I was standing on the left side of the stage, focusing intensely on the scene unfolding in front of me and wracking my brain to figure out how I could make it funnier. By the end of the 20 minute set, I had contributed twice, including closing out one of the skits (which happens when a joke brings the house down and a colleague runs across the stage, denoting the end)!

Earlier that night, I had attended my very first Improv workshop. If you had asked me that morning, I would have told you with 99.99% confidence that I wouldn’t be performing in an actual show where people paid money to watch me make up jokes on the spot. That type of thing would require months, even years, of practice. And besides, I was hilarious in my daily life, but up on stage? I would most definitely freeze.

I left my first Improv acting experience feeling exhilarated and looking forward to participating in the following week’s show. Yes, having people laugh at your jokes is a huge ego booster in and of itself, and if it’s on a stage in front of a real audience who came expecting to laugh, even more so. But there was something different about this experience, a different kind of thrill and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Throughout the rest of the weekend, the experience percolated in the back of my mind and popped up during my daily meditations until something connected and I had a moment of realization.

From the time I walked into the building at 7:30pm, ready for the workshop, until the time I walked out at the other end of the show, I hadn’t looked at my phone or drifted away from the event into my own head once.

In our hectic lives, there are few times when we devote all of our attention to any one thing. As hard as we may try to heed the advice of articles telling us to unplug, we’re all guilty of reverting back to our bad habits and ignoring our friends as they try to connect and share their lives with us. The only way to lessen the frequency of these instances is to strengthen our “Presence” muscles, and Improv is a great exercise for this.

If you want to succeed in Improv, you must be attentive at all times. You can’t dwell on a missed joke opportunity and you can’t prepare for future scenes (they don’t exist!). You can only listen actively and look for ways that you can add to that scene, in that moment.

On stage, if I wasn’t constantly present, giving my eyes, ears, nose, brain and respect to the performers, I would have missed my chance to jump in and deliver that killer scene-ending joke. I would missed my chance to enhance the moment.

How many more times will you miss an opportunity to enhance the scenes of your life?