The First Thing To Do When Life Gets Hard

Now What? Part One: Agree and Accept

Agree and Accept

We all think we have a script for our lives.

We wake up each day assuming we’re in a particular scene:

This is the part where I go to college. This is the part where I fall in love. This is the part where I start a family, build a career, or enjoy retirement.

The only problem? Things go off-script.

What happens when you don’t fall in love — or you fall out of it?
When you can’t have kids?
When you lose your dream job or have to start over financially toward the end of your career?
When your health fades or your loved one is injured?
When the world shuts down for a pandemic?
When your mental health collapses, your faith falls apart, or your reputation is destroyed in one dumb moment?

When that happens, you go off-script.

Suddenly, the very real, very formative moments of life are right in your face. You have to do something, but you have no idea what to do.

Here’s the part that sounds crazy:
The same principles I learned doing improv comedy in Las Vegas apply to these real, unfunny situations.

Improv is improv. Whether it’s making up a silly scene for drunk tourists or managing a cancer diagnosis in your thirties, the core skills are the same.

Most people never need to learn improv to be funny.
But we all need to learn it to survive.

That’s what this series is about — 12 centering practices to improvise your way through anything.

And the first one can be summed up in a single word: Yes.

---

The Practice: Agree and Accept

On stage, “agree and accept” means saying yes to your scene partner — yes to the reality you’ve been given and to who you are in the story.

In real life, it’s the same principle: the sooner you can acknowledge reality, the sooner you can move forward.
It doesn’t mean you like it.
It means you stop fighting the truth of what is.

---

What Keeps Us From Accepting Reality

1. Denial – Pretending it isn’t happening.
This is the default reaction when life throws us off-script.
We act like nothing has changed, hoping if we ignore it long enough, it’ll go away. In improv comedy, we call this denial — saying “no” to your scene partner and refusing to engage with the reality you’ve been given.
On stage, denial kills a scene. In life, it kills dreams, relationships, and the chance to move forward.
You don’t have to like what’s happening. But you can’t begin to deal with it until you can say, “Yes, this is reality.”

2. Catastrophizing – Living in the future, assuming the worst.
If denial is pretending nothing is happening, catastrophizing is assuming the worst possible thing will happen.
Our brains jump straight to the doomsday version of the story: I’ll never recover. I’ll lose everything. This is the end of my career, my relationship, my stability.
The problem? Living in the imagined future paralyzes us in the present. We can’t take the next step because we’re too busy bracing for a blow that hasn’t landed yet — and might never land at all.

3. Self-Pity and Regret – Living in the past, wishing things had gone differently.
This is the other trap: getting stuck in the “what ifs” and “if onlys.”
We replay the moment everything went wrong, looking for a way to undo it. We imagine alternate endings. We keep asking, How did this happen? — not as a healthy reflection, but as a way of staying rooted in the past.
Grief is natural and necessary. But living in the past keeps us from seeing the resources, relationships, and opportunities that are still here, right now.

---

Taking Inventory

Once you’ve said yes to reality, take inventory of what you haven’t lost.

You may have lost your job, but you still have your health.
Lost your marriage, but you still have your friends.
Lost your savings, but you still have time to rebuild.

There’s always something you still have — and you need to say yes to that too.

This doesn’t mean you don’t grieve what’s gone.
It means you grieve with a clear, honest understanding of where you are.

---

The Eye of the Hurricane

When you find your now — your yes, your acceptance — it’s like standing in the eye of a hurricane.

The chaos is still all around you. More might be coming.
But at least you’re present.
You’re in control of your emotions and your thoughts.
You’re as ready as you can be for what’s next.

And what comes after yes?

You need to take an action.

And that’s another huge three-letter word: And.

Yes is what grounds you when life stuns you.

And is what focuses you so that you can take action.

Together, “Yes, and” become the first words of a new, redemptive story that can emerge from your chaos.