The Slightly Bigger You

A slightly bigger version of yourself on stage.

I was working with a student who had a big presentation coming up, the kind where the room goes quiet and every pair of eyes locks onto you like a heat-seeking missile. She told me her strategy was to "turn into someone else," a professional version of herself who didn't get nervous and knew all the answers. A mask, essentially. The kind we all reach for when the stakes feel high.

Here's the thing about masks, though. They crack.

Play the character, not the caricature

The improv lesson that changed how I think about high-stakes moments is actually very simple, and it comes from an exercise called "play the character, not the caricature."

In improv, when you step on stage and try to play a CEO, your first instinct is to go big, reach for the power suit, the commanding voice, the desk-pounding decisions. But that's a caricature. It's flat, it's predictable, and the audience checks out because they've seen it before.

The real character work happens when you play the CEO who's also afraid of public speaking, or the CEO who doodles in meetings because their brain works faster than the conversation. You take the real person and turn the dial up slightly, not all the way.

That's the same muscle you need for real life.

The mask you didn't know you were wearing

When you walk into a job interview, a networking event, or a wedding toast, your brain tells you to become someone else, the polished version, the one who doesn't stumble. But that version is a caricature too. It's stiff. It doesn't breathe. And people can feel it.

What actually works, what lands, is being a slightly bigger version of you, the one who's still a little nervous but says something honest about it, the one who tells a real story instead of a rehearsed answer, the one who lets a genuine laugh escape instead of a measured corporate chuckle.

A slightly bigger version of yourself isn't a performance. It's permission to let the parts of you that are already there take up a little more space.

The quiet listener becomes the person who asks the question nobody else would. The storyteller becomes the person who opens the toast with something real instead of something safe. The skeptic becomes the person who sees the flaw in the plan and says it out loud.

Authenticity in the real world — the same muscle, different stage.

A turn of the dial, not a full transformation

I think we spend so much energy trying to compress ourselves into what we think the moment requires, when the real power is in expansion, just a little. Not a full transformation. A turn of the dial.

The next time you've got a high-stakes moment coming up, try this. Don't ask yourself who you need to become. Ask yourself which part of who you already are needs a little more room. Then give it to them.

That's the character worth playing.