Reaching There

I was doing an improvisation scene with another actor. The objective of the "improv" was simple; to do a small talk with another actor with a motive to get money out of his pocket. At first it sounded like an easy thing to do; go out there and fleece this guy.  So I went in on the stage with "the goal" dwarfing everything else in my mind. A few minutes into the scene I was struggling for words. And why? I was too focused on my motive. The motive was handicapping my thought process. During the postmortem of the scene my teacher gave me the reason for my failure. I wasn't listening. I was too busy keeping the motive alive in my mind that I missed listening to my co-actor. Eventually I didn't have anything to react to! Robert Downey Jr said he hates motive, during an interview on "Inside an Actor's Studio" (a TV show I am a big fan of). I was definitely too engrossed in my motive to even think about anything else. Maybe it is good...