2 Tips for BIG Fear! 16 Minutes to Courage

Hello everyone, so welcome to another episode of Unlocking Lily. So it's always been my dream to be a speaker, which led me to quit my day job to pursue this full-time. And all of you are coming along for this journey with me. So in every episode, I take on a different challenge to really help me grow as a speaker. So in this video, I'm going to be filming at Yonge and Dundas Square, the busiest intersection in Toronto. It's because I learned from Brené Brown that if there's something meaningful that I want to do, I need to have the courage to show up. If I want to be a successful speaker, I need to be able to deliver my speech whenever, wherever, in front of whoever. So wish me luck and hope everything goes well. Alright, so today's the day. I'm going to be filming at Yonge and Dundas Square. To be honest with you, I think leading up to it, I felt so nervous. Even like a month ago when I thought about this idea, people staring at me going to be such an anxiety-provoking experience, but I actually feel really good. I feel more excited than anything else. I don't know, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just thinking about it over and over again, or it could be, um, I have been practicing more in the last month. I don't know, but you know, I'm right here at my house. Things could be very different when I get there, so we'll see how it goes. So we locked up our house. My lovely husband is gonna— look at your hair! Oh my goodness, that is like man bun to the max. Anyway, we're, um, he's gonna drive me to the GO station. I'm gonna take the GO train to, um, to downtown Toronto. Oh, look at that hair! She thinks she's all tough, eh? But wait till I drop her off at the GO station. She's gonna start quaking in her boots. Oh yeah, okay, we'll see, we'll see. I didn't realize I actually missed the last train. I came to the station a little too late. It's either the trains run really early in the morning, like around like 5:00 a.m., or really late in the afternoon. So I'm gonna be taking the bus. I hope I'm standing in the right spot. I had some lovely, lovely gentlemen over there in the Blue Jays shirt that, that pointed me in the right direction. So I have a new friend here that helped me out in pointing me in the right direction. What's your name?

Hi there, I'm Greg and I'm from Barrie and heading down to the Blue Jays games. And Lily tells me that today she's going to try to face her fears. That's what this episode's about, and it's about facing fears, and she's going to ride the— filming in public is going to be your big thing?

Yes.

That's pretty cool.

That's exciting. Do you have a fear?

I don't. I don't have any fears that I know about. Fearless. Yeah, well, not fearless. I'm sure, you know, there's always the fear of not being successful or not taking care of your family. Those are always the common ones, but other than that, no, nothing really. It's just one of those things.

All right, you just push through the fear. I do, yeah.

Yeah, you just learn to cope and you learn to deal with it.

All right, well, thank you so much.

No problem.

Thank you. I got to another station. I'm supposed to take another bus from here. It was interesting. I got to meet a gentleman named Greg, and after he did the video, we started talking, and then he said that he's into leadership stuff too and how he guides his employees to become better leaders. I never used to approach strangers. It's something that I had another fear of, but you know, sometimes approaching strangers, you never know, you could learn a lot from them. So something, something good came out of it. All right guys, so I'm finally here downtown. It took a long time. I was on the bus for about 2 and a half hours. I'm actually really hungry. I'm gonna go find something to eat and then take another subway up to Yonge and Dundas Square. So I'm actually— for you, for those of you who don't know, downtown Toronto. I'm really south, uh, and Yonge and Dundas is about 20 minutes from here. But I'm gonna go grab some food and go to the bathroom too. Actually, that's TMI, but I gotta go. I found a washroom and I got my food, so I'm going to try to find it somewhere that I can sit and eat before I do my big filming at Yonge and Dundas Square. So I finally I finally got to Yong An Danda Square and I realized that I messed up. I forgot my— I forgot my big tripod. I don't know, I left it in my husband's car. So I have my little one that Nina gave me, so I'm gonna try to use that. Also, another thing is I got here and there's like— I mean, there are people here, but it's nowhere close to as busy as I was expecting. So I don't know. I don't know. I'm thinking maybe I should find a busier place downtown to film because really I think there's about— I don't even know, like maybe 50 people around. I was expecting hundreds, maybe even a thousand, but not a lot of people. I don't know what's going on. It's a Friday afternoon at Yonge and Dundas and there's no one around. Interesting. Anyway, I'll try to figure it out and yeah, I'll start filming soon. Oh, I just found out that they're doing a Chevrolet Auto Show here, so they're blocking out Yonge and Dundas Square. That's why no one's around. So I also can't film there either. I'm going to walk down the street and probably go to Queen Street West, which is another really busy part of downtown Toronto. So I'm going to try doing that. And yeah, you know, life happens. You gotta adjust. You gotta adjust when things don't go exactly as planned. So we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. Everything Every opportunity is an opportunity to learn, guys, all the time. Alright, I found a busier place. I'm actually at the Toronto Civic Centre, I believe it's called. This is where we hold all our events. There's like different exhibits that's going on right now. Lots of people around, not as much as I would like. I don't know what I was expecting. I think when I wanted to do this event, I pictured thousands of people around me, but I don't know, maybe this is how busy it always is. I all made it up in my head that it's supposed to be a lot busier. Anyway, so it looks like they're gonna have a concert soon, so kind of give you a glimpse of how it looks like here. There's a food truck there. Oh, look, there's our beautiful Toronto, Toronto sign right there. Okay, so I'm gonna try to find a place to set up my little tripod because I, I lost my big one, and, uh, yeah. It's gonna happen. Testing, testing, testing. Since I'm here at my first attempt in shooting, I realized that I'm a little bit too far away from the action of Civic Center, and primarily because I couldn't find anything to put my tripod on. So I have to use my creativity to go right in the middle of all the action. Yeah, yeah, that's the point of all of this. The point of all of this is for me to face my fear and being around a lot of people, and I was kind of far away from people, so it's a good check-in for myself. Yeah, let me go find some place. So I found a busier place to, um, set up, but the only thing is that there was no, uh, no place for me to set up my tripod. So I have the tripod on a, uh, bench and I'm sitting on the floor, which kind of adds to the awkwardness of this, which is great because that's what I'm looking for. And I, I think people are probably wondering why am I sitting on the floor and recording, but hey, that's part of the challenge. Hey everyone, so as I'm here downtown Toronto facing my fear in filming in public, I thought I'd share some tips in how to overcome your fear, or at least push through it. The number one thing to always think about is how is your fear holding you back? So for example, I want to be a speaker and I'm going to be in situations where I'm going to be speaking in front of many people that I have, I've never met. I have no idea if they care about me, like me, or they may hate everything I have what they have to say. So I had to overcome that. I'm not always going to have the comfort of my own backyard filming, where everything is safe and it's my home and nobody else is looking at me, or have the comfort in going to the TDS Studio where it's only Evan and our camera person. So I needed to push through that fear, and thinking about how it's been holding me back all my life really helped me go through this process and really kind of diminish all the fear that I had in filming in public. Now that I'm here, it's actually not that bad. I don't feel that anxiety anymore that I used to. It was mo— mo— mo— I made a mistake. It's mostly all in my head. And when you're there, it's actually not that bad. The number 2 thing that you want to think about is to start small. You don't want to go from being like completely petrified in doing something and then completely flooding your system and going crazy. So for me, I had a fear in filming in public, so I started off filming while I was walking on a sidewalk. Then I, then I started filming in a grocery store, and then I started filming where my class was going on. And then little by little, it kind of helped me build the muscle to face my biggest fear, which is coming here downtown and filming in front of all these people around me. And that really, really helps. So when you want to think about it, like if you have a fear of swimming, maybe you want to try out a in your bathtub first and then go to a shallow end of a pool, and then later on you could go to a deep end of a pool. So little by little, you're going to train yourself to overcome that fear. And number 3 is to keep pushing. Just because you've conquered one fear doesn't mean that you're going to stop there. So for me, I've conquered this fear in filming in public. It doesn't really feel like a fear anymore. So now I need to think about what's next for me and keep pushing through and not be content that I— I mean, yeah, Yes, I'm happy that I overcame this fear, but I need to keep going through. So I think the next thing I want to do is like go on a big stage and speak in front of a lot of people. A lot. Hundreds of people. That's what I would like to do. Yeah. So I finished filming my little piece by setting up on the bench. It was interesting. It was good. I mean, I had to do what I could with the situation I was in. I can't believe I left my tripod in my husband's car, but I had to use my creativity to kind of maneuver— maneuver? Is maneuver the right word? Was it manure? Oh, manure. Okay, anyways, that's not the point. Maneuver around the obstacles, but more importantly, it's beautiful here. I used to live downtown. I lived downtown Toronto for about 6 years before moving up north, and I love it here. The energy is so vibrant, the people are so wonderful, and everyone's so diverse, and there's always something going on. So I— that part I really miss about living in the city. I'm gonna take a walk around and look at this exhibit that's going on. It's called No Blank Brain Project. So I'm gonna take a look and then I'm going to head home and go see my husband. Okay, so I'm back at Union Station. It's so interesting here. There's lots of stuff going on. Um, anyway, I have about half an hour to kill, so I'm going to get online and answer some of your comments because my Unlocking Lily episode 6— no, 5, 5, 5— just, uh, came out. Yeah, I'm excited to see what you guys wrote. Just got off the train, gonna go see the husband. And look how beautiful it is. It's not just nice. Yeah, what a change of scenery from crazy downtown Toronto to farmland beauty. Look who I found. It's my husband. You happy to see me? Oh yeah, happy to see you. Happy to see you too. So I just got back from filming in public, guys, and it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be initially. I was like playing up all these scenarios leading up to it. What if people stare at me weird? What if I accidentally drop my phone? What if people judge me? What if people say things to me? And honestly, no one cared. Everyone was going along their merry way. Everything was fine. People were having a great time. I think some people did kind of look over, but you know, it was out of curiosity and not like sheer judgment. Maybe they were judging, I don't know, but I felt great about it. I was so happy to be there downtown in the midst of all the action. I did have a few obstacles that I had to kind of use my creativity to kind of work around, but it all worked out in the end. And that goes to show that fear is sometimes just in your head, and when you go out there and do it, it's not as bad as you thought originally. Which brings me to the next point. So the question of the day is, what is your biggest fear that you still have yet to overcome? Write in the comments below and I'll join in on the discussion. So for my next challenge, I'm going to go into an event and start with my why, because I learned from Simon Sinek, instead of love going with what you do and how you do it, you need to start with why. So thank you so much for watching, and I really hope you enjoyed my journey throughout downtown Toronto. It was a lot of fun for me. And I actually have a special shout out for Halona Black. So Halona Black wrote, how exciting! It's great to have a mentor who can push you to do things that you may not feel ready for. I need to do more of this for myself. Yes, hello, no black, it is true. I do have a bomb of a mentor, Evan, and he is so wonderful, and he unleashes all sorts of belief on me when I need it the most. And I wouldn't be able to do a lot of the things I have done recently if it wasn't for him. So, so, so thankful for the lovely Evan. So when I first started out on this series, I thought it was just a way for to document my journey and show some transparency to you guys as well, but I had no idea that it would be inspiring for you and it would inspire you to do the things that you want to do. And I am completely at a loss of words of all the wonderful comments that have been pouring in. I can't thank you enough and be grateful enough, and I really do hope that one day I'll be able to meet all of you you in person. But if I don't, it makes me feel good that we're all in this together and we're going on this journey arm in arm. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, and I will see you guys very, very soon.