TJ Walker advises viewers to overcome the cringe of watching themselves on video by rehearsing presentations on camera. He argues that initial discomfort is normal, compares it to learning other skills, and gives practical, low-cost steps (use a phone, record privately) plus evaluation questions (Is the speaker understandable, interesting, memorable?) to guide improvement.
Chapters
So what do you do if you listen to the experts like me, and you've practiced your speech on video, you've recorded it, you did your best. Now you're watching it and all of a sudden your only response is cringing. You can't stand the sight of your own face, your body. You can't stand the sound of your own voice. What do you do? Well, if you're like most people, you tell yourself, well, I learned never to do that again. I'm never going to practice on video to see myself. It's too painful. I'm just going to practice out loud or maybe do it in the mirror or read my speech to get comfortable and familiar. And, you know, then I'll just wing it. Big, big mistake. Here's the thing. There are a lot of things in life. The first time you do it, it can be painful. The first time you take a walk as a baby, you're probably going to fall down, right? Imagine never learning how to walk just because of that pain of falling down the first few times. The first time you ever got on a bike, if you're like most people, you kind of wobbled and, you know, maybe fell down, skinned your knee. But imagine if you never bothered to learn how to ride a bike. You'd either harm your ability to get to different places easily, or you would remove a lot of joy from your life. If you like to ride your bike for fun, so. So almost anything worthwhile does involve a little discomfort. Learning how to write, maybe a long time for some of you. It was a long time ago for me, but the first time you wrote an essay and you got it back and the teacher circled with a red pen, you didn't put a comma here, you didn't have a period, the right place here, you didn't use capital letters. There's certain pain there, right? Imagine if you'd say, well, I got that first test back, that first essay, and I got criticism and I didn't like those red marks. So I'm never going to submit any of my written work again because it's too painful to get negative feedback from my teacher. And you never learned how to write. Now could you survive? Certainly there are jobs that do not require your ability to write or read. Typically not very well paying, but you could. But wouldn't that be a shame? If you want to advance in your career, if you want to be more successful, then improve your communication skills. The best way to do that, smash the subscribe button. Right now, you need to be a better communicator it really is that simple. If you want to be more effective just in civic life, sometimes just talking to family and friends, you need to be a better, better communicator. The number one way of doing that is to rehearse on camera. Now, you don't have to be in some big studio. You don't have a fancy camera. All you need is your cell phone and nobody has to be around. You can sort of tiptoe into a closet if you want. Don't tell anyone what you're doing, hold up your phone, hit record and speak. Do some practice of a presentation, a talk, a briefing, and look at it. It comes down to this. If you hit play and you're watching yourself and you're going into this with the attitude of, I'm gonna rip myself apart and I'm gonna compare myself to the most beautiful Hollywood movie star, well, yeah, you're gonna get discouraged if you say, I'm gonna compare my voice to the guy who does the movie trailers, who has the richest, most resonant voice in the world. Yeah, you can be disappointed. Guess what? Nobody else is doing that. When you're in a business meeting and a colleague stands up to present and they're giving you good ideas, useful ideas, ideas that are going to help you improve what you do, maybe make more money, save you time, I guarantee you, you're not looking at them saying, well, if only they look more like George Clooney or Julia Roberts or some other famous celebrity, then I look, no, that's not what you're saying. If they have a voice that is just perfectly normal, everyday voice and you can hear them and you can understand them, I'm pretty sure you're not saying, well, their voice isn't as good as Morgan Freeman, so I'm not going to listen to them. That's not what you're saying. If you can hear them and understand it and gain value, you're happy with their voice. Guess what? The same rules apply to you. I don't want to seem unsympathetic, but I have to share something with you. Get over yourself. If you think that somehow you're uniquely awful or, oh, I can't look at video myself, it makes me cringe. I'm cringe worthy. You're being selfish. What you're really saying is you don't care about putting forth your best ideas in the best way to your audience. You're saying, poor little me, I'm so special and I'm so important that a little bit of discomfort for me is More important than everyone I'm speaking to for the rest of my career being bored out of their minds, potentially. Because, let's face it, that's the real problem with most presentations in the world, especially in the business world. It's not that you stand up and you speak and all of a sudden people are pointing and, huh, look, TJ's hairline is awful. Look, TJ's tie is a little crooked. That's not the real danger for any of us. The danger for most people when we give a presentation, whether it's to one person, one prospect, one person interviewing us, or to five or six people, or to a larger group of 10 or 20 or 100 or a thousand, the biggest danger most of us face on a regular basis is we stand up, we speak, nobody notices how we look. Nobody notices anything about our voice. All they notice is, wow, this TJ guy just bored me to death. Thank goodness I brought my cell phone so I can ignore him and I can check email and I can check text and I can get caught up with other things because he was so boring. That's the number one problem everybody faces. The number one solution to that problem is you have to rehearse your presentation on video and then look at it and ask yourself the tough questions. Not an, am I totally beautiful? I know I'm not. That is my voice. The most beautiful voice ever. Mine isn't. You have to ask yourself the question, is what I'm saying understandable, interesting and memorable? And would I want to listen to this person? Those are the questions you need to ask. And you can't simply practice out loud and give intelligent answers to those questions. You have to watch yourself. You cannot multitask, be thinking about those questions while you're delivering, because sometimes you can feel like you're doing a great job, but then you watch it and you think, oh, my gosh, this is really boring. So that's what I want you to think of to help you get over. And again, I realize I'm sounding harsh and mean. Oh, gosh, TJ's mean. I'm not mean. I want to help you, but I can't help you if you're not willing to help yourself. So this hurdle of I am sort of uniquely awful, and I'm going to cringe every time I see myself on video. Therefore, I'm never going to practice on video. It's only hurting you. It's not hurting me. Frankly, it helps my business because the more people in the world who are bad speakers, it just means the people who come to me and my clients stand out as that much better. It increases the demand that someone's boss tells them they got to take one of my courses. So you're only helping me. I want to help you. I really do. And it's this money. It's not a technical problem. It's not a money problem. It's not a finance problem. You don't have to hire me for 10 or $20,000 a day. It's something you can do for free in your own closet. If you want to practice speaking, record it on video. And I do mean video, not just audio. You need to see yourself and hear yourself and get over this initial hurdle and keep practicing until you can look at the video of yourself. Speak, and you can give the following answers to these questions. Yes, the person on this video is understandable. Yes, the person on this video is interesting. Yes, the person in this video is giving memorable ideas. Yes, the person in this video is coming across comfortable, confident and relaxed. And yes, if this weren't me, I would want to watch that person. When you get to that point, you will be a successful communicator and the cringe will be gone.
