TJ Walker shares a story about a Miss Universe contestant who hated watching herself on video, normalizing the discomfort most people feel. He argues that practicing on camera is the only way to get comfortable, and warns that some stories don't land the same way across different cultures.
Chapters
If you don't love everything about how you look and sound when you watch yourself on video, you're in good company. In fact, the vast, vast majority of clients I work with in one on one trainings and live group trainings, they don't like to do the homework of being recorded on video. And they certainly don't like it when I put the camera on them during the live trainings. Unfortunately, that's the only way anyone gets better at this. Now, sometimes I'll have people moan and groan and complain they hate their voice or they don't sound like that. They don't like something about how they look. I've even had people cry. Believe it or not, I typically say the same thing to people when they are aghast at how they look. I'll say, relax, Bill. It's not that bad. Nobody's 21 anymore after all. My hair's falling out, I'm getting a double chin. I get some wrinkles here. No one's offering me a million dollars to do the voiceover for their TV commercial or movie trailer. So relax. It's not that bad. I once had a client, she started crying when she saw herself on video and hurt her voice. She hated the way she sounded, hated the way she looked. I was about to say what I normally do. Relax. Nobody's 21 anymore. Only one problem. She was 21 and she was actually Miss Universe. She still didn't like everything she saw. I said, Jennifer, what's wrong, T.J. i hate my voice. I hate the way I look. This didn't quite make sense to me. And then I asked her, I said, you're Miss Universe. Surely you've seen yourself many, many times on video TV cameras. No, T.J. i just signed up for the local pageant a couple months ago, won that quickly, won my national, and here I am. It's the first time I've ever seen myself on video. So if you don't love every aspect of how you look on camera or sound, you're in good company. Because she looked fine, she sounded fine. It's just for most of us, it's awkward. It's weird hearing our own voice because we hear our own voice distorted through the bones in our own skull. We're used to seeing pictures of ourselves, selfies of ourselves, but we're not used to watching video of ourselves. So you got to relax. The main thing is you got to do it enough so you get comfortable with it. So what did I do there? Why did I tell that story? I tell that story because I want people to realize it's okay not to love everything about how you look and sound. If Even someone who's 21 in a Miss Universe doesn't like the way she looks and sounds, then probably you shouldn't worry too much about not being perfect either. So I do that because I want people to be relaxed. I'm typically telling that right before I'm getting people on camera or if I'm asking them to. So it makes the whole thing go down. It is memorable to people. They can relate because everyone has an image of sort of the perfect looking beauty pageant contestant and winner. So it puts strong images in people's minds and it makes them relax a little bit because they realize I'm not alone. Everybody feels awkward with it. So that's what I'm after. I want them to realize it's okay to feel awkward recording yourself. It's okay to feel uncomfortable and not like it because that's how everybody feels. That's the basic message. Now, I will say about this story, I don't use it as often anymore because the cultural climate is much more critical of beauty pageants, especially that one because of certain previous owners. So I don't use that story as often because I don't want to muddy the waters. There are stories that work certain times in certain places but could backfire on you in other places. So you constantly have to gauge not only is this story accurate, does it make the message come alive, but is it going to play well or is it going to irritate people in other areas? So I'm putting it out here for you because I'm giving you basically everything in this course. I hope you're not offended by it. I'm not endorsing or condemning beauty pageants. I basically go where people call me to train them.
