On today’s fear facing action list:
– Scary movie!
Ahh first of I just have to say, what an afternoon and an evening! All thanks to some fear facing I decided to put myself up to. Just came back from watching BlackKklansman. Decided to buy two tickets and go out there and ask a stranger to join me! How it went? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see for your self in the Sunday video I’ll release!
– Dare to show unfinished material
It’s a free eBook called 5 steps to Finding your workflow which I recently read. In one of its sections, the author Nathan Lozeron talks about the implications of being a perfectionist and how it’s rooted in fear. How the fear of other people’s judgement makes us strive for perfection. He goes on making the case how this behaviour is a time waster and that we should get feedback when we’re only 20% into a project. At this stage there’s usually enough to make an early judgement if it’s heading in the right direction or not.
“Perfection is flawlessness. Excellence is the constant improvement of flaws.”
– Nathan Lozeron
So here follows a learning of mine in the context of what I’ve just mentioned. This was last night.
It’s 21:05 and I’m standing, or sitting, in the fear right now. I just sent a very early draft of a video I’ve done for a friend. But in a business context. Really tough for me to do this, as the perfectionist I am.
I am sitting here waiting for the feedback right now. I sent it like 7-8 minutes ago. It’s only 2 minutes long, so he should be done watching it by now. Wait. I can see how he is writing in facebook messenger, the “…” bar is lightning up. Oh, it disappeared, that means he deleted what he first wrote. This can’t be good.
Feedback. Total shit. And I get it. It was a very early draft, more to show the flow and choice of music. But I really got the white balance way off. Which I’ve known all along since I first opened the material up after the shot. But I had started to ignore this, or not dealt with it. After all, it’s been almost three weeks since I filmed it. Told myself I figure out a way to colour correct it later. This is emotionally very tough for me. I feel ashamed. Physically hurts within.
He called. We talked it out it. Feel better about it now. A lot of hours in the garbage bin in terms of output. Unless I learn some bad as colour correction skills. However, In learnings – totally different story. I’ve learnt not only the technical implications of using my camera, but the biggest learning is that I need to get comfortable with sharing and taking in feedback early in the process.
I’ve been working (very slowly though) with this edit for 3 weeks. If I would have just dared to show some of the footage straight away, that would have saved hours and hours of time. And equally much anxiety. This really is a big learning. BIG LEARNING.
Making mistakes should hurt. That’s when we really learn from them. At least if we’re mentally mature enough to process it in an objective way. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating emotional scars that hinder us from going at it again. What a shitty thing to say – when is that the case? Hard to tell, but when you have grown your self-esteem enough – you can deal with most shit!
My processing went like this; I haven’t done any real big mistakes in quite some time. That means I’ve been playing it too safe. This is a nice little reference point to look back at. My life didn’t end, even though my mind made it feel like that for a second. It grew. Because I choose too. Because I’ve imprinted so many times in my mind that through facing my fears, through failing a lot, that’s when the growth happens.
However, the two are completely separated things. Fears and output that is. I focus on the process of dealing with the fear of doing something and try to let the output of it get less attention. The latter is not important in the context of building the fear facing muscle. That’s a universal skill we apply in all life areas. I threw myself into this project knowing it most likely could go horribly wrong, because it was out of my skill range. So, in terms of facing my fears, I did great. I identified the fear and went for it even though it scared the crap out of me.
In terms of the video making, I did poorly if you look at the output. But even here I did well if we focus on the learning process of developing a certain skill. In this case – video making. I’ve had to research and learn what went wrong and now have a deeper understanding of it. If I just by luck had managed to get a good output, then the learning from what went wrong wouldn’t have been the same. And today I will go all nerdy on colour correction, maybe it can be saved!
Life is what you make of it, you decide how to interpret what has happened. You decide how to react and how to move forward from here. What good does blame or shaming do but to use up energy you could spend in actions moving forward. As Nathaniel Branden says in the six pillars of self-esteem:
“I am responsible for my choices and actions. To be ‘responsible’ in this context means responsible not as the recipient of moral blame or guilt, but responsible as the chief causal agent in my life and behavior.”
So this one got a bit lengthy, and probably a bit confusing. Might revise it tomorrow, too late for that now!
– Live stream
And yeah, if you want to have a look at another one of my fears I faced today – check out the Friday live stream I did!
See you tomorrow, Fear facer,
/Alex
