🔴 Do It Nervous. Do It Scared.
Do it nervous.
Do it scared.
Do it regardless of the soothing excuses in your head.
As humans, our brain’s factory settings are meant to protect us.
Our brain, by default, comes up with all sorts of ways danger could creep into our lives. But most of the dangers we imagine simply don’t happen.
20 minutes before having one of the highlights of my career, I almost listened to my factory settings and avoided putting myself in the scenario at all, because of the possible dangers I imagined in my head.
At work, we started approaching random strangers to record an interview with me on the spot. We literally ask strangers to film a 4-minute segment with me where they stand. The concept is “call someone you appreciate but haven’t talked to in a while, and tell them what you appreciate about them”.
The concept is to reconnect people with friends, family, and acquaintances that they lost contact with but would like to.
The part I get nervous about is giving clear directions while filming. The entire interview is in my hands and I worry that I won’t direct this random person enough to get good content. I’m pretty much interviewing and directing them all at once.
Approaching strangers and asking if they’re interested in filming is also quite nerve-racking. What if they say no? Most of them do, and we both move along with their days. No big deal. But it feels like a big deal at the moment.
So, all of these thoughts were sloshing around my head as I was procrastinating going outside to film.
I ate my lunch extra slowly. I had to wash my hands again. I checked the Instagmra DMs just to make sure there wasn’t an emergency. I checked my Slack for the same reason. I started organizing my Google Drive. Why the hell am I organizing my Google Drive, I told myself. Go outside and film! had to go over my notes one last time to make sure I had everything we needed.
As I’m going down the elevator with Jesse our videographer, we talk about everything and nothing at the same time. We were both looking to distract ourselves from our nerves.
We finally get outside and we continue talking to each other about the weather, our friends, our families.
Then we quickly test the mics and start walking just a bit slower than everyone around us. I begin looking for any stranger who looks like they’d be good on camera and shoo us away immediately.
When we spot someone, I approach, and Jesse lags behind me. She’s not hiding from the stranger, but she’s not making her presence extremely known.
Most of the time, these people are tourists in New York City, and they have some time on their hands. Many times they’ll simply say no, sorry, and we part ways.
Other times they say yes and we record a good video. On rare occasions, we get absolute magic.
That’s what happened this week. We have two great videos coming out this week that I can’t wait for you to see.
In the videos, we mended a rocky relationship between sisters who hadn’t talked to each other in a year, and we asked two friends who have been best friends for 49 years the secret to keeping a long friendship.
And here I was only twenty minutes before trying to convince myself that it would be better if we didn’t record because I was nervous.
I get nervous every time before filming them and I’d literally rather cancel the entire shoot. But then we get these amazing moments that these strangers will remember forever. And so will I.
Do it nervous.
Do it scared.
Do it regardless of the soothing excuses in your head.
Your brain is telling you all the bad things that could happen.
But we rarely consider that the scary thing you’re about to do could be one of the best things to ever happen to you.
The videos aren’t out at the time of publishing, but by this Wednesday at noon ET, both videos will be on @veefriends Instagram. Watch them there. They’re worth it.