You are what you believe you are!

“It’s simply not my cup of tea,” exploded Vami! She had started to struggle with herself.

All she was trying was to give her best shot, after all, she needed that second income, and it was just her first step.

She had been watching movies all her life, was very quick at picking up new things, she was a natural orator & a very good one!

She was on top of her game when it came to tabletop topics, she even represented her district on the state level of the Toastmaster’s contest.

But when she had to do it on camera with a prepared speech, she hesitated, rather freaked out most of the times; but she needed to overcome her fear, hesitation and whatever was stopping her had to be let go.

It was not getting easier with practice. Every time he rehearsed her script alone, she faired well, but add a live camera to it along with some audience & their she started to fumble!

She knew she was camera shy and had to desperately do something about it before it was too late.

This was indeed the perfect time for her to invest time & effort into this.

With keeping indoors due to the global pandemic, lesser distractions, and comparatively lesser workload, it could not have got better for her to dedicate much of her time to this.

“Let’s try again,” she told herself!

She turned on her laptop and started typing in, …. how to overcome camera shyness ….

Tips on how to overcome being camera shy, was the first search result, she clicked on it and started reading, how difficult it would be to follow these instructions thought Vami to herself.

#1 It is normal: - “Normal?”, Vami wondered!

Normal was the last thing she had in mind about being comfortable in front of the camera, after all, how long has it been since the video camera was invented, obviously it has not been with humans since forever. She curiously googled and found that it was only been about a century since it was first invented and even less than that since its first commercial use! She started to recall when was the first time she held her a gadget which could record a video; not more than a decade she realized.

She went on reading the article further, #2: Practice makes perfect.

She must have heard that a million times in her life, whether it was her math’s lessons in high school, the language teacher in middle school or the coding professor in college!

You can hone any of the skills even if you are currently not good at it, only by practice and more of practice; obviously, it cannot be any different for her shyness here as well.

She somehow knew very well that the more hours of practice she gave in rehearsing and getting used to seeing herself on a screen, she will get better at it each day.

She thought to herself to make it a goal to go to practice at least 10 times. On her current script before going to bed that night!

She went ahead reading the article, #3 Write a script: Awesome, I already have the script, I am at least ahead on this one, she thought to herself & rejoiced about it.

She could feel the tingling sparkling confidence all over her body.

She got up from the chair and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. Double espresso shot with a handful of ice cubes topped with chilled milk, her usual and all-time favourite drink both at leisure and while on the go.

With her large mug filled with liquid refreshment she settled back again on the chair, the camera turned on and script in her hand. She rehearsed her dialogues, and the script flows in the most natural way she could. The newly gained confidence was having a compounded effect, she made lesser ah sounds, continue her dialogues without much breaks resulting in an increase of confidence which again resulted in better performance and so on.

She knew deep down it was not the most natural thing to do for her and that itself was the biggest challenge. But she definitely found a hack – she fooled her own mind to make herself believe she was doing really well, she was not shy, she was a camera-friendly person, even when somewhere deep down she knew that it wasn’t one of her natural traits. She kept fooling her own mind by intense practice each day, something she swore by religiously. She would skip meals but not her script rehearsals.

Once she got better with her first script, finally it was D-day! She had to now record her first YouTube video for her new channel, something which has been on her MUST TO DO list for weeks now.

Finally, she turned on her camera, set it upright in front of her desk, the lens facing her – took a deep breath and pressed the recording button.

Took a deep breath, a long pause – recollected her thoughts, fooled her mind once again and got on with her dialogues. For an almost unbelievable experience, she was very pleased with her short 7 min non-stop video, it was nothing short of extraordinary achievement.

The camera turned off and now it was time for her editing lessons, she was parallelly taking her online editing lessons and editing her videos to upload them on YouTube at the same time. For her first 2 practice videos, it took her 2 full days of uninterrupted work. With the single take she had this time, she was hoping to finish her editing in a day and when she completed it before dinner time it called for some celebration.

“Could you take down the order for Skyview 3^rd Street?”, Vami speaking on the phone.

“Sure, Madam. Please tell me your order”, replied to the staff over the phone.

“1 Hakka noodles and hot & sour soup, that’s it, “ordered Vami.

“Sure, madam, it will be delivered in next 40 mins”, told the staff.

“Thank you!” Vami replied and smiled, before hanging the phone.

It was indeed a very good day!