Why You Hate Being on Video (And What’s Really Going On)

Let’s talk about video.

Because the second someone says

“you should be doing more video”

something happens.

You avoid it.

You overthink it.

Or you tell yourself you’ll get to it later… and don’t.

In this episode, we unpack what’s actually going on underneath that resistance and why it has nothing to do with your ability and everything to do with how aware you suddenly become of yourself.

Using real stories, behavioural research, and practical experience, this is a grounded look at why video feels uncomfortable and how to move through it without trying to become someone else.

𝗜𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿:

• Why video triggers overthinking and avoidance

• The spotlight effect and why you feel like everyone is watching

• The real reason you become hyper aware on camera

• The identity fears that show up when you try to be visible

• Why “being yourself” can still feel uncomfortable

• How early beliefs about being too much or not enough show up

• The moment that normalises the struggle and changes everything

• Why confidence on video is built through repetition, not talent

• The difference between practising and performing

• How to make video feel natural instead of forced

𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:

• You are not bad on video, you are under practised

• People are thinking about themselves far more than they are thinking about you

• Confidence is built through action, not preparation

• Authenticity is not something you master, it is something you practise

• Repetition creates comfort and comfort creates confidence

🎧 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝘀

https://www.sharonfrancisco.com/podcast

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Questions for the podcast? hello@sharonfrancisco.com

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👉  Also: The Entrepreneurial Bookkeeper — grow your business without sacrificing your health: sharonfrancisco.com/program

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook.

Have a question for the podcast? Email hello@sharonfrancisco.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Sharon Francisco show. Today we are going to be talking about why we hate being on video and what's really going on behind the scenes with that. Because I know the second somebody says to you, you should be doing more videos, you either avoid it, overthink it, or say, Yeah, I'll get to that. And then we don't. And what I want to say really up front before I get stuck into this is I'm not perfect at this either. I still watch some of my videos that I've done and think, oh, Sharon, what were you doing there? So this isn't coming from a place of me nailing it. It's coming from a place where I've worked on this consistently and I understand, I think, what might be going on underneath the either procrastination or that whole thing about recording and recording and recording and deleting and recording and deleting. So I feel like I've done this for long enough to understand what might be going on and how I can help you push through that, not coming from a place of perfection by any standard. So, because I think what this is about, it's not that you're bad at video, it's that you become hyper-aware of yourself when you do videos. There's actually research around this called the spotlight effect. It shows that we massively overestimate how much other people are noticing this. How often have we heard that? They're not even noticing you, so don't even worry about it. And it's actually true. We think everyone is analyzing us and they're not. They're thinking about themselves. And I think if you remember this, it's it makes it a lot easier. If you think that everyone, if you walk around and have an image that everyone on their forehead has a sign that says, please make me feel significant, that's where where people are thinking about themselves. They're not thinking about us, which makes should make this whole process a lot easier. But I think what will help, and as I go through today's podcast, I think what might help is that knowing this kind of stuff and stacking it is important. So if you're writing out notes on this or make it a mental note, the people are thinking about themselves, they're not thinking about you. So your videos, they're thinking about when you're talking, about how they can apply the learnings from your videos to themselves. Or they might even be thinking, gosh, I think I could do a better video than them. Again, they're thinking about themselves, they're not thinking about you. And even quite often, if they are thinking I could do a better video than you, at least they're learning about what they could do themselves. So don't feel like they're judging you with this. And let's stack some of these. So remember they're thinking about you themselves first, not you. Now, I want to take you back a little bit because this was obviously a big one for me when I first started um doing videos, which is properly I was doing started doing videos back in 2017. And I think when I first started understanding a little bit more around personal branding, that's where I started to really kind of break through on this video thing. I thought when I first started that I couldn't be me, because I've been told through a series of different things, but mainly in corporate, that I'm I'm too much. I have I'm too loud, I have too much energy, I'm too expressive, I'm just too much. And I've been told that all my life to the point where I actually pushed down my energy. Um, I'll tell you a funny little story about that. In my early teenage years, um I genuinely thought up until, you know, pretty much fairly into my teenage years, I honestly used to think that people were really good at maintaining their excitement for life, their energy and enthusiasm for life, because I just seemed to have so much of it that I thought everyone else was just really good at being poker face about how excited they were about life. And then there was actually a realization that they weren't trying to hold it in, that they were just really calm people and they didn't have the level of energy that I have, which is fine, that's totally fine. But I the realization was like, oh, they're not just really good at containing their energy, they just don't have the same energy as me. And then I learned something that really shifted everything for me. Jane Anderson is a personal branding coach, she's amazing. She was a personal branding coach that I did her program in 2017. And she said to me, and I want you to think again through the filter of you, not me. She said to me, Sharon, some people are going to love your energy and some people won't. And that's fine. No issues. And I remember thinking, oh, so I don't need to fix myself. I just need to find my people, which is so extraordinary to think that for all of those years I was tempering myself around people to push my energy down to make sure that I didn't, I don't know, scare people off or whatever it was, because I've been told by so many people you're too much, you're too loud, you're too energetic, you're too, too, too, too. And then I realized, you know what? I I kind of got the permission off Jane to go, I can just be me and and I'll find my people that enjoy my energy. And that's exactly what's happened for me. And it's ironic, you know, I'm always fascinated when I'll do a presentation or I'll do a webinar and I'll meet with people afterwards. And quite often, one of the first things that they say is, I love your energy. And I just want to cry because I spent most of my life pushing that little energy bubble down in in seemingly important places like in corporate or whenever I was around groups of people, I thought, oh, I need to make sure I contain that energy of mine, whereas now I just let it free, I don't mind, which is much easier for me to be more me, of course. Now I think this is where some people might get a little bit stuck. They go, okay, I'll be myself then. But then there's this fear that might set in. Am I too much? Like I was thinking about myself. Am I annoying? Am I a bit full on? Am I a bit boring? Am I too old? Am I too young? And the list goes on. So we start second guessing ourselves. And I totally get it because I've had the exact same thing as I said, um, thinking that I had too much energy. So, how do you show up authentically and honestly? I don't think you can ever fully master this. I definitely haven't. But I've done enough work and I've read enough and I've invested enough time, energy, and money, money in myself to get a little bit better every single day. And that's the point, right? Not perfection, but progress. Now, let me tell you something that's really helped me push through this because I think this was the turning point. I remember one time I I reached out to a speaking coach and I said to him, Well, I asked him a whole bunch of questions to begin with before I started doing his program. And I said, one of my first questions was questions to him was, is it normal that I could I record myself to do a video like 30 times and I delete every time and then think I could do it better, I could do it better, and trying to do the same thing for 30 plus times and still not think it's good enough. And he said to me, and I'll never forget this, he said to me, 30, is that all? And I remember feeling this wave of relief. And I'm like, really? It's is that normal? Am I normal? And now looking back, I think he was probably just being nice to me and making me feel good. But I believed him then and talking to people over the years, it's certainly what a lot of people do, maybe not 30 times, but hey, if you're doing it 30 times, you want you're not alone. That's how I started with it. So he works with people all the time, and he said that a lot of people struggle with this. And honestly, that's all I needed. And I think, you know what, if I'm on as well, I'm probably talking more to my kind of age group. I'm 56. So usually anyone that hasn't been raised with a phone or a computer in their hand to use getting used to doing videos all the time, I don't think it comes as naturally for them. But there might be some younger people that this will be helpful for as well. And honestly, that's all I needed from him. Um, that one moment where somebody kind of normalized what I was doing and thinking. Because up until then, I thought something was actually wrong with me that I couldn't figure it out. And I was like, oh man, I'm so frustrated that I can't just nail this on a couple of goes. I've got to do it 30 times before I get used to it. So I just kept going and going and going, and I kept recording and I kept practicing and I kept pushing through that um self-imposed limitation, I suppose, because some expert told me this is normal, just keep going. And guess what? I can now jump on a live video, and live video is like as it sounds, if you're not sure about it. So you press live and you don't have any re-record, you're just on there live. I can do that without even second guessing it now. No stress about it. I mean, how it's so cool to know that you can get to a stage where you can just jump on a video live, not perfect, but not paralyzed either. So let me tell you what actually helped me get to that stage because this is where I think most people can overcomplicate it a little bit. The first thing I started doing was every single day I recorded a one-minute video. Now, don't tell me you don't have one minute. You've got one minute. That's it, just one minute, on my phone, and I talked about absolutely anything. Something I'd learned, something I'd noticed, something that I'd said to a client, even some days when I was too tired, because what I generally do is get up very early. I'd come and start working here anywhere between six and seven o'clock in the morning. And back then it was quarter to five. I was uh my first thing in the morning was to record the video before I did anything. I before I even started my computer, I recorded my one minute video. And sometimes I didn't feel like talking about what I'd learnt and what I'd noticed. So I just looked around the room and I said, Oh, having my first coffee for the day and enjoying that. I'm about halfway through and I'm sitting here and my cat sound asleep next to me, and it's a cold morning. I've got a jumper, whatever. I said anything that came out of my mouth, whatever I could see around. But I made myself record it and look at myself when I was recording it. And this is what will get you to follow through. What you do with them is nothing. You don't have to post them, you don't have to put it out there for people to see. Some of them were just for me that I did, and some of them I did post, and some of them I didn't. The ones that I was talking about about my cat and what have you, I didn't post, but some of the more um professional ones I did post because the goal, usually when I was doing that, wasn't the content that I was doing. The goal was just getting comfortable seeing myself on video and recording myself. So let's be honest with this. The act of videoing yourself does feel awkward. It can feel weird. You don't know where to look, you don't know what to do with your hands, you suddenly feel like you forget to say what words you need to say, you can't string the thoughts together and it feels strange. So, what do we do? We just avoid it because of all of that that I've just said. We just avoid it. We go, you know what? I'm not gonna do a video. That's it. I'm just not gonna do one. And of course, we do, we just avoid it. But that avoidance is exactly why it never gets easier. It's like when I first joined a running group years ago, like, oh gosh, it makes me feel old. Probably 20 years ago, I joined a running group and I wanted to run a marathon. And I trained and trained and trained. I did my first 10K event and then I did a half marathon, which is 21k. And I was wanting to do a full marathon, which is 42 kilometers. And I went to the running group leader and I asked him one time because he was an amazing runner and done many marathons before. And I said to him, Mick, how do I get better at running? And the answer just shook me because he said, Sharon, just run. I'm like, okay, what do you mean? And he said, just make it a routine, just run, run as much as you can, and you'll get better. And that was like, okay, sure. And I mean, obviously, if you're a runner out there, you know that you have to do interval training and you have to do a whole bunch of stuff to be able to to um a whole bunch of different training um lengths and things like that and interval training and what have you to be able to be able to complete a marathon and not kill yourself at the end of it. But his advice of just run is exactly the same as the videos. Just do videos. But I think sometimes when we start doing videos, we think we have to post every single one of them. You don't. And I'm not going to tell you how long I did those one-minute videos for because it's a bit embarrassing, but I did them for a long time to get used to it. There's a great book called The Confidence Code. And one of the biggest takeaways in this is confidence is built through action, not thinking, not preparing, not waiting until you feel ready, but by doing and collecting evidence on what you're doing to see how you can improve. So instead of waiting to feel comfortable or confident to do video, you become confident because you've done it 50, 60, 100, 200, a thousand times. So let me give you three things you can do from here, not fluffy stuff, but real practical things that you can do to help you get better at video. The first one is my suggestion of a minute a day, no exceptions. And if you've heard from me before, if you heard a podcast about the default diary, and go back and listen to that if you haven't, but put it in your default diary. I put mine in every single morning when I was doing it. So I knew the first thing that I did when I looked in my calendar was my one-minute video. You don't need great lighting for this, you don't need a script, you don't need to post it anywhere. You just need to pick your phone up, press record, and do it for a minute. Talk about anything, and I mean anything, and stop and have it done. This is about exposure. The more you do it, the less weird it feels. That's your number one thing. Now, if you listen to this, pause it and go and put it in your calendar now. Do it out for at least three months until you get used to it. Monday to Friday, if you want to over be overzealous with it, do it Monday through Sunday every day for three months. All right, the second one is stop trying to sound professional. This was a big one for me. And the big thing that helped me with this is what I talked about, what Jane said to me. Sharon, just be you. And I remember saying to her one time, why is it so darn hard to be me? And what I think I meant by that is why is it that, again, why is it that I feel weird when I try to do this? What is it about this that makes me feel so awkward? And she's like, just be you. And so being means being that vulnerable me. And that's where that's being visible and that's being open to criticism. It's being open to all of these things. You've got to kind of realize that people don't care. People don't care. And if they do, who cares? You've just got to have the confidence enough to go, this is me. If you love me, you love me. If you don't, you don't. Remember, there are going to be there are going to be people out there that absolutely love you. They're going to love your content, they're going to love listening to you, they're going to love your voice, they're going to love all that. And there's going to be people that don't. Who cares about both of those? Some people will, some people won't. So what? It does not matter. So the second one, stop trying to be professional. This is where most people can get it a little bit wrong. They get on video and suddenly become not themselves. And I know that you know what I mean because I do the same thing. It's like, oh, now I've got to be something or do something that sounds a bit more not like me. That's not it. So they change their voice, their energy changes that might drop a little bit, and they sound like they're reading something or it's a script. And people can feel that. So you don't need to become professional. You just need to be you and natural. And the third one there is decide who you're talking to. So because if you try to talk to everyone, you're going to sound like it, you're going to sound like no one. Before you press record, think who is this for? One person. What are they struggling with? And what would I say to them if they were sitting right in front of me? That's where the best content comes from. And I love this suggestion. I heard years ago, and this is what really helped me. Um, and this suggestion was pretend like you're talking to your best friend's friend that you've never met. So remember, your friend, your best friend knows everything about you. You know, all those things where you get together with them and you barely laugh for cra over crazy things, and you've known each other forever. And there's such a familiarity between you two that it's just kind of fun, relaxed, and easy. Now, what you're doing is talking to their best friend. So your best friend's friend that you've never met before. So your best friends told them all about you and all about your little funny tweak, all your little funny personality traits and things like that. So they they've heard all about you, your background and who you are and how great you are, and all of those sort of things. You're talking to that person. They've never met you before. So, what that means is that you're going to know that they know about you, but you're not going to be so familiar that you're talking to your best friend. You've never met this person, remember? So you're talking to them who know all about you, but they don't know you personally. So, what that will give you is a warmth and kind of a bit of a twinkle in your eye, because they do know you, but not too familiar, where you then lower your guard completely. So you still want that professional edge, but you want the warmth and authenticity that hopefully that image will give you. And I want to leave you with this you're not behind because you're not confident on video. If you haven't nailed it yet, you've got a long time to get it sorted. You're just under practiced is the key. That's it. And the version of you that shows up confidently, you're not a different person. You're just somebody who kept pressing record, you kept doing it over and over. So no more waiting, no more overthinking it. Let's start practicing on camera. Because your voice and your expertise and your perspective, that's the thing someone out there actually needs to hear. You are unique, and your interpretation of what you're sharing is your interpretation. We want to hear that one because it's yours and it's real. And right now, you're the only one not pressing record. So press record and start doing those videos. And if you don't want to put it out to the world yet, start doing that one minute a day until you do feel ready to put that first video online. Hopefully, this has been helpful, guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.