Ep #8: How to get past the fear of visibility using video as a tool for self expression

Overcoming the Fear of Visibility: Using Video as a Tool for Self-Expression

In this episode, we explore the journey of overcoming the fear of visibility through the powerful tool of video. We delve into four primary reasons why people feel hindered by visibility: fear of judgment, perfectionism, fear of exposure, and the consequences of having a voice. The episode provides actionable tips such as practicing self-introduction in front of a mirror and recording oneself to help build confidence in self-expression. The discussion also highlights the unique challenges faced by women, especially female founders, and offers empathetic strategies to foster a more authentic and visible presence online.

00:00 Introduction to Overcoming Fear of Visibility
01:36 Understanding the Root Causes of Visibility Fears
03:05 The Role of Video in Building Confidence
09:22 Practical Steps to Use Video for Self-Expression
14:20 Empathy and Flow: Keys to Authentic Visibility
15:40 Conclusion and Call to Action

Message me on @contenthalo on Instagram for your magnetic visibility guide. 

Hey there, and welcome to the Visibility for Female Founders Podcast. I'm your host, Ika Lucas, and this podcast is for you if you're an impact driven, founder, coach, or consultant who wants to find your own voice to speak, present, and amplify your message Online. 

We explore how to get past the visibility roadblocks and grow your capacity to be seen so you can attract then chase your perfect audience, while staying connected to the most important things by building a business th

Solve your inner narrative with reframes to share your story without oversharing.

head to https://www.contenthalo.com/story/

Let's connect beyond this episode.

Follow me on either Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook.

https://www.instagram.com/radhikalucas
https://www.facebook.com/radhikalucas https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhikalucas

Or on my website: https://www.contenthalo.com

Transcript

0:28

So today, we are talking about a topic that is really dear to my heart, which is. Using video as a tool for self-expression in the journey of getting past the fear of visibility. And I can talk about this topic for days on end because I've got so many people who I've worked with that benefited from using video as a tool for self-expression and then going on and branching out and doing other things. But actually it gave them that absolute launch path that they needed to then first. Not only get comfortable with showing up as more of themselves, but then the unintended benefits of having done that was actually their ability to then speak freely, speak from the heart, speak with flow, and speak in a way that actually genuinely connects and creates that chemistry. With their audience, which is really hard to achieve with a templated, with a framework way of speaking, uh, which you just can't find or completely replicate with AI so, today I wanna talk and delve a little bit deeper into all of the reasons why people feel the way they feel, and why. This topic comes about in the first place and how my introduction into, overcoming the fear of visibility has led to me being able to speak and present with confidence in a way that's actually more geared with my own visibility capacity, with my own visibility profile, and with my own goals and strategies that I have in place. So with that being said. Let's dive in to the actual real reasons why you know, you might be feeling held back on account of your visibility or maybe the fears that you might be feeling with putting yourself out there. Now there are typically four reasons why people feel the way they do, is primarily because either from a fear of judgment, it could be because of, perfectionism, this is especially true if you have been in a setting where the default is or was. Crossing your T's and dotting your i's in every single respect, bearing in mind that there is a lot more pressure on women to, take more care at, either editing themselves or conforming into spaces where our voices will literally be limited. And so I think there's a lot that goes into the whole equation of why women. Are feeling and facing these fears in the first place. And that, I actually covered that in my other podcast, which is, why it's hard to find, your authentic voice as a female founder. So you might wanna check out that episode as well if you're tuning in. The third might be the fear of exposure. Where you feel like everyone is watching you or the fear of being or feeling over perceived,, with a range of reasons Because of gendered reasons quite often, harking back to perhaps, your past, or the way in which you were brought up. And so being mindful of those as you are going through, because these are the things that are gonna come up in your visibility journey and I'm gonna be giving you examples of how video can actually work with these symptoms rather than against. Them so that you can start to build on your voice in a safe space. That is, honoring your life and professional experiences and not isolating from them with a cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to showing up., But with using the tool as a way in which to heal and, uh, come through the other end. And how you can best do that, especially if you're a female founder for whom visibility is. Important in many different ways. Yes, there are ways to be visible without using social media, but let's face it, social media is the superhigh in which you can be visible quickly and get people into your world, if you do want to build a presence online, i'm not just leaning on one medium to do things because people are everywhere and you need to be omnipresent in this day and age, and which is part of the reason why the video aspect and the reason why. Video can be used as a tool to combat. The fear of visibility is so important in this discussion because it literally is the gateway or the padlock that you get to unlock to then be able to roam freely in the meadow of visibility. And so, um, and so on this journey of visibility, the, the fear of exposure is really, is very real. And some of the things that can be in place is, say for example, you may have certain channels. That you want to avoid because they create a certain amount of anxiety now rather than pushing through that anxiety entirely. It might be better to have a more customized approach for that platform, and it's not because of the reasons being that you editing yourself, but it's actually because you are protecting yourself and you're protecting your voice. You are actually able to express yourself in a format that best suits you. But with giving due credence to the fact that there might be some channels or some instances where you don't feel comfortable, maybe it's on account of, some trauma from the past that you might be carrying It really is for you to be able to today do a stock take and say, you know, where do I actually want to be visible versus where do I not want to be visible? That is a discussion that you need to have with yourself in this journey of visibility. The fourth reason being that, quite often, these days more so than ever before, I think you and I would agree that having a voice. Has many repercussions and, it is amplified by, incidences overseas across the world where people have been crucified for having their voice, be known, being activated, and throughout the ages. Those who have had a strong point of view or really stood up for what they believed in or stood for, has sometimes had to face the consequences of being disliked. And therein lies a really big issue in itself when it comes to visibility. Because if you think about us as female founders, the conditioning that has been in place for centuries has been that you have to be. The good one, you have to be, the one that is the carer, the nurturer, the whatever, the, the many different titles that come along with you. And that's not to negate or minimize the issues or the troubles that males have if you are a male listening into this. However, this is really about highlighting some of the systemic issues that women face as a result of. All of the historical and generational facts and truths that have already happened and already been in place, and what we can do to dismantle and work around them rather than work against them. And so when we are working with them, such as, say, for example, on a certain channel where we might feel misunderstood, it's really important for us to realize that. Through the journey of making some choices we may need to make peace with the fact that there might be certain channels that we are not ready for from a capacity perspective or because we might have circumstances in our life that prevent us from showing up on that channel. Whatever your reason might be for that, and you don't have to explain yourself. For why you're not visible on a specific channel. And so, the pathway to overcoming this has really been. Translating and reframing the a fear of visibility into, that of empathy for yourself and empathy for creating the space to really listen to your own voice, create the space for listening to. What are the guiding lights in your life that actually lead you to a, to a path that is beyond yourself? What are the unfulfilled needs and wants that you haven't yet created in your life? Perhaps you are a young mom with young children at the moment, and. You are listening into this and you're thinking, well, you've lost a really big sense of yourself, or you've lost a part of yourself that maybe once was, and now you're wanting to reclaim parts of that. Or maybe you are, a mom who is also an entrepreneur who is juggling multiple things and you are feeling fragmented and you're feeling dissected and. You know that there are many different parts of you that are hidden away, but there are only certain parts that can come out at certain times. So it really is about taking an empathetic angle to your journey of visibility while still maintaining a certain cadence. Before you can get into consistency, and there are many different tools to help enable you to do that. One of them being video. So the way in which I have used video in the past was actually using video as a tool for self-expression. Now there are ma various different ways in which you can use video as a tool for self-expression. One of them is using video in private. And so here's a quick actionable thing for you to be able to do across. Five days in five or less minutes, which is simply creating a script for yourself. So the script might be, three words that come to your mind that you wanna be known for as an example. And then you might start by introducing yourself and speaking to yourself for the first five days in front of the mirror. And literally, introducing yourself with your name and saying, this is what I stand for, these are the three words that I want to feel once I have finished, my ultimate visibility journey. Once I've come to the pinnacle of my visibility journey, this is how I want to feel. And I want you to say that out in the mirror for five days. Once you've done that, or maybe if you've kind of gone day three, you know, like, okay, this is starting to get a little bit, repetitive. What you can do is you can pull out your phone, pull out your camera on the phone, and start recording the exact same thing that you wanna say your name and you know what you want for yourself in the future, and record that for five days. Record that every single day for five days. This is literally gonna take you. Less than five minutes. I don't want you to judge yourself as you're doing this. So go away and do that. And then once you have done that, send me a DM okay at at Content Halo. And I would love to reward you for having done this across five days and giving me an insight of what it felt like for you. And I would love to send you a gift for having done this small exercise. So. Go and, practice this. Send me a DM with the word magnetic, and I would love to send you a little gift, so that you can make use of that, you can avail of that resource to really help you find, activate and amplify your voice online. So, that is one of the ways in which you can use a really quick. Trick to actually start on your voice and visibility journey is actually by having some private rituals. And once you've created those private rituals and had some micro movements that actually help move the needle and move the dial for you, it's then going to help activate a part of you which is like, yes, I can do this. It's going to build those neural pathways in your brain, and that really is the bridge. To then finding out how all that you have inside of you, the different parts of you that are feeling fragmented, fractured, or otherwise, can actually start working together in unison and bringing out more of who you are, which is. Using, using video as the tool for greater self-expression. Now, I love using video as a tool for greater self-expression, and the reason for that is that it actually rips the bandaid on your personality in a way that no other medium does. When you're writing, you can edit yourself, you can go back and create and you know, uh, cross those t's and dot those i's. And procrastinate and think about it. But when you are live, you say like, like I'm recording live right now. This is not based off of script. This is completely me shooting from the hip. There is no framework. Well, I had a framework, but I kind of, I'm not really using it and I'm really speaking from my soul and I'm really telling my story here. So I want you to be able to come into this flow and the way in which to come into that. Flow is, think about yourself as having had a hip replacement. Okay? If you've had a hip replacement, you are gonna need for the first maybe three months, a crutch, you're gonna need a couple of crutches at least, um, so that you can start exercising your, your legs, your muscles around your body, with a view to actually starting movement again by the end of three months. You may only use one crutch every now and again if say your hip plays up, maybe after six months you will be heading off to the beach and jumping in the waves. So if you really correlate that to your journey of being on video, video really can be a really transformative tool to help you with unpacking all of that, that fragmented that's inside of you. In a way that deeply connects with your ideal audience, and right now in the age of AI, where trust is at an all time low, the best way in which for you to really amplify your presence online is invest your in your time using video as a tool or as a key. To unlocking greater levels of visibility for yourself first, before you are ready to be visible for someone else. So in this way, what you're doing is actually turning that angle of fear into empathy first for yourself. Because you've gotta put your oxygen mask on first before you're ready to, you know, hold somebody else's hand. Get them to run along after you to help them go a bit faster or run, increase their running speed or whatever it is, you know? So you've really gotta use that as a crutch for yourself in order for you to then have empathy for your audience. Because once you have empathy for your audience, that's when. Your voice starts to flow. That's when you can start showing up. That's when you can get deeper and more magnetic with your content. It's when you are in motion, it's when you are in flow, is when fear really falls away and gives way to flow. And that flow then creates momentum. That, and that momentum is then what causes that flywheel or the, the movement that you're so wanting and wanting to create in your life and in your business. If you are listening to this, and if you, do give this a whirl with my, strategy on how to activate your voice in private, then send me a DM with the word magnetic, and I'd love to be able to send you a little gift your way. Now I wanna talk about who, this might be good for. So this is for you. If at any point you feel like you have been editing yourself for other people, second guessing, about what you said, feeling a little bit held back. On account of visibility on social media in particular, and feeling as though, what you want in your head are the words that actually come out of your mouth when you start speaking them. Those are all signs and symptoms of needing video to help you as a tool for self-expression. In a bit to help you get more freedom and flow with speaking and presenting online. And so if that's you, uh, and if you want to know how you can do that, by creating that magnetic presence for yourself, then. Message me with the word magnetic and I'd love to be able to send you a guide your way. So with that being said, I hope you've enjoyed this little podcast and I would love a review if you have enjoyed it, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.