Camera Shy

In this episode of the Happiness Highway, Marion van Dam tells about the start of her career as a professional photographer in Amsterdam. It turned out to be the start of her coaching career too, as most women were very insecure posing in front of the camera. Also they would be ashamed of how they looked, now matter how beautiful the portraits were. Do you love your selfie?

Low self esteem is limiting yourself to live your full potential, to live your happiest life ever. Check out the website to learn how to learn to accept and love yourself or schedule a free coaching call.

#selflove #selfesteem #personalgrowth #photography #portraits #coaching #beauty #happiness

Transcript

Intro: 0:04

Welcome to the happiness highway, a podcast by Marion van Dam. Marion van Dam is a certified hypnotherapist, a teacher of spirituality and happiness, and the international bestselling author.

Marion van Dam: 0:28

Well hello. Hello. Welcome to the show. This is Marion van Dam and I believe that every woman has a right to be very happy. Now, before I truly start these new episode of the happiness highway, I am going to ask you a question. If you look at all your photos from maybe long time ago or maybe recently, and you see yourself in a pictures and especially in the pictures that someone else, took of you, can you truly, if you look at all of those pictures of yourself, can you truly say about every picture? I look great in that or I just love the way I look there. Now I bet the answer to that is no, because most women don't like, don't really like the way they look and especially not in pictures and this episode is about that. Just that why can't we just love the way we look? Especially in the pictures. No, I'm taking you a little bit back in time when I started out as a photographer, a professional photographer, and this is an amazing career move and everything came together like the beauty of synchronicity as you know. My name is Marion van Dam and I, after I graduated from, from a photography school, I, uh, it was actually college, I would just went back to school and I got another degree in photography because I love to learn and I love photography actually. And I started out sharing a wonderful photo studio in Amsterdam, and you cannot believe this, but my net, my name is Maria.

: 2:10

on van Dam, and I got this beautiful workspace to share in Amsterdam and it was ride on them square. So it was Dam squared was Marion van Dam on the Dam square in Amsterdam that of course was just a setting for success.

Marion van Dam: 2:31

And actually it took off and it, it just happened to be, I wasn't that fancy. It wasn't an old building that was on the list to, to, to get renovated, to get sold and, and that, all those processes of contracts that took ages. So for three years I was in this amazing building and this amazing place looking out over them, square in, uh, in Amsterdam. And I loved it there. I love to be there and I the photography to do a portrait. And it was also right, the beginning, and we're talking about like one year was, is in 2009, 2010, 11. It was the start of all social media. LinkedIn started, Facebook started up and everyone needed a profile picture because of course you had to look good in those, uh, profile pictures, especially LinkedInn was considered very, it was quite serious. It could be, your next job interview. So people wanted to look good in those pictures. So I started up doing prortraits, or profile pictures], especially those for social media, for LinkedIn and for Facebook as well. And I really loved doing that. And it was also the era, uh, right before people started making selfies. So I guess time has changed a little bit over the past 10 years and we are so used to taking selfies these days that uh, we have lost a little of the camera shyness that we had like 10 years ago. But I want to share a story with you that, and it was not just one story, it was very many similar stories, but I want to share one particular story with you.[inaudible]. So what I would love to do is to also around Christmas or in, in a, in a month before Christmas, I would do family pictures because I love, Oh, I'm going to tell too many stories here. But when I was young, my father's sister, so my aunt and her, as she had moved to Canada, she was living in um, Montreal or in the neighborhood there with her family. And we of course didn't get to see them quite as often. And every year they made a Christmas picture of the entire family and send it to my grandma in Holland. And whenever I was at my grandma's, of course she had this room that a spare bedroom where I got to stay over. When I slept over with her and on the on a wall, she had all these pictures of the family, my, my end and her family. And so my cousins were in there and I loved to see these pictures, like how people had grown up over the years. And you see them change and you see them or braces and different hairdos big hairdos. And I just loved watching those pictures that really touched me and, and, and inspired me to do family pictures as well, especially around well around Christmas, you know, every grandma loves to have a family picture, I guess. And in Holland that was not such a tradition to do that. It was, some people think maybe it's a bit weird to portray yourself or it's unimportant or you just shouldn't do that. We have this little bit though. What is it? The Calvinistic. Okay. I believe still that, you know, you shouldn't also both selfie, she shouldn't be vain. And you, you know, you shouldn't take so many pictures of yourself. So that is something still deeply grounded in the Dutch. A spirit I guess. But anyway, I started, uh, these family picture days and, and I left doing that because I love kids, I love families. And I got all these families in my studio and I started to take pictures. And every time I took these beautiful pictures of these beautiful families, the mother was unhappy when she saw herself in the pictures. The mother always was disappointed. The husband, no, the kids had no problems. It was always the mom. And that's actually how my coaching career started because apparently I did not portray these women the way they saw themselves. They had a different image of themselves or they, they hope they ha they look differently and they were disappointed in how I portrayed them. And there was a sense of shame there too. And at first I couldn't understand that because it was really, most women lived beautifully, you know, they were slim, they had beautiful hair, beautiful faces. They had this loving family around them, everything to be happy about. And still if they saw themselves in a picture, they were disappointed and they felt ashamed and they felt ugly. And that touched me. And maybe you can relate to that. Maybe that's why I asked the question in the beginning. Maybe you can relate to that, that you see pictures of yourself and you're kind of feel disappointed. I thought I looked so much better because if you stand in front of a mirror, you hold a pose or even if you make a selfie, you just look for the right camera angle to, to show you exactly the, the angle that you like about you. But when you give that power to someone else, a photographer, that person is going to choose a different angle. And is it going to show a different side of you that you might not really like? And that is for sometimes upsetting. And that is actually how my coaching career started because all these women, we're so unhappy with their own pictures. And truly I, I'm a pretty good photographer. I'm not doing it as often anymore, but I still love to take portraits. But there was nothing wrong with my my skills as a photographer. And you know, I even in P hotoshop, I made the teeth a little witer. I made the skin a little smoother. I did everything to look them even more beautiful and still they were disappointed. And this is h ow my career started as a coach, I started coaching in front of the camera. I started to tell people that they were beautiful and I, I tried to make them at ease. I'm tried to make them laugh spontaneously or, or just, you know, believe in themselves, be still in themselves an d, and sh e's b eautiful portraits of them while they were truly being themselves. And when people would see those pictures, they didn't see their own beauty. And that really triggered me. How is it possible that people can not love themselves just as beautiful as they are? And so over time, I became a truly coach. I became a hypnotherapist. I did all kinds of courses and I'm actually, today I am fully committing myself to helping people to become happy. The happy person that they are meant to be. But back in the days I started out as a photographer and, I'm going to take a leap, u h, to 10 years further down the road. That's right as w here we are right here right now. And I still believe, of course l et's have a lot has changed over the years. We are taking more selfies so we're not as camera shy anymore as we were maybe once. But still, I'm going to ask you another question. If you make a selfie today, how many versions do you make before you post any online or do you make selfies at, O h, I would love to hear back from you. Are you taking selfies and how many selfies, u h, do y ou normally take before you choose one and are you happy with the way you look in your selfies? That's a some questions of me that I would love for you to answer and please go over to my website or posts below h air or wherever. Just l et me know how you feel about that.[inaudible] so what I did, I took this experience of my photography career cause I, I know photography, I, I graduated, I, I was, I'm telling you I am, I haven't been doing it professionally for a while but I'm still, I'm a good photographer and I can truly make people feel at ease in front of the camera so they can truly be themselves. But still, I notice that a lot of women, they are disappointed because the image that I portray of them is not the self image that they have of themselves. Why would this be disappointing? You would ask, well the disappointment is this, that then we only like a certain image of ourselves, an image that is confirming the image that we have of ourselves. And that is a very limiting image. It's, it's a very one dimensional image and it's not real like we practice in front of. Even if you look[inaudible] at yourself in a mirror that is of course already a false self image because it's mirrored and you can see the back of your self, you can see your mood yourself, move or respond to things. There is so more angles to yourself then then, then you know about yourself. And so if you're, you are depending on other people too. Uh, are the pictures to confirm, to affirm your self image. There a lot of disappointment waiting for you there. Now how did you solve that? Well, there is only one good answer to that. It's all about self love. Again, you need to learn to love yourself on apologetically. There's not a one dimensional that you need to love about yourself. You have to learn to love yourself from every corner, from every angle, from every love handle to every wrinkle you see in the picture. Because that is what makes you you. And there is nothing wrong with you. You were born perfect, you are perfect and maybe you don't like it. But a lot of people do. It can have just like one angle of yourself because you're not a one angle person. You're not a wonder mentionable person. You are a fully rounded personality with a beautiful soul and a beautiful smile and beautiful heart and that is what we want to see in those pictures and you just have to learn to love yourself, every aspect of yourself. And that is what I am going to help you with in my new upcoming course. It's the love your selfie course, a course or I teach you self-love and a bit of selfie techniques because of course you can learn some techniques to make yourself look better into pictures and to spread your vibe better. Just spread your love wider in a very nice way. But I want you to be comfortable in front of the camera, to smile, to play with the camera, and to share your love, your beautiful energy and your spirit with the world, with me and with your fellow family member. Isn't everyone in your tribe and around the world. I want you to spread your happiness and that is what I'm going to teach you in the love, your selfie course. Wonderful combination of self love and some camera techniques. So check the link down below. Sign up and I hope to see you in my beautiful cours, the Love your Selfie Course. Together we can spread happiness into this world and make this world a better place.[inaudible] thank you so much for listening to this episode of the happiness highway. I believe that everyone has a right to be very happy and especially

Intro: 14:52

you, if you're listening today, please check out the website. The show notes are check the link for the love your selfie cores end. If you want, please just schedule a free coaching call with me cause I'm here to help you be happy.[inaudible].