Well, the number one thing I’ve learnt is that you WILL get it wrong and there will be EVIDENCE. Filming snippets of my life with horses means I have watched back hundreds of hours of footage of my interactions with them and that in itself is a great learning tool. I have noticed things that I do that I’d like to change and things that I didn’t realise I did that are actually quite good. People notice both, and my online community predominantly comment on the good but it’s the minority that point out what you get wrong that stick in your brain. Putting a part of my life out in the public domain has really taught me how to cope with feedback, to give as much time in my brain to the good as the bad and not take anything too personally. After all failure is the key to progression.
I have learnt to remind myself daily that social media is only part of the story, it’s never the whole truth. We put out a 20-ish minute vlog a week, as a percentage of my life that is tiny. I try to let people see the ‘reality’ by not editing out the dodgy filming, the downs or the boring, but ultimately no one would watch a video of me poo-picking 30minutes a day and not getting to ride because I left work late and I have too much life-admin-adulting to do.
It’s harder than you think. We spend approximately 3-5 hours a week just to get one 20minute vlog up on YouTube. We get paid from adverts on YouTube around £8-10 per video so that’s at best £3.33 an hour. I don’t do it for the money, obviously….I do it because I love documenting my life with horses for me to look back on in the future and because I want to promote Endurance.
Some of the videos I’ve loved have been total ‘flops’ and some I personally consider incredibly boring do great, so you never know what will do well and something that is so ingrained in you that you don’t even notice it can be a revolutionary tip to someone else. I try not to do things just to film them so sometimes the video is a bit boring because that’s genuinely what I’m doing, but for me it makes it more real and sometimes it’s those videos that bring about the best interactions with our online community.
Weirdly I feel more self-assured. I care less about what people think about me, 8,000 people watch our videos a month but ultimately it doesn’t matter if they don’t like my hair or they think I should do something differently. This is me, being an imperfect human, trying my best, failing some of the time, getting it right some of the time and just taking other people along on the journey. I don’t know if this would have happened anyway with age but I feel like putting myself out there in video format has definitely thickened my skin.
Lastly, reflection should be more widely used in all aspects of our life. Watching videos back in the editing process enforces some reflection but I have also learnt that actively reflecting, considering and adjusting my thought processes has improved my life in all areas. I feel less awkward about getting things wrong as they offer me an opportunity to improve and check in with myself on a regular basis, which makes sure my goals and current actions are in alignment.
Anyway enough of my reflection, here’s a video of me taking my favourite pony for spin!
Beth Endurance 