My Self-Confidence Journey Online
If you stream at all, you are putting yourself out there on a public platform where anyone can view you and your content. It can be such a nerve-wracking experience whether if you’ve only just started out, or have been streaming for years.
I think there can be an assumption that streamers have a great level of self-confidence. For me, it’s been a constant journey of growth. Even after a couple of years on Twitch, I still find myself getting nervous before I go live. Honestly, sometimes I can be lying down right before I’m due to go live and just have waves of self-doubt creep in… but 99% of the time I bite the bullet and fight against it. I’ve actually come a long way from even refusing to post any photos of myself on a public profile to where I am now, so hopefully in being open about how I work on my self-confidence might encourage you to get out of your own comfort zone!
This was one of the first selfies I uploaded to Instagram when I decided I was going to stream!
Deciding to even start streaming was such a wild idea at the beginning, because I had never posted photos of myself publicly before, and the idea of my face being out there in the internet was something that made me feel sick. I grew up feeling very insecure about how I looked - in early high school I used to be teased about my looks and had comments made about my skin colour and my cultural background. It made me feel so uncomfortable in my own skin, and I wished I looked vastly different. I think eight year-old me loved characters like Storm from the X-Men movies and Jasmine from Aladdin because it was POC representation that wasn’t in most of the media I was consuming at that age.
One of the main reasons I pushed myself to put myself out there with my streams was not only to challenge myself, but also to inspire my little sister. I chat about her now and again on stream, and we are incredibly close. She’s not quite old enough to feature on my channel just yet, but all you need to know is she is just the most loving, kind ray of sunshine in the world. As the oldest sibling in the family and not having any older relatives around much growing up, I never had a girl around my age to look up to, so I’ve always wanted to be that person for my sister.
I want her to know that she is capable of doing whatever she sets her mind to, and that taking risks can be exciting! I want to be part of that positive representation in the media for her (and who knows, maybe hopefully other people too!) that I felt like I was missing from mine.
So how did I build up my confidence to get to where it is now? Like anything, a journey is never just a straight road. Sometimes you fall backwards on your way and that’s okay - you just have to remind yourself to get back up again. Having an incredible support system was the foundation of what encouraged me to get started. Did you know I absolutely hate taking selfies? The amount of times I will try and attempt to take a nice photo of myself, and just end up deleting it all has happened more times than I care to admit. If you see what might appear as a candid selfie, I guarantee I have deleted several photos and retaken so many to get that shot.
What I do now is I setup a self-timer app on my phone (LensBuddy) and will let it take a series of photos that I can review, sort and pick my best ones! Feel free to try this and let me know if it works for you. For example, my Jill Valentine photos (shown below) were taken this way!
When it comes to streaming, it feels like a completely different element because its all live of course! I take a few steps to make sure I feel ready and energised to stream that include:
Finding some ‘me-time’ that isn’t stream related to unwind properly. Lately, it’s been taking a bit of time to do my make-up just for fun
Setting up my stream usually an hour before so I’m not rushing to do it before I go live
Making sure I have a drink ready on my desk to keep myself hydrated throughout the night
Eating preferably a good amount of time before stream so I feel not rushed to devour my dinner, and also to try and not fall into a food coma while I’m live (hehe)
I hope this post has been insightful and reminds you that there is so much more to what you see posted on social media than meets the eye!
- B
