A friend of mine recently started live streaming every day, and even though I’ve only watched about 5% of the stuff he’s put out there, it was enough to inspire me to start live streaming 4 times a week. I’m only at the beginning of my live streaming journey, but I’m already getting tremendous benefit from it! Here are 5 things I’ve already learned to love from my first week of live streaming.
- No Editing: Because it’s live and you’re “on the air” you can’t edit things in real time. So you’re force to practice just being yourself, and if you want a better product then it’ll come through becoming more prepared or improving over time, not through endlessly editing yourself into perfection.
- Accountability: If you have plans to live stream at a certain time or a certain day, then you’re more likely to show up. If you just work on a video on your own, you can get bogged down with doing multiple takes or multiple edits and perhaps delay its release indefinitely. Live streaming holds you accountable to actually creating and sharing when you say you’re going to.
- Impacting Others: Putting yourself out there gives you a chance to impact others, even if you’re only getting a handful of viewers. Even if your product isn’t as perfect as you’d like to be, it’s super easy for others to connect with you and get something out of your work. And the more you experience someone getting a benefit for something you wish you could do much better, the more you realize you don’t have to be perfect to make a difference.
- Getting In the Habit of Creating: Committing to regular live streams gets you in the habit of creating. I know I’m going to be streaming four times a week, so I’m regularly on the lookout for things that interest me that I want to dive more deeply into, and live streaming about it gives me a space to actually scratch that itch rather than let it pass as a fleeting thought. Even writing this blog post is a result of this new habit. I had a thought and instead of trying to polish it into perfection I birthed it into this world, trusting that it will evolve into the more I’m looking for as it grows along the way.
- Using Live Streaming As A Means to Improve Myself: Since I’m just starting and hardly have an audience, I have to make sure I’m getting something worthwhile out of what I’m creating, otherwise it would feel like a waste of time. Consequently I’ve been very focused on using my live streaming time to tackle subjects that I would personally benefit from understanding more deeply. And there’s a great chance that I’m not the only one who’s looking for that deeper understanding, so focusing on helping myself also helps others who are looking for the same thing.
I live stream every Monday/Weds/Thurs/Saturday, usually in the evenings. Check out my Live Your Desires Facebook page to watch old videos, or like it to be notified when I’m streaming live.