We're filming a video in the office, and my team are fussing over where to put the camera. Higher. Lower. A bit more to the left. Apparently it's all about angles.
They're probably right. And it gets me thinking about two very different kinds of angle.
How things look
So many people care most about how things look, especially when it comes to health. How do I look? Do I look fit?
But how you look and how you are aren't the same thing. You can look incredibly fit and be seriously ill. You can look a bit less than perfect and have strength and stamina that would surprise people.
My body has never looked like a magazine cover. It has carried me 100 kilometres in a day. Plenty of people with much better looking bodies couldn't do that, and I don't say it to brag. It's just a different angle on what fit means.
What matters to me is how my body works and how I feel in it, not how it looks in good lighting.
How you look at things
The second angle is the one in your head.
How you feel about a moment depends on how you see it, not always on what actually happened. Everything in your past has already happened. The angle you look back at it from decides how it feels now.
It's like the car radio drifting off station on a long drive. You reach over and turn the dial. You can tune it back to the same station, or you can find a different one.
From the other side of the lens
I've spent a lot more time in front of cameras since then. Stages, podcasts, video calls most days. I still let other people worry about where the camera goes.
The angle in my head is the one I've worked on. Mostly by listening to the way I talk to myself, which I wrote about in Would you talk to a friend like that?.
Pick one thing you've been judging only by how it looks, your body or your business or anything else. Write down one thing it can actually do, or has already done, and spend a few minutes looking at it from there.
First published July 2017.
