You won’t believe what my Wife got me for Christmas!

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Aaron

My wife gave me a special present for Christmas this year. It was totally unexpected and I was blown away that she was able to completely surprise me. This is a post about a gift, yes, but as always there is more than just some consumer review for you here at weirdforgood.com

I opened the squareish hard plastic packaging of my GoPro camera, a few days before Christmas. Lindsay insisted that I go ahead and spoil the surprise. She was smart. I needed a few days to get used to the thing, before the family togetherness, so that I would know how to use it.

I began right away, making a mini video of her and I just sitting around the living room. Then I had fun with my nephews running down the hall at Mom’s house too. Anytime you put a couple three-year-old faces on the screen, cuteness ensues 🙂

I spent hours working on editing and processing family videos over that first week. I also found the urge to upgrade the accessories I have for it. I also dumped a few hundred more dollars into my computer for faster processing speeds.

I know a lot more about the whole world of GoPro today, than I did when I first opened the package. My intelligent and thoughtful wife, found something she knew I would enjoy, and spent the money to give it to me 🙂 I am blessed 🙂

I watched some interviews with the founder of the GoPro company. He is a guy that just wanted some good shots of his experiences out in the water, on his surfboard. He did the research, found a camera maker to work with, and the rest is history.

He said that these little, super-mountable cameras have become a ‘life-capture’ device for the tons and tons of people who now have them. He is right. I have been using mine for basic ‘life-capture’.

See, I not only have taken shots at family events, but I bring the thing to our volleyball games too. I also can be found setting it up at the Brand’N Iron, where I eventually plan to make a fun little video for showing people our food, our place and most importantly our great team. I will post it on facebook and our website, I think it will be lots of fun 🙂

Now that I have several and I mean several hours of footage of my own life, I have started to notice some problems… See, when I see myself on video, I don’t always enjoy watching that footage…

I see in the volleyball videos, my unathleticness…

I see my body from new, and unattractive angles…

I see missed opportunities and moments where I’ve failed myself and the team.

I even filmed some practice from yesterday. It felt good at the time, but I see in the video, how much room I have for improvement… Wow, look at that jump! Bleh!

At the Iron, last night, I shot more clips there too… Upon review, there are certain things I will choose to leave out… 🙁Sure, I have some good moments in all these activities. I even win points sometimes in volleyball, even with my dismal athletic prowess… But the super interesting thing to me, is how completely different my own life experience feels from driver’s seat inside my mind, to how it looks from the completely objective perspective of that little camera’s lens.

In fact, what this GoPro device really does, is remind me of the time I was really working on the art of Life Coaching. This camera performs a service, which is quite useful and powerful and presents us with a way to understand ourselves better than ever.

If I shoot a video of you, I look at it, and see, what I usually see. But when I take footage of myself, I see something that I can never, ever, ever get in any other way. I see the truth of how I walk, how I talk, how mobile or not, I appear from outside my own body. I get to sit with the images, the audio and the story of me, told by a completely opinion-less device.

In the coaching world, we understand that people are absolutely unable to perceive their own selves without a mirror, another person, or another lens that looks at them from the outside. When I see my own problems from inside my mind, looking out at the world from my own skull, I cannot physically or metaphysically understand all the possibilities and tools and opportunities I have at my disposal.

From inside my own self, my perspective is a tiny sliver of the spectrum of truth. It is filtered through a lifetime of regrets or low self-esteem. Huge dangerous dark risks can be overlooked from that point. Inherent hope and bright white light may not be noticed from the inner space of my tiny mind.

The best coaches that I ever met, worked a lot like the little GoPro camera. They just captured a moment of my life, then showed it to me. They could report diligently and without any opinion or judgement or any shielding of the cold hard truth. They simply showed me, what was. They then gave support or ideas or cleared up the moment to help me decide what I wanted to do about that truth we experienced together.

The little GoPro is not a replacement for a life coach. I don’t recommend everyone swap compassionate human intelligence for chunk of plastic and wires. There is huge value however in noticing ourselves from a brand-new perspective. I see now, how I want to make changes in myself. I want to do that, to better connect and to bring closer together the ideas in my mind, to how I operate in the world.

I can be soo negative on myself. I can get lost in the muck and mire of every-day-ness. With my little camera, maybe I can start spinning some new loops of thought into old broken records. Maybe I can see myself at work, at play and in moments of success. I can let those little filmstrips play on repeat and begin to build something fresher, more positive and delightful as a way of being, than just noticing my faults again and always again.

Even though the lens captures ugliness, there is beauty there too. I see our team. I see hard work. I see family and smiles. I see myself trying and failing, but at least trying to create something fun and bright and unique in this ever mind-numbingly repeatative world.

Thanks My Love, My beautiful pregnant wife, who I am so honored to be blessed because of. I appreciate you so much 🙂

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols