What You Will Get Out Of This ?
“Can you do me a favor?”
“I have a request for you?”
“Hi, Every day I take a photo with a stranger. Will you be my today’s guest?”
“Hi, my name is Prabhu, I take up a new task every month and try to do that everyday. This month I took Selfie with stranger as my monthly task. Can I take a photo with you? Is that okay?”
These are my elevator pitches which I try with complete strangers everyday to get a selfie with them. Some of them said yes and some said No. Regardless of their answer every one will ask “Why Do You Do This?”.
Once I give them a brief about my 30-day challenge they are super happy to pose with me for selfie. Only then I learned that, if we clearly communicate our objective, people are ready to give their trust and provide us help.
Frankly speaking I didn’t get much No from others. To be more precise, in the last 15 days I just got 2 big NO’s for selfie. One in Bangalore and one in Chennai.
When I choose this challenge I thought many would say No and I will be treated badly. But that didn’t happen. Real challenge is self doubt. Even before approaching someone, 1000 negative things will cross my mind “Will they say YES?” “Is it appropriate to approach them in the middle of a road ” “Should I ask them when they walk or should I wait till they settle in a place?”.
Once I crossed my internal resistance, it was much easier to persuade people for a selfie.
Most of them will say YES/NO within 10 seconds. But one school kid really tested my confidence. It was a regular evening and I was leaving from office. Saw this kind in the middle of the road. So I approached and asked for a selfie. Without responding to my request, he started to question — why do you do this?, Are you a blogger, Are you going to upload in social media ?, What you will get out of this?.
Only when I answered all his questions with detailed answered his doubts got cleared and gave me permission for click. But things didn’t end up there. When I was about to press the capture button in my mobile, he said “Anna I am not comfortable with this” and I replied “Even I am not comfortable brother. That’s why I took up this challenge to make me comfortable with unplanned happening with life”. He got convinced.
Even after the click, he asked what I do, where he can read my blogs. Our conversation ended when I asked about his board exam preparation :P
Big Thank You for taking your time and reading about my 30-day challenge update. Will write a complete post on my learning’s from this challenge at the end of this month.
