Today is a huge day. A monumental day! Do you know what today is?
It is the one-year anniversary of Edit Video Faster. My blog birthday! 365 days ago I was up late one night and decided to stop waiting and just go after it. Here’s how it all started.
I’m not going to spend the rest of this post recapping what happened over the past year. Basically I can sum it up in that I wrote a bunch of posts and made a ton of tutorials with the goal of helping video editors or creative professionals like me. The results came in the form of overwhelming support from my readers, people actually bought products I created, new friends were made, I created a course for Tuts+, I started a podcast, I got new freelance clients and I pushed my abilities further than I ever thought I could. Oh, and last week just to top it all off… I got to write a post for Avid!
Okay, okay. No more bragging. I promise. I feel very vain at the moment.
Being on Avid’s site seriously means so much to me. I was legit nearly brought to tears. However I was in the middle of a shoot when the article went live and thought it’d be a little inappropriate to start tearing up so I tried to keep my joy and excitement to a minimum, at least externally.
In today’s post I want to touch on what happens when you attempt to help people without expecting anything in return. Let’s call this unconditional help.
Unconditional help is when you help someone, either a person are you helping directly or someone you are helping indirectly by putting something of value out there for the world, and don’t expect anything in return.
Why should you help people?
Helping people feels good. Maybe it’s selfish to feel good after helping people. That doesn’t matter to me. It’s one of many pleasant side effects you get from helping others. I think Friends did an episode about that when Phoebe was trying to do a selfless deed or something.
Side Note: Is there anything better than Friends being on Netflix? Maybe It’s Always Sunny but still. Friends on Netflix is pretty clutch.
The world can be a brutal place, even the world of post production. Why make it tougher on people than it already is? I do not see any benefit in holding others back. So what if you create tougher competition? Elevate your game or lose out. Whatever the result you will try harder and become better at whatever you’re doing.
You should never expect anything in return when helping others. Not only does this thwart off disappointment but if something good does happen as a result of your acts then you’ll be much more happy.
Unconditional love means you’re going to love the person no matter what. You’re going to love them and expect nothing in return. Why can’t we do the same with helping people in post production?
We can help one another out. We can grow our skills and hone our craft…together.
Every single accomplishment I listed at the beginning of this post 1) I’m beyond belief proud of and 2) only happened because I helped people with no expectations of getting anything back.
I’m now a course instructor for Tuts+ because I created and still create easy-to-consume tutorials on YouTube. By the way, I am getting started on my next course for Tuts+!
The only reason I have my 9-5 job running a video/media department is because I taught Tae-Kwon-Do for free when I was a teenager. The father of two kids I taught was working at a company and we had kept in touch throughout the years. He gave me a call out of the blue one day and talked me into making the jump over to the company he was at.
I started this site to help video editors. Over the past year I feel like I have done that successfully. I can’t wait to see what this next year has in store for me!
Do you need help with anything? Ask away! I’m here for you.