#76 | Do It Scared (with Hanul Kim)

This is Into the Story, the podcast where you learn English with true stories from all over the world. Stories that connect us and inspire you to get Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Bree, your host. If you're back for another episode, then thank you for coming back. And if you're new here, then I'm so excited to have you. Have you ever wanted to do something big, a big goal, a big dream, something important to you, but you felt too scared?

Your hands are shaking, your heart is racing, and you think, I can't do this. But here's the truth. If you want to do something, do it. If you're scared, then do it scared. Today we're going into the story of how Kim, who goes for her dream. Even when things feel hard, she doesn't wait for perfect circumstances. She just finds a way to make it work. Professor Kim Hanul, welcome to the studio. I say, hello, and my voice comes out in such a weird high pitch.

cringy way and I just want to disappear. Into my chair. This is a story about pushing through fear, of making it work and not giving up. And by the end, you'll see how fear doesn't have to stop you, it can move you forward. If you enjoy this podcast, you will love my newsletter. Every few weeks. I'll send you a short email with practical tips to help you express yourself naturally, speak with more confidence.

And learn from the stories that I share with you here. I want to make your English feel real, personal, and meaningful. Just like this podcast. You can sign up at Intothestory Podcast.com.

And now it's time to look at five words and expressions that Hanel uses in her story today. The first one is Blazing. If something is blazing, it means that it's extremely bright and hot or full of emotion. For example, the sun was blazing overhead as they crossed the desert, or he made a blazing entrance with all eyes on him. Another word I wanted to include here with blazing because it's in the story and it actually comes right after the word blazing.

Is the word blazer. B L A Z E R. Now a blazer is a type of jacket. Nothing to do with the word blazing. It's often part of a uniform. or worn in a smart casual situation. For example, she wore her navy blazer to the first job interview, or he adjusted his blazer before stepping on stage. Next is the expression. Deer in headlight. D-E-E-R, as in the animal, and this is a look or a feeling of being frozen with fear or surprise.

For example, when the teacher called on him, he looked like a deer in headlights. Or she stood on stage, a deer in headlights, forgetting her lines. A deer in headlights. Then we have Storm over. To storm over is a phrasal verb that means to move angrily or suddenly toward someone or something. For example, he stormed over to the desk. About the mistake, or she stormed over to her friend after hearing the news. Storm over. Then we have

Shattered. If something is shattered, it is broken into many pieces. But it can also mean to be extremely tired or extremely emotionally destroyed, extremely sad, depending on the context. For example, the glass shattered on the floor. Or she was completely shattered after the 12-hour shift. Shattered. And then finally, we have the word. Squinting. To squint is to narrow your eyes to see better. So imagine you're trying to look in the distance.

You squint to see further. Or if you stepped outside on a sunny day, you would be squinting because of the bright light. For example, he was squinting at the menu in the dim light. Or she walked out into the sun squinting from the branches. As always, if you would like to get a free learning pack for this episode, visit Into the Story Podcast.com. Alright, let's get into the story.

I'm sitting under the Blazing lights in Studio C and my heart is dumping. The lights are so bright. It's hot but my hands are so icy cold and I'm just sitting there, awkwardly waiting for the time. to be on this live newscast for the first time in my life. And this is also my first time getting hair and makeup done professionally downstairs at the hair and makeup room.

I borrowed a white blazer and Put my hair in a ponytail and right before I went into the studio my coworker Said, Oh, do you wanna borrow my earring? I think it'll look good on you. It'll make you less bland. So I'm like, Okay, well, thank you. And I tried on. Yeah, it looks better, so everyone they wish me luck because the entire country The entire nation, Korea, is waiting.

to find out if our country has win the bid to host the next Winter Olympics. And this has been a huge deal for the country'cause we've been preparing for this moment for over ten years. and I am asked to go on live television not just national television, this is global television where this thing is being broadcast to over a hundred and five countries in the world. As the clock is ticking, Hanel is glancing over her notes, trying to look calm.

but her jaw is clenched and her legs are actually shaking underneath the news desk. And then suddenly somebody calls out her name. It's her producer. He wants to do a mic check. So she reads a line and he cuts her off right in the middle. That's fine, he says. I'm sitting there and I'm looking around and everybody seems relaxed.

All the two anchors, the male and female anchors, you're chatting to each other. The camera guy, he's kind of fiddling with the lens and you know, everybody except for me seems like they know what they're doing. And suddenly the chit chat just stops. There's this sudden silence. And the red clock, it takes down five, four, three. and the on air sign comes on. We're live.

And then I hear in the silence the Jimmy Jub camera crane. It sweeps across the studio and the anchors, they do their opening lines. And the male anchor he turns to the guests, which is me and this other professor sitting in the studio. And he greets us with a very professional smile. He says, Professor Kim Hanul, welcome to the studio. I blink. I say hello and my voice comes out in such a weird high pitch. cringy way and I just want to disappear.

Thank goodness I'm not the first one to go. The anchor asks the first question to the professor. He is speaking really eloquently. He's not even looking at the teleprompter. He seems like he memorized everything or I'm sure he's an expert. So he just goes on and on and on. And then it's my turn. So the female anchor, she turns over to me and she asks me a question.

I nod and I glance at her and then I shift my gaze to the teleprompter. The teleprompter, of course, is what news anchors read off of. It is their script. And as soon as Hanel turns and looks at it, She realizes there's a big problem. She can't really see the words. There's the black background and then very thin white words and numbers. So I'm already having blurry vision. And uh the biggest struggle was reading numbers because uh number three kind of looks like a number eight.

And in television it's a big no no to make number mistakes. You can't say for instance like three thousand people died when actually eight thousand people died. So having the accuracy and numbers or the year or the time that it happened is absolutely critical. But I was having trouble reading the numbers and I didn't want to make a mistake, so I'm squinting. If you look at me, I look like a deer in headlights. I look scared the whole time. And I'm supposed to talk about this very

joyous occasion where this is a proud moment. And I'm talking about how South Korea has been really putting a lot of effort to host this Winter Olympics and my face, my facial expressions are not matching the message that I'm delivering. And another thing, nobody told me that the camera is not going to be on me all the time. But actually the producer Cut to B roll. Which means they're just rolling background images, so I'm not actually on air.

So what professional or veteran news people do is when you're off air, you can actually read from the paper or give your eyes a break from just staring at the teleprompter. Nobody told me that. So I am just really trying to read this thing like a schoolgirl. trying to read a textbook in front of the teacher. I don't want to make any mistakes. So oh my gosh, I'm too nervous to even be aware of what's going on.

The news segment finally finishes. It was in total 14 minutes, but for Hanel it felt like 14 hours had passed. When the f cameras they finally stop, I stand up, my legs are still shaky, I Tell everybody thank you. Squashunida in Korean and I take the elevator back up to the sixth floor where the news desks are and I sit back at my desk, I'm still trying to process what just happened and my heart is still racing and I just can't get over that cringe.

of what happened and I suddenly hear footsteps coming towards my desk and my boss is my boss. He storms over and the first thing he tells me, he says, What's wrong with you? Why were you doing that? Why were you frowning on air? And I said, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, but I can't I couldn't tell him the truth. The truth was I couldn't see. I couldn't tell him that.

I had high myopia and I couldn't read the teleprompter. She did not see this coming. She didn't consider that her very high degree of myopia was going to prevent her from being able to read the teleprompter. This is a deal breaker. If she can't solve this problem, she will not become a news anchor. The high myopia, it's not correctable. And for me, it was so severe to the point that even contact lenses could not correct it a hundred percent.

went to eye doctors trying to look for surgical options but Year after year I came with the news that doctors were saying, you know, there's nothing we can do with today. To fix your eyes. So I go home that night. And I tell my mom everything and I start to break and I'm sobbing. And I told my mom, like, mom, I can't see.

She doesn't say anything because she knows that this is not a problem that we can fix. So we are just hugging each other and I'm crying. My mom is just Because this was the dream. When I first joined the network as a news reporter, I had one goal. I really wanted to become an anchor woman at Adirang TV. This was the only English language network in South Korea and it broadcasts to a hundred and five countries and it's watched by

over a billion people in the world. So this was the stage that for a young Korean girl who has the brains, the poise and the English skills. This was the dream. And if I became an anchor woman, this was for me like an I made it moment. So this is where all the aunties they beam with pride. I grew up in Singapore so all the aunties and y your Sunday school teachers point into the screen and say, Hey, that's Hanel, that's our girl.

You know, the one where you quietly think to yourself, Yeah, this is it. I'm on television. I made it. But that night doesn't feel like a dream come true. It feels like the dream just shattered, that I had no chance of making it. All I can think in my head is like, oh my god, I blew it, I messed up in front of the whole world.

But the next morning, something shifted. I wake up and I tell myself, well, it's not over, not yet. It's too early to give up. And I'm telling myself, no, I have come too far. I am not going to let this stop me. I'll figure it out. I have to figure it out. And then I go into problem solving mode. So I come up with these tricks and hacks to read the teleprompter. uh I start marking certain words by putting dot dot dots around each word to create space. Um so my vision is not

blurred by all these numbers in one line. So uh just enough to make them pop And I shortened the lines to make it sound more natural. So they roll off the tongue and it's easier to memorize. So in case my eyes fail, I can still speak with memory, and I rehearse things over and over again until I can finally speak without thinking. And the words are just coming out. And also I train myself to look calm on the outside while I'm panicking on the inside because credibility

is key in television news. You don't want to look unsure or you don't want to look nervous when the viewers are looking at you for credible sources of information. So there were some days where I really did not have the confidence. be on camera. I felt like the dumbest person. in the room. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I have to go up there. And pretend that I know everything. So before big moments like that.

I use some artificial help to boost my confidence. I down a sugar caffeine concoction of Red Bull and Mountain Dew and this is my ridiculous go-go juice. So I don't recommend people to try this at home. So I chugged that in because you know what in television, most people don't know this, but if you show up at 100%, the viewers perceive you as 70 to 80.

So if you wanna present yourself at a hundred, you gotta show up at like hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty. You really have to exaggerate your energy in order to push through the camera. to reach the viewers watching you at home. So if I need a little bit of boost to my confidence level, I chug down my go-go juice and I'm on this like caffeine sugar high and I'm like talking you know. Like I know everything and once the camera turns off I just crash.

Hanal works hard and she practices these skills, these survival techniques that she comes up with, so that no one can say that she isn't good enough. But the fear is always there. Those years were hard. I felt like I was going through a dark tunnel. I didn't know where the light of the tunnel was, but I was so focused on improving myself. And I had very limited resources and help back then. Nobody was teaching me anything. I'm self taught.

But um I really tried to sharpen my skills so no one could uh challenge me technically. So I stop frowning and I start flowing and Slowly but quietly, I learn how to make the fear work for me. So I try I don't try to fight the fear, I embrace the fear.

Now, it's 11 years later. I'm sitting in a different studio, Studio D. The lights are still hot and the camera still does that slow dramatic sweep. But this time, she is not the nervous guest. She is the host. Hanel has her own weekly current affairs show. It's her name in the credits. Yes, she still gets nervous and has moments where she gets butterflies, but she knows how to recenter herself.

Now, when she thinks back to that first appearance on the news, back in Studio C, speaking about South Korea's bid for the Winter Olympics, that was survival. But here in Studio D, this is mastery. In studio C, I was a guest, I was nervous, I was unsure, I was trying not to mess mess up. In studio D, I'm the host. I'm grounded. Sharp.

and in control. In studio C I was squinting at the teleprompter. I couldn't read. I'm so terrified I'll make a mistake or get things wrong. But in studio D, I know my material. I can read the teleprompter, my eyes are still the same, still bad, but I can make it work. And if I could just go back and talk to that terrified girl in studio C the one who is sweating through her borrowed blazer looking like she's about to cry. I'll tell her this. You're gonna make

And you're gonna make it make it big. Don't you ever doubt yourself. And don't let this one experience be true for the rest of your career. Cuz you're only gonna go up. So hey, if you're listening to this, this is a story about resilience. It's about not giving up. Not letting obstacles, whether it's a physical flaw or a technical flaw, it's it's about figuring it out as you go. If right now you are thinking about something that you have been avoiding because it feels too scary, remember this.

If you want to do something, do it. And if you're scared, then do it scared. Today, Hanel Kim is a global public speaking coach. If you want to boost your speaking confidence, Hanel has created a free guide to help you. Shift your mindset and speak with impact. You can get it at coachhanol.com slash ITS and I will leave you a link in the show notes.

I hope that you enjoyed this story. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already, make sure to follow into the story so that you never miss a new episode. And if today made you feel something inspired, excited, maybe smile, then I would love if you could leave this podcast a five-star rating and review. It is a small but very powerful way to support this show. That's all for today folks. Until next time, I hope that you have a good time, or at least a good story to tell.