Charles Gupton

Archives for April 2010

Going to Play

When I go to play tennis, I go to play tennis. I don’t go to work at it. I want my play to be fun, not a chore or another task to be accomplished. That’s not to say I don’t want to win. However, when I finish, I’d rather have lost an enjoyable match in which I played my best than to win a match in which I didn’t play well or have fun.

There are too many times when I see the desire to win cause players to make poor calls to win the point. Or make very safe shots just to stay in the game.

I want to be challenged by the opponents I’m playing with because I want to steadily improve my game. In fact, I often look at my opponent as my partner in raising my game. I also want to be a good opponent/partner in that regards. One of the best compliments I can receive when I finish a match is to have my opponents say that I made them work for every point they won, that playing with me raises their game to a higher level.

I find the attitude that I choose to play with on the court has an impact on how I play off the court and vice versa. I don’t want my wins to come at the expense of my honesty, my willingness to take risks, or my desire to enjoy the game I’m in.

Charles

Are You Committed?

A buddy and I were having breakfast this week and the discussion turned to commitments in relationships. Specifically, we were making comparisons between how people make and stand by commitments in their personal and business lives. One question that is still lingering in my mind is, can someone make a deep commitment to another person – or a company – if they don’t believe there is a commitment to them in return.

I believe that people who show commitment in their personal lives also display that commitment in all of their business relationships as well.

I’ve worked with a number of clients with whom I’ve felt the freedom to make mistakes – in other words, take risks. I feel a commitment from the client to the process and, at times, to me personally. I do my best work for those people because I believe they trust my integrity and my desire to do my best work on their behalf.

I’ve also done my share of work for companies that had a very low tolerance for mistakes, meaning that creativity or taking the risk of not getting a “safe” solution is not acceptable. In each of those cases, I’ve felt the work I’ve done for them was entirely transactional. There was no commitment to the process of getting remarkable work or to me as a person or artist.

The connection I often see is that the people who won’t make a deeper commitment to their business relationships often have very shallow personal commitments as well. I can get a fairly quick read on whether I’m going to be able to get a deeper connection with someone by assessing whether they have any deep connections at all, and if so, where those connections are in their life.

What does that mean for me and possibly for you?

One, if I do my best creative work for clients that I have a better connection with, why would I spend my energy trying to engage anyone who is only interested in the transaction of the moment?

Second, if I desire a deeper connection with new relationships, I need to focus energy on deepening my commitment to the relationships that already have significance in my life. If I’m not serving the needs of the people I say that I care about, how can I serve the needs of new friends and prospective clients?

What do you think? How do you see it?

Charles

Taking Initiative to Find Direction

I find it interesting that it’s when I’m not writing my blog posts that I’m most aware of what direction I want my blog to take. But because I don’t have the time to think and write as I want to do, I occasionally produce no posts at all.

The last couple of months have been well filled with assignments, numerous meetings, personal commitments and most discouraging, several weeks of on-going illness. As a result, I did not get to the regular morning reading and journaling that feeds my heart and sets some routine for writing posts. When I try to force something through the keyboard onto the monitor before me, all I feel is anxiety and frustration that I’m just trying to “git ‘er done” without regard to the direction I want it to go.

At the same time, it’s the process of pushing the words across the screen that gets the job done. One of the curses of perfectionism is that waiting for the time and circumstances to get it “right” often means not getting something done at all.

Of course, I know that my posts are neither perfect nor earth-shaking in anyone’s life. But I challenge you to find any writer who doesn’t have such grandiose thoughts of changing lives before starting to fill a page. The same for a painter, who wants to stir hearts before placing a canvas on an easel. Or a chef who wants to wow palettes when selecting a menu and its ingredients.

The key for a creator is to stop perfectionism from derailing the process before it even gets started.

Charles