Charles Gupton

Archives for May 2010

Cleaning Your Heart Out

We’d decided to take our first tandem bike ride of the season and I was digging around for my riding shorts, a t-shirt and socks when it hit me that I had too much crammed in the drawers. A minute later, I had the contents of the drawers all dumped out on the bed, making piles of what I did want to keep and other piles of stuff that needed to go.

For months (maybe years?) Linda has tried to get me to throw out well-seasoned articles from my wardrobe. I said they had character. She said they were ratty.

Although she couldn’t understand the nostalgic value of a t-shirt I played tennis in through high school, she’d shake her head and fold it away for me. But why was I keeping so many pairs of  “Sunday undies” (you know, they’re holey)? And did it matter if most of my socks were mostly like new if they were all threadbare in exactly the same spot?

I wasn’t sure what was causing the wave of desire to clean the drawers out, but I did it anyway. Linda wasn’t even around. When she came in to see if I was still going to ride, she found me going through every piece. If there was any question, I gave her final approval over its merit to stay.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been putting an extraordinary amount of attention into business development. Very little of my time and resources have been invested in my heart and art.

It’s been a couple of years since I led the last of several groups of artists through Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. In her book, Cameron talks about the need to clean out and de-clutter as a way to make room for the new and unexpected to come into our lives. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve experienced a shift in my heart and mind. Rather than list out quantifiable business goals as a part of my group accountability, I found myself interjecting some creative project goals. I hadn’t really given it much pre-thought. It just popped out. It was as if my heart said, “Enough. I want my turn.” Who was I to argue?

Although I’d started ruminating on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to proceed, I hadn’t yet taken any defining action. But as I was putting my socks and skivvies away, I realized my heart wanted to see some change, some cleaning out to make room for something new. This isn’t the end, but I had to start somewhere. So I have.

Fortunately, we still had time left for our ride.

Charles

Are You Looking for Advice or Agreement?

You’ve probably heard the old saw – the second happiest day of a boat owner’s life is the day he buys it. The happiest day is when he sells it.

A number of years ago, my brother wanted to buy a boat. He asked everyone around him – including our dad – for advice on whether he should or should not go into debt to make this purchase. Everyone he asked, with the exception of the salesman he bought his boat from, counseled him to stay away from a boat, especially if it required taking on debt. Ostensibly, he was looking for objective counsel about a decision he was trying to make. But since the deal was already decided in his head, he was actually just looking for someone to agree with his rationale and help justify the purchase.

I made a similar mistake many years ago when I decided to spend about $50,000 of borrowed money on a direct mail postcard campaign in an attempt to get more national assignment work. I ran the numbers and justified the expense. I then asked a few select people – including Linda – for their thoughts on my reasoning. When all of them counseled against that load of debt for advertising, I further reasoned that they were motivated by fear and just trying to hold me back.

Although the increased exposure did eventually bring in enough work to cover most of the expense, it was not nearly worth the pain of covering the debt and the interest charges that mounted for several years. It was a foolish decision that cost us dearly. Nobody – especially Linda – was trying to hold me back. Everyone wanted what was best for us. But I was too arrogant to really listen. I wanted agreement.

I heard many years ago that an education is an expensive process, regardless of how the tuition is paid. And the cost can come in the form of one’s time and money.

Life is not long enough for any of us to gain all the wisdom we need by ourselves. We need to learn and have some of our education paid for by other people’s experiences. If someone else has already paid for and learned a particular lesson, wouldn’t it behoove us to listen and learn from them?

Of course, one always runs the risk of having counsel given out of someone else’s fear. If we choose to listen to people who live their lives with a scarcity or fear-based mentality, we will never try anything risky or daring. The trick is to select a set of advisers who have wisdom born out of failure but who’ve also picked themselves up and tried again until their passions succeeded.

I’m not sure if the day my brother sold his boat was his happiest. But I can’t express the sense of relief I had the day we paid off the debt of my advertising campaign. I may have gotten work from it, but it wasn’t worth the anguish. I learned a big lesson. When I ask for advice now, I listen. And when someone agrees with me too quickly on a big decision, I’m more inclined to question that person’s reasoning. Heck, I’m the one paying the tuition bill.

Charles

Time for What?

I enjoy being around people who are relaxed and fun to be with. Don’t you?

But similar to the axiom that to have friends you need to be a friend, to be welcome among fun people one needs to be a fun person.

That’s the rub for me. Sometimes I’m a fun person who’s relaxed and genuinely interested in the lives of my friends. But too much of the time I’m not. The difference in my attitude, I’ve noticed, is based on my attention on and awareness of one thing.

The clock.

When my attention is on how much I have to get done or where I have to be with a deadline as my focus then I have little room left for attention anywhere else. That means my ability to center my thoughts on another’s needs or to relax in the moment all but evaporates.

The struggle comes in realizing that one can learn to be efficient with things but not with people. Not if one wants to have effective relationships with them. No one I know wants to know they’re being time-managed. Do you? Very few people have the skills to manage people within the constraints of the clock and not leave them feeling managed. When we’re with our friends or other significant relationships, don’t we want to know that they’re truly “with” us to?

Are you fun to be with? How are you managing your time and relationships with the people you care for?

Charles