Attitude is not always everything. But it sure makes a world of difference.
I attended the wedding of a special friend this weekend. I don’t know that I’ve ever witnessed a couple that looked anymore delighted at the prospect of having their lives and hearts joined in marriage.
A first kiss with "attitude".
As a photographer, what was of particular interest to me was watching the official photographer work and interact with the wedding party, family, and guests. I ‘d brought a camera with me but had left it in the car so that I could focus my entire attention on the occasion and not be caught up in the imagery from it. It’s a difficult habit to break. After watching the glow on Alex’s face when the church doors opened and he focused everything in his being on his bride-to-be, I couldn’t resist running back to the car for my camera.
Although I don’t label myself a wedding photographer, I’ve shot a lot of weddings. As a result, I am very sensitive to where I position myself so that I’m not in the way of anyone who is at a wedding in an official capacity. So I was a little dismayed when the photographer approached me in the corner of the balcony and told me that he was the “official” photographer and that I was in the way of him carrying out his assignment. Mind you, the balcony could have held fifteen photographers standing abreast but, biting my tongue, I stepped back and offered him my spot. He stepped in front of me, shot one photo then turned and headed down the stairs. On the way down, he slammed his head into an overhang. He later told me it was my fault that he’d hit his head.
A few minutes later I was at the back of the church to get a shot of the couple as they turned to leave. Again the photographer came over to remind me that he was the “official” photographer and that I was again in his way. He stepped in front of me, shot one photo and marched up the middle aisle to the front of the church. I went back upstairs to be out of the way and get a better angle. When the couple did turn, he was completely out of position at the front of the church and had to dash to the back of the church.
Sometime later, near the end of the “official” family photos, the groom’s family approached me about shooting some family photos of them. The photographer had refused to shoot them because they were not on the “official” list. Although it felt a little awkward, I was glad to help them. I understand the pain of missing those important family images. Our “official” photographer marked his calendar incorrectly and was a no-show at our wedding.
Alisane and Alex Ferguson
As a result, our wedding photos are cobbled together from photos taken by other photographer friends who were in attendance. As a result, capturing all of the desired images from a special occasion is dear to my heart.
When I cover an event these days I try to always have one or two additional photographers with me. I can’t think of everything, be in every spot, nor be assured no technical glitches will ever occur. And when shooting a single image on a project, I’m delighted to get input from anyone who sees a better possibility before us. I value abundance of involvement.
I relate this weekend’s experience, not to beat up on an industry peer, but to capture an example of scarcity attitude. Including his snappish comments directed at other guests, everything the photographer did seemed to have come from a place of deep-down anxiety and fear. Fear of not being seen as competent as well as someone else appearing to be more so. I know this fear. Sadly, I’ve embraced it as well. I believe we all have at some point.
Acknowledging that we’re holding on to fear is no excuse for not finding a means of letting it go. Fear does not serve us and it stands in the way of us serving others as well. This applies to all relationships, business and personal.
Having an attitude of abundance and possibility may not be everything, but it sure goes a long way towards enjoying the process. And making it more enjoyable for others around us.
Your thoughts?
Charles
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Competition,
Creative Juices,
Emotions,
Photography
I have a business colleague who judges everyone else according to his own strengths. When people don’t measure up to his standard of strengths, they are dismissed as inadequate and unworthy of his business respect. Since his particular strengths are in the area of technology, I often fall short, in his view, of being the full measure of the man I should be.
After feeling the sting of this judgment a few times, I found myself getting fairly irritated in his company on every occasion. I found myself going into each encounter with a ready quip or two prepared to put him on the defensive by pointing out some of the shortcomings he might be overlooking. However, in a moment of clarity I realized, I am him; I have been that kind of person too. And is my heart of hearts, I still am.
I my heart, I have harshly judged people for how they choose to eat, spend their money, and spend their time. On many of those occasions, I have made comments that reflected my judgments in a way that stressed the relationship. Enough of those stress fractures and the relationship will be damaged beyond repair.
I’m not saying that we should not exercise our judgment – there’s far too little good judgment being used. What I am suggesting is that we decide how our particular insights can be of value rather than be demeaning.
I don’t believe that because I’ve not utilized technology to push my LinkedIn connections to 500+ makes me an unthoughtful person. Or that my phone, laptop and desktop are not perfectly synced with identical folders and using automatic smart-mailbox routing so that I have every contact’s complete information at my fingertips at all times is the strongest indication that I don’t care about other people.
I desperately need to make improvements in all areas of life involving technology. I have a lot of improvements to make in other areas as well. What I need is guidance. And encouragement. And support.
But derision causes defensiveness to rise up. Emotional barriers get built. Connection is lost, perhaps permanently.
Again, discernment is a very good and important quality to possess. What is even more important though is the end to which it’s used.
When we discover a weakness in a colleague or friend, do we merely point it out or possibly exploit it? Or do we use the knowledge as a means of building a bridge or a connection? As a means of building that person up?
By being more supportive of others growth, is it possible that we might become more open to others supporting our growth as well?
Charles
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Discernment,
Emotions,
Listening,
Relationships,
Social media,
Technology
There are many ideas and concepts that need more descriptive English words than we often have at the tip of our tongues to describe them properly. “Friend” is one of them.
Avery and me after putting insulation under the house.
As I was finishing up with the small talk during a business event recently, I was asked, “Got big plans for the weekend?” I hesitated then said, “With the help of a friend, I’m putting insulation in the crawl space under our house along with support jacks to stabilize the floors. I guess you could call those big plans.” The response came back in a flash, “Good luck with that. Any friends I know would bail as soon as they saw the work was hard.”
True dat. I’ve had a number of house and farm projects through the years see the quick exit of a buddy or even a paid worker who realized the work involved was, well, work.
People make casual offers more frequently then they should, agreeing to help folks in their circle of acquaintances with projects that are frustrating their ‘friends’ with details beyond their capabilities. What are often sold as little projects by a person in need become massive in the eyes of the ‘savior,’ and the ‘savior’ then bails out, leaving the ‘needy’ person frustrated and possibly with hurt feelings or even a broken friendship.
Having been on both sides of the needy/savior divide on numerous occasions, I understand the power and importance of follow-through on really helping someone and maintaining the integrity of the relationship. I am also no less than amazed when someone sticks with a project to see it through.
The past year, I’ve taken on a couple of major projects only because I had the help and commitment of my friend Avery to see them through. Early on, I kept expecting him to not show up for the next round of work, but every time he did. Even though the work is always difficult, dirty and exhausting.
Even though I am loyal, hardworking, and willing to finish anything I start, Avery consistently keeps the bar high for what I expect those standards to be now. He goes beyond what anyone I know is willing to do to finish a job well.
Avery on a jackhammer, digging a fence post hole.
Most people I encounter enjoy being with people who don’t challenge their growth, level of commitment, or expectations of quality of service. This goes for their business and personal lives as well.
I can’t say it’s comfortable but it is desirable for me to keep raising the bar of excellence. Associating with people who display their commitment to excellence in service through action rather than empty talk raises my game as well as my stake in the game. They check my complacency and make me a better person.
And isn’t that a real definition of a friend?
Charles
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Relationships
I had an unusually wonderful meeting with the Director of Development of a non-profit this week. The meeting was set up to discuss photography coverage for a fund-raising event this fall, but instead evolved into a broader discussion of how we could work towards incorporating photographs into their overall branding and communications efforts.
My desire is to do more than simply shoot pictures. I want to use imagery to create awareness, communicate stories, and capture emotions. I want to inspire imagination.
Most of the people I talk with seem to be satisfied – no, compelled – to stick with the status quo. Although it’s seldom spoken, the question that seems to hang in the air is “How can we just get it done for the least amount of effort, for the lowest possible cost?”
Increasingly, I’m finding that the lowest expenditure brings the lowest impact. Sometimes (but not always), a little more effort and money can bring an amazing return on investment. But the major difference is in the planning and thought given to the outcome desired and how the work fits into an overall strategy. By asking in advance, “What is the impact we ultimately want to have and will this use of our resources bring us closer to achieving that goal?,” we can use what seem to be very limited resources to produce a far greater outcome than we could have imagined.
I believe the same is true for individuals as it is for organizations.
I have a buddy who has amazing talents. Amazing. But he uses most of his time and energy under-utilizing his gifts. In his case, the expenditure is not of money, but of heart — a willingness to allow passion to be publicly invested. By relying on the status quo in thinking about how people should serve and help others with one’s talents, his impact is far less than it could and should be. It’s not that he’s having no impact. It’s just that using the same time, with greater thoughtfulness and focus, could lead to a greater outcome, in my observation.
Is there an area where you can be making a greater difference by being more thoughtful and proactive? Is the status quo around you compromising your heart and ability to serve?
Charles
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Creativity
When Linda and I took a sabbatical from our communications work several years ago and ventured into organic farming, I spent an inordinate amount of time doing the work of laying irrigation, preparing the soil, fencing pastures, and other necessary tasks to allow us to produce the various crops and products we ate and sold.
But over time, we found that the most important work that we did was not the growing of food, but the growing of the relationships with our customers. The points of contact where we were engaged with the people most affected by our efforts – whether it was delivering produce or attending a farmers’ market meeting – did more to deepen the relationships and fuel our hearts than anything else we did.
We came to understand that it’s not just about work, but “The Work.”
As I was sitting in a recent peer advisory meeting where we were discussing the metrics that were most critical for each of our businesses to succeed, I had a profound revelation. I had been setting the number of client and potential-client meetings that I was having as the most important metric to count. After all, no business can have sales without customers.
The revelation was that I was not establishing any metrics for nourishing my creative heart. I was counting meetings as having the most value in my life, but not anything connected to producing my art. It was truly an ‘A-ha!’ moment.
As soon as I started writing down the “The Work” my heart wanted to achieve, the other work I needed to get accomplished seemed to be so much more approachable and less burdensome to consider. Just as I’m far more inclined to enjoy any work I do when I’m physically rested and fed, my heart is far more engaged when it’s rested and fed.
From the moment my heart got attention, everything else I did was energized. I’ve been told a number of times in the last several weeks that I walk into a room with a renewed energy, and every meeting I’ve been involved with has more new possibilities than before. I don’t believe the situations have changed, but my view of them has.
My current metrics now include accountable projects for both my heart and head, and my heart is enjoying the process of being included in the census.
What about you? Are your feeding “The Work” that feeds your heart or is the work consuming your life?
Charles
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Creative Juices,
Creativity,
Emotions,
Feeding the Heart,
Relationships
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
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Creativity,
Emotions
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
Tagged as:
Advice,
Attitude,
Listening,
Relationships
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
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Listening,
Relationships
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
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Play,
winning
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
Tagged as:
Attitude,
Creativity,
Relationships
