Charles Gupton

Creativity

How Are You Waiting?

I’ve spent more time in waiting areas in the past several months than I’ve cumulatively spent in such spaces during the majority of my life up to this point. Most of my waiting time has been in hospitals and medical environments.

What became shockingly clear to me as I looked around was how few people plan and use their waiting time productively, even when they knew their time sitting would span hours or most of a day or more.

While most of those around me were glued to their cell phones as a chief means of distraction, when a phone wasn’t stuck in front of their noses, they watched the ever present TV with a blank stare, mindlessly ate whatever fast food fare was nearby, and/or just stared into space.

I acknowledge my tendency to over-compensate, but I usually take several hours worth of reading, writing, and work projects with me nearly everywhere I go.

While I’m more than a little perplexed as to why others don’t do the same, I’ve also taken these opportunities as fodder for thinking more deeply about how all of us use the waiting or ‘in-between’ spaces in our lives.

If you think about it, much of our life is spent waiting. We’re waiting for a returned email or phone call to come. Waiting for a project to be approved so we can begin work on it. Waiting for kids to be back in school so that routines can be reset again. Waiting for the end of the school year to put the house on the market and move. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

For the last three years, I’ve had to deal with several family matters that have required more patience and waiting than I’ve ever been called upon to endure. Combined with some severe business and financial droughts and a couple of health surprises, this period has pushed my patience button further than I believed I could go.

I believe I have a higher capacity for uncertainty – which is what a lot of waiting entails – than most. But what do we do with that time?

At a point of deep despair and doubt that movement would ever occur again on several fronts, I kept thinking that if I didn’t have these concerns holding me up, I’d have more mental resources available to focus on a list of goals I’d written out. As the loop continued, I thought, “Yea, if I wasn’t having to keep my mind on these particular issues, I’d throw myself into this project, then that one, then that one!” Then the most unsettling thought occurred – “Then why don’t you just do the first one anyway, because it ain’t getting’ done while you’re waiting.”

Ouch.

I had a list of some conferences I wanted to attend, some story projects I wanted to film, and a couple of social events I wanted to initiate. So I finally got to it.

I got on line and registered for three conferences that I wanted to attend – the StoryLine conference in Nashville, SXSW in Austin, and World Domination Summit in Portland – and started making travel arrangements. As I’ve attended these three events over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to film segments for story projects I wanted to initiate. Two of those projects – the Legacy Project and Fear and Boulders – have five or more interviews already filmed or in production.

In retrospect, I wonder if I would have really set out and committed to each of these goals had it not been for my determination not to waste my time waiting.

I needed to invest myself in goals and objectives that were attainable and not allow myself to get caught up in the malaise or anxiety that often comes when waiting for events outside our control to move the needle forward.

When school starts and the kids are out of the house, your surgery is over and recovery underway, or when the phone rings and the project you’ve been waiting on is approved to start working, what will you have accomplished or lost during that time of uncertainty and fear while you waited? 

Is it possible to make that decision now, while you’ve got the time? While you’re waiting?

Charles 

Regret for Time Spent in Regret

Regret occurs in our lives when the consequences of “bad” choices we make slam into the ideal we have of ourselves as good people.

Three recent examples from my life:

• I did not complete a written contract for a project several months ago before undertaking the work. That oversight led to a number of misunderstandings and miscommunications that have bogged down the project, wasted an inordinate amount of time, and potentially exacted a huge toll on the working relationships.

• I loaned money to a buddy to try to help him get out of a financial bind only to learn that he’s used the resources to dig a deeper hole of debt to climb out of rather than use good judgment to get out of the mid-sized hole he was in when he came to me.

• I did not move fast enough when an elderly family member was taken advantage of regarding her health care and finances. Had I moved more quickly and decisively, I believe I could have prevented a legal and personal quagmire that has lasted three years to date.

Although I consider myself fairly reasoned and intelligent, in each situation, I allowed urgency to over-shadow my better judgment. I was caught up in the busyness of too many commitments, and simply tried to make an important decision without the clarity of quiet separation from the critical issue at hand.

Because I see myself as thoughtful and deliberate, each of these oversights was like a kick in my stomach and something I greatly regretted doing. But each instance has also taught me a huge lesson in discernment.

What I am learning is that the bridge needed to cross the chasm that separates regret from wisdom is built with personal forgiveness and grace. In none of the situations did I intend to do something wrong.

By moving away from regret and towards understanding, I spend less unproductive time wallowing in shame and more constructive energy producing work that can have an impact for other people. Wallowing in regret and shame drains my heart of the willingness to risk again, if I let it.

If you do anything of any substance, that has any chance of making a difference in people’s lives, you’re going to face failure. And when you do, regret is going to raise its nasty head. I’ve yet to learn how to decapitate and leave it for dead. But I am learning to not sit down with it and let it devour me. I’m learning to build that bridge and move to greater wisdom.

In my work with clients, I frequently hear mistakes and regrets pop up in our discussions. The fear of making errors shuts them off to possibilities. I try to use those conversations as a sounding board to hear my own angst and address it. Because often we can’t recognize our fears until they’re revealed in the lives around us.

How about you? What are your regrets? How are they holding your story hostage?

Charles

 

Is Good, Enough?

 

                                              “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”                                                                                                                  ~ Annie Dillard

Surely, you’ve experienced it.

As you’re working out the details for a pending project — or maybe while you’re in the middle of a vexing complication — your client comes to the conclusion that maybe the problem is the bar Is just set too high.

“Maybe we should just settle for something more realistic.”

“I’m not sure we’re going to have the budget to make this baby a prize-winner. Maybe on the next one.”

“Sometimes good enough really is, don’t you think?”

When I ask, “What do you want to eliminate and still keep the outcome acceptable?”, the response is usually a reflection of the decision maker’s fears or lack of commitment to excellence rather than the actual constraints of the situation. Seldom do the extra resources required to make a project stand out really cost significantly more in terms of budget or effort.

Will settling for ‘Good Enough’ be good enough to build your life on?

The more deeply I become aware of the impact of self-protection issues in the workplace, the more I realize that many people, even those in seemingly high positions in organizations, are often afraid of excellence. They don’t want their work to stand out in a way that raises the bar because their next project may be compared to what they’ve done and new expectations set.

Are there ever times when “good enough” is? Sure!

But I believe making that decision in the planning stage of the project – based on the desired impact – is the right choice, not as a rationalization or an excuse for lack of commitment in the middle of the process.

As the opening quote by Annie Dillard suggests, when you spend your life – day after day after yet another tedious day – settling for good enough, you may one day find out that it wasn’t. 

Charles

 

 

 

Honoring the Process of Process

Have you ever been severely constipated, your bowels aching to relieve themselves of the blockage? All you want to do is move along with your day but your intestines won’t cooperate.

Writing is often like that for me.

I’ve just spent the last two hours straining to push words out of my brain into a book project that I’m working on.  And much of what has come out appears to my eye to be crap. But I continue to strain. Why?

I am excruciatingly, slowly teaching myself to honor the process of the process.

Calling myself a writer doesn’t make me a writer. I’m only a writer when I’m writing, not talking about writing. Doing the writing makes me a writer.

I have been a professional photographer for 35 years. But several years ago, in one of the deepest dips of the recession, I realized that I’d not shot one picture in a nearly six-month period. What I had done during that time period was go to networking events, business classes, sales presentation appointments, and anywhere else I could to shake up an opportunity for paid work. But I had not, during that time, picked up a camera.

My attitude sucked and my energy was flagging.

If we are what we do, then I was an unpaid networker. But I was NOT a photographer. I had not honored the process of feeding my heart or keeping my skills sharpened.

I took a week off from all appointments and shot photos. I can’t say they were great images. My vision was rusty and shallow. But the process fed my heart and energized my life.

I realized that I am not an artist and communicator because it’s a glamorous or lucrative way to make a living. I am passionate about telling stories. It is the core of who I am. But to truly be something, I have to do it. It is action that creates results, not talk.

It is the same with writing. It is a process. What I’ve discovered is that the most critical part of developing a process is to honor the process.

What I want, when I sit down to write, is for the words to flow out of me like a tap. If you’ve ever written, you know that’s not how it goes. But I’ve also learned that honoring the process of writing does cause the words to flow. A lot of the process of writing is fighting back the ‘voice’ of doubt and recrimination that whispers ‘Who would ever want to read anything you have to write?’

My job at that moment isn’t to find an answer to justify my time in front of the keyboard. My job at that moment is to write. By trusting the process itself, I eventually fight back the ‘voice’ and get the words out.

I’ve talked with a lot of people who want to write/paint/photograph, etc., but stall when the process becomes painful. Although there are times when creativity does abound, I don’t think it ever becomes entirely pain free.

That’s when the discipline of honoring the process becomes critical to becoming what your heart screams out to be.

How do you respond to the resistance that inevitably inhibits your personal vision from seeing the light?

 

Charles

 

From Perfect to Good

One of the greatest realizations that I’ve come to – and am still coming to – is that the standard for what is acceptable quality in the communications world has radically changed. Over the last decade, my bent towards perfectionism has taken numerous hits.

The transition from print to web dominance in communications has greatly reduced the need for high resolution images. Couple that with the trend towards creating photos on smart phones and tablets, and many photographers are left feeling that their extensive training and creative abilities are now far undervalued.

While I would never tell artists to stop caring about their creations or throw the quality of their craftsmanship aside, I have come to realize that the quantity of time and attention to detail given needs to be appropriate to the final usage of the images that we produce.

Charles