Charles Gupton

Creativity

Confusing Work With ‘The Work’

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

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 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

The Great Thing about Difficulty

The great thing about difficulty is that it keeps the mediocre from attempting great things

I’ve been working on the details for a class on creativity for business people that’s designed to help them unleash their right-brain thinking for business. I’ve heard it said that the devil is in the details and that God is in the details. It may be a mix of both, but I know every time I’m trying to launch something of significance, the minutia is what eats up my energy.

What keeps me going forward is: 1) if it really is important, then it’s important to see it through; and 2) it’s the difficulty that stops the mediocre people from trying. Most people go for the low-hanging fruit then quit when there’s any obstacle in the way.

I find myself talking with people every week who want to accomplish great things. But not only do they not have a plan, they quit when fate doesn’t just drop success in their laps. I feel as if I’m going to bleed to death some days from the small nicks of a thousand details. But I realize that charging ahead with a will to finish is what the average person lacks.

Is there something of significance that you need to see through to completion? Don’t let the details bleed your heart.

Charles