Be Inspired Guest Post by Emily Potts | Photoshop Actions for Photographers Giveaway
I truly believe that all of us are born bursting with creativity and brimming with inspiration. Watch a child at play, and I think you’ll agree. They create spin elaborate scenarios when playing with their toys and find alternative uses for any old household item with the greatest of ease. My son constantly amazes me with the thoughts that just swirl in his head. ?Why are walruses so fat? Why can’t our skin be blue? How do the leaves fall off of the trees?? My day is peppered with seemingly random questions that simply point to the fact that he is continuously contemplating his world.
As we get older, we begin to notice that some of our questions are met with giggles or rolled eyes or are dismissed as silly and stupid. We become aware that some of the ideas we think are downright brilliant are mocked by others and titled ?stupid?. We notice that the scenario we invented for our toys doesn’t make total sense. We begin to conform, compare and homogenize . . . and our creativity is stifled.
So what is a grownup gal to do when she wants to spark her creativity? Sometimes when I am seeking inspiration I will turn to other photographers’ blogs, facebook pages, and websites. It is usually the very worst thing I could do! I’ll cyber-stalk those that have been recognized by the industry as talented and successful. Thirty minutes into this practice and I find myself wading knee-deep in self-doubt. My now self-conscious mind starts to whisper, ?Her work is soooooo much better than yours. Her studio is soooooo much bigger than yours. Oh wait a minute . . . she has a studio and you don’t. Even her thighs are thinner. Her life looks perfect. You fail.? Needless to say after I have been sucked into the vortex of frantic mouse-clicking I emerge not inspired, but completely depleted. My creativity is shot and inspiration has been sucked dry by the emotional vampire that is comparison.
One of my favorite photographers, Farrah Braniff, once relayed a quote by Theodore Roosevelt that said comparison is the thief of joy. (I think this comment should put her in league with the Dali Lama . . . or at least Yoda!) When I find my creativity stifled because I have been playing the apples to oranges game, the best thing I have found I can do is turn inward and look for the inspiration that I know dwells within.
When I was a child it flowed forth with ease. I created a ?house of straw? using the pine needles in the back yard. I created a ?Bad Year Blimp? to frighten my younger brother with the prospect of a year filled of bad luck. (Cruel, sure, but definitely creative!) I painted and sang and danced unaware and uncaring of any others’ opinions of my works. I mapped out my future as a nun-seamstress-ballerina-vet. I had big plans and big ideas and I thought they were good. All of this came without attending creativity workshops or using expertly crafted techniques. It came about because my mind was free and all of my needs were met.
I have a theory that if we care for ourselves like we do our own children, creativity can flow again like it did once before. So many of us run around maxed out with tasks, errands and crazy calendars. We subsist off of few hours of sleep and fast food consumed in the car. However, we can recapture our youthful, inspired minds if we’re rested, stress-free, and well nourished. If we play and laugh daily. If we feel secure and loved and wanted.
I encourage all of you to look at ways to care for yourself, body and soul, so your mind can behave more like it did when you were a child. Practice meditation so you can dump the stress cluttering your mind. Get enough sleep so the fog of exhaustion doesn’t cloud your view of the world. Take fun dance lessons so you get exercise and play. Your mind will wake up to the beauty this life holds for each of us and inspiration is sure to follow!
Emily Potts is the creator of and writer for Moms With Cameras, a blog dedicated to professional photographers who are mothers and really mean business! Check out her site at www.moms-with-cameras.com.
Make sure to view the details, rules and awesomeness of The Be Inspired Giveaway so you don’t miss out! Over $1300 in prizes for the winner, another $250 value prize for a second place prize and hundreds of dollars worth of surprise Facebook giveaways during the week!!
Photo by Emily Potts Photography
by Emily Potts
LOVE THIS!! Thanks for sharing!!
I love how Emily writes! Her article is very inspiring. Thank you for this!
Loved the quote about “comparison being the thief of joy”. Will remember that one… and check their blog! Thanks! 🙂
Oh my goodness that was a great read!
Yeah these are super cool I can’t wait to learn more.
I loved the read, very inspiring and oh so true!
I’m genuinely touched that you posted this, Annie. I love the (brutal) honesty portrayed here; The fact that playing the comparison game, we can only and undoubtedly come out as “losers” because we only check ourselves (enter in italics here!) and forget what others (more italics) may or even, are thinking. Perhaps it’s that we spend too much time thinking how we are veiwed by others, or the want/need to be accepted as “the best” or “better” and the constant striving towards that goal which, in all too many cases leaves some of our best minds completely, as you put it, “depleted” of joy that is meant to follow us through life and help us get inspired to do more and more creative things with it. It leads to that nagging despair, “is it worth it, in that case?” Why not pack up our metaphorical suitcase and be on our way? Let’s scratch that for a start; I can tell you, with my hand on my heart, that whilst I am a very private person (despite my clear quirkiness which has clearly not gone amiss by yourself, in amongst others who’ve also noticed ;)) and I tend to work for “myself” and am not really looking for praise but perhaps this has been why (even more italics) I’ve had some of the very same questions swirling around inside my head for the best part of the last three months and it does tie-in with my previous post about life and what to do about having a lack of “inspirational motivation”, shall we call it. On closer inspection, I find that a lot of the creative people, (naming no names, of course!) in the “business” at the forefront, seem to “borrow” each others ideas and put new names on ’em. It seems to be more about “how successfully can I market my idea versus yours” – I think that as an artist the drive should be to market yourself, your ideas and your plans for the future – what good is a duplicate of someone else’s idea, if yours just drew too heavily from the latter? Third person speak, obviously 😉 I love your blog, your Facebook and the fact that you care so much about keeping active with your clientele, whilst aiming to have a life outside of work. I admire you and judging from all your social outlets, so do your fans! The fact that you (more italics!) have done and can do so much is teh KEY. I think it’s time all us self-doubters gave ourselves a huuuuuge pat on the back and smiled about what we have achieved and what we can still achieve. Who cares about the big, swanky studio if we haven’t even lived the better portion of our lives and transmitted all those glorious ideas still inside? We can all suprize ourselves and have THAT idea. Why th ehell not? What exactly is it that makes us feel worse, or indferior? Are we? Surely not. I don’t buy that for one second (and not vecause I’m deluded) lol 🙂 Maybe cyber-stalking others’ work is the devil in disguise – and who needs him? Introspection and doing OUR thing should be the key. When you can’t find inspiration through others, scratch that and take some time out. I now find myself curiously drawn towards the garden again… 😉
P.S. Despite my best efforts, I’m still at war with my keyboard (even though it hasn’t been that bad today) so forgive the typos, again!!!
P.P.S. Before I get annoying today, I just wanted to let you know I suggested your page to 5 more of my FB friends 🙂
AWESOME post! “like” x 10000000 🙂
Awesome. Awesome!!
Great ! Thank you for sharing !
Really glad to have read this. Love the links.
Thank you Emily! I am a newbie and while I have a ton of “creative ideas” I find myself too intimidated to put them on print because I compare myself to the “pros”. Ideas that I have don’t look like what everyone else is producing so automatically I say to myself that they must be dumb ideas. Reading this post has given me a different perspective and had encouraged me to embrace my creativity, so again THANK YOU 🙂