A self-portrait does not have to be the whole self. If you’re not there yet with that kind of work (and it is a deep, long-lasting work), only use a part of yourself. A hand, your hair – get creative! And if you feel like you can push yourself, create a full-fledged self-portrait!

This means you are the one working the camera and in front of it. I’ve created over 500 self-portraits in the past 10 years. Whew. Jump on board with me!

I’ll pull some of the art that I see this week to feature!
Use the hashtag #PromotingPassionChallenge so I can find you!

Here is some food for thought. Enjoy the challenge, and remember to push yourself creatively!

“He did each thing as if he did nothing else.”

We live in a world built on pressures; the pressure to be successful, the pressure to be happy, the pressure to be someone great. We are taught, not necessarily by our parents but certainly by other influences, that we both need to reach higher yet stay in our place. We are taught to get a stable job and work for the promotion. We are taught to seek someone wonderful to marry so that we may find stability. We are taught that we should have dreams, yet work for the good of the team. And indeed, each of these things can be individually rewarding. Yet the lessons we are taught by those who influence us, especially as we grow, are very often contradictory.

Instead of being taught to dream big and do what we need to do to achieve that dream, we are taught to dream realistically. Instead of being told that we can be great, we are told to try and be great while staying inside the confines of what is socially acceptable. Each of these paradigms is what ultimately holds so many people back from doing what they love or defining happiness for themselves.

Part of the problem is how widespread we are as individuals. We do what we think we need to do to serve others, and in doing so, very often, forget to serve ourselves. We please our parents and we please our friends and we take care of children and we help our boss, yet behind all of that is a sense of self. We are taught that we must please those higher up than ourselves, that we must obey our parents, that we must, must, must. And behind all of those “musts” is what we need to nourish our souls.

“He did each thing as if he did nothing else.” I think this quote is so powerful for two reasons. One is of presence. To be present is to perform each task as if it were the only one; to get rid of distractions and embrace a life in the now. The other reason why I love the words so much is what it implies about the man himself. In order to do each thing at such a level, one must place value on the self so as to see value in doing anything at all.

I do not believe that this quote indicates he did everything better than other people, but instead that he placed value in each thing that he did and was engaged enough to focus his energy into them. So much of our problem today lies in two places: distractions and self-doubt. We doubt ourselves because we are told to, whether directly or unintentionally. Take going to school for art. If you are someone who has done this, it is very likely someone along the way told you how impractical that would be. In my case it was deciding to be a photographer. I had no training and no idea of how to run a business, but my heart was set on it. And as a result opinions came out of the woodwork, and I was told of how practical I needed to be.

“People don’t make money selling art. You need a backup plan.”

These words are commonly spoken and meant to be caring most of the time. Yet at the same time, they inadvertently tell the person to whom they are spoken that they are not good enough, will not succeed, and should not try. With messages like this floating around everywhere, self-doubt is a disease that plagues many, and understandably so.

What if we could channel some of that Charles Dickens magic and create a world for ourselves where we did each thing as if we did nothing else? What if we made decisions that could change our lives, and do change our lives, and we lived them as though nothing else mattered? To be present, to get rid of distractions, to believe you are worthy of pursuing such goals…that is the ultimate in finding your voice and finding a story for your life.

How can we get rid of the doubt and the anxiety and the distractions? Two simple ideas: The first is that few people care about you as much as you care about yourself, and the people who might care more are the people who will try to keep you safe. You need to take risks. You need to do something scary. And those who love us most will often hold us back, in the kindest way possible and for the very best reasons. Yet we need not listen. We must move forward. The second thing to realize is that you are the only one making decisions in your life. If we place the blame on other people for offering their opinions, we are living life in the shadow of someone else. A journey in the shadow of another is a very dark road.

Every single person has an incredible, unique story and vision. That story needs to be told, and that vision expressed, and to do so is to empower others to do the same. Dream big and dream often. Find your voice and share it. Tell the story of your life through your own words. And next time you take a leap and do something important, do it as if you did nothing else. Do it wholly, with confidence and pride, and do it with love…for yourself, as much as others.

**Image by my friend Seth Cashman, who is as kind and true as he is talented.**

Give me a nasty comment online about my photos and I shrug it off. If someone doesn’t like the work I create, it doesn’t hurt me. I don’t spend my time looking into negativity. I don’t spend my days worrying about if people like what I do or not. What does get me, every single time, is how people experience me as a person. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be at my best all the time, and it physically pains me to think that I have given someone less than that.

Everyone deals with disappointment in different ways. It might be disappointment in a product, in someone else, or in yourself. In my case, I have trouble dealing with disappointment in myself. I hold everyone and everything in my life to high standards, but none more than me personally. I don’t deal with disappointment well. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I get physically ill. Sometimes I want to stop everything that I’ve worked for so as to never feel that feeling again.

Just a couple hours ago I said, out loud, that I wanted to quit my job. I didn’t want to move forward with any of the projects I’ve been working on for fear of being judged, rejected, or disappointing someone. Yet even as I thought about quitting, I could hear my future self, the one who wants to push harder and move further, talking rather loudly in my ear. She was telling me that if I never put myself out there I can never be a positive influence in the world. If I never put myself out there I can never do what my heart is set on doing. Yet the other side, like a little devil sitting on my shoulder, told me that I will do too much harm to make it worth it.

I will let people down. I will be a disappointment. I will never be what someone wants me to be.

Yet all the while, I will be myself. I will try to work on my journey and how I see the world and how I interact with it. I will try to be a better person. I will try to touch people’s lives for the better. I will try, and trying is all we can expect of each other.

That is a truth that I know intimately. It is a truth I have come face to face with many times. There are days when I want to quit. Right now, at this very moment, I have that desire deep in my bones. I don’t want to mess up. I don’t want to be a disappointment. Yet even greater than that is the knowledge that when one perseveres, tries harder, and becomes a better person, other people will benefit as well.

I might fail a hundred times, but if I succeed at only one thing, I hope it is to help someone, somewhere, in some way. In any way. To spread the love that I feel inside. And should I fail, I will welcome that failure with open arms. I will regret nothing because I tried my best. I will work to correct my mistakes. I will progress. I will challenge myself. I will try.

Let yourself feel what your body wants to feel. Let yourself be emotional and scared and understand, in those moments, how terrifying it is to put yourself out there. But when that feeling passes, even if only in a small amount, remind yourself of how incredible you are. You are only one small human, and yet in being so, you are powerful beyond measure. Next time you fall, remember that if you never did, you could not understand the immense honor of reaching peaks. All of life is made up of valleys and mountain tops that seem out of reach, yet both are attainable. We will fall and we will rise again, and we will do so understanding more about life each time.

I created an image of a blue origami crane not too long ago, and accidentally saved over that high-res Photoshop file as a smaller image before I backed it up. Totally, 100%, stupidly my fault. I was upset about it. I wasn’t even sure of what to do, since a gallery had already expressed interest in showing it. It wasn’t just me I had let down. So I broke the news, and everyone moved on without a second thought, and I decided to not let it upset me.

What good is doing what you love if you dwell on the bad? Bad things will happen whether we want them to or not, just as the good will. The only difference from one life to another is how we choose to see those situations. I’ve seen people with almost nothing to live off of smile and laugh as though they had everything; and opposite, I have seen people with everything who are miserable. I like to think of life as an illusion. We make it up as we go, and our reactions to the world shape how we understand the world.

This might seem a bit dramatic for a lost file, but that event simply sparked change in me to live life to a greater degree: to care less about the truly unimportant and to care more about what matters. I made a decision in this instance to stop thinking about how sad I was to lose the picture, and instead create a new one that I love. I thought about recreating the image exactly, and I still might attempt it, but for the moment I was freshly inspired and decided to go a different direction.

I put more story into the new picture, adding a Mother Nature theme and titling the image “Empty Nest” to bring home the idea that we all lose something, and it is our job to see beauty in the darkness. There is always beauty waiting to be discovered, and one could argue that there is always darkness, too. We have this tendency to see the darkness all around us, so if we search for beauty we are always traveling, looking for light, and experiencing all the goodness there is in the world.

Do not push away the darkness; shine a light on it.

These are 5 ways that could help in overcoming adversity:

1. Let yourself feel it…

Let yourself be angry, sad, upset, etc…It is natural and healthy to feel emotions. But don’t allow those negative emotions to define you.

2. What if someone were watching…

React to situations the way you would react if someone you didn’t know were watching. We have a tendency to become complacent in how we react to the world because it becomes routine. But what if you had to make a good impression? How would you react?

3. There is always something out there…

Terrible things happen in this world, a million times worse than losing a silly file. No matter what the situation, you are at the center of it, and it can feel very dramatic. Remember that when you do move on, there will be more to discover and be impassioned by.

4. Channel your emotion…

Learn to see your emotions as inspiration for your art. Turn that emotion into an image, or whatever your artform is, and be inspired by yourself.

5. Know who you want to be…

Write down 5 words that describe the person you want to be in the future. This is something to work toward. How would that person react to the situation?

INSPIRED
KIND
LOVING
AMAZED
CENTERED

What are your 5 words?