How to Succeed in Commercial Photography : Insights From a Leading Consultant

PART2 / VISION

my clients choose me. My business stinks. I can’t help it if the

assignment market is slipping, I can’t fight the stock

photography option, and I certainly can’t compete with the

assignment shooters who low bid and are willing to give their

services away. Life is not a choice, stuff just happens, and I strug-

gle every day.”

If you find yourself feeling as if you have few choices or if

it seems as if the options in front of you are not options at all,

I would invite you to examine your perceptions and look at

your general attitude. No matter your current circumstance,

seeing yourself as helpless is giving up your power. Feeling as if

you have no power creates that reality. Ironically, giving up your

power to outside circumstances is indeed a choice that you are making,

an unconscious choice most likely, but a choice all the same.

Seeing the world as a place that happens around you, one

that you just react to rather than one you actively create, is con-

tinuing the belief that you have no control.

In reality you hold all the control. Your thoughts create the

idea that you have no power. In reality you are not a passive indi-

vidual floating in a world that is happening around you. You can

choose to stop those thoughts now. They do not serve you!

Instead, I would invite you to open your heart up for a bit

and begin to entertain the belief that your view of the world,

your perceptions of how things are, really might be limiting your

options. I would ask you to suspend your beliefs for a bit and

read on. You will see how you are indeed in control of what hap-

pens to you. You will see that you do have the power to create

your life the way you would like. You will see that your choices,

conscious choices, do truly affect your entire existence. They

cannot help but affect you.

Choices make up your reality. Choices are our actions based

on thoughts. Teacher Deepak Chopra, in his Creating

Abundance, has said, “You are your thoughts. Your thoughts

become your actions and your actions become your reality.”

With this truth in mind, every time you choose a thought it

will turn into an action, and through these actions you are

indeed creating your reality.

Let’s look at how this might work in your business world.

Let’s suppose that you have been booked for an assignment

that you are very excited about. It’s the type of job that will

Chapter 11.qxd 6/25/07 7:18 AM Page 64