Networking and Some Related Challenging Quotes

Networking is a powerful marketing tool. The more people who know about you, your talents and your abilities, the more easily you will attract the opportunities, assignments, resources, people, ideas, money and results that you really want!

1. Create a Presence

People prefer to work with people they know and like. The industry wide concept of traditional repping and the art buyer system keeps prospects from knowing you. Find ways to know the decision makers in your world. Make the first move, in a friendly, helpful way.

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw

2. Plant a Garden
Plant seeds. Remember to water them. They are often a wonderful surprise. If you have an entire garden of unknown flowers, imagine the surprise when they bloom. Instead of offering your business card, ask for theirs. This allows you to water the seeds and to be more proactive. Rather than waiting for your phone to ring, reach out to your network.

You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it’s a little thing; do something for those who have need of a man’s help, something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers live here, too.
Albert Schweitzer

3. Ask Questions and Listen to the Answers

Make your conversations about the other person; not about you. Ask questions that invite conversation. Listen very carefully to what people share with you. Paraphrase what they said to be certain that you understand and to let the other person know you were listening carefully. Find ways to stay connected over time so you can create seven different ways of staying in touch with the person (phone call, email, postcards, lunch dates, sporting event, etc).

I no longer ask the young man’s question: How far will I go? My questions are now those of the mature person: When it is over, what will my life have been about? First as Martin Buber taught, life is meeting. We come alive only when we relate to others. Secondly, we are here to change the world with small acts of thoughtfulness done daily rather than with one great dramatic leap in results. Finally, we are here to finish god’s labors. One of the sages of the Talmud taught nearly two thousand years ago that God could have created a plant that would grow loaves of bread. Instead He created wheat for us to mill and bake into bread. Why? So that we could be His partners in completing the work of creation.
Harold Kushner

(more…)

share this

Optimism is a tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation. Antonyms: doubt, gloom, hopelessness, pessimism.

How to be Optimistic in a Recessed Economy

How are you maintaining an optimistic attitude in a recessive economy? Some wallow in the deep dark doom and gloom prophesies emanating from government, politicians, media and other sources. Some gather in groups to complain.

Therapists advise that a way to relieve depression is to take actions. What actions may you take that will turn you towards hope, growth and abundance? Most readers of this newsletter are creators. Is there a way to use the power of creation to manifest your dreams?

Is photography a calling? If the assignment photography business continues a downward turn, would you continue to make photographs? Many of you are happiest when you are creating. Will you make pictures no matter what?

(more…)

share this

A Selection from
1001 Quotes Questions & Pondering
about the Creative Process

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.
Albert Einstein

In what ways do you encourage your mind to stop judging? When were you surprised by solutions coming from a source unknown to you?

2.
An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would
be a good idea to give them.
Andy Warhol

In what ways is art needed or desired?

3.
Boldness has genius, power and magic. Engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin, and the work will be completed.
Goethe

Do you approach your creating boldly? When has genius, power and magic heated your mind?

4.
… the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art – it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure – photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac’s Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget’s Paris. Photography is not an art like, say, painting and poetry. Although the activities of some photographers conform to the traditional notion of a fine art, the activity of exceptionally talented individuals producing discrete objects that have value in themselves, from the beginning photography has also lent itself to that notion of art which says that art is obsolete. The power of photography – and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns – is that it confirms both ideas of art. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.
Susan Sontag

Is photography a medium or an art form or both to you?

5.
It is in the world of slow-time that truth and art are found.
Norman Maclean

How can you slow down to move forward?

6.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
Mark Twain

Substitute photography, painting, poem or any other creative medium for ‘word’.

7.

We’re creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.
Henry Miller

What are you compelled to give back to the world?

8.

All behavior consists of opposites… Learn to see things backward, inside out, and upside down.
Lao-Tzu

Select a creative problem you have been working on. Make a list of all the truths you know about it. Then make a list of the opposites of all the truths. In what ways does thinking contrary help you to see things differently?

9.
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

How is this like the Fool’s journey? Study the Tarot.

10.

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
Saul Steinberg

Are you bored? How does boredom affect your creativity?

For 991 more Idea Stimulators like these, ask for your free copy of 1001 Quotes Questions & Pondering. This e-book will be sent to you as a PDF file. I hope you find it interesting, informative, and inspiring.

share this