What are you projecting?
How do you show up in the world?
I'm talking about daily. Your interactions with people. I don't mean just the people you know. I'm talking about the people you run into everday: a cashier in the supermarket, the guy in the little booth as you walk past them onto the train station platform, the amazon delivery driver. Yes ... even them.
OK, photography. Let's stick with photography.
How do you show up with the people you interact with on the street when you're taking photos? What are you projecting? What are you giving off? What are you putting out there?
Are you happy, excited, enthusiastic when you approach people? Or have you simply fitted into the status quo, sleeping your way through life, more or less a drone, like most of the people you see walking about?
I’m happy on the inside!
I've spoken to people before about this. When you ask someone why they're not happy about something, they'll either look at you perplexed, angry or utterly bemused, like they have no idea what the fuck spaceship you have just been beamed in from. They kind of shrug.
Or they'll say…
“Oh, but I’m happy on the inside.”
Happy on the inside?
What fucking good does that do anybody?
Half the problem with people being scared to be larger than life is that they're so wrapped up and on their guard, worrying about what other people are thinking about them.
They've become clogged up. Dense. Asleep.
Stop worrying about what people think of you.
Do you know something… nobody's looking.
You think they are. But they're not.
People are so wrapped up in their own cocoon, so disconnected, that mostly they don't have the slightest bit of concern for what's going on in your life
People are so clogged up.
Get over yourself and be the change you want to see.
How to be great
If you want positive results, you have to project a positive attitude. If you project being miserable, guess what… the world will look miserable and you’ll get miserable feedback from it. If you project an attitude of mediocrity, then life will pay you back in kind.
If you want a great life and you want to take great street photos, then that’s what you need to put out into the world.
You need to be great.
