Lessons

Lesson Info

Fear

And so I was, it was a very odd situation. I did my very first platform at WPPI two years ago and I stood up on stage and my text and you introduce your platform and there's 350 people. It was my first platform. I had a small room and 350 people and my text went off and I thought I silenced the phone and didn't read the text and I turned and, it's just, (mumbles) and I turned away from it and I don't know why I didn't read it. I just went, I've gotta introduce myself and then I stepped like this and I said, my name's Sue Bryce and I'm a portrait photographer and everyone claps and I did my two hour platform and it was just a crazy experience to be in front of a big crowd and be in Vegas and present this platform and it was really huge and when I had finished all of my friends were sort of sitting down the front, and I'll tell you why it's making me all funny, sitting down the front and they were looking at me like this and I was like, did you enjoy that? And they're like, a devastating...

earthquake in New Zealand at Christchurch and that's where my parents were. Luckily my parents were safe. And that all happened, the text that I got was that there's been an earthquake right now and I had I read that, I would have been standing in front of all these people. Oh (sighs) it upsets me because I remember that moment, you know, of just wondering if my parents were alive and I couldn't get through to them on the phone so I didn't get through to them for another two hours and very luckily they were alive. Anyway, I have lots of dear friends that live in Christchurch and I remember going from Vegas to New York that week and I was in Times Square and I saw this big billboard come across and it said all the people that have died in Christchurch, New Zealand and I remember like reading it on this billboard in Times Square and just thinking how far away I was from home and how close my parents were to that. But anyway, I had lots of friends who are photographers and I've known 'em for years that I lived and worked there and two of my absolute favorites, Jo Grams and Johannes van Kan had come and they actually have one of the most beautiful studios that I have ever seen. Now I have built a beautiful studio and I know that my studio is better than most peoples' and their studio was so beautiful and they lost that and their home in one morning in Christchurch. So, fast forward to two years, my parents have left Christchurch because I made them leave. I paid for them to go because my parents, when I saw them after four months of working and living in Christchurch, I saw them and they'd put on weight and they looked really unhappy and I said to mom and dad, what's up? And they just said, it's so depressing here. Every day there's more earthquakes and every day people are evacuating and the town center has never been brought back and it's just, it's devastation at its long term level. And, throughout losing their home and their studio, these two kept their business going and stayed in Christchurch with their baby daughter because they decided that, they kept their business alive because of Jo's, she said, loyal client base. That people still ring her for photographs. Even through this time, they're still getting business, still rocking their business. So as we talk about fear and loss in the next hour and a half, it just occurred to me that the greatest story of fear and loss is actually sitting in my audience today and anything that you could possibly confront wouldn't be as bad as what these two had just discovered about themselves in the last two years, without insurance being paid, without, you know, and that sort of devastation but not only the devastation but the energy in the community, of a community that has been destroyed and is being rebuilt and I know there are other communities here, Katrina, et cetera, destroyed and that people are rebuilding all the time and they still have effects but what I do want to say is one thing, I actually just wanted to shout out that they were here and then, you know, let's meet them so I asked Jo and Johannes if they'd like to come up and talk to me. So come and talk to me for a minute. I was trying to do that, I was trying to do that, (audience clapping) I was trying to do that without looking at everyone. I knew that I'd cry if I look at them. These two are significantly beautiful photographers. We're gonna post their website for you on the chat so that you can see it. It's a difficult website to remember, to spell out. Moda Fotografica? So it's Moda Fotografica but for some reason when we had the building, we wanted to have the European influence so we changed-- Well it was a European building though, you know, it was so gothic and-- So we had to, you know, go with a brand that suited the building and that's why it was Moda Fotografica with Fs instead of PH. You know? Fantastic. So I just wanted to, oh yeah. Sorry, can you spell it out? Sorry. Moda, M-O-D-A and then Fotografica, F-O-T-O-G-R-A-F-I-C-A and it means-- At dot co. Dot co.nz. Yeah so we (mumbles). And it means a way of drawing with light. That's the meaning behind it. Beautiful. Thank you. So both Jo and Johannes met as photographers, married as photographers, fell in love as photographers. They're both award winning photographers. They're both judges internationally. They both win in both New Zealand and Australia consistently but if I can say one thing about both of them, both of them are great educators. Both of them are great speakers. Both of them are incredible photographers but very few photographers that I meet bring a level of beauty and artistry to their work that these two do. So, please enjoy their website and I just thought, and as we go into this segment, I would like to introduce you to these two people because Jo rung me a month ago and she said, I've applied for your audience. I'm coming over and so she said the struggle here is just too much and I really know that if I come over and I see you and I sit in your audience, that you're gonna kick my ass. (woman laughing) (audience clapping) And do you know what? Do you know what that means? To have your ass kicked in an economy that she's living in and the devastation that they're living in, to still want to run a business there and to still think that there's hope for that and to still want to turn your own attitude and your own thoughts and your own everything around, that's survival at its, you know, purest form, but the truth is is that's a choice. You could dwell on it or you could overcome it and do you know what? I think that they will because everything they do is beautiful so I should let them talk. I just can't stop talking. (audience laughing) Thank you Sue. You made me cry when I was standing there, back there, and remembering that day in February. Just so you know I actually watched, when you say that, I watched a movie, so I met a guy that filmed it. He was in the earthquake and he's a filmmaker and he picked up Logan McMillian and he's got footage on YouTube and he picked up his camera and went straight out but when he did the presentation, at (mumbles) he kept a live recording of a woman that was doing a radio interview. She was interviewing someone live on radio when the earthquake and you can hear the sound and he cut all the visual footage and all you hear is the sound of the earthquake and her reaction and it was, in that moment, oh gosh, it's so incredible to think that nature can take away from you in a heartbeat what you could build in a lifetime and I remember that, sitting there and hearing the sound and I got the impact just by the imagery of what my parents were experiencing when I was a world away from them in Vegas. So, that morning, I know when everyone talks about it, they talk about it the same way. For us, it was very difficult as well because not only did our building start falling down, we were a hill away from each other. Jo was on the other side of the hill and the only way through was through a tunnel that they closed so she decided to walk over. (woman laughing) I found five muscly boys. (audience laughing) Who had the baby? I did. Yeah. And all I had was my stubbles to feed her up on the hill. (laughing) She would have been happy with rice bubbles. Yeah. But it's amazing how these things change you and one of the really good things to come out of it and you have to look at the good things because you can't dwell on the loss and the things that went bad for you, one of the really good things about it was the opportunity to look at ourselves from, well, out here somewhere and say, well, we can't drag any of that with us because it doesn't exist any more and if we were going to start our lives as new people, as photographers, what would be the most amazing thing we could do? And that was perhaps the most powerful thing that we could take from it and there's a sort of saying that's important for everybody I think because-- What was that for you? What, the thing that we could take? Yeah. It was actually be out, the ability to look at ourselves almost separate from ourselves and say, look at those people down there. What should they do in this circumstance and how can they be the best at what they can do rather than say, well, we've got all these encumbrances that you drag around with you, all the things that you gather up and you say, I can't change because I have these things on my shoulders that hold me down. Baggage. Yeah, baggage. And how did that change you as a photographer? Did it change you as a photographer? Does it make you value seeing people's family portraits destroyed forever never to be brought back to them? I think the biggest thing for me in how I take my photographs is I have a very loyal following of clients and I shoot over a period of time. I would take a family right through pregnancy or a wedding, pregnancy, first born, second born, kids, all the way through and for me, one of the latest projects was finishing off a two year project for a client and just going back from he was a newborn, and that was before the earthquake, to seeing this kid now and that's in an album and it's the most precious, precious thing that I can give a family is those memories. Thank you. I just wanted you all to meet them and enjoy their website. Thank you. And out there, enjoy that. (audience clapping) Just to let you know, some people, the people in the chat room have been looking and the wedding portraits are amazing. Wow, awesome images there. They're amazed by your work so congratulations. It is beautiful. So, thank you for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. (audience clapping) I always find ways to get Kiwi accents up here. (audience laughing) Let's talk about everything that's gonna get in your way. Okay, I've laid out the challenges. I'm gonna talk about them again when I wrap it up this afternoon. I've laid out how to make money. I've laid out how to get different avenues to marketing, multiple different avenues to marketing. I've laid out how to open your mind, how to open your creativity. I've laid out how to look at your business blocks and see where you suffer, where you fail, where you succeed. I've asked you to confront where you fail and decide in that moment whether you need to confront it further or whether you need to let it go and outsource it. I told you to write a hate list. We're gonna go back through that this afternoon but before I do, I wanna address this one incredible experience that I had about three weeks ago when I was sitting at home and I had a fearful moment in my personal self and I put this post on In Bed with Sue which is a private Facebook group dedicated to just becoming better glamour photographers. There's about seven and a half thousand people in it and join it if you want to, In Bed with Sue on Facebook. You have to get invited, it's a closed group. I put this. When I was talking about marketing on Saturday, so that was after Hailey Shoreel's course, you all, you are all very creative and very few of you get excited about marketing. I don't understand that. And then I remembered why I never got excited by marketing because I knew where my block was and you see, the fear, the blocks, and the can'ts, and the excuses that occurred, I want you to name the thing that makes you walk away. I want you to name the thing that makes you walk away from a phone call, from approaching a person, and from putting yourself out there. This is all I wrote. This is a Facebook thread. Okay? So, that was January the 29th at 12:48 PM, afternoon. Clearly I should have been working but I was sitting at my table having a conversation with people on Facebook. And I will go first, that's what I wrote. I want you to see how similar we all are so keep it short. I have a solution, I just want to hear it. That's what I wrote. I got 1,363 posts in an hour on that thread and I'll read some of them to you. I started first. Rejection, not good enough, nobody will pay for that, what you do is not worth it and then it just started. I don't deserve to be successful, feeling inadequate, too expensive, everyone wants something for nothing, I'm not good enough, skill isn't good enough, I'm going to F something up, no one will pay for it. You won't make money doing this. Haven't been in the business long enough. Too shy. Too expensive. Not smart enough. Not smart enough to do business. I don't know what I'm doing. If it were that easy, everybody would be good at it. I don't look that glamorous. I'm not that beautiful. How am I to show their beauty if I don't exude mine? They want everything for free. Too expensive. Nobody will pay for what I want. Ugly star. Working from my garage. My work isn't good enough. I have too much to learn. Don't need it. When I get better at posting. This lady must be crazy. Studio is in my garage. I don't really have the time. I'll lose my family. I'll look like, I don't even know what that is. So much of this sounds familiar. Competition indeed. I'm scared of. I can't afford that. I need a makeup artist. I'm fighting for space. Sick and getting every decision I make. Joe Blogs does it better. Hard work. Never succeed. I have to do this other job that I hate. Or how I will I support myself working out the price for a product? My studio has a living room inside it. I think all my responses have been said. (laughing) My camera didn't cost over $2,000. I need a web site and a logo. What if they don't like my work? What if they don't like me? Someone else is better. Wish I had a better camera. No studio props. Why try if you're gonna fail anyway? You're not worth it. Your work is average. And then, something started to happen in this thread. You did what all human beings did. You started to do, you started to blame others and you stopped taking responsibility of yourself. So you told me, you went from your emotional responses to the market is failing. Too many photographers in the industry. Too many shoot and boons in the industry. They are not emotions people. That is blame and a victim mentality and a negative block. So, I jump on the thread and I say, I don't care about what you think of the industry, I asked you to tell me how you feel. Emotions only please. Just tell me how you feel. And it went back again. I won't meet expectations. It's too scary. It's too expensive. I'm waiting for the right time. The other person is better than me. It just keeps going and it keeps going. Not the right city. I haven't been doing it long enough and then again, it turned immediately into blame again. It just turns instantly into my competition is cheaper than I am. You know? Women don't value themselves in my area. There's no money in where I am. I'm from a small town. None of those are emotions, people. I asked you to tell me how you feel. And then it went back again. So I stayed on the thread for the whole hour and I kept saying, stop telling me what you think of the industry, in capitals, and tell me how you feel. And then it would start again. Rejection. I don't, you know, I don't look good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. Rejection. Criticism. You know? Somebody wrote, the cow jumped over the moon. (audience laughing) Also, just so you know, we do have your Facebook page. (audience laughing) I'm not as good as everybody else and it keeps shifting and every single time the thread went through, it would change and change and change and then every single time it would go back, it would go to blame and blame and blame and I kept asking for emotion. I didn't ask you to tell me what you think about yourself. I asked you to tell me how you feel about yourself and that is based purely on emotion and when I keep putting up on that thread, it's emotion, I need emotion, stop it, I need emotion. Stop telling me about this industry. I need emotion. And then finally, it just kept coming back to emotion and then what it came down to is I'm just not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not skinny enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't have as many things. That was the bottom line for everybody over and over and over again. The bottom line kept coming back to that but the worst thing is the amount of people that tried to blame someone else. Now, I don't care if this segment of this workshop sits really hard with you. I don't care. I'm gonna challenge this on every level. I don't care if you think you're the best photographer in the world or the best business person in the world, if you don't sort your attitude out, you'll get nothing different in this world. It's that simple. I believe this so passionately that I'm going to tell you why. Now, I don't think I have the right personality, fear of succeeding. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not pretty enough? The most famous photographers in the world certainly aren't good looking. I mean, the only good looking photographer I've ever seen is Christy Turlington. You know, she used to be a supermodel and now she's a photographer. Oh my God, everybody is a photographer these days. (audience laughing) Like supermodel wasn't good enough. You know? It's like when you write that on the form on the plane, Christy, do you write photographer or ex-supermodel? (audience laughing) You know? I'm insecure. The fear of someone saying no. The fear of failure. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of rejection. The fear of being told I am nothing. The fear of being told I am not good enough, not being appreciated, not being taken seriously, not enough time. I will lose my momentum and quit if it gets too tough. Too much watching. Too much apathy. Too much fear. Too much can't leave the house and they were blaming again. You know? So, the bottom line for everybody came down to one thing. I'm not worthy and I'm not good enough. You are not worthy to what? Make an income? But you can get a job that makes an income. So you go and get a job that earns you what? $400 a week and that's what you think you're worth. So, it's okay to accept a wage but not make your own income and then when you leave that wage, you go and start your business and do you know what you do? You do what my two photographers did. You create a business that turns over $400 a week because that, in your mentality, is what you think you're worth. Bottom line. So it's okay to go and get a wage from somebody and even better, I've been an employee before, it's okay to stay on Facebook for an hour when your boss isn't there, wasting a whole hour of his salary and trust me, you don't get pissed off about that until you're a boss. Then you find out your staff are doing it, and then you remember you did it so you have to let it go. (audience laughing) So it's okay to rip him off and get your money every week and then complain that it's not enough and it's your choice. Awesome. Cool rule, right. You made that. So now, go and start your business and go take your wage, I'm not good enough mentality, go and rinse repeat and suffer. Suffer in your jobs. That's how it works. We do the same thing over and over again and we cry out that it's not my fault. You know what's not your fault? A friggin' earthquake. That's not your fault. Your fault would be how you deal with it. You know? And this what I learned because I was the biggest victim of them all. And I reeked of it. Heart and soul. I'm not ready to do this. I'm gonna get rejected. I am too scared. Bumbling, stuttering, sounding like an idiot. I'm afraid to ask for what I want, for what I need. It just goes on and on and on and on and on and every single one of them had the same bottom line. And it just occurred to me that until I dealt with that, I didn't change anything. And so, this has the same bottom line, but trust me, it gets broken up into many divisions. So, you can own which one's yours and you can own it today. I hear a lot of people, tell me about fear. Nobody tells you how to get over it. You said to me yesterday when we broke, you said, everybody tells you about building a business and be around successful people but nobody tells you to identify the blocks that where they went wrong. Nobody tells you to identify your own blocks. They all just tell you to like climb to the top of the hill. Right? Because at the top of the hill the cherries are up there and then when you reach there, it's sunshine and roses and butterflies and it's a lie. It is a filthy, dirty lie because every person who's even climbed that hill knows the hill just keeps going and the bigger you get and the more successful you get, the bigger your hill gets. It's the same struggle. The trick is to not see it as a struggle but a journey or a, you know, or an experience or gratitude or many other things and I'm gonna tell you the answer to that and everybody talks to me about fear and climbing the mountain but nobody ever tells me how. And you know, that's the thing that really bugged me. I used to sit there and think, we can discuss fear until the sun sets and it won't change the fact that I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and not be able to make a phone call to my business because I'm terrified. Why am I terrified? I'm not terrified. I just don't think I'm worth it. I don't think I'm worth it. That's heartbreaking. Isn't it? So, I look at the thread and I get through it and I sit there and I think to myself, wow, that comes down to our attitude and what we think and what we feel and it just keeps going and going and going and I photographed it because I wanted to keep it. You know? And, I even liked the bit where people said their fear is of success. Their fear is of losing success. Their fear is, their greatest fear is to never realize it. And wouldn't that be a definition of a sad life that you would get to the end of it and never have realized it in any way, shape, or form because you were too afraid to ever confront it. You know? And the best part is, is right now I'm gonna explain to you why it's so fake and artificial and why it doesn't actually exist at all. So, once I get to here, this to me were the keywords. I've experienced every one of them. Failure, what is failure? We failed and then we climbed back up again. It's called life. You get a polarity. The more you love, the more you lose. Do you understand that? To love someone so greatly and to lose them means you grieve as greatly as you love them. To love no one at all would mean no grief but that's how you know yourself. That is the polarity of life. With every good comes bad. With every love comes grief and I can guarantee that when you're experiencing a high, there will be a low that matches it. That is called the polarity that we exist in. Yin, yang, you know, all of it. That's the rules. I know that when you lose someone and you've loved them greatly that the only thing you can do is grieve for as long as you need to and then focus on how much you loved them because if you focus on what you don't have, then that's where you will be locked in your grief. And, I know that if you get 50, 50 of everything including loss and success and failure then it stands to reason that across the board, the only reason you don't sit in the middle is because you're choosing to dwell on one side or the other. You choose that. Okay? You choose that. You choose that. If you make your weakness your greatest strength, then it stands to reason that you can go and take something as devastating as losing your entire business and rebuilding it and you can make that your greatest strength and then you can empower yourself and others by how you rebuilt it and what you learn from it. That will make you more powerful than anybody else because you will be working from your heart and your soul. I know that apathy is non action and apathy stops you from doing anything and no matter how afraid you are or how afraid you think you are, it means absolutely nothing if you don't take action. Now, a few years ago a book came out called The Secret. Here's the thing, abundance. Didn't know it was a secret but read the book and went, meh. All right? I'm already of an abundant mentality so I was really interested to read it and one of the things that I saw happen afterwards was everybody laid on the couch and tried to manifest a Ferrari and that's the magical thing about manifestation. You can sit on a chair and look at a door and you can will it to open. I will it to open. I manifest that door opens. That door will open. That door will open for me. The door is not opening. It's not gonna open. It's never gonna open. Why am I trying to will the door to open? And yet, if you said, I manifest this door to open in a million different doors for me and opportunity and you've got up and you actually touched the handle and opened it and then walked through it, you'll find you're in a corridor with 50 other doors and you can choose which one you walk through. So you actually have to get up and do something about it but you have to do that, you have to get up and walk across the room with no fear. Now, what if your fear wasn't fear at all because if you're in a white room and there's no tigers, no biting dogs, no nails on the floor, no chainsaw massacre standing between you and the door, what are you afraid of? There is no flight or fight there. There's no need to run, there's no need to cry. There's no need to fight. So when you tell me you're afraid to open the door, I don't actually believe that anymore. In fact, I don't think fear exists. I discovered when I read that book about self hate that the reason that you stop getting up and opening that door is because the voice of self hate is so strong, it tells you to sit back down and be nothing and you listen to it. You choose in that moment to listen to the voice in your head that says, sit down, you're a worthless piece of shit and you do because you've been listening to it for years and it's a little voice. Some people have it bigger. I have a big self hate voice. Some people have a huge self hate voice. Some people are controlled by their voice and they don't even know it and that will stop you from opening that door. It will stop you from getting up from the couch. So now I know this. I know there's no fear. I stand up and I say, there is no fear in my body because I'm safe right now. I don't have a fight or flight response right now or a adrenaline in my body, therefore, as I step forward, I hear the voice of self hate. Oh, it's crippling me and it hurts and it just sees stuff and it just, it's my voice and it's my belief and I have to walk across the room and every step I take is gonna be stronger and stronger and then I just sit there and I go, ah, okay, that voice. Stop. And it stops. And then I'm like, I don't choose to hate myself anymore. That was an old pattern and what if I did that for whatever your reason for doing it, please don't tell me that story. The reason I'm in so much self hate, let's stop re-energizing the self hate for God's sake. Just acknowledge it. Acknowledge it. Went through a bad patch. Got a bit of self hate going on. Whoa! (audience laughing) Dealing with it now. You know, it's not emotion. You've made it emotional. You've made it your life voice. You've made it, you know like, this was my bad patch. You don't need to hear about it. We've all had a bad patch right? Mine was really big though. Mine was more important than yours. Don't you understand? I have to stay with self hate because mine actually isn't self hate. Mine was traumatic experience. So, I'm a victim therefore I'm gonna stay over here on the victim couch because mine's not actually self hate. See, that's not my fault that this happened to me so I'm just gonna stay here because self hate is just like whatever 'cause I don't belong in your grade so I'll just stay on the couch and safe in here but I choose to go, okay, self hate, wow. So now I'm actually intrigued by it. So when I feel a feeling of self hate in my body I'm like, oh really, we're gonna go with that? And then my self hate goes, (mumbles). And I go, ha, ha, ha, ha. You know and why would I hate on myself? Okay, to stand in front of thousands of people, do you know what that takes? It turned me inside out for days and days and days and days and weeks but I did it anyway because I wanted to and one of the most incredible experiences about being on CreativeLive, about being a speaker, is that every single time that voice comes up in my head and says, you know, you're not good enough to stand up there, I go, for some people I may not be but for a whole bunch of people I will be and that's why I'm here, for the ones that want me to stand up here. And whether that's four people that are watching at home, you know, or 100,000 that message me, that's my decision and the voice of self hate will rear up and it will mirror back to me over and over again and I choose now not to be affected by it and I choose not to listen to it. Okay, I'm 41 years old. I'm single and I'm a little bit fat. That's life. I've had a good one. It's all paid for. I'm honest. I love my job. I'm wealth building. I try every day to grow both in my personal self, spiritually, financially. I'm addicted to learning about my mind and business and human nature. I love to share and teach and photograph people. I will photograph people until the day I die. What a gift I have been given. What a gift I have been given but I choose from this day to forth to be good enough now. I don't need to be younger. I don't need to be slimmer. I'm good enough now. I'm smart enough now. My body is perfect now. It is healthy. I don't care what you think of it. It is the greatest instrument you will ever own. It's rich. Right? So, for the first time in my life, I have discovered the voice of self hate and when I discovered it and I conquered it, I realized I no longer have any fear. So now, doesn't mean it doesn't come back. I just (mumbles) every single day and have since Christmas so it's been, me and self hate, have been together since, you know, teenage years and we're dealing with it now since and it's an interesting relationship, you know, but it has no control over me now. And when it does come up, I address it immediately. In fact, I'm quite intrigued by it and I'm like, wow, you're the voice that told me I wasn't good enough and this whole time I could have just told you to shut up. So, then the next block would be small thinking. Small thinking. Small thinking. Small thinking. None of us think big enough. None of you think big enough. Whatever number you put on what you want to earn in a week, what was your average sale with how many shoots, quadruple it. Think about it. You came in too small and you're worth more. In fact, I think you wrote down exactly what you think you deserve. No, I think you doubled what you think you deserved because you thought that was a big number. You probably quadrupled it too and then you wrote a nice, safe number of money that wouldn't offend anybody in your family if you got wealthier than them. Hmm, interesting. You know? And that there, small thinking, will cripple you also. So if yours is not much self hate and it's a whole lot of small thinking, open up. You don't need to think big. You just need to think open wide. Okay? I am open to earning money in my business. Don't put a number on it. I want to work three days a week and create an abundant income. Then, lift your average. Think about it. The negative voice. The negative voice in your head is purely self hate. That's it. That's a pattern you learned when you were young but you're gonna learn it, we're teaching it to our children. Yes, they'll be in therapy, you know, blaming you. It's okay. We blamed our parents and then they'll learn, like everybody else, to love themselves the way they need to be loved because everybody needs to be loved differently and sometimes we don't get enough and we cry about it. For like an eternity. Like our whole life. And that book liberated me. There's Nothing Wrong with You by Cheri Huber. It liberated me and it did it in the most powerful way and I can't believe she made it that basic. (sighs) The victim mentality. That thread turned to victim within 20 comments because the second we stopped owning our own shit, we started to project around everyone around us. I just don't believe in a (mumbles) mentality anymore. I believe in an abundant, amazing community around me and I believe in a community that has a balance of love and somebody actually wrote me an email the other day and said, I wrote on Facebook I'm going to Whistler. Has anybody got any great recommendations where to stay? And I got private emails. One of them said, you're a celebrity. You should not tell people where you're going. That's dangerous and it's a dark, dangerous world and I wrote back and I was like, I'm a photographer. Like, I'm not a celebrity. I'm a portrait photographer, A. B, it's a beautiful world. And yes, it can be dark and dangerous sometimes. I didn't even say when I was going to Whistler. Whoever's going up there to meet me though might still be there and that was three weeks ago and I didn't go. (audience laughing) But I choose not to see the world like that. And yes, it can be dark and it can be dangerous and it can be all of those things but I choose not to see that. I know it's both. Yes and it's frightening sometimes. Sure is. Certainly comforting sometimes too. But the best one is the last one. The self hate is the single most liberating one but the best one is competition and ego. You as a human incarnation were brought to this earth and given an ego. That ego identifies you as somebody separate from me. And that ego will keep you separate from me. And I believe that when you stop being in your ego so much just for one moment and you become present that you connect with everybody around you in the most incredible way and the only thing that stops you from doing that is that ego. I always take that quote, I'm not here to compete, I'm here to create. Okay. I'm not here to compete for what is already created. I'm a creator and when I'm in a creative energy, I'm not looking at what you're doing and trying to be better than you because it's not the blame or the finger pointing here. It's the state with which dwell and the state with which you dwell is an energy of lack, scarcity, blame, and hate and if that's what you are projecting, that's what you are going to get 10 fold because what you put out, you get back and that is a simple truth. You understand that? So when you get on Facebook and you criticize, when you go home and you back stab, when you go, oh my God, did you see Sue Bryce? What she did today and what she said today? You're the loser. Not the person you're talking about. You're losing and you are all guilty of doing that. Who has somebody in their life that sucks the blood out of them? Everybody has a bloodsucking friend. Someone that sucks the life out of you, right? What if I told you that was you, not me. What if I said you're the blood sucker. Don't you get it? The blood sucker leaves with a big smile on his face. You're the one sucking the life out of everybody because you're either aren't standing up for yourself or you're either projecting exactly the same thing back at them and you don't even acknowledge it so you blame them. That's mirroring ego behavior and it is frightening because when you own that, you have to own everything. I met somebody last year at WPPI that I didn't like and I don't meet many people I don't like. You know, you meet people you're like, meh, but you don't meet many people you don't like and I did not like this person. In fact, I would go so far to say, and it's a very strong word, that I hated this person and we have a mutual friend and that mutual friend was like, I can't believe you hate him. And I was like, I don't want that person within a 50 mile radius of me. And she said, why? And I searched for the answer within myself. I searched for it. What is he doing that I do? And I went through the list of all the judgments that I put on him and I did not acknowledge one of them as being something I do so it bugged the hell out of me until I talked to that mutual friend again and she said, I get it. I know. I know he can be a bit difficult. He's a deeply insecure person. And when my friend said that, I felt like somebody knifed me in the chest and I said, I've gotta go. Can I call you back? And I sat down and I started to cry because that word hit me so hard, why I was so repelled by this person is because I was in a state of deep insecurity at that moment and I was repelled by their energy so I attracted it immediately, saw it, and then hated it. And I hated it about myself. So what I did was I went away and I went quiet time and I thought about that insecurity, not in him, but in me, and I addressed it. And do you know when that was? That was two days before my platform at WPPI last year and five days because my very first CreativeLive. Had I not addressed that insecurity, I would have walked on stage and delivered from a place of insecurity and ego. Instead, I addressed that so quickly in myself that when I walked on stage at WPPI and then when I walked on set at CreativeLive, which, by the way, is one of the greatest terrors you can ever bestow upon yourself and learn from, I came from, as you will remember, a state of pure love because I had done the work and I stood up in front of you and I opened my heart and my soul and I said, I don't care how I look. I don't care if you don't like my work. I am here to teach you how to do what I love to do so much and I delivered that from my heart and soul and you all felt it. You embraced me as a community. You supported me and you changed my life. And had I not dealt with that, I would have experienced something entirely different. I know that. Do you understand? What you deal with in yourself and then you put out, you get back to you immediately. It is instantaneous and it is glorious and joyous and it will free you from any bullshit fear that you think is holding you back because that's a lie and just an idea that is wrong. It's even biologically wrong. I'm in a state of fear. No, a state of fear would be fight and flight. You'd be having adrenaline pump into your body and you would be running for your life or fighting for your life but you would not be sitting here on the couch going, I can't do my marketing today. Would you? (moans) I'm too afraid. That's not afraid. That's hate. That's small thinking. That's apathy. That's a negative voice and it's a victim mentality but mostly it's a big, competitive ego and every cell in my body believes it because I know it's true. So, how I got out of that was the only way to shift a negative mind is an attitude of gratitude. Right? Is to think of anything that you can grateful for. The greatest trauma on this earth, you can be thankful for. Johannes and Jo can be thankful their daughter is alive. Is that not the greatest gift you could have as a parent? Can you imagine being in an earthquake? My dad said the most devastating part of that earthquake was hearing the stories of people trying to run down the hallway to their children in their rooms because it was five in the morning, early, early in the morning. They were running down the hallway to their children who were crying and they could not get to them because they could not stand up. As a parent they could hear their children and they couldn't get to them. You know, but at the end of the day, you know, if you look at that, you've lost a business, you've lost this but I have my family and I have a whole new set of life and a whole new lease for life, that is gratitude. Find gratitude in everything. Any trauma that you have suffered, if you have clawed your way through it, stop focusing on the trauma. It's done. And yes, it shouldn't have been done and there's a whole lot of that's not fair involved with trauma but that's life. It got done. It's done. Stop re-energizing. Let it go. And guess what, now that it's over there, say hey, I went through a bit of trauma over there. Got a bit of self hate. Dealing with that right now. But you know, the best part is now that I'm through it, I'm grateful because I can help anybody around me and I can liberate them through their own and through every person that I free, I will feel grateful for that trauma that I suffered because I identify with you and I know where you've been and I know that there's light at the end of the tunnel and you can choose to walk down it and walk out of it. And whatever your salvation is, like, if you have a god or you want to call it, whatever it is, for me it's gratitude. I have to find a positive spin on everything. Even, you know, that you can even get a positive spin on the bad dates you've had. You can get a positive spin on the clients that didn't spend money with you because you've learnt something about yourself and your service and if you are honestly sitting there going, that client came to me, spent no money, treated me like shit and I did nothing wrong, well then, you're lying to yourself. (audience laughing) You know? So, attitude, gratitude and it's all about turning that into a positive and then standing up, walking over, and opening the door. And that's it. Tell the voice of self hate to shut up. Work out what it is. Identify it immediately. So that's it, this is the pattern. Failure, apathy, non-action, small thinking, negative voice, self hate, victim mentality. What am I doing right now? I'm in a state of competition. Why? Because I like this guy and this other girl likes him and she's younger and prettier than me and it's put me in a full state of ego. Okay. Do you need that one guy? No. There are three billion others walking the earth so, you know, focus on the one that doesn't want you for about a year while the other 2 billion, 999 thousand (mumbles) are walking past you going, damn girl. You know? (audience laughing) You don't know that. Just turn around for one God damn minute and have a look over your shoulder. You know? Get your head out of your own bum just for one second and look around you because that's where it is and you can turn that off. That voice of self hate is no longer fear. You know you can conquer it now so when you step forward, the self hate goes, oh, I hate you and you're like, oh really, because you live here. So, you know, you better get over it because we live together and I'm not gonna listen to you anymore. In fact, I'm not gonna listen to you until you start saying something nice. Say something nice to me. Here's the kicker. The ego is clever and self hate is so smart, it's wants to survive within you so it says this, you're right. I've been so hard on you and the truth is is I don't hate you. The truth is is you're actually really heart and more special than anybody else on this earth and did you know, that is still hate. It's just disguised as more ego because to over exaggerate yourself is just as bad as to put yourself down. You are over inflating yourself and lying to yourself further and that's even better. So, oh, watch that ego and that self hate because when you get into that place, self hate's really clever and then the best one, and this one's for the girls, because I know the boys don't get this so much. That little fantasy that you've got going on in your head that you think about every morning you wake up and every night that you go to bed about having a better body or having a better lover or having, you know, a better relationship or having, you know, that fantasy that everybody has and you visualize yourself and it's not you in your visualization. It's the best version of yourself. That's hate and you're dwelling in that space saying I'm not good enough now because if I was good enough now, I would be visualizing myself now. In fact, no, I wouldn't be visualizing myself now. I would be having that in my daily life instead of lying in bed thinking I was different, wishing I was different because that's hate and girls do that so badly it's not even funny. We will fantasize ourselves into a fabulous relationship and it's not even happening. (audience laughing) And then the best part is we'll fantasize ourself right through a break up and the answer is not on your credit card or in your fridge or in a bottle of wine. (audience laughing) Tried all three, none of them work. And all three of them will get you at some stage. You can't go home, cry, and eat a pound cake. You just cry and you live it out and then you stop hating and then you get up and you do the one thing that you would do to somebody that you were hating on and you would love them and how dare you speak to yourself like that? Would you speak to your daughter like that? Or would you look at your daughter and say, you're a worthless piece of shit and before somebody puts up their hand and says my mother did say that to me, I'm gonna say, I'm sorry that she said that to you because I grew up with the greatest love of a great mother but do you know why my mother was so great? Because her mother said that to her. My beautiful mother. She said she'd never do it to me. But I did because she didn't teach me differently. Don't you see? She can tell me I'm worth more but she didn't act it herself so I learned what she learnt. So my mother never treated me like shit, I did. It's how it works. You can tell your kids whatever you want. If you don't deal with it, they'll just learn from you and then you'll look at your daughter one day and you'll see her hating herself and it will break your heart and then you'll know it's why. You'll know why because you did it. You'll know why and that's sad. That's the sad truth. We have a victim mentality that wants to not take responsibility for ourselves because we don't want to. We're little kids. We're emotional. We don't want to take responsibility for ourself. Our responsibility is about wanting somebody else to make it better. Mom and dad will make it better. You're 30. Mom and dad aren't gonna make it better. You know? Mom and dad are gonna fix this. My mom's gonna love me the way I wanted her to love me. You're 60. She's never gonna love you and the best part is is she's probably dead now so she's never gonna love you now. She's gone. You know, do you get it? It's cyclic. It's a pattern. It's human nature and it is easy, easy, easy, easy, easy to overcome because now I don't expect anybody to love me more than myself and if anybody treats me in a way that is not a way of great love and respect, it's because I'm not treating myself in a way of great love and respect and lately when it does happen to me and it has been happening to me lately, I've been looking at myself and I've been, instead of saying, instead of saying, you, you know, how did you get here again and why are you experiencing this and blah, blah, blah. I just look at myself and I go, ooh, well, that's just another opportunity to love myself and be amazing because I just learned that I wasn't respecting myself because nobody around me was and that's liberating instead of emotional and no victim in me will ever, ever come back because I'm not interested. I think I can handle anything my life will throw at me. I think about things that could happen. Losing a family, losing a home and business. I think about that and I think about how I would overcome it and I have been so empowered in this last year in understanding that and shifting my own mind that I'd come to understand one thing and that one thing that I've come to understand is this, nothing the world throws at me now will ever stop me or keep me down. It will only help me empower myself and others. And for as long as I have somebody that's interested in hearing that, I will keep repeating it. (audience clapping) So we don't dwell on our negative and we don't have our victim anymore and now that we understand that we don't have the negative voice, we don't have the self hate, we don't have the fear. Oh no, guess what? We don't have any excuses to be what we want to be, what we really want to be. Oh, I love this. What do you want to be? I don't know. Oh no, I like this one. I don't know. I don't know. You know, people don't, they don't move their mouth. (audience laughing) It's kind of like, you look like a growling dog right now. Why are you doing that? (audience laughing) I don't know. I don't know. And they're up here somewhere. They're like, I don't know. And you go, okay, so you know when you dream about being something that you don't tell anybody and we know what that is. We all know, you know. Some of you, it's all different but everyone knows that they do it. You know what you want to be. You just don't believe you're worth it or you don't believe you can have it. Or, you don't know how to get it. One of those three things. So (sighs) what do you want to be? You have no excuses now. I've taken away fear, self hate, apathy, victim mentality, and small thinking. Wow. Oh don't worry, they'll come back up on the path. They'll be there to trip you up but that's okay, you can go, ah, I know what you are. You're victim mentality. I'm so there right now. And you know the best way to tell what state you're in is seeing it in others. If you're seeing ego in others, you're in your ego. If you're seeing victim in others, you're being a victim. And if you're attracted to people who bring light, then you are doing it. So, check the people around you and then acknowledge it in yourself. First. Not them, you. Right. Now that I've cleared the path out for now, you know that path's gonna fill up again, I'll tell ya how I started to turn it around. I found this cool site called Wealth Dynamics. You can choose to do it or not. I don't subscribe to them or sponsored by them so I'm not gonna link them. Wealth Dynamics. And it might even be the theory that you subscribe to because there's lots of others systems like this in the world so I'm not saying this is the best one. I'm just saying this one worked for me. I figured that people were writing books about becoming rich and if that were something you could learn, then surely I should read these books because I am poor. So I read these books. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. (audience laughing) Read the books, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Richest Man in Babylon, and then you start the practice but that's kind of not the easy part. The practice is something that's quite long and it's intense and, of course, I read Richest Man in Babylon and Rich Dad, Poor Dad and they did liberate me from thought. Then I read a free PDF called The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. It was written in 1910. It was actually where the base of The Secret, the book came from. He wrote that in 1910 and it challenged me on every level to create from what he calls formless substance, which is energy, and I read that book and it changed my world instantaneously because it was a language that I identified with but more importantly, I realized how I was pushing money away when I read that book. It's easy to get. It's free to distribute around the world. It just, you can't change anything on it. So, I could distribute it but, in fact, I'll ask Craig if I can download it onto the site or the blog. I'll find a way and if not, Google it, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. Anyway, Wealth Dynamics is a wealth website and they've set up a structure of the sort of personality type you are, if you will, around your career. You are creator, a star, a supporter, a mechanic, a deal maker, a lord, and based on what you are, that's your path to wealth. Okay? So in my business, I created an amazing business and when I created it, I didn't want to work there anymore. I wanted to keep building businesses but instead I stayed in the business and I started to suffer so I hired a photographer, thinking that that was gonna free me up and it didn't and I was dying and dying and dying and dying and then I wanted to give up photography and the idea was, it wasn't about the photography. It was about the path that I was on. Once I learnt that I was a creator, I started to create in my business. I created other business plans. I created marketing plans. I created marketing ideas. And then I created training manuals and the more creating I'm doing, the more powerful I am, the more work I'm getting, the stronger I'm getting, the more energy in my body because I am thrilled and the more I'm doing accounts and sales and marketing, I'm filled with inertia and I don't want to get up in the morning and I'm suffering and dying and then I'm creating, I'm creating. So I realized I had to learn to create my income through that one path. It's eighth paths to wealth. That's what he talks about and it became so clear to me. I'm a creator by nature. If I'm not making money from creating, then I can't sustain an income or make an income because I hate doing everything else. And so that really freed me. It's a 100 U.S. dollars to get online and do the profile so you can work out your own profile but if you study it, I'm sure there's lots of others that might resonate with you but that freed me, understanding, and really the bottom line for that is that was my strength. Don't you get it? If you follow your path of your greatest strength, then your greatest strength will bring you wealth because it's what you love to do and that's what I've been talking to you about. If you hate it, it will destroy you and yet most of you are doing jobs that you hate and we're gonna go back to the hate list. So Wealth Dynamics was not about conjuring money. It wasn't about sitting on the couch wishing for the Ferrari or anything of that kind. What it was about was leading my true path, stepping forward into my true path, which was being a creative photographer and I'm so sick of hearing photographers say, I photograph this but I want to shoot landscapes but you can't make money from that. Oh really? Maybe you should call Peter Licht. You know like come on, there's people out there. Anything is possible. You're the only one that believes it's not. So if you've told yourself you can't make an income doing what you love and you have to do what you hate, you are slowly dying and you're rotting from the inside and I can smell you from here. (audience laughing) You know? And you are not nourishing your skills, your beliefs, your pathway, your true power and I'm not saying give up photography and become a professional creator. I can stay in my photography business. I just need to focus on anything in my business that creates. I want to create marketing plans. I want to create new brands. I want to create new studios. I want to create new spaces. I want to create new images. I want to create new styles. I want to create new, you name it, I want to create it. And anything that takes me away from creation will kill me slowly. Now there are people out there that are mechanics and they're engineers and they're deal makers. They want to make deals. They want to make deals. I love making deals. There's people out there, I've got a friend in Sydney who's not a creative photographer. He's a family portrait photographer. Studio does a million dollars a year in family portraits and he just loves getting the numbers (snapping). For him, it's all logistics. It's money. Bums on seats. He likes getting the get. For him, he's a deal maker. He's a lord. That's his strength and that's why he's wealthy because he follows his strength and if you don't follow your greatest power, you will never, ever become successful. That freed me immediately. Then, I follow John Demartini because I like the spiritual component of my highest values. To me the highest values is exactly the same thing as your strength. Your highest values, like I said to you yesterday, is the thing that you do every day. The thing that you do every day is your highest value because you value it enough to do it every day. Not the thing you make yourself do every day or the thing you wish you did every day. So, when John Demartini asks you to list your five highest values, I wrote, working out and then I realized that I don't like working out every day, I just wish I did. So that's not one of my highest values. That's one of my highest values I wish I had. So I had to cross a few things off the list before I got what my five values were and the five values were the things you do every day. Once I learned them, I would only work in a space that allowed those five things to come to fruition. One of them, for me, is not educating and doing workshops because I told you why I didn't like it but one of them, for me, was self mastery so this is not why I'm drawn to teach a workshop. So, I'm drawn to teach a workshop so I can teach you what I've just told you in the last hour because I had this conversation every day and sometimes I have it with complete strangers and I don't know why. Now I do. Because it's one of my highest values. Because learning and self mastery is one of my greatest gifts and I didn't even know it until I wrote it down because he says, what are the conversations you have every day? And I'm like, oh, I have this repeating conversation every day for the last 20 years. With every client I've ever photographed, with every woman I've ever met, with every friend that I've ever had, with every boyfriend I've ever had, with my family members, I have this conversation with everybody I know. Therefore, it's one of my highest values. Wow. I didn't even know that. If I move towards that and work with that and then stay in this space, I'm re-energized. And you can always tell the difference between something you love to do and something that you hate to do. When you finish doing something you love, you are fully energized and when you're finished doing something you hate, it sucks the life out of you and you are lying down having an inner nap. Or, shopping and eating a pound cake and drinking a bottle of wine. (audience laughing) So you must walk towards your right path and that is very, very important. There is a clear vision and a goal setting to becoming successful and that is just basic math. Until you tell me what you want, you will not create it. Until you tell me what you want and value it, you will not bring it to fruition and until you tell me what you want and truly value it and honor that, you don't believe it and it will never happen. So you write a list of where you want to be. Don't write thinner. Trust me. Don't. There's more to life. All right? Because you find yourself thinner with the same problems. And you'll never be thin enough. Clear vision and goal setting is about saying, where do I want to be in a year? I need to be financially free, maybe with 20 grand in the bank. I need to be financially free with a house paid off with 10 million dollars in the bank. Whatever your limit is, think big and just say where you want to be and set a goal and then actively step towards it and believe it and hold that vision every day and work towards it and an attitude of gratitude. Your life will significantly change. Magic. I showed this. I'm sure I did on my first CreativeLive, or maybe my second. I had a very bizarre experience when I walked into the set of CreativeLive in Seattle. You see, I drew that picture on the left two years before I stepped into that set there. Does that freak you out? You know what's freakier about that picture? Is I wrote underneath it, a warehouse to educate photographers. That was on my vision board. What I didn't write was, and you will own it. (audience laughing) So here's the thing. When I was on the set of CreativeLive, I walked into the tour, loved all the people, hugged everyone, fell in love with everybody there, never wanted to leave, didn't, and then it occurred to me that everybody went out to dinner and I was too scared to eat so I sat on the set and I was in the studio on my own and that is a big place to be on your own and then all of a sudden, it was the night before and I'm writing a keynote and I don't want to be on camera in front of you people and I was trembling and I just felt this unbelievable fear come into my body and I was like, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? And I just turned around, frightened in this big room, and I looked at that set and I went like this, and I looked back and I was like, I've seen that before. So I go through my computer and I dig out this image from my vision board that I'd drawn two years before. Never seen CreativeLive. Didn't even know if they had a set then and I had drawn that picture on the left. Now, if that is not a clear vision, I can't tell you what is. And am I different from anybody else, no. All I knew is that's what I wanted. What I drew was what I wanted. And the crazy part is is I even drew the window and the floor. You know? That is a clear vision and work towards it with gratitude and love and watch it come to fruition. It is very, very freeing and it's a long journey ahead. Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth (sighs) with your eyes turned skyward for there you have been and there you will always long to return.