Do you worry about crap?

"Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." - Charles R. Swindoll

I work in a very large and grey-walled office amongst a sea of cubicles. People email me, call me and occasionally visit me in person to give me crap to do.

Sometimes, this pile of crap gets really big. It happened the other day, and I got stressed. It sucked. Instead of simply focusing on my work, I became angry at my situation. My ears turned red, my eyes itched and I couldn't think about anything but the fact that I had a lot of crap to do.

Then, I remembered something.

As long as I would just do what I had to do, I would be fine. I didn't really know what I was worrying about. I get paid to deal with crap, so I dealt with it, and everything turned out fine.

Humans are interesting creatures. Not only because we live around habits, but we constantly measure ourselves and our lives and then we worry about those measurements. We judge things (even when our religion tells us not to), we see things and react to them.

So, when there's a pile of work to do in front of us, we tend to fret about it before doing it. In the face of challenges, we worry that we won't measure up, we worry about what other people will think of us if we fail.

When I first heard "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." - I didn't agree with it, but that was when my life revolved around measuring myself to others' standards. Today, most of my friends would probably tell you that I'm a generally laid-back person. I don't appear to be excited when I actually am (which can be a bad thing), and I don't worry about a lot of the things that people measure themselves with. I relax a lot. The truth is, I'm not a normal person, but who is?

So, what do I believe about worrying? I think it's the only way that most people can confront their challenges in life, but I believe worrying blows things out of proportion and causes unneeded stress. Worrying skews our perception of our challenges. I don't need to worry to get stuff done, but I still do it because I'm human.

As a photographer, I'm familiar with people and how they see things. When I'm behind the camera, I get to see a lot of expressions and reactions. I notice little things, little quirks, and I learn from them. Sometimes, when I'm photographing nervous, despairing subjects, I help them relax by simply talking to them to get their minds off of themselves, to get them to stop measuring themselves for a moment. I've discovered that the reason people don't like being photographed is because they think that the camera is measuring them. They worry about being too pasty or too chubby. If you're one of these people, you need to understand that people will appreciate a photo of you just as much as they appreciate seeing you in person. Trust your photographer to bring out the best in you. The memories and feelings that people get when they see the photo are what really matters (this is another future blog post topic).

I'm definitely not an over-achiever by any means, but I do know that the only thing between where you are now and where you want to be is in yourself. Getting stuff done can be difficult, but only because we preconceive that it is going to be difficult. If you expect something to suck, it's gonna suck. But if you expect something to get done, you have to stop, recognize what's in front of you, relax and do it.

Thanks for reading.

-John