As I sit down to reflect on my recent experiences, I find myself on a journey of self-discovery. I would like to take you on a journey through my thought process of defining my vision. I’ve been asking myself, “What is my unique perspective in photography? How can I contribute to the world?”
Recently, I participated in an Entrepreneur Workshop boot camp, organised by Maxi Strauch. In the past, I’ve attended several online courses and watched a lot of YouTube videos on defining our vision. Most of them left me unsatisfied. They all seem to have a common theme: define your goal in life, and the path towards it will somehow reveal itself. Part of it works for me, and part of it doesn’t.
The workshop introduced me to the concept of a scanner personality, which resonated with me. A scanner is someone who has multiple interests, many ideas, and tries to do them all. For a long time, I felt like this. For a scanner, it’s really difficult to focus on one thing, and we struggle with the world that seems to have this notion that we have to specialise in one thing and be very good at that.
One valuable insight was to realise that there’s a strategy to deal with this: we don’t have to follow all of our interests at once. We can say, “Let’s keep that for later,” and that’s really helpful.
Another helpful coaching question was, “Why do I attend these workshops?” Beyond the obvious reasons like it’s online, accessible, and I can do it at my own pace, I realised there’s something in my life that I would like to fulfil. There’s a gift inside of me, something that I would like to contribute to the world. It’s nagging me. I haven’t found the right way to do this yet, and maybe there are some limiting beliefs within myself, some hurdles I have to overcome. But basically, I have something to give, and I want to let that out now.
Then I took a step further and thought about my vision. The examples that she gave in her workshop, like how do I want to live, where do I want to work, how much money do I want to earn, didn’t resonate much with me. But we also talked about what’s our motivation, and being helpful and of service for others could be a motivation. It’s kind of what also drives me to be helpful, to see others thrive, and to understand how I can help them in their process of becoming a thriving artist.
My vision is not about myself; it’s about the value that I would like to bring to the world. I recently stumbled across the concept of contemplation photography, and that resonates with me a lot. I try to combine photography, mostly people photography but also street or landscape photography, with the ideas of Zen to be more mindful about who we are and what we do. I connect with our environment in a mindful way, with open awareness and without judgement.
I envision to take that one step further to use all this in the way of personal development:
I aspire to integrate shadow work, a concept that Carl Gustav Jung introduced me to into the photographic journey.
I remember I started this process of a Daily Record with my camera and I abandoned that project again. Attending these workshops and thinking about what drives me, what’s important to me, what matters to me, helped me to regain focus and to come back to this.
I’m still in the process of defining my vision, but I think I made one step further, I got a little bit ahead, and that fills me with joy and fulfilment. That’s what I would like to share with you. I hope this insight is also valuable for you and helps you on your journey