Beating The Block

Some sort of a mental block happens to all of us, for some, it's as simple as forgetting a word, for others it's the difference between making $5K worth of sales versus $50K worth of sales. For me, it's a creative block. and I am 100 percent sure that I am not the only one who has gone through this. But how do get past the block? Well, that's a long story that's taken me years to figure out, but let me summarise it for you.

For me, I've had a creative block for a few years, and I mean it's been years. As you know, my day job is as a real estate photographer for one of the largest agencies in Canberra. The block would've started about 3 or 4 years ago when I left my position as a camera salesman at a local franchised camera store to change my career to become a real estate agent. Honestly, a lot has happened since then in my life, where I've had to focus my attention away from my business. Back then, I mentally admitted to myself that freelancing wasn't my thing anymore, and that's ok, but what's not okay is I stopped shooting for myself. Actually, while I think of it, the block would've started before this when I stopped freelancing as my only source of income. I stopped because the income was too inconsistent and I wanted a break for chasing clients, chasing money and all of that stuff, it was overwhelming.

Part of the block would've been a lack of growth. My social media wasn't growing, my client list wasn't growing, my motivation was decreasing and my life felt like it was on pause and I didn't know what to do, plus the increasing pressure (from myself) to grow.

I remember this particular day where I went to the Arboretum and I sat among the trees of the Himalayan cedar forest and I sent off 20 emails trying to build my client base but nothing, possibly I was looking in the wrong place. Either way, the end result was the same and I decided the best route was to get some part-time work, then look at changing careers.

After changing careers I realised that shooting for myself had stopped. I would do the occasional set of images and I would feel happy and motivated by it but it's never stuck. Even when I was working at the camera store I would still do the occasional job here or there but it still wasn't the same and I still felt the need to go back to the place I was at - shooting all the time for the love of it.

Around the time I decided to get a part-time job I was going through a TAFE course, where it kind of killed photography for me, as sad as it is, that's the honest truth. Without talking too much shit, I found the course to be extremely boring, not challenging and the staff that taught me made the entire 12 months drag on for what seemed like an eternality. My hope going into the course was for the teachers to help me develop my existing skills and help me further my progression as a professional photographer. Instead, I found myself assisting other peers, feeling unrecognised by the teachers because I wouldn't show off my achievements and ask for assistance every chance I got because I was already one step ahead of my peers and had more commercial background than the staff members trying to teach me. All in all, everything about the course became a chore and it started to make me want to shoot less in my free time.

So where am I at?

For the past (almost) 2 years I've been shooting every day for my job as a photographer for possibly the largest real estate agency in Canberra (definitely the best - maybe I’m biased). I've learnt so much through this job and experience. But, I still haven't felt that rush, the rush for more and that same rush didn't make me want to shoot for myself again. Obviously, I do the occasional shoot, and the occasional freelance job outside of my day job, and there are some properties that give me that rush for more, but nothing has been consistent and lasts longer than in the moment.

How do you overcome this?

Well, it's taken me a long time and I'm still working on it, but I think I've gotten to the point where I can talk about it from a point of experience so I can help others who might be going through the same or people who might go through the same in the future. All good knowledge comes from a book, and of course, that's where my "recovery" started, and guess what the best part is, it had nothing to do with photography and me picking up the camera outside of work and making money.

The Resilience Project, highly recommend it. Now, I can't guarantee it will work for everyone but if you've gotten this far in my rambling you may as well keep reading because this is the part where it gets good. Obviously, I recommend reading the book as it's a great book and I live by it (much like the Barefoot Investor). The part that I took away from the book was gratitude. At the end of each day, I write down 3 good things that happened to me that day, they can be big or small things like I got a coffee today, or I had an insightful conversation with a client. I also write down at least 3 things that I'm looking forward to tomorrow. When you decide to read the book, it goes into a lot more detail on everything, but I've found listing these 6 or more things have made me more energetic and for the first time in 3 years I've felt like myself again, I've felt the drive, the rush to shoot for myself again. Last week, I shot for myself in my spare time for the first time, the results are good, but it felt amazing to be out there again. At the end of the day, I think it comes down to your mentality about it. You don't always have to make money from your work, you don't always need 100+ likes on social media, you don't need 1500 followers. All you need is to enjoy what you're doing. You need to feel that rush, I don't care if the images are the worst ones you've ever taken, it doesn't matter if they never see the light of day. But, it's so important to shoot for yourself in your free time and have those projects on the side, especially when you've got the camera in your hand every single day.

I have read about so many leading professional photographers, where they've been shooting their entire lives for money, for work and they end up having enough, to the point where they stop shooting for themselves. A good friend of mine and one of my mentors when I first started getting into the commercial space told me I need to always have projects going all the time.

From my experience, there isn't much you can do to prevent the lack of growth, other than to change your mentality from wanting more, you can just be happy with the clients you have, you can just be happy with where your socials are at. But honestly, what kind of a business person, or artist would you be to not want more?

When you start to feel drained, mentally and physically your body is probably telling you to take a break, and you really need to listen to it otherwise you'll get burnt out and that opens you up to free falling into this rut that I've been in. If you've read any of my other posts, you'll know that I'm overly OCD about my calendar, I live off it - it runs my life. I have to schedule in breaks so I don't work 7 days a week, and that's good, having a family helps that too.

Reflecting on the mistakes I made, I don't think the change of career was a bad thing, everything happens for a reason and we all choose our own pathways. The experience of working in a camera store has given me the customer service experience I needed, it has helped me learn how to talk to people and not be afraid of confrontational situations. Making the move into real estate continued to develop those skills and teach me how to sell myself as a brand and it was a stepping stone to where I am now.

If you've decided to skip this entire post to see if there were key points you could read. Well, it's your lucky day as I've jotted them below, but without context, you'll learn nothing so I strongly suggest going back to the start and 5 minutes to read through.

Your pathway is what you've chosen, each step is a stepping stone to something better or to learn an important life lesson
Take breaks regularly
Read The Resilience Project and follow the GEM practices like your life depends on it
Goals are just a guideline to the future you envision.
Always have projects going on the side, learn something new whilst you do them
Research the courses you do from people who have done them and gauge if it's worth your time and money

There are heaps of ways to prevent burnout and overcome mental blocks, creative blocks and everything in between, and I hope I've been able to help by telling my story on how this has worked for me (so far). Anyway, I need to wrap this up, if you feel like you're going through something similar or have your own techniques for beating the block, please feel free to send me a message or comment below, I would love to hear from you.

www.jackmohr.com.au

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