Brick Walls Serve a Purpose

© Sergey Nivens - Fotolia

A short time ago I mentioned a great little book I picked up, It Always Seems Impossible Until It's Done. It's well worth a daily read, just to feed your brain with some great motivational material. Click on the cover and you'll be linked to Amazon.

Yesterday I was talking with a photographer who made the comment, "I've just hit the wall and don't know what to do with my business!" Well, as luck would have it, this morning I'm sitting here trying to figure out what to write about and I found this incredibly relevant quote from Randy Pausch:

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"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; 
the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. 
Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. 
They're there to stop the other people."

Here's the point - we all hit a wall now and then. We all have to deal with adversity and sometimes it seems like, just when we get through a challenge in our business, something happens in our personal life or there's another wall to climb in the business. We never seem to get everything going in the right direction all at the same time.

Guess what? That's life and especially in the career field you've chosen. Just when you think you understand technology, something new is going to show up. Every day there's another paradigm shift and you've got to run a little faster to catch up, but here's the beauty of it all.

The more you learn, the more challenges you endure and the more brick walls you either climb over or just obliterate, the stronger artist you become. Every brick wall is nothing more than a test of your love for the craft. Each wall is simply another workshop in building your skills.

Next week I'll be headed to NYC for Photo Plus Expo and what makes me love the show so much is the networking with both new friends, old friends and associates. We'll have time to just talk about the business and out of this one trip will come dozens of new ideas... each one capable of getting over the next wall.

See you in NYC!