Why Not Blaze Your Own Trail…

I was reading someone’s bio the other day and, amongst all the other relevant facts and bullet points, they had listed “award-winning photographer.” That caught my eye for several reasons – first, it was a little unusual to find in a biography for someone who wasn’t a professional photographer; second, I consider myself a decent amateur photographer so there was some respect given; and, finally, it dawned on me that that one phrase had caused me to stop my casual scan and actively start thinking about this person.

Put another way, their choice to include this unusual fact about themselves led me to engage with their information more thoughtfully which, I’d argue, was a good thing and perhaps their ultimate purpose for including it. It frankly made them more interesting to me… and, if I’m honest, maybe a little jealous. And it also got me wondering how they’d done it.

And that leads to the theme of this post – that we can often blaze our own trails towards something we want.

Let’s go back to this eye-stopping, “award winning” phrase. I started to exercise my critical thinking skills and, not to take anything away from this person, but I soon realized that this award could actually be a number of things. Maybe he’d won the prestigious Sony World Photography Award or maybe it was a local contest sponsored by his neighborhood grocery store. All I knew was that, barring an outright lie, this guy had taken a photograph that someone, somewhere had put a ribbon on. Maybe it was a huge competition and maybe it wasn’t. So I decided to see if I could become award-winning too.

A quick Internet search turned up dozens of photography contests that a person could enter, many at no cost. So I created an account, uploaded a half dozen of what I felt were some of my best photographs and submitted a few to a couple of current contests that would be decided in the next month.

Then an interesting thing happened. Within an hour, I started getting notices that people were following my new account. Not hundreds but certainly dozens. And, what’s more, many of them had graciously given me “peer awards” which, to my surprise, were listed as “Awards” in my profile. I stared at the screen realizing that, in only a couple of hours, I had become – technically speaking at least – an “award winning photographer” (I have since gotten a Staff Award as well ;). Simply amazing.

Now, set aside my little vanity experiment, and this experience really got me to thinking about the power each of us has in determining our own outcomes. One of my very first posts here talked about the need to sometimes leap over an obstacle and to come at it from a different angle in order to find a solution. While my experience here is a little different, I can easily draw the similarities of how, when faced with something we don’t know how to solve, we can create a new path to end up at our desired goal.

So think about something you want to accomplish. Maybe it’s huge – getting a college degree or climbing Mt. Everest or getting out of debt. Or maybe it’s a slightly smaller scale like learning a second language or getting back into shape… or even becoming an award-winning photographer. The fun part of this exercise then becomes a “so, how do I do this?”

There’s no magic formula I can give you here but what I am encouraging you to do is to think about something you’ve wanted and to approach it from a different angle. Let yourself think broadly and differently about possible ways forward.

Let’s take getting into shape. The basics are obvious – diet and exercise – but, if you’re like me, I enjoy food and find exercise boring which kind of points me in the wrong direction. So what if I did something different about both?

For me, the trick was making it easy or fun. Easy is saying “hold the cheese” whenever I order something at a restaurant (significant calorie savings there with only a minor sacrifice). Or challenge yourself to make one day a week Healthy Day. As for exercise, I found the zombie run app that turns an otherwise boring jog into a race for your survival. And there are tons of other ideas but these few examples are just meant to illustrate that being a little creative can often give you that edge.

When I was single and having a hard time meeting girls I wanted to date, I decided to start doing volunteer projects on the weekend figuring that I’d meet other like-minded people (including women!) and that, even if I never met anybody, I would be happy knowing I was helping people out.

The bottom line to all of this is to encourage us to take a more active role in both figuring out what we want and then to get creative in finding ways to get there. I got lucky in my quest to become an “award winning photographer” but it also was a good reminder that we have a lot more control over our destinies than we may realize. It’s certainly not complete control but there are many things we can do to help us get to places we may not have thought were attainable.

Know that I’m pulling for you!