Emotional Connection

Time away always brings perspective.  Throw an earthquake and a hurricane into the mix and all of the things I am so invested in (career, home, stuff, etc.) disappear.  What matters are personal relationships.  Deep, unyielding, honest relationships with those who we choose to love.  My struggle is to acknowledge that their loss, while wholly untenable, is possible.  We sacrifice and give with intention and integrity, fueled by the effort, never depleted.  The joy we receive is not the return of the love we give, but rather the honesty of the relationship to each other.  Intimacy.

Why should your creative business be any different?  More and more, I understand that creative businesses sell emotion above all else – your ability to connect with your client, relate to them and deliver, through your art, the feeling you both have decided is the goal.  Shock and awe.  A smile. Tears of joy or just tears.  The physical art (i.e., flowers, stationery, photographs, interiors) is the means to the end, the medium from which you can deliver on the emotional connection you have made.  The deeper the connection and its context to your work, the greater the possibility of successfully translating your art into emotion.  Your clients hire you to make them feel something far more than they do to get a thing from you.

What we all do not acknowledge is the fear associated with being responsible for emotion, relationship and connection.  Instead, we rely on the physicality of our art — the easiest cop out.  “You will love what we do.”  “It will be beautiful.  Trust me.”  “Look at what I have done in the past for other clients.”  Better to acknowledge that you do what YOU do and the past is only instructive of what a client can expect.  Embracing the fear of emotion and moving through it will allow you to relate what you do and will do for your client to their deepest aspirations for the work.  “I just love that you both met in college, here is what I am thinking…”  It requires that you expose yourself and your creative business beyond “here’s what we sell.”  It is about listening, understanding and being present to the human being in front of you and then responding with craft, integrity and honesty.

It sounds so simple – be present, available and exposed and act from that place.  And yet we put a million justifications and diversions in the way because it is HARD to be present, available and exposed.  There is comfort in having the out – “I just do not know why my [package, product, blog, site, etc.] is not working.  Maybe I have to come up with a new [package, product, blog, site, etc.].” Like everything else though, the excuse is the illusion.  The core is to acknowledge that you are likely hiding behind the curtain of pretense you have created for you, your art and your creative business.  Once you have acknowledged the pretense, you can stop and start being just plainly yourself.  So scary, but oh so worth it.