I\u2019ve been doing an experiment for about six months now, not my usual sort where I get all pseudo scientific with paper, inks or whatever. This one is a behavioural experiment: I have stopped apologising for what I do.<\/p>\n
This all dates back to a conversation I had with my printer friend Ian Phillips who pointed out that \u2018if you behave like a housewife with a shed in her garden, that\u2019s how they\u2019ll treat you\u2019. I\u2019m paraphrasing here, but he was quite right: be timid about your art and people will react appropriately. I gave it some thought and realised that I had to change. I needed to stop saying things like \u2018I was lucky to get the commission\u2019 and start saying \u2018I won that commission\u2019. Both true, but I feel much better about the second!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s mainly an attitude thing. I don\u2019t exaggerate my skills, but I have given up under-selling them too. The hardest thing was money of course (what with the double whammy of being British and middle class), but I have found that the opening gambit of a smile and \u2018Of course I like to keep my prices affordable while I can\u2019 doesn\u2019t bring the world to a catastrophic end. Far from it, people are actually much more respectful. The second bit of good advice comes in here and this was given to me by a barrister. He said \u2018If you must squirm, make it your toes inside your shoes and remember to keep your mouth shut unless you have something sensible to say\u2019 (this suggests that I was on trial at the time, but I promise that wasn\u2019t the case). Note the keeping your mouth shut: no waffling, no justifying along with no apologising.<\/p>\n
All this doesn\u2019t mean I have stopped automatically apologising to people who\u2019ve bumped into me. I haven\u2019t turned into Gordon Gecko, but I have managed to change how people see me and, more importantly, how seriously they take me. Try it: it works. Takes a bit of nerve and you do have to be very conscious of it at first. But it gets comfortable and it does feel good to be respected and, like me, you may find you sell better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been doing an experiment for about six months now, not my usual sort where I get all pseudo scientific with paper, inks or whatever. This one is a behavioural experiment: I have stopped apologising for what I do. This all dates back to a conversation I had with my printer friend Ian Phillips who … Continue reading “Sorry?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}