302 Realize Your Clients’ Lingo with Photographer, Jeffrey Shaw

Jeffrey Shaw is one of the most well-known portrait photographers in the United States - His portraits have appeared on Oprah and People magazine as well as hundreds of other publications. Jeffrey is also host of the successful business podcast called Creative Warriors. Mindfulness plays a key role in Jeffrey’s world. He realizes making powerful connections with people is about embracing and understanding their LINGO, their specific secret language.Using this insight, Jeffrey teaches entrepreneurs how to attract their ideal customers by learning to speak the proper LINGO.

Contact Info

• Website: JeffreyShaw.com
• FREE Lingo Media Kit: JeffreyShaw.com/MindfulnessMode
• Podcast: Creative Warriors
• Book: Lingo: Discover Your Ideal Customer’s Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible by Jeffrey Shaw

Most Influential Person

• K.S. Iyengar of Iyengar Yoga

Effect on Emotions

• Mindfulness has affected my emotions by giving me greater stability.
• We're very emotional beings and as a creative person, that's probably even more exaggerated.
• So mindfulness has created curiosity, which creates a stability of mind.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Breathing is very much a part of my mindfulness practice. In Yoga we refer to it as Pranayama.
• I have three kids and are adults now, but when one of my daughters was young, she had a really bad toothache and I taught her to breathe through the toothache.
• I had double hernias. I chose to have surgery done separately without anesthesia because I convinced the doctor. I didn't want to go through the general anesthesia. So we did them separately and I breathed through those surgeries. He didn't think it could be done and I was like, I can do it. So breathing has been a big part of my life.

Suggested Resources

• Book: Going To Pieces Without Falling Apart by Mark Epstein
• App: N/A

Bullying Story

• I was bullied most of my childhood, to be honest with you. Through middle school were really, really tough years for me.
• When I was growing up we had seventh and eighth grade in middle school and I spent most of those two years the guidance counselor office because I wouldn't go to the cafeteria.
• I went from class to the guidance counselor office to avoid the bullies. I was bullied on the bus. I was a shy, withdrawn kid; very sensitive. I was not as tough as the other boys.
• Yeah, most certainly I was bullied.I think the sensitivity that I carried with me was the mindfulness. There was no way I ever could have taken the advice I see given in tv shows about bullying.
• On sitcoms somebody's always advising the person being bullied to stand up to the bully. There is no way that was ever going to happen for me. So the mindfulness for me, was I was very aware that I was being bullied, but I was very mindful that that person had a problem.
• And I actually think it's the mindfulness that helped me survive it. And I've gone to counselors and therapy and all the time I spent in the guidance counselor's office was to be with a therapist and that was often pointed out to me.
• I honestly never really took on the victim role. I was being victimized, but I looked at it from the perspective that the person doing the bullying has an issue. I'm OK. I always carried with me a certain amount of self awareness and self confidence despite the fact that I was shy, I was actually inwardly quite confident and I was confident that the issue is not mine. I was very mindful that the issue was with the bully. Yeah, I mean it just was never. I never could have taken the advice.
• I had two older brothers and a father there was the typical sibling interaction. My older brothers were constantly picking on me and bullying me and the advice to me was to toughen up. My parents would just say, toughen up, which to this day never made sense to me. I thought, why should I toughen up? Why are you telling the person being bullied to toughen up, to meet that person as opposed to telling the bully to knock it off.
• But again, being mindful of the situation, I think it was just the easier route. A lot of times parents knowingly or not, just choose the easier route.
• It was easier to tell me to toughen up than it was ever to tell older brothers to take it easy on your little brother because they were tougher. There was more resistance. I was the path of least resistance.
• So oddly enough, I was very mindful of this dynamic. Even as a very young kid, I was very mindful that this was the dynamic which allowed me to hold on to a significant amount of self-worth and confidence that it was like, I'm OK, I don't know what's wrong with these people, but I'm OK and I'll just wait until I can find my right place in the world.
• And when I do, I'll be able to shine.