With some clarity on what you want to achieve and some understanding about who you need to become, you now look to the obstacles standing in your way to the BIG innovation. Although many small hurdles cross your path to innovation, the really big obstacles reside within the innovator. They include the ego, the motivation, and the desired recognition. These are the slowly diminishing Siren songs and Circe visions. Confront them.
WHAT IS STOPPING YOU?
EGO — To confront this obstacle, question who you really are. How much do you doubt your ability to innovate? Question it? Retreat from it? Delay it? How do you react when people criticize or challenge your ideas? Defensive? Accepting? Threatened? Fearful? How do you define yourself? Name? Occupation? Title? Degrees? Accomplishments? In what areas are you judgmental? Other people’s behavior? Other people’s ideas? Solutions proposed by others? Other people’s conclusions?
As you contemplate these questions, remind yourself that life consists of small things. These small things, when connected, grow into landfills of mental debris. As the debris accumulates, the ego grows. As the ego grows, it becomes a hungry creature that must be fed regularly — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in between. It munches on your dreams, your imagination, your commitment to innovation. Put yourself on an ego-diet. Systematically, dismantle the landfills. Remove the debris. Free yourself, to the greatest extent possible, of all ego entanglements. The freer you are of this menace, the easier you will envision innovations.
MOTIVATION — To confront this obstacle, question why you want to be a BIG innovator. Impress people with your performance? Conquer your perceived mountains? Control other people? Accumulate riches? Achieve prestige? Establish bragging-rights? Win arguments? Share the glory? Increase awareness? Avoid ready-made answers? Penetrate the unknown?
Again, remind yourself that life consists of small things. Your positive motivation directs you toward creativity, toward making the world better, toward being able to hear the whispers of emerging ideas. As you move away from argument as motivation, your world increases in its silence, a silence that lets you hear the voices speaking to you from your deepest self. These voices sing not the Siren songs; these voices guide your in what you love. These voices do not speak of terrifying visions; they focus your attention on your creative imagination.
RECOGNITION — To confront this obstacle, question what recognition you want for your innovating. This obstacle is the most complicated. EGO and MOTIVATION are within you, in your control to change. RECOGNITION is something so deeply embedded in cultures that undoing it as an obstacle demands the release of long-held practices. From the earliest steps of childhood, we encourage. As children grow we reward them with money, with badges of accomplishment, with diplomas and degrees to applaud knowledge gained. As people reach adulthood, the forms of desired recognition change to honors, to prizes, to awarded titles and degrees.
Again, remind yourself that life consists of little things. Each plant in a garden creates it own space but demands no recognition for the creation. It simply draws upon itself. Each innovation creates its own space within you. Each innovation tries to penetrate the unknown. Each innovation forces you to grope in the dark. Each innovation exposes “again ideas” that are simply re-workings of the past. Each innovation moves you closer to other innovations. Ideas are never finished. Some are given away to others. Some are nurtured to maturity. Some change the world in ways that cannot be imagined. Therefore, seek not the recognition, seek only what connects you to the future that makes the world better.
To further help you understand people who do not covet personal recognition, conduct a search on “Vinton Cerf,” and “Tim Berners Lee.” The simple things the two men did changed the world in their own lifetimes. Each in his own way gave innovations to the world — free of charge. Without them, no internet, no world wide web. To find others, search for “people who refused Nobel prizes.” Do not let desired recognition interfere with the work of the innovation.
In the end, you must confront all of your own obstacles — the temptations of the Siren songs and the visions of Circe. Innovation begins as a solitary activity. However, as you share your ideas and your love of the work you do, people who want to help gravitate to you. You move beyond the simple call to innovate and the seduction of unrefined dreams in your head. You began your Odyssey by courting the BIG innovation. The courtship now ends. The music and visions still exist. You are now free of the diversions. In the end, you marry yourself to the ideas that please you, the ideas you love. You, too, can change the world.
Virginia L. McBride, The Haven Maven Founder, EPROW Images Creator, “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE THINKING” Virginia builds personalized “thinking environments” to strengthen innovative thought. Working with EPROW Images, clients identify what stops them. With achievement, becoming, and obstacles clear, BIG Innovation really emerges. To qualify for a free 30-minute consultation, submit a “pitch” through EPROW’s PAPPY program =>
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