If you were asked whether or not you are an Innovator what would your answer be?
One thing that makes it easy to shy away from innovation is that it involves taking some risk. It might be financial, emotional, physical or reputational risk.
To be truly innovative requires a deliberate change of mindset, especially around how you view and relate to risk. This is because your view of life and your potential to become more innovative is directly connected to how you relate to risk and, one thing I know for sure is that you will always play small when you are caught up in so much worry about everything that you have become a risk aversion expert. Innovation goes out the window.
Risk sits on a continuum between Risk Aversion, through Risk Avoidance to Risk Awareness. The really awesome thing, despite risk being both real and perceived, is that you can learn to move along this continuum – it is simply a different mindset. And this different mindset enables you to function differently, to view and to respond differently to the risk. To manage it so that you can see the opportunities rather than the problems.
Quick reality check here: It is easy to believe that being outside your comfort zone is the same as being at risk. Nah!!!
To be a risk taker, to move towards innovation, you need to be prepared to make decisions that may potentially cause you some damage eg physical harm or financial loss, while also presenting you with an opportunity for an awesome, rewarding outcome. This risk-taker mentality can really fuel your creative processes which in turn will contribute to an innovative mindset. You will see the possibilities more clearly.
Innovation comes when you are confident. When you trust yourself and when you dare to make a change. It is triggered by situations you find yourself in and the feelings attached to those. Things like distress, discontent, love, or a vision of what might be possible. Another trigger is the sheer bloody mindedness some of us experience when we are told that something is not possible.
Does that ring a bell for you?
So…..how do you make the space to develop your creativity?
Are you leaving the physical, mental and emotional space you need to be innovative? Are you using discomfort to get curious about how things could be done differently and to promote courageous creativity?
Moving to the Risk Aware point of the continuum will allow you greater space for innovation. From here:
- Be open to new ideas, trust others and challenge the status quo
Get curious and notice things - Listen to others and to the world
- Collaborate with others
- Talk about your discontent and other triggers and see them as a message to change
- Re-frame what is going on so that you are more open to new ideas and more easily able to be resourceful and innovative
Abundance comes from confidence while scarcity is based in fear. You will always achieve much, much more when you have the confidence to notice the risks, determine what is needed to minimise or manage them and take action. You will begin to open up the space for innovation.
Imagine…….making changes to something that you are aware of by introducing new ideas, new ways of doing or new products?
How awesome would it be to INNOVATE and become much more creative in your work and in your life? Making this change is a simple as committing to doing something which stretches you creatively every day. Are you up for it?