Fostering Innovation: Insights From The 3 Principles

Looking to foster innovation in your life and work? Join Clare in this thought-provoking 3 Principles session and gain insights into fostering innovation. Explore the principles of creativity, embrace a growth mindset, and discover how the 3 Principles can unleash your innovative potential.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the CalmCast, A time to feel calm and think clearly. I'm Clare Downam, The Queen of Calm, A Transformational Life Coach. I was a burnt out head teacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same. The CalmCast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state, Which is calm and clarity. Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity. There's nothing else to do. Now let's relax into today's episode. So welcome to fostering innovation from a three principles perspective. And it's really interesting as I think about this subject that many of the things I said about creativity are going to come alive in this session, Because I think again, Innovation is human. It's something that humans are meant to do, That it's part of our innate essence, As I like to call it. This sense that there is something within us that is beyond, I don't know, Beyond our thinking or below our thinking or more than our thinking. And of course, As human beings, We live most of our time in our thinking, So we don't necessarily always experience the innovation that is meant to come through. So as I'm doing with so many of these sessions about productivity, I want, First of all, To talk about small children and how they innovate. And you may think, Oh, But I've never seen a small child innovate, You know, What have they invented? You know, But actually they're doing all the time. I shared this recently on a live on Insight Timer, I'm going to share it with you because it's a metaphor that kind of came out in the moment. And you know, I've spent a lot of time with small children playing with Lego. Now, Not really small children, Probably you want to be like three and above, Don't you, With Lego, Because I have this habit of swallowing it and joking. So you keep the small Lego bricks away from the very small children. I've got this thing about symmetry when it comes to Lego. So I'm a bit of a Lego control freak. Let's call it that. I really don't like things that are not symmetrical. I don't know if you've come across those cars driving about that have, I think it's a four wheel drive in some description, I can't even remember what brand of car it is because cars are not of interest to me really, But this car has its number plate set off to the side. And when I look at it, I have a lot of thinking about that number plate being off to the side, I don't like things not being symmetrical. So if I was ever building in the Lego with my children, And my daughter was the same, She would make her buildings and things symmetrical as well. It was like, You know, Let's say we're building a house, There's got to be a line of red bricks and then a line of blue bricks and then a line, You know, It's got to kind of go all the way around. There can't be random bricks everywhere, That's just not on. And I used to be quite like, Hmm, About it. You know, Controlling is the right word, I think. So this is a lovely metaphor for what happens to us in terms of our own innovation. So listen with an open mind to this. So let's imagine that I'm sat with a three-year-old playing in the Lego and the three-year-old starts building. Now that three-year-old's creation, That three-year-old's invention, Which they do, Don't they? Have you seen little children with the Lego, How they, You know, They stick a brick here, A brick there, And then they build this thing up and then it's got a big arm on it. And you say to them, Well, What's the arm for? And they say, Well, The arm is the thing that's going to save the planet. And you know, They're like, They are innovating. And they're doing that with this essence that's within all of us. They're just like, You know, Literally I think if you said to a four to five-year-old maybe, You know, What would you invent in the Lego to make the world a better place? I guarantee that we'll come up with a new idea, Something that hadn't been thought of before. So let's imagine that's going on. The child is engrossed, The child is creating and innovating. And then I come along with my symmetry issue. And I start saying, Well, Actually, Please, No, Don't put that brick there because it's the wrong colour. You need to match it up and it's the wrong size. You've got to have like one of those six bricks and you've got to have a six brick red one at the other side, Exactly the same. And you know, And I start, I start, No, Don't do that. That's not right. It shouldn't look like that. That's not okay. Nitpicketing and trying to control and doing all of that. I can pretty much guarantee that child would like either just give up or, You know, Get upset or just like, Yeah, Just leave the Lego or try and go away from me completely and try and create something else. But, But that talk about their thing not being right and their thing not being okay and it needs to be symmetrical. It's got to look like this. I hope you can hear that you've got a voice in your head just like that. Probably because at some point in the past, And this is not about blaming or saying anybody did anything wrong because everybody's doing the best they can with the thinking that looks true to them. At some point in the past, Somebody said something like that to you. Oh, That, That's not good enough. People aren't going to like that judging you, Telling you that you're wrong, Telling you that what you're doing isn't okay. At some point in your life that's happened. And so what happens in the moment, Because we're not poking around in the past, We're not doing any of that, But what we are doing is saying the way you think about your own magical innovative thoughts is made of the past. It's made of the stuff that you learn from the people around you in the past. And that is just how it is. And so what happens for many of us human beings now is that we get excited about a new idea. We have a thought for an innovation. We have something that looks to be exciting, New, Whatever it is. And we start to create it or we think about creating it and we think, Oh, Wow, That, That is something different. That is something fresh and new. How exciting. And then all that thinking, Like me and my control-free curiosimetry thing, Starts coming in and says, Ugh, No, You can't do that. Everything looks stupid. People are going to judge you, Blah, Blah, Blah. And then you don't do it that way. And your innovation, Your new way of doing things goes to the grave, You know, Or, And I've seen this happen, Actually happen to me. Somebody else does it. Has that ever happened to you? Because it's happened to me. I had an idea. I can't even remember what the idea was, But I had an idea for something and I didn't do it because no doubt I had that chuntering voice in the back of my head going, Oh, You can't do it. We haven't got time or whatever. Or I procrastinated about it, Avoided it. That's generally what I used to do. And somebody else did it and I was like, Oh my goodness. Somebody else is doing the thing that I thought of. And I think that ideas have an energy to them, Don't they? Innovation has an energy to it and it's not your energy. It's the energy that wants to come through you. It chooses you and if you don't do it, It'll go somewhere else. So the other story, Yeah, The second story, Because there are three really, The second story is from Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, Who, After she'd written Eat, Pray, Love, She started writing another book or she started sketching out another book and doing the research. She does a lot of research and a lot of historical research as Elizabeth Gilbert for her books and I've read quite a lot of her books, They're very good. And she went into this research phase for this book with this really complicated story and so she had to do quite a lot of research about the country where she was going to set it and partly through this process, Unfortunately, She had some personal issues that she needed to deal with. So she didn't write the book and she just put it to one side and she sorted out personal issues. So she had a coffee with a friend of hers who was also an author, They'd met through the publisher, I think, And she got chatting to this author and the author was really excited about her new book that was coming out and as she started talking to Elizabeth Gilbert about this book, Elizabeth Gilbert was aghast because it pretty much was the same story. Obviously it had this other lady's flavour because they have different thinking, But it was the same story and Elizabeth Gilbert was stunned, Really, To find that the story, The innovation has to come out and if it doesn't come out through you, It's going to come out through somebody else. And the third story is about me and my business and when you label yourself up as a coach, I don't use that word quite so much, Although I think on some of my social media it probably says coach somewhere, You know, When you call yourself a coach or even a mentor, Anybody in the helping professions, If you call yourself a therapist or you call yourself a counsellor or something like that, I guarantee there will be somebody or more than one somebody who approaches you to try and tell you how to grow your business. So that happens in a number of ways, I get approached on social media quite a lot, LinkedIn in particular, I come across adverts on Instagram, It's like Instagram knows what I'm doing and it's like, Hey, This is how to grow your business the fastest possible way and I went through a phase when I was first doing this of buying every single one of everybody's $27, You know, A lot of them are $27, This is your system for social media, This is your system for growing your business, This is how to write an email, This is da-da-da-da-da and it went on and on and on and on and there was a lot of me buying courses and not finishing them but trying different people's things and going all around the houses and what I've noticed more recently is that I'm not doing that and I'm just trusting that what's coming out of me is right for my business and for me and that's felt much more like innovation and sometimes the voice does rear up and says, Oh, Are you sure that's the right thing to do? Are you sure that's it? And so I'll put things off for a little bit but then they keep coming back again and again and again to say, Hey, Look, This is the thing, This is the thing to do and the one that's bubbling at, There's a one that's bubbling at the moment that I probably should do something about or will do something about shortly but it's really amazing to see how as I follow that innovation, As I follow the sound of my own internal innovator, I find myself creating a path that is bringing more joy, More money, Interestingly and has this wonderful organic feel to it. It seems to be once I started to follow that, It's almost got its own movement, It's got its own organic, Organicness, Which is now a word I've made up but it's got this organic feel to it, It's got aliveness to it and I think that's what happens when you start to follow the energy of your own innovation is that more and more of those ideas come to life and as you give them life, More of them come to life and that's just really exciting to see that happen. So listen to that small voice inside you and you know, Put to one side those voices that say you can't or just become aware of them. They're going to be there, They're not going to disappear overnight but maybe you don't have to listen to them and maybe you can do that thing that is bubbling up inside you and wants to come into the world. So have an absolutely beautiful day, I hope it's full of innovation and fun and please do join me on Insight Timer live at some point in the very near future. There's guaranteed to be a live near you very soon and there's a few courses you can have a look at too so if you don't follow me already, Please do follow me and I'll see you hopefully on Insight Timer soon. Take care. Thank you so much for listening. There's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life. Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm. This has been The Calm Cast with Clare Downam, Queen of Calm. Take care and keep listening.