Breakthrough Thinking: Curating Creativity to Innovate Expansion

“It would never work…”

For business owners, this happens more often as you get established and feel more comfortable in your business.?

As time goes on and your systems and strategies become more entrenched, it’s all too easy to relax into the comfort of routine and stop living on your growing edges – especially when business is good.

The fact is: If you want to create different results in your business in 2024, you need to do something differently.?

The same old song-and-dance isn’t going to get you there.

Innovation Awaits Outside Your Comfort Zone

Whether you’re troubleshooting solutions for a seemingly intractable issue or creating new strategies to connect with your ideal clients, you must be willing to explore the possibilities in the so-called impossible.?

You have to discover the doable in what is yet undone.

In over forty years of building businesses and mentoring leaders, the best way I’ve found to do that is to believe that any idea that shows up is an idea worth exploring.?

All too often, I see seasoned, successful entrepreneurs dismiss their fabulous, yet far-fetched ideas. If they dare to share something that feels too outside the box, they start poking holes in it before it even gets out of their mouth.

And it’s got to stop.

Entertain the Impossible

When you stop exploring what is possible because it feels improbable, you start erasing opportunities to innovate your business. And you condition your brain to color within the lines.

Your wild, outlandish ideas – even the ones that are truly impossible to execute – are the jumping-off point for the inspiration you can actually take action on.?

They’re the next big thing waiting to happen. The thing that hasn’t been done before. That couldn’t be done until now.

Once upon a time, standing where you are as the CEO of your business felt like a pipedream, too.?

So the next time you find yourself shutting down an idea, give yourself permission to get curious instead.

Even if absolutely nothing comes of interrogating your ideas at first, when you practice curiosity outside your comfort zone, you start building up your capacity to innovate creative solutions and outside-the-box ideas.?

Make Curiosity a Personal Practice

Every human brain has the potential to provide us with a treasure trove of innovation, but only when we’re willing to step into the sometimes uncomfortable space between reality and possibility can we bring those ideas to life.

When you practice curiosity, you’re nurturing creativity. You probably won’t break any brilliant new ground overnight, but the more you entertain the idea of the unexpected, the more capable you are of seeing opportunities where you used to see obstacles.

When you’re willing to allow any idea to be a good idea, you open the door to ingenious insights that will help you innovate your business and bring more fun and creativity to your systems and routines.

5 Strategic Steps to Foster Inspiration

You can’t do everything all at once, but that doesn’t mean you have to let inspiration pass you by.?

Here are a few other simple tricks to help you reconnect with your creative side:

• Play “What If?” Even if it’s just when you’re getting ready in the morning, set aside fifteen minutes a day to ask questions about your business and entertain answers beyond the systems and expectations you have in place.

• Practice reverse engineering. Instead of tossing an idea because it seems impossible from the start, try beginning from the finish line and working backwards to the beginning. What would you have to do? What else is possible?

• Keep a pad of sticky notes by your bed and in your workspace so you can quickly jot down any idea that shows up at an inconvenient time.

• Create a folder in the cloud where you can make a note of those bright shiny ideas as they strike and revisit them down the road when you have space to explore them. Or when you need a creative boost or an outside-the-box solution.

• Pass the baton to someone who can make it happen. Back in 2020, I had an idea for an app that I couldn’t bring to life, but I knew someone with the skill to do it, and they ran with it. Even though I wasn’t the one to see the idea through to fruition, it’s incredibly satisfying to know that spark of possibility is now a reality.

When you allow obstacles, impossibilities, and improbabilities to inspire curiosity, you reignite your creativity, and unlock new opportunities in your business.

Join the conversation:

How are you committed to creating expansive growth in 2024??

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