Buddha's Best Innovation Practice #3

[NOTE: Welcome to another installment of The Enlightened Innovator: How Buddha Changed the World for Good And How You Can Too. In this series, we learn to innovate better toward an enlightened world. We do this, not through studying what Buddha said and taught, but rather by observing what he did. Then we put his actions into practice.]

In the last posts, we explored the first two innovation practices Buddha took toward innovating the way to achieving enlightenment in this world. He found a quiet, protected, open clearing, and took some simple steps into that opening. You can find all prior posts here.

In this post, we look more deeply at the third innovation practice Buddha took: He took a good look around and at where he was.

BUDDHA’S BEST INNOVATION PRACTICE NUMBER THREE: 

Look Around

“Observation is the big game changer in our company.” 
— Scott Cook, founder, Intuit

You’ve found open space.

You’ve stepped into it.

You’re immersed in new terrain.

Take a moment.

Look around.

What do you see?

Take out your list of twenty ideas from the second practice that was outlined earlier. Or look at some of the things your initial steps have revealed. Perhaps your first steps were to Google some financial planning software packages, or look up ways other people have made their homes more energy self-sustaining. Whatever it is, don’t make any decisions yet. Just calmly take a look at where your first steps have taken you.

You will be in a different place. It may not be far from where you took your first step, but it’s a whole different view. But you won’t notice how far you’ve come if you don’t stop to appreciate it.

Get a visceral sense of the surroundings. Feel them. Relax into the moment. See what’s going on around you.

Just look. Just see. Don’t try to figure anything out. Just observe. Breathe easy. Let it be.

A Crappy View

In the last practice, we used the example of Kristen Murdock who stepped into the desert landscape around her home and found a whole bunch of dried cow patties and started collecting them. So you’re probably wondering what she did with all that dung piling up in her garage. She took a look around and saw that it was good. Some of it was disintegrating, so she shellacked it. She liked how colorful and solid they turned out to be, like petrified wood.

She still didn’t know what she would do with them. And that’s a good thing. Too often, we begin forcing our way into solving a problem. Instead, just sit with the beauty of where you are—dirt, crap, and all. Eventually the idea of putting clocks into the colorful patties came to her one night. She turned them into gag gifts. Her friends began receiving the unconventional tokens of appreciation with silly sayings on them like “For all you do, this crap’s for you,” and “You Dung Good.” “None of my girlfriends liked them,” she says. “They hated them . . . they thought it was so sick.” But—and here’s the beauty of following your gut, even when you’re not sure where it will lead—she gave a dung clock to a friend who happened to be a friend of Donny Osmond. Osmond ordered one and presented it on the Donny and Marie Show. The orders started flowing in. Today, Murdock refers to herself as an “entre-manure.”

When you step into your own ideas, what do you see? Then, after you look around, you are ready to take the next step: Declare a big, bold intention!

________

James Lopata is the founder and CEO of innerOvation, which provides executive leadership and entrepreneurial coaching services to organizations and individuals who are changing the world for good. He is a certified professional coach who works out of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He holds a Masters Degree from Harvard University, where he focussed in Buddhist Studies.

______

P.S. For more on enlightened innovation, please visit www.TheEnlightenedInnovator.com.