Innovation and breaking patterns with Epicness
How do you shake things up?
Sometimes people get stuck into patterns. They think they are being safe but they are unhappy. This wouldn’t bother me too much except that they make everyone around them unhappy by complaining.
Have you ever heard someone say “It doesn’t challenge me but it’s a good job and it has health insurance…” or something like “I know he’s not ‘the one’ but he’s a stable guy…” Those people are stuck in a rut. Maybe they are ok with that but it is a waste of their potential. We all suffer when someone wastes their potential.
How do you get out of a pattern? How do you get out of a rut?
The interesting thing that I’ve found is that you can break a rut through innovation or epicness. The corollary to this is that the change doesn’t even have to happen in the area that the rut exists. This is an extension of the “Keystone habit” topic that we discussed a couple weeks ago.
You don’t have to kick that boring boyfriend out or quit that milqtoast job. You can innovate in other areas, like your health or your fitness for instance. The point is that by innovating in any area of your life (Work, Family, Health, Spiritual) you create a gravity well that starts to pull other areas into it.
Example: you start eating well and working out and losing weight and getting fit. All of a sudden all those people who populate the other areas of your life start to get worried. They worry that this is somehow about them. You’re losing weight and it upsets the apple cart at work and in your relationship.
It’s funny, or maybe sad, but ultimately predictable that people will feel threatened. Even though you aren’t directly messing with that other part of your life! They will start with passive aggressive intervention and move on to simple meanness.
It is a catalyst for change.
That is how you will know that you are making a difference. You have directly caused a shift in gravity in your life and they are like antibodies trying to kill off the intruder. They are, in their minds, trying to protect the ‘host’ from change.
What do I mean by innovation? Basically I mean trying something new. Pick an area of your life and try something new. That’s it. Simple. But you will be surprised how much inertia holds you back from that simple act of trying something new. “Oh my god, I just don’t have time to join the volleyball team at the rec center!”
The challenge with innovation is engineering it into your life. I’m not talking about trying something new one time. I’m talking about designing into your life that you rigorously and relentlessly try new things. Make yourself an innovation machine.
The other challenge with innovation is the ‘innovator’s dilemma’ that we have talked about before. In order to try something new you have to break, discard or change something old. The scary part is that the old thing may not be dysfunctional. It may be a habit or an endeavor that is ok. The ability to break mediocre endeavors and replace them with innovative endeavors is the thing. It’s quite scary and it can be risky.
You have to make innovation your habit.
That’s why we don’t do it. We ask the question “what if this new thing doesn’t work?” Then I’m stuck without the new thing and I’ve burned my boats – there is no retreat. And that is exactly the power of innovation. You HAVE burned your boats and you WILL have to figure out how to make it work. It will bring out the best in you.
You may have to pivot. What’s a pivot? The pivot is a concept for startup companies where you realize that the strategy you started out with is not working. These companies are nimble enough to change direction quickly and on the spot to pursue a new strategy with what they learned from the first pass.
In one of my startups I worked with my marketing guy and we’d launch a white paper to our list every two weeks. We’d watch the uptake and if it was a stinker we’d change. If it was a winner we’d create more content and products around that theme. In a normal company the marketing calendar is fixed and it would take months to change a theme. Pivot. Innovate.
On the surface innovation looks like taking risk, but the reality is that you will get more from yourself if you put yourself in that position. You will figure it out. You will have sleepless nights and psychiatrist visits but you will look back on it and say “why didn’t I do that sooner?”
I’ve said this before; if you want to know where to innovate look for things that scare you. That is where you will find the big leaps. If it scares you then there is a reason. This is a blind spot for you and you should embrace it.
Ask the question; “What’s the worst that can happen?” I lose my job. I take a hit. The way entrepreneurs think is “I can always get another job, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” It forces you to grow.
Do something that scares you. Look at the areas of your life and see what makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck – Work – Family – Health – Spiritual, something in there scares you. Go do it. Innovate. Get your feet on those hot coals and see how you can dance.
Finally, when you are stuck in a pattern and you just can’t get out of it no matter how hard you try there is a nuclear option – go epic.
This is why running a marathon, or qualifying for Boston, or running a 100 miler changes people. That’s the secret to epic; you exit the epic thing a different person than the one who came in. That’s the power of epic.
Break your pattern by obliterating it. When you feel yourself in a particularly intransigent rut, blow it up. Break the frame of reference. The power of epic is that you purposely cut the strings to ordinary. You cut yourself adrift in an unknown place. This, my friends is freedom, pure and simple.
What are the attributes of epic? Epic will be different for everyone. Epic is a thing that is totally outside your frame of reference. It’s that thing that you would never have considered possible – until you do it. It is consciously putting yourself in the position of unknown territory, terra incognita. There be dragons there.
It should scare you but not as much as you think, because once you commit to epic your frame of reference is broken and the old rules don’t apply. All those reasons for fear are now disembodied butterflies fluttering about and they really don’t matter because you’ve got this epic thing to snuggle up with every night.
It doesn’t matter if you are actually successful at this thing. You may surprise yourself because it’s amazing what you can do once you decide it can be done and commence to do it. Even a near miss or an epic fail breaks your frame. Failing is sometimes more powerful because it makes you mad and you learn from it.
So, my friends, where can you instill a mindset and practice of innovation in your life? Or do you need to break the frame and go epic?
Cheers,
Chris,