You might be surprised by the title of the post, but is there really another possibility? Well actually yes, innovation can start between the ears of someone else. But in any case, it won’t happen outside someone’s brain.

We tend to see innovation as something external, something that will happen one day almost by chance, and yet it’s our way of thinking, judging, feeling, acting, that brakes or enables the creation and implementation of new ideas that add value.

Although we «sometimes» forget, or rather we «sometimes» remember it, these behaviors are processes starting in our brain. The funny thing is, that we don’t normally realize about it, nor become aware of the filters we use to read reality. And thus we tend to think that we all see things the same way.

Well thankfully, it’s not true. If not, what a pain this life would be!. All just the same. We could easily see ourselves as the soma consumers in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

The advantage of not realizing how we operate is that we can keep thinking we are the way we are, we live a present which can not be changed, and that doing things differently is just too difficult, too dangerous or simply impossible.

The downside is that doing so wastes our great potential. One which can only be accessed by you.

If you start to realize which part of your «personal hypnosis», also called education, helps you achieve professional and personal goals, and which part is actually holding you back, you’d be taking the first steps on the path of learning. Learning that when directed toward the generation and implementation of new ideas, become synonymous with innovation.

When you do, you begin to question many of the things that you were giving for granted. You will ask yourself new questions. You’ll try to understand what underlays the labels people use to describe their reality. And above all, you will dare to set up goals in the realm of the unknown. Once you’ve defined these goals, outside the comfort zone, everything will start to be much easier.

Especially if you’ve managed to lower your ego, to postpone judgement, and to assume you have a great potential to deploy. If you do so, your brain will start to enjoy, and to show what it is, what you are, capable of.

Technically this is not a particularly long trip, since you’re already in contact with it.

But it is normally perceived as a scary journey. The fear comes from questioning the certainty that you were accustomed to, and from the fact that you will need to get new mental structures to provide you with the same security you were having when you were in your previous comfort zone.

And these mental structures are at your fingertips. They are called «self-belief,» «self-trust,» and especially «consciousness of the need to operate some of the time outside the comfort zone». Those are the structures you’ll need if what you expect is discovering new opportunities, generating new ideas to satisfy them, and implementing them to delight your new synapses.

It is not an exhaustive list of what you need to do to deploy your innovation potential, but I hope it’s enough to make you think about how you are using this wonderful tool that nature has given you. And which leveraged with love and a little common sense can give you great joy.

Anyway, I hope you remember more often that part of yourself. It’s your right and in my opinion, your obligation.

Good luck in your trip!