By Mark Usher.
Photo by Andras Toth
If it’s to Peak Innovation you want to rise, you’ve got to find what works for you, then ritualise.
In my work as a transformational life coach I help people create miraculous, innovative turn-arounds in their lives. Innovative in the sense it involves the discovery of new powerful strategies of thinking, speaking and behaving, which when repeated, help my clients achieve breakthrough steps into newly imagined realities.
These new strategies become their Rituals.
The Greek root of the word ritual is “ritu”, literally meaning “that which is proven to work”. Reaching your Peak Innovation becomes a simple process: find everything that places you into a highly innovative and creative state of being and repeat it. Every. Single. Day.
Consistently doing this shifts Peak Innovation from being a temporary state into being a personal trait.
I went to a recent Innovation workshop in which some of the most important key players of the manufacturing industry of Ireland were present. The future of their companies’ ability not only to thrive, but to survive, rests almost exclusively in their individual and collective ability to be innovative. And yet when I asked any of them what innovation rituals they practiced I was met by looks of bewilderment. Nobody had any known daily or weekly ritual they used to be their best innovative selves outside of company “innovation meetings” when they were expected to turn up and turn on the innovation switch.
And yet the world’s greatest innovators, visionaries and disruptors have always used the full power of rituals.
Thomas Edison, one of the world’s greatest inventors, sat at the river side fishing with a line that had no bait on it. Undisturbed peace of mind was all he wanted to allow his greatest breakthroughs to happen.
Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most innovative social disruptors ever to have lived, would go meditate whenever a solution to a problem remained elusive.
World-renowned mathematician David Goss has spent over forty years creating an entirely new mathematical language in which we can solve problems that can’t be resolved in traditional language. His breakthrough ideas would always come when he stepped out of intensive work and step away into going for a walk, going on his exercise bike; setting the stage “for what happens when you step away.”
Oprah Winfrey practices meditation every morning. “Knowing for sure that even in the daily craziness that bombards us from every direction, there is — still — the constancy of stillness. Only from that space can you create your best work and your best life.”
And then there are the New Zealand All-Blacks. In the ferociously competitive world of international rugby they have been the most dominant team ever seen. Their unparalleled consistency of excellence is built upon their superior ability to find innovative ways of breaking through the best defences in world rugby. The key ingredient behind their clear Peak Innovation success? Probably the best known, most emotionally dramatic and powerful ritual in existence: the Haka.
This powerful ritual places the All-Blacks into a state of being that allows their Peak Innovative capacities to emerge Every. Single. Time.
The power of these Giants of Innovation is in first, recognising what worked for them, and second, repeating what worked for them Every. Single. Time.
No matter who you are or what your current situation is, your highest inner happiness and outer success CAN become your personal, professional and organisational reality. This WILL happen for you when you discover how to live Peak Innovation as a consistently repeatable state of being also known as a personal trait.
To end as I have started: if it’s to Peak Innovation you want to rise, you’ve got to find what works for you and ritualise.
