Innovation in Me

Innovation is the word of the new millennium.  Innovation is taken to mean not just technical innovation but personal innovation. To keep pace with the new world, we need to innovate ourselves.

Innovation is a talent that everyone has, yet they think they don't. There is power in innovation. Maybe you’re mesmerized by somebody's creative prowess and ingenuity; fret not, you too can create and innovate. It takes only time, concentration and desire to innovate. Everyone is born with a creative juice. The box of crayons in kindergarten was not only for the kids you possessed the talent or potential; it was for every kid in kindergarten because the truth is that everybody has potential.

Do you remember how long it took to learn to ride a bike or drive or to never commit the same mistake again? The same is true with innovation. It takes a lot of practice and patience before this mind function comes easily when called and when it does it comes naturally. Bringing out those inherent creative juices from you takes time and prodding.

Don't listen to the negative things that people say. Follow the beat of your heart; follow your gut feel. Allowing for the input of other people will only bring cacophony to the music you are trying to make. If you have an original idea, don't waste your time and effort trying to make people understand. They most likely won't. If all the geniuses listened to their peers, we would probably still be living in the middle ages.

Spend time on your ideas. I don’t mean to tell you to quit your job and jump on to implement your idea. Rather, manage your time wisely so that you can spend time to grow and develop your ideas. 

Exercise, take a walk, run a mile or two. Send all those endorphins coursing through your veins to clear and relax your mind and allow ideas to pop out from it.  

Dreams have meanings; record your dreams. Some dreams are just the craziest things that your conscious mind would never have thought of. In these crazy dreams are untapped innovative powers you have lying within. Make notes of your dream as these may just create an innovative spark in you.

Don’t copy or replicate; find your own style. It cannot be called an innovation if it was a mere adaptation of someone else’s work.  People will appreciate your innovation more when it is uniquely yours.

It doesn’t matter if you lack gadgets or tools. A masterpiece is produced not from the most expensive set of paints but from the most creative mind. You don't need some expensive fountain pen or a flashy laptop to write a best seller. J.K. Rowling wrote the first book of the Harry Potter Series on bits of tissue.

Innovation starts with passion. Why do you wake up in the morning? What keeps you going? What is your utmost desire? Sometimes people with talent are overtaken by the people who want it more. Do you remember the hare and the tortoise? The tortoise won the race because he simply desires and worked to win. Ellen DeGeneres once said that if you're not doing something that you want to do, then you don't really want to do it. When you want something so bad, you become virtually unstoppable. That, my friend, is passion. Passion will keep you going. 

Sometimes, you don’t even need inspiration. You can’t face inspiration; you can't force it. Inspiration will hit you when you least expect it; be always prepared. An idea could strike you on the subway and it will be unfortunate if you don’t have a sheet of paper to scribble down an idea that could change the world. Always have a pen and paper within your reach at all times.

I hope these tips helped perk up your creative juices. Above all, keep in mind that you are doing these things for your own satisfaction and not for anybody else's. Whether you like it or not, your innovation, personal or otherwise, will soon be noticed and everything would snowball from there.

Creating an Online Business

An online business is one of the best businesses that a single mom should consider. Funny, but it was in my most trying times that I discovered the internet and in the process was able to build not just one but a number of successful online businesses. Let me discuss with you two online venues/sites that you can look into when creating your online business.

Almost all business coaches would tell you that to be successful in your business venture you have to create a product or service that you are most interested in, are obsessed with or passionate about. This makes sense because if you love what you do, you would never feel like you are working at all. You just keep on doing it and will be very creative with your ideas and approach. Of course, as a single mom there is the added challenge of wanting your business to pick-up immediately because you need the money to support your family. Nevertheless, when I was putting up my businesses the ones that I am more passionate about were the ones that easily made money and looking back even during the hard times I did not feel the burden because I loved what I was doing.

I am not a techy person; the internet offers so many free tutorials and free website platforms that even an elementary kid can do. So creating a website that would serve a particular niche in the market is not difficult to do. The first thing you need to do is to make a little research to determine an underserved need in the market. Since this is your initial venture, do not go too far but just consider a possible need in your community. Observe the market, interview people casually; that is, just asking friends, neighbors and family members what they feel is a need they have which is not being served by the businesses in your area.  When you have confidently identified a product or service that you can deliver, start building a simple website. When you're building a website, you're going to want to find cheap keywords that you can use to promote your business as well as create good content. By creating the content and then creating back links between yourself and other websites, you'll be setting yourself up to have a high page rank with Google. By using AdWords to bring traffic to your website and then also developing your natural search engine traffic, you will have built yourself a very solid business.

The second avenue that you can consider after creating your own website is to use eBay. This is an area which was particularly hot several years ago and still remains a solid business proposition. Many people are able to make a full-time income on eBay. You can sell your own product but even if you don’t have your own product to sell, you can still earn money by using eBay. You will need to find a wholesaler where you can get products at a discount to sell on eBay. The general idea when working on selling on eBay is to find a drop shipper. A definition of a drop shipper is a wholesaler sells you a product and will ship the product to a customer. You will buy the product at the wholesale price and then make money on the difference between what you buy the product for and sell the product for on eBay. Using the wholesaler allows you to focus on selling the product without worrying about stocking the product. You do not need to worry about any sort of shipping or backend but you will want to make sure that everything gets sent out.

These are two basic ideas in creating an online business. There are many ways to make money on the Internet but these are two proven methods. You will not have to use a lot of money up front to create these particular online businesses and these businesses can be something that you will have great deal of success with.

Steps to Personal Improvement

 

 

No one is perfect such that he/she does not have to improve in any aspect of his/her life. The key to personal improvement and success is learning. When you learn about you, what you want, and what specific difficulties you want to change, you are on the road to improving your personal life.

Life is process that goes through problems, diagnosis and solutions. Re-live a time in your life; look back to see obstacles you went through and what you did to overcome those obstacles.  Were your decisions capable of helping you handle the problems? Did your decisions have good or bad consequences? If you made good decisions then, can you use those decisions now to fix problems?

Once you review your history of problem-solving tactics move on to evaluate your skills. What skills do you have that will help you improve your personal life? What skills can you develop that will guide you to a prosperous life? Do you need to continue school? Can you find a better job?

Unlock the Door to Personal Improvement

You need to unlock the doors to your personal improvement. You need to unlock the door to honesty.  When you are honest with yourself and others, it helps reduce emotional chaos. When a person lies, they live in denial, anger, misery and hopelessness; worst is they live in self pity. Stop the pity party and move on. Accept the truth that something or someone (yourself included) hindered you from achieving your goal.

For instance, you deny that you made a mistake in your decision that derailed your career goal. You keep telling yourself and the people around you that what you now have is what you want. This attitude will just keep you in your present position longer (and probably permanently and will forever be miserable) but if you accept the truth and work towards what you really desire then you can get back on track to your career path.

Are you addicted to sex, alcohol, and cigarettes? How about shopping, work, food? If you discover an addiction seek help. There are support groups, helpful resources including addiction clinics of all sorts that will offer you a hand. Never deal with addictions alone. This is also to say that you will also need to work on yourself to take control of your addictions. The key to success is accepting you have a problem. Honesty is the key that opens many doors. Once you accept you have an addiction, you will find it easier to get help.

Look Ahead

Look ahead and keep reminding yourself that you will soon get to where you envision to go. I love this quote though I can’t remember who wrote it “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.” When you look ahead, you are visualizing your future. Visualization helps you to keep improving yourself so that you reach your objective. Steps, no matter how small, will get you towards your goal as long as you keep looking ahead and keeping focused to your objective.