I chose my mother perfectly. She wanted me to be perfect and I bought into it totally. I imagine that the choice was made during some period when I was out of a body and just an energy - a soul - and decided that a good part of my path in this life would be to always try to be perfect, often fall very short and finally realize at age 66 that perfection is a mental box. It keeps creativity from entering.

Let's look at an example. Let's say I want perfect grooming. I try to figure out how to have my hair look perfect. I try to figure out how my nails should look to be considered perfect. I spend lots of effort figuring out how to dress, moisturize, deodorize and criticize myself into perfection. Does it work? Can I ever really know from my inner knowing how to dress myself so that I express who I am? Of course not! And I probably have cut off that connection of knowing - that part of myself in order to put myself in someone else's grooming and fashion box.
Let's look at another example. Let's say I want the perfect career but I don't know who I am or what my gifts really are and, once again, I have cut myself off from that inner knowing by spending so much time in my thinking-ego-mind that I'm even confused about what others think is the perfect career. Which others really know? Which others are universally judged to know about these things - perfectly. No one, of course. No one, that is, expect you.

You are the only expert on you that you need. How do you take those "cut off" parts of yourself back? You keep learning, being open to hearing from truly loving support and you keep knowing that you are intrinsically, infinitly creative by virtue of being a part of the magnificent Whole. You are perfectly you.

Maia Berens, life coach, personal growth teacher, self coaching programs, has been growing and transforming herself for over 30 years. No more bad marriage, poor self esteem, no $. Join her in a new adventure - Self Coaching Site Dot Com. It's like Facebook plus personal growth - or as her son calls it, "face-up-to-it book". Click here: http://tinyurl.com/mydvbe

Maia Berens, life coach, personal growth teacher, self coaching programs, has been growing and transforming herself for over 30 years. No more bad marriage, poor self esteem, no $. Join her in a new adventure - Self Coaching Site Dot Com. It's like Facebook plus personal growth - or as her son calls it, "face-up-to-it book". Click here: http://tinyurl.com/mydvbe

The power of innovation is a talent that everyone has, yet they don't they do. If you've ever marveled at somebody's creative prowess and thought to yourself, "I wish I could be like that." Guess what, you can create and innovate too! It just takes time. Everyone is born creative. The boxes of crayons in kindergarten were not limited to those who possessed potential. The truth is everybody has potential; it just needs to be nourished.

You know how long it took to learn to ride a bike or drive or to never commit the same mistake again? It's the same with innovation. It takes a bit of practice and a lot of time before this mind function comes easily when called. This article will teach you a few tips on how to bring innovation into your life.

Don't listen to what other people say. Follow the beat of your own drum. Jim Rohn says "Be unique!" Always allow for the input of other people, but don't allow it to bring disharmony to the masterpiece you are trying to create. If you have an original idea, don't waste your time and effort trying to make people understand. Usually they won't get it and the help you get will probably come in the form of negative feedback. If all those past geniuses listened to their peers, we would probably still be living in the middle ages.

Spend time on it. I can't stress this enough, although, please don't mistake this as me telling you to quit your day job. Don't! This involves some time management, but with a little discipline you'll be able to squeeze both in.

Exercise; take a walk, run a mile or two. Send all those endorphins coursing through your veins. Exercising certainly clears and relaxes your mind and allows for the creative juices to flow.

Record your dreams. Keep a notepad next to your bed on the nightstand. When you wake up, write down everything you remember from your dreams right away before you forget them! Aren't some of them just the craziest things that your conscious mind would never have thought of? If you've had these dreams before, and I'm sure have, this only shows you the untapped innovative power you have lying within. So jot down those notes. Those dreams may just create an innovative spark in you.

Find your own style. You can always tell a Van Gogh from a Matisse. You'll know Hemingway wrote something by the choice of words on the paper. It's the same with all of us. People will appreciate your innovativeness more because it is uniquely yours and no one else would have thought what you were thinking. That will let people see what a valuable asset you are.

Don't hide behind nifty gadgets or tools. You don't need the most expensive set of paints to produce a masterpiece. The same way with writing. You don't need some expensive fountain pen and really smooth paper for a bestseller. In fact, J.K. Rowling wrote the first book of the Harry Potter Series on bits of tissue. So what if you've got an expensive SLR camera if you're a crappy photographer? Who cares if you've got a kick-butt laptop if you can't use it to its full potential? The experienced artist actually reduces the number of tools he has as he gets better at his craft: he knows what works and what doesn't.

Nothing will work without passion. What wakes you up in the mornings? What keeps the flame burning? What is the one thing that you'll die if you don't do? Sometimes people with talent are overtaken by the people who want it more. 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. And that's true. Sometimes you just want something so bad you become virtually unstoppable. And that is passion. Passion will keep you going, no matter what. You just have to want it bad enough. Find your true passion and see how innovative you become trying to reach your goal!

Don't worry about inspiration. You can't force it. Inspiration hits when you least expect it. You need to be prepared for those unpredictable, yet inevitable moments. An idea could strike you on the subway, yet alas, you poor unfortunate soul; you have no sheet of paper to scribble down a thought that could quite possibly change the world! Avoid these disasters; have a pen and paper within your arm's reach at all times.

I hope this article has helped you realize the innovative potential in your life. Keep in mind that you're doing these things for your own satisfaction and nobody else's. But soon, others will begin to take notice, and everything will snowball from there. Just don't ever quit and don't ever, EVER let anybody steal your dreams!

About The Author
Lou and Robin Bonaventura have been Professional Network Marketers

for the past 4 years. They attribute much of their success to

personal development and consistent learning. Visit their Blog

and their Learning Centers for more insight into how

personal development can benefit you.

No matter what you have been hearing what others have been telling you, the creatvity process is not a process so complex, that common folks like you and I cannot understand it.

Neither is the creative process a highly mysterious one which is practiced only by those who are blessed with natural creative talents. You can understand and even experience, perhaps for the first time, the practical steps of creativity that great thinkers use to come up with great ideas.

Simply put, the whole creative thinking process can be distilled down to five stages or phases of creativity.Phase 1: Problem Identification/Definition

The primary impetus of creativity is the realization of a problem.

That there's a problem at hand and you need a creative solution to it. This stage of the creative problem solving process is called the Problem Identification or Definition phase. It's when you size up the problem before and attempt to define it by establishing its parameters.

Here you immerse yourself in the problem, searching out any information that might be relevant. You let your imagination roam free, open yourself to anything that is even vaguely relevant to the problem.

The idea is to gather a broad range of data so that unusual and unlikely elements can begin to juxtapose themselves. Being receptive, being able to listen openly and well, is a crucial skill here.Phase 2: Idea Generation

Here, you generate a large number of ideas.

This stage of the creative thinking process should be freeing and characterized by inspiration, spontaneity, experimentation, intuition and without fear.

It is at this stage that you want to be careful about not judging the validity or feasibility of your ideas. Let your ideas flow and suspend judgment or self-censorship for the moment.

Great thinkers have discovered that they can only achieve their full creative potential by learning how to separate idea generation from idea evaluation. They know how to generate as many ideas as possible way before analyzing them.Phase 3: Incubation

This is the "sleeping on the problem" stage.

Once you have mulled over all the relevant information, you leave the problem to simmer. At this Incubation stage, you chew on all the data you have collated and wait almost passively.

You will have to trust your subconscious mind to do all the work. You literally let your mind "sleep on the problem."Phase 4: Illumination

This is probably the most exciting phase.

It's that part of the creativity process that seemingly makes all the effort and work worthwhile.

In this Illumination phase, you'll experience the sudden bubbling up of the answer. The creative solution or solutions seem to come to you out of the blue.

The Illumination stage is generally described as the "Eureka!" moment.Phase 5: Verification

This is the final stage of the dynamic creativity process.

Called the Verification stage, here you look back over the other phases and evaluate your progress.

Patrick C. is a creativity trainer & bestselling author.His unorthodox creative thinking techniques, icebreakers, brainteasers & learning systems at http://www.wordjuxtapoz.com intrigued hundreds of audiences.

It was Henry Ford who said, "Whether you believe you can, or whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right."