“Are you an Innovator?”

I felt intrigued and nervous at answering Dr. Corriel’s question. Why is it hard to own up to our gifts?

YES! Okay. I’m an innovator. And I can also be quite uncreative at times. For me, the key to innovation and creativity is presence. When I connect to my breath, allow myself to feel fully present in the moment, I access innovation—with my writing, my business, teaching, in solving problems, even in relationships. That deep breath, that walk in nature, that slowing down is the key to innovation for me. 

I tend to write advice oriented, practical blog posts, but recently, I claim my creative voice more. I share the things I’m working on as I write my book. And it’s scary to share that offbeat, innovative, quirky voice with the world. 

Yet, when I do, it also feels freeing. I press “Post” and something inside me opens up.

I decided to make my innovative work a bit more public.

I held a bonus call for people in my book proposal writing class and shared exercises for tapping into our creative genius, then offered time to write on the call, in community. 

In preparing for the call and looking through the practices in the book, I felt that some didn’t work well for a class. Maybe some didn’t belong in the book at all. It was challenging to look at them with a critical eye. 

As I shared the exercises on a Zoom conference, I realized where some exercises weren’t that clear, where some needed clarification. And that’s another part of innovation—it’s not all pretty and perfect. You have to be okay with the failures, with not looking good. You have to go through imperfection to get to the best stuff.

Lisa Tener is a book coach and creativity catalyst, who can be linked with on her LikendIn profile.