At some level, all of us fear something. The trick is not to let it control you! Put fear into a corner and be aware of it, fear is there to warn you of a potential danger. Fear should not and dominate your decision making or you dictate your personality.

Last time we were talking about The 4 Pillars of Success:

1. Self Awareness
2. Ingenuity
3. Love
4. Heroism

Last time we talked about the first pillar, Self Awareness. Today let’s talk about Pillar #2, Ingenuity. From now on, you’ll begin to see how all of these tie into one another.

Self Awareness is the cornerstone to Ingenuity! 

The enemy of Ingenuity is FEAR! Do you have a fear of failing, fear of taking risks, fear of change, or a fear of success? Does your fear cripple you?

Fear will always stop you from moving forward and move you backwards.

Ingenuity is the ability to innovate, to absorb new perspectives, to respond quickly to opportunities or threats, and to let go of strategies that no longer work in order to embrace new ones. And not to be afraid of change, because for some change means being wrong at what you’ve been doing.

There are two vital ingredients to master Ingenuity

1. Indifference
2. The contemplation to attain Love

Today I’ll focus on Indifference. When I talk about Indifference, I’m not talking about not caring or being aloof. I’m talking about being open minded and able to change, adapt, and find new ways to be creative. Indifference frees you from the prejudices, attachments, fears, and narrow-minded thinking the can block the enthusiastic pursuit of new and innovative ideas and opportunities.

Being Indifferent gives you the ability to adapt, create, and respond quickly when the need to change challenges you. Not changing can hurt your business, or put you out of business. To some level, being Indifferent means loosing your drive to always be right and give you the ability to change.

In 1886, Smith Corona was founded and at one time was the most successful typewriter manufacturing company in the world. In 1995 the company closed its doors, out of business! So what happened?

Smith Corona’s closest competitor was IBM. They were both in the word processing business, but IBM seen the change coming to personal computers and Smith Corona ignored the change in word processing. They felt like they had to sell typewriters because that’s what they manufactured, “if we change our business and start building personal computers, it may put us out of business”!  (see what you do vs. what you provide)

Clearly, IBM was “Indifferent” to change and became one of the most successful companies which build PC’s. Before they knew it, they were Ill equipped to fight the good fight of the personal computer business, which opened the door to other computer manufactures.

As in Life – as in Business, the only thing you can count on is change. In order to be successful you need to embrace change and become indifferent to change, or you’ll end up just like Smith Corona, Schwinn Bicycle, and Blockbuster! They all once dominated market share in there respective businesses, but they were all blinded by there own success as to what they needed to do to adapt and change to be successful in business.

The enemy of Ingenuity is FEAR!

A road to a slow death of any company is the lack of Ingenuity!