Like the two ends of a see-saw, the successful small business person has both an active life in the market place and a quiet place of reflection and creativity. It's the quiet place of creativity that I'd like to focus on and talk about this morning.

For myself, I have a study. And in the study is a large 100+ year-old roll-top desk that I've had for over thirty years. At my desk, in my study in the early morning is the time and place where I sit and reflect on the events in my day-to-day life and let my intuition and genius-see Blog # 8-speak to me about "possibilities."

In this place of quiet, the creative spark leaps in my brain from my eyes that see in the "here and now" to an eye that sees ahead, and what might be possible in the future. I call this eye into the future, my "third-eye." Like one of those puzzles that ask you to connect certain points using only three lines, the "third-eye" allows me to see beyond the limited possibilities that my perceptual mechanisms have been trained to see.

For me, it takes a period of prolonged quiet, when the chatter of my everyday mind is stilled, to let these creative thoughts surface and come to consciousness. I've noticed that most successful business people have developed a place and a time where the activity of the market place is set aside and they pay attention to the insights from their "third-eye" of their intuition or genius.

It takes some time and experimentation to discover and create this time and place in a busy life. For you it may be a garden where you come into the rhythms of growing things to set free your inner growth. It may be a workshop, where the discipline of working with tools and with wood or metal, frees your creativity and allows for off-the-wall insights. It may be a study where you read and reflect on the lives of saints and sages that triggers your imagination. For some it may just be the shower!

What I know is that every person has this capacity for self-reflection. Where ever it is that you connect with this deeper part of yourself, I encourage you to cultivate and make it a regular part of your life.

Find that time and place in your physical life to set aside the "mindset" that allows you to succeed in business and enter this inner realm, even if only for a few minutes. Those few minutes and the creativity that flows from your psychic depths, is what allows your business to move into the future and to grow in response to what you actually see happening day-to-day.

The day-to-day world needs to be balanced by the creative energy from your quiet nook.

But not all the creative ideas are necessarily profitable ideas or will fit into your business. You need a filter or a measuring mechanism to test them by. This playful balance between creative intuition and the hard-headed business feedback is a basic idea in The Profit Process. Neither one alone will get you where you want to go. Together, they move you gradually to business and personal success.

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