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Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved (9780345530691): Jeff Degraff: Books. A Letter from Author Jeff DeGraff Rebalancing Your Portfolio Life Have you ever fantasized about your great escape? You know, getting away from the stressful job, the daily grind, the loveless marriage? What if you made a break for it and actually got all the way to the land of plenty only to find that it wasn’t what you really wanted? That’s exactly what I did (more than once) before I learned that the same mindset that drives a person to try to have it all eventually stops them from having what they really want. I made my first great escape at twenty nine. I was exhausted. I had been running full-out for a decade. A marginal student from a blue collar neighborhood in Michigan, I made my way through three degrees in six years working as a Teamster. I got married at twenty three and put my wife through college, as well as the tornado that was my life. At twenty five, I turned my back on a professorship at a top university to go to work as an executive at a regional pizza company. Four years and three billion dollars later (for the company, not me alas), it was time to leave Domino’s Pizza, and my marriage, though not our daughter, who had arrived a year earlier. A single daddy, I retired at twenty nine in search of simplicity, solitude and solace. I found them all, but found them all wanting. My daughter and I moved into a small but fairytale house. We sang songs, read rhyming books and went on magical adventures. Sure the meals were mediocre, the laundry a failed chemistry experiment and our personal appearance merely adequate, but we managed. During these four years I read every self-help book ever written, played my guitars incessantly and even learned to meditate. My social life was a patchwork of yoga instructors, performance artists and earth mothers. I smelled like patchouli and sandalwood. This was a life I wanted? Time with my daughter aside, my soothing daily routines began to bore and annoy me. How much mindfulness and navel gazing could I really stand? How could I have fooled myself into believing that I could go from doing deals around the world to doing tea around the corner without getting altitude sickness? It wasn’t that I failed at making my dreams come true; rather it was that I succeeded only to find that they weren’t my real dreams at all. It’s not just me. My guess is that it’s you too. You might be flirting with an old entrepreneurial idea and are considering chucking your present career to chase that long-held dream. Or maybe you’re a recently retired doctor boomerang back into a medical practice because fishing and golf just aren’t enough for you. Or maybe it’s your twenty five year old kid who is trying to reinvent herself after her hitch with the Peace Corps and is now back in school getting her MBA. We all seem to be chasing something we haven’t got or moving the bar once we get “there.” In my case, I’d gone from brashly pursuing goals to quietly searching for harmony, like a windshield wiper. And then, quite by coincidence, the next stage of my life began when I was able to make a shift in my perspective. Going over my portfolio of investments with a financial advisor, he metaphorically referred to them as though they were parts of my life. And just like that, I started to see new possibilities: High risk, high reward investments in startup biotech firms made me think about a new business I had long considered starting. Blue chips stocks with consistent returns suggested to me that I too needed to commit to daily discipline in areas of my life like exercise. Giving money to my alma mater r[7154] Advance praise for Innovation You“A useful guide to thinking about career changes, entrepreneurial leaps, or general self-improvement, DeGraff’s newest work is a must-read for those contemplating change and wanting to make more creative decision.”—Publishers Weekly“Whether you’re looking to stay competitive professionally, make a career change, or just be inspired to greater personal creativity, this is the book to light the proverbial fire underneath you. It is a pragmatic, step-by-step framework for unlocking the unique capacity for growth in each of us.”—Tom Glocer, CEO, Thomson-Reuters Group, PLC “This is not just another book on innovation. Jeff DeGraff takes a lifetime of learning and teaching and turns it into a conversation about what it takes to change, grow, and create. And he does it with honesty and wit. You’ll discover ‘we grow when our life sucks’ and other DeGraffisms that put into perspective the hard work and motivation that goes into innovating at work and in life.”—Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer, GE “DeGraff translates the innovation strategies and practices used in top-shelf firms into an easy-to-follow road map for making our own lives new and improved. This book will show you how to really make innovation happen.”—Vijay Govindarajan, professor, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
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