We started the week talking about keeping a creative and innovative perspective going amid dramatic change. The seven lessons below, originally shared in an abbreviated form on Twitter, were written across several days of thinking strategically about how Brainzooming is progressing and how to move it ahead even more dramatically.

If you're in a situation where you're contemplating making a dramatic change, consider these ideas and how you can get a head start now, before the change takes place:

  • Flexibility is freeing. Design your life strategically to create future options for yourself. You never know when you'll need them.
  • Create situations where you can make as many of your learning mistakes as possible before it really matters. While the intensity will naturally be less, you'll be that much more ready when everything counts.
  • It's one thing to build a network. It's quite another to effectively use it to benefit others and yourself. Beyond simply helping others in your network, work on how you can and will ask others for their mutual assistance as well.
  • Never depend on any one thing as a "sure" thing. Always be prepared for what you'll do "just in case."
  • You may not have your elevator speech down pat the first time you get on the elevator. It may take a lot of elevator rides to refine it. Start the process now.
  • Borrow liberally and tweak ideas. But be sure to extend credit even MORE liberally than you're borrowing!
  • Don't be crippled by someone telling you, "It's the worst time in the world," to do what your attempting to do. In reality, it's the worst time in the world to tell someone it's the "worst time in the world" to pursue their dreams. - Mike Brown