#11, An Infinite Well, 40 Days of Self Appreciation

You are an infinite well of creative potential!

Everyone is a creative genius including you and I. When I first heard this I thought, “Well, I certainly don’t feel like one.” Of course, I quickly realized that if I don’t believe myself to be a genius of creative ideas then I won’t be. So I decided, in my spirit of optimism, to entertain the notion that I, myself can also be capable of extraordinary ideas. We always hear about new ideas for products and services or general tips, tricks and life hacks. It’s easy to assume that the person who had the idea is special or gifted and that they are something to be envied. We think, ‘Why can’t I come up with brilliant ideas that will change the world?’ Here are a few guidelines for generating better ideas.

• Don’t try to have good ideas by thinking too hard. Try to remain open minded. You want to tune your mind to a state that’s receptive to new possibilities. Think: rules are meant to be broken, anything goes, there’s a sort of fair play. This attitude prevents your ideas from being confined to a preexisting conceptual framework and allows for outside-the-box thinking.
• Listen and ask more questions. Get beyond a surface-level understanding of the topic of interest by going deeper on the subject. Then zoom out to try and see the big picture and the end goal.
• Keep a journal of ideas.

The mind is continuously moving. Ideas can be hard to pin down and even harder to recall later. Have a place to write things down as they come to you. This way you can outsource your memory rather than assuming you’ll remember everything. The process of brainstorming in a stream-of-consciousness-like-fashion is a powerful tool for flexing your genius muscle. Be free to write without regard to the supposed validity of an idea. The act of writing will bring new ideas to the surface. Capturing ideas in writing allows you to come back and revisit them. Then you can clarify and refine your thinking expanding on the good ideas and discarding the nonsense.

The longer you work somewhere and the more comfortable you get with your roles, the harder it is to break the mold. To avoid getting “stuck in my ways,” I continuously seek strategies of getting from A to B quicker and more efficiently, i.e. to work smarter, not harder. I encourage free thinking by employees, and I especially value the opinions of new people because they bring a fresh perspective. I am happy to be shown a new method if it means greater quality or productivity, and I’m not so proud as to believe that it’s my way or the highway. Say you want to befriend a potential mate in your personal life. Sticking to the rules of social etiquette is often boring and forgettable. If you can stay spontaneous with your approach and unafraid to be a little unorthodox, you’ll surprise the person and will likely stand out among the crowd.

Sometimes we might have a brilliant idea that we think is our own only to see it manifest entirely to the credit of someone else. Such is life. All we can do is be willing to act on an idea in the face of uncertainty. Our biggest regrets come from our failure to act out of fear of failure itself. It’s the courage of individuals to act that brings new ideas to life and drives cultural and spiritual evolution.