If you are like many people, you do nothing or maybe you tell yourself that when you get home you will write that idea down, but then home comes and you have now forgotten the main premise of the idea or lost it entirely. Or, are you the type of person when those insightful nuggets start coming, you pull the car over to grab a pen, or get your voice recorder out and let the words flow or you simply grab a pad of paper and start scribbling ideas, thoughts, doodles while still in your pajamas.
Facing facts, it is a sad reality that only a small percentage of ideas ever take flight. they don’t get traction due to fear, or because of need for perfection or the idea person doesn’t know how to package, market and sell the idea. In the simplest of terms...fear, confinement or lack of passion will ground ideas. And worse case scenario, your really good idea ends up someone else’s really good idea and you watch in slow motion as it is presented on the shopping channel or as the award transfers hands.
FEAR > COURAGE
“As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”- Marianne Williamson
Amazing to believe that fear is the root cause of so many failed dreams. People allow fear to drive their decisions for many reasons. Whether it is fear of failure or reputation or loss of money, fear eats away at what we are so tightly trying to hold on to and protect. Fear drives people of action to freeze dead in their tracks. Dale Carnegie said, “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Marianne Williamson has another thought about fear. She says, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?” Imagine being all that you are and allowing others to do the same while you have the courage to push an idea forward.
CONFINEMENT > HOPE
“Success represents the one per cent of your work which results from the 99 per cent that is called failure." -Soichiro Honda
Idea People who are unwilling to fail or who are consumed with perfection will find it hard to let ideas take flight. Much like an airplane, wings and an engine allow it to fly. An idea is the same. If confined, the idea will stay grounded. But given wings and a push, it has the ability to catch wind and achieve flight. I say ability, because wings and a push doesn’t guarantee success. However, wings, a push, hope and willingness to fail are the primary ingredients for success. Failure ROCKS not just because it makes success sweeter, but because failure means you are trying. And, who knows better than the most creative of thinkers? Henry Ford said "Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." And, IBM's own Thomas Watson said, "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."
INCITE > PASSION
(v) To stir, encourage, or urge on; stimulate or prompt to action: to incite a crowd to riot.
Type incite into google and you will get a host of responses from the definition to joining groups to [you name it]. Everyone of them is urging the reader to take some form of action. Things happen quickly and, with ideas, speed is a virtuous circle. Per Steven Baylay, Hewlett-Packard makes the majority of its earnings from products that didn't exist last year. Once the simple ability to manufacture guaranteed competitive advantage. That's no longer so. Anything can be made anywhere; the world is flat. Instead, the ability to generate ideas has replaced manufacturing as the engine of the economy.” Add onto that speed, the ability to influence and drive something towards adoption. I read somewhere that idea generators were unpredictable, quixotic and completely unsuited for the business environment. While that might have been true about Bob Dylan (“I follow no one”) or Miles Davis (“I’ll play it first and tell you what it’s about later”), there are many individuals in the workplace with unconventional wisdom who are sparking ideas on a variety of levels and scale each and every day.
Wrapping up, My wish for each of you is to not let fear, naysayers, need for perfection, inability to let go or inability to incite others make you stop. live life as it is meant to be… fearless, full of gusto, with determination and desire. Let your ideas flood the workplace. Incite others through your passion. And, on the days where life attacks you “several days all at once” and you are discouraged or challenged, think of what Teddy Roosevelt said a long, long time ago:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Living life in the arena,
~stacy
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