Talk : Why Ideas Get Away

Find out why ideas can get away and how to ensure the best ones come to fruition. Another conversation between Susie Pearl and me was first recorded over 12 years ago and remastered for Insight Timer.

Photo by Dstudio Bcn on Unsplash

Transcript

How do you stop ideas getting away?

What a great topic.

Tom,

I'd like to ask you about this and find out what you have to say about how you stop ideas getting away.

Well,

Imagine you've got a pebble rolling downhill,

OK?

Then what you've got,

You've got gravity working for you,

Haven't you?

And you know that phrase,

It feels like I'm pushing water uphill?

That's the opposite of it,

Isn't it?

Yeah.

So imagine then you take that sort of as a metaphor into the field of ideas that if you've got things going with you,

It's going to be so much easier.

So there's a couple of ways to do this.

First is that so long as you're taking action,

And there's a very specific kind of action called right action,

Then you're going to go with the flow and you'll find things are really,

Really easy.

And a lot of people will say to me,

Oh,

Tom,

I've had this great idea.

I think what I'll do is I'll go and patent it.

I'll go and get a copyright on it.

I'll go and trademark it.

I'll go and spend lots of money with a patent lawyer or something like that.

And then I say,

Well,

You know this idea you've got,

Have you actually tested it on the market yet?

Have you actually found out if anyone else thinks it's a good idea?

And they go,

Well,

No,

No,

No,

I'm worried about that.

So what I'll do is I'll spend money protecting it because I don't want people to steal it and what have you.

So that kind of fearful energy goes into pushing the idea back uphill and it pushes it back towards the collective consciousness where it came from.

Whereas if you take the idea and you kind of run with it and you think about running downhill with it and you test it out and maybe take a little bit of the idea and test it out on the market,

Or maybe you make a prototype.

And very importantly,

If you manifest it into the physical realm,

It has the effect of actually pushing the idea from behind using gravity and also protecting it.

Because if you run that fear that someone might steal your idea,

Then it might get stolen.

If you have no fear,

Funnily enough,

It almost protects it.

And it may be that the idea needs to shape and change in order to work precisely.

Because often ideas,

They come in in one form.

And by the time you've played and updated and messed around,

They can look really different.

Correct.

And the spinoff can have many more potential sales than the original idea.

And by allowing the idea to get out there and to generate any number of spinoffs,

You start with one seed idea,

But you can end up with sort of 10,

20 or more,

Even better ideas.

And often I've worked in a team where one person comes up with an idea around a table or in the pub or wherever,

And someone goes,

Yeah,

And,

And they'll add to it.

And each jigsaw piece will be added.

And with 10 minds on it in a buddy group or a brainstorming group,

You come up with an amazing,

Amazing growth and a shaping of the thing,

Which looks completely different and is fabulously enhanced by everyone adding a little bit,

The tapestry.

Yeah,

Because you've got people with different ages.

So you might find you've got an idea or a good example is that the hush puppy,

You know,

Might be sound,

Might sound like a really old kind of shoe.

But it's,

It's Michael,

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in the Tipping Point book,

That in the 90s,

People started wearing it in nightclubs in New York.

And all of a sudden people thought,

And this is a really trendy shoe.

So the same idea with the idea of shoe has a different connotation and a context that actually means it's,

It's,

It can sell even more in a slightly different environment.

So different people of different ages,

Everyone's got a different experience,

Will have a different viewpoint on the same seed idea.

And as you say,

It's really a question not of one,

Every time you get two minds together,

It's one and one makes three.

And if you bring a third mind into that,

I think three minds together are as good as five,

And so on and so forth.

I've often found that when I've had an idea,

And I start activating it in some way,

The same idea could suddenly pop up a week later,

Somewhere else out of the blue.

It's like it's come at the same time.

Well,

There's a couple of theories for this.

One reason is that either two or more people have picked up the same idea from the collective consciousness at the same time.

Or it could just be that because you've had this idea,

You're more attuned to people having a similar idea.

And one of the best things you can do by far when you have an idea before you run with it is actually do a bit of due diligence and market research.

And nowadays,

Obviously with the internet,

That's very easy for us,

We can just put those search terms in and see who else is doing something.

And two things happen when you do that.

First is that you may find that someone else has already had the idea and done something with it,

And you could save yourself a lot of time.

Or you see what someone else has done with that idea in a different context,

And you say,

Ah,

Now I see what they're doing with it,

This is what I want to do with it,

And it's completely different from them,

And it's enhanced from your original idea and their idea.

The other thing with ideas is often I've had a great idea.

I've had one or two of my best ideas I've ever had have come under scrutiny,

And people have told me this won't work,

This just won't work,

It's a terrible idea.

And often that spurred me on,

Actually.

And I've noticed that it's not always useful to listen to other people's opinion on your personal idea,

Because your visioning of it may well be completely different to someone else's visioning.

So go with your own inner sense of your idea,

And if you think it will work,

Then there's a very good chance that it will.

Well,

It's funny that you mention the word inner sense,

Because a lot of us,

We use it in our language,

Don't we,

That I'm going to trust my gut on this,

Or I really feel this in my water,

Or that my heart's into this project,

Or my heart's not into this project.

And when we use these utterances,

It's because our heart mind and our gut mind are actually interacting with our conscious mind.

And in every case,

I think,

And I think a lot of people will resonate with this,

Is that any time we've overruled our gut,

I think we can agree that we've regressed it a bit later.

And our gut knows more than we do,

And it's really worth spending a bit of time to get to know our vestigial gut mind.

So what we're saying here is,

Let the ideas flow,

Let them come out,

Be free,

Don't worry so much about who's going to steal them,

But just let them flow,

And follow our intuition and our inner sense.

Yeah,

And let that idea flow downhill,

Let it gain some momentum.

And you know what,

If you find that idea does,

I've found this a lot,

If that idea,

Either you find someone else has done it before,

Or it fizzles out,

It'll let another idea which is even better just pop in.

Beautiful.

On that note,

Thank you,

Tom.

Thank you,

Susie.

Reviews

These are great talks. So packed with insights in a very short time.🙏🏼💜

Tom as always splendid advice. My ideas pour forth and are taking shape. Thank you.

I didn't know hush puppies were born in NY! Very cool! Loved this talk. Time for me to act on some ideas! ☺️