Big ideas seem to be everywhere, business to personal, the ideas are plentiful. How many people do you know talking about their dream job, or that book or movie script they want to write, or that product they’ve been thinking about making or that business they’ve been working on?
I’m no different. I’m a wellspring of ideas and I’m constantly receiving ideas from clients, friends, peers, and colleagues. I have journals, folders, hard drive space, blog posts, whiteboards, and sticky notes full of ideas. Thinking Big is not a problem for me. I suspect you feel the same way,
It seems the Thinking Big is easy, maybe too easy.
In fact, we are well trained in this production of ideas. From early childhood request to use our imaginations through school and work life where we are required to brainstorm with peers. To further our comfort with ideas we interpret ideas as both intellectual and inspirational often spawn from the world around us, past experiences, in the moment circumstances and seemingly without effort while listening to music or watching TV or simply being ‘zoned out’. We simply can not escape our ideas, they are a part of us. And as my colleague, Kneale has recently posted http://onemann.blogspot.com/2011/04/big-ideas-big-plans-big-business.html it’s a scary thing to have all these big ideas and the fear of failure weighs heavy on us.
The dark side of big ideas is fear.
It seems that thinking big has an ugly side, an often unspoken side, a dark side. With every good idea, immediately coupled with it is the dark side of that big idea, the big fear. A fear of failure, a fear of being seen incompetent, a fear of being evaluated or criticized by friends, spouse, and coworkers. Wow, what baggage.
No wonder we keep talking about our ideas and not acting on them. So long as they stay ideas, you and everyone else can treasure them, you can continue to declare yourself a genius, and you can rest comfortably knowing there really is no pressure to deliver the idea – to do the idea, to take action.
Many of us know what we are afraid of and how to deal with it, However, many great ideas never get acted on because we do not acknowledge the fear that comes from those ideas. What’s worse, is the answer to these fears is quite simple. Give yourself permission to fail and take action. Don’t feed the dark side of your big ideas.
Go, make your ideas happen. Take action and see your big ideas become a reality.
