Ideas are EVERYTHING!

 Monday Message from Margo      10-26-09

“ Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.”     ~Andre Malraux 

This week I want to remind you of a vocabulary word I made up for you last year (please, no laughing). The word is IDEAING (idea-ing).

Although we just finished  discussing over the last two weeks about moneytudes (our money attitudes), I’ll say with certainty that your most valuable of all resources are NOT the dollars in your bank account or the investments you have tucked (somewhat) safely away. In fact, your greatest resources are bigger and better than money, because of their ability to sustain you throughout your life, and because of their ability to reproduce and deliver prosperity upon prosperity, in many areas that matter to you. Your greatest resources are your IDEAS.

Ideas are everything. Our ideas are full of power. They have within them the potential to create and to connect, to bring us happiness and to bring harmony into our lives and into the lives of others. New ideas and innovative thinking can drive our businesses and our personal lives to success, in both small and big ways.

Our ideas are what make us wonderful human beings, and fuel us to live well, enjoy relationships, and love to the best of our ability. Ideas help us succeed in business, and excel in personal endeavors. As you get in touch with your creative side through the skill of IDEAING, you will immediately feel strong and energized.

I believe there is something in the air that is calling all of us to use our marvelous brains to create a better experience for ourselves, our families, our customers, and our communities. Stirring up and expressing our ideas will most certainly empower us to live life better than we ever thought we could. Money cannot buy what creativity and marvelous ideas can. Putting great ideas to use over time as well as experiencing them in small ways in daily living is the true essence of wealth and success.

IDEAING is the act of allowing your ideas to be expressed, and capturing them (usually on paper), so that you can look at them more closely and with further purpose. IDEAING involves relaxing and allowing thoughts to flow. It also involves active thinking, innovation,  and sometimes problem solving. Most importantly, IDEAING involves planning—putting your thoughts, ideas, and innovations into a plan for potential action. 

Within your heart and mind, there is an enormous wellspring of exciting ideas, needed creativity, and useful ingenuity. These thoughts reside in an inner ”container” within you that must be stirred up. YOU must stir them up in the process of IDEAING.

Never let other people, the media, the state of the economy, and even your own negative thoughts tell you to stop IDEAING or to look down on or stop acting on your good ideas. Let your ideas—even the absolutely over-the-top, off the wall, or seemingly laughable ones be what catapult you to new life events, and to new business offerings that customers are ready and eager for. I believe that if you determine to serve yourself and others through valuable ideas that you act upon, your business and your personal life will soar to new frontiers.

Of course, any new and solid idea that has real promise will need to be developed, and that takes resources. Not to worry. Take IDEAING one step at a time, knowing that the same energy (the act of IDEAING) that formed your great idea in the first place will once again be there to help you figure out ways to actually move upon that idea and bring it to full fruition, in other words additional IDEAING sessions will help you to find ways to secure the resources needed.  IDEAING is a process that has success and completion built right into it, and it is also a process that is contagious and never-ending.

Our ability to think up ideas coupled with our willingness and confidence to move on them is what brings true success. I know without a doubt that it is my ideas that make me tick and connect me with others. My ideas help me to build and help me to bridge, and they bring joy to me and to others, including my loved ones and my customers. My ideas are also the gold that fills my pocket book. My willingness to shake up my ideas and act upon those that ring out with meaning is what gives me deep joy. This IDEAING process has so energized me every step of the way through my life and career, and caused me to LOVE the PROCESS of success, and not simply the destination. My ideas and especially my ability to dream them up are more valuable to me than all the money in the world. 

Your Action Exercise (I like to give this to you once every year or so):

Look for a challenge, roadblock, opportunity, problem or issue in your business (or personal life) this week. Write down the issue. Next (this is SO important), translate the issue or problem into a positive statement about what you WANT. This will give you a positive focus (NEVER focus on what you DON”T want) and the IDEAING STIMULUS for your IDEAING session.

For example, if the problem is “I don’t have enough sales to make ends meet”, give that thought a positive focus by changing it to something like, “I will increase my sales by ________ percent so that I can pay all of my bills each month, pay myself a salary, and have a profit left over for my business account”. This statement is the positive IDEAING STIMULUS for your IDEAING session.

Now, get out a paper and pen. At the top of the blank page, write down a shortened version of your positive IDEAING STIMULUS, in the form of a “how to” statement, such as “How can I increase sales to get paid AND make a profit?”

Begin writing. Brainstorm, and I mean, LET IT STORM! Let all of your thoughts come out on paper all over the place. Don’t try to control the process. Let the obvious ideas come out, and then KEEP WRITING. You must get past the obvious. Have fun with it. Don’t think about the soundness or unsoundness of the ideas. Just jot things down quickly. If a thought really speaks to you, expand on it a bit if you must, but keep the focus on ideas that could possibly help you accomplish your goal of increased sales and profits. The more ideas you write, the wackier they will get, and in a brainstorming session like this, it is usually the last 33 percent of your ideas that are golden and have the potential to really take you to a new level.

Once you have a page full of ideas, sit with this paper over an hour, a day, or a week (it’s up to you). Try to group like ideas together to create a few solid “categories” of ideas. As you study your notes, one idea will speak to YOU (focus on one)! It will feel good and make sense to YOU. Play with it, reconfigure it, and begin to plan some action steps around that idea. Your success will not be far away.

Today, know your ideas can and will work—not all of them, but many of them. Never stop brainstorming just because something didn’t work out. That’s like throwing a fabulous little baby out with the dirty bathwater. We would never do that, and likewise we should never stop IDEAING! Don’t forget, it is not the material things that make your life and your business work for you. It is your powerful ideas that drive you, excite you, and give your feet a reason to be put into action.

P.S. ONLY YOU can contribute the ideas that are in YOUR container.

Have a wildly successful week filled with YOUR great ideas,