Where do All These Ideas Come From?

Since I began this Blog last September, I have made 52 posts. Each of these has been either an idea I have developed or a post of an article I had previously written for another purpose. I was asked where do all these ideas come from? So, this post will address one of the most important behaviors of any Legacy Leader; open minded observation.

What prevents the average person from coming up with new ideas is observing what goes on around them with a fixed mindset. When you try to fit everything you experience into a context that only considers your personal view of the world, the application of each experience is constrained. By asking one simple question you change your level of understanding and your opportunity for creative applications. That question is “what are all the ways this experience can be interpreted and applied to my world?” Once you start looking for these broader interpretations and applications you open your mind to many ideas you never thought of before. In reality, these may not be new ideas for the world, but they can be major innovations for you.

By failing to examine alternative interpretations and applications of what you observe and experience, you limit your ability to understand. Using the same lens to examine everything prevents you from seeing details that can only be seen through a different lens. Until the invention of the microscope, science had no idea that living organisms were made up of cells. This breakthrough observation has led to millions of new ideas that have saved millions and millions of lives and has led to amazing improvements in the quality of life we all experience. But, by failing to continue our ongoing search for alternative interpretations and applications of the observations we make, we relegate our minds to the dark world of the fixed mindset.

The most innovative people can suddenly become the people who protect the status quo when they forget how they became innovators. It didn’t happen by protecting what is. It happened by being open to other possibilities, other ways to interpret what seems like the “right way,” and other perspectives. Truly having an open mindset requires vigilance. Our brains have evolved with a protective default setting. Our brains will naturally try to create a safe zone. It is in this safe zone that growth stops and fear begins. All change and innovation ceases. It is here that we become convinced that we have reached the end and that no further improvements can be made. I have a personal experience that illustrates this point. More than 40 years ago, a very knowledgeable science teacher was told by one of his students that his father had just photographed a water molecule. That teacher told the student that was not possible. It would take a microscope that used lenses that were impossible to make. Of course, as we know today, if you use an entirely different technology to help the human eye make the observation, photographs of the water molecule is completely possible. That student’s father was Dr. Albert Crewe, the inventor of the scanning transmission electron microscope. As soon as we believe we can’t improve any more, we are right but only about ourselves. The rest of the world will continue to look for new ideas, new interpretations of old ideas, and new applications for both.

So all these ideas, they will keep on coming as long as I am open to the possibilities. You can be too. Change your mindset and you change your opportunities. Be open not fixed. That’s the secret to being able to have an endless stream of ideas.