Act on Your Dreams or else someone else will
September 24, 2009 at 1:33 pm 1 comment
The other day as I was monitoring my tweet deck (which I love), I came upon a fascinating white paper. What made it all the more fascinating was because it was on a topic I had intended to write on and publish myself! I felt as though someone had just shouted “checkmate” then only to realize no one else was playing. It was me, myself, and I that I had lost to.
Have you ever had this experience? Maybe it was a clever invention that you said, “hey, I had this very idea several years ago.” I run into people all the time who share with me their immense frustration and disappointment over an author who supposedly “stole their idea” for a book or even their very title.
For those of us who have had such encounters, I want to offer just a few guiding principles:
1. There is still plenty of space left in the market for other ideas, inventions, and yes even book titles. Be careful not to fall into a scarcity mentality.
2. If this happens to you on a regular basis, it might be a good idea to take inventory of your life and make some adjustments. One off kinds of experiences can potentially be turning points or even defining moments in life but patterns in life are symptomatic of something much deeper. Pause. Listen. Adjust your life course so you are in front of the next opportunity. Not behind it.
3. Get comfortable being uncomfortable and take some risk developing your next idea. Some very basic ways to begin nurturing your idea is to
- journal about it in free verse (unstructured mind mapping). Nobody is grading your journal. Its just thoughts that are being released into an entrepreneurial incubator… your journal.
- speak it out loud to someone. As you talk about it even in its infant form, you bring much needed energy and nourishment to the idea.
- survey people wherever you go on the viability of your idea.
- write it on a post-it and stick on the rim of your computer
Above all, don’t do nothing… (my 8th grade grammar teach would be unhappy with my double negative here but it makes the point).
Dreams are like leaves of gold that fall from heaven… if you don’t pick them up, someone else will. Excuse me now while I start on my next white paper!
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: Dreams.
1.
tuc | October 12, 2009 at 5:35 pm
So far I’ve been pretty fortunate—my ideas have stayed, for the most part, my own. More pertinent to me and my life, is how to take your dream from an idea, or even a completed project, to the next level—noticed and appreciated. How does one sell books by an unknown author? I’m sure it happens all the time, but HOW? Also, I’d like to start a neighborhood buddy system for dogs. Each owner is assigned a buddy for his pet. The dogs make friends with one another, play together on a regular basis, and the owners feel good about leaving town for a few days, knowing their pet’s having fun and being taken care of. Also, I have an opera in the final stages of composition. It’s already received some really positive press, and is truly a beautiful work of art. Right now, the team consists simply of a librettist, a composer, and an editor/orchestrator/copyist. All no-names. How do no-names go about getting this debuted? I have no idea. Terry, I’ve got no problem picking up dreamleaves; the hard part is passing passing a tree to the masses.