The World of Our Ideas

I’m sure you’ve heard of the book “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. If you watch vloggers on YouTube (esp. Self-Growth junkies), you would always hear most of them recommending that book.  If not, then you’re in for a treat, most especially if you’re into productivity and creativity. It’s one of those books that everyone should read before they die. 

Before reading this book, I have always thought about ideas as just this thought or these thoughts that come to us while staring into space, perhaps while doing the dishes or something, or these thoughts and imaginations that just come to you when triggered by experiences, movies, etc. That’s all I thought about ideas. They just drop by. 

After reading this book, my gosh, I asked God and the universe, like, where has this book been all my life? To be honest, I’ve seen this book in the store, and this had always been waiting for me to pick it up from the shelf and just read it. 

Ms. Elizabeth gives us this fresh perspective in a segment of her book about how we should think of our ideas, that I never even thought of before. You can imagine me gawking at the book and nod my head in enlightenment. Here are my two important takeaways: 

IDEAS EXIST IN THEIR OWN WORLD  

Ideas are these spirits that roam around their own world looking for their host, their partner. They’re looking for who they think is their perfect writer, inventor, filmmaker, cook, architect, entrepreneur, painter, businessman, engineer, etc. that will help them manifest into the real world. 

Once they found you, they present themselves to you. Perhaps like “Hey! Here I am” or like a “Uhm, hi. I’m right over here. I’ll be over in just a second” They could just come to you like when you’re washing the dishes or they could come to you through something that triggers you like, what I mentioned before, a movie or an experience. 

COMMITMENT TO AN IDEA IS A RELATIONSHIP

Think about it.  Treat your idea like a human being. You fall in love with it (Eureka moment). You commit to it. Your idea and yourself will always find time to spend time with each other if both of you are fully committed to the relationship. 

What if you’re not really that committed. Half-hearted. Your idea will start to notice. Both of you will grow rather distant. You both try to make it work. Your idea might think, “Oh he/she must be busy. Everything’s okay”Actually, both of you may think that it’s still there, that spark, that willpower. You both kid yourselves until eventually when you wanted to sit down with your idea…it left. 

That’s what happened to Ms. Gilbert. She sat down in front of her computer, fingers hovering over the keyboard, and then…nothing. Her idea left her. It wasn’t writer’s block. She couldn’t force herself to get it out in the paper. It wasn’t there. 

But the unbelievable happened.  

YOUR IDEA CAN COME BACK TO YOU...OR CAN FIND SOMEONE ELSE

Your idea may have left you and may still hover there in the universe. It can perhaps come back to you, giving yourself a second chance, believing in the fact that it’ll workout;  but there’s also a chance that it found someone else.  

Ms. Gilbert met an author that had the same idea as hers, the same idea that left her. It wasn’t exactly the same, but most of it is. They were both amazed, gobsmacked. It was a surreal moment for both of them. That’s why there’s a saying that goes along the lines of “Create it now before someone else does” 

—— 

It’s nice to think in this perspective, in this mindset. As of this moment, it’s hard for me to swallow that perhaps that my script idea has already left me. Or maybe it hasn’t. Perhaps I’m just trying to cling onto it, and I need to let it go. It’s just that somewhere in my heart, in my willpower, that I need to write and film this script, that I need to bring it to life, into the world.

Here’s my two cents if you’re anxious about losing your idea. 

It really takes a lot of “WHY” to make things work out again, and then it takes the “WHAT” to push things through. For example, “Why am I creating this idea?” And your answer would be the main purpose, the bigger picture. This usually pushes you and motivates you and inspires you. And when you have it, you ask yourself, let’s say “What is my next step?” Or “What should I do to make this work?” From there, you are united with your idea again. 

But then again, sometimes the WHY and the WHAT is not enough. And it’s okay. Sometimes, you have to accept and realize you have to let it go. Maybe you can find someone else who can create your idea better, who is more qualified for the job. That’s what happened to one of my bosses. We thought he would submit a concept to our company’s internal contest, only to tell us that he lost passion for it. He had that idea for, from what I remember, a pretty long time.  

With this enlightening idea, perhaps this will help us look over on our commitment with our ideas. Do you really want your idea to come out to this world, or you’re just afraid? 


What do you think of this perspective?