I’m an idea guy. I get wild extravagant ideas all the time, some of my most heretical have come while either driving in my car or when I’m laying in bed at night trying to go to sleep.
Some of these ideas have legs… most of them do not.
Out of the ideas that have legs, I would say less than 10% of them become a reality, and out of those ideas that become a reality, only a handful have ever been “successful.” Most ideas have short life span and do not impact me in any way, they are in some bizarre way a healthy workout for my mind, as new ideas replace the old in a matter of minutes.
But when an idea has legs and begins to move along toward becoming a reality, it becomes apart of my life. And sometimes these ideas fail or come to a inexplicable end due to internal or external factors… Internal hindrances to an idea are easy to deal with – as it includes a natural, and logical progression to extinction. In the times that external factors play a significant hindering role to an idea’s crushing end, it is hard to cope with… and I usually go into a period of mourning – a process within my mind grieving the loss of such a potentially life-altering idea.
Basically, the idea has to die within me so that I can move on.
The Death of an Idea: My Internal Process of Grief.
- Frustration - may include cussing, short temper and general feelings of malaise.
- Franticness - wild, distraught, and chaotic searching for another avenue to avoid the idea’s demise.
- Fall-out - complete resignation to the fact that the idea is dead. Symptoms: avoidance of showering, ingestion of large amounts of unhealthy food, lots of uninspiring TV (aka: NASCAR and CSI), avoidance of anything athletic or creative in nature, et cetera.
- Funk - depression resulting from previous day(s) Fall-out.
- Formalities - official turning point, acceptance of the ideas demise.
- Formation - the beginning of a new idea… the peculation of new and exciting postulations in my mind.
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I’m in the Funk stage today… trying to find a way to put this idea six feet under.
How do you deal with the demise of your ideas?
