When do you usually get your best idea? Oh, c’mon now, we ALL get ideas. Yep, yes we do. Mine usually come streaming from my head as fast as the water running down my body in the shower. And like the water , I leave many behind in the stall–but stay with me here for a moment.

During lunch today with a new friend one of the topics we talked about was how many great ideas we’ve come up with in our lives. Some of them we’ve acted upon and some of then we haven’t. One of the things that I realized for myself is that I’ve allowed many of my ideas to be stopped in mid-stream before I have time to think about acting on them. It’s as if I have a big ole gigantic can of RAID IDEA KILLER that I spray-spray-spray when I get a good idea and that ole RAID does its job killing all my fresh ideas and must have an incredible half-life because it sticks around to retard the blossoming of several new generations of ideas for awhile after the initial slaughter.

Some of the ingredients of RAID IDEA KILLER are: to tell someone your idea who is a natural “editor” about all things possible, to compare yourself to others who seem to be leading a life that you are completely envious about, to pull out what my sponsor in a 12-step program calls “your dripping bag of crappola”, to wish that you had made different choices in your past –and one that I am quite fond of—to pine for what you wish would be in your future.

One of the remedies for someone who has had a good spraying of RAID IDEA KILLER, is to think of your ideas in a different way. If you feel a burgeoning of an idea about to happen, however you would normally handle your idea, find a new way to handle it. For instance, if you usually talk about your idea with several people and get hypnotized by their response so that you don’t feel like taking action–write your idea down and do not tell anyone else until you’ve taken at least 3 action steps for your idea.

Likewise, if you usually keep your idea to yourself and then let it get swallowed up by the quicksand of your mind, think of 2-3 people that you know have your best interest at heart and who you can trust and ask them if you can sound out your idea with them.

I’m sure that someone out there has come up with the statistics to back this up, but I would imagine that a normal human being comes up with a huge amount of ideas per hour, much less per day. I would betcha as well that it would be interesting to interview a couple of great minds of people who make their living out of the ideas they generate. Great technical minds, great scientists, even great writers all get to hook into that inconceivable thing that I believe we’re all connected to and take their ideas as far as they will go. I would imagine that the reason they can do this is that they do not let anything or anyone get in the way of their realizing their idea. Let me repeat that. They do not let anything or anyone get between them and their ideas. Further, they are mature enough to sift through which idea is a “keeper” and which idea to throw back into the pool for further growth.

So, what if we agreed to think of our ideas in a different way. Start paying attention when you get those inklings, those buzzes, those flashes of brilliant insight and treat them with the respect they deserve. If you don’t do anything else beyond acknowledging them for coming through you and enjoying them while you have them, then that is good enough.

Me? I’m ready to see what I can create. One idea that came to me today was that I’ve been berating myself behind the scenes because even though I’m a certified Career Coach, I don’t know what my dream job is and then I realized that I most certainly do know what my dream job is, I love to write and interview others, it’s just I’ve allowed myself to get discouraged by everyone else who doesn’t see or get my idea. All I’m doing right now is being open to various sources of income that are coming to me now while I write and interview until I can create or discover the ideal way to earn income with what I love to do.

It’s the big ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Life is good when we love ourselves and appreciate our ideas. Embrace yours and try thinking of them in a different way.