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Where are you when you get an idea? Are you driving in your
car? Lying in bed? Shampooing your hair in the shower?
Are you in a brainstorming session with co-workers or are
you coloring with your small child?
Ideas can be life changing. While it isn't exactly an
original concept, it certainly is valid. Ideas led to the
invention of airbags and air conditioning, kitty litter and
Kool-Aid, theme parks and thermometers. Someone had an
idea. Someone acted on it. Lives were changed.
The question then becomes, who took the action? Did the
person with the idea? Did he or she take a chance on a far-
fetched idea and make it a reality? Or did the person share
the idea with someone else and then walk away. Perhaps, in
our litigious society, the thinker and the doer met up
again in a court room, fighting over who should reap the
financial rewards.
Of course, not all ideas bring in huge amounts of money.
Some ideas improve the quality of our relationships. Think
of the Mom whose idea it is to pack a picnic dinner, load
the children in the car, and meet Dad at his workplace so
that they can drive to the nearby park or beach for dinner.
That's a great idea! The child who thinks to visit an
elderly neighbor on a warm spring day also has a great
idea.
But what happens when the Mom or child has an idea and
doesn't act on it? What if the Mom is too busy, too tired,
or worries that Dad won't like the surprise? What if the
child wonders what he and the neighbor will talk about and
decides to play ball with his friends instead?
What happens? Nothing changes. The family relationship
remains the same. Dad comes home from work and finds
things they way he always finds them. The neighbor sees the
children playing ball in the street as she does every
spring. Nothing changes.
Every day each of us has ideas. A song on the radio, a
television commercial or a conversation may cause us to
think of something that would brighten someone's day,
change someone's life, or make us feel better about
ourselves. Each day we have the choice to act on our ideas
or not.
But some ideas are fleeting. They seem to disappear as
quickly as they came, and we only remember them when it
seems too late to act upon them. For instance, a man
driving past a florist's delivery van, thinks "I should buy
flowers for my lady love," but before he can fully process
the idea, a blaring car horn pushes the idea from his head.
Later, when he learns from his love that a coworker
received flowers that day, he thinks "Too late. If I buy
flowers now, I will seem like a copycat."
How do we capture these fleeting ideas? I make lists. I
have more ideas than time and energy to fulfill them all.
Some ideas take years to develop or act on. Some ideas are
discarded immediately or eventually. Some ideas I act on
immediately. What about you? What do you do with your
ideas? Do you let them change your life or your
relationships? Do you take a chance to develop them and
reap the rewards or learn from the consequences? Or do you
push ideas to the back of your mind and tell yourself they
won't work, they won't make a difference, they won't
matter?
Yesterday, I took advantage of a warm, sunshiny, Easter day
and spent some time raking the lawn. I get many ideas
when I am doing chores that allow my mind to wander. I
remember thinking about the story I would write for this
month's newsletter and wondering how many people would
actually read it. I know that people are busy and e-mail
inboxes get loaded with more messages than can be read. My
own inbox has hundreds of unread notes. I understand the
time involved to read and process the valuable information
we receive each day. We may not immediately delete the
notes, but eventually we admit we won't get to them, and
discard them.
So I found myself wondering what I could do to make it
easier for you to enjoy the lessons I share twice a month.
I wondered if I could record the stories and put them on my
website for you to listen to. I wondered if anyone would
bother, how much time it would take to download the audio
file, if my website would support it, and a dozen other
questions that could easily have caused me to push the idea
to the back of my mind and forget it. But I didn't.
Instead, I did some research. I asked my husband, my
terrific technical support person, questions. Then I tried
uploading a sound file to my website. And it worked. At
least for me it worked. So now the test will be, if it
works for you.
I've created an audio recording of this story that you can
play from my website. It will take a few minutes to
download. Hopefully your computer is set up to recognize
the sound file and will begin to play it when the download
is complete.
This is a first for me, so I hope you will let me know if
you had trouble opening it, listening to it, or any other
comments. Please let me know if you enjoy this delivery
method. If you do, I will continue to offer it in the
future. If you don't like it, please let me know that too.
I may decide to spend my time and energy pursuing other
ideas. But unless we put our ideas into action, we don't
know whether they will be life changing or not.
So whether you are reading this story or listening to it, I
hope that you will take a few minutes to remember an idea
you've had, one that has been hanging in the back of your
mind waiting for you to do something with it. I hope you
pull it out, dust it off, and take action on it. You won't
know how it might change your life until you do.
~~~
Copyright 2002 by Donna Doyon. All rights reserved. You are free to
use material from the A Swan's Song eZine in whole or in part,
as long as you include complete attribution, including live web
site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.
The attribution should read:
"By Donna Doyon. Please visit Donna's
web site at http://www.donnadoyon.com for additional stories and articles on improving relationships with yourself, your family and the other people in your world."
"Carefree Woman" artwork by Ann Boyajian
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