Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and
magic in it.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau
Does this sound familiar?
You are sitting on the bus or you are standing in shower. Suddenly a great or very useful idea plops into your head. Or you have a moment of inspiration on your daily walk to work or school.
You are pleased with yourself and excited about the idea.
But then the days go by. A month goes by.
And nothing has happened with your idea or moment of inspiration. Life just continues as usual.
I guess we have all been there. It can be painful. It can feel frustrating.
So what can you do to make it a whole lot more likely that you will turn your idea or moment of inspiration into something real?
Here’s what works for me.
Write it down.
First, awesome ideas often get lost because they tend to not stay in your mind for long. Something else comes along and after just a few minutes that great thought may be floating away on the wind.
So you need to capture it before that. You need to write it down.
Choose a way to capture your ideas. I use my cell phone. You can use that or a pad of paper and a pen. Or something else. But has to be something you can use quickly after your idea has popped into your head, so a small and portable object that you carry around with you every day works the best.
Keep it simple.
It can be inspiring to build on your idea and make it bigger, grander. You may for example want to make your e-book into a big education package with lots of bells and whistles.
Or make your idea of starting to exercise into this big production with not only running a couple of days per week, but also soccer and aerobics so that almost all your days contain quite a bit of working out.
This feels good and like a huge leap forward. But the hugeness of it all can become a big problem when are about to take action on all of this.
You start to feel paralyzed and overwhelmed because doing all of this isn’t the same thing as dreaming about doing all of it.
To be able to get started and get some practical results instead of just big dreams a month from now make it simple.
Go out running for 20 minutes once a week for the first few weeks.
Just write an e-book and get that done. Don’t worry about creating a lot of extras.
Get the ball rolling today.
Ideas turn into plans for someday because we don’t take action and make them into a little piece of our reality today.
So instead of keeping on dreaming for the rest of the day take one small action to get the ball rolling and make your thought into something real.
Go the local gym after work and sign up for a one month membership or go out and buy a pair of running shoes.
Create a mindmap of the ideas you want incorporate into your e-book on a big piece of paper or start writing on the introduction chapter of the book where you talk about why you wanted to write this book and how it will help the reader.
Go for good enough.
After you have gotten ball rolling, after you have continued to take action and you are coming close to getting it done – if it is something that can be done, like a book, a song, a project of some kind – remember this: go for good enough.
It is very easy to get stuck in trying to polish your creation until it is just perfect. This will in reality however seldom lead to a perfect final result but simply that you don’t ever get it done.
Don’t trap yourself that way. Yes, it can be scary to let go of what you have created. To tell yourself that it is done – for now at least, maybe you’ll come back to it later on in the future – and to release it into the world and have other see it and react to it.
But it also feels so good to be done, to have something you have created out here. And it is a sort of relief to be able to fully move on to the next thing.
So go for good enough.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau
Does this sound familiar?
You are sitting on the bus or you are standing in shower. Suddenly a great or very useful idea plops into your head. Or you have a moment of inspiration on your daily walk to work or school.
You are pleased with yourself and excited about the idea.
But then the days go by. A month goes by.
And nothing has happened with your idea or moment of inspiration. Life just continues as usual.
I guess we have all been there. It can be painful. It can feel frustrating.
So what can you do to make it a whole lot more likely that you will turn your idea or moment of inspiration into something real?
Here’s what works for me.
Write it down.
First, awesome ideas often get lost because they tend to not stay in your mind for long. Something else comes along and after just a few minutes that great thought may be floating away on the wind.
So you need to capture it before that. You need to write it down.
Choose a way to capture your ideas. I use my cell phone. You can use that or a pad of paper and a pen. Or something else. But has to be something you can use quickly after your idea has popped into your head, so a small and portable object that you carry around with you every day works the best.
Keep it simple.
It can be inspiring to build on your idea and make it bigger, grander. You may for example want to make your e-book into a big education package with lots of bells and whistles.
Or make your idea of starting to exercise into this big production with not only running a couple of days per week, but also soccer and aerobics so that almost all your days contain quite a bit of working out.
This feels good and like a huge leap forward. But the hugeness of it all can become a big problem when are about to take action on all of this.
You start to feel paralyzed and overwhelmed because doing all of this isn’t the same thing as dreaming about doing all of it.
To be able to get started and get some practical results instead of just big dreams a month from now make it simple.
Go out running for 20 minutes once a week for the first few weeks.
Just write an e-book and get that done. Don’t worry about creating a lot of extras.
Get the ball rolling today.
Ideas turn into plans for someday because we don’t take action and make them into a little piece of our reality today.
So instead of keeping on dreaming for the rest of the day take one small action to get the ball rolling and make your thought into something real.
Go the local gym after work and sign up for a one month membership or go out and buy a pair of running shoes.
Create a mindmap of the ideas you want incorporate into your e-book on a big piece of paper or start writing on the introduction chapter of the book where you talk about why you wanted to write this book and how it will help the reader.
Go for good enough.
After you have gotten ball rolling, after you have continued to take action and you are coming close to getting it done – if it is something that can be done, like a book, a song, a project of some kind – remember this: go for good enough.
It is very easy to get stuck in trying to polish your creation until it is just perfect. This will in reality however seldom lead to a perfect final result but simply that you don’t ever get it done.
Don’t trap yourself that way. Yes, it can be scary to let go of what you have created. To tell yourself that it is done – for now at least, maybe you’ll come back to it later on in the future – and to release it into the world and have other see it and react to it.
But it also feels so good to be done, to have something you have created out here. And it is a sort of relief to be able to fully move on to the next thing.
So go for good enough.
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