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ChangingMinds Blog! > Blog Archive > 14-Sep-14

Sunday 14-September-14

Big Ideas

Sometimes you might be dozing, strolling, driving or otherwise not thinking too much, when a thunderbolt strikes you as an idea just materializes from thin air. Ideas can also appear when you are straining to find them, but often as not they turn up in their own good time.

Ideas can be useful, they can be wacky and, sadly, they can turn out to be impractical. And now and again they can be great. Big ideas are those things that change lives. Often it is just your life that changes when a new realization makes you see the world differently or you come up with a way of making your life much easier. Sometimes, even more rarely, the idea can change the world, such as when Einstein linked mass, energy and the speed of light, or when Mark Zukerberg came up with Facebook.

Big ideas can arrive fully formed, though often they arrive in a jumbled mess that needs a lot of work to untangle before the brilliance is revealed. There are few rules about great ideas and many are stillborn when they are not recognized, not developed or otherwise starved of the oxygen they need to become the world-changing phenomena they could be.

When we have a big idea, sometimes we know it's a biggie, though often it takes a while for another aha moment to come along as we realize we've got a monster on our hands. You can have big ideas skulking at the back of the mental cupboard for years before they declare their greatness. Maybe there's some in there right now, just waiting for the right moment.

One of the big ideas I had was to write this website. It's been pretty successful and kept me out of mischief for a dozen or so years now. It's pretty much panned out as I planned. My goal was 'touch the world' and it seems I have as I regularly sell books around the glob and I've received many nice letters from many countries. Another is the CIA Needs model, about which I'm now writing a complete book, though it took a few years to realize this model was worth the effort to expand and detail it. Another realization was that a major skill I have is insight, finding the core essence of whatever I am investigating. Only looking back at years of work have I realized that this is why it all seemed to work so well.

Just watch out then, for your ideas. Scrutinize then closely. You never know it, you may have a big one on your hands!