Not Every Idea That Visits You Is Yours to Keep

I had a chat last week with my beautiful friend Michelle, who runs Fern and Quill. She has an Etsy shop, teaches on Skillshare and has travelled quite a different business path from the one she was on when we first met almost seven years ago.

Back then, Michelle was a business coach. Our businesses have both changed since, as businesses tend to do when the people running them keep learning, experimenting and discovering what they actually want to make.

While we were chatting, Michelle asked for my opinion about something connected to her products. Within moments, I had given her three or four ideas, pointed her towards some people worth following on Skillshare and suggested a few things she could research.

I could almost see her brain start moving as I spoke and she sent me a GIF later with an excited face so I think it’s safe to say, she found something hahahaha.

Give me a question and I’ll give you five ideas

I don’t know whether it comes from my Manifestor brain, the different jobs I’ve had or almost seven years of running my own business. It is probably a mixture of everything I have created, learned and watched other people try.

Whatever the reason, somebody can tell me what they are working on and my brain immediately begins making connections. One thought leads to another, a possible product appears and suddenly I have five ideas waiting to come out. I do this for myself too, obviously. My own collection of side quests is enough evidence of that.

Sometimes it is easier to see the possibilities in somebody else’s work because I’m not tangled inside it. I’m not worrying about whether I have time to make the thing, how it fits with everything else I’m doing or whether it belongs in my current plan. I can look at what they have shown me and follow the ideas wherever they lead.

The interesting thing is that I don’t feel as though I have lost something when I give those ideas away. I feel as though I have gifted them to the person who might be ready for them.

Ideas arrive like paper aeroplanes

One of the reasons I wanted to read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert was her way of talking about ideas. She describes them as if they have a life of their own. They visit us, try to get our attention and may eventually move on if we don’t choose to act on them.

That idea immediately created an image in my head.

I imagine ideas zipping around like the letters in Harry Potter, except mine look more like little paper aeroplanes. They are flying past our heads, circling back and occasionally giving us a determined prod because they would quite like to be noticed.

One might brush past and leave the tiniest snippet behind. Another might fly directly into your earhole and lodge itself more firmly in your brain.

Some will keep circling until you finally say, “Fine. I’ll make you.”

You don’t have to make a contract with every idea

This is where my own thinking wanders slightly away from what I took from Big Magic.

I can come up with ideas at the drop of a hat, but that doesn’t mean I am supposed to create all of them. I may notice an idea, understand its potential and even see what it could become without being the right person to take it any further.

I haven’t made a contract with it.

Perhaps I don’t have the time, the interest or the particular skills it needs. It might not fit the season my business is in, especially now that I’m making a deliberate move towards more art and products of my own.

That doesn’t make the idea worthless. It may mean it came through me on its way to somebody else.

This morning, some of those paper aeroplanes landed in my conversation with Michelle. I could have taken them home, put them on another enormous ideas list and felt vaguely guilty about not doing anything with them.

Instead, I passed them to her.

What she does with them now is completely up to her. She may research one and discover something worth pursuing. Another might lead her towards a different idea entirely. She may decide none of them are right for her.

The gift doesn’t come with an obligation.

Giving away an idea doesn’t mean giving away your opportunity

We can become protective of ideas because we worry there may only be one good one available. If somebody else makes it first, perhaps we have missed our chance.

I don’t believe creativity works like that.

Even if Michelle takes one of the ideas I gave her and creates something with it, she will make it as Michelle. Her experiences, style and customers will influence what it becomes.

If I created something from the same starting point, it would become something different because it passed through me.

The idea itself is only the beginning. The person who chooses it, commits to it and brings it into the world is part of what makes it valuable.

Perhaps your idea is a gift

You don’t need to collect every idea that visits you. You certainly don’t have to turn each one into another unfinished project sitting in a folder, notebook or slightly alarming Notion dashboard.

Some ideas will feel like yours. They will keep niggling until you make space for them, and eventually you will decide to enter into that contract and see where they take you.

Others may arrive because you are the person who can recognise where they need to go next.

Perhaps they belong with a friend who has the right skills. They might suit a client, collaborator or student who is ready to do something with them now.

Passing an idea on doesn’t mean you failed to use it. Helping it find the right person may have been your part in its journey.

So the next time an idea flies past your head like a little paper aeroplane, you don’t have to grab it and add it to your own list.

You can catch it, unfold it and ask one question:

Is this idea mine to keep, or is it mine to gift?

Have you ever given somebody an idea and watched them turn it into something you would never have created yourself?