In my role as an experienced coach supporting leaders to reach their peak, I’m highly focussed on limiting beliefs, choice of words, and also where language is phrased negatively rather than positively.
It is a little absurd then, that I have often used a certain phrase, and even written an article about it: “No such thing as an original idea“. As I put in that brief article:
“…I recognised that {a recent post} was, to use a musician’s analogy, a riff on a recurring theme, in this case: “less is more”. A favourite phrase of mine is “there is no such thing as an original idea”. I believe, though, that we are always listening, learning, developing new ideas to develop, extend, evolve ideas.”
So, my own belief around the phrase “no such thing as an original idea” can be qualified as I described above.
That said, in a recent call with Nilofer Merchant, author of “The Power of Onlyness” (see article here), she totally challenged me when I used that line around the themes I am looking to incorporate in the book I am in the processing of writing.
She reminded me of the definition she created of “Onlyness”, being:
“You’re standing in a spot in the world that only you stand in, a function of your history and experiences, visions, and hopes. From this spot where only you stand, you offer a distinct point of view, novel insights, and even groundbreaking ideas.”
Thank you Nilofer, that landed like a really good smack in the mouth (in a good way!).. it woke me up to my language and my own self-limiting beliefs around my own “distinct point of view, novel insights, and even groundbreaking ideas.”
As I left that call, past ideas I’d had flooded back to me from across the years. Yes! I’ve had LOTS of ideas, what was I thinking? ?
Other books include the idea that we can all be original, all grow, all succeed, and in our own way we absolutely can. A few books along this theme are:
- Originals – Adam Grant (articles featuring Adam here)
- Mindset – Carol Dweck (see “Writing I Love – Mindset“)
- Grit – Angela Duckworth (see “Emotional Equations – Grit“)
Each of these books brings awareness to the abilities we all have to succeed (as we define it for ourselves) and brings tools to support us, to be original, to move from fixed to growth mindset, to have grit.
I leave you today, though, with a picture of a quote I’ve reflected on more since my “wake up call” (literally!) with Nilofer, and it takes me back to the fact that we all have our unique “Onlyness”.
From what B.J. Neblett says, we all absolutely have our own unique insights, creativity, ideas to bring to the world.
With this, then, please reflect on the question in the title of this article:
What is your original idea today?
