Ideas

Truth #3: You can't have good ideas unless you are willing to generate a lot of bad ones.

Brainstorming...I've been doing a lot of that lately due to our small business start-up. We had to come up with a name and let me tell you, there were a LOT of bad ones before we finalized our decision. Same for baby names. We have had several "suggestions" on names, the most recent of which were "if it's a girl you could name her Hermione (Harry Potter reference in case you did not know) or Primm....ummmmm...don't think so! Needless to say we are weeding through a lot of names before we reach the right one for our baby due in June.

It actually helps me to generate bad, off the wall, or seemingly impossible or improbable ideas when trying to come to a decision like this because as wrong as the worst idea sounds, the right one sounds equally right. It kind of seperates the "definitely nots" from the "yes definitelys". I also find it's a good brain exercise to work those creative muscles that we sometimes lose somewhere between playing dress up and starting middle school. Unless you do creative work that allows you to use your imagination or creative brainstorming is part of your everyday job, we tend to neglect this part of us as adults. I have foudn that using your creativity is one of the best parts of generating both good and bad ideas.

So is willingness to speak those ideas to others (with love and respect of course). It takes courage and boldness to speak up and share your ideas- good or bad. By sharing our ideas, it gives us a chance to think outside our world view and experience. Just because I don't think it's a good idea does not mean that everyone else thinks that. Something that might seem like a really bad idea to me might answer someone else's question or solve their problem. If we never share ideas how can we help one another. This is NOT to say that everything that goes through your mind needs to be spoken (talking to myself), but rather that if we are thoughtful and prayer about our words and interactions with others, maybe what we are thinking needs to be spoken with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Our willingness to generate bad ideas in order to get to good ideas also shows our willingness to expose our humanity and imperfections which humbles us. If every idea we ever had was a good one it would sure be easy to credit ourselves with the idea vs. crediting God. If every idea was good, we would not learn failure or what it means to lean on God and the Holy Spirit for guidance and intercession. Sometimes our bad ideas lead us to good ideas because we finally listen to something greater than ourselves.

The struggle of prayerfully weighing the pros and cons of decisions helps us know whether each individual idea we come up with is something that will be a positive or a negative in our lives.  The struggle of even small things like coming up with the name for a business or a baby helps you get invested in that situation- it connects you. You have labored over both the good and bad ideas and come up with a decision. Knowing that you have struggled and gone over all the possibilities- both good and bad- helps you feel confident in your choice. It is the humility, struggle, and laboriousness of creating ideas that makes them so powerful. When you hit upon a good one, it's worth all the time and energy.