Part 1: How to Recognize an Idea Worth Pursuing

This article is part of a 3-series. Go here for Part 2 and Part 3.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Everyone has them. Things we should do; things we should stop doing. Or things we could be doing, creating, producing, changing, enhancing, trying, living, or just dreaming. It does not take a special person to think of ideas. Even little kiddies have ideas — mostly bad ones with consequence but they do have ideas.

A healthy, functioning brain and body has thoughts, desires, opinions, aspirations, and oh yes, emotions. The thought of going through a day without a single idea is unimaginable to me. I have a hard time keeping track of mine, and you know what? The number of these ideas keep climbing in direct proportion to my well-being. The better I eat, the more fit I feel, and the more exercise, yoga and meditation I build into my habits, the more ideas run through the windmills of my mind. This sweet effect is so undeniable lately — partially because I feed the cycle more and more just for kicks – that it feels as though a sleeping (and beautiful!) bear is slowly coming out of hibernation — and this lady bear is ready to put some of her ideas into serious action.

But how do you know when an idea is good? When you have an idea definitely worth pursuing? When is it that your idea warrants even a sacrifice, a serious change of lifestyle, and a step or two backward before you can take that giant leap forward?

You should seriously consider sticking to an idea if you ….

• Hear the idea in your head frequently.
• Feel the urge to immediately write it down.
• Find that you keep telling it to yourself.
• Think about it — a lot.
• Feel butterflies in your stomach from thinking about it.
• Imagine what if you turned the idea into action.
• Love hearing it said.
• Love the idea itself period.
• Delight in saying it just to hear it to dissolve on your tongue.
• Daydream about it.
• Dream about it.
• Lose sleep over it.
  
• Wake up to it after a sweet slumber.
• Stare out in space and visualize the idea materializing before you.
• Obsess with the very thought of it.
• Believe in it.
• Want to keep it entirely to yourself until you are ready to reveal it.
• Reveal it with passion, zest, enthusiasm and energy.
  
• Defend it against naysayers or “the realists” after you do reveal it.
• Know that the only way you can stop thinking about the idea is if you did something — anything — about it.

Ideas can still be good even if you do none, one or two of the above. But what if by chance, by a rare shot in the dark, by a scarce stroke of luck, your idea consumes you in all the ways I counted? Then my darling friends, do not waste another minute before you lock that idea into your sanctum and move and shake your world until you make it happen.

So tell me, what was your last good idea? And what, pray tell, did you end up doing about it?