The #1 thing we need to understand about ideas. (And when having one doesn’t matter).

How often do we hear people say:

“What?! Those bastards/ SOBs just stole my idea!”

or

“I had this idea five years ago. Damn! If I had only acted on it I would be a millionaire by now!”

Well, maybe this idea wasn’t yours in the first place?

And maybe this ‘I would be a millionaire’ narrative is just that. A narrative. A nice story you like to tell yourself. A story how this awesome idea would be just as successful had you acted on it.

I mean, how can you know?

Maybe something else is true?

That this awesome idea was floating in the air and waiting for the right guy or gal and you weren’t meant to be this guy or gal.

You happened to be first, but you weren’t the one. Or you simply weren’t ready. You weren’t the person who could do something with this idea at that point.

Maybe no matter how awesome this idea appears to be and how big of a potential it has, it’s worth nothing until the right person shows up in the right time.

You had this idea and you thought it was awesome. It hit you and you thought you were special.

So why the hell five damn years passed until somebody (not you!) did something with it?

How come the same idea hit this other person? Wasn’t it YOUR idea?

You had it much, much earlier, didn’t you? You were probably the first person to have this idea in the whole world (or at least that’s how the story is told by you).

“OMG, my net worth today would be something like…, I don’t know…, $100M, maybe, maybe… $200M?”

How unfair!!!

YOUR idea. YOUR bloody idea!

You will probably tell all your friends about it. How your genius brain generated it and how you should be given all the credit.

Now, that it is a massive success, you’d like to tell the whole world how five years ago you, of all the people in this world, had this very idea. But you probably realize how lousy it would sound. After all, why would anybody care in the first place? Why should anybody give you credit for the success of this idea?

You see?! That’s the whole point.

This awesome idea was worthless when it was sitting in your head.

It spent some time in the back of your head but then, as soon as it realized that it wasn’t the right place, it moved on.

It moved on because ideas crave to be acted on and when they’re not they go some place else. They visit our heads rather than our heads generate them.

So stop beating yourself up. This brilliant idea of yours wasn’t yours at all.

It was floating in the air, saw you and thought “Let’s check this guy/ gal out.”

You were chosen to be a host and you could have developed it. You could have made it BIG.

But it turned out you were not the right host.

Did somebody steal the idea from you?

No. You didn’t even tell anybody about it. You thought it was too ridiculous. You feared that people will laugh at it, ridicule and discourage you. You told yourself out of it. You were doing just fine inside your comfort zone and although you interpreted it that your genius brain “generated” this idea you did nothing about it.

So, in an attempt to end the endless debate whether ideas are, or aren’t shit (because execution is, or isn’t, what really matters) I’d say the following:

Ideas are not shit. Shit doesn’t float in the air. Well, it can fly sometimes (when it hit the fan), but it certainly does not float. It’s just not how shit usually behaves. It’s not like those invisible particles of dust or those tiny seeds that float all around us.

Ideas are like those seeds. They need a fertile soil to turn into something bigger.

Ideas without the right person mean nothing. And as much we’d like to believe that with us those ideas would be also so successful, it’s not necessarily true.

Ideas need the right host. If you had an idea and didn’t turn it to something big and meaningful, you weren’t the right host.

Hence, as much as you’d like all the credit go to you, and no matter what nice fairy tale you tell yourself and the people around you, there is no real reason for that to happen.

The truth is you didn’t even generate that idea. It visited you.

And if you didn’t act on it this visit becomes just as insignificant as any of all those countless visits of a random fly on your hair.