Creatives: Actualizing Your Ideas Part 1.

What I'm about to share I can only support with a claim, like my friend Faith will say “some of us are blessed with this kind of talent”. A smerk to know human nature and how to motivate men. It's not exactly easy converting thoughts to actions, if these thoughts are actually creative ideas. It's going to take time and effort and sometimes you would move really slow. 

Similar Ideas

In 2010, I think I saw the future, and I still see this future.  It hit me that our world was in need of a new way make cash transactions and at the time, the cashless policy here in Nigeria wasn't exactly predominant. In my vision, I had thought “paper money” would pass away and money would become something vague, stashed all up in the cloud. 

Prior to this era, I had reasoned, mobile Apps would have to be built to make this possible.  Lo and behold, new payment methods evolved and become very popular in Nigeria. 

I felt bad that I wasn't one of those who engineered this change, in my mind I had felt my ideas were actually similar to those that had been actualized by others. Since I wasn't tech-savvy, I didn't know how to go about actualizing my own ideas. But the future's still bright because, no matter how similar the ideas are, they aren't the same as mine and money isn't stashed up in the cloud yet, at least not all of it. 

Get Started!

Eight years later, I have new ideas and still, actualizing them have been challenging. In 2017, I had thought of starting this blog, for anyone who's started one, this might seem quiet easy but for me it wasn't because I had a precise idea on what I wanted to do. Then there were various challenges I had to overcome like funding. I shared this ideas with a few friends and some strangers too who cared to listen.  Eventually, It took me seven months to actually get started and now I'm on a journey fashioning  this to what I really want it to be. 

From my story you will observe I'm not there yet, I'm on the journey geared towards actualization, I have started but it's not what I want it to be. So what I'm about to tell you, I haven't done much of it myself although I'm on it. If I should tell you all it should take, we'd never be done here and I should put that in a book. Now that's another idea which makes me wonder about conflicting ideas. 

Conflicting Ideas

In 2010, I got into college with a goal of becoming the best graduating student in my department, now that was an idea. I didn't actualize that goal because I saw an “opportunity” in modeling. That was another idea. I had no problem balancing these two goals but unfortunately some triggers from the modeling industry made me do things that really got me depressed. Eventually, that cost me my modeling dream and my graduation dream too . I have shared this experience with two prominent architects in Nigeria and I have always wondered how we could separate an opportunity from a distraction. 

A True Story

Mr Ibinabo in his response shared a story of his time overseas. He had gotten into college with a goal of becoming an architect but then he also joined the basketball team where he did an excellent job although at the expense of his grades.  He eventually had to choose between the two when he got confronted by one of his professors who was really concerned about he's wellbeing. 

In trying to make the right decision he decided to ask a simple question “What would I become when I'm done studying architecture? That's an architect. “What would I become after playing basketball for many years?” That's a Coach. I felt better being called an architect than a Coach. 

Relating these goals to ideas we discover sometimes a new idea that's conflicting with what you already have going on is only a distraction. 

Pen It Down

You know we get amazing ideas and get started but along the line we also get other amazing ideas or so we think and get distracted. Ideas will always come, you can pen it down for keeps but always remember you don't have to do it. At least not now that you have your hands full on something else. You also have to create that mental picture of what you are trying to create and stick to what makes you feel good. As my dear friend Faith would say “you can do it all but maybe not all at once.” 

If you don't take anything from this post, please remember these:

1. Don't throw your ideas away because someone has done something similar. If it’s not the vision you had, you should still do it. A new set of people would relate to your unique idea. 
2. Get started even though it's not what you want it to be. It's a process, you will have to build this idea. 
3. Sometimes we have an amazing idea but along that line we get other amazing ideas or so we think. If these fresh ideas are conflicting with what's already on board. They may just be distractions. 
4. Pen down your conflicting ideas, you can do it all in your life time or may find out much later how it all fits together. 

There's so much more to ideas than what have been stated here. This is just a first part and soon the next would be posted, stay tuned!