Creatives: Actualizing Your Ideas Part 2

In 2012, prior to my depressive years, I did a lot of thinking about life and “ideas” were one of my thoughts. What I'm about to share now I have never shared before and I can say it's taken 6 years to think this through but I can only share a bit. 

Ideas Come From Nature

When I think of ideas I first wonder where they come from, I ask myself why the next man has a similar idea to mine or even understands or misunderstands my ideas. In my thoughts I had reached a conclusion that all ideas must come from Nature. 

Why? Because I think knowledge comes from observing nature, so ideas must come from nature.  This makes me want to ask you what Nature means to you and eventually I wonder what's your Nature?

I think about Nature and I can only think of living and non-living things. And it's true, they are the epitome of all knowledge. More knowledge however must come from living things but how much more from the intelligent “man”. 

You must be wondering where this is going by now. Let me simplify; I have wondered how we may have built the airplane if we never observed birds or a submarine if we never observed fishes. If you think that's too obscure, how about “how we learnt to swim?” I do that frog-leg movement. Maybe we learnt more from a frog than from a fish. 

Okay are you convinced, don't disregard the dead part of nature cause I think the mirror may never have been created if no one saw a reflection on the surface of water or if no one saw a shadow casted at noon and also saw same shadow casted at night. 

So I had asked, what does nature mean to you and what is your nature?  There lies where ideas come from and that is how we figure out actualizing our ideas. 

More ideas come from the living part of Nature than from the dead, I just think that and it's also reasonable to think so since the living part of nature interacts with its environment, thus giving us much more to observe and learn from. 

Ideas Come Incomplete 

In my personal experiences I have had an idea to do something, this I’d like to call a “foundational idea”. While I have a vivid mental picture of what I want to do, I realise I have absolutely no idea on how to go about it which makes me conclude that ideas come incomplete, hence we have to go out to get “creative ideas” that can help us actualize.

I don't know why ideas come incomplete, they just do although sometimes I think it's because we are never done experiencing life, if we were, we'd be dead. Now that we've landed on a new catchword ;“experiences”, I'd like to back-up again. So I had said we learn from the living and the non-living. It's easier to understand non-living things, they only change slowly and have an almost invisible interaction with their environment. Now that I've written that I wonder if it's even easy since you’d have to study them for years. On the other hand, the living interacts with their environment, making more visible reactions that need interpretation. I like to call this gaining experience when I relate it to man. 

It's quite simple eventually to answer the questions about ideas. We have similar ideas because we exist in similar environments , thus have similar experiences. Similar they are but not identical hence our ideas are unique and they become more diverse as we explore our diverging crust.

In addressing the problem, I proffer three solutions:

1. Relate what you want to do or create with Nature. Remember how we said the mirror got created or how we learnt to fly or swim. Then, learn or study the underlying principle that governs it. I had learnt a new secret about blogging or video blogging for that matter. It somewhat almost made want to quit my blog because I believe now that I had started all wrong. I discovered an underlying principle only after starting, you know how they say you use your social media to promote your blog, that's true but to do so, they often forget to say that your social media should be the blog and should in fact drive the blog. The secret would be to start first only on social media promoting bits of your ideas and gaining a following which is easier to do on social media than on actual blog platforms or websites. Eventually, when you have gained a good following you can now set up your blog account or video blog and now share even smaller bits of your work on your social media while directing them to your blog page. While it might seem starting with social media is giving a lot of free stuff, gaining a following pays off in the long run and with social media today, you can actually monetize. I guess I never would have figured it out if I never got started in the first place. 
2. If experiences are important for creating ideas, maybe we will need to acquire more experiences to complete our idea (foundational idea). Since we cannot separate experiences from our environment, it's only reasonable to assume that we have to change our environments. This may involve relocating to another city or changing your association. You need to be at a place where the idea is feasible or were you get motivated to do more. Tony Elumelu recently set-up a Public Tech Incubator in Haiti which should carter for Tech startups in the country, I believe there's one in Lagos too. If you plan to start a tech based company, you may want to relocate to cities with  such incubators since there would be more tech-savvy people like yourself in such cities. In another instance, if you plan to do a business in a city that's already saturated with similar ideas, then I hope you have a magic formula to win that game, sometimes the magic formula is finding the city that needs your service or product. 
3. The essence of changing your environment is geared towards meeting new people who are the richest source of ideas. Some will have similar ideas as you do and their successes will only motivate you. You may want to listen to what people have to say about it. That is Everyone who cares to speak.  Chinedu was  slightly angry at a gym mate which he says tried to advise him on his workout. Someone he claims was unqualified to do so judging from his physical appearance since Chinedu on the other hand had a physique that could speak for his knowledge and efforts in the gym. My reply to Chinedu  was to listen to anyone who cares to share because sometimes, they may have met someone who knows much more than you do and in that meeting, learnt something you don't know and that places them above you on that particular subject. Learning this way saves you time. Apparently I have to add that listening doesn't mean you have to take it all in.

The above suggest you define for yourself what nature is to you, which you do by changing your environment and secondly letting your new environment influence you, hence changing your nature.