Why I treat my ideas like eggs.
Chatting with a friend and she suddenly got struck with a bolt of inspiration. A great idea. Something that would combine all of her passions, would fulfil her creatively and spiritually – and with the potential to support her financially. And it was a little bit 'different'. Sounds fecking brilliant doesn't it?
We talked for a while about all the possibilities and potential and as we were saying goodbye I said: Treat that idea like an egg.
Say what now? (her expression said).
'Ah, apparently I've said that out loud. Ok well…' and I shared with her my ideas-are-eggs theory, and she found it really helpful, so I thought you might too.
When you have an idea, think of it like a delicate little egg. It's got a soft membrane and it needs protecting. Idea eggs are particularly susceptible to other people's opinions. Share your fragile egg with the wrong person and they'll smash the shiz out of it. They might not even mean to, but when we've got a fresh idea, and we're full of excitement about it, these are things we don't need:
Naysayers.
People who are 'realistic' (I mean, they can just feck off!)
And my least favourite: the devil's advocate. I mean, really, you want to represent the devil? Then you and your 'opinion' can just feck off.
(So apparently I'm quite protective of my eggs.)
A fresh egg needs care. It needs love. It needs nurturing. It needs protecting – and if that means we hide it whilst it develops then so be it. That doesn't mean we pretend we don't have the egg!
I've been working on a few new things recently, and a couple of them have taken me outside ye olde comfort zone. I'm lucky that I have a good egg-hatching-support system, so I messaged a friend who knew I'd been down the rabbithole of discovery and said: 'I've just found this in the closet… and I'm telling you so that I can't pretend I didn't find it.'
Eggs, rabbitholes, and closets, it's like a really messed-up fairytale. (Surely the best kind.)
There's another good reason for incubating your eggs in private. When we share an idea, or goal, on facebook for example, and we get feedback and encouragement, it flicks a switch in our minds that says 'Praise received for this idea'. And this can trick our brain into thinking 'praise received for actually doing the thing'. Lovely little dopamine fix in response to the egg, and the idea never takes physical form.
You probably know someone who spends more time talking on facebook about who they are, what they stand for, and what they're planning, than they spend actually doing, creating, serving or achieving anything. They might have mistakenly created a pattern of getting a 'reward' for showing off a new egg rather than hatching the idea inside it.
(Oh god, the temptation to start making egg-themed puns is becoming overwhelming.)
Instead, what I find works well, is to get the egg and incubate it. Keep it a precious little secret unless there's someone you can 100% guarantee will only be enthusiastic about it. And not so enthusiastic that they start telling you what you could do with it, and you're like 'stop trying to poach my egg'. (HAHA the joy of the double-meaning in that. I'm really discovering new depths of my geekness in writing these newsletters.)
Allow the idea to develop. Investigate it. Let it breathe, see what it wants to be. Let it develop a thicker shell. Prepare it for the outside world. The more robust you and the egg are, the less susceptible you are to damage. And then when you're both ready – then you share it.
One thing I see over and over in my work is that the more sure we are about something, the less we attract questions. The more faith we have, the less doubt we attract. The more self-belief we have, the less we attract the devil's knobheads.
A few years ago, I decided that I wasn't in the business of explaining myself to anybody. I don't have to convince anyone of anything. I work with energy. Everything is energy. People are either on that bus or off it. I have no judgement of them not being on it, and I also am not here to try and convince them to get on.
Yesterday I was chatting with a couple I'd not met before, and the wife was really interested in my work. The husband was not. He just got up from the table and faffed about fetching drinks and finding little tasks to do for about 20 minutes. I was fine with it. He was fine with it. And we chatted and laughed about other things later.
I've done my time as a gateway drug to energy work. That was one of my purposes and I threw everything into it. No longer my mission. (That shift happened nearly a year ago, message from upstairs: purpose update, Michelle version 4.11 downloaded.)
You have something really special in you that wants to be hatched. You might already have hatched it. You might know what it is. You might have known for a long time but when you told somebody they made it seem hard, or even impossible – or maybe were so enthusiastic it freaked you out. You might not yet know what it looks like, you just know it's there. All of the above is ok! It's perfectly ok – it's where you are right now, so how can it be wrong?
What's your next step forward? To dust off an old egg and bring it back to life? To set aside some time to hatch a new one? To see if you can rebuild an egg that you allowed someone else to shatter?
Whatever it is… protect it. Nurture your ideas, allow them to develop in private, help them to become robust enough to withstand a bit of pressure.
And then one day, sooner than you think, they'll be able to fly.
With kindness,
Michelle xx