Hoarding ideas leads to stagnation
Physics 101: energy takes the path of least resistance.
By hoarding ideas and sitting on them you’re turning yourself into a giant resistor.
Energy flows where attention goes. But the more we grasp and hoard, the less we are able to grow.
Ideas, just like still water, begin to stagnate.
Holding on to things without allowing them to fulfil their ultimate function is like collecting plant seeds but never sowing them.
People go through life hoarding all sorts of things, but the act of hoarding ideas is the most insidious and damaging because we think no one can see what we’re up to.
But the more we hold on to things, the more our expression sours. Behind the mask of ego, our faces take on a strained and scrunched up look.
We’ve all experienced moments where we’re hit with a flash of insight. That intuitive nudge from the universe that feels like a good idea. Inspiration strikes and we, even if for just a moment, know without a shadow of a doubt, that we received the seed for a fruitful idea.
But that’s where it stops for most of us. The moment passes and our habitual thoughts of resistance swing back into action, telling us we can’t possibly do what our gut tells us. The longer we allow these thoughts, the more they multiply.
In short order our brilliant insight is overwhelmed by the pull of mediocrity and self doubt.
But instead of letting go of the idea with a conscious grace, we stash it away in the ‘someday box’. We tell ourselves that while now might not be the right time, we ought to hold on to it, for some future moment when things are better.
Of course this ideal future never arrives, and our hoarded ideas begin to stagnate.
Occasionally, when things are feeling particularly optimistic, we might dust off the someday box and pull out one of the stashed ideas. That feeling of inspiration might still be there, but it has begun to dim. We tell ourselves that it still has potential, but entropy has begun to set in, and we know it.
Rather than letting it go and setting the idea free, we play unwitting captors to its energy.
Naturally the idea’s energy continues to fade, while we reminisce about the good old days. We’re left pining for a time where we had more energy and zest for life.
Eventually there comes a moment where we notice that someone else has built the exact idea we stashed in our someday box. We instantly recognise the product, book or business is a mirror image of what we envisioned. The feeling is undeniable because the realised idea is created from the same energy we felt when the idea occurred to us.
We can’t help but feel betrayed, thinking, ‘That was my idea!’.
But instead of growth, or freedom from needing to do anything with the idea if the timing wasn’t right, we created our own stagnation by grasping it too tight.
Because we hoarded it, put it in a closed box where no one could see it, where it couldn’t sprout and grow into its full being, we have no recourse except shame, self-blame and bottled up frustration.
Imagine if we had thanked the idea for crossing our path. Knowing we had other priorities, we gave it a wink and allowed it to carry on its merry way to find embodiment in reality.
Or perhaps, after acknowledging its beauty and potential, we found a place to plant this inspiration in fertile soil. Tending to it as best as we could as it sprouted and eventually blossomed.
When we start to see an idea as a living energetic entity, wishing to become material in nature, we can encourage and allow it to become what it desires to be. We can help it find ground, and release its potential charge into an embodied reality.
Imagine looking back as we near the end of our brief lives, how much more invigorating would it feel to walk through a lush forest, than look down at the little bag of now lifeless seeds we lorded over all these years, in the hope we might plant them someday.
Someday is only ever today.