The Idea Machine (yes, grey matter, that sticky, gelatinous mass encapsulated by your skull that is wasting away, if you don't take care of it; and I don't know that it's sticky, but it is in the movies..)


Ideas. They are best developed when we are exercising our brains. A lot of emphasis is placed upon ingesting healthy food, working your body, etc., etc. Don't get me wrong, these activities are as vital to our mental health as they are to our bodies (I'd probably lose my mind if I didn't run and hit the gym six days a week). But what about the mind? Now, you may be saying that your mind gets plenty of exercise. What are your routines? Cluttering your brain with wasteful thoughts? Most of us, with very few exceptions, are guilty of this. What did you do tonight? Did you spend the better part of your evening hours planting your ass on the couch watching the news? I mean, what is "news" anyway? One of the definitions for news is: a report of a recent event; intelligence; information. Let's face it, ladies and gentlemen; there is nothing intelligent about mainstream media, cable, or local news. Are you gossiping with family, friends, colleagues? How many sleepless nights do you spend worrying or living in fear (this is a big one for me; lots of fun and festivities with this one). These are just a few examples of how your mind can get cluttered with useless information and activities. I'm sure many studies have been done on cranial capacity. I'm not scientist, but I would venture to say that all of these distractions occupy most of the usable space in our brains. But fear has to take the cake, if it were measurable on some kind of synapse scale. Fear and I have had a very special relationship for a very long time. From upon graduating college forward, my mind has been virtually paralyzed by fear: Will I have enough money for retirement (why the hell was I so worried? I accumulated and invested my hard earned money for 15 years after graduating, just to lose every penny, and then some). Will I have a job in five years? Ten years? What is my long term financial plan? Will I even be alive in ten years? For the longest time I was terrified that I wouldn't live to see my first child be born (I just had my third, sixteen years after my second, so I guess I can rest easy now). By the way, what the hell kind of childhood did I have to be so afraid of dying all the time? I'll attribute that to being born and raised in New Jersey (no real reason behind this; I just couldn't come up with anything else; wait a minute, I just remembered what it was..it was the Cold War!). Do I have enough life insurance (I am an insurance junkie, always worried about what will happen upon my eventual death instead of living and dreaming and loving where I am right now; one of my favorite sayings was that I am worth more dead than alive...just call me George Bailey; who knew Bedford Falls was in New Jersey?). The truth is, we are conditioned to be fearful by the very media I mentioned earlier. It is hard to avoid, because we are mercilessly bombarded by so much useless information over the course of the day. Television isn't even the worst of it anymore, because it is almost easier to avoid than the multitude of devices vying for your attention. Think about your desktop or laptop at work and at home, your smartphone, your tablet (Ipad, Android, or whatever). Jesus, I find myself checking my LinkedIn or Facebook account when I'm taking a piss at work (I don't even use Facebook but maybe 3 times a year; talk about clutter and wasting your time, not to mention the inherent danger of holding your mobile in one hand and..well, you get the idea). If you have made it this far through the post, isn't it clear that my mind is implacably cluttered right now? Bottom line is this; the more useless material we absorb over the course of the day, the more we hamstring our mind to grow. And we reduce our capacity to create, to stimulate the idea machine. And herein lies my biggest challenge, COMING UP WITH AN IDEA FOR A BUSINESS. Over the course of my adult life, the cluttering material has changed, but the result has always been the same: I have been hampering my ability to pursue my dreams...