May 16, 2025 • 19 mins
We’re all thinking of ideas to make real all day every day, though we often don’t realize it. Ideas for what we want to do with an afternoon, how to theme a party, what relationship or health habits we want to tweak, or the big obvious ones like what career change we want to make, where we want to travel, or what we want a creative project to be based on.
And then…we get stuck.
Ever get stuck finding your next step?
Or figuring out what approach to take?
Maybe you get caught up in thinking about what you SHOULD do, or what you’ve seen before, or what everyone else is doing.
We all do, because our human brain is designed to fit in; not to stand out.
In order to be truly creative and authentic with our ideas, we need to help our human brains break out of those boxed up ways of thinking.
Based on the design thinking practices, futurist processes, improv, career search specialists, and my own processes for ideation, today’s episode will teach you five different practices to help your brain think in new and different ways.
What you’ll learn in today’s episode:
- How combining your favorite things can make the next step easier than you think
- What futurists do to expand their thinking, that you can do anytime, anywhere
- The difference between having many ideas, and many types of ideas
- How to use improv to spice up your idea
- 4 questions to ask yourself to shed the fear and unleash possibility
- How we can remember to balance presence of positive qualities with familiarity
How to connect with Marie:
- On the Web | The Local Bloom
- Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
- All Things Marie on LinkTree
JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take
all of your ideas for what youwant and we turn them into real
things.
I'm your host, certified CoachMarie McDonald.
Let's get into it.
Hello everyone, and welcome toepisode 127 of the Bloom your
(00:33):
Mind podcast.
I have the most exciting thingfor you.
Well, it's exciting to me and Ioffer you to join me in my
excitement, which is that, afterfour years of running my own
coaching business and coachingpractice that's, it's more of a
practice I finally built awebsite and it's so gorgeous.
(00:54):
I'm so happy with it because Ihad a brilliant, brilliant
collaborator and designer, and Iam going to send that out to
you if you are on my email list,and if you aren't, you should
get on there, because it's socool, it's so beautiful and if
you ever need a web designer, Ihave someone for you.
So I'm going to talk today abouthow to jumpstart your idea, or
(01:15):
find an idea, or jumpstart yourthinking around things, because
I keep hearing people get stuckin either trying to come up with
an idea or, you know, liketrying to think through how they
should approach something, anda lot of times they're.
You know, I use this word ideaa lot, a lot of times they're
not thinking about it as theiridea, it's just something
(01:36):
they're working on.
I think of everything as anidea, but I hear a lot of people
getting stuck because they havea mentality that's fixed in a
few different ways in comparisonwith other people, or
comparison with manifestationsof the thing that they're trying
to do that already exist in theworld, right.
(01:57):
So they can only think aboutthe thing in the forms that
they've seen that thing exist inbefore, if that makes sense.
So if we're trying to think ofa book, we can only think in the
genres that we know booksalready exist in.
It's hard for us to think of agenre that's outside of the
genres that books already existin, for example.
(02:19):
Or if we think of a party, wetend to think of a type of party
that we've been to before MaybeI'll have this type of party or
this type a party.
We tend to think of a type ofparty that we've been to before
Maybe I'll have this type ofparty or this type of party
rather than thinking aboutsomething that we've never seen
or heard of before.
We also get stuck in thiscomparison with the people
(02:40):
around us.
So the first thing is sort ofthinking in terms of what we've
seen before.
The second one is comparisonwith others.
So we think that if we didsomething in a different way,
what would everybody else think?
Or what is expected of me whenwe see it in these other people,
it sort of becomes thedefinition of the boundaries of
(03:01):
what's possible for us, whichleads to the third.
We often think about what weshould do.
Well, what am I supposed to doin this situation?
What is acceptable?
So all of these, of course, arerelated and kind of a Venn
diagram.
Right, what should we do?
Overlaps with what we've seenbefore and comparison.
They all kind of overlap.
But people get stuck, we all getstuck, I get stuck, you get
(03:24):
stuck, we all get stuck in theseways of thinking that constrain
our idea unintentionally.
So creative constraint is avaluable tool when we have
intentionally decided on designconstraints, the rules of what
we're designing within.
(03:44):
But oftentimes we giveourselves constraints without
meaning to.
So today I'm going to give youfive different ways that you can
think outside of the parametersthat you usually think in,
think outside the box, and thiscan be not only for a big idea.
You know, I mentioned somethinglike a party or a book, but it
(04:08):
can also just be about howyou're thinking about your life,
relationships, what you want todo with your time, changes you
want to make to your home.
It's anything right.
Our brains are human brains andthey are very confined, unless
we intentionally break them outof their boxes.
(04:29):
But before that, I want to justmention this other thing that
I've been thinking about, whichis I have been noticing
something that I noticedperiodically in life, but I've
been noticing it a lot lately,about how we have this quote
that many of us have heardfamiliarity breeds contempt, and
I've just been seeing so manyexamples of this, of how,
(04:51):
specifically with relationships,the longer we know someone, the
more their faults are visible,yes, but the more we allow their
faults to define them in ourminds.
So just think about the peoplearound you, the people you know
and love, and the way that youthought about them when you
(05:13):
first knew them, and then theway that you think about them
now.
Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I've just seen it with
many people around me, with manyexamples.
I've seen how we allow ourperspectives on other people to
become tarnished over time,which is, you know, human and
(05:34):
okay, we don't have to be hardon ourselves about that and we
can polish that tarnishedperspective.
We can make it shiny again.
We can train ourselves and puteffort into assuming the best
intentions, into looking forwhat we like, into believing in
the people around us.
(05:56):
And if you listen to episode 126, what's your Story?
That one is based off ofintentionally looking at what
parts of a person or a thing oran experience you choose to
share so with people around us.
What are we choosing to talkabout?
(06:16):
So this is just my littlequestion for us, as we know
people more deeply and for alonger period of time, and see
them more fully and allow theirimperfections to be visible, how
might we remain as aware of thewonderful things about them,
their good qualities, theirperfections, how can we stay as
(06:40):
aware of those things andinteract with those things as
much as we focus on theirimperfections?
All right, you ready for yourfive ways to jumpstart your idea
?
Okay, way, number one.
As per usual, I'm going to giveyou some examples.
So we talked about how.
First of all, the context ofthis is that we often get stuck
(07:01):
when we're thinking aboutanything thinking about
ourselves, thinking about otherpeople.
We're thinking about somethingwe want to do.
We often get stuck, gettingcaught up in comparing what is
possible to what we've seenbefore, what we should do and
what's expected of us Right, andwhat is directly around us in
(07:24):
comparison to others around us.
So in order to break out ofthose, I have five different
tools you can use.
The first one is to compileyour favorite things.
Okay, this is a thing that Ijust made up.
Oh God, this was like 10 yearsago when I saw this call for
(07:46):
museum installations and Ithought you know, I've never
even thought about doing amuseum installation, but my
daughter had been born a coupleyears ago and I have a couple
art degrees and I love ideas, Ilove making things, I love
theory, and I was like I couldthrow my hat in the ring.
But what would my concept be?
What in the world would I makea museum installation about?
(08:10):
So I was sitting there and Istarted, just.
I decided to start by justwriting down all the things I
loved and that were reallyinspiring to me.
Right then I wrote downhumpback whales, which I've
always loved.
I wrote down Japanese fishingballs, because there were these
(08:33):
big, bright glass balls that Ifound in Half Moon Bay, and then
I had just been thinking abouta lot that you know fisher
people using these balls and theballs kind of floating on the
top of the ocean, and I wasreally just kind of enchanted by
these objects.
So I listed that.
I listed this concept of thelonely crowd, which you can also
(08:54):
see my podcast episode about,and the antithesis to the lonely
crowd, which is people beingconnected to each other.
So that's what I listed.
From there I wrote kind of astory, a narrative about human
beings being stuck inside all ofour lonely crowd environments
and cars and traffic, apartmentunits right next to each other.
(09:17):
You know headphones in as we'rewalking on the sidewalk, little
cubicles, all these ways wherewe are a lonely crowd sitting
right next to each other, allthese ways where we are a lonely
crowd sitting right next toeach other.
And I created this wholenarrative that one day all these
fishing balls appeared on thebeaches of this shore of this
continent and it broughteveryone out of their apartments
(09:41):
on this evening and they allwent out to see the phenomenon
of all of these fishing ballsthat had washed up on the beach.
People from all different walksof life.
All walked out there to findthese fishing balls and no one
could explain.
No scientist, no news outlet,no politician, no, nobody could
(10:03):
explain or understand why thesefishing balls had all washed up
on the beach at the exact sametime.
But what happened was all thesepeople from all these different
walks of life started talkingto each other and laughing
together and connecting inperson, walking the beach,
fantasizing around why thesefishing balls all washed up,
(10:24):
laughing together, tellingstories, and what ended up
happening in this narrative wasthat every Sunday, after that
weekly, there became a traditionbecause people were inspired by
the way that they felt.
After connecting to one anotherand experiencing this mystery
and walking the beach in thenatural environment, every
(10:46):
Sunday, they decided to walk thebeach and it became this
tradition where everyone cameout on this continent and up and
down the coast.
They walked the beaches andlaughed and talked about
mysteries and life.
And then, at the very end, yousaw these whales out on the
horizon and none of the peoplenoticed them because they were
too far out, but they came up.
And you saw these whales out onthe horizon and none of the
(11:06):
people noticed them because theywere too far out, but they came
up and you saw their eyes kindof surface and peek over and
notice all the people walkingthe beach and then they just
submerged back under the waves.
So that was the story and Icreated this whole museum
installation, submitted it andgot a call back, just like this
(11:30):
inspired call by this museumdirector that said you know I
see some holes in this proposal,but I am so interested in
talking to you and I wouldreally like to take this to the
next step.
Here's my suggestion to you.
Here's my suggestion to you Ifyou're stuck in an idea for
(12:01):
anything in your life, writedown five things that you love
and see how you can.
Longing meets the world's deepneed, and I think this actually
has like religious origins.
I will look it up and put it inthe show notes, but I do no
matter what you know, youbelieve and whether you are
religious or not.
I love this concept and I bringit up a lot to folks who are
(12:22):
looking for what they want to dowith their life the idea of
where your heart's longing meetsthe world's need.
In innovation circles, indesign thinking, this might be
translated into who is youraudience and what is the problem
that you're trying to solveinstead of the world's deep need
.
So you can frame it as thosetwo questions design thinking we
(12:44):
might.
What is the problem we'retrying to solve?
And who is my audience?
What is the historical contexthere?
But I like to add to that thesecond half, which is what's my
heart's deep longing, what am Ipassionate about?
What do I want to do with mytime here on earth?
So that's number two.
Number one combine your topfive favorite things.
(13:05):
Number two find where yourpassion meets the world's need.
And number three is to get wild.
And number three is to get wildPractice generating ideas.
And you can look back at mypodcast episode, blue Sky
Thinking, if you want way moreinformation on this.
But at the Institute of theFuture in Palo Alto they do all
(13:26):
kinds of futurism thinking andthey have this concept be
ridiculous at first.
And in the Bloom Room we use itall the time.
We love it when any big ideashould sound ridiculous at first
if it's worth anything.
Because everything, if you lookaround you that truly solved
problems and changed thingssounds ridiculous If you think
(13:48):
of it not existing.
Yet.
I'm looking at my eyeglassesright now.
The first person who said let'sput two pieces of glass that
float on our faces and are heldby wire around our ears.
Like what the heck?
That probably sounded reallyweird the first time someone
said that idea.
But have you ever thought ofeyeglasses as weird?
(14:10):
Maybe, but probably not Right.
Like then we take this idea oftelephones sitting in different
places across continents andtalking to each other at the
same time.
How weird does that sound,right?
Light bulbs, all kinds ofinventions.
So when you really want togenerate ideas that are new and
(14:31):
different, how can you be asridiculous as possible, generate
ideas that are new anddifferent?
How can you be as ridiculous aspossible?
One year my daughter and herfriend wanted to do a joint
birthday party and one of themwanted the theme.
I think it was their 10thbirthday party, maybe ninth
wanted the theme to be Greekgods and the other wanted
baseball.
And we were being reallyridiculous at first and we're
(14:52):
like let's have a Greek godsbaseball party.
And the more we thought aboutit, the more we're like that is
an excellent idea, let's playbaseball in Togas.
And the whole party wasdelightful.
So our third way to mine forideas is to be ridiculous at
first and get a little wild.
The fourth one is to practice atenet in design thinking, which
(15:15):
is that you might you know, weall look for a quantity of ideas
.
When we're brainstorming it'slike, okay, what are all the
different ways I could do this,and that's great to come up with
as many different approaches asyou possibly can before you
choose one that expands yourhorizons in terms of possibility
thinking and also there'ssomething called fluency in
(15:41):
ideation.
So ideation is basicallybrainstorming, right, and there
are two different types of wayswe look at ideation.
One is what's the quantity ofideas and the other one is
what's the fluency of ideas.
Quantity is how many can wecome up with.
(16:01):
Fluency is how many differenttypes can we come up with?
How can our ideas be asdifferent as possible from one
another?
So, for instance, I was coachingsomeone to come up with a side
hustle and at first we werethinking about all different
ideas that are a lot of a largequantity of ideas, but that were
sort of in all in the same vein.
They were all desk based andcomputer based.
(16:22):
When I gave her the assignmentto think of as many different
types, a large fluency of ideasshe came up with dog walking.
She came up with, liketelehealth, in this new field
that she wanted to invent, shecame up with working at a
nursery, I mean, she came upwith so many different things,
(16:44):
things that required her to livein different places, and among
all of those things, shegenerated the ideas that she
actually ended up going with,which were never going to show
up on our list if she hadn'ttried to think of as many
different types of ideas as shecould.
So how might you apply that todifferent kinds of relationships
, to different kinds of healthhabits, to different places you
(17:05):
could live, to different topicsfor your book, different types
of parties, whatever it is thatyou might want or wherever you
might be stuck in your life?
So that's number four fluencyin addition to quantity.
And number five is the triedand true yes.
(17:25):
And this is a practice thatmany of us know from the improv
world, where we take an idea andwe never say, but we never say
no, we always say yes and andthen we build on the idea.
How might you yes and astarting idea as many times as
you can.
(17:45):
You can do this with a partner,and that's really fun, where
you build and build, and buildand build until your idea feels
ridiculous and you've reallywalked all the way around the
thing and seen it from all theangles.
Right.
This generates a huge amount ofcreativity and is a really fun
way to get unstuck.
So our five ways are to combineyour top five favorite things,
(18:10):
to think of where your heart'spassion meets what the world
needs, the problem you want tosolve.
Number three is to get wild andbe ridiculous at first.
Number four is to think aboutquantity as well as fluency.
Number five is to practice yesand and.
Then you can always just thinkto answer these questions what
(18:30):
would I never do, what istotally just like, not me at all
, something that just doesn'tseem like me?
Once I bought a pink watch andstarted wearing it every day
because I thought that's justnot something I would do, and I
ended up loving that pink watch.
That's a pretty ridiculousexample.
But hey, answer the questionwhat would I do if nothing was
(18:52):
at stake here, if I had nothingto lose, if I was afraid of
nothing?
Those are all some ideas to getyou unstuck.
That is what I've got for youthis week and I will see you
next week.
If you like what you're hearingon the podcast, you gotta come
(19:18):
and join us in the Bloom Room.
This is a year-round membershipwhere we take all of these
concepts and we apply them toreal life in a community where
we have each other's backs andwe bring out the best in each
other.
We're all there to make ourideas real, one idea at a time.
I'll see you in the Bloom Room.
Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take
all of your ideas for what youwant and we turn them into real
things.
I'm your host, certified CoachMarie McDonald.
Let's get into it.
Hello everyone, and welcome toepisode 127 of the Bloom your
(00:33):
Mind podcast.
I have the most exciting thingfor you.
Well, it's exciting to me and Ioffer you to join me in my
excitement, which is that, afterfour years of running my own
coaching business and coachingpractice that's, it's more of a
practice I finally built awebsite and it's so gorgeous.
(00:54):
I'm so happy with it because Ihad a brilliant, brilliant
collaborator and designer, and Iam going to send that out to
you if you are on my email list,and if you aren't, you should
get on there, because it's socool, it's so beautiful and if
you ever need a web designer, Ihave someone for you.
So I'm going to talk today abouthow to jumpstart your idea, or
(01:15):
find an idea, or jumpstart yourthinking around things, because
I keep hearing people get stuckin either trying to come up with
an idea or, you know, liketrying to think through how they
should approach something, anda lot of times they're.
You know, I use this word ideaa lot, a lot of times they're
not thinking about it as theiridea, it's just something
(01:36):
they're working on.
I think of everything as anidea, but I hear a lot of people
getting stuck because they havea mentality that's fixed in a
few different ways in comparisonwith other people, or
comparison with manifestationsof the thing that they're trying
to do that already exist in theworld, right.
(01:57):
So they can only think aboutthe thing in the forms that
they've seen that thing exist inbefore, if that makes sense.
So if we're trying to think ofa book, we can only think in the
genres that we know booksalready exist in.
It's hard for us to think of agenre that's outside of the
genres that books already existin, for example.
(02:19):
Or if we think of a party, wetend to think of a type of party
that we've been to before MaybeI'll have this type of party or
this type a party.
We tend to think of a type ofparty that we've been to before
Maybe I'll have this type ofparty or this type of party
rather than thinking aboutsomething that we've never seen
or heard of before.
We also get stuck in thiscomparison with the people
(02:40):
around us.
So the first thing is sort ofthinking in terms of what we've
seen before.
The second one is comparisonwith others.
So we think that if we didsomething in a different way,
what would everybody else think?
Or what is expected of me whenwe see it in these other people,
it sort of becomes thedefinition of the boundaries of
(03:01):
what's possible for us, whichleads to the third.
We often think about what weshould do.
Well, what am I supposed to doin this situation?
What is acceptable?
So all of these, of course, arerelated and kind of a Venn
diagram.
Right, what should we do?
Overlaps with what we've seenbefore and comparison.
They all kind of overlap.
But people get stuck, we all getstuck, I get stuck, you get
(03:24):
stuck, we all get stuck in theseways of thinking that constrain
our idea unintentionally.
So creative constraint is avaluable tool when we have
intentionally decided on designconstraints, the rules of what
we're designing within.
(03:44):
But oftentimes we giveourselves constraints without
meaning to.
So today I'm going to give youfive different ways that you can
think outside of the parametersthat you usually think in,
think outside the box, and thiscan be not only for a big idea.
You know, I mentioned somethinglike a party or a book, but it
(04:08):
can also just be about howyou're thinking about your life,
relationships, what you want todo with your time, changes you
want to make to your home.
It's anything right.
Our brains are human brains andthey are very confined, unless
we intentionally break them outof their boxes.
(04:29):
But before that, I want to justmention this other thing that
I've been thinking about, whichis I have been noticing
something that I noticedperiodically in life, but I've
been noticing it a lot lately,about how we have this quote
that many of us have heardfamiliarity breeds contempt, and
I've just been seeing so manyexamples of this, of how,
(04:51):
specifically with relationships,the longer we know someone, the
more their faults are visible,yes, but the more we allow their
faults to define them in ourminds.
So just think about the peoplearound you, the people you know
and love, and the way that youthought about them when you
(05:13):
first knew them, and then theway that you think about them
now.
Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I've just seen it with
many people around me, with manyexamples.
I've seen how we allow ourperspectives on other people to
become tarnished over time,which is, you know, human and
(05:34):
okay, we don't have to be hardon ourselves about that and we
can polish that tarnishedperspective.
We can make it shiny again.
We can train ourselves and puteffort into assuming the best
intentions, into looking forwhat we like, into believing in
the people around us.
(05:56):
And if you listen to episode 126, what's your Story?
That one is based off ofintentionally looking at what
parts of a person or a thing oran experience you choose to
share so with people around us.
What are we choosing to talkabout?
(06:16):
So this is just my littlequestion for us, as we know
people more deeply and for alonger period of time, and see
them more fully and allow theirimperfections to be visible, how
might we remain as aware of thewonderful things about them,
their good qualities, theirperfections, how can we stay as
(06:40):
aware of those things andinteract with those things as
much as we focus on theirimperfections?
All right, you ready for yourfive ways to jumpstart your idea
?
Okay, way, number one.
As per usual, I'm going to giveyou some examples.
So we talked about how.
First of all, the context ofthis is that we often get stuck
(07:01):
when we're thinking aboutanything thinking about
ourselves, thinking about otherpeople.
We're thinking about somethingwe want to do.
We often get stuck, gettingcaught up in comparing what is
possible to what we've seenbefore, what we should do and
what's expected of us Right, andwhat is directly around us in
(07:24):
comparison to others around us.
So in order to break out ofthose, I have five different
tools you can use.
The first one is to compileyour favorite things.
Okay, this is a thing that Ijust made up.
Oh God, this was like 10 yearsago when I saw this call for
(07:46):
museum installations and Ithought you know, I've never
even thought about doing amuseum installation, but my
daughter had been born a coupleyears ago and I have a couple
art degrees and I love ideas, Ilove making things, I love
theory, and I was like I couldthrow my hat in the ring.
But what would my concept be?
What in the world would I makea museum installation about?
(08:10):
So I was sitting there and Istarted, just.
I decided to start by justwriting down all the things I
loved and that were reallyinspiring to me.
Right then I wrote downhumpback whales, which I've
always loved.
I wrote down Japanese fishingballs, because there were these
(08:33):
big, bright glass balls that Ifound in Half Moon Bay, and then
I had just been thinking abouta lot that you know fisher
people using these balls and theballs kind of floating on the
top of the ocean, and I wasreally just kind of enchanted by
these objects.
So I listed that.
I listed this concept of thelonely crowd, which you can also
(08:54):
see my podcast episode about,and the antithesis to the lonely
crowd, which is people beingconnected to each other.
So that's what I listed.
From there I wrote kind of astory, a narrative about human
beings being stuck inside all ofour lonely crowd environments
and cars and traffic, apartmentunits right next to each other.
(09:17):
You know headphones in as we'rewalking on the sidewalk, little
cubicles, all these ways wherewe are a lonely crowd sitting
right next to each other, allthese ways where we are a lonely
crowd sitting right next toeach other.
And I created this wholenarrative that one day all these
fishing balls appeared on thebeaches of this shore of this
continent and it broughteveryone out of their apartments
(09:41):
on this evening and they allwent out to see the phenomenon
of all of these fishing ballsthat had washed up on the beach.
People from all different walksof life.
All walked out there to findthese fishing balls and no one
could explain.
No scientist, no news outlet,no politician, no, nobody could
(10:03):
explain or understand why thesefishing balls had all washed up
on the beach at the exact sametime.
But what happened was all thesepeople from all these different
walks of life started talkingto each other and laughing
together and connecting inperson, walking the beach,
fantasizing around why thesefishing balls all washed up,
(10:24):
laughing together, tellingstories, and what ended up
happening in this narrative wasthat every Sunday, after that
weekly, there became a traditionbecause people were inspired by
the way that they felt.
After connecting to one anotherand experiencing this mystery
and walking the beach in thenatural environment, every
(10:46):
Sunday, they decided to walk thebeach and it became this
tradition where everyone cameout on this continent and up and
down the coast.
They walked the beaches andlaughed and talked about
mysteries and life.
And then, at the very end, yousaw these whales out on the
horizon and none of the peoplenoticed them because they were
too far out, but they came up.
And you saw these whales out onthe horizon and none of the
(11:06):
people noticed them because theywere too far out, but they came
up and you saw their eyes kindof surface and peek over and
notice all the people walkingthe beach and then they just
submerged back under the waves.
So that was the story and Icreated this whole museum
installation, submitted it andgot a call back, just like this
(11:30):
inspired call by this museumdirector that said you know I
see some holes in this proposal,but I am so interested in
talking to you and I wouldreally like to take this to the
next step.
Here's my suggestion to you.
Here's my suggestion to you Ifyou're stuck in an idea for
(12:01):
anything in your life, writedown five things that you love
and see how you can.
Longing meets the world's deepneed, and I think this actually
has like religious origins.
I will look it up and put it inthe show notes, but I do no
matter what you know, youbelieve and whether you are
religious or not.
I love this concept and I bringit up a lot to folks who are
(12:22):
looking for what they want to dowith their life the idea of
where your heart's longing meetsthe world's need.
In innovation circles, indesign thinking, this might be
translated into who is youraudience and what is the problem
that you're trying to solveinstead of the world's deep need
.
So you can frame it as thosetwo questions design thinking we
(12:44):
might.
What is the problem we'retrying to solve?
And who is my audience?
What is the historical contexthere?
But I like to add to that thesecond half, which is what's my
heart's deep longing, what am Ipassionate about?
What do I want to do with mytime here on earth?
So that's number two.
Number one combine your topfive favorite things.
(13:05):
Number two find where yourpassion meets the world's need.
And number three is to get wild.
And number three is to get wildPractice generating ideas.
And you can look back at mypodcast episode, blue Sky
Thinking, if you want way moreinformation on this.
But at the Institute of theFuture in Palo Alto they do all
(13:26):
kinds of futurism thinking andthey have this concept be
ridiculous at first.
And in the Bloom Room we use itall the time.
We love it when any big ideashould sound ridiculous at first
if it's worth anything.
Because everything, if you lookaround you that truly solved
problems and changed thingssounds ridiculous If you think
(13:48):
of it not existing.
Yet.
I'm looking at my eyeglassesright now.
The first person who said let'sput two pieces of glass that
float on our faces and are heldby wire around our ears.
Like what the heck?
That probably sounded reallyweird the first time someone
said that idea.
But have you ever thought ofeyeglasses as weird?
(14:10):
Maybe, but probably not Right.
Like then we take this idea oftelephones sitting in different
places across continents andtalking to each other at the
same time.
How weird does that sound,right?
Light bulbs, all kinds ofinventions.
So when you really want togenerate ideas that are new and
(14:31):
different, how can you be asridiculous as possible, generate
ideas that are new anddifferent?
How can you be as ridiculous aspossible?
One year my daughter and herfriend wanted to do a joint
birthday party and one of themwanted the theme.
I think it was their 10thbirthday party, maybe ninth
wanted the theme to be Greekgods and the other wanted
baseball.
And we were being reallyridiculous at first and we're
(14:52):
like let's have a Greek godsbaseball party.
And the more we thought aboutit, the more we're like that is
an excellent idea, let's playbaseball in Togas.
And the whole party wasdelightful.
So our third way to mine forideas is to be ridiculous at
first and get a little wild.
The fourth one is to practice atenet in design thinking, which
(15:15):
is that you might you know, weall look for a quantity of ideas
.
When we're brainstorming it'slike, okay, what are all the
different ways I could do this,and that's great to come up with
as many different approaches asyou possibly can before you
choose one that expands yourhorizons in terms of possibility
thinking and also there'ssomething called fluency in
(15:41):
ideation.
So ideation is basicallybrainstorming, right, and there
are two different types of wayswe look at ideation.
One is what's the quantity ofideas and the other one is
what's the fluency of ideas.
Quantity is how many can wecome up with.
(16:01):
Fluency is how many differenttypes can we come up with?
How can our ideas be asdifferent as possible from one
another?
So, for instance, I was coachingsomeone to come up with a side
hustle and at first we werethinking about all different
ideas that are a lot of a largequantity of ideas, but that were
sort of in all in the same vein.
They were all desk based andcomputer based.
(16:22):
When I gave her the assignmentto think of as many different
types, a large fluency of ideasshe came up with dog walking.
She came up with, liketelehealth, in this new field
that she wanted to invent, shecame up with working at a
nursery, I mean, she came upwith so many different things,
(16:44):
things that required her to livein different places, and among
all of those things, shegenerated the ideas that she
actually ended up going with,which were never going to show
up on our list if she hadn'ttried to think of as many
different types of ideas as shecould.
So how might you apply that todifferent kinds of relationships
, to different kinds of healthhabits, to different places you
(17:05):
could live, to different topicsfor your book, different types
of parties, whatever it is thatyou might want or wherever you
might be stuck in your life?
So that's number four fluencyin addition to quantity.
And number five is the triedand true yes.
(17:25):
And this is a practice thatmany of us know from the improv
world, where we take an idea andwe never say, but we never say
no, we always say yes and andthen we build on the idea.
How might you yes and astarting idea as many times as
you can.
(17:45):
You can do this with a partner,and that's really fun, where
you build and build, and buildand build until your idea feels
ridiculous and you've reallywalked all the way around the
thing and seen it from all theangles.
Right.
This generates a huge amount ofcreativity and is a really fun
way to get unstuck.
So our five ways are to combineyour top five favorite things,
(18:10):
to think of where your heart'spassion meets what the world
needs, the problem you want tosolve.
Number three is to get wild andbe ridiculous at first.
Number four is to think aboutquantity as well as fluency.
Number five is to practice yesand and.
Then you can always just thinkto answer these questions what
(18:30):
would I never do, what istotally just like, not me at all
, something that just doesn'tseem like me?
Once I bought a pink watch andstarted wearing it every day
because I thought that's justnot something I would do, and I
ended up loving that pink watch.
That's a pretty ridiculousexample.
But hey, answer the questionwhat would I do if nothing was
(18:52):
at stake here, if I had nothingto lose, if I was afraid of
nothing?
Those are all some ideas to getyou unstuck.
That is what I've got for youthis week and I will see you
next week.
If you like what you're hearingon the podcast, you gotta come
(19:18):
and join us in the Bloom Room.
This is a year-round membershipwhere we take all of these
concepts and we apply them toreal life in a community where
we have each other's backs andwe bring out the best in each
other.
We're all there to make ourideas real, one idea at a time.
I'll see you in the Bloom Room.
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