“Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done right.” -Walt Whitman

There is nothing that cheers me and sets me on course like a good idea. I love to ideate, imagining new realities happens in me often with out trying. Something changes inside of you when a good idea takes hold. Worry and anxiety about problems vaporize into a more solid energy of problem solving. Better still, good ideas that aren’t solving problems have a tingle to them that informs new creations.

Marilyn vos Savant, a journalist with the highest IQ ever recorded (228) said, “A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.” For me, good ideas feed me more deeply than food. They are my way of sensing my connection to something larger than my own life, a way of connecting to other people and the universe. Good ideas energize and give hope.

One of my most reliable sources of good and sometimes even great ideas is Seth’s blog, by Seth Godin. One of the brightest and most creative thinkers I have ever come across, his ideas couched in Internet marketing are really about what it means to be an effective and remarkable human on the planet. His blog is one of the few that I get streamed to my Kindle and truly often stir my own great ideas…. the kind that keep me up at night.

Tapping into good ideas, your own or someone else’s is a profoundly positive thing you can do for yourself and the world.  Imagining, expanding and communicating good ideas is a way of being a force of good in the world. Grace Murray Hopper,  a computer programmer and Inventor of COBOL once said, “If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.” Good ideas should be the leader in life. They are the magical transmissions of the best part of oneself and deserve all the respect and allegiance of any good leader.

Learning to capture and sustain my good ideas has been the subtext of this positivity quest. Too many people get distracted from their own genius or worse still, don’t give their own genius the credit it deserves. Dr. Linus Pauling, multiple Nobel prize winner summed it up when he said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” Listen for them and follow them like the sign posts that they are to your dreams.