3.
Become Idea-Prone

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that a wrong one.

Samuel Johnson

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

G. C. Lichtenberg

Man can live without air for a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months— and without a new thought for years on end.

Kent Ruth

Nobody understands (yet) how your brain—a physical thing—can produce an idea—something that is not physical.

All we know is that it happens. Perhaps it happens to you less often than it does to other people. But since it has happened to you a few times we know that there’s no physical deficiency—no genetic mutation in your brain, for example—that’s preventing you from getting ideas. You can get them. That’s proven.

So the only thing we have to figure out is why you’re getting too few of them and then work on getting more of them.

When I was a kid I hung around with a guy named Johnny-Boy Boyd. JB was a klutz. Accidents just seemed to happen to him; if one didn’t run into him, he ran into it.

Nowadays psychologists would say that subconsciously JB made accidents happen, that it was his way of getting attention.

Back then we just called him “accident-prone” and let it go at that.

As an adult I hung around with people who were “idea-prone.” Ideas just seemed to happen to them the way accidents happened to JB. And the psychologists would probably say the same thing about them that they said about JB—that subconsciously they made these things happen, that it was their way of getting attention.

Perhaps. But I think there’s more to it than that.

James Webb Young quotes Vilfredo Pareto, who believed that there were two main types of people, types he called the Speculator and the Rentier.

The Speculator, said Pareto, is constantly preoccupied with the possibilities of new combinations. This is the type that includes, as Young put it, “all those persons in any field who . . . cannot let well enough alone and who speculate on how to change it.”

The Rentier, on the other hand, includes “routine, steady-going, unimaginative, conserving people whom the Speculator manipulates.”

Young agreed with Pareto that those two types exist and—that being the case—concluded “that there are large numbers of people whom no technique for producing ideas will ever help.”

I disagree with that conclusion.

I do not think that the idea-prone people I hung around with were born with some special kind of ideation talent, or some unique way of thinking that led them down untrodden paths, or some laserlike insight that let them see order and new relationships where others saw only chaos.

The thing that sets them apart is this:

The ones who come up with ideas know that ideas exist and know that they will find those ideas; the ones who don’t come up with ideas don’t know that ideas exist and don’t know that they will find ideas.

Let me say it again:

The ones who come up with ideas know that ideas exist and know that they will find those ideas; the ones who don’t come up with ideas don’t know that ideas exist and don’t know that they will find ideas.

Know That Ideas Exist

When I first started teaching I told my students that for every problem there was a solution, an answer, an idea.

I was wrong.

I now know that there are hundreds of solutions, hundreds of answers, hundreds of ideas.

Maybe even thousands. Indeed, perhaps it’s infinite.

Just consider:

As of 1940 (the last time they checked, I guess) a total of 94 patents had been taken out on shaving mugs. Shaving mugs, for heaven’s sake!

There are more than 1,200 different kinds of barbed wire.

Enough cookbooks have been published in the United States to fill a small library.

Or just listen to Lincoln Steffens, writing in 1931:

Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be done or done over.

The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t in all the world a perfect railroad, nor a good government, nor a sound law. Physics, mathematics, and especially the most advanced and exact of the sciences, are being fundamentally revised. Chemistry is just becoming a science; psychology, economics, and sociology are awaiting a Darwin, whose work in turn is awaiting an Einstein.

If the rah-rah boys in our colleges could be told this, they might not all be specialists in football, parties, and unearned degrees. They are not told it, however; they are told to learn what is known. This is nothing.

Every word he wrote is as true today as it was in 1931. Nothing is done. Everything waits for you to do it.

Let me tell you a story:

For more than 20 years I worked for the advertising agency that did the advertising for Smokey Bear. The first thing the writers and art directors had to do every year was to come up with a basic poster.

The rules for the poster never varied: It had to be a certain shape and size; it had to feature Smokey; it had to be simple enough to grasp at a glance, clear enough for even a dunce to understand, and (if it had words) brief enough to read in three or four seconds.

The mission of the poster never varied either: It had to convince people to be careful with fire.

In other words, every year we had to come up with the same thing only different.

And we did. Indeed, every year we came up with 15 or 20 different ideas for posters. Every year. For more than 20 years. Over 300 posters all featuring Smokey and all trying to do the same thing and not two of them the same.

As far as I know, the writers and art directors at that agency still have the same rules and mission for the Smokey poster and are still coming up with ideas.

So don’t tell me there’s only one or two ways to solve a problem. I know differently.

Or listen to a story a friend of mine told me:

“I used to teach a three-day seminar on advertising in Chicago. One of the assignments I gave each student was to create, overnight, an outdoor board for a Swiss Army knife. Most of the students would come in the next morning with the required billboard, but several of them would say that they worked for hours and couldn’t come up with anything. This happened three years in a row.

“The fourth year I tried something different. Instead of asking for just one billboard, I asked each student to create at least ten billboards for a Swiss Army knife. And instead of giving them all night, I told them they had to do it during their lunch hour.

“After lunch everybody had at least ten ideas. Many had more. One student had 25.

“I came to realize that when faced with a problem most people look for the one right solution because that’s the way they were brought up. All through school they had to answer multiple-choice and true-or-false questions, questions that had only one right answer. And so they assume that all questions and problems are like that. And when they can’t find a solution that looks perfect they give up.

“But most problems aren’t like exam questions in school. Most problems have many solutions. And as soon as I forced my students to realize that, they found those solutions.”

Did you hear that? As soon as his students realized there were many solutions they found those solutions.

“Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will become so,” said Émile Coué.

When you’re not sure an answer exists, finding it can be hard. When you know there are many answers, finding one or two is easy.

Dr. Norbert Wiener noticed the same thing: “Once a scientist attacks a problem which he knows to have a solution, his entire attitude is changed. He is already some 50% of his way toward that answer.”

Arthur Koestler agreed: “The mere knowledge that a problem is soluble means that half the game is already won.”

That’s one of the reasons some people always seem to get ideas—they know they’re around.

I was working one day in my office with Larry Corby, the illustrator of this book, trying to come up with TV commercials for a kid’s toy.

“Shut the door,” he said.

“Why?”

“There are a couple of ideas in here and I don’t want them to get out.”

He wasn’t joking either. He truly believed that the ideas we were looking for were physically present in that room. And since he knew they were there, five minutes later he found a couple of them.

Joseph Heller believed the same thing. “I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon,” he said.

And so of course did Thomas Edison. He believed—no, he knew—that ideas “are in the air.” If he hadn’t found them someone else would have. Is it any wonder he was the one who found so many?

There’s always another idea, always another solution. Accept it.

Know That You Will Find Those Ideas

You now know (I hope) that hundreds of solutions exist for your problem, that ideas abound. OK then, why aren’t you finding them?

Consider these three events:

1. You’ve seen this one happen all the time: Some golfer you’ve never heard of is leading a major tournament after the first day. The newspapers are full of stories about him. Everybody’s talking about him. He’s the new Arnold Palmer, the new Jack Nicklaus, the new Tiger Woods.

The next day the poor guy shoots eight-over, misses the cut, and disappears.

What happened?

2. I was filming a commercial at the Los Angeles Forum once and Wilt Chamberlain was at the other end of the court practicing free throws. He had a couple of kids there retrieving the balls for him. He must have shot over 100 free throws while I was there and I saw him miss only three. Swish, swish, swish. It was remarkable. That night in a game he missed eight out of twelve from the line.

What happened?

3. You have a speech to deliver out of town and you’ve got it down cold. You know your subject, you know what you want to say, you know how you want to say it. A piece of cake. You rehearse it in front of a mirror. A perfect 10.

But when you get up to deliver it your mind goes blank and the speech is a disaster.

What happened?

You know what happened.

There are a lot of different ways to say it, but basically you and Wilt and that forgotten golfer— consciously or unconsciously—all started doubting yourselves. And the rest is history.

The golfer on that first day and Wilt on the practice court and you in your hotel room all felt comfortable at the levels you were performing at.

But later you somehow got to wondering if you were as good as you thought you were. Your performances on the golf course and on the practice court and in the hotel room were better than the mental images you had of yourselves.

So your bodies and minds automatically lowered your performances to the levels where you felt comfortable again.

And no amount of will power, no amount of effort or practice or determination could bring your performances back to where they were.

That’s because your self-image determines what you are and how you perform. Not effort or will. Self-image.

And the only way to significantly improve your performance is to improve your self-image.

So if you want to become idea-prone you must accept two things:

First, you must accept that what you think about yourself is the single most important factor in your success.

Your personality, your actions, how you get along with others, how you perform at work, your feelings, your beliefs, your dedication, your aspirations, even your talents and abilities are affected—no, controlled— by your self-image.

You act like the kind of person you imagine yourself to be. It’s as simple as that.

And it’s no longer open to question.

If you think of yourself as a failure you will probably become a failure. If you think of yourself as successful you will probably become successful.

How else can you explain why seemingly gifted people fail while seemingly deprived people succeed?

“They can do it all because they think they can,” said Virgil, and this fundamental fact about the triumph of self-image is as true today as it was 2,000 years ago.

Henry Ford agreed: “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.”

In short: Attitude is more important than facts.

Specifically this means that for the most part the difference between people who crackle with ideas and those who don’t has little to do with some innate ability to come up with ideas. It has to do with the belief that they can come up with ideas.

Those who believe they can, can; those who believe they can’t, can’t. It’s as simple as that.

Second, you must accept that what William James called “the greatest discovery of my generation” is also a fact. The discovery?

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.

Jean-Paul Sartre put it like this: “Man is what he conceives himself to be.”

And Anton Chekhov put it like this: “Man is what he believes.”

This too is no longer open to question.

And yet this is what many people, perhaps yourself included, refuse to accept.

You accept that your self-image drives your life, but despite all the evidence cited by sages and parents and clergymen and doctors and poets and researchers and philosophers and psychologists and teachers and therapists and coaches, and despite the thousands of real-life examples in the hundreds of self-improvement books, you reject the notion that you can change your own self-image.

You are wrong. You can change it.

You accept “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” But you seem to believe that if you thinketh differently in your heart you will remain the same you.

You won’t. You will be a different you.

Or you seem to think that you can’t think differently in your heart, that the way you think today is locked in stone forever.

You are wrong. You can think differently.

Everybody accepts now that the mind alters how the body works. The evidence that it can and does is simply overwhelming.

Drug addicts take placebos and have no withdrawal symptoms, allergy sufferers sneeze at plastic flowers, unloved children physically stop growing, hypnotized patients undergo surgery without anesthesia, people lower their blood pressures and pulse rates by willing it, cancer victims experience spontaneous remissions, hopeless cripples walk away cured from Lourdes—the examples are legion.

But when you think about it, accepting the concept that one thing (the mind) can alter another thing (the body) is a huge leap, a major leap, perhaps even a quantum leap.

All I’m asking you to accept is a minor leap—that the mind can alter the mind.

Accept it. It’s a fact.

And then start altering your self-image.

I do not propose to tell you in this book how to do it, except to say this: If you tell yourself that you “never get ideas,” you never will.

Instead, tell yourself every day that you are a font of ideas, that ideas bubble forth from you like water from a spring. Every day. No, many times every day. Eventually you will begin living up to this new mental image you have created of yourself.

Of course the libraries and bookstores are loaded with hundreds of books and tapes and videos that can tell you much better than I can how to change your self-image—The Magic of Believing; Change Your Life Now; Psycho-Cybernetics; Think and Grow Rich; The Power of Positive Thinking; Life’s Too Short; Unlimited Power —the list goes on and on.

Get one of them and read it.

Every one says basically the same thing—that you can change your life by changing the way you think about yourself.

And every one of them is right.

Accept it.

Once you know that ideas exist and that you will find them, a great calm envelops you. It is a calm you need today more than ever.

The reason?

Today wasn’t supposed to break this way.

Computers and faxes and modems and e-mail and the Internet and voice mail and cell phones and networking were all supposed to make our lives simpler and easier. We were supposed to have more time than ever to come up with ideas.

But for many—perhaps for you—the reverse happened. Downsizing stole the time that electronics created. And now it seems you have less time to do twice as much. And that squeeze is starting to panic you.

Well, relax. You know the idea is out there. And you know that you’re going to find it.

So don’t worry about time. Although some ideas take longer to get than others, getting an idea does not depend, strangely enough, upon time. Nor upon workplaces or schedules or even workloads.

You can search for an idea while you’re eating lunch or taking a shower or walking your dog. And you can find it in the instant you start your car or snap on a light.

Getting an idea depends upon your belief in its existence. And upon your belief in yourself.

Believe.