70. How to have original ideas

If you've ever felt like all you're doing is regurgitating other people's ideas or repackaging your teacher's frameworks, this one is for you. Your original thinking has never mattered more, and I'm going to teach you how to have more original ideas.

Listen to hear more about:

• Why the world needs your thought leadership now — especially if you've been marginalized by existing power structures
• What original ideas actually feel like in your body (hint: it's not angels singing)
• The everyday genius move your brain is already doing that you've been ignoring
• Why the people with the most distinctive points of view aren't thinking more — they're doing this 10 times more

Ready to be more original? Let's go.

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening.

Today we're gonna talk about how to generate original ideas. I have been thinking about this for a long time — how to help people develop a genuinely new, original contribution to whatever their field is.

I've had so many conversations with students throughout the years where they would feel insecure. Like, "I feel like all I do is basically do what my teacher taught me to do and I use their framework, and I feel like, what am I bringing that's new and valuable to the field?" Or just people feeling like, "There's nothing that I do that's that distinctive," and they feel insecure about it.

So if that's you, if you can relate to that in some way, I want to help you. But also, even if it's something that you weren't insecure about, I extra want to push everyone to really challenge yourself to think in an original way and to contribute original creations and ideas to whatever your field is.

Why this matters now more than ever

Because I think this matters now at this point in history more than ever — to be a little bit grandiose, like, this point in history requires you to step it up with the originality. And here's why.

I think that if you aren't someone who's been centered by default in the world so far — I'm talking about if you're a woman, if you're queer, if you're a person of color, a member of the global majority, or you have a neurodivergent brain, you have a disability, whatever the case is — if you are outside of the categories of people whose ideas have been traditionally treated as the superior standard default, the world needs your thought leadership now more than ever.

Because I think in so many ways we can see that the existing world — the world that we've inherited from our parents — is crumbling rapidly before our eyes. Institutions are crumbling, established world order is crumbling, and we need to be able to build a new world out of the cracks of the old one. That's the metaphor that I keep going to because I think it's so evocative. And whose ideas are gonna build the new world? I think it's gotta be yours, if you are someone who's been marginalized by the existing power structures so far.

So if that's you, we need your original thought leadership. We need it so much.

And the other piece, of course, is we're increasingly living in an AI world. Whether you like it or not, AI is here. It is not going anywhere. And what AI has done is that it has really reduced the value of just specialized knowledge. If you don't want to be replaced by AI, then we need your original thinking more than ever.

It's not only practical — it's the most practical thing you can do for your business, for your career, your platform — but also, like I said earlier, it's just really essential for humanity at this point. We need your thoughts because robots can't have an original point of view by definition. So we need original thoughts from human beings like you.

The foundation: actually develop mastery

So I want to teach you what it takes to have more original thoughts, more original contributions. The first layer that I think gets kind of bypassed a lot — that people forget about or undervalue — is the part where you actually need to put in the time and the effort and energy to develop a certain level of competence in the craft of whatever it is.

Like if you want to be an original voice in, I don't know, let's say the field of graphic design — if you're like, "I wanna make genuinely original contributions to the field of graphic design," that's great, but you actually have to really know graphic design well first. You can't just watch 20 YouTube videos on graphic design and build five websites and be like, "I'm gonna make an original..." You have to cultivate muscle memory of competence in the craft.

In order to produce a distinctive body of work, you need that basic level of deep mastery of the craft. The example that I always give is Picasso. Picasso at his time — I mean even now — is obviously known for very original contributions to art. And he didn't come out of the womb painting cubism. Cubism was his original contribution, but for years he was trained in sort of traditional painting. Like Rembrandt, the old masters, the sort of traditional paintings that we associate with European art — trying to make things as realistic as possible, being very skillful on that. That's what Picasso was doing for years and years before he was like, "Wait a minute, what if I shook things up a little bit and did cubism?"

I don't know enough about art to go into more nuance, but that's kind of what you have to do. Study the masters. Get really good at your craft. Because then and only then do you have enough substance inside of you for new connections to be made.

I feel like this part, people often try to rush it, and it can't be rushed. Let's say you are a coach and you want to contribute original things to the field of coaching. Then you better be really fucking good at the craft of coaching. I want you to be able to coach anyone so well, so that when you come up with original ideas, there's depth, there's roots, there's substance underneath it.

So you get what I'm trying to say — that foundation is necessary. Because otherwise, your original ideas are just ideas. Anyone can generate ideas. You can ask a chatbot, "Hey, generate original ideas," and it'll combine existing ideas to come up with something that sounds novel. But it's not gonna be interesting. It's not gonna have teeth. It's not gonna resonate with people, because it is not based on the actual mastery of a human being who has built that mastery with a particular point of view — who has flesh and blood experience of wrestling with that.

So again, that foundation of human skill — very important. And once you have that, I have three pieces of advice. If you don't have that, please put the time and the effort into developing it. What does it mean for you to get to the next level of skill, of technical mastery, in what it is that you do? Because that is going to make it so much more likely for you to generate original ideas that actually resonate with people.

Advice #1: You already have original ideas — you're just ignoring them

So I said I have three pieces of advice for coming up with original ideas. The first is that you need to realize that you already have a distinctive and original point of view, and you might've just been ignoring that part of your brain all along.

Here's what I mean. When someone genuinely has original contribution, it rarely feels like, "Oh my God, I have this brilliant original idea no one's ever heard of," and clouds are parting and angels are singing, spotlight on you. It doesn't feel like that.

Let me tell you what original ideas feel like. Have you ever done this where you buy, let's say like a shirt or a dress from a store, and you're like, "Oh, this is so cute, I can't wait to wear it." And then you wear it and you're like, "Why is something itching on the side of my waist?" And you're walking around, and after a couple of hours you're like, "Okay, something is definitely itching." And then you look underneath your shirt and it turns out you didn't take the tag off.

Is it just me? Am I the only person that does this? This has happened to me so many times — ADHD, always in a hurry, can't be bothered to take the fricking tag off. So that kind of "wait, something is itchy" — what is it? That feeling that you get when you haven't taken the tag off something that you just bought? That's often what an original idea feels like.

Yeah, I know, right? It's like a tiny, almost imperceptible, subtle discomfort. Maybe it's a hunch that you have. Sometimes you have a hunch and you let it just hang out on the side of your head, but you don't necessarily make yourself pay attention to it. 'Cause it feels like random and you can't back it up with evidence, and you're like, "Uh, I don't know. It's just there." That's the scratchy tag that you haven't taken off.

Or you hear everyone in your field talking about a certain concept and you're like, "Why — hold on. Why is everyone saying this and not considering this other angle? Is it just me? Is this weird? Is this too random?" And then again, in that moment you're like, "Uh, I'm probably wrong. This probably doesn't matter. This is probably stupid."

That small moment of irritation, discomfort, questioning, doubting — those are the seeds of your original points of view. I guarantee you, anyone who's ever come to me with insecurities about "I don't have original ideas" — I guarantee you have so many of these already in your life, already in your brain. You just have to pay attention.

So start there. Every time you notice something like that, write it down or record yourself talking about it, however you like to keep track. Talk about them. Treat them like they matter, like they are seeds of original thought leadership — because they very well might be.

That's my first advice.

Advice #2: Draw lines between things that don't usually go together

Here's my second advice. A lot of the times, original ideas aren't created from scratch. It's not like you dig the earth and get the clay out of the earth and mold your original idea from scratch. It often doesn't look like that.

What it does look like often is you drawing connections between things that already exist, but the connections haven't been drawn yet. So unexpected connections between things are often where original ideas are born.

Like, I think about this all the time — my family background is Buddhist and I was raised in a Buddhist culture, and so much of what I learned about business, I'm always unconsciously filtering it — unconsciously and consciously filtering it — through Buddhist ideas and Buddhist teachings. And when I say it out loud, it sounds original, 'cause people haven't thought about it that way. But I didn't invent Buddhism. I didn't invent business. I just happened to draw the lines.

And I'm not saying I'm the only person who does this, but it's actually pretty novel. Because again, it's a line drawn between two things that aren't usually — people don't usually think of them as connected.

Or maybe you are really into community building and that's something that you want to talk about a lot and help people with. And you are also learning about the ecology and the environment. And maybe something that you'll learn about — like how mushrooms have these mycelial root networks — reminds you of how people need to organize together. And there's a parallel that you can draw from how mushrooms do their thing and how humans need to do our thing. It's like, oh look, you just drew a line between two things that people don't normally think go together.

These connections are gold. Because you already have a lifetime of different experiences, a lifetime of learning about different things, a lifetime of having — I'm sure if you're anything like me — random obsessions here and there. Your brain is such a fabulously complex genius machine that has probably been drawing these unexpected lines all of your life.

And once again, you gotta take it seriously. The most interesting thinkers that I know — and I like to think of myself as an interesting thinker as well — are the people who let themselves follow the breadcrumbs of these strange associations that their brains make. They don't need someone else to come and put a stamp of approval and say, "Oh yeah, this makes sense," or "This is useful." They trust that if their brain feels like a line could be drawn between two things, then that must be a real thing. It's worth examining. It's worth exploring.

So this is not a new skill. Like I said, your brain's already doing this. The work is to catch yourself when you're doing it and to give yourself permission to go deeper, to take it seriously, to explore it, to share it.

Advice #3: Say it out loud before you think it's ready

Speaking of which, that brings me to my third point, third piece of advice about how to develop original thinking. And that is: before you feel like you have it all figured out and neatly organized in your mind and backed up with evidence, say it out loud. Before you feel like it's ready.

A lot of people want to make this a private process, and I get it. Like, "I only wanna share it when it's all polished and refined and it can withstand whoever's scrutiny about whatever. Then I'll put it out there." Uh-uh.

A lot of the times, original points of view get developed in the process of you sharing your raw ideas, your raw instincts. The process of sharing — and the conversations it generates — is part of the raw material that original ideas are born from.

You might just put an idea out there: "Hey, has anyone ever thought blah, blah, blah?" And then somebody might respond and say, "You know, that's so interesting. Why do you think that?" And then in the process of answering that person's question, you might catch an entire new framework coming out of your mouth in the process of answering that person's question.

That's the development process. You let your ideas, before you feel like they're quote-unquote "ready," meet the world.

And I think the people that you see around who really have strong and distinctive points of view — they're not, like, 10 times thinking more interestingly by themselves in private. They're articulating 10 times more. They're letting their ideas meet the world 10 times more, and they're allowing it to be messy 10 times more.

That's the difference. They made peace with letting this articulation and development process unfold in real time in conversation with the external world. You just have to be willing to do that. A lot of the times you don't think your way to a distinctive point of view — you talk your way, you converse your way there.

In many ways, it's like a co-creation. It's like a relational process with the world around you, with people around you. There's alchemy that happens, and I want you to trust that.

This is my invitation to you, to do more of that. More sharing of what you're thinking, of what your hunch is, what association just came to you — without it needing to be backed up by someone else's approval or understanding, without it needing to not feel random. Just put it out there. See what happens. Let your ideas meet the world.

You don't need to be one in 8 billion

So that's my three pieces of advice. But first, make sure you have substance. Put time and effort and energy into developing mastery of your craft, whatever it is. If you have that foundation or you're developing that foundation, it's really, really useful to notice all the genius things your associative brain is already doing, what your finely tuned body is already reacting to.

And by the way, when I say "original" — this is actually a really important point, so I'm glad I thought of it — I don't mean that you have to be the only person on earth on this planet of 8 billion people. You don't need to be one out of 8 billion to be original.

There are tons of ideas that are going to be perceived as genuinely original because whoever you're talking to hasn't heard that yet. Let's say I gave the example of how I draw connections between Buddhism and business. If I talk to a room full of Buddhist monks, the ideas that feel super original to me and my Western audience — all those Buddhist monks would be like, "Yeah, well, duh. Of course business is like that." So it's not innovative to a group of Buddhist monks. But guess what? We don't live in a world of Buddhist monks. We live in a world of regular people who think business is over here and Buddhism is over there.

So you don't have to worry about, "Am I the only person in the world who's ever thought about this? Who's ever drawn these connections?" You probably are not. There might be other people who have, but that doesn't matter. There's no prize for being the only person in the world out of 8 billion.

The thing is, your idea just has to be new and useful to the people who are encountering it. That has to be the bar for originality. Not "no one else in the history of humanity has ever come up with this before."

I actually have a theory — cannot be scientifically vetted — but I think that ideas are kind of like flying around in the ether, like little fairies. And when an idea is really ready to meet the world, it wants to be expressed in the world, it wants to be known in the world. I think that ideas pick multiple people, like, "Hey, I'm gonna sit on your shoulder and tell you this idea. And I'm also gonna go to this different country and sit on someone else's shoulder." I think a lot of people can download the same idea at once, because an idea, in theory, decided, "I want to now be expressed on earth." And that idea could be genuinely new and innovative and original and groundbreaking for the world, but it wasn't just one solitary person expressing it — it was multiple people doing it at the same time.

So yeah, that's original. And also, again, it doesn't have to be that you're the only person in the history of humanity.

Go forth and share

Okay. So I hope that all felt like encouragement and inspiration, 'cause that's how I intended it. To trust your guts, trust your instincts, and put your ideas out there. Because the world does need the one-in-8-billion perspective that you can bring. We need you to trust yourself. We need you to share yourself with us.

Okay? So go forth and share. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.