Life-Changing Ideas: Chapter 15

The Value of Idea

Abraham Lincoln is a good symbol for the lasting value of ideas.

Now that you have your 5 ideas, it is up to you to make them life-changing.

You have the tools. Now let’s add some inspiration.

Let’s get right into it. Here is chapter 15 of Five Life-Changing Ideas.

Now that you’ve identified your ideas, the challenge is to change your life. Ideas have great power when they are transformed into action.

Now you must go from thinking to doing.

You must move from concepts that guide you to behaviors you practice.

Now comes the fun part. You know your goals. You’ve established your priorities. Now you get to enjoy the process. Now is the time to do it.

Take all of your best ideas, your top five, and incorporate them into your life. Do them over and over again until they become second nature.

Do them until your life-changing ideas are life-changing actions.

Ideas require no entrance fee or registration forms. There is nothing that must be purchased to think; no apparatus, no supplies, no attachments. The thinking mechanism comes as standard equipment. Everyone has ideas and most people are willing to share theirs, even when not asked or wished to do so. Ideas are not limited to the rich or educated; nor are they confined to any geographical area.

Ideas can have great beneficial effect. Heart pacemakers, a trip to the moon, a vaccine for smallpox, the telephone, electric lights and a symphonic orchestra, each started as an idea. Achievement begins with a thought.

Ideas can bring disaster, too. Depression, frustration and loneliness start as ideas. So does murder, tyranny, divorce, child abuse and rape. The 30,000+ suicides in the US last year prove it is possible to—literally—think ourselves to death.

Here are some quotes to stimulate your thinking about ideas:

Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, but ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold from the mines. —A. Owen Penny

Great ideas need landing gears as well as wings. —Adolph Augustus Berle

You speak of beginning the education of your son. The moment he was able to form an idea his education was already begun. —Aikin Barbauld

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. —Albert Einstein

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied. —Alfred B. Nobel

Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them. —Alfred Whitehead

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture. —Anatole France

The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset. —Anthony D’Angelo

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent. —Antoine Rivarol

Every really new idea looks crazy at first. —Alfred Whitehead

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world. —Aristotle

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
—Arnold Glasow

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. —Arthur C. Clarke

Ideas are precious. An idea is the only lever which moves the world. —Arthur F. Corey

Believe in something larger than yourself. . . . Get involved in the big ideas of your time. —Barbara Bush

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person’s brow. —Charles Brower

It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas. —Charles Peguy

In many ways ideas are more important than people; they are much more permanent. —Charles Kettering

The best way to get great ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. —Charles “Chic” Thompson

It is true that we shall not be able to reach perfection, but in our struggle toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties with which we have been gifted to the best possible account. —Confucius

These are ideas. I could say that they just came to me, but it would be more accurate to say that I went to them. Ideas—and new connections between ideas—lead you away from commonly held perceptions of reality. Ideas lead you out here. Ideas lead you into the darkness. —Dave Sim

If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea. —David Belasco

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. —Don Marquis

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all. —Elbert Hubbard

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when its the only one we have. —Emile Auguste Chartier

An idea is salvation by imagination. —Frank Lloyd Wright

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. —Georg C. Lichtenberg

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. —George Bernard Shaw

All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. —Grant Wood

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane. —Kurt Vonnegut

An idea is a curious thing. It will not work unless you do. —Hannah Whitall Smith

Thought is, perhaps, the forerunner and even the mother of ideas, and ideas are the most powerful and the most useful things in the world —George Gardner

There’s an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny. —Irving Berlin

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea. —Jim Rohn

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. —John F. Kennedy

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. —John Steinbeck

Little words never hurt a big idea. —Howard W. Newton

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience. —Hyman Rickover

Summary

Take a moment to think back over the entire book. What best summarizes your feelings and thoughts?

Life-Changing Ideas Home Page

The Value of Idea

Now you must go from thinking to doing.

Do them until your life-changing ideas are life-changing actions.

Summary

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