#67 - Acting On My Best Ideas, Then Sabotaging My Efforts

   By KC Johnson

Who hasn’t hatched ideas that we think will change our life?  For me, this is a process that I thoroughly enjoy doing.  Seeing a way to make improvements to an existing product, or devising ways for us to live together in greater harmony, or figuring out how to make my life less cluttered with non-useful ideas, are just invitations to devise practical solutions.  I’ve done this all my life and have secretly felt a complacency that made me feel in control of my life.  I mean, aren’t we all meant to exercise our creative juices?  Isn't it about making life better and overcome those people among us who seem determined to destroy things for everyone else?

At one point about ten years ago I developed a list of over fifty possible invention ideas.  I’m still impressed with what I created and determined to follow through with some of those gems.  Especially after reading a Stephen Key book, One Simple Idea, where he explains the step-by-step process for taking any new idea that improves on a product and turning it into a lucrative income without having to start a company.  I was definitely jazzed about diving into this world of licensing my ideas.  It was not billed as a snap to do, but it was much easier than creating a company around the product including getting the financing, doing the marketing, setting up production, and hiring a staff.

So now I am ten years down the road and still dreaming about making my ideas come to life.  This article is about how I have sabotaged myself and stymied my future income.  All of us have dealt with life altering events.  For me, one significant event was manifesting a viral attack on my spinal nerves resulting in temporary quadriplegia thirteen years ago.  My lingering paralysis has definitely been challenging.  Walking and daily functions were more difficult.  Though I never adopted a ‘poor me’ attitude about my situation, I did see my physical limitations as a huge obstacle.  Seeing people in the media who dealt with much more intense health challenges and still managed to create an amazing life for themselves, began opening my eyes to what is possible and how I had been limiting myself with my beliefs.  Everything revolves around the attitudes each of us holds about ourselves.

I did not realize at that time just how insidious my attitudes about my abilities were linked to a more deeply held self-concept that I couldn’t make any of this work.  After all, I had started a half dozen small businesses over the years, and none of them became my dream situation.  I had developed some attitudes about saving the world that made normal business practices impossible to be successful.  I just never realized at the time how my thoughts were limiting me.

Way back in the ‘60s I held peace and love sensibilities without adopting the hippie life style.  I joined VISTA and worked in northern Alabama in the poverty program.  I was aware of me being a do-gooder outsider and began seeing the results of my efforts.  I created a Community Leadership Training Program helping rural folks practice speaking up in meetings and becoming leaders when poor leadership was plaguing real progress.  I traveled all over the deep south and even to D.C. and New York City searching for seed money, all to no avail except for a $200 check from John Lewis and his grassroots organization.  I tried, really tried to get this started, but my resilience was hindered by my lack of dedication to my belief in getting funding for the program.  Something that I would discover to be a reoccurring life theme.

Once out of VISTA I worked in non-profits still helping senior citizens, people experiencing cognitive challenges, and coaching kids from low-income neighborhoods.  My first real business attempt was starting a hand-made leather shop while doing local events and working in my shop, all on a shoe string using guerilla marketing.  I worked at this several years while also working in a manufacturing business, had a great time, went broke as a leathercrafter, and once again sabotaged any real growth because of my held idea limitations.  I’m not going to recreate my entire work life here, but I do want to show how sneaky our early life self-concepts interfere with our ideas and actions later in life.

About ten years after Alabama I became a follower of the Irwin Schiff school of non-payment of taxes.  My idealism once again led me into a situation that was not sustainable.  Whether his ideas were right or wrong (he eventually spent time in prison for his beliefs and practices), for me, following this path was a complete non-starter for doing business, buying a home, or exploring some of my other creative ideas.  My sense is that I was relying on my idealistic path as an excuse to not really be serious about getting anything started that could work.  I did start a home painting and repair business operating for over ten years, but again, everything was under-the-table payments, as per my earlier beliefs around taxation issues.  This was definitely not sustainable and eventually costly to me.

My heart always went out to people struggling with life resulting in my work with homeless youth and weatherizing low-income people’s residences.  This is a firmly held personal belief created in my youth when I watched how racists treated blacks back in the ‘50s-60s and how, as a country, we became interventionists meddling in country after country to the detriment of everyday citizens just trying to get by.  I suppose that I made a personal commitment to help right the wrongs I was seeing.  Nothing with these beliefs to feel badly about, but the consequences have been that whatever I do, it has to fit into this ‘save-the-world scenario.  Money was not a legitimate pursuit.  As I grew older and couldn’t build a nest egg for retirement I began thinking more about being the creator of new ideas and products. 

Now I can see how limiting my “yes, but” standard has been.  Even as I work to build this blog site and promote my ideas for personal growth and happiness, I am running into my old nemesis, high standards that lead to unworkable circumstances.  My stubbornness to not change into a social media guru has again shown how difficult it is to alter and refine basic belief systems.  Fortunately, I at last have been able to see how limiting these basic views have been and hopefully can work around the limitations. 

We all hold limiting thoughts in some way.   The challenge is to recognize them and grow in ways that allow ourselves to prepare for our future.  My basic beliefs are still honorable, but they don’t have to be so self-defining that becoming financially stable is impossible.  I can have a desired future that allows for following the ‘genius’ of my creative mind.  Hopefully, this article will alert you to where your held ideas are interfering with a future you desire.  If your beliefs are too restrictive, that may be a sign that you are afraid of exposing vulnerabilities such as the fear of failure, or of getting hurt, or of being in over your head.

It took me way too many years to figure out that challenges are the purpose of my life to deal with.  Experiences that I have to endure are the learning opportunities I came into this human body to experience.  Every one of us has the power within ourselves to visualize the future we want.  The universe will provide when we are fully focused on an outcome.  Intention is the secret power we all have.  If we are judgmental and indulge in negative thinking, then that is what we will attract.  If we hold intense beliefs in having a happy, loving and safe world, that is what we will receive.  Our personal power is based on our intention, our focus, our ability to send clear messages out to the Universe about what we want, and our belief that we are here as a loving and loved being creating our unique life. - kc