Learning the Value of Ideas

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Tilt.

I’ve often been thanked for giving away ideas, lots of ideas including ideas that other people have made lots of money with.   And instead of saying, “You’re welcome,” I’ve simply answered that it was no problem because I get lots of ideas and they’re free. Here I sit with a stellium in Aquarius,  and I’m only now realizing  the value of my ideas.

The Long-Awaited Honest-to-God Secret to Being Happy

The thing about keeping a healing journal for an ex- tended period  is that you eventually either give it up or you dig deeper and deeper to chase those shadows.   It’s shovel time.  Again.

When I  was  in  the  fifth  grade,  I  accompanied  my mom to the grocery store where she bought me a pack of 25 pencils for 25 cents.  They were cool and colorful— some in hot pink, some in bright blue, all sorts of wonderment. The next day, on the bus ride home, a kid ex- pressed interest in the bright  blue ones.    I didn’t really want to part with my blue pencils but I was willing to for a nickel each.

By the end of the bus ride, I’d sold all the pencils for a nickel each, and asked my mom if I could go back to the grocery store. We did. I bought two packs of pencils myself.  Over the next two days, I sold 50 pencils. I was happy.  My clamoring customers were thrilled.  So I asked my mom if we could stop by the grocery store on the way home, and I told her that I was opening my own little business.

And that was the end of that business.  My parents were uncomfortable with  my  entrepreneurial attempts. Probably for  good reason—we had enough schemers in my extended family and my Southern Baptist parents were probably worried that I’d take after one of them, shafting  customers  right and left with  my  bright ideas.

Over the years, I gave away tons of ideas to other people and yet never really valued them for myself.  After all, if ideas came to me so freaking easily and by the gazillions, then  certainly  they couldn’t  be worth anything.  They came freely to me.

Somehow over the years, largely through my Christian religion, I was taught that if something came that easily to me and didn’t cost me anything, then I was greedy or selfish not to give it away or at least share it.  So I gave it all away.  Others got the benefit and I got to feel good about them getting the benefit, and I never saw how much of a benefit these ideas could have been to me.

Times are changing for me.  I still do plenty of charity work, but it’s no longer all charity work. My ideas are starting to come with a price. This is something new that I must learn if I’m to make the jump that’s coming.

Yesterday, while on a trip out of town with my daughters, I heard Shannon explain something rather amazing to Aislinn and it struck me that  she could make money off this lesson she was teaching.  Good money.  She had honed a very unique way of explaining a valuable bit of information that people will be willing to pay for.  This is a gift I want her to have—I want her to understand that her talents also lie in her mental pursuits and that she can make some of her future wealth off of her ideas.  She can give this away as I always have or she can use it like gold to buy her future and her dreams.

Ideas have value, and not just to other people.  Ideas are—I now  realize—a true raw material, a gift from the Gods that can be packaged  and sold to happy customers.  This knowledge is part of my transition, to keep me from  struggling  so  hard  when  my  greatest  natural  re- source is right there in front of me and pointing out a way to make my dreams happen.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *