Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? It happens almost every day. A new idea pops up that seems so amazingly simple that almost anyone could have thought of it. It’s natural to be attracted to such ideas. We wish we had thought of it and acted on it. We should have. It creates cognitive dissonance. Someone thought of it and did it. We didn’t. Why? This thinking leads us to imitate the innovator we admire. If we could only imitate that path to find the next great new idea……
Samuel Johnson famously said “No man ever yet became great by imitation.”
Perhaps. But, pursuing the path of imitation creates a serious obstacle to success. It distracts us from our own creativity – our own internal ability to create a new great idea.
Net time you have that “Why didn’t I think of that?” moment, skip the invitation to imitation and turn on your own creative juices.
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