What’s the Big Idea?

The Big Idea is the Idea that pulls all the smaller ideas in our lives together.

One of the aspects of basic principles is understanding the ideas in our life. Perhaps one of the most important ideas that we can come to understand is the idea that each of us is. What are we here for. “What am I here for?”

In my book which is yet to be published, I talked about learning to shoot a rifle while I was in the army. Shooting at a target, myself, the rifle and the target where all ideas and the bigger idea that pulled us all together was making holes in the target as close to center as possible. In the context of that idea, the rifle was an idea designed for outputting projectiles. I was the idea of a person who operated a rifle and the target was the center of that big idea. It was the idea that was being changed but in the process of changing the target both myself and the rifle changed.

And so one way of looking at an idea, or looking at something to see how it is an idea is to see how it causes change. Depending on what we are looking at we may need to put it in a relationship to see how it causes change. As an example, if we see the pieces of a rifle out of context, we might not recognize them as parts of a rifle until we see how they fit together. Then seeing how those parts fit together with all the other parts we can see the change that they can create.

Trying to understand how each of us creates change or trying to understand the change we are good at creating we can look at how we create change in different settings. How are we when we are with friends. What are the qualities that we bring to that friendship. Do we make our friends laugh or do we always listen or do we always do particular things together. What about in our relationship with our family or our spouse or our children. What are the changes that we cause when we connect with them?

Is it the change that we want to create? What are the changes we cause at work? As a business the question we might ask ourselves is what are the changes we create for our customer? Are they good changes. Do they affect everyone concerned in a positive manner.

For myself I realized that one of the changes I caused in my girlfriend was to make her unhappy and in the process I became unhappy too. I didn’t like that kind of change. And so I decided to change the idea of who I was. Part of what helped me was reading a blog about customer service. A waitress who made each customer feel welcomed. I asked myself, did I make my girlfriend feel welcomed each time I saw her. Did I make her feel like I was happy to see her. What about my clients at the yoga studio. How did I make them feel.

And so the idea of me becoming a gentleman. Treating the people around me with respect and kindness. And as for my clients, treating them kindly too and with or without the language barrier (I teach in Taiwan where one of the main languages is Mandarin Chinese) the person I choose to be is the person who is helping them to learn yoga, to learn their body and whatever else it is that they want to learn.

And likewise with this blog, the big idea is that of helping people realize their potential. And the way I can do that first of all is by being a gentleman, a person who cares, a person who see’s the potential in all the people he meets and is providing the tools or the means to help those people realize that potential.

And in so doing I’m realizing my own best possibility.

And so what’s the big idea that is pulling me along? This may change, this may need improving but for now it is being the best person I can be and in turn helping the people around me be the best person they can be. And one of the ways I can do that is by being conscious of both myself and the people around me.