Dear Dreamer,
Do you already have an idea you want to monetize? If so, that’s great news! The hard part for most people is settling on an idea.
If you have no ideas (you really do-they’re just hiding), then you might be tempted to tell me the results of your latest skills assessment, about your degrees or your experience sitting in a cube, or even how you currently pay the bills. Of course, there’s your score on the Milton/Heimloch personality test-very important stuff. But most importantly, there’s Uncle Bob, the family authority on just about everything, especially on giving you ideas about what you should be doing.
While all of this information may be useful, there are even more useful and revealing questions that can get you closer to your winning idea:
- What makes your light come on?
- What are you talking about when your voice changes?
- Who are you jealous of?
- What are you doing when you become oblivious to time passing?
- What comes so naturally to you that you assume everyone can do it and the idea of taking money for it makes you feel rotten to the core?
- What did you love to do as a kid?
- What’s that crazy unrealistic thing that keeps popping into your head and you don’t know why because there is certainly no way you can make money at it?
- What do you want your life to look like?
If you made it to this web site, you’re probably a lot like me. For a very long time, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had what some would call a stable, successful career. I had lots of freedom in my job. But I still had thoughts like, “Is this it? Isn’t there something else? Am I really going to do this for the rest of my life?” I would randomly get excited about a new idea, but it wouldn’t last. Many of my ideas were thrown in the garbage because I just couldn’t see how to do them and still be able to pay my bills.
After attending countless seminars on careers, self discovery, and personal development, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. I read tons of books on finding your passion, your right livelihood, and doing what you love. I subscribed to e-zines on every related topic. I had personal consultations with two different creative career experts, including a retreat in Italy. This is when I finally started to see some patterns….
Sometimes you don’t need the right answers-you need the right questions.
Probably the first pattern you’ll notice is that this takes some time and some work. Most worthwhile things do. You probably won’t wake up and roll over one morning with everything perfectly clear and simple. However, there are some simple tools that have helped me tremendously to realize and uncover:
- What exactly brings me joy (not what I’m good at-I’m good at a lot of stuff that doesn’t bring me joy, like scrubbing the tub and proofing other people’s writing for typos…)
- How, in my wildest dreams, I see my life unfolding
- The power I have to create my ideal life
As soon as I had some basic answers to these questions, I could move forward, one baby step at a time toward that ideal life, and this is what I’m still doing today. I can’t guarantee that I’ll reach my personal ideal, and I can’t guarantee that you will either. But I do believe that reaching for that ideal and failing is a whole lot more fun and exciting than staying where you are and playing the “what if” game in your mind for the next couple of decades…
If you have ideas or if you’re clueless, if you want to do something different or create more opportunities for income from what you’re already doing, if you want to hear stories about others who are doing things you might want to do or finding solutions you might want to find, then come along.
Sincerely,
Glenna Bailey
Chief Idea Thinker Upper
Monetize Your Idea