“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” Paulo Coelho, Author of the Alchemist
What if we realized that in order to accomplish our dreams, we will sometimes have to start something stupid?
After reading Richie Norton’s new book, The Power of Starting Something Stupid, I learned that the smartest people in the world don’t run away from stupid ideas; they lean into it. What if we let go of excuses and gave into our dreams?
If anyone has ever told you that your idea was crazy, then you would be in good company. Richie Norton reminds us that many brilliant minds before us were labeled as crazy: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Sara Blakeley, Ben Horowitz, Walt Disney and William Shakespeare.
In The Power of Starting Something Stupid, Richie Norton redefines stupid as the new smart and explains that life-changing ideas are often mislabeled stupid. What if the key to success, creativity, and joy in your life lives in the potential of your stupid ideas?
As Norton says, “Projects allow us to experiment and determine what works and what doesn’t. They allow us room to fail and modify our ideas to achieve eventual success.” The important thing is to make room for the experiment – the stupid idea.
Isn’t it better to look back years from now and not have regret for what we didn’t do? There will always be an excuse of why we didn’t start something. Norton points out the three most common excuses: the lack of time, the lack of education or experience and the lack of money. Even if we had all of these, there is still no guarantee that our idea will work. How liberating to just go ahead and live out our stupid idea!
This book is rich and inspiring. Norton shares a very personal story about how he came to live his stupid ideas. After great losses in his life, he learned from grief what he calls Gavin’s Law: Live to Start. Start to Live.
No more excuses. Start something stupid — the smartest thing you can do.