But what about?

Every single question is important

Empty cups with dried coffee in them, paper, pens, and pencils that were used and discarded, and a big whiteboard full of gibberish - yes you and your team are in the middle of a hectic brainstorming session. You have come up with a strategy together everyone agrees with the approach and is excited about the idea and then suddenly one person asks but what if this happens and then we are not able to do this. Yes, that annoying person. The first instinct is of course to ask them to shut up or ridicule them in some way or even politely turn down their rebuttal.

This opinion is perhaps the most important one of all those shared. Not because of the presumed self-importance of the person who asked it or even the relevance of the question itself. It is because this is the first time your idea has met the real world- its first real challenge. This decides if the people who came up with it believe it in the first place.

The Fly Who Felt the Flame 

Illuminating the world - With billions of lights
Creating visions of tomorrow - Limitless and free
Each brain a repository, a factory
Churning them out by the gazillions

Into the flame, they fly
Like a mayfly, they disappear
Those intentions, Those propositions
Each dead idea the start of a lesson

An evil cold world teaches nothing
But resentment and hatred
To keep it from infecting you
You need conviction a belief

So many of your ideas burned and died at the first stage. Not fulfilling their potential, not reaching their end, not even being believed in. This post is in mourning for all those ideas. You beautiful visions of tomorrow, you will be missed dearly, the world could do with your good intentions.

A healthcare worker washing his or her hands after a procedure - to us this might seem like the most logical thing to do. But in 1847, a Hungarian doctor was imprisoned and then killed for suggesting this very thing. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis - now known as the ‘savior of mothers’, was the first doctor to suggest disinfection using chlorinated limes after each procedure. His peers did not accept his ideas, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1865 and then was killed by the guards in the asylum where he was interned.

We have all had our ‘Semmelweis’ moment. A time when our ideas have been rejected or challenged. You should not take that as a personal insult but a lack of belief. Don’t let the world pervert and corrupt your ideas use the questions to build onto your ideas and make them stronger. See them come true and change the world to be a better place.