Page 228 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

Barrier #2: Fear of Looking Stupid 219

BARRIER #2: FEAR OF LOOKING STUPID

There’s something else that we fear, sometimes even more than failure.
And that is the fear of “what they’ll think” about our idea. Our only
consolation is that we are their “they” when they’re fearing what others
think.
But this fear is nothing to be scoffed at; it prevents people from tak-
ing a leap. I can see the apprehension around a new idea in the work I
do with businesspeople every week. Often they look at a new idea,
then think, “Hmm, they’re not going to like it. I might look like an idiot.
I might lose my job. How am I going to pay the mortgage? I’m going to
have to move my family under the viaduct.” It’s an eight-second
thought chain that leads from “they might not like it” to “life under the
viaduct.” Why risk it?
Why? Because you have to risk it in order to succeed.
One of the benefits of the methods we’re covering in this book is
that failure is built into your creative processes. You’re allowed to fail.
If you’re doing 100 MPH Thinking and come up with 50 ideas, you
could fail 49 times and still succeed. With 180° Thinking, we’re trying
to fail; we’re trying to come up with bad ideas in the name of succeed-
ing, to loosen our brains and loosen our apprehensions.

Would it make you feel any better to know that some of the most
highly accomplished people of all time have had the fear of looking
stupid?

One of the greatest all-time writing duos of rock ’n’ roll wrote songs
early in their careers using a pseudonym. Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards of The Rolling Stones, often referred to as the world’s great-
est rock ’n’ roll band, first started writing songs under the pen name of
Nanker Phelge. Look on their first few records and see for yourself.
Could it be that they were fearful of putting themselves out there?
The Beatles, arguably the best rock ’n’ roll band of all time, were
writing their own material long before they were playing it in public or
recording it. There are many authors who have never sent a manuscript
to a publishing house or an agent for fear of rejection, fear of failure. I
confess that I myself wrote a spy novel in the mid-1980s, received two
rejection letters, then put the manuscript under my bed to collect dust.