Thinking Out Loud

Some have seen the effects of this ability when taken to extremes, when I have held up in some hole somewhere and dreamed as big as I could dream and believing that it was all possible and in fact would come to pass.

I’ve recovered from this tendency to fly off the handle. I did it by recognizing that any truly big ideas involve the participation of other people and recognizing that other people are just never going to sign up for a nutty idea no matter how sweet the potential outcome. They just have more important things to do with their days.

In the last month, and particularly in the last two weeks, my ideas machine has been in overdrive. The process is exhausting. Some nights I do not sleep, my mind continually working out new ideas and all the angles to get them implemented.

This time around, I’ve put some effort into figuring out why I can be so sure of my ideas’ successes.

The first possibility is that I’m just crazy. I believe these ideas will succeed because either I’m just prone to believing my own bullshit (BMOB) or because I have some sort of psychic connection to everyone.

Psychic connections are at best unproven, so I thought I should come up with another possibility.

I have long considered myself to be more than one person. Since the beginning of my time, I have been having conversations with myself in my head. If I talked out loud, you would think I was talking to myself.

When I did this, I would address myself as “we,” as in “I think we should do this because…” It was like I was making a speech to a group of people and I was the leader. I would lay out all the reason for my plan and eventually a decision would be made to go forward or refrain, based on the evidence and the arguments.

In the last few years, I have decided that the people I’m addressing are all the versions of myself which live on in my head. I think I have solidified and perpetuated identities that broke off either at traumatic turns on my life or in periods between changes. For instance, in my head there’s still an elementary kid, a geeky kid entering junior high school, a high school senior, a college student, a guy with his first job, with his first serious girlfriend, his first family, etc.

I don’t know why I started referring myself as plural so long ago though unless there are even younger personalities in there. It would make sense that they are.

We could consider the youngest personalities have having the biggest seniority and the biggest input on the next course of action. It’s my youngest personalities that decided that macaroni and cheese is awesome and that I need to be liked by other people and how fantastic it is to get a hug from someone you love. I think it is those young personalities that in the past have been willing to risk the future on immediate and fantastic gratification — these personalities live in their now more than they live in our tomorrow.

I really like the ideas. Frankly, coming up with ideas is my greatest strength and I sincerely believe I could do it professionally, but getting people to pay you to think can be one of the hardest things to accomplish.

I now have an inventory of more than two dozen viable business ideas. There is no way I can do them all. About a month ago I decided that I would just give away all the ideas I have in order to build up a professional career helping people develop their own ideas.

The reason I’m good with ideas goes hand in hand with the reason I think I know how people will react to ideas (and marketing plans). Some of these people in my head are you.

What I mean is that of all the types of personalities, I’m by far the observer. I study everything and everyone I see. When I see a poster on the wall of the convenience store, I try to figure out what the company is wanting me to see. What are they trying to say? Does the position of the product here highlight that message? How are they trying to distract me from my sense of self and trying to get me to suspend any prejudice I may harbor against the product? If this is a beer ad, let’s say, and it’s Tuesday night, then I have already determined I don’t want any beer — it’s Tuesday, I have things to do. But, that woman in the poster is having so much fun. She’s practically inviting me to come along. Nice hair. 🙂

I’ve also been observing people and I’ve known a lot of people… from all walks of life. I’ve been around the extremely rich and the extremely poor. I’ve been around people who have bright futures and those who think they have no future. I’ve been around people of every race. I’ve been around people who have told me about other people with whom I have yet to make my acquaintances, but I nonetheless get an idea in my head of how they are.

I think these people have become part of my “we.”

As some of you may have gathered from my postings, I believe in God, but it’s not the kind of God about whom you have been told. This version of God has almost none of the powers attributed to the Judeo-Christian God in that beloved Book.

This version of God doesn’t even seem to be one personality.

Skeptics are going to say that this version of God is in my head, literally subconscious parts of me talking to myself. There is no proof otherwise.

I see God as a chorus of voices. My brain hears the chorus, but it’s a very weak signal. I can only make out what passes through my filters and then what comes through is colored by my own ideas.

In the chorus are different factions. They want me to know different things. They give different advice. Some is good advice, some bad.

Skeptics would say this is just the angel and the devil on my shoulder, arguing among themselves, like in Animal House. For the record, the answer was an obvious “no way” in that movie, but it’s a funny scene.

Following that advice has led me into some hard times in the shorter term, but everything has worked out so well since then, and with lots of other people involved, that I have to conclude that the chorus was right and that I should continue to carefully consider what the chorus says.

In an effort to more purely use the information from the chorus, I have tried to completely eliminate my own ego from the mix. My ego is built from years of self interest — the self interests of the moments of personality that are still modeled in my head.

The 14 year old boy in my head still wants things and sees my current adultness as the means to finally get what he wants. When my ever-so-lovely girlfriend calls me, “bad man,” I imagine she’s addressing the 14 year old who she knows has undressed her with his eyes and would probably trade anything for a bag of magic beans or something that’s at least shiny. But the boy isn’t really bad, he’s just 14.

So, I know my ideas will work because I know how many different people work including those versions of myself who live on in my head.

I’ve held up on the idea to give all ideas to the world. Right now, I’m sorting out which ideas would be directly beneficial to the people I know, starting first with the people who have helped me out in the past. The way I figure it, they made an investment in me when they helped me along. They didn’t do it thinking of it as an investment and they don’t expect anything in return, but I think if I come up with something of value to them then they should be the first to hear an offer.

I am currently considering signing over all of my ideas to date to a company, perhaps called Joe’s Brain, LLC, and taking on a benefactor who would invest money in that company for the purpose of developing a number of those ideas. Of course that person would then receive a portion of any profits on the ideas. The only reason to do this is that I could get several of the ideas going on a schedule that would be several years shorter.

Due to the nature of technology, simultaneous invention is a fact of life. What did Lenon sing, “You can’t sing a song that can’t be sung?” You can certainly sing it first though, and if you don’t someone else will eventually.

Trust is an important thing. I’ve learned to trust myself so maybe I can engender some trust to a benefactor. I have someone in mind.