How to Have Original Ideas That Change You

Some ideas just hit you like a brick. They are not sophisticated. Complicated. They don’t feel like rocket science. They are almost always simple. So simple it makes you pull your hair and wonder…

“how the hell I didn’t think about this!!!”.

Like this idea from the book, “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield.. I read it maybe five years ago. One idea from that book never left me. It completely changed the way I saw work. And, more importantly, it changed the way I saw myself.

The idea was simple:

Turn pro. Show up every day. No matter how you feel.

That’s it.

They show up because that’s what professionals do. And they never take success or failure personally. An amateur worries about how they feel. A professional doesn’t care how they feel. They do what they gotta do. No matter what.

Woody Allen said something similar: “80% of success is just showing up.”

The one thing all original ideas share is that they don’t just motivate you, they change your entire identity.

And that’s what I want to talk about today: Ideas that make you change.

Ideas that give you a perspective so powerful that they shift the way you see yourself, your problems, and your life.

So how do you find these ideas?

First, you have to become a person who can have them. And to have these ideas you need an empty mind. Get comfortable with boredom. If you keep consuming other peoples ideas, your brain will never get a chance to think about its own. Sit with the discomfort of boredom. Your mind will tell you.. this is madness. The phone is right there Why are you staring at a wall??? Pick it. Scroll some reels. The little dopamine monkey won’t stop. But remember: this self discipline is the process to cook ideas.

No suffering, no cooking.

Now when you’re doing nothing, something new happens. Your five senses collect information from your environment. And then send it to the brain. And the brain processes this information and converts it into knowledge.

For example, if you touch a steel pot on a stove once, your brain remembers you got a blister from it. That’s knowledge. Original knowledge that you learned from your experience. That’s an original idea. Now you can write a book about ‘Hot things burn’. You didn’t read it in a book. You learned it from life.

Original ideas come from experience. From observation of your thoughts, emotions and actions, and then reflecting on them. And then asking: What did I just learn? So be bored. Do things. Explore life. Observe, and then note them down.

That’s the easy part. We all have hundreds of observations noted down in journals, notes app, old Google Docs, coffee shop napkins.

So what makes an idea original?

I think it’s this:

An original idea compresses a complicated problem into a simple truth that changes how you act.

The power of an original idea comes from the fact that it can instantly shift you from point A to point B. The transformation is instant. It gives you a totally different perspective to reinterpret your reality.

Mel Robbins’ book ‘The 5 Second Rule’ is a perfect example. We all struggle with discipline and procrastination. There are thousands of books, systems, productivity apps, and morning routines designed to solve it.

And then there’s this ridiculously simple idea:

5-4-3-2-1. Go.

Before your mind starts making excuses. Resists. Creates a totally rational reason to not do something, You act. You don’t think about doing something, you become the person who does it. And then you do it again. And again. You start believing:

Maybe I am someone who takes action.

The idea was simple. Easy. And it instantly shifted your identity from a thinker to a doer. You try it a few times. And you feel good. It works. It becomes an idea that changed your life.

From the field of biology, there is the idea of: fasting. There are a million complex ways to think about health. Diets, supplements, training protocols, sleep optimisation, medications, metabolic pathways.

And yet one of the oldest ideas is almost comically simple:

Sometimes, don’t eat.

Simple. Effective. And scientifically proven. An idea that just works. No fluff. You don’t eat for a day and that is it. And Yoshinori Ohsumi, the biologist who discovered autophagy, got a noble prize for it.

Complex problem, simple solution. That’s the fundamental core of an original idea. Where’s my Nobel? ;)

Just observe your own life. You don't need to invent the next theory of relativity. Start small. Think about the problems you solved for yourself.

What did you believe before?
What happened?
What did you discover?
What changed?

And then write it down in its most simplest form. Like in a few words or a sentence.

Amateur → Pro.
Thinking → 5-4-3-2-1 → Doing.
Fear → Action.
Perfectionism → Do it ugly.

The shorter, the better.

The best ideas feel like a click. Everything makes sense. Feels like an epiphany. Like you've jumped timelines. Shifted mentally, emotionally, and spiritually into a different dimension of life. Your Eureka! moment.

It’s the idea that makes you say,

“Oh shit. Everything I’ve been doing is wrong.”

That’s the sign of an original idea. It might sound obvious after someone says it. But the obvious stays invisible until someone discovers it.

It’s original because it came from your own personal experience. It’s original because it was simple. And it’s original because it turned you into a different person.

A better version of yourself.

That’s what makes an idea worth remembering. And maybe that’s what makes it original.

– Karun