How do you learn to think on your feet? –@socialhotchoco
Things always go wrong. All the time. When I was selling my first company, everything went wrong. We lost clients. Our landlord refused to give approval. We forget to get health insurance for our employees (and we had to admit that to our buyer), we were going bankrupt if the acquisition didn’t close within a month.
But every problem has a solution. Your mind has to be as flexible as possible.
Some people say, “The mind gets flexible through meditation.”
That only works for a few people. Not everyone can start off sitting for an hour a day and not get totally bored or fall asleep. Meditation is not really meant for most people (this is my opinion).
But you can train your mind to be flexible and to think fast. When I exercise muscles, I exercise until I hurt. Until I sweat. Until I know the next day I’m going to be sore. Otherwise the exercise doesn’t work.
It’s the same thing with the mind. You have to every day exercise it until it hurts. Until it’s sore the next day. Until you can’t go on any further but you know you have to if you want your idea muscles to be working. Idea muscles atrophy. You need to exercise them every day to build them back up. The benefits:
A) You will be able to think on your feet regardless of what problem comes up
B) You will become an idea machine
C) Other people with ideas will be attracted to you. Ideas want to mate. They want to give birth to new ideas. So people who have the idea muscles sharpened will become evolutionarily attracted to you to get new ideas born.
Just start with this: every day take a waiter’s pad and write down ten ideas. Then, with each idea, come up with the next two steps of how to get that idea done. If it’s a book idea, write the outline. If it’s a chapter idea, write down what the chapter is about. If it’s a business idea, write down some initial customers, or what the next step is on getting the idea implemented. Hurt your head. Keep thinking on each idea until you have to stop and say, “ugh, this hurts to push any more on this idea.” Do that for six months.
Then you join the ranks of the Idea Machines.