Where ideas come from

I was having a conversation with a co worker today, and as I sometimes do, I was talking in a bit of a stream of consciousness. He had asked me a question about where would I find new companies to talk to. Here’s the deal… I am a Technical Recruiter, and part of my job is to call companies and see if they need help finding people to work in their IT departments. So I gave him a run down on about 50 places to start looking. He looked at me like I had lost my mind and couldn't seem to figure out where I came up with these ideas.

It made me think about where we get ideas from, and for that matter think about some of the experiences in life that make you think in certain ways.

In looking back, I had watched a movie about 10 years ago called Working Girl. I really like the movie at the time, but didn’t necessarily think that it would have a lasting impact on how I decide to do things. You may be familiar with the movie where the secretary is a hard worker and going to school to improve herself, but keeps getting shut down. Eventually she takes a chance and has a deal pending when a high powered person tries to steal her idea and pass it off as their own. The part that struck me was when the secretary had to talk about where she came up with her idea. She got the initial idea from a society column where some guy who owned a company’s daughter was going to get married. She thought the father’s company might be a good fit for something else she was looking at from some other angle, so she put two and two and two together and came up with an idea for a solution. I think this way too!

It's like there is no straight line from A to B. It is more like random thoughts get you to B.

So, where am I going with this? I was just thinking that I learned and started applying a way of thinking from a movie that I saw over 10 years ago. It is amazing how something as simple as watching a movie can set the path for a lifetime of a way of thinking and doing things. It just hit me as interesting where we get the paths that we follow and eventually make them into our own. This is just one thing of many but it just shows that every experience that you have regardless of how insignificant it seems at the time can shape your life and how you decide to live it.