Silence is the key to unlocking your biggest ideas

A few weeks ago I was reminded why silence is often the key to unlocking our biggest ideas.

My son turns 16 this year. I had promised to write him a book for his birthday, like I did for his older sister a couple of years earlier.

By November last year, I’d had two failed attempts. I was trying to muscle my way through writing it. Every time I started to write, I got a block. Words weren't flowing. Ideas were boring and felt like a sermon not a gift.

With less than three months until his birthday, I was getting stressing out about how I’d keep my promise to him.

So, I decided I needed to shift gears. And let ideas come to me and not force them.

And here's what happened.

My son's a musician. He plays guitar in a band and loves it.

One night over dinner we had a conversation about his school year coming up and he told me he was going to have to write original music and perform it.

"Cool", I said.

Later than night, as I was lying in bed with the lights off, I asked myself a question. "What form should the book for my son take?" That's all.

And in the silence what came to me a few moments later shocked me, "Write some songs.”

I've not been a song writer before, but the calling to put words into rhythm and rhyme and see how that could create something for my son's birthday was too good an idea to waste.

In the two weeks after that idea, nine songs came to me. It was over the summer break as I was in a restful state, with no input other than the sound of birds and the warmth of the baking hot sun.

After the songs were written a second idea appeared after a conversation with a friend that gave the book its shape. To surround each song's lyrics with a conversation between a young boy and his older self in a dream. A remnant from the two “failed” book attempts I’d had before. The conversation shines a light on the messages hidden inside each of the songs.

Unusual book structure = yes. Will it hit the mark = To be determined. Am I happy with the book = hell yes.

The book is now written and off to the printer.

The songs and conversations illustrate choices to live an authentic life based on my own stumbles, face plants and cliff jumps over the past five decades. Choices to help you live a life you truly want, not one you endure or told to live by others.

It's what I hope my son's able to do with his life.

The book is a gift for his birthday (along with some other things he really will love!). It's offered to him without expectation. He may like it, he may not. But the gift of giving this to him has been a truly great gift for me.

What I know is if I hadn’t chosen to switch off my analytical mind, the one I use every day to get the practical things done I need to, the creative ideas that came to me that powered the writing I did would not have happened.

It reminded me that sometimes we just need to find the space to live in silence for a little while and prompt our mind with the right question.

Then listen for the big ideas to our biggest challenges drop by and summon the courage to act on them.