The Brilliance of Being an Inspired Idiot

You just may need to be an idiot about it …

That impasse your facing, the desperately needed solution, the breakout idea/concept that could lift something to the next level – are you open to embracing what Leonard Sweet calls inspired idiocy?

This is not the absurd ravings of a madman. We play the idiot (at least to others we seem to) when we experience and act on flashes of intuition, bursts of creative imagination and brilliant, risky ideas.

Great Idiots in History Sampler

It’s easy to see inspired idiocy in history because it is so abnormal. It clearly stands above and apart from most people.

• Copernicus was considered a threat and an idiot by those who thought planet earth was the center of everything.

• Everyone was saying the earth was flat. Columbus sailed for the horizon anyway. What an idiot!

• Martin Luther was a 16th-century idiot who faced down centuries of bad theology and church tradition. He was a restoring, transformational agent in Christianity and the Western world.

You see, inspired idiocy is when we challenge the status quo and relinquish what needs to go. We unlearn so that we may embrace new ways of seeing and living.

• The American Founders forged a never-before-seen government as the nations watched. They risked their lives, fortunes, sacred honor and changed the world.

• Consider the life and work of George Washington Carver who absolutely transformed southern agriculture in the 1800′s, a case study in inspired idiocy.

• Surely Bill Gates was thought to be idiotic for dropping out of Harvard to pursue software development.

• The Apostle Paul confronted the religious and philosophical establishment throughout the Roman Empire, setting in motion forces which have only increased since his lifetime. He said, “We are fools for Christ.” He shaped (no, he redirected) history.

What About Us?

We may not be sailing from Europe on the Santa Maria searching for a westward route to Asia, only to discover a New World.

But we probably need to leave the shores of what we have known and experienced. There are many ways in which we can challenge needs and engage opportunities – beginning with our personal world and then advancing into the world-at-large around us.

• That relationship which is tired and needs to press thru another “membrane” into a refreshing season of growth …

• Those worn-out cycles of thinking, feeling, and speaking which must be transformed into something new …

• The work, career, business that is crying out for new pathways …

• ___________________________ (fill in the blank)

Explore your life and work. In what areas can you become an inspired idiot? What about your sphere of influence?

Focus one area of your life or work and conduct an experiment. Calm down. Meditate. Pray. Visualize. Generate creative ideas. And then take a risk, leaving the shore of what you know. Let’s lift our sails and catch the winds that will take us to new places we’re designed for.

Open up to living with the touch of genius.