Put in the effort to persuade the life passion petals open, and the idea seeds will be ready to harvest.

Do you ever get stuck?  Hung up on the same old plan or ideas or maybe no ideas at all?  Having a wide variety of choices (or just some FRESH choices) can mean the difference between success and failure.  A key point to know if you’re trying to find your life’s passion or purpose.

I’ve read quite a few books from ideation geniuses – you know, those guys and gals that come up with ideas for a living. (lucky ducks!) And they all seem to come to similar conclusions about successful ideas:

1 good idea in 100 ideas is a VERY good ratio.

That’s a 1% “good idea” success rate… depressing, right?  Fear not my creatively challenged champion!  I’d like to introduce you to my favorite “easy, quick, and useful” brainstorming method: The Lotus Blossom.

Or as I like to call it, “Get me a crap load of ideas – like NOW!”  This is how to make 64 ideas in under 15 minutes – over 4 ideas a minute.  A useful statistic I am sure. That’s 4 ideas on how to “Live Your Passion” per minute.  You’re gonna strike gold some time – let’s increase your chances by throwing ‘quantity’ at it.

Lotus Blossom Your Way to Living Your Passion

The steps to using the Lotus Blossom Brainstorming Method are pretty straight forward.  Let me count the ways… oh, and it would be a good idea to work this along with me.  I just linked the PDF file in the first sentence.  Go get it. :)

Steps to Brainstorming with the Lotus Blossom Method:

1) Pick a main problem or area of focus to work on

I’ll pick “My Passions (and how to live them)” for 400 Alex

2) Put your choice in the center square of the lotus blossom – like so:

Identify your main topic.

3) Pick 8 important things or defining characteristics about your main choice

4) Put those 8 things in the 8 square around the main choice

I picked my 8 main passions: teaching, learning, reading, exploring, helping, growing, discovering self, and creativity – here:

Identify the 8 subtopics / characteristics.

5) Copy the square ‘1’ to the empty square ‘1’ box in the upper left

6) Copy square ‘2’ to the empty square ‘2’

7) Repeat for the remaining squares

You should now have something that looks like this:

Your 8 blossoms are now seeded and ready to go!

8) Now, pick 8 blurbs that expand, address, describe, or solve the characteristic (or “blossom seed”) in square ‘1’

Here’s what I came up with for ‘Teaching’:

Grow the 8 ideas relevant to a blossom seed.

9) Repeat this for the remaining squares.

Some of them will be VERY tough.  If you get stuck, go on and go to the next square.  BUT, come back and fill in the remaining blanks when you can.  Make sure you fill in every square on the whole Lotus Blossom.  When you’re getting stuck, the best stuff gets squeezed out.  Stick with it!

10) Go through and highlight the ideas you like for each square or “Blossom”

There were 5 from ‘Teaching’ that I liked:

Highlight the ideas you like.

11) Write down your thoughts on the ideas you like.  Turn those little Lotus Blossom seeds into full blow idea statements.

As an example, here are some possible ideas for living my passion for ‘Teaching’:

1. Teaching kids: through entertaining and technologically relevant methods
2. A program to teach the under-educated adults – adult learning program
3. Focus only on confusing areas of schooling and study.  Transform those into quickly (and easily) digestible lesson plans.
4. Work on methods to increase student interest and attention in schools.
5. Design learning plans and tools that help increase intrinsic motivation to learn.

12) If any Blossom has 5 or more ideas highlighted, you might want to start a new Lotus Blossom sheet with THAT idea as the main topic.

I would probably want to start a new Lotus Blossom sheet using ‘Teaching’ as the main topic since I found 5 ‘seeds’ that I really liked.  You can now see how 64 ideas (8 blossoms of 8 ideas each) can become 128 ideas (2 full Lotus Blossoms) very fast.

Being Stuck for Passion Ideas is for Suckers – Time to Blossom!

It seems like I use this Lotus Blossom Brainstorming Method on a weekly basis.  Sometimes it’s for something as simple as “how can I squeeze some more time out of my day?” to something a bit more complex like “how can we increase safety awareness within the corporation?”  …or “how the heck can I live my passion?!!?!”

Give it a whirl.  And most of all, practice.  The first couple of rounds might be tough and yield very few decent ideas.  Remember, you’re aiming for quantity here not a whole bunch of quality.

The quickest way to reach the “1% good idea ratio” is to Lotus Blossom until you’re all blossomed out.  Blossom on, my friends, and bring that passion to life!

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