Why Not Share?

If you belong to any of the online piano teacher forums, you will know what I mean when I say that I have benefited from so many wonderful ideas that have been shared in this venue.  What’s been interesting to me is that sometimes the most simple idea that someone shares can be just what I need to help a struggling student. Similarly, sometimes I have hesitated to share something that might seem silly or obvious to me only to find after I do share that it is just what another teacher needed!  Derek Sivers has another great article about why we hesitate to share ideas and why we should consider sharing our ideas even when they are obvious to us.  Here is part of his article:

Obvious to You; Amazing to Others:

Any creator of anything knows this feeling:

You experience someone else’s innovative work. It’s beautiful, brilliant, breath-taking. You’re stunned.

Their ideas are unexpected and surprising, but perfect.

You think, “I never would have thought of that. How do they even come up with that? It’s genius!”

Afterwards, you think, “My ideas are so obvious. I’ll never be as inventive as that.”

…One day someone emailed me and said, “I never would have thought of that. How did you even come up with that? It’s genius!”

Of course I disagreed, and explained why it was nothing special.

But afterwards, I realized something surprisingly profound:

Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them.

So maybe what’s obvious to me is amazing to someone else?

Hit songwriters, in interviews, often admit that their most successful hit song was one they thought was just stupid, even not worth recording.

We’re clearly a bad judge of our own creations. We should just put it out and let the world decide.

I would encourage you to read the entire article.  I love the way Derek closes his article and would like to ask you the same question: “Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?”