We study great ideas, admire the ideas others developed, and we discuss these.

But when we look more closely, the people we admire rarely call themselves idea generators or the greatest of all time. They just stayed with their idea and worked with it. They started by making this idea work for themselves.

Then they shared it with us. The interaction that unfolded from there contributed to changing the initial idea and allowing it to take a life of its own.

As we take up these ideas, may they be a philosophy, a framework, a theory, a model, or simply an idea it is our opportunity to make it our own.

Austin Kleon calls this stealing like an artist.

It’s not the idea to copy something and say it is our own.

It is the idea that by becoming a practitioner of that idea, by putting it into practice we’ll discover how it impacts others and us. It’s how we’ll discover a new world that will be ours. It’s how that idea that came from somewhere else will be changed by our unique way of experiencing its implementation.

But we need to be willing to become a practitioner instead of a copyist.