It is never too late for the seed to sprout

Most people barely have the time and energy to ship their own work, much less help someone else get theirs to the finish line.

They’re too cagey to share the love. Who cares about making the pie bigger when all they want to do is eat their piece?

Shawn, the supervisor at my old advertising agency, was the rare exception. Anytime a copy assignment tripped me up, he would take twenty minutes out of his day to work on a few executions of my ideas. And then he’d just give them to me.

Never once did he ask for credit. He would just smile and say, what’s mine is yours, and then go back to working on his own stuff.

This is precisely why helping other people execute their ideas is such an anomaly. It requires profound humility, faith and generosity, not to mention, a deep abundance mentality.

Because unless you trust that the forest will always provide, unless you believe that the more creativity you use, the more you have, it won’t work.

And this process is not just about ideas, either. It’s about the relationships we have with the people who belong to those ideas.

Look, everyone needs someone to tell them they have value. Everyone needs the satisfaction of knowing their talents contributed to a larger effort. And helping them execute their ideas accomplishes both.

In a world where millions of people are trying to make their ideas more popular than yours, setting aside the attachment to credit and enlisting yourself in another person’s dreams is always welcome.

Remember, there is great comfort in knowing that one’s ideas have been witnessed, shared and loved by another.

We can talk a big game about being open to other people’s ideas, or we can you simply go to work and start helping them execute those ideas.

Whose dream has become a reality because of you?