If you’ve been on this earth for any reasonable amount of time, and are even a little observant, you’ll have realised that life often works in cycles.

 

The seasons, fads, fashions.  Whatever it is, most things work in cycles.

 

This also works with ideas.  Often ‘new’ is merely something old dressed up a little, when we take a closer look.

 

It may be packaged in a different way, it may profess to be ‘new and cutting edge’ but what it professes to be and what it is, are not always aligned. Deep down, we know better.

 

Special Snowflakes

We all like to feel like we’ve ‘discovered’ something or ‘invented’ something but the truth is often simpler.  Most of us are living in a framework of handed down ideas from others.  Our ‘reality’ has already been created for us, to a degree, by someone else’s perception of that reality.

 

Languages, civilisations, political ideals, philosophies.  All have a source if we go back far enough.  None are ours to own.

 

Mindfulness is not new, in spite of what the book cover of the latest best seller in the genre may claim.  Just ask Lao Tzu, or Socrates, or Seneca or…well, you get the point.

 

Bodyweight training may be having its moment in the sun as a popular way for people to strengthen their bodies, in endless interesting ways.  But let’s be clear, getting strong with your own bodyweight is as old as man.

 

Intermittent Fasting may be the trendy way of eating and fit for many of us in our modern days, but this is another concept that is ancient.  Just because you package it up as 18/6, 20/4, 23/1 and give it a catchy name, it doesn’t make it new.

 

Of course, this isn’t welcome news to many of us.  We like the idea of being special little snowflakes.  We are all in love with the idea of knowing our own mind, of owning our ideas.  Of being original.

 

If we’re honest with ourselves, we all borrow ideas from those around us.  We borrow from those that have come before us.  We can remix ideas and concepts but essentially, everything old becomes new again.

 

We can recognise this and embrace it.  It can free us up.  We can be inspired by others and credit them.  We can put our own spin on ideas but forget the false pretence that we own this stuff.

 

Let’s throw our ego out and commit to adding something positive.  Being part of a continuing tradition of recycling, refining and handing down ideas for generations to come.

 

 

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