We Are All Purple Squirrels

We are all Purple Squirrels. We are rare and valuable. We are unique. We believe in our capacity to change the world. We want to have a meaningful, positive impact on the people around us and the causes we care about. We hunger for change. We are frustrated when the things we care about fail to achieve their potential.?

Purple Squirrels have a deep desire for change and to make an impact, yet some are afraid of what others might think. And yet the more we wait, the more intense the frustration. We believe our ideas can change the world but we’re not sure how to make them real, or what might be holding us back. So we continue to direct that energy inward, toward more and more ideas, creating more and more pressure.

Every one of a Purple Squirrel’s ideas has multiple paths forward, each with the potential for success. And all of them (or at least most of them) feel like they are worth pursuing.?And in sets the decision fatigue.?Each of the ideas pulls at us a little, until nothing – no energy or time - is left. Then we stop, drained, and retreat back to the mundane requirements, however necessary, of maintaining our survival and that our family.

With the world the way it is now, with unlimited digital resources, the box of our world-changing ideas can be bottomless, sucking all of the pent-up energy of frustration into the vortex,?keeping our Purple energy from the people and causes that need it most.

Our Purple ideas love us. We love them.?But our ideas also need the love of others to live a full Purple life. And thus, we must accept the fact that not all of our precious and beautiful ideas will live. Not even a few.

We have to learn to be OK with the vast majority of our precious ideas dying so that others - the truly transcendent, world-changing, perfect, sparkly Purple ones - have a chance to flourish.