Lately I’ve taken to reading some personal development blogs again, mainly for kicks and giggles since usually I don’t voraciously read self-help blogs.

Of course, that leads full circle to why I don’t read self-help blogs in the first place: The information most spew out is simply terrible. In a field where self-expression, creativity, and originality rank up there as supreme virtues that everybody should adhere to, it’s mystifying and sadly ironic that these bloggers haven’t figured out how to be original yet.

I know, I know. Everybody has a story to tell, everybody is unique in their own “special” way, blah blah blah. I totally get that, that weird, frilly aspect of self-help is not lost on me. But I can’t help but wonder if these people haven’t ever read a personal development book in their lives. Have they thought about the immense amount of awesome ideas in said books? Have they applied these said ideas in their own lives?

Feeding into my misery over the state of self-help blogs is how each blog appears to be Xeroxed copies of one another. Every blog seems consistently churn out posts on the same old, dead topics: goal setting, productivity, time management. That’s not necessarily a bad array of topics to choose from, but once they’re done to death in the same exact ways, you begin to question why you’re reading these blogs in the first place. Do you really need to know another 20 simple tips to boost your productivity? Do you really need to question your gnawing suspicion that the list sounds oddly familiar?

This is why creating fresh ideas in any field is paramount to your success. For bloggers, nobody – and I mean nobody – wants to read something that’s been talked about for the last four years. You need to be enlightening, creative, entertaining, and emotional. Above all, you need to have brilliant ideas, ideas that shine above the rest. Yes, implimentation of your ideas is just as vital (otherwise the world won’t see your smarts); however, a great idea with great execution is impressive and something everybody and their mother loves.

But how do you create interesting ideas? Well, that’s what I’m here for. Following are three simple ways you can use to create better, fresh ideas.

1. Draw from your past experiences.

There are multiple emotional ways you can reminisce about your past: shock and awe, senseless longing, confusion, a strange mix of hatred and apathy. Some ways are strangely empowering, some act as a nasty downer. Uh oh!

When you’re trying to create fresh ideas, especially in a seemingly overcrowded field wrought with repackaged material (while competing tooth and nail for the same audience share), it’s difficult to throw your own originality into the heavy mix. So do something that’s ridiculously simple: draw from your own past experiences.

Luckily for you, your life experiences are totally your own. Nobody else has quite the same muddled, interesting mix of upbringing, values, friends and family, job, past times, and anything else you could possibly imagine. Your experiences are uniquely shaded with your own personal colors, painted from your life experiences.

If you’re having trouble brainstorming ideas that truly resonate with you, draw from your own past experiences. For self-help bloggers, do you have stories you can share with others about personal struggles and successes with goal setting? Have you unknowingly been using a personal twist on an old topic, a personal tip or trick you can share with the rest of the world?

People long to be connected to; they want to feel as if they have a kinship with you. Let them. If you’re a lyricist, can you tap into your memories to create a bond with your audience? If you’re suggesting improvements to your church to reach out to the youth in your community, can you look back at old service bulletins and see what works and what didn’t work, and try your hand at some of those ideas again?

The past can be a great source of inspiration and ideas. Sharing those experiences with the world can open the door to more creative self-expression. Instead of repackaging the same ideas through and through, you’ll be using your own life as a basis for what you write and share and how you connect to other people.

2. Brainstorm. A lot.

For the sake of an example, say you’re a blogger. A pretty standard question you might ask yourself is, “How can I differentiate myself from every other blogger out there in my chosen field?” From there, you might think a novel writing style would be in order, so you could then ask yourself the the question, “How can I create a more unique voice for myself?” From there, you brainstorm: Will you write sounding more excited? Snarky? Apathetic? Uplifting? Destroying? Flirty? You keep brainstorming until a certain style totally resonates with you; then you test it out. See where it takes you. The more ideas you can create, the better chance that you’ll find something that clicks with you that’s also totally original.

Brainstorming can be a painstakingly boring task. To create amazing ideas and a quality product that other people will stand with mouths gaping wide in awe at, you need to go through a lot of riff-raff to get to that point. Sometimes your best ideas will be some of the first ones you create; sometimes your best ideas will come very late in the game.

To illustrate this point, let’s take a very quick look at some classical music history. We all know Mozart was a very prolific composer, but did you know he wrote nearly 200+ pieces of music before he created his first amazing masterpiece at age 18? That’s a lot of mediocre, okay, average ideas. Beethoven wrote some of his very best work after he became deaf, after 25 straight years of composing. That’s self-discipline.

The Catch-22 of this wonderful suggestion is the fact that you might have to keep brainstorming. Over, and over, and over again. Sometimes the brainstorming never really stops. However, as time goes by, your brainstorming sessions become easier. You become in tune with yourself and what works (and doesn’t work). The quality of your ideas goes up. You’re able to create fresh ideas quite quickly at that point.

3. Do more thinking and less doing; ask pointed questions about diverse topics.

Pretend – for the sake of a strange, enlightening example – that there were no flavors of potato chips other than “Original.” Whenever you got a hankerin’ for potato chips, you’d dash to the store to buy that one simple flavor. It’d get boring fast, wouldn’t it?

Now what if you accidentally put a very slight amount of BBQ sauce on those potato chips one day? Yikes! Now you’ve created something slightly brand new, but totally different. You market your new creation as BBQ potato chips while everybody else keeps making Original potato chips. You rake in the dough and accolades while others simply lag behind in their old ways.

One of the major problems (and one of my number one complaints) in the personal development community is not enough time is doing thinking about topics while too much time is done writing. That’s not to say bloggers shouldn’t be posting 3 times a week or so and developing a base, but what’s the point if you’re not constantly bombarding your brain with new information? Your blog posts would feel stale, you would stall out and stagnate, just like the aforementioned potato chip business.

If you’re a self-help blogger writing about something such as acceptance, don’t just write about acceptance and what it means to other people. Ask what acceptance truly encompasses. Really think about what it means to you. Take your hands away from the keyboard for a while, take a walk, and just think about the topic. What kinds of personal stories do you have about acceptance? How did you learn lessons dealing with acceptance; how did that color how you view acceptance and the world? Does acceptance have any relationship with seemingly non-related personal development topics, such as self-discipline or productivity? Can you see hidden relationships that others might pass up in regards to those non-related topics?

When you’re given something to create ideas around, take the time to really think about that topic. Ask those pointed questions, really dig deep into what you’re thinking of. The gemstones of ideas don’t lie on the surface; they lie deep below the ground where others refuse to mine. It can be difficult; it can be painful; it sometimes can be irritating. But it’s so incredibly rewarding.

So… what are you waiting for? Get to creating those ideas, right now!