The Hidden Danger Of Falling In Love With Your Ideas

This expert opinion by Andrea Olson, CEO of Pragmadik, was originally published on Inc.com.

There’s a seductive pull that comes with a new idea. It starts as a spark that’s energizing, intoxicating, and full of possibility. Before long, that spark becomes a narrative, and the narrative becomes a belief. If you’re not careful, that belief becomes dogma. 

This is the danger of falling in love with your own ideas. Once you’re emotionally hooked, you stop seeing clearly. You’ve effectively gotten high on your own supply. In business, innovation, strategy, and leadership, this is one of the most consistent and costly blind spots. Not because people lack creativity, but because they become too enamored with the wrong creativity—their own. 

The Allure Of Your Own Genius—Real Or Imagined 

Ideas feel great. They might give you identity, purpose, and a sense of mastery. When you come up with something clever—an insight, solution or strategy—your brain rewards you. Dopamine surges, confidence rises, and suddenly, the idea isn’t just an idea. It’s the idea. 

This chemical rush is precisely why the phrase “never get high on your own supply” matters. It’s not about cynicism or self-doubt. It’s about maintaining clarity in a moment when your biology and ego are conspiring to convince you that you’re infallible. 

Innovation’s Most Common Addiction 

Teams often fall into this trap: 

• Building a product because they love the concept 
• Crafting a strategy because it feels smart 
• Pitching an initiative because it sounds visionary 
• Defending the plan because they created it—not because it’s right 

The problem is markets don’t care about your emotional attachment to your ideas. Customers don’t reward your internal excitement. Organizations don’t succeed because you’re clever. They succeed because you’re grounded. Addiction to your own idea suppresses the two things leaders need most—curiosity and humility. 

When Passion Turns Into Paralysis 

Once people get high on their own idea, three things happen: 

1. They become selectively blind. Every piece of data that contradicts their idea becomes an outlier, an anomaly, or a misunderstanding. 
2. They build the wrong thing remarkably well. Execution ramps up, effort increases, and resources pile in toward an idea that increasingly diverges from reality. 
3. They push harder instead of stepping back. Resistance is interpreted as ignorance, not feedback. The instinct becomes to evangelize, not evaluate. 

Detachment Without Apathy Is The Antidote  

This is how organizations march confidently into failure: Fully committed, completely convinced, and entirely wrong. 

Detachment doesn’t mean indifference. It means refusing to let your identity fuse with your invention. The healthiest innovators and strategic leaders maintain a productive distance between themselves and their ideas. That distance allows room for testing, critique, iteration, refocusing, and abandonment when necessary. Never allow yourself to get high on your own supply. This isn’t a warning against ambition. It’s a warning against unexamined certainty. 

Make Your Idea Prove Itself  

The best leaders treat ideas like hypotheses, not declarations. They ask: 

• What would convince me that this isn’t as good as I think? 
• Where could this go wrong? 
• Who disagrees with me and why?
• What evidence do I not want to see? 

This mindset transforms creativity into capability. It turns inspiration into strategy. Also, it keeps you sharp, grounded, and adaptive—the three traits that enamored thinkers inevitably lose. 

Why Falling In Love With An Idea Is Risky 

When your ego becomes the gatekeeper of truth, you stop learning. When your excitement becomes the metric of value, you stop listening. When your idea becomes part of your identity, you stop evolving. 

So pursue bold ideas. Generate new ones. Experiment relentlessly. However, always keep a clear head. Because in the world of strategy and innovation, the moment you get high on your own supply is the moment your thinking becomes dull and your decisions become dangerous.