You dismiss an idea because it's yours, the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson says in an 1841 essay, then admire it when somebody else says it. You recognize it, but now it has what he calls "alienated majesty," something like your own thought looking grand because it belongs to someone else. That's a fancy name for hearing your own idea from your brother-in-law. Emerson's warning is that if you keep dropping your own thoughts, someone else will say them tomorrow, and you'll have to take your own opinion back from them, and feel ashamed doing it. Say you had an idea in the shower about doing Saturday differently, and you're already halfway to dropping it. Saying it yourself, while it's still rough, is how it stays yours. Over breakfast this morning, tell whoever's at the table one idea you were about to drop, before you decide it's too ordinary to mention.