Nihil Novi Sub Sole — Nothing new under the sun.
But that’s not a limitation. It’s freedom.
In today’s episode of Morning Motivation, Michael Whitehouse reminds us that innovation doesn’t require novelty. You don’t have to invent brand-new ideas—just present timeless truths in your way, to your people. Remix. Reframe. Repeat. That’s how you make a difference.
Transcript
Nihil novi subsole. That is Latin for nothing new under the sun. The idea that there is nothing new is over 2,000 years old, at least in Latin form. I imagine it goes way before that. See, most things we learn and most things we do are simply remixes of other things. Sure, there's new technologies, but those technologies build on other technologies and build on other technologies. No one's invented new physics to make these technologies exist. They just discovered them and put them together differently. Everything's done with the same elements, the same 92 or 104 or whatever it is elements. Those just rearrange in different shapes to get different things. Everything I'm teaching you, someone probably taught me. Even if I think I came up with it first, I probably didn't. I probably heard it somewhere or maybe I heard two ideas. I synthesized them together. So when we go into our lives and we think, well, I don't know if what I'm doing is that special. I don't know if I'm doing anything unique. You doing it makes it unique. But ultimately, you're just teaching what other people teach. All the stuff Tony Robbins teaches that's so dramatic and exciting and earth-breaking, yeah, all that stuff is in the teachings of Buddha and the Bible and the Quran and Confucius teachings and all these ancient wisdom. It's thousands a year old. He just did it a different way. He presented it in a way that caught your attention and that caught everyone else's attention too. Same thing for you. You don't need to create anything new. Now, I'm not saying plagiarize someone's book or something, but the concepts, the ideas, you don't need to make new ideas. You need to take the old ideas and make them new through you. Bring them to new people. Serve in a new and different way. It's not about being totally new because you can't be new. Nihil Novi Subsoleh, there is nothing new under the sun. But you can make the old new. You can take the old concept. You can take what you've learned from others and make them accessible to people you're meant to bring them to. So share your greatness and realize it doesn't have to be totally new. It just has to be new to the people you're sharing it with. And that's enough.