Flipping the internal to be external

Taking action implies taking responsibility.

One of the keys to great conversation is to be active, and not passive. It’s important to go into any conversation with a clear intention, but intention alone is not enough. Your intention must affect your actions: What you do, how you act, and what you say.

Intention suggests your options. Intention doesn’t just guide your actions. You do not, after thinking up some options, use your intention to pick among them. Rather, starting from your intentions, you can imagine actions which are in accord.

Forget what you think you know about intention. It’s not a squishy, touch-feely noun. Nope, your intention is a sharp, laser-focused action that make things happen. We want to inspire, to deflate, to engage, to quash, to persuade, to conspire, to welcome, to shut this down, to excite.

Thinking of your intention as an action and not a feeling is crucial. A feeling resides inside; it’s all about us. An action goes outside; we are affecting the people we’re around.

~ Angie Flynn-McIver, from Before You Say Anything

Taking action implies taking responsibility. We can sit on the sidelines and think, “Why doesn’t someone…” The obvious alternative is to step up. I keep saying that it’s not enough for us to simply have conversations, because we must actively work to create better conversations.

How can you turn your intention into action?

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