The Direction of Intention

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You’d be surprised by how much in common training an actor has with coaching an executive. Clarity of intention, specificity of target, honesty of relationship, and ability to honor the greater integrity of the story are just a few of the similarities. The forms are different but the path is the same. Here’s the map:

Know what you can control and what you can’t. It is impossible to clearly see choices if you are trying to control the things that can’t be controlled (like other people’s thoughts and feelings).

Once you’ve let go of what you cannot control, choices become very clear. Where you put your energy shifts from manipulation to creation. In shorthand, you begin to control what you can control: your choices, your opinion of your self, what you want to create.

Intention is a fuzzy thing until choices become clear (and owned). Your relationship with control clarifies your relationship with choice – not the other way around. Your relationship with choice, once clarified, opens the route to a specific actionable intention.

It’s dominoes: a proper relationship with control reveals choice and a proper relationship with choice reveals intention. For the actor, there is nothing more powerful than a clear choice in service to a specific intention. The same is true of an executive. And, intention is pointless if not in service to a greater relationship. In business or on the stage, this is the map to transformation (if you are business type and shudder at the “T” word, insert the word “Innovation” for increased palatability). Art is business. Business is art. The language may be different but the path to mastery is the same.

Filed under: Perspective, Truly Powerful People |