Intentional Action on a Simple Smile

Personal Reflection

Last year in The Depths of a Simple Smile, I challenged you “to take a step back and uncover what makes your heart smile and find those passions in your life.” I now challenge you to be intentional with your passions to make positive changes to the world around you.

In November 2015, I departed for the north eastern parts of Africa to explore more of what truly makes me smile and to reflect further on turning my passions into reality. Reflecting on my experiences, I learned that to make a positive difference in the world and feel joy and happiness in what I do requires reflection, journaling, and forming relationships.

Africa Journaling

As we share our stories and experiences, we start understanding more the depth of our smile. It is important to then take time to reflect and write down our stories and thoughts on a daily basis to help us better develop our passions. Through our own written words we can start to see the formation of common themes, interests, and passions. This compilation allows us to dream big and organize lofty ideas into actionable goals for the future. It provides us understanding of who we are and how to fulfill our mission, vision, and values.

No dream is fulfilled by introspection alone nor does it happen overnight. It requires engaging like-missioned individuals to travel alongside us. A famous African proverb states, “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together.” Travelling far allows us to embrace our passions while travelling fast allows little time for smiling and self-understanding. Friends, family, colleagues, and mentors provide guidance, accountability, and encouragement leading us toward intentional action on our dreams, but not just anyone can fill those shoes. We must intentionally build relationships that align with our personal values, mission, and vision.

African Community

In August 2015, a relationship built a dozen years before came to provide new fruit. Mike, a friend from the past, became a life coach on the John Maxwell Team so I reached out to learn more about his new endeavors. Mike graciously shared his passion to be a life coach, and I embraced the opportunity to learn from his insight and focus more intentionally on my passions and dreams. He challenged me to dream big and write uninhibited goals for the future. The goal associated with my smile came effortlessly as I poured over my years of notes and experiences and worked to put some coherency around them. The ease of putting my dream together makes me question why only a dream. Part of the answer is that I have not effectively brought others on my journey. We need encouragement from those we trust as we face the illusion of failure, uncertainty, and not enough time. Not only do others provide encouragement, but their dreams may fit alongside, compliment, or even enhance ours or vice versa. I have found this to be very true over the past year as I have shared my passions, journey, and goals with others. Life is not about the individual but the community. Therefore, best laid plans come from the collaboration of many not one, and the benefit of those plans on the larger community and world can be extraordinary when we become focused and intentional.

In order to make the depths of your smile real, you must reflect, journal, and form intentional relationships. As you take action to make a difference in the world, here are some questions to ponder:

• Do your actions align with or go against your mission, vision, and values? This includes your daily job, family life, free time, the friends you spend time with, faith community, service work, and organizations.
• If your goals don’t align, what needs to be tweaked? Everything overtime needs tweaking as we continue to grow and develop in who we are and our overall understandings.
• How does your smile benefit the community locally and/or globally?
• How does your passion enhance the human dignity of others?
• How does it provide respect and honor to the people you encounter on a daily basis? 

Previous Blog Post and Link to The Depths of a Simple Smile