How to get to action

I attended a meeting yesterday about leadership and innovation, partially centered around the question “how do you inspire students to go from community engagement to political action?” (Heck, how do I inspire myself to go from community engagement to political action and what does political action mean anyways?)

Nothing was decided, solved or determined. But good questions were asked. Like

1. How can we use leadership, innovation and design thinking to solve some of the bigger social problems that exist in our community?
2. What skills can we teach/must we teach our students, members of our community and beyond that will allow them to be leaders, innovators and creative thinkers in the 21st century?
3. The future lies in today’s student. What do we think are important skills for them to have as they become tomorrow’s leaders?

We did not get to action. But it was one of those preliminary meetings that you leave knowing that something will come from it. You don’t really know what, and you don’t really know what your part will be, but you are thinking. You are looking at your own life and asking, how is my work serving the greater good? Is my work contributing to these questions? What do I need to do more or less of going forward? Is this worth suffering for? And if not, what is? How do I want to contribute to this beautiful life, and am I doing it?

So maybe some of the first steps to getting to action is asking the right questions. What are you asking yourself right now?