Listening Without Excuse

Ask With Intent
Listening Without Excuse
Acting with Courage

This will be part one of "Listening Without Excuse".... Want to go back a little bit, and explore what I am asking...

The above 3, Ask, Listen and Act are realy the process of purposeful thinking.... the opposite of rationalizing.

As such, I have to give debt to Vince Evangelista who pointed out in a talk he gave a few years ago....that when making decisions, he asks,

"How will this affect me in 3 hours..... in 3 months..... and in 3 years. This is a great way, in my opinion of rationally assessing whether a decision is a good one or not. Of course, when projecting into the future, many times the consequences of some actions will be obvious and other times, it will be a matter of speculation. Either way, it forces one to consider consequences before acting.

That is of course, the opposite of "whim worship", where one intentionally (whether you admit it to yourself or not) avoids thinking of consequences, because, like a child who simply wants candy, we want to blank out reality so that it will allow us to have our "candy".

So Listening without excuse, is simply, that when our rational conclusion is to either take or avoid a certain action, we do not attempt to justify or rationalize but move on to the next step which is to "Act with Courage."