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What’s Your Priority?

What’s Your Priority?

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Railroad tracks that split in two directions

When you start to work on a project, have you ever have something else come up that needed your attention? It dragged you away from your priority, while you dealt with the more immediate concern. Did this develop into a pattern for you, so that every time you began to shift your attention to your project, another distraction would arise?

If so, it’s an unconscious tactic to resist moving forward with your vision. You may have an unknown block to creating your goal. Or you could be concerned about leaving your comfort zone. Your subconscious is simply giving you the means to stay where you are.

Resisting Your Priority

Your priority is whatever goal or vision you’re currently working on, and the steps that can bring it into reality. This could be making your business a success, improving your health, or cleaning out the garage. It needs to be attended to before you deal with anything else. And your priority takes precedence over anyone else’s demands on you.

Resistance can take many aspects. You can recognize it if you’re procrastinating some action having to do with your goal. Washing the dishes first could be an excuse to avoid dealing with your priority. If you want to reduce weight, and decide to have that slice of pie at a party, then you’re giving in to the part of you that doesn’t want that slim figure. Or you could just keep postponing diving into a project that needs to be done. All of these are subconscious devices to keep you where it feels familiar.

The Cost of Distractions

It’s also easy for life to distract you from what’s significant. So many other things demand your attention when you’re trying to fulfill your priorities. Answering email, washing the dog, a friend calling you in distress can all be excuses not to put your needs first. Whatever you pay attention to, even if it’s something that’s been thrust on you, becomes your priority for that moment. You have to consciously make a choice of what is most vital to you.

When other things clamor for your attention, and you focus on them and ignore your goal, you’re giving your subconscious the direction to continue to keep you off track. Unless you take action on your goal first, your subconscious will continue to divert you. It follows your direction. When you let yourself be distracted, it takes the message that you want it to continue to undermine your goal.

The Difference Between Immediate and Urgent

You have to determine what needs your attention now, and what can wait for a few hours. It’s hard not to confuse the immediate from the urgent. An email that needs to be answered today means that it can be responded to later. It can be put off until after you spend time on your goal.

If you have something that’s urgent, it needs to be addressed before you work on your goal. For instance, a computer crash prevents you from doing your work. The computer has to be fixed before anything can be done in the area of your business. A crisis can deter you for a short time. But when it’s over, get refocused and back on course. 

Suppose your goal is to eat healthier and avoid sugar. When you have dinner at your mom’s, your priority is to pick the foods that fit your plan. Even if she’s upset when you don’t have a piece of her chocolate cake, choose to stick to your goal. Your seeking health trumps her being offended. Besides, shouldn’t she support your goal to be healthier?

If you want to establish a spiritual practice, you have to set aside time to meditate and read. When you allow other concerns to impede your practice, you establish that they’re more crucial  than your spiritual growth. When you stand firm in your goal, you communicate to the Universe that you recognize the value of your inner life.

Resolving Resistance

When you have a goal, you have to create the plan to achieve it. You’ll develop steps, and then prioritize them, figuring out what comes first, then second and so on. Each day, make your vision your priority and take some action towards it. Only by doing so will you undo the resistance that has been trying to sabotage your plans.

Distractions will diminish, and you’ll handle them better, because your subconscious will get the message that you intend to fulfill your desire. As you make your vision a priority, you’ll be creating the habit of attending to it a step at a time. Step by step, you’ll get to your goal, and your vision will become a reality.

Affirmation:

I now prioritize myself and my vision. No one can stop me but me. What I want is important, and I set my intention to follow through on it. I push through my resistance, in whatever form it takes. Every day, I take positive action in the direction of my goal. As I do, I establish the habit of supporting myself and my priorities.

As a focus coach, hypnotherapist, and speaker, Linda-Ann Stewart motivates women entrepreneurs and small business owners to focus and transform their business through deliberate actions that break through distraction and overwhelm to greater success, wellbeing and prosperity..To achieve
your goals with confidence and ease in 4 powerful steps, register for her FREE training video and accompanying action planning guide at www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/setyourcourse.html. You can contact her at LAS@Linda-AnnStewart.com or 928-600-0452.

Key Elements for Your Success

Key Elements for Your Success

Having your heart and vision aligned are vital for the success of any venture, whether personal or professional. But they is another key element that you need to be able to propel yourself forward. It’s one that is key for your success and it includes other aspects. Linda-Ann Stewart, vision strategist, will share what this element is and give you some ideas on how to cultivate it in your life.



Transcript:
Thank you for joining me. I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision strategist. Do you wonder what that is? Well, I help people take their vision and focus on the strategies that will bring it into a reality. I’d like to talk about what elements you need to have in place to be successful. The first part of is that you need to align your heart with your vision. From there you create a plan, or strategies, and then focus on them.

When I talk about the heart, I mean passion and beliefs, mindset. What about you? Do you have a passion for your next step? Do you have any beliefs that contradict it? Your passion and beliefs have to be aligned with your vision, which is your intention and direction you want to go in.

Your vision is why you want to achieve your goals, and what you eventually hope to achieve. What about you? What’s your vision? When your heart and vision are supporting each other, the plan, which is the steps, strategies and tactics to take, is easy to develop. Natural progression. Heart, vision and plan form the foundation of any endeavor, whether personal or professional.

In my hypnotherapy practice, these were the first things my clients and I had to decide on before we start making changes in their lives, whether for stress reduction, stopping smoking, weight management, improving self-esteem, success programming or anything else. Without the foundation to build on, my clients would have failed to achieve their goals.

The next step was equally important. It’s what programmed them for success. It was focusing on the strategies and taking the actions that the plan dictated. Many people pay attention to details or tactics that don’t really help them in the long run. But they feel like they’re getting things done, even though they’re really just in motion. Do you ever feel that?

You can run on a treadmill, but you’ll never actually get anywhere, will you? If you’re running in place, you have to step back off that treadmill and assess if the actions you’re taking are allowing you to make progress.

When you’re not focused, you can easily become scattered, sidetracked and distracted. You don’t want to always be chasing after squirrels, do you? So focus also means to have your priorities straight. You decide what comes first then next, then next after that. You wouldn’t try to scramble eggs before you got a pan onto the stove, would you? If you did, you’d have a real mess, right? Same goes with priorities.

And you have to make sure you spend time on your priorities, and not let someone else dictate what they are. For instance, suppose you’d planned to spend the evening paying bills that were due, but a friend stopped by at the last minute and wanted you to go to a movie with them. If you agree, wouldn’t you have let their priority be more important than yours?

I know paying bills isn’t a fun job, but it was your priority and necessary to avoid late fees. If you didn’t get it done when you’d originally planned, it had to be done another time, when you might have had something else planned.

This can also happen if you don’t have any priorities at all. Then you leave the door open for someone else to decide what your priorities should be. And who wants that?

Having a focus means you also cultivate the behaviors, habits and skills you need. Maybe you need to stop procrastinating paying those bills until the last minute? Or you might want to develop the habit of scheduling social time with friends? Maybe you want to learn more about social media? All of these also take focus and attention, and help take you in the direction of your vision.

Focus is what keeps you on track and progressing. In addition to having heart, vision, and a plan, focus propels you to success. Are you lacking focus in an area? Are your priorities in order? Are you following your priorities? Do you need to establish a new habit or develop a new skill to take the next step? Take just one of these, and begin to act on it. Establish it as a priority and notice how you start making progress.

If you’d like some help in achieving your goals, apply for a complimentary Clarify Your Vision coaching consultation.

Thank you for watching. And I would love to know how you’re focusing on your goal. Take care.

Read the accompanying article, Align Your Heart with Your Vision.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Making Your Priorities Important

Making Your Priorities Important

It’s sometimes hard to keep your priorities straight. You’re pulled in different directions, especially when other people want something from you. But your priorities are important and necessary if you’re going to achieve any goal. And the most important person to please is yourself. Here are 3 tips on how to respect your priorities and set them first in your life.



Transcript:
Thank you for watching. I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision strategist. Sometimes, it’s just so hard to keep your priorities straight, isn’t it? You’re pulled in different directions. You have competing agendas from yourself and other people.

For instance, let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds, but you also want a piece of your coworker’s birthday cake. It’s really a hard choice. One part of you wants to lose the weight, the other wants the cake. Future benefits vs immediate gratification, and the cake is right there in front of you. But if you don’t focus on your priorities, which are for your future benefit, you sabotage what you want to accomplish, don’t you? I mean, that 10 pounds will always remain because of all the temptations, unless you prioritize your priorities.

And it’s not just sugar that can be your downfall. When you want to accomplish some goal, it’s all to easy to get distracted by small tasks and other peoples desires, isn’t it? Being able to stick to your priorities is important if you ever want to achieve your goals. It doesn’t matter if your goal is personal or professional. You have to make it a priority above other things. This is what propels you forward so that you reach your goal or dream. And this is one of the things I help my coaching clients with.

I specialize in working with women service professionals and entrepreneurs, who spin their wheels and get stuck as their business runs them. Using my 30 years of experience as a hypnotherapist, I help them chart their course and develop the strategies that will accelerate their business to the next level and beyond. And I’d like to share a some tips that I share with my clients.

One of the things that gets in the say of sticking to your priorities is other people’s desires. They want something from you and it can be hard to disappoint them, can’t it? It’s hard to know when it’s appropriate to give them what they want and when it’s not. Especially for women. All too often, we put off our priorities to please others, don’t we?

But priorities are called that for a reason. When you prioritize something, and follow through on it, you’re establishing that it’s important to you. It’s more important than what other people want from you, or than the other tasks and minutiae that crop up to distract you. A priority takes precedence over all that, right?

How can you approve of your priorities, rather than seeking approval from other people? The most important person to please is yourself. If you constantly put your priorities aside for other people, you’ll never get them done. It may feel selfish, but, if you think about it, so is breathing.

By fulfilling your priorities, you’re committing to a certain course of action that will take you to a goal and you’re dedicating your time and effort to towards it. The priority of your goal comes first on the list of things to accomplish.

Life can get in the way, sometimes, and you can get sidetracked, can’t you? But if you establish your priorities, and respect them, you’ll stay on track to accomplish your goal. And your goal is a step towards your dream or vision. So how can you set your priorities first?

1. Set strong boundaries. Let people know what you’ll do and what you won’t do. When you’ll help and when you won’t. And don’t make exceptions, except in a true emergency.

2. Prioritize your priorities. When they’re they most important thing in your mind, that changes the way you think about them and how you respond to distractions and others demands. When you’re faced with temptation, remember that you’ve set your priority above anything else.

3. Take action on your priorities.
Take 1 step, do 1 thing. Your brain and subconscious likes accomplishment, even if it’s small. Your subconscious and brain will use that to keep your motivation up and momentum going.

These are 3 steps you can take to make sure you fulfill your priorities. When you act on them, you’ll have more success in achieving your goal, dream and vision.

If you’d like some help in achieving your goals, apply for a complimentary Clarify Your Vision coaching consultation.

Thank you for watching. As you take care of your priorities, your goal will take care of itself.

Read the article that accompanies this video, Don’t Let Distractions Crush Your Dreams.

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Prioritization – More Important Than Any Productivity Technique
Productivity doesn’t mean to get more tasks done. That’s just a way of staying and looking busy and it’s neither efficient or effective. True productivity means to get the most important task done. The one that will drive you closer to your goal. To that end, you need to prioritize what is most important and do that task first.

How to Support Yourself When Your Emotions Don’t
Our emotions are valuable because they provide us with important information. But sometimes our emotions steer us down the wrong path, and we can make self-destructive decisions based on them. This article explores how to determine when our emotions aren’t being helpful and what we can do in that case.

Take a Mindful Moment: 5 Simple Practices for Daily Life
From frustrating to impatient, your experiences each day give you opportunities to practice mindfulness. And it doesn’t need to take much time to reclaim your calm and reason. It just needs a bit of consideration and practice. Explore these simple practices to breathe more peace into your day.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Don’t Let Distractions Crush Your Dreams

Don’t Let Distractions Crush Your Dreams

by Linda-Ann Stewart

distract-sign-515056-sm

I recently had lunch with a friend, Mary, who makes jewelry. Her work is in stores and online, and has begun to get popular. But, as with many creative entrepreneurs, she’s having trouble with loved ones who don’t take her business seriously. She struggles with balancing her work with the expectations of her extended family.

Because she doesn’t have a 9 to 5 job, her family assumes that she’ll be available whenever they want. They don’t respect her work time because she hasn’t insisted that they do. She’s put their desires above her interests. Her message to them and to her subconscious is that her work and priorities aren’t that important. As a result, she’s trained her subconscious and the Law of Attraction to not only accept the interruption to her work, but to attract other interference.

Have you ever noticed that as you’re expanding and changing, you have a lot more distractions? They seem to pop up out of nowhere, and keep getting in the way of what you want to accomplish. If you succumb to them, they’ll sabotage your priorities. But it’s a natural part of the change process. The Universe isn’t testing you. It’s your subconscious testing you to see if you really are dedicated to your dream. The subconscious is also trying to keep you in your comfort zone.

I was amazed at how many of my smoking cessation hypnotherapy clients would experience unexpected stressful situations when they quit smoking. It was their subconscious throwing up road blocks to their goal. The severity of their problems was in direct proportion to the amount of ambivalence they had to becoming an ex-smoker. If they weren’t committed to quitting, they backslid and gave up. The distraction was an excuse for them to continue smoking.

Sometimes the subconscious will know you really don’t want to face a task, and your concentration is disturbed. For instance, you need to get the budget done. But you receive a phone call about an insignificant matter that pulls you away from it. You could have let the call go to voicemail, but welcomed the interruption. That’s the subconscious trying to help you avoid what it knows you don’t want to do.

The main purpose of the subconscious is to keep you safe, even if it means keeping you from doing what you want. It sees any change as a threat. If you allow yourself to get off track, the subconscious will get the message that you want to stay off course. And it will begin to seek out new ways to detour you.

However, if you push the distractions aside and persist with your priorities, there will be fewer disturbances. Your subconscious will get more comfortable and will help you move towards your goal. Your priorities are important. The Universe and Your subconscious will support you as you support yourself. When you respect your own priorities above what anyone else wants from you, you’re instructing your subconscious to respect your interests, too.

Mary decided to make appointments with herself to work, and keep them no matter what. She wanted to make sure nothing got in the way of that time with her jewelry. This will convince her subconscious that she’s committed to her work, and her inner mind will start to support her by reducing distractions. When she recognizes the validity of her business, she’ll be able to stand up for her priorities. As a result, she’ll create boundaries and insist that others recognize them.

Is there some goal or dream you want? If so, set it as a priority. Work towards your goal and don’t let anything get in the way. You can attend to other people’s wishes after you’ve satisfied your priorities. But your priorities come first. How can you respect your priorities and stand up for them? When you figure that out, and act on it, your path to achieving your dream will get easier.

Affirmation:

The Universe supports me as I support myself in the pursuit of my dream. I deserve it, and I respect my time and efforts. I realize that other people may have desires of their own, but I put my well being and interests first. I fulfill my priorities first, then I can address the desires of others.

Watch the video that accompanies this article, Making Your Priorities Important.

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A Simple but Proven Way to Get Things Done
For some people, without having outside pressure to accomplish a task, it doesn’t get done. It’s hard to set aside the time and energy to achieve it when you can always put it off. This can affect your productivity, effectiveness and success. But if you figure out how to set it as a priority, you’ll get it done. This article describes an efficient method you can use to increase your progress.

How to Overcome Perfectionism: 6 Powerful Habits
Perfectionism is a destructive tendency. It drains your self-esteem and undermines your productivity. Not only can you get stuck while trying to get things perfect, but you dig yourself into a hole that it’s hard to get out of. But you can overcome this frustrating pattern. It’s not easy to break this habit, but using these tips will get you moving in the right direction.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Make Yourself a Priority to Reduce Overwhelm

Make Yourself a Priority to Reduce Overwhelm

How many roles do you fill? Do you ever feel like they’re pulling you in a hundred different directions all at once? This contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, because you can’t do it all. Learn a couple of techniques of how you can prioritize yourself in a way that supports your mental and physical health.



Transcript:

How many roles do you have? Mother, father, wife, husband, sister/brother, business owner, worker, manager, daughter, son, and on and on? Do you ever feel like they’re pulling you in a hundred different directions all at once? Like you have too many people who want you to help them, or want something from you, and they all want it now? This contributes to a feeling of stress and overwhelm, because you can’t do it all. And trying to can impact your personal and professional life. I’d like to give a couple of suggestions of how you can prioritize yourself in a way that supports your mental and physical health.

I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision strategist. For almost 30 years, I’ve been a hypnotherapist. Clients came to see me to create change in their lives. Over time, I discovered that they had to also have a vision of where they wanted to end up with that change to be truly successful. Now, as a vision strategist, I help women entrepreneurs get clear, focused and get back in control so they’re able to accelerate to the next level of their business.

I don’t know about you, but I’m always fighting against being a people pleaser. In the past, my needs took second place to what others wanted. If a group I was volunteered for asked me to be part of committee, I’d generally say “yes,” even when the time involved impacted my work or well being. The wake-up call came when I got so over involved with different organizations that my health was affected. That’s when I developed the ability to say “no.” I realized I couldn’t be all things to all people, and still be there for myself. I couldn’t please everyone. Can you?

For instance, you know you can’t satisfy all of your potential customers. Some will just be more trouble than they’re worth. You’ll have to choose your values and peace of mind over what they want from you. Setting boundaries on your time may be your first step. For instance, you don’t answer the phone outside of office hours. Or, if you need to be on call, you establish some rules for customers who abuse the privilege.

In my first years as a hypnotherapist and coach, I learned not to give my home number to clients (this was in the years before cell phones). Too many called in the evening, just to talk. So what kind of boundaries can you set? It’s just another way of saying “no.”

If people in your personal life demand what you struggle to give, it’s important to use both of those strategies. Learn to say “no” to requests that you know will mean you have to sacrifice something important to you. And establish boundaries for when you will and won’t be available, what you’re willing to do and not do. Especially if they’re things that the person asking can do for themselves. You can’t please everyone, and you need to take care of your well being or you won’t be able to be there for others.

Years ago, I had to end my association with some of the organizations I’d been involved with. They couldn’t accept that I wasn’t at their beck and call anymore. It was hard, and I probably wouldn’t have done it if my health hadn’t been involved. But learning to say “no” was a valuable lesson. It’s one that has served me well in my personal and professional life since.

What can you say “no” to? How can you set boundaries in your life? These are very important abilities to develop. They allow you to prioritize what’s important for you. And when you do that, you’ll reduce your stress and have more peace of mind.

If you’d like more tips on how to make your day flow more smoothly, download my free guide, Take Control of Your Day.

Thank you for watching. I really encourage you to practice these techniques. I know they’ll make a difference in your life.

Read the accompanying article, Conquer the Distress of Overwhelm.

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Avoid These 7 Traps That Sabotage Your Dreams

Avoid These 7 Traps That Sabotage Your Dreams

Sunset Crater, Flagstaff AZDo you have a dream or a vision that you’re not actively pursuing? Maybe you’re not taking action on it or you’re chronically preparing to start. If so, you’re not alone. Self-sabotage is an insidious, subversive and subtle act. It gets hidden amongst the busyness of your life. And it may even seem completely reasonable that you haven’t been able to make any progress toward your dream. But there are unseen forces at work within you that are holding you back.

Here are 7 ways that you undermine yourself and steps you can take to overcome these obstacles.

1. Lack of clarity. You only have a fuzzy idea of what you want. This isn’t very motivating and it won’t impel you to take action. When you don’t have a precise idea of your direction, you won’t take any steps. Specific ideas about your goals allow you to take specific steps towards achieving them, which leads to better results. It also gives the Law of Attraction an explicit pattern to follow.

2. No plan. You may want to go with the flow and resist the structure of a plan. But when you choose to let things unfold in this way, you’re going to be blown around by every circumstance that presents itself. There’s a saying, “When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” In your busy life, if something doesn’t get prioritized, it doesn’t get done. Create an outline of a plan that serves you, so that the Law of Attraction can draw to you what you need. Your plan should include room for the unexpected.

3. Not working your plan. You’ve created a plan, put it in a drawer and gotten involved in your busy life. The immediate and the urgent have taken precedence. Or you may be dealing with the “shiny object syndrome.” Other enticing options have taken you off track and gotten you nowhere. This just creates confusion for the Universe, as it doesn’t know what you want. It’s ok to make course corrections periodically, but not every day. Assess your plan and get back to working it.

4. Not making your dream a priority. You have a plan, but you let other things get in the way. This may be day-to-day chores or plain old inertia. It’s simply easier to fall back into old habits than it is to clear space to work for your dream. Unless you decide that your dream is important, you’ll never achieve it. And the Universe won’t make it a priority, either. Focus on what you want, schedule taking action and following through.

5. Seeking approval. You’re trying to live up to other peoples’ expectations of you. And you put others’ agendas ahead of your own wants, needs and desires. For the most part, you don’t need their approval nor to meet their expectations. What you want is as important as what they do. Learn to say, “No,” when their expectations conflict with what you want. The Universe approves of you when you do.

6. Perfectionism. You won’t move forward until everything is perfect. This is an unrealistic and unreachable goal. Perfectionism comes from fear that you’ll make a mistake. Of course, you’re going to make mistakes. That’s how you learn and make course corrections. The Universe doesn’t expect your efforts to be flawless. Repeat to yourself, “Progress, not perfection.” As long as you have a vision and the beginnings of a plan, you can make some headway. You can build the rest as you go along.

7. Procrastination.
This behavior is the worst of the offenders. It probably sinks more dreams than anything else. Either you put off starting or you put off uncomfortable or unfamiliar tasks that are necessary to your vision. Out of fear or rebellion, you chronically avoid making a decision or taking an action until the last minute. The Law of Attraction follows your lead and delays any good coming your way. Take some action, no matter how small and build momentum. One small step at a time is all you need to do to make progress.

Self-sabotage is an attempt to keep you safely confined in your comfort zone, so you don’t have to stretch or be anxious. Your subconscious is trying to protect you from the disappointment or rejection that you experienced when you were younger. Unfortunately, this strategy doesn’t support your dream or who you are now.

When you recognize that you’re sabotaging yourself, and that it’s a function of some outdated attempt at self-preservation, you can make changes. It will be uncomfortable at first, as all change is. And you’ll be tempted to step back into old patterns. But you have the power, wisdom and understanding to take charge and shift your world. Open the door to your dreams and step through.

Affirmation:
I realize the self-sabotage is an outdated attempt to keep me safe in a world that no longer exists. I now recognize any ways in which I undermine myself. It’s powerful to bring them out into the light so that I can see they are no longer needed. I now let go of what no longer serves me, and now establish new thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that support my dreams.

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