Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” – Albert Einstein

This is a choice you make, based on your early training, as well as your experiences. Even if your experiences have shown you difficulty, you can still make a different choice. Optimism can be learned, and is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you change your belief that your Universe supports you, and that Life cares for you, then you open up the floodgates for more good to come your way.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Is Your Attention on Your Intention?

Is Your Attention on Your Intention?

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Where are you putting your attention? Is it on your intention, vision or what you want to create in your life? There’s an expression, “Energy flows where attention goes.” Whatever you’re focusing on will be the direction your energy will go, whether it’s towards your dream or away from it. This is true whether you want to start a new habit of meditating every day, write more, or follow up on leads for your business. Is your attention on what you want or do you get sidetracked?

To achieve your goal, you need to have a plan and benchmarks to follow. But you may get distracted or scattered as you try to act on them. It’s inevitable that crises will happen and unexpected tasks get shoved into your schedule. This only becomes a problem if these issues become chronic. Your subconscious may have been trained to keep you off track by creating problems. The solution is to refocus on what’s really important first and deal with the unexpected later in the day.

Establish Your Priorities

A plan is necessary and you have to work your plan to achieve success. Establishing your priorities is an integral part of fulfilling your intention. You have to make your next step or goal your primary mission each day. If you don’t, you’ll allow life’s diversions to pull you off course. It all depends on where you put your focus. Because wherever you put your attention makes that task or situation your priority.

For instance, let’s say you want to finish a project. But when the phone rings, you answer it, interrupting your work. By answering, you’ve allowed your phone to take precedence over your task. And you give your subconscious the message that the call is more important than your project. That means your subconscious will create more interruptions because it follows your lead.

On a personal level, you may want to lose weight. But you’re tempted by indulging in a bowl of ice cream. If you decide to eat the ice cream, your attention has shifted from weight loss to treating yourself. You’ve made pampering yourself your priority and have undermined your intention of losing weight. Do this more than a couple of times in a short time frame and you’ll create a habit that will destroy your original goal.

Your Intentions Are Important

In a professional capacity, many people will set their interests aside to help a coworker work on a report. The coworker is capable of doing it by themself, but they want help. Instead of taking the responsibility of handling it, the coworker finds someone to assist or support them.

Unfortunately, the person who has agreed to help ignores their own priorities to fulfill the other person’s goal. In helping, they’re acting on someone else’s agenda and not attending to their own. This occurs when you don’t let the phone go to voicemail, frequently check your email or don’t put a sign on your door saying, “Do Not Disturb,” when you need to complete a project. When you don’t focus on and stand up for your intention, then you allow another person’s goal to take precedence over yours.

Focus on Your Priorities

In general, women especially tend to put other people’s wants ahead of their well-being. Their focus is to try to make sure everyone else is happy and satisfied before they address their own intentions.  They forget that others are just as capable of fulfilling their own desires.

How often do you give an employee a task or train a coworker and say to yourself, “It would be easier and faster to do it myself?” When you fall into this trap of doing the work yourself, you’re telling them that you don’t believe they can do their job. You’re also instructing your subconscious to keep you overwhelmed. Again, you’re setting aside your priorities to handle someone else’s.

When you give your employee a task and allow them to complete it, you’re helping to build their confidence. Once trained, a coworker will be able to take some responsibility off your shoulders. This will give you more time to focus on your priorities.

How to Be Intentional

Every day, you have hundreds of decisions to make. Many of those have to do with your intention, vision or dream. To stay focused on it, you have to stay conscious and mindful, and not fall into the trap of just reacting to whatever shows up. Whenever you have something unexpected occur, ask yourself, “Is this someone else’s agenda?” and “Will this interfere with my intention?”

If the answer to these questions is, “Yes,” then you have to choose what’s more important, your intention or theirs. But remember, the only way you’ll be able to fulfill your dream is to keep your attention on your intention.

Affirmation:

The Universe supports me in all my endeavors.  I keep my intention in mind at all times. Whenever anything unexpected takes place, I stay conscious and mindful and make decisions that support my intention. I realize that everyone has the ability to take care of their own challenges. By attending to my agenda, I’m empowered and empower others to handle their own.

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How to Stick to Your Goals

How to Stick to Your Goals

Do you sometimes have trouble sticking to your plan, or get distracted from your goal? There’s a time-tested tactic that can increase your likelihood of success many times over. The technique makes it much easier to stay on course, whether you want to change a habit or stop procrastinating. Learn how to use this tactic to more effectively achieve your goals and vision.

Transcript:

Do you sometimes have trouble sticking to your plan for a goal? Do you fall off your diet or get distracted from your vision? If so, you’re not alone.

There’s a tactic that can increase your likelihood of success many times over. Researchers refer to this tactic as an “implementation intention.” Try saying that fast. In other words, you create an intention of what to do when a specific situation arises. More informally, they’re called, “If/Then” plans. That term is more understandable, isn’t it?

I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision empowerment strategist, and I’ve been a hypnotherapist for over 30 years. I’ve taught this tactic to my hypnotherapy and coaching clients, to help them stay on course to their goals and vision.

The way this kind of plan is used is you identify traps or pitfalls or issues that can sabotage your goals. And you know what those are, right? And then you proactively decide how you’re going to respond to the situation.

The plan goes like this:

If (or when) [a specific situation arises], then I will do or perform [a specific behaviour or response].

Got it? In other words “If ‘abc’ happens, then I will ‘xyz.'”

As in: “If someone asks me to volunteer my time, then I will tell them I have to think about it first.”

The sentence becomes a trigger for you. You know ahead of time what action to take, instead of being confused in the moment. When the situation comes up, the decision is already made as to what behavior you’ll do. It’s like you’re programming your response. Execution becomes automatic.

It works for new habits. For instance, if you’re on a diet, you might say, “If I eat cookies today, then I’ll forgive myself and get right back on my diet.” This keeps you from getting discouraged and giving up.

Lets’ say you have a coworker who always interrupts your work, your cue could be, “If Jody wants to talk when I’m busy, then I’ll tell her I can’t talk right now, and will call her when I’m done.”

Or you can set an intention for something you might otherwise procrastinate, such as, “When I get to my desk in the morning, then I will start making follow up phone calls.”

This tactic takes the guess work out of what you’ll do and motivates you to follow through on your goals. It works for whenever you experience setbacks, distractions or get tempted to take a detour from your goals and vision. Simply identify the pitfall and decide how to address it ahead of time.

When you use this tactic, you’ll achieve your goals much more easily.

For ways to achieve your goals with greater confidence and ease in 4 powerful steps, watch my FREE training video, Set Your Course to Success. Register for the video and accompanying action planning guide at www.SetYourCourseGuide.com

Thank you for watching. How can you use the If/Then tactic today? Stay focused.

Read the accompanying article, 4 Ways You Sabotage Yourself (and how to deal with them).

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

4 Ways You Sabotage Yourself (and how to deal with them)

4 Ways You Sabotage Yourself (and how to deal with them)

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Do you want to lose weight, change a habit, learn a skill, or build a business? When you have a goal, and you’re not making any headway towards accomplishing it, you could be unconsciously sabotaging yourself. This is frustrating and discouraging, especially if you don’t know what’s preventing your progress.

If this is true for you, you’re probably making decisions that worked for you in the past, but haven’t been updated. Those old ideas aren’t helping you to grow, expand or to achieve your vision. Instead of acting unconsciously, the solution is to be more deliberate about your choices.

Overcome Self-Sabotage

Here are some common ways you sabotage yourself and how to overcome them.

1. You crave freedom. You don’t want to be limited by routine or structure and you seek to be spontaneous. Although spontaneity is important to enrich your personal life, it can undermine your professional goals. Impulsiveness causes you to follow whatever idea is uppermost in your mind at the time. This brings chaos and confuses the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction acts on what you focus on. When you’re not focused, the Law won’t know what to bring you. Unfortunately, spontaneity is the opposite of consistency, which is necessary for success.

Instead of winging it, create a structure and plan for yourself. Routine serves the purpose of freeing your mind to be more spontaneous in other areas of your life. Create a plan of what you’re going to do the next day. This gives the Law of Attraction the instruction of what you want. Allow time and space for the unexpected to take place.

2. You react to situations. When you react to a situation, you act in the same way you’ve done in the past. This doesn’t serve you when you want to change your future. You can’t do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. The only way to receive a different outcome is to change the way you think about the situation and act towards it. When you change the way you think, the Law of Attraction can change your experience.

Instead of reacting, consciously choose how to respond. If the situation happens often, you’ll want to plan your action ahead of time. Then, when it happens the next time, take a few deep breaths before you respond. When you think through an action, either before or at the time, you’re coming from place of power. When you feel empowered, you have more of a connection to the Universe.

3. You give up after a setback. If you fall off your diet, you might be discouraged and abandon your diet altogether. When you hit a block while learning to play the piano, you quit. Setbacks are going to happen. They’re a gift from the Universe. Two steps forward and one back allow you to solidify progress. Setbacks are also the way you discover what doesn’t work and help you to figure out what will succeed.

Setbacks don’t obstruct you unless you let them. Instead, they can be stepping stones. Since they are going to arise, plan for what you’ll do when they do. What would be the common setbacks you will experience? Decide on specific actions to take, or statements you’ll repeat to yourself to keep you on course. Your determination and commitment energizes the Law of Attraction, making it easier for it to perform for you.

4. You procrastinate. Procrastination is generally triggered by fear. You don’t know how to do a task, you dread the tedium, you’re concerned that it won’t be good enough and so you resist beginning it. Because of that, you wait until the last minute to attend to the project. This is stressful, and because you delayed, you rarely can give it your best effort. Also, stress blocks access to your intuition and guidance from the Universe.

You may have to force yourself, but do one tiny chore concerning the project. Just start with a single action. Decide to spend five minutes on it each day. Taking small steps will build up momentum, and you’ll whittle away at the task. Very quickly, it won’t seem so difficult, and you’ll find it easier to complete it. Now that you’re not resisting, you’re more in the flow of inspiration from the Universe.

By deliberately changing your responses, you take charge of your life. This empowers you with greater freedom, creativity, success and peace of mind.

Affirmation:

The Universe wants the best for me. I let go of old ideas and reactions, as they no longer serve me. I open my mind and heart to the Universe to guide and direct my every thought and action. As I stay mindful of my responses, I stay in the flow of Universal Good. Changing my thoughts, changes my actions, and thus changes my life.

Watch the accompanying article, How to Stick to Your Goals.

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Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Have you heard the saying, “There’s no such thing as a mistake?” It’s true. A mistake is simply a mis-take, like a second take of a movie. You may have not done things perfectly the first time, but you have another chance to make them better. This is the way you learn. As a child, you figured out how to balance one block on top of another by trial and error. And that’s all a mistake is. Trying something, and it not turning out as you’d hoped. But as when you were a child, you learned something and get to try again.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

7 Ways You Sabotage Your Goals

7 Ways You Sabotage Your Goals

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Reach Goal

All you have to do to find out what your priorities have been is to look at your life. It’s a perfect reflection of your thoughts, beliefs, and choices. If you’re an entrepreneur and don’t have enough income, where have you been putting your energy? Has it gone into checking your email all day long or into promoting your business? Being out of shape means that watching TV, surfing the internet, or eating junk food have been more important to you than exercising.

Everything you have in your life is a result of  your past choices. You make decisions each day and then act on them. When you’re hungry, you can reach for a cupcake or have an apple. If you eat a cupcake for a snack every day, you’ll probably gain weight. Munching on the apple means you’ll have  better health. All the choices you make have consequences, either good or bad.

Change Your Choices

If you want something different in your life, you’ll need to start making different choices and following them through with a plan of action. To lose weight, reduce your calorie intake, portion sizes and increase your exercise. For more business, take action to become more visible and let people know about your product or service. 

Decisions are made in different ways, for different reasons, and not always consciously. Unfortunately, sometimes the actions you take sabotage what you really want. Learning to identify how your decisions are made can make the difference between success and failure. Once you become more aware of what prompts your decisions, you can formulate strategies to keep you on track and make decisions that will move you forward.

When Your Choices Sabotage Your Goals

Choices can sabotage you when they’re made:

1. Unconsciously. You could simply be acting out of a habit you created in the past. Although, you have the best of intentions, you fall into old patterns that undermine your goals. What can you do to break that habit and create a new one that supports your vision?

2. Based on past programming. For instance, you accepted ideas from people who told you that you wouldn’t be successful. By continuing to act on this, you’re limiting yourself for no reason. They didn’t know or couldn’t recognize your potential. Reassess them and reprogram your beliefs.

3. To avoid uncomfortable emotions. Change can be threatening. Achieving your goal could bring up outdated beliefs that don’t want to let go. So you choose the path of least resistance to keep from confronting those ideas. You have to decide which is most important to you, continued comfort or facing your fears.

4. Due to procrastination. This is similar to the last one. Once you move forward, you’re going to be in uncharted territory. You could be risking failure, criticism, or more responsibility. Find out why you procrastinate and develop a way of handling it.

5. Because you didn’t make a choice. You decided to put off making a decision. But not making a choice is a choice in itself. You’ve simply chosen not to change or take any action towards your goal. What do you need to do to decide to take action?

6. Trying to change too much all at once. Some people dive in and try to change their entire lives at one time. If you aren’t forced to do this, through divorce or some other trauma, don’t overwhelm yourself. The subconscious doesn’t like to change too much at one time. Take one area and work on it until it’s underway, then start on another.

7. From a sense of overwhelm or stress. Unfortunately, decisions made under duress are rarely for the best. They usually are made in reaction to outside circumstances and not well thought out. Step back, take a deep breath, and assess the situation before you make a choice.

Make Your Choices Work For You

Once you recognize how you make decisions, you can create a plan to keep you on the path to your goal. You simply break the old habit by establishing a new one.

You want to be able to consciously make decisions. The only way to be effective at achieving your goals is to know your target and aim for it. Some people weigh the pros and cons, and some decide what feels right. Whatever way you make choices, be aware of what you want and make a plan. Then stay on track and work your plan. And each day, make sure your choices support your endeavor.

Affirmation:

The Universe is always supporting my endeavors. It wants me to be abundant and successful. I am always Divinely guided. When I have a goal, I create a plan to achieve it. Any resistance to moving forward is now dissolved. It no longer serves a purpose. I commit myself to my goal and work my plan every day.

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Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

“Opportunities pour into my life, allowing me to experience a greater satisfaction and abundance. I am guided as to which opportunities to follow through on and accept.”

Opportunities are always coming your way. Whether you notice them or not depends on the mental filters you have. If you tend to dismiss compliments and potentials, then your subconscious will make sure you don’t notice opportunities. As you change your filter, your subconscious will not only discover more of them around you, but also attract more of them to you. 

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Guided Meditation to Stay Motivated to Achieve a Goal

Guided Meditation to Stay Motivated to Achieve a Goal

Do you ever have trouble staying motivated to achieve a goal or vision? You may start taking steps, but get bored, discouraged or have a setback and your motivation evaporates. To get back on course, reconnecting with your inspiration is vital. This guided meditation will help keep you energized and inspired, and remind you of your reason and intention for your goal.

Transcript:

Thank you for joining me. Today, I want to share a short meditation to help keep you motivated to achieve a specific goal or vision. When you have a goal, even if you’re making progress on it, your enthusiasm to continue to take action can evaporate.

You can become bored, discouraged you’re not achieving it fast enough, or even frustrated when you have some setbacks. Sometimes, you can have trouble taking the first step towards it, or starting again after a pause. This meditation will help with all of those issues.

I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision empowerment strategist, and I’ve been a hypnotherapist for over 30 years. This meditation is similar to ones I’ve done with hypnotherapy and coaching clients to inspire them to stay on course to their goals.

If you’re so inclined, close your eyes. Take a deep breath to relax and get focused.

Now, think of a goal you want to accomplish. What is it you want to achieve? Imagine how different your life would be with it a reality in your life. What would you be doing, thinking, feeling and behaving that’s different from now? Place an image of these ideas in a picture frame. 

Now, uncover your reason for your goal. Why is it you want this change in your life? This has to be a reason that will continue to urge and energize you. Place this reason in the picture frame with the image of your goal. This reason could be a symbol, a feeling, a color, and outcome or something else that has meaning for you.

As you place the reason inside the frame, it creates a positive change in the picture of your goal. The picture and frame begins to glow a beautiful color. The reason itself causes the picture to be surrounded and filled with a powerful light. This light could be gold, silver, white, or whatever color excites and encourages you.

As the light glows brighter, the picture and frame get bigger and bigger, until they take up your entire perspective. The picture becomes a huge billboard, impressive and powerful. You feel excited to begin, and to continue, taking action towards your goal. You know you can accomplish your goal. The steps appear for you, and you overcome any setbacks.

Whenever you think about your goal, you imagine this billboard, the image of your accomplished goal and your reason for taking actions towards it. The image of the billboard is strong, powerful, motivating, encouraging, and inspiring you to take your next step. It fills you with anticipation.

Open your eyes.

This meditation gives your subconscious mind direction and energy for you start working towards your goal. If you find yourself needing a motivational boost, close your eyes, take a deep breath and imagine the billboard. Imagine the goal, your reason, and the brilliance of the billboard. Doing this will remind your subconscious mind of your purpose and intention.

To achieve your goals with greater confidence and ease in 4 powerful steps, watch my FREE training video, Set Your Course to Success. Register for the video and accompanying action planning guide at www.SetYourCourseGuide.com

Thank you for watching. I know that you can achieve any goal that you desire. Stay focused.

Read the accompanying article 5 Tips to Maintain Your Motivation

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

5 Tips to Maintain Your Motivation

5 Tips to Maintain Your Motivation

by Linda-Ann Stewart

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” Zig Ziglar

There’s a saying that you can only motivate yourself. You have to supply the desire for an improvement to make the effort to accomplish your goal. But sometimes, your determination flags and you need a boost. The good news is that you don’t always have to go it alone.

For instance, when I was facilitating smoking cessation classes for the county health department, I had a reputation for being very motivating. Once someone had convinced themselves to commit to the classes, I found ways to encourage them to follow through.

They wanted to accomplish the difficult goal of quitting smoking and wanted group support to achieve it. The group dynamic kept them focused on their goal and gave them inspiration to keep going. But, first, they had to want to quit smoking. No one else could make them want that goal.

Motivation for a Goal

To achieve any goal, you have to be motivated and willing to make changes, put forth energy, and take action of some sort. Your motivation is the driving force and the reason you want a better outcome. No one else can provide this reason for you.

Necessity can provoke you to move forward. For instance, you have to find a job or else you won’t be able to pay your bills, and will end up indigent. Or you discover that your health is in danger unless you make some lifestyle changes. But even then, the possibility of severe difficulties in life doesn’t always motivate people to change. For many people, the danger has to be immediate. They have to feel the pain.  

So how do you develop and maintain your motivation, whether it’s something you want or need?

Ways to Stay Motivated

Have you ever gone to motivational program and been inspired? The program aroused your intrinsic desire for something better for yourself and caused you to take action. But not long after the event was over, the excitement probably wore off and your enthusiasm flagged.

Every day, you need some stimulation that will keep you motivated and on course. Here are 5 tips to fuel your drive and keep you stimulated.

1.  What’s your “why?” Uncover your big why, which is your reason and purpose for wanting your goal. What is your goal going to get or give you? How will it improve your circumstances? Get detailed. It has to be an aspiration that connects with you. Once you’ve discovered your why, keep referring back to it.

2.  Fill your mind with motivation. Read inspirational books, listen to motivational podcasts, and be around uplifting people. Study people who have accomplished what you want to achieve or who overcame obstacles similar to yours. This will add motivation to your efforts.  

3.  Get creative. When you get bored, discouraged or want to take a break, find a new way to approach the steps to your goal. For instance, change your routine. If you’re always working in your home office, go to a park. Find alternative ways to stay interested in the actions you need to take.  

4.  Acknowledge your progress. Don’t just check a task off your to do list. That feels good, of course, but to make a bigger impact, congratulate yourself on completing that step. Reward yourself. This is a powerful technique to encourage yourself to keep going.

5.  Accept support. Find an accountability or empowerment partner, and ask them to help keep you focused. This is one of the roles of a coach. People who tell a partner what they intend to do, and then report their progress, achieve their goal 76% of the time. 

The smoking cessation classes I facilitated used every one of these steps and had a great success rate. The participants needed different ways of keeping themselves motivated, just as everyone with a bold goal does. These tips will motivate, support and inspire you, too, to stay on course to your vision.

Watch the accompanying video, Guided Meditation to Stay Motivated to Achieve a Goal

Affirmation:

The Universe completely supports my goals and aspirations. It wants the best for me and knows why my goal is important. The Universe supplies me with all the inspiration and motivation I need to take action. I am Divinely guided and directed in Right Action for my goal and aspiration. My next step is made clear to me.

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What Is Your Motivation for Change?

What Is Your Motivation for Change?

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Time for Change Dial

When a hypnotherapy client came into my office wanting to make a change, one of my jobs was to find out what was motivating them. Was their motivation stronger than their attachment to what they were experiencing? For instance, I’d have smokers come to me and say, “I really want to want to quit smoking.” (No, that wasn’t a typo.) They hadn’t made the commitment to quitting, even though they knew they need to. Until their determination was stronger than their attachment to their habit, nothing would happen.

Subconscious Patterns

In the subconscious mind, the strongest idea wins. When the desire to stop smoking is more powerful than continuing, then the person will quit. This is true for any change, whether it be weight management, self-esteem, success, prosperity, relationship issues or anything else. Only when the desire for the new pattern becomes stronger than the attachment to the old will change occur.

Many times, the old pattern will have more energy to begin with because it’s familiar. People tend to like to hold onto what they’re used to, because they don’t know what the change will bring with it. But as a person contemplates the advantages of the new, feels the excitement and enthusiasm about it, then the subconscious will create the pathway for the new pattern to manifest.

Tips for Change

What change do you want to make in your life? Do you want more prosperity, self-acceptance, success, a better relationship, weight management, improved health? Write down what you want. Ask yourself what keeps you where you are and write that down. What changes in behavior, attitude, or belief do you need to make for your goal to succeed?

What is it that motivates you for your goal? If it’s to meet someone else’s expectations or to impress another, that won’t be strong enough to convince the subconscious. The reason for your goal has to be deeply meaningful to you. And your motivation has to be stronger than your desire to remain in your current situation.

You must be committed to do whatever is necessary for the change. Once you’ve determined your motivation, write it down and look at it several times a day. From your list of what changes you need to make, pick one per day to add to your behaviors. Before long, you’ll have accomplished your goal.

Affirmation:

I bring to mind what it is that I want. I know that the Universe wants it for me. I discover what my motivation is for the change I desire. As I contemplate how my goal feels, I uncover other reasons to accept it. I commit myself to do whatever I need to do to accomplish my goal. I deserve it.