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3 Powerful Ingredients for Success

3 Powerful Ingredients for Success

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Traffic light that signals both stop and go

When my friend Norah wanted to quit smoking, she threw away her cigarettes. Although she avoided them at home, when she was around someone who was smoking, she’d ask for one. To quit, she was using willpower to break the habit of smoking, but she hadn’t changed her attitude and feelings about cigarettes.

Even though she wanted to quit, she still viewed herself as a smoker. Cigarettes still had positive associations for her, and she wanted to fit in with her smoking friends when they were together. That lasted until she ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and almost died. Then, she finally changed her attitude about them and quit smoking permanently.

Ingredients for Success

To achieve your goals, you need to have your intention and beliefs aligned. Norah had a goal, but her beliefs and self-image weren’t in agreement with it. When your goal and attitude clash, your mindset will prevent you from meeting your goal. This is true for both your personal and professional lives. The Law of Attraction will act on your deeply held beliefs rather than your stated desire. For success, three powerful ingredients are essential.  

1. Willpower.

Willpower is a function of your conscious mind, which makes decisions and chooses your vision or goal. Although willpower will get you moving on a goal, it can only take you so far. After a while, your willpower wanes due to exhaustion and stress, among other factors. It then becomes hard to avoid distraction and temptation.

Willpower isn’t about forcing your desire into manifestation. It’s more about being self-disciplined and having self-control. You allow the Universe to work through you as you willingly take the actions necessary for your goal.

When you get tired or stressed, you become too overwhelmed to deal with the changes your goal requires and you return to familiar and known behaviors. It’s easier to be impulsive, and you may not make the best decisions. Rather than rationally deciding on the best course, you react from past beliefs and experiences.  

Use your willpower sparingly and realize it’s a limited resource. Instead, prepare for situations by making decisions ahead of time so that you can follow them automatically. Stay focused on small steps that will direct you towards your goal.

2. Mindset.

Your mindset has been programmed into your subconscious mind by your past ideas and experiences. To be successful, your thought patterns, beliefs and attitudes must be in harmony with your goal. Otherwise, the Law of Attraction will act on your deep beliefs and sabotage your conscious desire. When you want to achieve a goal, consider how you think and feel about it.

When you change your mindset to align with your new goal, you change your relationship to your goal and the actions you need to take. Changing the way you think about it means your actions come more naturally, and your willpower just implements them.  

When your mindset supports your goal, focus on the benefits of it and why you want it.

3. Imagination.

Your imagination is the creative part of you and also a function of your subconscious mind. A key to changing your mindset is imagining what can be accomplished. Use your imagination to visualize how your goal will look when it’s completed. The Universe will use your visualization as a model and bring you everything you need to achieve your goal.

When you imagine a situation, whether it’s choosing an apple over candy, making a follow up call, or working on working on your budget, you allow your subconscious to rehearse the motions of success. You familiarize your subconscious with your chosen actions and create pathways in your mind to make it easier to follow through.

Focus on the best outcome. When you do, instead of seeing the result as an observer, put yourself in the picture. Feel the satisfaction from accomplishing your goal. Then follow through with actions to achieve your vision.  

Align Your 3 Powers for Success

If your willpower, and mindset and imagination are in conflict, your mindset and imagination will win every time. However, when the three are in alignment, then success becomes almost inevitable. Once Norah changed her attitude about smoking, and imagined herself as a nonsmoker, it was easy for her to use her willpower to abstain from cigarettes. 

Your mindset and imagination fuel your willpower. As you change your thoughts and beliefs, and imagine the possibilities, your results change as well. Combine the drive of your willpower, the energy of your beliefs, and the power of your imagination to create the life you want.

Affirmation:

The Universe guides me to make the right decisions that support my goals. I set my intention to follow the ideas and steps necessary to fulfill my vision. I now align my thoughts, beliefs, actions, and mental pictures with my intended goal. When they are all aligned, the Universe can deliver everything I need to succeed. My desire to achieve my goal sustains me and assists me to stay focused. Each step I take makes it easier to stay on course and take the next one. I keep my mind focused on my direction and take the actions necessary to achieve my vision.

Watch the accompanying videos, Use Your Won’t Power to Strengthen Your Willpower and Visualization to Align Your Self-Image with Your Goal.

As a focus mentor, hypnotherapist, and writer, 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 boost productivity and reduce overwhelm, register for her FREE guide, Design Your Best Day, at https://www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/guide.html

Use Your Decisions to Sculpt Your Life

Use Your Decisions to Sculpt Your Life

Are you living the life you want? There are so many choices that you have to make. But only some of them will lead to decisions that are in alignment with your desires. Learn a mindset shift so those decisions will support your goals. Watch Use Your Decisions to Sculpt Your Life.

Transcript:

Welcome. Are your decisions bringing you the results you want? If not, I’d like to give you a mindset shift on how to make choices that will help you to meet your goals.

I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a focus mentor and hypnotherapist. These videos are dedicated to empower you to focus and align your heart with your vision so you can achieve your goals.

If you aren’t living the life you want, it may be because of the choices you’ve made in the past. Now, you make decisions every day, right? Some are made deliberately and you take action to follow through on them. But others are made by default, following the path of least resistance. They could be old patterns from the past or just what’s easiest in the moment.

Those default decisions rarely bring you anything new. You’ll just end up with what you already have. Doesn’t this sound like, “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten?” It’s because it’s true. But you can change that.

When you want a different outcome, you have to make a choice based on your goal or vision, right? Something different than what you’ve had. And for a new result, you have to eliminate all but the choices that lead to the outcome you want.

It’s like being the sculptor of your life. When asked how he sculpted his masterpieces, Michelangelo said the finished product was already in the stone. He just chipped away at whatever wasn’t a part of that image. He chipped away whatever was superfluous.

That’s what making a choice is for you. You choose decisions that carve out everything that doesn’t align with your ultimate vision. With the result you want.

Stay focused on making the decisions that actively support your goals and then avoid everything that doesn’t. Be like Michelangelo in pursuit of your result. Make decisions that chip away everything that doesn’t contribute to your vision. And you’ll end up with a masterpiece of your life. Thank you for watching. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you’d like to be notified when I release more videos on mindset, motivation and empowerment, please like my YouTube channel and click on the bell. As always, stay focused.

Read the accompanying article, Decisions Design Your Destiny.

Decisions Design Your Destiny

Decisions Design Your Destiny

by Linda-Ann Stewart

You make decisions every day, such as what to eat, what to wear, what task to do, what to say, and much more. The life you have today is based on the choices you’ve made in the past. You choose what you want, either consciously or unconsciously. Then your choice leads to making a decision, which then results in some sort of outcome. The decisions you make today will create the life you have tomorrow and beyond.

Your decisions channel the energy of the Universe. Have your decisions brought you the results you want? If you don’t like your outcomes, your power lies in being able to make different choices. But what is it that really makes you choose what you do?

What Influences Your Decisions?

There are some basic motivations that compel your decisions. Once you understand what influences your choices, you can adjust them.

Expediency. You quickly make a choice so you can move onto something else.

Past Beliefs. Old ideas unconsciously drive your choices, which may undermine what you consciously want.

Habit. You automatically fall into an old pattern of choice without thinking about it.

Fear. This can prompt you to avoid making a choice, or it can cause you to take action because of the consequences if you don’t.

Desire. You have something you really want, so you choose to go for it.

Goals. You use your goals as a frame for your choices.  

Your Decisions Create Your Life

When you make a choice, you have to abandon other options and possibilities. When you ask for Divine Guidance, the answer often becomes clear. Once you’ve chosen your course of action, follow through on it. And each decision brings consequences, or rewards and positive outcomes.

If your decision hasn’t brought what you want, reassess your original choice. Is it in alignment with your defined goal, vision or your intention? If not, and you were to choose differently, what would your choice be? Make a different decision based on your new choice.

When your decision leads you to what you’d hoped for, then it’s done its work. Each decision, and the action you take concerning it, creates your life. When you make a choice, it sets in motion the power of the Universe. You have the power. Choose your decisions according to the life you want to be living.

Affirmation:

I am divinely guided to make the best decision that brings me my Highest Good. The One Life within me leads and directs my thoughts and choices. I realize that when I make a decision, it sets the power of the Universe in motion. Divine right action takes place in all areas of my life. Only good comes to and through me.   

As a focus mentor, hypnotherapist, and writer, 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 boost productivity and reduce overwhelm, register for her FREE guide, Design Your Best Day, at https://www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/guide.html

What Are You Choosing?

What Are You Choosing?

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Time for Change Dial

When a smoker comes to see me, many times they tell me they feel controlled by their cigarettes. I remind them that they have the choice whether to smoke or not. Not smoking may result in a brief period of mental/emotional discomfort, but they can say “No” to a cigarette. Their subconscious mind is simply following the direction of what the conscious mind once told it to do. Their decision to smoke seemed appropriate at the time that they first began the habit. The subconscious is still operating on that decision, even though they now want to make a different one. It still is a matter of choice and communicating that choice to the subconscious.

Many times, we make choices that then take on a life of their own. They operate under our mental radar, and we’re not even aware that they’re there. It’s like installing a program on our computer, and having it run in the background. We tend to forget it’s there, even if it begins interfering with the functioning of our computer.

How We Make Decisions

We make decisions based on the best information at the time. As children, we try to fit into a strange world, and learn how to survive there. We take on the attitudes of those who are powerful, such as parents, as a way to gain acceptance, safety and security. When we grow up, we don’t need those same survival strategies, but they continue to function because we haven’t made any attempt to change them.

The automatic programs can be physical ones, such as smoking or overeating to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Or they can be mental/emotional programs of feeling like a victim, having low self-esteem, difficulties with money, or pessimistic thinking. The past choices we’ve made were reasonable at a specific time and place in our lives, but now they’re no longer helping us anymore. Actually, they may be causing us harm. But unless you give the subconscious different instructions, it will continue to operate those old programs, thinking that it’s still what you want.

How We Change Our Choice

One of the first things I do for many of my clients is to make them aware of when their habitual program kicks in. Many of my smoking clients think that they smoke all the time, only to discover that there are only certain times or places that trigger the desire. The same is true of clients who have low self-esteem. They may feel competent doing their job, but as soon as someone criticizes them, they feel worthless. After we discover when the mental program begins to run, we work on retraining the subconscious to think differently.

But first, we have to become consciously aware of the choice. Bringing it out of the shadows, where it’s been operating, and into the light so we can assess it and make a different decision. When we first begin to change the program, the subconscious may rebel by seeming to make the habit more entrenched or causing chaos. It’s just acting on the original instructions of the conscious mind. The subconscious must follow the directions of the conscious mind, and as long as the conscious mind stays focused on the goal, the inner mind will follow.

Be Consistent

Every moment of every day, we’re making choices, whether they’re ones operating automatically or ones we make consciously. If there are areas of your life that aren’t working for your good anymore, then become aware of the reason you made the original choice and make a new one. Figure out what you need to do every time that program begins to run, become aware of it, and then implement the new choice every single time it shows up. You have to make a firm, new choice, and act on it every time, or the subconscious won’t believe the conscious mind is really serious about it.

It’s very simple, but not necessarily easy. There may be some discomfort as you make the changes, just like when you part your hair in a different place. It feels strange at first. But soon your subconscious will recognize your determination, realize that it’s okay to make that change, and will then act on the new instructions. But first you need to be aware of your choices and make a new decision.

Affirmation:

I now choose to become consciously aware of past decisions that I’ve made that are no longer serving a positive purpose in my life. I recognize that they seemed reasonable and appropriate when they were first made, but they are no longer helpful. I now create a new mental program to alert me when the remnant of the old choice starts to operate. As I become aware of it, I now substitute the new choice I’ve made. My subconscious mind now understands that it is safe and better for me in the present to accept the new programming.

As a focus mentor, hypnotherapist, and writer, 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 boost productivity and reduce overwhelm, register for her FREE guide, Design Your Best Day, at https://www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/guide.html

Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Every minute of the day, you’re making choices. Some of them are unconscious, because they were made and programmed into your subconscious years ago. And some of your decisions are unconscious because they’re based on beliefs and attitudes you’ve formulated during your life. Are the choices you’re making for your benefit and encourage your success? If not, they were instituted to help you long ago. Even if you feel that you’re stuck, and can’t move ahead, that’s a choice. Every issue that you have in your life is based on a decision you once made. Once you realize you can change that choice, a world of possibilities opens for you.  If you can choose to eat oatmeal for breakfast, rather than scrambled eggs, you can make the decisions necessary to be a success.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Podcast Interview – Improve Your Focus

Podcast Interview – Improve Your Focus

I had a lovely conversation with Marybeth Welty of Sustainable Lifestyle Solutions on how to Improve Your Focus and Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome. As an interior designer, she helps create calm and inspiring home and office spaces. In addition to her design work, she also teaches mindfulness and leads guided meditations, both of which are dear to my heart. Her mission is to encourage healthy minds and healthy homes.

In my work with clients, I empower women to be present and aware of their choices and decisions, which comes from being mindful. As we talked about what I do, we discussed how her mindfulness training and my work intersect. It’s so important to think things through and discover new solutions from a point of peace.

In our conversation, we covered what can cause the Shiny Object Syndrome and the problems that result from it. For one thing, it creates stress, which means you can’t think clearly. In a way, multitasking is a part of the syndrome. We agreed that any benefits from multitasking are a myth. Not only do you not finish anything, but you end the day feeling exhausted. Getting distracted by Shiny Objects is a symptom that something is amiss in your business.

We talked about how focus is a skill that you can develop. Mindfulness helps to cultivate focus. And as we discussed the Shiny Object Syndrome, Marybeth was surprised that allowing yourself to get distracted means you’re training your brain to seek more distractions. Distractions and paying attention to something new lights up the reward circuit in your brain. Since it feels good, you pursue more distractions. But it ultimately sabotages you, since nothing gets accomplished.

We exchanged stories about our own difficulties with staying focused. At the end, I shared 5 steps to overcome the Shiny Object Syndrome, with first being to take some deep breaths to calm down your nervous system so you can think clearly. Once you’ve done that, only then you can seek some clarity and get focused.

Marybeth is a calming and tranquil presence. I really enjoyed spending time with her and be able to chat about subjects that are near and dear to both of us.

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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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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Get Greater Satisfaction from Living Intentionally

Get Greater Satisfaction from Living Intentionally

Living intentionally brings better health, happiness, freedom and peace of mind. It’s not always easy to live intentionally, because you have to be pro-active or let other people or circumstances make the choice for you. Learn how making deliberate choices brings you better outcomes and the results you want.

Transcript:

Do you live intentionally? Living intentionally means that you deliberately choose a desired result and follow through to create it. It also means that you chose to live according to your values and beliefs. When you live intentionally, you’re healthier, happier, freer and more at peace. Who wouldn’t want that?

Living intentionally is not easy, because every day, your life is made up of a series of choices. You can either make a decision each time a choice arises or let that decision be made for you by other people or by circumstances. Many times, it’s easier to let other people or circumstances make the choice for you, but then you feel helpless and hopeless. And you probably won’t get the outcome you seek.

Whether or not you live intentionally is like being in a canoe in a swift running creek. Do you want to use the paddle to keep you on course or throw that paddle away and let the creek toss you about every which way? This would be the proverbial, “Up a creek without a paddle” scenario, right?

If you don’t have a paddle, which is your decision making power, your canoe might run onto rocks and be overturned and you’d be in the water. Not a good result, right? Being intentional is like using your paddle to direct your canoe through the water safely.

When you’ve chosen a result you’re willing to work towards, or to live by your values, most of your choices become easier. You discard the possibilities that lead you away from your path, and choose the ones that support the direction you want to go. You’re more focused and fulfilled. You feel empowered, motivated and in control.

How can you become more intentional with your choices today?

For more tips and articles on mindset, motivation and empowerment, please visit my blog EmpoweringYourMind.com.

Have a wonderful and intentional day.

Read the accompanying article Why You Need a Vision and Plan.

Why You Need a Vision and Plan

Why You Need a Vision and Plan

by Linda-Ann Stewart

When you choose to grow a garden, do you start watering the plot without planning what you want to grow in it? Or do you decide what plants you want, and till and fertilize the soil to make it receptive for those kinds of plants? Don’t you clear the area of growth that doesn’t fit with your plan? And then you choose seeds or seedlings you want and place them in the soil. To care for your garden, you water, feed the plants, and weed out what doesn’t belong.

Your mind and life is like a garden. If you just jump into a garden, or life, without a vision or plan, you’re going to receive what plants and seeds are already in that plot. By not sowing any new seeds, you can only harvest what is already growing there. You won’t reap anything new. In this case, to misquote an investment disclaimer, “Past performance will indicate future results.”

The Downside to Going with the Flow

Many people just want to go with the flow, having no intention, vision or plan. They want to follow instinct or intuition, without any real idea of what they want. This kind of philosophy is fine if you want to float through life. But if you want to change a habit, or achieve something, you have to be more deliberate.

The problem with the idea of just flowing is that it means you’re acting on what’s already in your subconscious. There’s no new destination or goal. It’s like watering a garden without putting any thought into what you want. You’ll get what you get, not necessarily what you want. Your subconscious can only deliver on the ideas you’ve already sown into it. If you’re simply following your subconscious, you’ll wander in circles, never accomplishing anything new. And the weeds in the garden of your life may choke out most of the flowers.

The Role of Your Conscious and Subconscious

Your subconscious has a specific role to play in your life and it’s a powerful one. Your subconscious is your problem solver, and where your creativity and insights come from. But your subconscious can’t make decisions for you. Choices must come from your conscious mind to be fulfilled by your subconscious. Your subconscious uses all your knowledge and experience to help you achieve your intention. But your subconscious can’t seek any outside information to help. New information has to come to, and through, your conscious mind.

Your conscious mind chooses your destination, intentions, goals or vision.  Your subconscious provides you with the ideas, innovation and insights to realize them. When you have a vision and plan, you give your subconscious concrete information to work with. With a vision, your subconscious knows what to seek and scans your environment to help you. Your plan creates guiderails and makes it easier for your subconscious to locate and discover opportunities.

Tending Your Intention

In your garden or your life, not all the seeds you sow will germinate and not all of the plants will survive to maturity. The same is true of your vision and plan. You’ll need to discover what didn’t survive and why, and address that problem. It could be that you didn’t tend to your garden as much as it needed or that the soil wasn’t fertile enough. Maybe circumstances changed, and your vision and plan needs to be adjusted.

If you want better results in your life, you’ll tend to the garden of your intention. A garden takes constant attention to support its growth and fertility. Only after putting in the effort will you reap the rewards. Your life deserves the same care, love and consideration as a garden.

Affirmation:

As I choose my direction in life, it gives the Law of Attraction definite details of what to draw to me. The Universe is on my side, and wants the best for me. I’m Divinely Guided and Directed into the right path for my Highest Good. Everything I need is provided in the best way possible.

Watch the accompanying video, Get Greater Satisfaction from Living Intentionally.

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