Meeting Topic

Did you know you’re giving your mind a job it cannot do? By Inna Neal

The article that forms the basis of this meeting topic is meant to help us become aware of the times when our mind is too ‘full’ to focus on our next best step. Inna Neal of Innerlightened shares one of her favourite techniques with us for how to de-clutter our minds so that we can once again hear our intuition, which is vital to helping us solve problems and make decisions. You can read the entire article below. For now, why not invest a few moments to consider a time in your life or business when you found yourself in need of a good mind ‘de-clutter’ and how it impacted your decision-making.
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Creating a positive mindset is important, but what if our mind is cluttered with beliefs and habits that don’t serve us? The mind cannot focus on our next best step. So how do we help ourselves when this happens?

The mind is perpetually focused on something – it is always thinking and creating stories. These stories impact how we feel and respond to challenges and new experiences in our lives. If a story or habit is based on judgement, doubt or fear of the unknown, the mind gets cluttered with more of the same stories and leaves little space for what is our next best step.

It is a beautifully designed machine. It plays many roles. One role of the mind is to create habits and build neural pathways so that we don’t need to put much effort into tasks that we do every day, like brushing our teeth or driving a familiar route.

Another role it plays is to receive instructions to complete actions on what we need to do to achieve certain goals. The dilemma is that we have been taught to give the mind a job it cannot do. We give the mind a task to find solutions to challenges and new experiences that we don’t yet have a neural pathway for.

So where do these instructions come from? They come from our intuition, our heart brain. It’s a thing! Check out www.heartmath.org. The HeartMath Institute have been conducting studies and experiments since the 1960’s on the power of our heart and intuition.

Here is an example:

As women in business, each day brings new experiences. One day we are celebrating and another we are tackling challenges. Let’s say you lost an important client, you had a challenging month financially, a client needs something specific that you’re not sure how to complete yet, or you just feel overwhelmed with a huge to-do list. If we allow the mind to take over, it begins to add similar thoughts and escalates the same thought repeatedly. This snowball effect spirals into an old pattern of “I’m not good enough”, “This is too hard” or any long-held beliefs and habitual thoughts.

If we want to make decisions from our true authentic selves, we must become aware that our intuition is actually where the solutions are. Each time you connect to your intuition, the solution is one that serves you and gives you information on how to get to what you want to achieve.

Our intuition is the guide, it tells the mind what to focus on and the mind completes the actions. So how do we clear our minds and connect to our intuition so that we can give the mind proper instructions?

One technique I find extremely helpful is a term you’ve probably heard before called ‘Brain Dumping.’ Brain dumping is acknowledging all the thoughts that are cluttering your mind and clearing them so that we make the space for our intuition to be heard. Let me show you how I use Brain Dumping:

  1. Become aware when your mind is streaming thoughts that aren’t serving you.  You will know this by how it feels. Our emotions are our guidance system.  If you are feeling any heavy emotions like overwhelm, anxiety, self-doubt, blame, your mind is cluttered.
  2. Grab a journal and set your timer for 10 minutes and start brain dumping everything that you are thinking. Just let it flow – with no judgment. If you feel stuck, you can ask yourself  ‘what else am I thinking?’ Keep asking yourself this question until you feel satisfied you have ‘offloaded’ everything.  If you keep going, you may discover thoughts that you didn’t even know were there!
  3. Pause, put down your journal and take as many conscious deep breaths as you can. At least 5 or 6. Don’t rush through these.
  4. Pick up your journal and look at what you wrote. Reflect on your thoughts by answering these two questions… ‘Is this all true?’  ‘Do I know for sure that everything I wrote here is true?’ (These two important questions are part of Byron Katie’s technique).
  5. Place both hands on your heart. Take 5 more deep, conscious breaths and feel into your heart space while asking yourself this question, ‘What else is possible here?’  Be open and curious to receive what comes up. Becoming still and curious will awaken your intuition. You will be able to hear it. At first it may be quiet, so listen and journal on what comes up. It may just be the next best step. Allow that to be enough.

What I have learned through my own experience and with the clients I work with is this: it’s one thing to know this information, but it’s another to experience it. I invite you to take the time to make space for this practice because it is a practice. Reflect on the shift that it creates. Be kind to yourself. Try it a few times, the awareness and clarity will come for you with practice.

On a ‘full disclosure’ side note…I needed to use this practice to write this article! We got this, ladies!

Sending love, light and curiosity.

Inna Neal

www.innerlightened.com

‘If one advances confidently in the direction of [her] dreams, and endeavours to live the life which [s]he has imagined, [s]he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’ ~ Henry David Thoreau

Dream from your heart!

Original blog here

Education Topic

Will THIS Year be YOUR Year? by Jen Myers

Do you ever find yourself mentally saying – ‘I can just FEEL it! It’s gonna’ be MY YEAR!!’ You’re excited, your energy is refreshed and you intend to do things differently at the beginning of a new year and then…when the rubber hits the road, your year turns into the same old same old doesn’t it. How disappointing! I don’t know about you, but while intentions are great for me, I generally need more specific plans that can help GUIDE me when I stray off the path! And I’m human – so I DO stray off the path! Let’s invest the next wee while looking at a few key things that will help you have a really successful year by gaining clarity around your goals so you can stay on track!

The first thing I want you to do is take a deep breath and REFLECT on the year that was. Give credit where credit is due – what went WELL and how did YOU personally contribute to that? What did you focus on that WAS under your control? When was your attitude spot-on? What opportunity did you take proactive action on?

Now let’s get really honest for a moment and look at what didn’t work so well. What did YOU bring to the table there? When did your attitude falter and what triggered it? What things did you worry about that were beyond your control? What project did you procrastinate on and why?

Looking at what did and didn’t go well last year will give you some clues as to how to move forward this year, but the real gold from this process of reflection is right here. Ask yourself these questions:  ‘If I could do something differently this year that would get me a better result what would that be?’ and ‘What opportunities do I have in front of me that I can run with this year that will make a big positive impact on my business?’

Let me help you get the creative juices flowing when it comes to the topic of opportunities, shall I? You may want to do a bit of brainstorming around these 4 questions:

  • How can I become more efficient? – So often, we are busy being busy. But by the end of the day we wonder WHERE exactly the day went and WHAT exactly we accomplished! I know many of you run small offices where you need to wear a heap of hats every day. My advice to you on this point is to do your absolute best to prioritise client interaction and identify daily goals to help keep you on track (and have the discipline to stick to those daily goals). Then, OUTSOURCE what you’re not great at. Because when we work to our strengths, it helps to keep us motivated and productive.
  • How can I improve my communication? – Communication is the secret sauce of success, I always say. Are there opportunities for you to up your game? Ensuring you’re treating each and every client with the same quality of attention is key, so how will you ensure you make that happen consistently? Can you better utilise your CRM to keep you on track? Should you hire a PA or VA even a few hours every week to help you focus on the priorities rather than the small stuff? Because the more you communicate with your clients – two great things happen: 1. you’ll know what’s going on with them so that you can be confident you’re still providing the best possible solutions for them AND 2. the more your clients feel valued and well-serviced, the more likely they are to REFER you to others you can help! When you up your game with regard to communication and start understanding that not everyone is ‘wired’ to communicate they way YOU are, you become more effective! Because then you’ll begin presenting solutions in the ‘language’ that your prospects understand. One way to do this is to set the goal of getting yourself onto a COURSE – make it a point to LEARN about DISC or another behavioural styles system. Finally, sharpening your speaking and presenting skills will also be a shot in the arm to your ability to not only help your customers but to reach new prospects. Being able to confidently present one or two key concepts to a small group of people in 20-30 minutes will help set you apart as someone who REALLY knows her stuff. And of course, to be able to do this effectively, you do REALLY need to know your stuff, which leads me to the next area around which you may want to set a few goals!
  • How can I expand my knowledge base? – To have a sustainable business, meaning a business that supports you into the future where you’re going to be around to help your customers for the long haul, you need to prioritise the attitude and discipline of ‘sharpening the saw’ or constantly learning and striving to BE better at what you do and how you do it. That means staying up to speed with regulatory changes and requirements, continuing education, learning about topics that will best serve your customer base, not just yourself. Have a think about what you can learn and bring to the table for your customers this year that will add to THEIR knowledge base and help THEM be well-informed.
  • How can I step up my activity? – We all know that more quality activity generates more results, right? SO – instead of setting financial goals, why not try setting activity goals! Because you know if you’re consistently hitting those activity goals, the rest will follow and you’ll be consistent about reaching more people you can help with whatever it is you do!! It’s all about relationships, isn’t it? Nurturing relationships with existing clients, building relationships with new prospects AND building relationships with centres of influence. So how many new opportunities will you commit to opening each week consistently? How many quality conversations? 3? 5? More? And how will you maintain your MOJO to do that week after week?

Jim Rohn said, ‘Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practised every day.’ If you commit to setting aside a bit of planning time to lay out your opportunities for this year and then put some action plans behind those opportunities, I promise your year will be infinitely more rewarding!

*Go to my website to grab this planning tool to help you put specific action around each objective or goal you set for your business this year!

https://gener8leadership.solutions/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Project-Action-Plan-Worksheet.pdf

Find out more about Jennifer here: https://jennifermyers.co.nz/testimonials/ or here: https://gener8leadership.solutions

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