26. 5 Steps to Take Inspired Action

Have you ever wondered about the power of ideas and how they can transform your life? In this episode, we unlock the secrets of the universe's first currency - IDEAS.

We'll explore 5 powerful steps to tap into your internal wisdom and discuss a process that helps you shift your mindset to create the outcomes you desire. 

I'll also share an ideation process of writing down at least 20 ideas, no matter how crazy they seem, in order to help ignite ideas that energize you, and how to order them according to your desire, commitment, and then scheduling them on your calendar. 

What You'll Learn From this Episode:

• Why results are a reflection of our awareness; if we want different different results, we have to change our thinking.

• How to ask powerful questions, taking action and what to do once you have a powerful question.

• Powerful questions start with "what" or "who," and sometimes "how," but all powerful questions are grounded in the present.

• What is The Brave Thinking Activation Process, created by Mary Morrissey.

• How to take action on your commitments, on your schedule, in service of your dream. 

• How to use "Universal Google" to imagine opening up to the infinite, to all the possibilities to bring your dream into reality.

Featured on the Episode:

• Mary Morrissey's Brave Activation Thinking Process
• Jim Fortin
• Episode 20 - How to Ask Yourself Powerful Questions 

If you want to find out more about how coaching with me will help you get in touch with your dreams and start living them, here are some resources for you.

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Full Episode Transcript:

📍You're listening to the Success-Minded Woman with Deidrea Kiesling, episode 26, How to Take Inspired Action.

Hi, I'm Deidrea, wife, and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob, and certified life and business coach. If you're a high-achieving, goal-oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a Success-Minded Woman and you're in the right place. I'm here to help you make the money and the impact you've been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that and post your syndrome, and harness the power of your mind. If you're ready to create a life and business you love, then let's go. I'm so glad you're here.

This episode is a very special one. I share with you a process that I have been using and that I've been trained in. It's a powerful process to tap into your intuition and your guidance and your inspiration to take inspired action. As we go into this episode, I want to share with you this concept that I've been really sitting with recently, and that's – ideas are the first currency of the universe, and we'll be getting into how to generate those ideas and listen to those ideas in this episode.

Last week, we talked about the results formula that is always working in our life. Whether we realize it or not, whether we like it or not, the results that we have in our life are a reflection of what we've been thinking of, where our awareness has been up until now. So, if we want different results, we have to change our thinking, and one of the first things to change in our thinking is how we source ideas of what action to take.

I often hear my clients and myself say things like but what action should I take? Or how do I get started? Or what should I focus on? Asking these questions to someone else instead of listening to our own internal wisdom keeps us stuck.

Asking ourselves or other people questions like, why is this so hard? Why can't I figure it out? What's wrong with me? Why am I always like this? Waiting until the last minute, getting overwhelmed, stopping, and starting, having so much to do and not enough time, these are all disempowering questions. These questions have us looking back in the past and focused on what's wrong, or looking outside of ourselves for the answers, but we want to be present here and now and ask questions to move us forward. That is where our power is.

The quality of our life is determined by the quality of the questions we ask. I talked about this in episode 20, called How to Ask Powerful Questions, so you might want to go back to that episode for more details on how to ask powerful questions, but for this episode, I want to focus on what to do next once you have a powerful question.

And a powerful question does not start with why. Why questions are in the past, but what or who questions are questions that will move you forward. A powerful question will start with what or who, or sometimes it might start with how, but all-powerful questions are grounded in the present, where you are right now and where you want to go to achieve your goals and dreams, to create the vision for your life, not looking in the past.

Today I'm going to share with you a very powerful process that I have learned and been trained in by my coach and mentor, Mary Morrissey, and this process is called the Brave Thinking Activation Process, and it's a way for you to discover what next steps you can do in service of your dream. This process is very different than a regular planning or productivity process.

This is a way of tapping into your intuition and your guidance, to be open and receptive and to activate the potential inside of you to generate the results you want to create for your best life, for your best self, for the vision of the life that you would love. I like to call this partnering with the infinite side of our nature. You can call it God, universe, spirit whatever your name is for the power breathing you. And I especially love this process when I'm feeling stuck and I don't know what to do, or complaining that I have too much to do, and feeling overwhelmed and feeling doubt or worry or anxiety. This process is a way to calm yourself down. This is what I use to calm myself down, get centered, get present, and that is where we can listen to our intuition, to our guidance, to the universe, or whatever your name is for that spirit, that voice that's breathing you.

So, we start with The Brave Thinking Activation Process, with generating a state of peace and abundance, and we do this by taking three slow breaths. You want to do this slowly through your nose and slowly blow out your breath, like you're breathing through a straw, and if you do that three times, it really calms yourself down.

And then you want to connect with your dream, connect with your vision. You can close your eyes, or you can just imagine this, but you really want to put yourself in your vision, feel it and see it and really experience it as if it's happening right now. So, you really want to see yourself inside that life that you love, feel yourself being that person, see the mental images of your dream home, on vacation with your family, maybe running a marathon or doing a yoga class, speaking in front of a group of people, or maybe it's a romantic walk on the beach with the one you love.

Whatever it is, your dream, your vision, connect with it and recognize that there's a power that knows all things, including exactly how to move you from where you are to where you want to be. What I've learned from Mary Morrissey and what she has said, is that there's no dream that the mind you've dreamed it up in does not know how to bring it forth. It knows how, and our job is to get with that knowing, activate that knowing, employ that knowing so that we can have the results which we desire. She says that you, me, all of us have the vibration for the dream, and when you stay in that vibration, things begin to shift, and that's why it's so important to connect with your vision as much as you can in your life, throughout your day, but especially when you're doing this process. She says the very fact that you have the dream means that it is possible and there is a way for it to come into your life, no matter what your life looks like right now.

I really do believe that we would not have that dream, that vision for our life if we didn't have the capability and the capacity to bring that into reality. We all have a power within us that's greater than any circumstance, any condition, any situation. That power is available to us anytime, and what I've learned from working with Mary Morrissey is that that power is helping us right now. It's breathing us. It's seeking to express, by means of us, the fact that the power is here does not move our life or change our results.

Activating it does, and that's what this Brave Thinking Activation Process is how you do it. It's how you activate it to get the clarity, to get the direction, to tap into the inspiration and guidance, to take the action steps to bring your vision into reality.

So, I heard this concept from one of my mentors, Jim Fortin, and he had us do a visualization exercise and one of the things that we would do is that we could go to a keyboard in our mind, like in our imaginary workshop in our mind, and we could go to a keyboard, and he called it the Universal Google, and we could type any question into the Universal Google. And I always love that, and I really actually tell myself that imagine going to Universal Google and that's really what this is. We're going to Universal Google. The Google that's way more than what the facts and information that you can get on the actual Google, but it's opening up to the infinite, to all the possibilities to bring your dream into reality.

The Brave Thinking Activation Process is there's five S's, so there's five steps and they all start with an S. So, I'm going to go through each of them, tell you what it is and then why we do it and then how to do it. So, the first S is source, and this is how we source ideas from the infinite, from our intuition. We tap into our own internal wisdom and guidance to find new, fresh, powerful ideas for creating our vision.

So, we start with asking a quality question. We ask the universe the question that will generate answers that we're seeking. So, to get a specific answer, we need to ask a specific question. So, you want to ask a high-quality question and then listen for the answers. One of the questions you could ask would be what could I do to generate $10,000? By the end of the month? And then listen for the answers, and here is where you want to just write everything down.

So, you ask a quality question, and it could be anything that you have a question about, on what action steps you should take or the goal that you want to achieve and what specific steps you could take. And so, what you want to do is you can write this on a piece of paper at the top. Whatever that question is and remember it's going to start with the what. So, what can I do? What action should I take? Just something that will open up to action, steps for you to move closer to your goals and dreams. So, you ask a specific question, and it might be something. Sometimes it could be who should I speak to about this, or what can I do to get an appointment with this person? So, it can be very specific, or it can be more general, but we just want to make sure that it's an empowering, high-quality question, and so you ask that question. You write it on the top of your page and then you listen for the answers, and you write them down.

And here's what the key is you want to write at least 20 ideas. If you write some and you can't think of anything else, you just pause and then just write some more. So, you want to just keep writing until you get at least 20 ideas, and you don't filter them, you don't edit them, you just write down whatever pops in your head, even if it sounds crazy or even if, like you know, there's no way you're going to do that, you just keep writing them down, because it's priming the pump and the more that you do this, the more ideas are going to come up. I have been blown away by the ideas that have come up for me in doing this process. It's really powerful. So, if you can't come up with 20, just sit there and just wait. You know what else, what else? And get to at least 20 and don't edit it.

So, if you get an idea and it sounds crazy or no way you would do it, you just write it down anyways. Okay, so it's just like a brain dump of all of these ideas. So, you just want to keep it flowing until you get at least 20.

Okay, so that is how you've sourced. That's the first S. You've sourced ideas to the quality question that you asked. And then the next S, step two, is to sort. And so now what you want to do is sort through and organize the ideas according to which ones give you electricity, a charge, make you feel alive and inspired, something that you would be excited about. And some of those are really not going to have any electricity to them.

You're going to be like there's no way, I want to do that. But go through and sort out the ones that you're excited about, that you feel a pull, a charge for, and you want to just basically in the level of energy that you feel about it, and you can really think about does it feel expansive, or does it feel constrictive? So, you really want to use your imagination and your intuition to really guide you on which ones would be the best next steps, and then you can circle them, the ones that really give you energy, that feel expansive, that you feel excited about. So go ahead and circle all of those.

So that's how you've sorted them. So, after you've sorted them, the next step, the third S, is select, and so this is where you're going to actually select the ideas that you are going to take action on, and so you can put a square around these, you can put a circle on them, you can star them, so whatever process you want to do, but really, from the ones you already identified, that have that energy around them. You had some electricity around.

Now you’re going to decide which ones are you actually going to take action on. So, you want to select those. You can circle them or mark them, however you want, but then I want you to put them in numerical order of the order that you would do them in, because this is the important piece, right, that we want to take action on these. So, you want to make sure that you order them in a way that you can take action on them. So, I like to just put them in number order, but it's really important that you number them in the order that you're going to commit to action.

And then the fourth S, the fourth step is schedule, and this is where you want to schedule the ideas that you've selected and put them on your calendar. You want to set a specific date and time on your calendar to complete it. So, this is where you're really making the investment of your time, of your energy and putting it on your calendar and then committing to doing it. So one of the things that Mary Morrissey suggested and I've heard this from other productivity experts as well is that you want to schedule these things, these needle-mover activities or these action steps that are, you know, important to as you move towards your vision, is to put them at times when you're in peak time, so times when you are most energized, or maybe when you have the most free time, or where it can be focused, where you're not going to have interruptions.

So, you really want to pick a special time when you can really focus on the action steps for your dream. So, for me, that's early in the morning, that's before everything starts with getting the kids up and breakfast and all the things. So, when there's really specific things that I want to do that are more like not involving other people, I like to do those in the morning whenever I can. I mean, obviously it's going to depend on your schedule and the demands on your life, but it's really important to start figuring out your schedule and noticing when your peak times are, when your optimum times are for doing different activities, for doing more creative and thought work versus more action you know out in the world.

So, just start really paying attention to where those peak times are for you. So for me, like my podcasting and writing and doing blog posts and things that I'm really using my creativity and I want to really focus without distraction, I do those early in the morning, but then other things like phone calls and going to meetings and going to networking things or giving talks that I do at different organizations, and things like those are in the afternoon or even in the evening hours is sometimes I might be doing things with my kids, taking them to do shopping and whatever they need to do. So, it's really important to just get an idea of your schedule and your energy and how to best optimize your time.

And then the fifth step, the fifth S, is serve, and that is really how you serve, and you live in and act in service of your dreams. This is where you define and execute the plan with the ideas that you've served, that you've sourced, and so I really love this idea of serving your vision through the actions that you're taking and what I also like to say is to give it your full energy, your full attention, and really be in the energy of your dream, to be in the energy of your vision and that focus, and that energy really creates a laser beam, focus that can really accelerate your achievement because you're so focused and really serving it in the best way that you can.

So, those are the five S's, and so I'll say them again. So, the first is to source the ideas at least 20 ideas, starting with the high-quality question and then sorting those ideas around the ones that you feel a connection or energy around or excitement around, and then select the ones that you really think you will take action on and put them in order and then schedule them on your calendar. I really like to think about the calendar as part of my support team and honor that just as if it was a team member on my team, to honor the commitments that I put on my calendar and really use my calendar as accountability. And so that's one of the things that I do with my accountability. I'm getting better and better at it. This is definitely a learning process for me, but I really encourage you to build this habit for yourself of putting things on your calendar and honoring your calendar.

And then the fifth step is serving, serving, taking action on your commitments, on your schedule, in service of your dream. And I love that being in service because it just has this different energy around serving versus doing, or it just has a more expansive energy for me that I'm serving my dream, that I'm serving my vision. I do that, too, with my clients, that I'm serving my clients. It's just a really beautiful way to honor the experience of your dreams, of serving your dreams, by taking these committed actions and continuing to go towards your dream, because remember that your dreams are meant for you and you have the capability and the capacity to create them, and it's up to you to take the action right. The actions not guaranteed, that's your part.

But this Brave Thinking Activation Process is a way that you can source ideas and action steps in service of your dream, where you can slow down and tap into your intuition, to your guidance, to the universe, God, spirit, whatever that is for you, knowing that there's something bigger than you, and when you connect to that, you can follow your intuition and follow the action, steps that have been given to you. And that requires trust in you, trust in your intuition, and then trust that you honor your commitments to yourself to do what you say you're going to do because if you don't, none of this helps.

We can have great ideas, we can select them and source them and even schedule them, but if we don't serve them, if we don't actually do them, then the dream will be, it won't come true, right? And that keeps us stuck.

And so what I like to do, kind of in a shorter time, if I don't have, if I'm not at a dedicated time to go through this whole process, here's an abbreviated version that you can do at any point in your day so you can calm yourself down, like, take some deep breaths and just ask yourself this question: what can I do in the next five minutes in the direction of my dream, to serve my dream? So just any action that you can take will get you out of feeling stuck, feeling overwhelmed, feeling confused.

So, even that quality question, what can I do in the next five minutes to move in the direction of my dream? Because action creates energy and action creates the energy and it starts building the momentum, and so any action that you can do will start to move you in the direction of your dream, and I love this idea of the five-minute power move. Like you really can create progress even with just a five-minute power move.

And so, do what you can with what you have from where you are right now. Because action creates clarity, action creates confidence, action over time creates results and action creates abundance, and I love this—I heard this by Jim Fortin. He says action is where the action is, money is attracted to action, and action with the right energy creates your dreams.

So, thank you so much for listening today. This was a long one, but I'm glad that you stuck with me, and this is really one that you might want to come back to, because there was a lot here. But if you do this, if you follow this process, it will help you. It really will help you in the direction of your dream.

And just know this that I'm here for you. I want to support you in any way that I can, and so you can always reach out to me. You can email me; you can message me. I'm here for you, and so just know that you're not in this alone. We're all in this together and your dreams are meant for you and it's your job to serve them by taking action daily towards your dreams.

All right, y'all. I love you and I'll talk to you all next week. Bye.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Success Minded Woman podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast, when you want to know more, then head on over to www.thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to you all next week. Bye.