[00:00:02] Welcome to the Business Miracles podcast. I'm Heather Dominick, founder of www.businessmiracles.com and author of the book Different The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution, found at www.differentthebook.com. Since 2010, I've been training Highly Sensitive Entrepreneurs and Leaders from around the globe to work less while making more impact and income by doing things differently. I'm so glad you joined me. Listen in and get ready. Get ready for a shift in the way you view yourself, your work, your life. A business miracle.
[00:00:39] This is A Course in Business Miracles podcast episode 164 HSE Prioritization. Listen in to learn a powerful method for prioritizing tasks. This method supports you in staying focused while also embracing your highly sensitive visionary strength while also avoiding your highly sensitive shadow of analysis paralysis. All so that you can more confidently navigate the challenges that come your way more easily. Continuously tap into your highly sensitive strengths and more effortlessly just each day. Rise up as the highly sensitive entrepreneur and leader that you are meant to be.
[00:01:32] We are here to focus today on the long-term list.
I'm going to take a bit of a circuitous route to get us to the heart of the long-term list.
For those of us who were together as part of our
Intuitive Planning Day, during that day, I spoke about
The theme of pay attention and be aware. As part of that theme, I spoke about the metaphor of the sleeper wave, bringing yourself to the edge of the ocean, and it's that wave that suddenly just crashes up and down and over. When your back is to the ocean, that sleeper wave will take you out. When you're willing to face the ocean, you'll see the sleeper wave coming and it will give you an opportunity to be able to stay strong, stay steady, hold your ground. The sleeper wave is still going to crash. The sand, the earth beneath you is probably going to become a little bit mushy. You'll sink down a little bit into the earth. You might get knocked a little bit to the right and the left, but as that sleeper wave passes, you are still standing.
That metaphor, the theme, following my intuition to bring that to our intuitive planning day with the help of some shamanic mentorship and astrological mentorship that I received. Oh my gosh. I have witnessed many sleeper waves in this community, amongst my friends, my family, and for myself. There has been a lot of personal loss. We have lost parents. We have lost friends. We have lost employees. We have lost dear soul pets. We have lost long-term homes that have been meant to be moved on from. We have had broken toes. We have had surprising legal issues and situations. For myself, almost immediately after leading Intuitive Planning Day, my sleeper wave came. Not going to fully go into the details, but I'll say it was a surprise. My husband and I were blindsided. It was a real estate issue gone sideways, asking us, calling us to face some very corrupt behavior, some very illegal behavior, and some very extreme challenging decisions.
We made the decision based on the willingness to face the sleeper wave, be in the process, not give in to fear, not give in to being bullied and choosing to make decisions based instead on our values. Though lawyers needed to be hired, though brokers needed to be consulted, at the heart of it, we stayed strong, stayed steady, made a decision to walk away from a toxic situation rather than stay and fight for many reasons, but ultimately based in value. So, what that means is that we together, my husband and I, my sweetheart husband and I will once again be moving. Now, if you've been with me through 2020 and 2021, or if you've read my book Different, you will know that this now will make the fifth move that my husband and I are having to make within now a three-year period.
This is for two people who actually really like to stay where we are. This never would have been our choice. This is absolutely 100% a forced move. This is also a ripple continuation of the effects of our global pandemic and the impact that it's having on cultural situations, New York City real estate being one of them, and at the end of the day, again, being able to keep our feet strong, steady in spite of this sleeper wave.
There is an HSL member who I've had a couple of private mentor calls with during this time since February 2023 who has also faced and out-of-the-blue sleeper wave based on someone else's illegal behavior. What I was sharing with her yesterday during our private mentor call is that when you are willing to face the wave, it gives you access to an accelerated ability to move through areas where perhaps you had been a bit asleep to, a bit complacent to access a fast track to behavioral change.
She completely agreed with me and used the words, "This situation has brought me to a higher level of highly sensitive maturity and highly sensitive leadership," and she said, "I don't know if you really understand what I mean," and I said, "I absolutely understand what you mean." As you are willing to rather than close down, shut down, pull back, protect yourself, default to shadow behaviors or get caught into coping mechanisms or the highly sensitive coping cycle, you are available to be transformed by the sleeper wave.
So, where I'd like us to bring our attention and focus is to the top of the coping cycle and to see the words touched and awakened, two alternatives to being triggered. So, I'll tell you this as part of my sleeper wave experience and what I have been through over the last couple of months, not in any way do I want to diminish the sense of what an emotional journey this has been. However, as we can see here in the coping cycle, when you have been doing the real work consistently in moments when things are not intense, in moments when there is not a sleeper wave, in moments when you are not triggered, that when that moment comes of intensity, of a sleeper wave, of a trigger, you have the opportunity through consistency of doing the real work as we do here, to choose alternatively to allow an intense situation, to allow a sleeper wave, to allow a trigger to touch you, to awaken you rather than get tossed into the coping cycle.
Touched and awakened. Those are terms that come from Bonnie Badenoch in her book, The Trauma of the Heart. I taught this coping cycle years ago, pre-pandemic, pre-these exceptional times, and yet the truth of her work and the truth of the opportunity to be touched, to be awakened, to receive an acceleration rather than go into the habitual behavior of trigger anxiety, fear, lack of safety, the coping mechanisms, collapsing, beating up on self, soothing, recovery and rebound. That option is always available to you now more than ever.
We've been speaking of what it is to access empowerment and strength rather than shadow behavior and drama behavior. Specifically, we've been looking at over protection, persecutor, challenger, and intuition, bringing your eyes to that word challenger. As I've shared, the irony is that the challenger is our doorway to a deeper level of happiness and then therefore a deeper level of access to our highly sensitive strengths, particularly our intuition.
So, though this time for me has been massively, massively challenging, it has also been laced with some incredible miracles and the acceleration that I've personally experienced from being touched, from being awakened is that things that I was willing to tolerate before this sleeper wave, I am no longer willing to tolerate. Areas where I was slow, slower and accessing my intuition when it comes to decisions has now sped up, accelerated. A lack of willingness to tolerate what I've tolerated previously, a lack of willingness to buy into the limiting belief that I have to slow down in order to be able to manage my nervous system, that I can actually have both and through intuition and what has really allowed me to do this is absolutely utilizing the tool of the long-term list.
So, for myself, I am massively proud and impressed with my ability to remain balanced over these weeks. One, alcohol did not become a major food group. Yay me. Two, my sweetheart, husband and I have navigated this challenging situation together, actually allowing it to bring us to a deeper bond if that was possible, and three, I have continued to serve actions in the long-term list. I said it was going to be a circuitous route to get there. So, the long-term list. The long-term list is a tool that serves the area that so many highly sensitive entrepreneurs and leaders find the most challenging and that area is the ability to prioritize. Please write that down, the ability to prioritize.
So, first, let's talk about where the long-term list came from. The long-term list is a tool that I created for myself in my early days of being self-employed. This is 20 years ago. Did not know that I was highly sensitive. I did have enough awareness that I would become very overwhelmed very quickly. I found the experience, the world of self-employment to not only be overwhelming, but to be absolutely terrifying. I turned to this tool that I created of the long-term list, which gave me a place to house, to home, to keep these incredible creative inspired ideas that would come into my mind.
Part of it would be downloads. Part of it in all honesty was totally from comparison, things that I was seeing other people doing, and that sense of anxiety of like, I have to do this and I have to do this now and I'm not doing this. That means I'm not going to be successful. I'm not going to be able to keep up. I'm going to absolutely crash when it comes to this self-employed thing and I'm going to be living in a box in a couple of months. Rather than allowing that anxiety to drive me, I turned to the long-term list. The long-term list then became a part of a tool that I taught for a long time, which was the 30-day plan. The whole intention of the 30-day plan was to stay focused on what needed to move the business forward just over the next 30 days.
The long-term list was a place to, again, to house, to home, to hold all of these bigger ideas and then what would happen is at the end of the 30 days, as I prepared to make my next 30-day plan, I would consult my long-term list. What on that list perhaps now made sense to be a part of the next 30 days or made sense to actually remain on the long term list or actually now just seemed completely ridiculous. I can't believe I ever even thought that was a good idea and I could release and let it go.
Why is the area of prioritization so challenging for us as highly sensitive? Because analysis paralysis is the shadow side of our visionary strength. Write that down.
We have the ability to see big picture. Some of us literally are clairvoyant. We can see it. Some of us are clairsentient. We can feel it. Some of us are clairaudient. We can hear the vision. Rather than allowing the sight, the sound, the feel of that bigger vision, that bigger calling to be as distracting, rather than allowing it to activate, overwhelm, rather than allowing it to suck us into the shadow of analysis paralysis, we use the long-term list. It is the long-term list that has allowed me to stay focused over these months since February Intuitive Planning Day in combination with my intuitive plan.
I have continued to have ideas. I have definitely had moments of comparison. I have definitely had moments of feeling persecuted, feeling victimized by this massively corrupt illegal situation and yet have been able to access quickly challenger intuition, access quickly creator... Oh my gosh. Why can't I say that word? Creator and creativity. Do you ever have those moments where a word just sounds wrong? This was one of those moments.
So, to be able to continue to serve, to be able to continue to move the mission of Business Miracles forward while continuing to remain connected to my sweetheart husband and to take care of myself in a balanced
Highly, highly recommend resurrecting for yourself or turning to for the first time the long-term list, to disengage that shadow behavior, to disrupt the tendency to go into the habitual coping cycle. Allow yourself during these continuous, exceptional times to be touched, to be awakened, to be transformed as a result of. Deep breath in and let it out. Will you accept the challenge? Accept the challenge of what it is to be highly sensitive in the face of intensity, in the face of overwhelm, in the face of being challenged with your deep belief and justice or whatever way the challenge is presenting itself to you. Will you accept it? Will you accept it? Will you accept it? Will you rise up to be the highly sensitive, successful entrepreneur that you feel called to be, to be the highly sensitive, successful leader that you've been called to be?
It is the question that we are all going to be called to answer over and over and over. Turn to the tools. Turn to the teachings. Turn to the trainings to serve you, to support you, to hold you steady. The sleeper waves will come. Are you trying to hide with your back to the ocean? Please, please, please, please, please don't let a sleeper wave come. Please, please, please, please, please don't let me get knocked over. Please, please, please, please, please. No, no, no, no, no. Or will you open heart, head high, chest wide open, feet strong, planted steady, face the wave and give yourself the gift of knowing that not only you can survive, but you can thrive?
[00:20:48] Thank you for being a part of this Business Miracles podcast episode and for beginning to dip your toe into the journey of highly sensitive leadership training. If you are ready to truly use your sensitivities as strengths in all parts of your work and life, I invite you to connect for a one on one chat. You will experience being deeply listened to and together we'll get a sense of whether the Highly Sensitive Leadership Training Programs are the best next step for you and your highly sensitive journey at this time. Just go to www.claritycall.com to schedule a conversation. We so look forward to connecting with you. Talk to you soon!
