How To Keep Your Dreams A Priority And Manage Your Time Effectively

You know in this busy world, we are being mothers. We’re being fathers, sisters, daughters, colleagues, employees, and entrepreneurs.

We’re always being something that demands us to show up for someone else. A question to all of that is, how do you keep your own dreams, your own aspirations, a priority while serving everybody else?

Here are some of the ways to keep your dreams a priority and to increase abundance in ALL areas of life (read more here).

1. Make Clear Decisions

You have to remember that when you’re good at what you do everybody wants you to help them because you’re great. So don’t be so surprised that everyone else is always asking you to join their team, to jump on this assignment with them, to go to this place with them because you’re amazing and people want amazing people around them.

The challenge is, you’re always in demand and you have to make a clear, decisive decision.

2. Manage Your Time Effectively

Some of us like to resist time management because we’re a free spirit. We didn’t want to be controlled. We’re like butterflies. We just want to soar and be free. Well, the reality is that when you manage your time effectively, you actually create more freedom. Because when you manage time and you know how to better use blocks of your time, you can do a lot more things.

Let me give you some examples of that.

My Time Schedule Example

I’m gonna use better blocks of my time meaning, I’m only gonna go on my email three times a day.

I start with my email at about 9:30. I stay on my email for 30 minutes. I’ll go back in my email about 3:00 in the afternoon.

I stay on my email again for about 30 minutes. Then, I go back to my email one more time at 6 pm. I stay in for about 30 minutes and that’s it. It's important to notice that I don’t go in nineteen times.

Three times a day gives me adequate time to see what’s in there, see what’s new and act appropriately, otherwise, it’s throwing me off.

I time blocked my day, about 90 minutes each time block to do the task even if the task is going to take me 30 minutes, I time blocked 30 minutes because I get distracted.

When you time block your day, and then you schedule each day, not every day looks the same. I have a time block for everything I need to do for seven days of the week.

Can you believe that in that time, I got more things done? Now I’m going to post on my Facebook page my actual time schedule from 2006 and do you know that that time schedule took my revenue up to 258% in a year because I was more laser-focused? You’re not operating wide and loosey-goosey and confused and hopping from one thing to another.

You have a task owned your time, even relaxing, even reading a book, even just chilling. I have it in my schedule.

3. Inspire Yourself

With the last point, you’ll notice on the time management schedule that I’ll show you as an example that I didn’t include a workout, ‘cause working out does not inspire me. The phrase working out does not inspire me. But I would use the name that speaks of the result that you want to create. So when I was checking my email, it says “hunting for new business”. And when I was going to the gym, instead of work out, it says “snatching my sexy back”.

And so create the name for the result you want to create in the world versus the process to get there. The process to get there is going to be psychologically draining because it’s the process. The outcome is going to inspire you. So name your tasks inside time management with the outcome that you want to create.

How To Keep Yourself A Priority

1. Set a schedule that puts your agenda in the schedule. Because when it doesn’t exist out loud, it doesn’t exist anywhere. That’s number 1.
2. You have to become comfortable with your no. My grandmother says if you want your ‘yes's to have more value, you need to learn how to exercise your no. See, your ‘yes' might not have its value anymore. Why? Because you give it away too much. You give it to too many people. You give it away too often. You’re always over-committing and then you’ll feel drained and frustrated and you don’t have gratitude in your heart because you’re overcommitted. Well that all started with a yes that should have been a no. Or should have been ‘I’d love to but not now.’
3. It’s your job to fill your own take and it’s your job to fulfill your own dreams. It’s your job to write a story that you would want to read. So, the responsibility of your dreams coming through does not belong to your husband, does not belong to your man, does not belong to your woman, or to your children, to wait and hope for them to one day see your dream as a priority, that’s an unrealistic expectation. And actually, it’s unfair. It’s your priority. And what it looks like is carving that time. It looks like putting it on the agenda. It looks like declaring it out loud so that the world could hear and it looks like giving yourself a chance, a thousand chances and pressing reset if you have to fall down or sit down or getting distracted.

4. Teach The World

I know what it feels like to prioritize other people over my dreams. After all, I did it for years. I love being loved, I love to love and I used to say yes all the time just to be loved. And I realized that I was teaching the people around me how to treat me. That you teach the people around you how to treat you.

So if they’re treating you as if your life isn’t a priority, your dreams aren’t the priority, it’s because you taught them how to treat you that way.

The reality is if you train them how to treat you then you can re-train them how to treat you now. And it’s not a matter of making any big announcements.

It starts with setting some healthy boundaries. And it starts with making some time management. It starts by making sure you continue to make a come back here and that we stay connected and that you allow me or someone else to help navigate you through the train called designing a better life, the one that you love, the one that you admire.

And so let’s start with those things because that would make a huge difference in your life.

So if you want to know what does it mean to keep your dreams a priority, it starts with you. It starts right now. It starts right here.

Following your dreams isn’t luck. It’s something you create. These 24 guidelines show the way.