Even the best-laid plans hit snags from time to time. What do you do when you feel like you’ve lost control of your plans? Today we’re talking with Mandy Harvey, an award-winning singer and songwriter who lost her residual hearing at 19. Even after her hearing loss, Mandy pursued an incredibly successful career in music. She performs around the United States, has released four albums, and was recently featured on America’s Got Talent. Her story looks different than what she had planned for herself, and it is such an inspiring and powerful example of what it looks like to overcome obstacles and pivot so that you can still chase after your why.
What’s In This Episode:
Mandy’s story and the journey she’s been on to get to where she is now
How losing her hearing has allowed her to communicate more & feel more connected
Dealing with having to change your plans while still staying true to your why
What to do if your dream gives up on you
Getting over fear by permitting yourself to fail
Learn how to plan for success and achieve your goals in today’s Ask Tonya Q&A episode. I’m answering your questions on how to create a successful accountability partnership, dealing with a family member who refuses to buy in, how to plan and maximize your downtime with your kids, and preparing your business for long-term growth from the very beginning.
What’s In This Episode:
Want to be the best accountability partner? I’m sharing how you can ensure you’re providing value to your partner
What to do if a family member isn’t on board with your goals or systems
How to get the most out of your downtime with your family
The most important thing you can do in the early stages of your business to help you grow and expand
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. This week, we’re talking all about accountability and support systems. We’ll dive into why it’s so important to have someone hold you accountable, how accountability partners help foster success in your life, and how to find & build a successful partnership. We’ll also discuss the different types of accountability partnerships and groups and the benefits of each.
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All season long our focus has been on planning for success, but the best-laid plans don't do us any good if we don't take the time to make them happen. Today, we’re discussing how to create space for your goals. I’ll share how creating habits allows you to make daily progress towards your goals, my four tips on how you can intentionally carve out time, and the importance of getting rid of the things that don’t line up with your priorities in order to get you closer to the life that you want to lead.
What’s In This Episode:
Goals are an integral part of creating plans for success, but sometimes it’s difficult for us to know where to begin when it comes to setting a goal. Your goal may be a project, a habit, or a task, but whatever it is, all goals start with you considering the final destination, and that's what I want to focus on today. We will discuss the idea of starting with the end in mind, creating counterbalance in order to achieve certain goals, the importance of visualization, and creating milestones to ensure that you meet the big goals and dreams you have set for yourself.
What’s In This Episode:
How many times have you said that you'd do whatever it is you want to do “someday”? In reality, someday is this indefinite time in the future that never really comes. Today, I want to focus on your someday. We’ll discuss the roadblocks that keep us from pursuing the things that we say matter most to us & how we can take actionable steps towards prioritizing and achieving those dreams. We have to stop delaying our happiness and give ourselves permission to change, to start, to do the things we need to do, and to move towards the lives we really want.
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Why is mindfulness so important when it comes to productivity? Today, Chris Bailey & I will be discussing productivity, mindfulness, and his books, The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus. Chris is a productivity expert who speaks to organizations around the globe on how to become more productive without hating the process. We will also be sharing about the importance of taking time to let our minds wander and the benefits that come from that time.
What’s In This Episode:
Which is better, to fill our day with 40 insignificant tasks that we can check off our list? Or five momentum building, goal setting tasks? Five important tasks will trump any number of insignificant ones any day of the week. Today, we’re talking about shifting our mindset from busyness to productivity. I’ll share why it’s important to be intentional with our time and how to be sure our ‘yeses’ matter.
What’s In This Episode:
Time blocking and routines are two solid ways to focus on doing things that really matter the most to us. We all function in many different roles and if we don’t intentionally plan our time, we can find ourselves feeling overwhelmed and overstressed. Today, we're going to be talking about creating routines and utilizing time blocking to help move you closer to achieving your goals and your dreams.
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Today, we're talking all about the power of paper and how journaling can change your life. Paper is a permanent space in an all too temporary world. The words we write don't disappear in 24 hours unless we want them to. Paper's a break from the consumption of technology. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the benefits of journaling, how writing awakens our creativity, and five ways that you can use a journal.
Season 8 is all about planning for success. As we move towards the end of the year and into the next, this is the ideal time to lay down the groundwork and focus on how planning for success can help lead us into happier, more productive lives. Today, we are going to talk about creating a planning system that works for you. I’ll share how having a system in place enables us to focus on our goals every day, the importance of writing our goals down, and my 5 P’s for how to plan.
What’s In This Episode:
We all feel so busy, rushing and hurrying... Our days feel like they're chock-full to the brim with every minute filled with tasks and activities. It feels difficult to stop and really savor the moments, and that's what I want to focus on today - savoring our time so we can feel less stressed. We’ll talk about the how savoring increases our happiness and five ways to create savored moments.
What’s In This Episode:
Over the second half of the season on cultivating happiness we've been talking quite a bit about connection and the need for one another in order to increase our happiness. Today, I want to talk about why we need to disconnect from our smartphones and choose instead to connect with others to really intentionally carve out time to deepen up those connections. We’ll talk about setting aside tech free time & making routines to enrich our connection with others.
What’s In This Episode:
Sometimes we might feel as though happiness is not a choice. When John O’Leary was nine years old, he suffered burns over 100% of his body and he was expected to die. He's now an inspirational speaker, podcaster and bestselling author, teaching more than 50,000 people around the world each year how to live inspired. John encourages people to wake up from accidental living and lead an inspired life. Today on the podcast, he’s sharing why cultivating happiness is a choice and how you can choose happiness in the little things, along with the importance of having the right people in our lives to give us guidance.
What’s In This Episode:
Traditions have a way of weaving time together. They allow us to retain and pass down our cultural beliefs, our spiritual beliefs, and even our family moral values. A tradition is any activity that is purposely repeated, and today we’re talking about how they help us create stronger bonds and connections, which is a key to happiness. We’ll also discuss the benefits of creating traditions and the three different types.
What’s In This Episode:
Relationships are one of those things that are at the top of our priority list, but in the busyness of our days, we sometimes forget to pay attention to that as a priority. Our connections with others are what builds into our overall happiness and improve our productivity. This week, we are talking about building and cultivating your partnerships, dealing with issues and conflicts, and letting go of unrealistic expectations in your relationship. We’ll also discuss the three keys to creating strong partnerships.
What’s In This Episode:
We’ve been talking about happiness all season long, and today we’re discussing the importance of connections and how that impacts your happiness. It’s important that we treat our friendships as the priority that they truly are because as humans, our need for love and belonging are the foundation for who we are. In this episode, we’ll discuss how important friendships and connections are, the way that connection impacts your health, and why it is important to build a friendship on a variety of different interests on multiple levels.
What’s In This Episode:
Do some hours seem long and enjoyable while others feel fleeting and full of stress? Today, we are going to be talking about eliminating stress by bending time. We’ll talk about the impact planning fallacy has on our perception of time and how to make our important tasks more manageable and our days more enjoyable by using time buffers. We’ll also discuss the importance of lingering and six ideas that reinforce the idea of not rushing on to the very next thing.
What’s In This Episode:
Learn how to be intentional with your family in today’s Ask Tonya Q&A episode. I’m answering listener’s questions about how to create & maximize time with family, the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, getting your family on board with new systems, and how changing your perspective on others’ successes can lead to your own accomplishments.
What’s In This Episode:
There are some things in our lives that feel like they shouldn’t be scheduled, but when we make time for them, they truly increase our happiness. Today we're talking about scheduling the unschedulable to allow yourself the space to be able to do what you want to do. We will talk about the importance of planning your free time and prioritizing your tasks, your loved ones, and yourself.
What’s In This Episode:
Are you good at taking breaks? Do you feel guilty taking breaks? Do you feel like they are a waste of time? Many of us skip breaks, just trying to push through and be as efficient as possible. Skipping out on breaks isn’t good for your productivity or overall happiness at work & at home. Today, we’re talking about the importance of taking breaks and the types of breaks that will make us feel happier each day.
What’s In This Episode:
We've all heard of FOMO, the fear of missing out, but what we need to do is to work to cultivate the joy of missing out. We’ll find the happiness in not following along what everybody else is doing, purposely not following the crowd, and doing your own thing. On today’s episode we are talking about where our FOMO comes from and the things that exacerbate it. We’ll also learn practices that will help us cultivate solitude and help us discover what we truly love.
What’s In This Episode:
Today we’re shifting our perspectives to cultivate a happier, more satisfying life. We’ll focus on mindset, the importance of identifying negative self-talk and thoughts, and the five practices that will allow you to shift your perspective. Learn to finally stop finding the negative in situations, and instead choose to become more aware of the positives and create your happiest life.
What’s In This Episode:
What does happiness have to do with productivity? Everything. The goal of productivity is to find ways to create space, to focus our time, our energy, and our effort into what really matters most, the result of which is happiness. Today we start season 7, on cultivating happiness through productivity. We’ll start with discussing the idea of choosing happiness. I’ll talk about what it looks like to choose happiness, how to handle our negative emotions and inner critic and four mindset shifts that you can start making today.
What’s In This Episode:
All season long, we've uncovered several of the stumbling blocks many of us deal with and turned them into starting blocks. We're really only limited by our visions of who we are and what we're capable of doing & the stumbling blocks we experience are merely small obstacles to overcome. Today, I’m building on that idea and the importance of visualizing success. Visualization is the deliberate creation of images in one's mind and when done correctly, visualization is an effective way to overcome your obstacles and achieve success.
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