Do your mornings ever feel like starting a cold car on a winter day? The key is turning, but the engine doesn’t want to start. We can choose to stay in the warmth, but if the car doesn’t get started, the fact is we’re not going anywhere.
This is why having a solid morning routine is key to having a good day. You might be thinking, “Julie, I’m not really a morning person.” I get it, I was NEVER a morning person, but after I made this a habit, it was like magic happened and I became a morning person, which quickly led to having happier, more productive days.
This is my Simple 6-Step Morning Routine that has Changed my Life:
Read more...Of all the things successful people do to accelerate their path to the lifestyle they want, working with a coach is at the top of the list. Oola Coaching is the formula I discovered that has transformed not only my life, but the lives of more than a million people around the world. 
What is Oola? It’s short for Ooh-la-la . . . that feeling you get when you wake up every day happy, growing and looking forward to what life has next. It’s living a balanced life in our unbalanced world. With vibrant good health, equally healthy finances, family and friends who support you, fun times, and a career or calling that inspires you every day. That’s the Oola Life.
And now, my new calling is helping people get their own OolaLife . . . whatever defines it for you. Over the next couple of months, I’ll be challenging you to look at every area of your life, asking yourself, “Where can I improve? Where do I need to calm the overwhelm?” When you ask those questions, I have the solution: a 10-week coaching program that focuses on bringing balanced and a rockin’ good future to all major areas of your life: fitness, finances, family, field (career) , faith, friends and fun. Together we will follow a specific curriculum, but also:
• Determine specific action steps to help you achieve your goals
• Help you sort through opportunities that arise from your forward momentum
• Keep you focused on your top priorities while fitting in daily tasks
• Achieve balance in your life while still accomplishing your lifestyle or career goals
Overwhelming debt. Marriages on life support. Time bandits that leave no room for family, friends, or fun. This is what our modern-day culture has brought us to. And it all adds up to over-scheduled and overworked lives that are out of balance.
Luckily, there’s a solution.
This 7-step formula, based on the bestselling book series, Oola: Finding Balance in an Unbalanced World, is one I use with clients because it’s designed to quickly lower stress and make space for a life of purpose, success and satisfaction:
Fitness: Eliminating sugar, processed foods, bad fats and addictive substances — emphasizing whole foods instead — brings about the mental clarity, confidence and high energy needed to focus on goals in the other 6 areas of your life.
Finance: Eliminating debt — and the accompanying stress it brings — returns personal finances to a more manageable routine where monthly budgeting, auto-saving for retirement, and planning major purchases are the norm.
Family: If you’re not working on your marriage, you’re working on your divorce. Additionally, focusing on your inner circle family members (and protecting them from toxic family “outliers”) eliminates drama and creates a safe environment for kids to grow.
Field: Studies show up to 70% of people hate their jobs. If that describes you, creating a plan to safely transition into a new role (or new field entirely) is key to finding balance.
Faith: While I don’t tell clients what to believe, having an active faith walk — with prayerful meditation time, church affiliation, and regular study — keeps people balanced.
Friends: Friends influence our life, career and relationship decisions, so “reverse-engineering” the friendships you want is crucial. And friends who create drama? Decide whether to have a crucial conversation or simply unfriend, unfollow, delete.
Fun: Adding everyday fun and bigger “bucket list” trips and experiences not only adds to the joy of life, it delivers physiological benefits like lower stress and beneficial human connection. Yet too many adults plan to wait until retirement. Fun is necessary.
Achieving a life of contentment, vibrant good health, ample finances, and supportive relationships is what I help clients with. Contact me to start working on your 7 areas and getting the life you dream of and deserve.
You want more free time, fewer obligations, and less clutter in your life. Who doesn’t?
This doesn’t have to just be a wish.
You can simplify and reclaim your life.
It has been said that life is more than long enough, as long as you’re not wasting time. You’re wasting time if your life is more complicated than it needs to be.
Use these easy techniques to create a simpler life that’s more meaningful to you:
1. Know your priorities.
Who and what are most important to you? What do you want to accomplish with your life? What are your goals? If you understand your priorities, it’s easier to simplify your life, because you know what matters and what doesn’t.
This includes identifying your daily priorities each day. Life is simpler when you know exactly what you want to get done each day. Make a list each evening for the next day and stick to it.
2. Start your day with Meditation.
One of the great benefits of meditation is the clarity it provides. The things, activities, and people in your life that matter will become more apparent. Everything else is just habit and noise.
3. Declutter your home.
Go from room to room and consider everything. What do you not use? What do you not need? What do you not love? If you don’t use, need, or love it, strongly think about getting rid of it.
If you’re resistant to removing something from your life, ask yourself why.
4. Track your activity for one weekday and one weekend day.
Record how you spend your time each hour. For example, at 9:00 am you might write: 8:00-9:00: 15 minutes answering email. 15 minutes surfing the internet. 30 minutes driving to work.
Do that for the whole day and tabulate how you spent your time. You’ll likely see a few activities that are taking up your time without providing much value to your life. Be ruthless in controlling these time-wasters.
5. Assess your commitments.
This includes regular social activities, committees, clubs, and other commitments. Compare these to your list of priorities and goals. If a commitment doesn’t help you accomplish what’s most important to you, consider quitting.
6. Create routines.
Routines are just a series of habits. You can have a routine for cleaning the kitchen or completing a report at work.
Routines simplify the amount of thinking you have to do. You can use your intellectual resources for other things.
A few other examples include a morning and evening routine for yourself, a yard work routine, an after-school routine for children, or an exercise routine.
7. Assess the people in your life.
Are all the optional people in your life adding something worthwhile to your life? Are you still dragging around an old high school friend or two that you don’t enjoy spending time with anymore? It’s not always easy to eliminate people from your life, but it may help you.
8. Don’t be afraid to say “no.”
Before adding new commitments to your life, remember to review your priorities and goals. Be willing to decline any offers that complicate your life unnecessarily. Be brave and tell a few people “no.” It will do wonders for your self-esteem and support simplifying your life.
Give yourself the gift of freedom and simplify your life. Once you’ve completed the process, repeat it again every few months. The first round will produce a lot of benefits, but you can simplify your life even further.
Buddhist monks are allowed little more than two robes, a spoon, a bowl, and a pair of sandals. How simple can you make your life?
We all have times when we just don’t feel good and wonder, “what the heck is wrong with me?” We come home from work and crash on the couch, or lie awake all night praying to get some sleep, constant headaches, or we sometimes feel like a butterfly net, catching every bug out there. All we want is answers to the big question, “what’s my deal?”
Being an obsessive researcher and skeptic, I’ve learned a very useful skill to figure out just about any problem. This secret skill has given me confidence and freedom.
I’ve had so many friends asking for advice to the point that I could call myself a therapist. I soon realized that this skill is not exactly common, but it should be!
I’m going to teach you my secret in 3 simple steps. You are going to be shocked how super-simple this is and start using this skill on a daily basis.
Step One: What’s your problem?
You may say that you can’t sleep, or you have headaches, you’re overwhelmed, your house is a mess, or something like that. That is NOT your problem. It’s a symptom of your problem. It’s like asking what’s wrong with your car and answering that the engine light is on. Well, a hammer can fix that, but that’s not the problem. The first step is realization that your symptom is an indicator that there IS a problem.
Step Two: Research
All of a sudden, anxiety sets in and flashbacks to school research papers come to mind. No worries, this kind of research is simple, broad and shouldn’t take much time. We are so blessed to have access to so much knowledge with a click of a button. Pull up your favorite browser and type in “reasons for…” then what your symptom is. For example, “reasons for lack of sleep, headaches, overwhelm, lack of organization, etc…” After you click through a handful of articles, you should have a list of root causes of your particular issue. At this point, don’t panic and use Occam’s Razor which states, “the simplest solution tends to be the correct one.” Headache doesn’t always mean you have a brain tumor.
Once you find a handful of causes, weigh these with common sense and find what fits your situation best. For instance, a couple of reasons for headaches could be muscle tension, hormones, or allergies. Do you have tight muscles in your back, do you have other hormonal symptoms, is it around the time of year when allergies are a possibility?
Step Three: Trigger Point
Now that you have a reasonable cause, what is the trigger point? If it’s health-related, drill down to the body system and support that particular body system. If you are dealing with organization or time management, find out what is keeping you from doing these things well. You may even find that you’re not motivated because you aren’t appreciated, or are bored and need a challenge. Once you find the trigger point, a world of possibilities and solutions will present themselves.
After dealing with chronic headaches, I found that one cause was hormones. I had my doctor do tests and voila! my progesterone was low. Since I’ve started taking steps to support my endocrine system and adding a natural progesterone, headaches GONE!
I am passionate about teaching people to be confident in their abilities and taking charge of their lives. You CAN do it, there ARE solutions, you WILL figure it out. Listen to opinions and accept advice, but ultimately, you are in charge of you!
Fear of success has always seemed absolutely ridiculous to me, but after being stuck in the same place for years and finally dealing with it, I can tell you that it’s totally legit.
Our lives rarely change because we become comfortable with our situation.
We might not like it, but it’s comfortable. We know what to expect. We might be unhappy, but we know we can deal with it.
In a nutshell, we don’t like change. We also don’t like the prospect of failing or of standing out.
You might fear success if you:
- Consistently make plans for your life, but fail to follow through on them. Whether it’s to start a business, read a book a month, or hit the gym five days a week, you just can’t seem to make it happen
- You leave projects uncompleted. This includes at work and in your personal life
- You’re all talk. You rarely take action
- You struggle to make decisions
- Your life never changes for the better
- You self-sabotage, especially when you’re nearing success.
This probably describes most of the people you know. Does it describe you accurately?
Use these strategies to defeat your fear of success and make real changes in your life:
1.Imagine being ultra successful.
Imagine yourself being even more successful than you want to be. If your goal is to make $100,000 per year, imagine making $1 million. If you want to lose 25 pounds, imagine getting lean enough that you can see your abs. Do this each night and morning in bed.
- Make the visualization as vivid as possible. Include all of your senses. When it feels uncomfortable, stick with it and just relax.
- In time, it will feel natural. When that happens, achieving your goal will be much easier.
2. Practice standing out.
Many of us fear success because we don’t want to stand out in any way. Somewhere along the way, we learned or decided that it’s better to keep our head down than to be noticed.
- There are a variety of ways you can practice standing out in your everyday life. You can dress differently. You might even put on a pair of pink mittens and walk around the mall in the middle of the summer. Or you could wear your best clothes to the store.
- You could go out in public with your hair disheveled.
- You can do something in public that you’re either really good or really bad at, like bowling.
3. Reframe failure.
Fear of success might actually be a fear of failure. Keep in mind that failure is just an undesired result. It says nothing about you. It simply means that you need more practice, more time, or a better approach. When you can view failure in this manner, there’s nothing to fear.
4. Focus on action over thought.
We can’t fear success if we don’t think. If you need to send 100 cold emails to find clients for your business, just sit down and get busy. The longer you think about it, the harder it becomes. Just decide and take action.
5. Have a real vision for the future.
Enough motivation can overcome any fear. Create a possible future in your mind that is worth overcoming any obstacle. Fear doesn’t matter if you have a very compelling future in mind.
Do you fear success? It seems counter-intuitive to fear success, but it’s a common obstacle to making sustained progress in life. Success brings attention, the unknown, and the possibility of failure.
Create a vision for the future that will pull you through any fears you might have. Learn to deal with discomfort. Remember, you only have one life to live. Avoid allowing fear to limit your life!
