To get your child to see your point of view means you need to be prepared to see theirs. It’s the old give and take adage. Finding common ground is easier than it seems, you don’t need to wave the white flag or admit defeat. What you need to do is listen to your child. Listening means leaving your points of view at the door, and learning about what’s important to your child, learning how the world looks to them. Children are incredibly knowledge and insightful. They often see things with fresh eyes and open minds, hearing what they have to say can open your eyes to new perspectives.

You don’t need to agree with your child. You just need to understand their point of view, without judgment. The more effort you put into doing this without expecting anything in return, the more meaningful relationship you’ll have with your child. They will feel more valued, more appreciated and more loved. When a child feels this way they are more willing to do what you ask of them.

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With love & gratitude, Julie xxx

All relationships are an extension of you, representing different parts of you. At times they will compliment you and at other times they will test you to the limits. Recognising when this happens helps to make sense of it all. Knowing that while one relationship lifts you up and helps you feel fantastic there will be another relationship that tests you, usually by challenging your self worth.  Think about the main relationships in your life right now. Which ones lift you up, which ones challenge you? Is this a constant or does the dynamic of this change from time to time? This usually happens in direct proportion to each other. You’ll be lifted up in one relationship to the same degree to you are challenged by another. There will also be other relationships which maintain the balance, the status quo. You need them to stay centred and level headed.

Everything happens in perfect balance in life and it’s the same with your relationships. The key to being happy is learning how to react to the changes and different dynamics within your relationships. Learning when to let go, when to push the limits, when to stand up for yourself, when to set and enforce personal boundaries, when to say NO, when to listen and take on the other persons point of view. You also need a balance of these reactions within your relationships to keep them flowing and functioning properly.

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With love & gratitude, Julie xxx

When the cycle turns and you’re faced with hardships and struggle, flowing with life becomes harder. Typically, you’ll become tense and less trusting. You will start to worry and think about all the things that could go wrong. Before you know it, in your thoughts you’ve created a worse scenario, and then an even worse one again. You continue on this path, worrying more, trusting less. At the same time, your heartbeat changes, it quickens with the tension and anxiety and you stop breathing as freely. There will be times when you pause in your breath, breathe less deeply or even hold your breath. This tightening happens all over your body. Noticeably in your shoulders, neck, upper back. It happens on a deeper level too, your inner organs will also tighten. You may have stomach aches, bowel changes and so on.

As you continue to tighten up, you also restrict the natural cycle of the ebb and flow. It’s like putting your brakes on and stopping midway on a roundabout. You block the flow of traffic. Stalling in the one spot, not knowing how to move forward, second guessing yourself and your choices, not knowing which direction to take. Not knowing what to do next. This is a challenging space to be in.  

This is where it is vitally important for you to learn to let go, to relax, to step back and to learn to trust. Allow things to follow the natural cycle. You need to start to observe what happens when you hold on tightly and then what happens as you let go. It’s a powerful experience that can create magical changes in your life.

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With love & gratitude, Julie xxx

Initially, you may find it hard. You’ll feel the urge to celebrate by doing something. If only you could just sit still……. Most people can’t because it feels too uncomfortable. Having all that good to yourself is uncomfortable, that’s why you share the good news with others. If you could keep it to yourself, and just sit quietly in the space of all the buzz that goes with good news something interesting will happen. The buzz that you feel when something wonderful happens in an energy surge and talking about and sharing your news with others dissipates the energy. A little like letting the air out of a balloon, it goes flat.

Keeping the good news to yourself gives you time to get used to the buzz or the new level of energy that it’s brought with it. This allows you to put more air into your happiness, good times, and exciting news balloon. As you become more comfortable feeling like this and having experiences like this, more come into your life. If you want more happiness, more love, more excitement, more passion, more wonderful, more good – the next time you feel happy, loved, excited, passionate, wonderful or good take the time to feel it and keep it to yourself as long as you can before you share. Turn it into a game with yourself, try and extend the how long you keep it to yourself for.

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With love & gratitude, Julie xxx

When what they’ve been yearning for comes along, yes they’re happier for a while. Then the emptiness within starts to rise and once again they’re off searching for that ‘elusive’ happiness. That’s why people find themselves in the same patterns, always leaving jobs for the same reasons, yoyo dieting, going in and out of relationships, saving and spending etc.

The truth is that you find happiness within you. Being happy with who you are and accepting yourself as you are. There’s no quick fix to being happy. It doesn’t happen overnight, working on yourself takes time, you need to learn about yourself. What makes you tick? How you really feel? What’s missing?

A good place to start is by writing a list of all the parts in your life that aren’t working or aren’t making you happy and identify a common theme. You’re looking for what’s missing. Now look at your life as a whole to see where this is also missing in the parts of your life that are working. Or it may be there but in smaller amounts.

Some further questions you can ask are – why do I need this? What benefits will it bring to me? How will it make me a better person? How will I feel about myself if I had this? Would it really make my life happier?

With love & gratitude, Julie xxx

You need to both have a common goal, want the same things. You need to be able to separate the mundane every day tasks of life that take over the longer you are together. It’s these tasks that can get in the way to keeping the love alive. Things like household chores, running kids around, paying the bills, which TV shows to watch. Every couple has their own list of the little things that cause the biggest tensions. It’s usually the same things that couples disagree on over and over again. Each time the unresolved issues from the last time you discussed it or argued over it are still there, bubbling away under the surface. They sit in your memory bank, not as the fact that you’ve argued over and over again, but the feelings sit in your memory bank. The feelings of frustration, of not feeling supported, of feeling ignored, rejected, left out, not cared for, and so on.

It’s easy to get caught up in this. Focusing on what the problems are, how your partner makes you feel when they’re not doing what you want them to do. However, if couples put as much effort into keeping the love alive as they do to keeping the argument going or proving they are right, or trying to keep the upper hand their relationships would be very different.

The key is to make the effort to do the loving, caring things for your partner like you did in the beginning. Tell your partner lovely things about themselves, make their favourite meal, pick a flower for them, text them to tell them you can’t wait to see them again.  Ask them what they’d like you to do for them and do it, no strings attached, just because you want to make them happy. Listen to them attentively as they talk, looking into their eyes.

Taking and making the time, effort and commitment to keeping the love alive is worth it. It’s a beautiful feeling to feel alive in the arms of your partner, to feel that skipped heartbeat, the butterflies, the excitement. To feel in love, in sure beats the mundane, routine, going through the motions existance.

With love & gratitude, Julie xxx

Reflect on your last disagreement with your partner or another significant relationship. How did you react? ….How did they react? …How are you feeling about it now? …What are you hanging onto from the disagreement? …Are you proud of how you handled things? …Do you wish you’d acted, or said something differently? …Chances are these questions are bringing up some emotions for you. You may be feeling angry, guilty, remorseful, blaming, self righteous, etc. Or maybe you don’t want to admit your role in how things panned out. When you stay in these emotions or thinking patterns, saying sorry becomes hard.

If you can, step back and look at things from another perspective. How do you think the other person was feeling? ….How might they be feeling now? …If you could change something about how you handled things, what would that be?….

Now, let all that thinking stuff go…
Take some nice slow breaths, letting all that tension float away. Staying nice and relaxed and focusing on your breath in and out. Connect with the love in your heart, it may help to think of something or someone you love dearly. Just stay in that space, while continuing to breathe. Allow the beautiful feelings of that love grow with each breath, connecting with it more and more.

If you’re not already, think of the person you had the disagreement with. Feel the love you have deep inside for them, let any thoughts float away, just connect with the love. With each breath in and out letting the love expand and grow, feeling stronger and stronger. You may have a tear or two, that’s ok. Just allow the feeling to surface as you continue to allow the feeling of love to envelope you gently….
When you are ready, still feeling the love and bringing it with you, take some deep breaths and gently bringing your awareness back to where you are now. If you want to, saying sorry will be so much easier now.

With love & gratitude, Julie

Always respect the other person. They are an individual just like you. They have life experience too. It may not be the same as yours but it’s very real for them. Respect means not thinking that you know best every time.

Listen! It’s often said that you have two ears and one mouth because listening is twice as important as talking. The best way to show someone that you value them is to listen. Practice hearing what the other person is saying, allow some silence in the conversation so you know they’ve finished speaking. That way you won’t cut them off or share your thoughts when they’ve got more to say. Try to let some conversations just be about the other person.

Don’t criticize. Your intentions may be good, you’re probably just trying to help them become a better person, or do a better job at something. Your comments or suggestions or actions can be perceived by the other person as criticism. It doesn’t matter if they do things their way, or in actual fact not how you want it to be done.

 Look in the mirror! If they’re pushing your buttons, take a look at yourself. Things only annoy you when you do something similar. It can be hard to admit this. If the relationship means a lot to you, it is really important that you are prepared to work on yourself in order to improve the relationship.

Pick your battles. Striking a balance between loosing yourself in the relationship and standing up for you takes practice. Don’t argue over petty things that won’t matter in a year’s time. It can help to excuse yourself, go for a walk or take some deep breaths to allow you the space to put things into perspective. Ask yourself if this happening with someone else would it matter as much?

With love and gratitude, Julie

There’s two types of people who don’t achieve their goals. Those who typically focus on having goals that are action based, something they have to do or achieve without any idea of how. This can be demotivating, and undermining as that …little voice in your head starts to question your ability to achieve your goal. And then there’s people who don’t set goals because they just don’t know how to or believe they can’t possibly achieve them.

It is important to set the right goals. Goals that you connect with, that are meaningful and make you feel better.

For the month of January, you can have 1/2hr goal setting session with me for just $60.

In these sessions you will:
*become clear about what is most important to you
*connect with your true hearts desires
*set realistic and inspiring goals for the year ahead

The goal setting sessions are available in person, over the phone or via Skype. They are the perfect way to start 2012 with a clear intention about what you want to achieve this year. To book a session, click here.

Here’s some tips to help you stay on track.

1.      Mix with like minded people

Like minded people energise you and lift you up. They understand where you’re coming from and you don’t need to explain yourself or justify your choices or actions. This brings more self acceptance and more enthusiasm to keep working on your stuff.

 2.      Read books, websites, blogs

Reading information about the stuff you are working on keeps you motivated and focus. What you already know will be reinforced and you will learn more. This leaves you feeling empowered and helps you to learn as you grow. Feeling more confident that you know what you are talking about makes it easier for you to share your knowledge with others.

 3.      Use affirmations

An affirmation is anything you say or think. People who aren’t used to working with affirmations don’t take a lot of notice of what they are saying or thinking. An affirmation is simply a conscious decision to change a thought or your words to something that sounds better and more importantly something that feels better. When you are working through your stuff you will notice what you are saying or thinking about the subject more and more. All you need to do is change the words to more positive words. Use words that describe how you want things to be or what you want to have. Always choose words that make you feel better.

 4.      Spend time with your feelings

Learn to be comfortable with how you feel. The more comfortable you are with your feelings the easier it is to work through your stuff. All feelings are normal, this includes the ‘good’ and ‘bad/negative’ feelings. People can avoid working through their stuff because of their feelings. The best way to feel is to sit quietly for a few moments, close your eyes, and just notice how you feel. Breathe in a relaxed way and just notice whatever feeling you notice. Allow yourself to connect with the feeling so that you can get a stronger sense of it. To start with do this for a minute every day for a week, then build up to 2 minutes. Each time allowing yourself to get a stronger sense of how you feel. You will be surprised and how good it feels.

 5.      Spend time outdoors

Being outdoors is revitalizing. Breathing in the fresh air, feeling the sun or wind or rain on your face, watching the leaves move or fall and listening to the sounds of nature brings you back into the moment, allowing your mind to switch off and relax. Even 10 seconds of switching off is good. Imagine clenching your fist really tightly and holding it for as long as you can. Notice the tension. It’s the same when your mind is busy. Allowing that down time for your mind is just as important as relaxing your muscles. There’s lots of things you can do outside – walk, exercise, sit with a coffee, read.

To download a pdf of these tips, please click the link – Top Tips for Staying on Track