Get What You Want

Reverse Engineer What You Want

Julie is an impressive human being. Her work has been featured in top-tier outlets like FORBES, Entrepreneur, Business Weekly, SUCCESS, and People Magazine. And, she was recently named one of the Top 100 leaders in Influencer Marketing by Influence. 

And, it doesn’t take long to see why she’s created so much success, but it’s actually the vulnerability and authenticity Julie shares in her book and in this episode that made me truly excited to share this conversation with you. 

Julie: By focusing on what it is that we don’t want, actually puts us on the path of discovery of what it is that we do want. Well, now that I know all the things that I don’t want with this, what are some of the things that I do want? And, it’s usually the opposite of those things. That’s going to unlock us to more of that clarity of what it is that we do want. 

Jackie: How do we tackle that crippling fear of actually saying it out loud, you know, for the world to hear? I think many of us do know what we want, but there’s something about saying it out loud. You know, I think there’s a fear there. Where do you think that comes from?

Julie: It’s not that we don’t know what we want, it’s just: that we’re afraid of saying what we want, declaring what we want, advocating for what we want; and then heaven forbid, it not happen. And then, that means something about us. ‘We’re a failure. We’re not enough. Who did we think we were to think that we could even make this possible?’ The Imposter Syndrome, all of the fears come in.

I was one of those people for a very, very long time, who not only didn’t think that I knew what I wanted, but when I got really honest with myself, it’s that I didn’t think that what I wanted was possible. These other people could get what they wanted. You know, because they had figured something out that I hadn’t, they knew the secret sauce. 

They knew the key to life. They had a better car, a better job, a better husband, a better partner, whatever it was that I would make up and tell myself. And so, it was always for me, and this is where it kind of allowed me to kind of stay in my victim state because the answer was always out there or for somebody else. And so, it wasn’t possible for me

Your Origin Story

In Julie’s book, she opens with a story about hiding $30,000 in credit card debt from her husband, actor, Johnathon Schaech, when he discovered her dirty little secret and confronted her.

Julie: This is a story that I had never shared publicly until the book came out. Another thing that I strongly believe in life is that every coach needs a coach, every therapist needs a therapist, every leader needs a leader, and every teacher needs a teacher. So, I had a writing coach through this process. I wanted to write it myself. I wanted to really give myself the courage and the vulnerability to do that, but I’d never written anything before. 

And so, I get on the phone with Mary, who is my amazing writing coach. And, I just said, “I need you to walk me through this. Like, what is too much, what is not enough?” And, she just said, “Well, just talk to me, you know, just tell me some stories. Tell me the stories that if you think someone knows you would want to go crawl in a hole and die; like the most shameful, dark, icky stories.” 

I said, “Well, you know, if I’m really being honest, it’s several years ago, you know?” And then, I told her this story about how I had, on paper; this great PR job and I had a husband and my son, and on the outside looking in, you would think it would be one of those picture-perfect stories. 

But on the inside, I was hiding this big secret; and I was hiding this debt, and I would go and I would shop and I would buy things. And then, I would justify buying things by saying, “Well, you know, It’s not like I’m going to Rodeo Drive and buying Ames bags. You know, I’m buying lip gloss and I’m buying a t-shirt from T.J.Maxx, and how bad could it really be? 

But over the years, it compounded into a heaping amount of debt. And, when my husband called and said, “When were you going to tell me about the credit card,” I had this guttural moment. Initially, I wanted to try to fix it because I’m a fixer. I wanted to avoid it because that was my, ‘Justify, Rationalize, Avoid’ addictive pattern. 

But most importantly, I knew that I had been, you know, ‘hand in the cookie jar’; I was caught and I had a choice at that moment: ‘do I want to keep doing what I’m doing and getting the same results, or do I want to have a “come to universe moment” and start to face some really hard truths about myself?’ 

And, the hard truth at that moment was, ‘why am I so afraid to be honest about money? Why am I so afraid to be honest about my relationship with money? Why am I so afraid to be honest about maybe not feeling worthy of money? Why am I so afraid to be honest with the fact that I can make a lot of money, but I spend it faster than I can make it because I don’t feel worthy of having it in the first place?’ 

If you’ve listened to The Grown-Ass Woman’s Guide before, you know I’m no stranger to money conversations. In fact, keep your eyes open for an upcoming episode on that. But money mindset and our attitudes around finances, cannot be underestimated. And, most of those attitudes are formed in childhood, in our origin story. 

Julie: When it came to money, I have this origin story of a scarcity mindset around money. I grew up in a very small town, blue-collar working family. My dad literally wore a blue-collar to work every day. And, there was just this mindset of, as long as we have enough money to pay the bills, and I really hope that we have enough money this week to pay the bills, then everything’s okay. And so, there was never enough money to go around. Therefore, conversations about savings weren’t happening. There was no money to save or 401(k) or forecasting or wealth advice; like wealth, ‘what’s wealth? That’s for those people. You know, those people get to do that. I don’t get to do that, I’m not worthy of doing that. I’m not good enough to do that. I wasn’t born into that. Therefore, it’s not possible for me.’ 

And so, that very childish, scarcity mindset started to come into my adult life because I had never faced that. The other thing to kind of compound that when it came to money is that I was raised with this mindset that is very common in a small town in Tennessee. A very Southern culture mindset, where ‘there’s going to be some man in your life that’s going to come in and he’s going to handle all of that. So, you don’t have to worry about that. And, not only do you not have to worry about that, but we don’t want you to worry about that because you’re a woman which, kind of, automatically makes you a financial toddler.  So, you’re not going to know how to count. You’re not going to know how to use a calculator. You’re not going to know how to balance a checkbook. You know, a man has to come in to do those things.’ 

So, I was always waiting for this Fairy Dadmother, you know, Fairy Godfather, I should say, to fall down from the sky to kind of handle all of this for me. And, I would see the patterns in my first marriage, even though I was very young, there were these patterns. I even remember my husband, at the time, being like, ‘we need to talk about finances,’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t need to talk about that. That’s your job. Like, why is it my responsibility to have to budget? I don’t understand math. I’m not good with numbers. You’re the engineer. You need to figure that out.’ And, I would just kind of pass it off. 

But what I didn’t realize at the time, is that it was compounding this core belief system that I had around money and around my own ability to have freedom and have abundance and to really see money as this tool that I could use to not only hopefully pay the bills this week, but to actually get what I wanted in life. 

The reason why I wanted to share that story so much is that I know that there are probably a lot of women out there that didn’t hide $30,000 of credit card debt from their husbands, but maybe they do other things. Maybe they’re like my mom, who, when she runs into the house with shopping bags, immediately runs to her closet to hide the shopping bags, because she doesn’t want to have to talk about how she went shopping that day. 

Jackie: Totally. And, let me tell you this; when I bought my first house in Burbanks, California in 1999, I would go out and buy things for the house or some clothes for me. Single, I’m a single woman in my own house that I purchased, and I would leave my bags in the car until it was dark so my neighbors would not see that I went shopping and think things of me. 

That’s how jacked up my money mindset was. So, when I was reading this, I was like, ‘Oh, you are so not alone.’ Let me ask you this though. Was there a part of you that wanted him to find out because it was like, how long could you keep this going? I mean, maybe in your subconscious?

Julie: No, I was so delusional, Jackie. I kind of had like a gambler’s mindset, which is an addictive mindset, that I had told myself things like, ‘I’m just going to book a PR gig and I’m going to pay it off before he finds out, or he’s going to land some new job, and somehow, I’m going to take the money from the job that he landed without him knowing it and pay it off and he’ll never find out or I’m going to win the lottery.’ 

For me, it was more important for me to feel this accomplishment or this pride and being like, I got myself in this, ‘I’m going to get myself out of it and I’m going to be able to get myself out of it, to where he doesn’t even need to know about it.’ 

Then it was like, I need help. I didn’t even see it as a cry for help at that moment. And so, I couldn’t even think about, oh, I kind of wish that he finds out. Now, I will say it was a relief once he found out, because I’m like, ‘okay, now this is out in the open.’ But when I was really in it the addict mindset is one of such delusion and such unusual and bizarre behavior that when you’re in that addict mindset, you can talk yourself in and out of something that makes so much sense to you, even though it could be farther from the reality of the situation. So, that’s really in the moment of where I was. I was in a massive state of delusion.

Jackie: Yeah. You know, I don’t think we talk about this. So, you know, you’re married to a Hollywood actor. You’re working in publicity. When you do make money, when you are bringing in clients or when he’s getting gigs or whatever’s going on, it’s a sizeable amount of money. 

So, I think sometimes we can, sort of, poo-poo the idea that somebody might actually be struggling because on the outside, you’re successful, you’ve got everything. You’re not living in your car. It doesn’t look like a struggle in what we have determined as a society what a struggle looks like.

Julie: That’s what I would always say to myself too. I’m like, ‘I don’t need help. I’m not in a ditch with a needle in my arm. You know, I’m not rock-bottom. Like, I’m not on drugs. I’m not on, you know, drinking all day.’ And again, that’s the justification and the rationalization of the behavior. And I would, I would say those things. 

And, I think also, what you touch on too, is this idea of, I never knew what ‘enough’ was because I never had ‘enough’ growing up. So, there was no magical number that I could have ever come up with that would’ve been enough. So, my husband could have made 50 million a year. And like, would that have been enough? I don’t know. So, it wasn’t about his money or his success, or how much he had made throughout his career. 

I remember one time, one of my really good friends, Liz Rider said to me, “Julie, what is enough for you? A million, 3 million, 5 million, 10 million? Like, what is enough?” And, I just remember looking at her being dumbfounded because I had never asked myself that question, ‘when is enough, enough?’ 

I think that when you’re trying to fill up the void of enoughness, you know, until you’re really hit by those harsh realities, it’s like you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall or you’re, kind of, just, the cliff just keeps getting higher and higher as you keep going up it. Because there was never that magical moment where I’d be like, ‘okay, I’ve made all the money and I feel great. And, now I can just sit back.’ 

Jackie: In the book, you mentioned origin story. When you’re thinking about what you want, some people might be like, ‘well, why do I even have to go back? I don’t want to look back. I don’t want to think about my childhood. I don’t want to relive any of that.’ But according to you, it’s extremely important to go back and to think about where you came from before you can even think about where you’re going. 

Julie: Yeah. You know, I’m a firm believer in not dwelling on where we’ve come from, but being really clear on what got me to this place? Like, what were the thoughts? What were the beliefs? What were the ideas? What were the frameworks that got me to this place that I don’t want to be at? 

I really need to understand myself fully and wholeheartedly to be able to be the first to admit these are my strengths and these are not my strengths. And so, how do I really use both to make sure that I’m showing up as the absolute best version of myself? My origin story is one of, you know, we talked about the money piece, so a big heap of scarcity, lots of people-pleasing, the need for validation. When I was growing up, I had this desperate need for people to like me. And so, I would wear all these different kinds of masks or kind of be whatever people needed me to be so they would like me. 

I would automatically like people back just because they liked me without even checking in with me, on if I actually wanted to be around this person. So, because of that, I would tend to hang out with the wild crowd, the crowd that did all the drinking and drugs and the partying. And, I also liked that, that was thrilling to me. 

It was never the addictive patterns that I was attracted to, but it was the people who loved that kind of walking on the wild side that I loved because I thought that I could fix them or I thought that I could change them or I thought that I could be the hero in their story. The payoff to that was that I felt validated, I felt important, I felt loved, I felt seen. 

And so, that is where kind of that self-righteousness comes in. And so, if you don’t get really clear on your origin story and what are these things that really makeup how you now see the world, because the results that we see today, just come from our beliefs, which are just the stories that we tell ourselves over and over again, which then dictate our thoughts, which then dictate our feelings, which then dictate our actions or reactions or responses in the world, which then dictate the results that we’re seeing today. 

So, what I’ve come to find is that getting clear on where I’ve come from, by really understanding what my origin story is, allows me to keep the focus on myself. And, by keeping the focus on myself, I’m able to get really clear on, where I end and other people begin, codependency? And you know, how can I start to take stock and actually change the things in my life that aren’t serving me, that I don’t want in my life anymore? 

It also allows you to really see, what are the payoffs in thinking those limiting ways, that the victimhood mindset of, ‘nothing ever works for me, people don’t ever look out for me, people don’t support me, it’s never enough, I’m never enough, I’m not good with money.’ It’s like all of these little things that we can just say to ourselves constantly throughout the day, come from this deeper belief system that we have and are ultimately dictating all the results that we’re getting. 

The 3 Keys

Julie’s three keys to freedom are simple to understand, but powerful when actually implemented; Awareness, Acceptance, and Action. Here she breaks down the keys and how we can implement them to get what we want

Julie: We can’t control everything that happens in our lives, but we can control a lot more than what I think we give ourselves the credit and really the need for because it can begin an end of me. And so, and that’s where, you know, my three keys to freedom come in, which are; Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.

When I decided to get the help that I needed, and for me that looked like; getting into therapy groups, reading a lot of books, started going to a lot of Personal Development conferences; got into a 12-step program called Al-Anon, which was really helpful for me because I grew up in an alcoholic home. 

And, that really started to unlock for me a lot of; this is why I think the way that I do, and this is why I act and react in the way that I do. The three A’s is what I call them in the book, I didn’t invent them. They’re very well-known in therapy circles, and recovery groups.

So, the first step is really, Awareness, and I think that’s the first step to any kind of recovery process. It is simply the identification that some problem or dysfunction exists in your life that needs to change; simply what it is. Acceptance is typically that very uncomfortable place where we have to come to grips with the idea that the problem is not all of me, but it is a part of me. And, it does not define me, but it is merely one piece to the puzzle in my life that no longer fits, and it needs to be removed. And, I will say, out of the three A’s, and I’ll get to ‘Action’ in just a moment, but Awareness, Acceptance, and Action, the biggest “A” that people typically want to avoid or bypass is the Acceptance piece.

Jackie: It’s painful.

Julie: Yes. We’re cool with being ‘Aware’. We’re cool with taking ‘Action’, but to have to ‘Accept’ our part to play and the things that aren’t happening in our lives that we don’t like, accepting our part to play and the things that we love to blame other people, places and things for, it’s a big one. 

Jackie: Especially when it comes to our origin story, right? It’s super comfortable to go back and recognize the origin story, and then blame all those people for everything that’s happening today.

Julie: Exactly. And, you know, there had to become a time where Julie’s origin story became Julie’s story.  And, I couldn’t even blame it on the origin anymore because I’m a grown-ass woman. 

Julie: So, it’s not my ‘daddy issues’ or my ‘mommy issues’ or my ‘origin issues’. They’re my issues. So, it’s really about wanting to Accept, ‘I’m aware that this is what it is. I’m accepting that it is what it is as it is, and nothing more or less, even if I would want it to be something different. I’m also accepting my part to play, even if it’s 1% my part to play in this, even if it’s just my reaction or response to it.’ 

And then, we can go into Action, which is just the plan that we can put together to start to restore the things that have maybe been lost or forgotten within that dysfunction. So, that’s where we can start to restore our self-esteem, our hope, our serenity, our balance, our confidence, and our clarity in how we see the world. And, that’s why Action is so important. 

Jackie: And, I think there are a lot of people out there who are taking action, taking action, and they haven’t stopped to do the first two. 

Julie: Right. 

Path to Sobriety

Another habit some of us grown-ass women keep behind closed doors is our drinking. Julie posted an episode of The Influencer Podcast earlier this year, where she discussed her decision to stop drinking. Things in her life began to shift almost immediately. 

Julie: I first want to say that the amount of drinking that someone can drink, and is that amount too much or too little, is a very relative question for people? Because of where I came from and my origin story. I grew up in a home that had a dad that drank and has drunk every single day of his life. I’ve never known my father to not have a beer in his hand and to not be consistently drinking. And, for a very long time, I would say to myself, ‘well, you know, that he’s just having a 12 pack of beer. Like, he’s not in a ditch in the corner.’ 

You know, those justifications and rationalizations; I still have to be very aware and mindful of my defensiveness toward people who drink, because I love to put them in this bubble; and they’re fine and they’re safe and you got to leave them alone, and it’s just due to my relationship with the effects of alcoholism.

So, with all of that said, for me, I have never been someone who would drink a 12-pack of beer every day. I would never be someone who would drink a bottle of wine every day, but I am a social drinker. You know, I will want to go out and have a margarita; or maybe after a long day of work, I would crack open a bottle of wine and have a drink. I have a husband who became sober in 2015. 

And so, we used to drink more together, but then when he chose to live a life of sobriety that was best for him, it did kind of make it a little bit easier for me. And, I was never one that even in college and kind of growing up, I never had a lot of alcohol in my home. I would never be one that would make– You know, I would have wine, but not the cocktails. 

However, as I would get busier, I noticed for myself about the end of last year, that I was just kind of cracking the wine bottle open a little bit more. And, at the end of every day, I was a new mom. Again, things tend to happen when you are new moms. The first time I was a new mom, I spent $30,000 and hid from my husband. The second time I was a new mom, I was drinking, for me, what was a lot of wine. 

I have some friends that it’s very normal for them to make cocktails at home. And, they would not consider themselves to have a problem with drinking or consider alcoholism being an issue at all. So, that’s why it’s very, very relative. And, I also have a very skewed idea as to what may be too much drinking is because I was just around it so much as a child.

Jackie: And, and would you agree, sometimes it’s not what you’re doing, but it’s why you’re doing it. 

Julie: Yes. Why? And then, I would catch myself being like, ‘oh God, what time is it? Like, I just cannot wait to have a freaking glass of wine.’ I would start saying these things to myself, which just wasn’t, again, the norm for me. It was that Why piece, as after, you know, weeks turned into months and I started noticing that pretty much every day throughout the week, I was opening a bottle of wine and at least having one glass if not two. 

And, for someone who doesn’t normally do that, if you go from having maybe five glasses of wine a month to 60 a month, that’s a big jump. You know, I started to gain weight. My face started to break out. I couldn’t sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I was just foggy. I just did not feel good. And, I kept being like, ‘well, maybe it’s the hormones because I’m not adjusted from the baby yet, or maybe it’s this, or maybe it’s that.’ 

Mind you, my daughter was a year old at this point. So, it wasn’t that she was a newborn like she was sleeping through the night. And so, I went through the holidays and I just said, you know, I’m going to do a dry January.  And, I know that it’s coming from this place of just, I’m exhausted. I’m trying to fill the void. I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I’m a new mom. Sometimes I don’t want to deal with the realities of being a new mom. And so, I’m going to the bottle. 

So, I did the whole month of January without having a drink. I started drinking a lot of tea. I started drinking more water. And, just in that month, the only habit that I changed was that I would make sure to have a water bottle at my desk at all times. Whenever I wanted to sip something, I would make just herbal tea. And, in a matter of 30 days, my skin had cleared up. I lost seven pounds without trying, which like Hallelujah to that, just the feeling of feeling better. I was sleeping better than I had in almost a year. The first week or so was hard, but once I got into the flow of not drinking as much anymore, I really didn’t crave it as much. It allowed this reframe for me. 

And so, even now, since the beginning of the year, I would ask myself, why do I want to have a drink right now, to celebrate something, because I like the taste of it? What is the reason for wanting to have a drink right now? And, since January, it’s been very rare; you know, I’m not really drinking at home unless we’re celebrating something. It’s usually at a birthday or at a restaurant. 

But now, also remembering to go easy on myself, if I do want to have a drink, that’s safe and healthy for me. And, if it’s not disruptive to my own health or self-esteem, or the health of other people around me, then allowing myself to do that with joy and in celebration, and not this guilt or it being something else that it’s not. 

Imagine the woman you want to be

There’s a quote in Julie’s book, “Imagine the woman you want to be, think of what her daily life looks like. Notice what her habits, behavior, and routines would be. Write them down. Next, start showing up to those habits and routines, and start building them step by step, one day at a time. You don’t wave a magic wand and become her, you don’t wait for some person, place, or thing to give her to you; you build her. So, start building.

Julie: This goes back to the drinking conversation that we just had. I had to ask myself, ‘well, who is the woman that wakes up and feels refreshed every day? Is she drinking two bottles a week? Probably not. Let me get curious about this. Well, what about the woman that feels excited to go outside and go for a walk? You know, is she drinking three glasses a night? Probably not.’ 

Because I know when I drink three glasses a night, the last thing I want to do is go for a walk. Or I know when I’ve had three bottles of wine a week, the last thing that I want to do is get up bright and early because I’m tired as I drank last night. And so, I had to get really mindful of the idea that we don’t get what we want by waiting for our externals to change or by waiting to have what it is that we think we need to have. 

We start getting what we want by becoming the person that we need to be today that gets what we want to have tomorrow. You know, ‘how do they think, who do they surround themselves with? What are their habits? What are their daily rituals?’ Another thing that I started doing at the beginning of this year was meditating. Yes, I have missed days, but I will really try to be intentional about sitting. I will listen to binaural beats, even if it’s just 10 to 20 minutes a day to just give myself that space. I may be thinking about everything under the sun the entire time that I meditate, which is the antithesis of meditating. But at least, I’m on the mat. And, I’m giving myself that time because what I have asked myself is, the woman that I want to become, does she have a practice like that in place in her life? Yes, she absolutely does. Does she see that as self-care? Yes, she does. Does she take the time to do that for herself so she can show up for the world around her? Yes, she does. And so, I didn’t wait for this magical day to happen to start meditating. I just started meditating, and I don’t get it right. I don’t get it perfect every day, but it’s that action of doing it and being in that, in the receiving mode of that, that you start to become who you want to be.

Jackie: Absolutely. And, you can apply that to your health. Does the woman who is running that 5K or that triathlon or whatever it is that you want to do, is she scrolling Facebook while drinking coffee for the first hour of her day? My bet is, she’s not. I think that is such a powerful thing. So, if you are looking to build a business, if you’re looking to change careers, if you’re looking to do something in your life, are you showing up as that woman? 

Julie: It’s not about faking it until you make it. It’s about acting ‘as if’; I’m going to act as if I already am making a million dollars. ‘So, what time do I get up? What’s the first thing that I do when I get up? How am I spending my day? When does my day end? What is essential during my day? Am I checking out, and then spending time with my family? Who am I having meetings with? Who am I surrounding myself with? What kind of content am I consuming? What kind of content am I creating?’ 

And, even if you don’t know the answers, make it up. You know, it’s like, really at the end of the day, I don’t know if the person that is running the 5K is scrolling on Instagram or not. But the version that I would want to be, if I’m running the 5K, I’m not scrolling on Instagram every day. 

It’s not about copying someone else, and what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. It’s copying the way that they think, and really getting into their mindset of how they’re approaching life and business and communication and whatever it is, with confidence and clarity.

your happiness has nothing to do with me

You’ve done all this work to improve your mindset, to get into this space, to become uber-successful. Does Julie ever find herself slipping back and how does she get out of it?

Julie: It depends. I mean, sometimes if I’m riding one of the, ‘oh, poor me,’ waves, like I could be on there for a hot minute, for me, I think reaching out to a support system helps. Being able to reach out to women that can call you in very quickly, but also very lovingly, helps. To me, those are just mirrors. So, a good mirror helps; who can kind of reflect this back to me right now? 

There’s something that I talk about in the book, why am I talking right now? Like, why do I want to show up and say something right now? Is it to be validated? Is it to try to get something that I want? Is it to feel seen? Is it to feed some kind of void, or is it actually coming from this really impactful and uplifting and positive place? 

And so, really getting clear on ‘why do I want to show up and say something? Why do I want to respond to something right now? Why do I want to read this right now? Is it going to make me feel like crap about myself, or is it actually going to make me feel good about myself? Why am I seeking out whatever it may be?’ 

Another thing that helps me and I mention it in the book, the acronym is Q-TIP; and it stands for Quit Taking It Personally. 99.9% of the things that other people may do or say have nothing to do with us, and everything to do with them. And, it’s all just a reflection of their own experience. 

And so, not taking it so personally really helps. And then, another big thing that I’ve had to learn is that I don’t assume responsibility for other people’s success or happiness anymore. And, that was a huge recovery for me, especially as a coach. I used to love to assume that because it would make me feel like I was a better coach if somebody was more successful or happier, but that has nothing to do with me. I just really express my own success and happiness in a way that if you turn into it and you can be really in the vibration of that, then you can start to experience not only the benefit of seeing someone else do that but the benefit of your own success and happiness. 

I’ve learned that for me, at least, when I became so dependent on what others were doing and how others were feeling, and most of all, how others were thinking and feeling about me, it put me in a very powerless and hopeless position because then I was dependent upon what somebody else was doing with their focus, over which I have no control over, to begin with.

Jackie: Yeah. It’s such a good point because somebody could slap down $20,000 to work with you and not show up for themselves. Even if they’re physically showing up, not really doing the work, that’s not on you.

Julie: Right. And then, they could go off and be like, ‘well, it was her.’ ‘She’s terrible. Don’t work with her da, da, da, da.’ And you know, I think that there’s always a balance between; you always want to make sure that you’re in alignment with the coach or the container or the book you’re reading, like whatever it is. You are responsible for making sure that you are in alignment with what it is that you’re signing up for, no matter if it’s $10 or $10,000. 

But you, and only you, are ultimately responsible for your success and for the entire experience that you are having. And so, the reason why I believe that is because I can’t give my energy or my brain to someone else, I can only demonstrate my alignment to that person. 

And, if we’re in alignment, then they’re going to be able to energetically meet me there and we’re going to have this really beautiful experience. If they’re not in alignment, then they’re not going to be able to meet me there, and then we’re going to have a misalignment. And so, I have just learned, that you have to give people the dignity of having their own experience, even if it’s a misaligned one. Because if I just try to jump in to save or assume responsibility for it, then they’re never going to learn whatever it is that they need to learn from that experience. 

And, it’s never about the money. I mean, I’ve had people that have paid $30,000 and never showed up. And, I’ve had people that have paid $300 and never showed up. It truly is about the alignment. And, the other question I would love to pose for those listening is that when I say things like, ‘as a coach, it’s not my responsibility for your success or happiness,’ if that rubs someone the wrong way, being like, ‘well, you’re my coach, I’ve paid you. Of course, you have to have some responsibility in this.’ 

I love to ask people, ‘well, what about your origin story tells you that? What about the things that you were told to believe, or the things that were said to you growing up that makes you think that other people are responsible for your success and happiness?’ Because that’s your part to play in it just like, it’s my part to play in it. And, that’s just another great example of why the origin story is so important in all the steps that we take in our life with our success, our freedom, and whatever it is that we want.

Some final words from our guest…

Julie’s book and all of the links to her podcast programs and more can be found below. But before we go, Julie’s got one final gem for you to take with you. 

Julie: There’s a quote in the book that’s my favorite. And, I say, “You can’t hide yourself and expect to be seen.”

Jackie: Yes. And, there are so many women out there being seen for someone they’re not. 

Julie: Yes, or just hiding. And, that’s where expectations get crazy if you think that the responsibility of your life and your success and your happiness is not yours and yours alone. And, I’m not saying that there aren’t issues out there, systemic issues, racial issues, patriarchal issues. But you have to focus on, ‘these are the things that I can’t change, and these are the things that I can.’ So, in the box of the things that you can change, if you are not taking 110% responsibility for that, then you are essentially hiding yourself and expecting to be seen. 

If you say that you want X, Y, and Z, but you’re sitting in the corner, not making any changes, not making any movements, not taking any action because you’re so afraid of making a mistake, then you’re hiding yourself and expecting to be seen. 

If you keep trying to throw money at the problem and then getting mad at every person, place, and thing for not changing your life for yourself, you’re hiding yourself and you’re expecting to be seen. So, that would be my biggest takeaway for any woman listening is that, ‘you can’t hide yourself and have this expectation of being seen and getting what you want in your life.’ 

As always, it’s my goal to reach millions of women and help them get the support and resources they need to live their most badass grown-ass lives. If you can help me do that by sharing the podcast, YouTube channel, or blog with a friend.

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Until next time, remember you are a grown-ass woman, act accordingly.