What Did You Do With Jill?Jill Whalen's healthy lifestyle transformation                                               

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version and a related video.]

We spend so much of our present moment time trying to predict the future. And when we’re not doing that, we ruminate over the past. We beat ourselves up for putting ourselves in the situation we’re in, and do our best to figure out every possible solution and outcome.

Neither of which is helpful.

All the wishing in the world that we did things differently can’t change the current state of affairs. Learning from our mistakes is one thing, but placing blame on ourselves or others for how things turned out, is 100% useless. There’s no sense in looking back.

Inevitably, life throws curve balls at us.

What’s happening now, is just what’s happening now.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve seen a lot of articles and comments about personal transformation that focus on how much time and effort it takes. They promise that with the right tools, techniques and lots of perseverance, transformation can eventually be yours.

Maybe.

But I see it differently.

Transformation happens via insight–not hard work.

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It’s been nearly four years since I announced to the industry I loved for 17 years (Search Engine Optimization aka SEO), that I was moving on.

In my parting message, the piece that stands out to me now is this:

“SEO was never about the money for me. It was my passion and something that I absolutely had to do. And because of that, the money came. I believe the same thing can be true for anyone who finds their passion and uses it to help others.”

Which is exactly what I’ve been doing these past 4 years.

I’ve found a new passion and am using it to help others.

Here’s the coolest part… Read the rest of this entry »

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My husband and I have been playing tennis during the summer for the past few years. This year we started a bit late in the season. It was staying lighter later in the evenings, but neither of us had mentioned tennis. I thought it would be a good idea to play again, but also had many contradictory thoughts. My back hurt, it was too hot, tennis was too much work. Blah, blah, blah. So rather than bring it up, I waited to see if my husband would get around to suggesting it.

Meanwhile I was secretly hoping he’d forget!

Inevitably, the day came when he asked if I wanted to play the next day.  To which I simply replied, “Sure.”

Had my thoughts and feelings changed about it?

Nope. Had my backed stopped hurting? Nope.

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Have you ever had a sense of “The Flow” when playing a sport or pursuing a creative endeavor?

While flow (or being in “The Zone”) has always been a part of my work and my writing, I became acutely aware of it when I took up tennis a couple of years ago. At first I was pretty clunky. I had to deliberately think about everything I was doing in order to have any chance of hitting the ball. But after awhile and with enough practice, I was able to get the ball over the net with some proficiency.

However…

The more I thought about what I was trying to do, the worse I got.

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[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

How much of what you do is because you’ve seen others do it first?

I recently saw a Facebook post from someone running an online program wondering what she might use as a bonus incentive to register. My initial reaction (which I posted to her) was something like: “Why do you need a bonus incentive? Shouldn’t your program’s content itself be the incentive to sign up?” She replied that she did believe her content was valuable enough, but that everyone else always has bonuses so she felt she needed to as well.

I found her answer to be curious.

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As you may have guessed from the name of my blog (What Did You Do With Jill?) I have changed. A lot. At this point (over 3 years into my personal transformation) I barely remember the old me. Still, every now and then I will think or say something about myself that isn’t really true anymore. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Or do they? Read the rest of this entry »

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Why is it so hard for us to be our true authentic self?

My guess is fear.

It seems that our authenticity gets “beaten” out of us when we’re little. Between getting teased as kids for being our wacky selves and our parents berating us to “act like everyone else,” slowly but surely we start to create a public persona that’s considered socially acceptable. We believe if the rest of the world knew how crazy, weird, dumb, silly or whatever we are deep inside, that there’s no way in hell they could like us–let alone love us. Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

How’s life treating you these days?

Is it fun? Is it peaceful?

Or is it tedious and hard?

If you answered the latter, what’s making life such a struggle for you? Read the rest of this entry »

If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.

[Jill’s Note: I wrote a version of this post in a Facebook Group for budding coaches last summer and was reminded of it yesterday as I was listening to the classic Og Mandino’s “The World’s Greatest Salesman – Scroll #4.” Apparently my last blog post on approaching people with love instead of judgment reminded my sister of Scroll #2 in that book which is why I was listening to it in the first place. Great minds think alike as I could relate to much of what Mandino says as it relates to business. He’s a little more “Go get ’em tiger” than I ever was, but his overall message was very similar to how I ran my business for over 18 years. Mandino’s Scroll #4 starts out:

“I am nature’s greatest miracle. Since the beginning of time, never has there been another with my mind, my heart, my eyes, my hands, my hair, my mouth. None that came before, none that live today, and none that come tomorrow can walk and talk and move and think exactly like me.”

To me, this notion has always been the key to business success as you’ll see from my post below written long before I ever heard of Og Mandino! – Jill ] Read the rest of this entry »

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Have you looked at leaders in your space or community, and wondered how they got there?

There could be millions of different ways, but I am 100% certain that it wasn’t by being a follower.

It seems that in our world, there are followers and there are leaders. While there can be some cross-over, for the most part we are one or the other.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Read the rest of this entry »

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My motto lately is “Baby Steps.” Pretty sure it’s the key to everything!

Looking back at my life and accomplishments, it’s been a long series of baby steps. And it’s the same for you. How could it be any other way?

There is no other way to get from here to there. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week I had been listening to Michael Neill’s Effortless Success program (mostly because I love listening to Michael’s voice!) when I took a little kayak break in our local reservoir. As I was paddling about in the water, I realized how effortlessly I was able to get from point A to B. Now I’m not talking about physical effort. I certainly had to keep paddling in order to move forward, but it didn’t take any thinking. I simply looked where I wanted to go, paddled away and arrived. This was true whether I was heading for somewhere straight ahead or a more out of the way destination. My arms just knew the right amount of give and take that I would need to get there. Read the rest of this entry »

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When I was recently at the 3PGC Three Principles Conference, at one point I was chatting with a few new friends over a glass of wine. I happened to mention that I had lost 25 lbs. about a year ago and was asked how I did it. My response was “I just decided to.” I had intended to go into the logistics, i.e., counting calories, doing more exercise, etc., but the waitress had interrupted, and the conversation took a new turn. Later in the evening my friend told me that she loved my answer on how I lost weight.

That’s when I realized–all I really did was make a Decision. Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Plugged Into Intuition!

We’ve all had “gut feelings” about people or things at some point in our lives. I’m sure you can think of times where you had positive experiences when you listened to your gut, and negative ones when you didn’t.

How many times have you thought something like “I knew shouldn’t have had that extra cookie!” or “If only I had taken my umbrella like I had been thinking of doing!” or “There was just something that wasn’t quite right about him,” etc.?

Yet most days we go through life without paying much attention to that little voice inside us even though it’s always accessible. Read the rest of this entry »