Julie Murphy, is a Chicago-based CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, and founder and CEO of JMC Wealth Management, Inc. Julie received her BS in Finance from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and her MBA from The University of Notre Dame. A 24-year veteran of the financial services industry, Julie and her team have successfully...
As much as money affords opportunity, I believe that you can turn the money you have right now and get started creating your own opportunity. Dreaming and pursuing those dreams shouldn’t be reserved just for the wealthy. You’re not rich? That’s okay. I wasn’t either when I decided to open my own financial business. You just need to be practical and smart with where you invest your time and how you save, spend and invest your money.
Find the root of your dream
I watch as we chip away at what our soul is screaming for us to do and we still choose to do other things despite being called to another path. We get trapped by the rat race of our lives which results in stuffing down our emotions. Those stuffed down emotions either work themselves out by feeling the feelings or we act them out through our health or our wealth. We start being put on medications from our doctors, and we grieve what we know our financial lives could have been if you had made different choices.
I’m overcome with joy when I see someone else experience these abundant moments and share them with the world, thereby planting more seeds of empowering shift.
I was inspired when I read this post by Jenn Dieas, Founder and President of “Glowout – A Golden Girl Salon”. She truly manifests the power of this message.
You may have your fearful moment, lament about your struggle. But once you focus back on your strength and let the world know you’re ready to embrace it, things change.
See how Jenn pulled herself from fear to power, and the financial win she experienced from creating that shift for herself. Read on, and unleash your inner Glow Getter!
I personally know how frustrating it is to feel as though you’ve fully worked through something, processed a trigger, and handled your emotions… only for you to get triggered again later. This is something I’ve been dealing with a lot this last year and talking with many people about. Why is it that we do all this work, only to be surprised by a triggering event later on?
It’s so frustrating when this happens, especially if you’re anything like me and you want to think through things and not feel through them. Sometimes it’s not natural to feel, so when you’ve put in all this emotional work, it can be pretty discouraging to realize there’s more work to be done.
But why is there more work necessary? How do we get that work done? Why do triggers keep happening? Don’t throw in the towel. We’re going to dig into this aspect of handling emotional triggers right now.
I’m the money chick, which leads a lot of people to ask, “Julie… why do you talk about so many of these others topics? Relationships? Work life? Health?”
The answer is actually very simple: success in all these areas has to do with how we are authentically showing up in the world, and money is actually the result of you aligning with your heart and your soul—aligning in your relationship, your work, your health, and so much more. Without alignment in all these areas, money doesn’t follow, and if it does follow, it may not stick and stay either.
So today we’re going to focus a bit on relationships because if you are not happy in your relationships, then going to affect many aspects of your life in a negative way.
Taking Responsibility
Many people get mad at me for saying this, but here’s the hard truth: you created exactly the life you have and you made choices to get to the place you’re in right now. I get that life happens and some things are out of your control, but you being in the relationship you’re in (or not in) is you’re choosing.
Something happened recently that I find super hilarious, while also incredibly encouraging and hopeful. The other day, I was running around doing my crazy morning errands. The kids wanted sushi in their lunches so I ended up going to WholeFoods to grab some for them. We ended up getting Dunkin Donuts too, which I know sounds obnoxious together, but it made my kids giggle!
And that reminded me of something: by making other people happy, causing them to giggle, and helping them do things they thoroughly enjoy, it makes me happy. Through this pattern, I can create a wave of happiness.
I’ve just realized something: this past week or so has been FULL of examples in my life showing me how important it is to be in a place of acceptance when it comes to things you cannot control.
If you haven’t noticed, we suffer when we don’t actually accept the things arising in our lives. When we’re fighting against things outside our own control, we end up triggered and often miserable, unable to achieve the financial abundance or deep personal fulfillment we do desire.
This has been made so clear to me this past week that I want to share a bit more of what I mean…
Why Suffering Cycles Happen
I don’t care what topic we’re talking about: acceptance is an essential step to getting yourself out of suffering cycles and on your way to achieving the financial abundance and deep personal fulfillment of your dreams.
Let’s be honest: the season we’re living through right now in this pandemic is scary and stressful for all of us. The more I keep watching, the more I keep seeing so many of us hitting places where we’re experiencing strong, sometimes confusing emotions—about our money, our jobs, or our lives in general.
Everything is a bit up in the air still, leading us to face a lot of stress and fear. Believe it or not, that’s why I think it’s so important to keep talking about building our wealth from the inside out, and not the outside in, so we can insulate ourselves against the chaos of what happens in the world and leave our fear and stress far behind us.
This is what I mean…
How to Build Your Life From the Inside Out
As many of you know, my passion is to bring all tools and resources you need to help you awaken your wealth. I’ve put together a toolbox, I go live regularly on my Facebook, and I’m continually referring to other experts and resources for you to truly awaken every aspect of your wealth. Because real wealth is about more than just money.
It’s so important to understand that money can only be the result of everything else happening in your life. Right now, many of us are going through a season of overwhelm, which is why I think it’s hugely important to share that my dear friend, Christine Arylo, has just come out with her new book: Overwhelmed & Over It.
So get ready to get over your overwhelm because it’s time for us to finally start living from our heart’s space.
We all need a paycheck to provide for ourselves and our families, but who says that paycheck can’t come from something you’re passionate about and love doing? Take your passion and make it happen. Why? Because that’s what brings you money! I cannot tell you how many times I’ve witnessed this: real people chasing real dreams and finding real wealth. It’s not only possible, it’s really doable!
You don’t need to stay stuck in a career you don’t love to make money. In fact, staying in a place you feel unfulfilled is limiting you from reaching your full potential.
There are some hugely negative connotations in our culture today about constantly having new ideas and dreaming about your future. We’re pressed towards having a steady, life-long career regardless of how it makes us feel, making a lot of money, and that’s our culture’s definition of success… So why do I talk so much about what it means and how it feels to be a dreamer?
Because here’s the truth about dreaming: no dream is idle. As a dreamer, you are one of the lucky ones. You have the energy, openness, and creativity to allow dreams to manifest within you and become your new reality.
Dreaming and pursuing your dreams shouldn’t be reserved for the wealthy. There’s no denying that money affords opportunity, but I believe you can turn the money you have right now into a sustainable support for your dream. You’re not rich? Not a problem. I wasn’t either when I started my financial business. All you need is to find the root of your dream, be practical about where you invest your time and how you save, spend, and invest your money.
Tell me if you can relate… Are you feeling stuck in a job that isn’t satisfying, perhaps one that’s not taking you anywhere you truly want to go? Maybe you don’t know what to do about it or how to change? Do you find yourself hating your work and feeling stuck there?
I encounter this a lot in my own work, and believe it or not, it’s not only people who are financially strapped with stories similar to these. No matter the amount of money in a 401k and other savings, any one of us can look up one day to find ourselves decades-deep in a less-than-desirable job situation without a clue for how to escape.
The job landscape is transforming before our eyes, forcing a lot of people to take jobs they don’t love simply to get by financially. Others of us are staying in jobs we don’t like to maintain a lifestyle we were once convinced we wanted, but now all this “just getting by” is making us feel like another drone in the system.
So many of us are afraid that it’s too late to start after our dreams or too late to leap towards the life we want, that we end up stuck in place. I get this or similar questions a lot: “Julie, I have a lot of dreams. Is it crazy to make the leap later in life? I’m feeling frozen…”
I think it’s never too late, and let me tell you why.
Take Advantage of Your Time
Once, I had a 72-year-old client go back to law school because he regretted not having done it in his youth. For years before that, however, we would talk about it. I would ask him, “You know, what are you going to do with all this money? Get busy living or get busy dying,” but for years, he put it off.
He kept coming in for his appointment and I’d ask him if he took the LSAT yet, or if he’d gotten into law school yet, or if he’d started taking classes yet. Not attending law school was one of his biggest regrets, but for a long time, he felt like it was too late to change anything about it.
Honestly, it all boils down to self love. You have to see your worth, and then you have to start dreaming where you can.
Focus on the Beginning
I know for a fact that we as humans do not have to call in a crisis to actually create our shift and manifest our dreams. We just have to start, even if it means starting small. Maybe the dreams are teeny tiny at first, usually because that’s all we can do at the moment, but once you really start manifesting your dreams, you start to open things up and those dreams only get bigger and bigger.
Times of change and craziness really bring a lot of clarity sometimes, and one of the things I wanted to share with you guys that I’m becoming super, super clear on, especially with everything that’s going on, is this: unless we deliberately make a change, we are going to start repeating all of our old patterns, or at least try to repeat a lot of the patterns from before COVID, even if that means repeating the worst of our suffering cycles.
Here’s what I mean…
The Effects of Repeating Patterns
The other day, I went out to a restaurant to eat with my kids. It’s been a long time of social distancing and we wanted to enjoy some time out for a bit. However, as I was eating at the restaurant, I noticed something as I was eating food I hadn’t been eating for the last few months. I kept having to blow my nose because there was something in the food that I have a sensitivity to. I’d been far more careful and was choosing better foods before, but as life started going back to “normal,” I made some exceptions for myself. And it didn’t feel good.
There’s so much going on around us these days. Does it feel like we’re almost in this surreal experience? An out-of-body experience? I can only imagine what it’s like for those who are feeling all of this anger and sadness about what’s going on. As with most of us, it’s been a challenge for me to know the best way to navigate this time but there’s something I’m super clear on…
Anger Comes from Sadness
I learned from one of my teachers that anger is a deeper version of sadness, and that rage is a deeper version of anger… which is also sadness. I experienced a lot of anger and even rage as I was going through the last parts of my marriage, which actually seems really small compared to what's going on today, but I think it can help us understand a little.
I really learned that this anger and rage I was feeling was telling me something. It was revealing how sad I was. So if you’re feeling a deep sadness or you’re in a place of rage and anger and you’re super triggered… ask yourself, “Why am I sad?” Don’t simply live with anger and rage. Question yourself, “Why am I sad?”
There’s so much going on right now, right? So many of us are in a confusing state of having no idea whatsoever what to do next. We’ve got a lot of layering going on now, right? We have a huge pandemic, financial crisis, rioting, and protesting, and I honestly don’t think this is going to be the end of it, ladies and gentlemen.
But something I’m super, super clear on is this: it’s really, truly okay to be in a space of “I don’t know what to do next.” Here’s what I mean by that...
The Magic Phase of “I Don’t Know”
Believe it or not, there is magic in that “I don’t know” phase. It’s really okay to be in the step of not knowing because it allows you to decide what to do next. You just have to know how to move forward in the right way.
What I’d encourage you all to do when you find yourself in a state of not knowing is to ask yourself a simple question: “What is the next right step?” Don’t worry about the far-away future or finding the perfect solution to every problem. Just ask yourself, “Show me the next right step.”
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