Julie Reisler is the founder and CEO of Empowered Living, an organization that focuses on life design and personal development.
She’s also the author of “Get a PhD in You Companion Journal: Writing to Unlock Your You-est You” and has spoken for Tedx on multiple occasions.
With a master’s degree in health and wellness coaching, she’s labeled herself a Life Designer, a term she’s created and trademarked.
Sitting down with Growth U’s Tonia Revere, Julie discusses her path to becoming a life coach and her unique approach to taking control of your own life.
After getting her degree in coaching, Julie didn’t know quite what she wanted to do with her degree. When she got a life coach for her own life, however, she suddenly felt a calling for that career path. Nonetheless, she felt like being a life coach didn’t encompass everything she wanted to do. Eventually, she came up with Life Designer.
She liked this term because it had a wide umbrella of meanings. Despite being hesitant at first, because she’d never done anything like it, she decided to trademark the phrase. She got lucky by running into an old friend from college, who was a trademark specialist. He liked her idea and helped her bring it to fruition.
Despite living in a nice home with caring parents, Julie still struggled with internal self-doubt. Not only was she taller and bigger than the others, but the insecurities thereof caused her to turn to food as emotional support. She specifically recalls an instance where she ate through a large portion of a six-pound bag of M&Ms in her office, which caused her to get sick and miss several days of work.
This was a wake-up call for Julie. She got in touch with a support group, which was the first step in her journey to understanding and bettering herself. She discovered that she didn’t feel worthy and had no compassion for herself. Eventually, she realized that she did have worth, just like in a forest, every tree stands tall and proud without envying the other trees.
This inner struggle of recognizing her own worth was, at times, at odds with her external experiences. Therefore, she had to teach herself to interrupt the external influences with healthy, inner ideas that gave her confidence.
Julie makes clear that her inner struggle is ongoing; confidence isn’t something that’s turned on or off permanently. One of the techniques she recommends in this inner battle is meditation. She started by only doing thirty seconds at a time, but these days, she considers it a cornerstone of her wellbeing.
Her medication is aided by the Insight Timer, which is an app that provides mediation services. One of the app’s aspects that Julie found most useful is its ability to show you how many people are meditating along with you, which created a sense of community that Julie found encouraging.
These days, Julie is actually featured on the Insight Timer app as having her own meditation program. She started with one mediation, but now she has almost fourteen, along with a course on recovering from food addiction.
While networking was never a conscious decision for Julie, she found that it actually helped her on her journey. By being in a purposeful state-of-mind, it created an openness that people were attracted to and felt comfortable with.
She emphasizes that the people around you are there for a reason, and potential value can be found in anyone. This ties into Julie’s idea of “abundance,” which doesn’t necessarily mean money, but, rather, the overwhelming sense of love and respect. By building relationships and connections, abundance becomes a superhighway, and positive feelings flow with ease.
Mutually beneficial relationships are tantamount, Julie finds, as not only does she need to develop her own value, but she needs to be prepared to add value to others. She finds that the more she thrives, the more others thrive–gratification is contagious.
In addition to branding herself a Life Designer, Julie finds that so much of life revolves around your perception of reality. For instance, instead of referring to her previous husband as an ex, which she finds to have a negative connotation, she calls him her co-parenting partner.
This choice of how to frame her ex-husband can be applied to many situations in life. Your feelings are not as involuntary as you might think. You can decide how to feel about certain things, and, therefore, frame the feelings around an incident in a way that benefits your mindset, rather than weighs it down.
When Julie finds herself in a bad interaction with someone, she prefers to look at that person as a teacher, rather than an antagonist. This is another example of reframing a situation to be emotional fruitful.
One such way that Julie feels people can attain true “abundance” is through being tangible. This means putting your hand on your heart, closing your eyes and focusing on the purpose of the heart–the way it nourishes you and has been with you from the very beginning.
The other thing she recommends is “mirror work.” While she prefaces this practice with the disclaimer that it might seem silly, it can help you get in touch with yourself. It entails looking at yourself in the mirror and focusing on your eyes, in the same way you focused on your heart. Connect with your eyes and acknowledge them as being with you since day one. Then move on to your mouth and ears.
If you liked Julie’s tips on connecting with your heart and eyes, she offers meditation courses on the Insight Timer app.
You can find more information about Julie on her website, JulieReisler.com, which provides links to her book and podcast.
She can also be found on social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and https://www.instagram.com/juliereisler/Instagram.