Month: November 2022

Healthy Habits

It’s easy to be hard & hard to be easy

Corie Muldoon

Easy choices make life hard and hard choices make life easy.

Choosing the easy

We can absolutely choose to lay in bed all day.

We can choose to do the bare minimum and just get by.

We can chose to do the easy stuff.

These are all legit choices and they are made everyday by people just like you and I.

Ever meet someone who refuses to eat healthy? No matter what, they always go for the junk food. “But junk food is EASY. I can just grab and go and get filled up from it.”

The downside to this easy choice are the side effects to eating junk food everyday for a long period of time. And these side effects make life hard.

This easy choice could and most likely will affect your health, self-confidence, relationships, communication, and even commitment negatively.

By choosing the easy day after day: eating unhealthy junk food, life becomes harder in every aspect.

Choosing the hard

We can also choose to get out of bed when the alarm goes off.

We can choose to do our best and make our dreams a reality.

We can choose to do the hard stuff.

These are also legit choices and they are made everyday by people like you and I.

Ever see a real happy person, like they’re happy all the time? And maybe ya think: “Man it must be so nice to be that happy. They don’t even have to try, they’re always just THAT happy.”

Effortless happiness is a myth. It takes HARD work to be happy. It takes constant awareness: reframing negative thoughts, finding gratitude, replenishing energy, sharing good vibes with others.

The upside to this hard choice are the side effects to being happy everyday for a long period of time. And these side effects make life easy.

This hard choice could and most likely will affect your health, self-confidence, relationships, communication, and even commitment positively.

By choosing the hard day after day: to really work on being happy, life becomes easier in every aspect.

Wrapping Up

There’s an easy choice and a hard choice for every situation.

The easy choice now leads to a harder tomorrow.

The hard choice now leads to an easier tomorrow.

Let’s start to ask ourselves in as many moments as we can remember: “What’s the hard choice here that will get me to my goals? Make me happier, healthier, more fulfilled?”

It’s easy to be heavy and hard to be light.

G.K. Chesterton
Productivity

Life Map: A Goal Setting System

Corie Muldoon

Writing down our goals and breaking them down into small, doable tasks is how we get extraordinary results.

Good builders don’t build without a blueprint. They have a vision, write it out on paper, tweak it, and review it over and over again. When their plan is approved by multiple experts, only then do they start to break ground.

Like a good builder, we can visualize our dreams and write up a plan to achieve them. No wishing or wanting, we’re committed to making it happen.

It’s totally doable, ya just have to know what you want. And that’s where the Life Map comes into play!

Getting started


Let’s create a Google spreadsheet:

  • Life categories going down (health, personal, finance, etc)

  • Timeline going across (someday, 5 year, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, daily)

Or just download a template of mine here 🙂

Choose 3-5 categories

What are your top 3-5 categories that you’d like to focus on?

  • Personal
  • Fitness
  • Health
  • Business
  • Finance
  • Romance
  • Charity
  • Something more specific?

Someday goal

Next, we’re going to come up with a “someday goal” for each category. This is where visualizing what you want your life to look like comes in handy! It’s the perfect time to write out your dream life.

Once you have a someday goal for each category, let’s move on to each category individually:

5 year goal

What’s the one thing I can do in 5 years that will help me accomplish my someday goal?

1 year goal

What’s the one thing I can do this year that will help me accomplish my 5 year goal?

1 month goal

What’s the one thing I can do this month that will help me accomplish my 1 year goal?

1 week goal

What’s the one thing I can do this week that will help me accomplish my 1 month goal?

Daily goal

What’s the one thing I can do today that will help me accomplish my 1 week goal?

BONUS: Who do I have to be?

Who do I have to be to accomplish my daily goal? Choose an adjective: outgoing, dedicated, romantic, curious, eager, consistent, reliable? Define what each word means and imagine yourself living it out.

Wrapping Up

The Life Map will keep you on track toward your goals, and will help you make big and small decisions you’ll be faced with down the road – “will saying yes to this push me toward my goals or away from them?”

The Life Map is a tool, and must be used on an on-going basis to get the best results possible. Yes that means reviewing your sheet daily 🙂

Your Life Map will be ever-evolving as you accomplish goals and replace them with new ones, so don’t get stuck on getting everything written out perfectly before taking action on your daily goals. Goals may change, even categories may change. The key is to keep up on the dailies and adjust along the way.

Take control of what you can control. Small actions lead to big results.

Commit to the Life Map and create the life of your dreams 🙂

General

Get to know your preferences

Corie Muldoon

What do I prefer? If I could do and have exactly what I wanted, what would it be? What would life look like?

I just recently learned that I prefer melons over berries in the morning. Weird but true.

So maybe you’re melons instead of berries like me.

Or maybe you’re yoga instead of weight training.

We have tons of choices in life…

Which choices do you vibe with?

Whatever your preferences, get to know them – be real and honest.

Only then can we start to make small changes in our day to day that keep us inspired and motivated to keep getting after it.

Lifestyle by design: Asking more questions.

Mindset

Focus on what you’re grateful for

Corie Muldoon

*walks into kitchen and sees dirty dishes in sink*

*gets a little irritated*

HERE is where people usually stop and the irritation is just left swirling around in their energy field…

I’m sure you can imagine what that can do to a person overtime.

For others HERE is where the journey lies…

*deep breath* (this is an important step)

*forces a smile*

*takes a mental note to reflect later*

*takes a moment to find one thing to be immensely grateful for in that moment*

“I am so grateful to be alive and to be able to stand on my own two feet (feels gratitude deep within the heart and belly). Yanno… I’m going to take a walk right after I’m finished with these dishes, it’s beautiful out!”

The above example is a healthy and productive way of handling negative feelings…

And it also helps to prevent wandering negative thoughts.

Wandering negative thoughts, in my experience, lead to break downs, panic attacks, under / over eating, outbursts, etc.

I am absolutely not going to allow dirty dishes to set me into a raging outburst…

So I make the choice to focus on what I’m grateful for and mellow out.

Productivity

What I Love Checklist

Corie Muldoon

Undesired states of mind like worry, fear, anxiety, anger, depression…

Come from being too consumed in the past or future.

You may be thinking of all that you have to do tomorrow.

Future thinking = worry / fear / anxiety

Or you may be consumed with guilt or regret about a past situation.

Past thinking = anger / depression

Do not judge when your mind starts to wonder…

Or when you start feeling these negative emotions.

Simply become aware that you are feeling the way you are…

Make a mental note to reflect on it later…

And work through your WHAT I LOVE CHECKLIST to get your joy back 🙂

What’s a What I Love Checklist?

It’s a list of things that make you happy!

Here are some things on my list:

  • Shower / at-home spa time
  • High vibe music
  • Meditate, pray, crystal work
  • 5 deep belly breaths
  • Yoga, mobility, strength training
  • Snack time / cook up a meal
  • Journal, read, online courses
  • Write blogs, create / share content
  • Send love on social media
  • Talking with family and friends
  • Clean / maintain home
  • Plan, do, review goals
  • Dates with Joey
  • Exercise Champ

Take 5 mins now to create your own What I Love Checklist and the next time you feel negative emotions coming on, you’ll be well equipped.

Utilize your list to get out of any funk. The more you practice this, the faster you’ll bounce back.

General

Making Mistakes

Corie Muldoon

Mistakes are only mistakes if we do not learn and change because of them.

The true mistake would be holding onto our mistake…

Dwelling on the past of how things could have gone differently.

Here’s a little 3-step system on using mistakes as a stepping stone to success:

  1. Find the lesson in the mistake: what is the universe trying to teach you right now?

    For example, if I am rushing around trying to get out the door and accidently drop a glass cup. Of course I’m immediately frustrated because I’m already late as it is, but I take a deep breath and laugh a little. “Yes I know I’m rushing around and need to slow down.” That’s the lesson: slow down, move at God’s speed, be in the moment, relax your nerves, getting worked up won’t make you un-late, don’t put yourself or others at harm because you are allowing your nerves to take over.

  2. Commit to making a change: in both thinking and behavior

    Going with the above example- once I find my lesson, which I shortly define as “move at God’s speed,” I immediately commit to making the change in my thinking and behavior. I clean up the broken glass with ease, breathing and working consciously to relax my nerves. I am feeling much more laid back and get to feeling that I will get there when I get there. I get to my destination 10 minutes later than I was scheduled to, however the person I was meeting was running even later than I was. Wow! Good thing I didn’t allow myself to stay worked up lol. Stories like this have definitely happened to me in real life, anyone else?!

  3. Give thanks: thank the universe for the lesson it has brought you ♡