Creating Your Perfect Life for 2022 with Janine Bolon49 min read

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe, as we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hello, and good morning. Thank you so much for joining the show. I’m Janine Bolon, and what we have to offer you today is the wonderful opportunities that we have with this year, it’s 2022. There are things that are available and are occurring that were inconceivable just three years ago. And I really want to spend this show focusing on the things that you can do, not only to make your life better, but you can do it without the guilt and stress that a lot of I don’t know, there’s been a lot of times where people have said, Oh, this is an option you can do, you know, make your life happened this way. And it did nothing but stress me out, or I felt guilt, I don’t know, maybe it was the old Catholic upbringing, who knows, all I do know is that I have created a life for myself that is successful, and constantly in motion and in flux. But I love it. And for those of you out there who also have your systems and processes that you use to keep your life moving forward, see if maybe I can give you a couple of gold nuggets as we share this time together to help you with your life, and the amazing and tremendous opportunities that 2022 is bringing to us every single day. Now as the media has been very talkative about is the change in mindset, a lot of people are having to the tune of millions, millions of people are changing the way they view work the way they choose to spend their lives and how they are making money. And so I just wanted to share with you some of the tips, systems, and the techniques that I use to keep my life in a positive place for myself and one of those things comes into, you cannot live a normal life. Now first of all, you have to be listening to the show, and because you are listening, I want to let you know you need to give up the idea that you’re normal. The faster you give up the idea of living a life of normality, the better you are. Why? Because that gives yourself, it gives you permission to live a life that is going to look different and feel different than anything you’ve seen around you. And by doing that you will express that individual spark that you are in a way that was inconceivable to you just three years ago. So now that we have all these live changes that have happened to us, around us, it’s given us an opportunity to kind of sit back and decide, okay, what do I want to do next? Where do I want to move forward? And so when it comes to 2022, and the new year, and this is something I do every year, is that I play a game with myself, and that game is what is my perfect life look like? And every year I spend some time in January, actually I go on retreat I take off and I go to an Airbnb, I usually get out of the house, I have four children. So you know, I have to spend some time alone. And what I do is I rent a little Airbnb place, and I sit for two or three days and I decide what am I going to do with the next year? How am I going to make those changes? Now, I have tossed out the idea of resolutions because I never could quite live according to the way people said you make these changes with new year’s resolutions. And when it comes to goal setting, I never really could get into goal setting the way we did and I hope you were listening last week. If not you can listen to the replays go to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, because we had Gary Barnes on last week and he was talking about how to use “get statements”, because he also was challenged. He’s a very successful traction coach as he likes to say he helps business owners go from where they are to making over $100,000 a year using systems he is built. And anyway, he’s called the Number One American Traction Coach, and Gary has set up “get statements”, and he use those rather than resolutions are goal setting because they’re highly specific and he has offered people an opportunity to email him they’re “get statements” so he can help you fine tune those “get statements”. So that was last week’s show. So we’re continuing the whole idea of how do you go about creating the life of your dreams? How do you go about living that life that is one that is filled not only with purpose, but leisure where you have time to be able to think? Sometimes our lives get so crazy busy, we don’t have time to think. And I wanted to let you know that January is the perfect month to make decisions, to make choices, to move forward with that. We’re going to be talking about all of the systems and techniques that I have learned over the years that create the life that I currently have. And I have to tell you, I love where I am in my life. I love what I am doing. And I want that for other people as well. So it starts with something very basic. And this is the challenge that sometimes we run into. When something sounds too simple. We throw it out into the wastebasket, we think, Oh, that can’t possibly work. That’s too simple. And literally, the advice I’m going to give you over the course of this next hour is simplicity itself. It is so simple. It is mind boggling to me that people won’t do these things, because it’s so simple. And when you sit down and you actually move through these things, it’s incredible how it alters the way you think about your life and the way you can manufacture things to help with your life. Okay, so what we’re going to talk about right now, is how you create your perfect life. Now, this is kind of tongue in cheek, okay, I like to play around with words, and I like to call my life perfect. And we all know there really isn’t that sort of thing. There really isn’t a perfect life. But I call it that like, this is my perfect life. Why? Because in my brain, I can create a perfect life, I can create the life where I have unlimited resources to money and unlimited amounts of time. And that’s where I put myself and what the very first thing I recommend you do for the upcoming year is that you create a vision board. Now I know you’ve heard a lot about vision boards, and probably from people who you’re like, No, I am so not that type of person. But believe it or not, when I was working in corporate America back in the 1990s, okay. They were using vision boards, they didn’t call them that, okay, didn’t call them vision boards. But we were having executives that had to attend these top level meetings of the C suite. And they would bring in consultants from Walt Disney and other major corporations that would teach these executives mind mapping techniques. It’s now all the rage, it used to be that you know, unless you were a C suite player and you were some high level executive, you didn’t have access to this. Now we do. So I want to let you know that vision boards have been around a long time. Don’t let their nature of the person who’s teaching vision boards to you upset you or you know, have you discount them, I want you to know this is high level stuff, that when you decide to spend your year, and you decide what it is you want out of life. So what we’re focused on is your whole life, the vision board is before I give up the ghost or before I expire from this life, I want to have accomplished these sayings. And what people find is there are certain experiences that they want to have in their life. And they know that they will not be able to achieve those experiences, if they don’t have some sort of target, which is a vision board. Now what is it? A vision board is simply, I go down to my local grocery store and I buy a piece of poster board literally. And I cut that poster board in half. And then I start running pictures through my printer and I choose not to use a lot of words. Now that may strike you as funny because I’m the author of 12 books, right? So you think I’d use words on my vision board, I don’t. I want certain experiences from my life before I give up the mortal shell. And when I choose to use pictures, it allows me to emote, what those experiences are going to be like so on my vision board for this year you’ll see the Sequoia National Forest. I want to go back and visit I’ve been there before but I want to go back and I want to be around those amazing trees. Now you may be like Janine, I’m not a tree person, why would I would ever do that? And that is my friend, why you need to make your vision board. You need to make a vision board that has these beautiful pictures on it that show you in places, in situations having experiences that you want. Now if you want to be able to have more leisure time and that means I want to be down at the beach or I want to be camping, make sure you put pictures of the places that you want to have that time in. The other thing is some people want to buy a home, well put your perfect home up there. What does it look like? Does it have a pool? Is it made of stone? Is it made of brick? What does your perfect house look like? The vision board allows you to suspend that critical analytical part of your brain that is trying to tell you that you have to be realistic Stop it you can’t have that, be realistic. People tell you that all the time and I am here to tell you that is the worst thing that you can possibly do when it comes to living your life is trying to be realistic when it comes to your vision for your life. Now, yes be realistic when it comes to paying the bills or what have you. Yes, yes, yes, we understand how we have to be practical in certain ways. However, when we’re talking about your perfect life, all right, and I say that with tongue in cheek, but when we’re talking about your perfect life, and when it comes to that vision board, this is the time to be ridiculous. Why? Because it just might happen. But it won’t. If you don’t take those thoughts that you have of that ridiculous, perfect life, and you put them on a vision board, you print them off, glue them onto that poster board, and you look at that poster board every day. Now mine is set up so that every time I walk out of my office, I see it on the wall opposite of my office. And that keeps me in alignment. Because I always take a minute or two and I just look at it. I just kind of look at that vision board. And even with all the people in my house, and even though we have a very engaging life, and people in school and all that kind of stuff, no matter how busy I am, I still take a moment to look at that vision board and it makes me happy, makes me smile. Because I know at some point in my life, I’m going to have that experience. And one of those experiences is I’m going to fly in a helicopter, I have always wanted to fly in a helicopter, and I haven’t, and I’m going to make time to make that happen. So to wrap up, to start off with, to start the new year, don’t worry about resolutions, don’t worry about goals, the thing to build is a vision board, go down to your local grocery store, grab a piece of poster board, and start slapping pictures on that board of the experiences that you want to have kind of like a bucket list. These are the things I want to do. And don’t worry about time, don’t worry about money. You want to suspend your belief system and you want to put the outrageous on that board. What are some things that you’ve always wanted to experience? Why? You don’t have to justify it to anybody you just want it to be. So the very first step to really making a successful and fantastic new year is to create a vision board. When we get back we’ll talk about how you make it your perfect year. But first get that vision board down. See in the next segment.

Janine Bolon
Welcome back, this is Janine Bolon. Thank you so much for tuning in. We were just describing and talking about how to make 2022 a really good year for you. I don’t like to say the best year ever, because that sounds a little salesy, and that’s not what I’m about. What I’m about here is I really want you to engage in life in a way that you may not have done ever before. And I’d like you to set up aspects of your life so that you can really just enjoy what 2022 has to offer, I get so excited, I can’t even speak straight. One of the things that we were talking about previously was the vision board. Most people will laugh at you about making a vision board or what have you. But I guarantee you that what I do every year in January is I don’t make resolutions, I don’t make goals, I sit down with a piece of poster board that I get from my grocery store, whatever. And I put pictures on it. And I start building the life of my dreams. And I call it my perfect life, like my vision board is my perfect life. Why? Because in my head it is, alright, I’m not saying that’s how it’s gonna manifest or I’m not being realistic here. I suspend time, I suspend my concept of money. I suspend all of that and I say if I had all the money in the world, and if I had all the time in the world, this is what I would do. And I understand that some of you are in life situations where you are caring for others or you’re caring for young children or caring for an ill parent or what have you, but I just wanted to let you know that when you suspend your responsibilities and you allow yourself to dream, it allows you to lift your spirit up a bit, and you’re able to go forward in new and novel ways that you never expected before. And why is this important? Because we came onto this planet to live our best life. Okay, and we’re all doing our very best. And one of the fascinating things about 2022 is the fact that we are actually living at a time where there has never been more opportunities for us to do exactly what we want to do. There has never been more opportunities new jobs are being created every day. More money is coming into Our economy every day, we are doing well. And I just know that there are some of you who may be, you’re in debt, or maybe you lost your job, and so for me to sit here and be really super positive, and perky is the last. It’s annoying. Trust me, I understand that. And so where you are, let’s fix that now, let’s move you into a place where we can start creating for you, you can start creating for yourself, not only your perfect life, but let’s talk about how you create your perfect year. So at the top of the hour, we were talking about vision boards, how to create your perfect life. Now we’re going to talk about your perfect year. The next segment, we’re going to be talking about your perfect week, and we’re going to wrap it up about how to make your perfect day. Now understand with me that is it going to manifest and be totally perfect, probably not. But hey, I always like to start with the ideal, and then I work my way to the practical. And so what we’re going to do with your perfect year, let’s start talking about the most important aspect of your perfect year. And this is it. When are you going to take time off?

Janine Bolon
I always like to start with that because it causes people to laugh because they think I’m going to get into goal setting or something like that, believe it or not, when I used to work with high level executives, and we were learning from Mike Vance in the 1990s. About vision boarding and all that. Oh, yeah, the vision boarding has been around a long time they used to call it storyboarding. And there’s all kinds of different terms, and one of the aspects that they would really bring out is that it was important that executives define for themselves, when do you take time off. That was the very first thing. And so what you want to do, and this is something that I started, gosh, back in the 1980s. And it’s something I did consistently whenever I could in life, sometimes I was in the care of very small children so I couldn’t go off by myself. But I always spent time in retreat. And for some people, that is the worst thing that you could probably possibly say to them is that they need to go off by themselves to figure out the next phase of their life. For me, I can’t live well, without it, I have learned that about myself. And so once every three months, take a whole apartment for yourself for the weekend. And it costs less than a hotel room and, and so I encourage you to set up a schedule for yourself where every three months you are taking time off and away from your life you are going on retreat. Retreats are ways that executives and other highly successful people stay effective. Stay productive by taking that time off. It’s incredibly important. And I am sure I don’t have to say that to a lot of you but there are still some people who feel that they have to stay nose to the grindstone, especially people who run their own businesses. I’ve had some entrepreneurs when I was coaching them tell me Oh, yeah, I haven’t gone on vacation in seven years. And I’m like, Whoa, we have to change your business model. Because you have to take time off, because a machine doesn’t even run 24/7 365. And if you find yourself running that hard, like, you know working that hard for the money or what have you, you need to alter the way you’re living your life and the way you think about your life because you are too important as a person to burnout. And so that’s what this times that you set up for yourself to create your perfect year. I highly recommend that you work with your biology a little bit, Okay? There is a reason we are human beings on planet Earth and we operate the way we do. We have four times a year that are conducive to a retreat during those times and they’re called the solstices and the equinoxes. Okay. There are times in our planets rotation around the sun, where you have what we call a solstice where it’s the halfway point between a change of season. And these things happen. Like we just went through a winter solstice on December 21st. And on December 21st, it’s called the longest night of the year. And people in ancient times used to have ceremonies and celebrations because they didn’t understand their worldview, the way we do now. They would have these celebrations and they thought that because they had these celebrations, then the sun would start coming back, right, because then we’re moving into spring. So December 21st is the longest night of the year. And then we move into the sun coming up earlier and earlier, and the days getting longer and longer. And then we hit the spring equinox, which is, we have the sun is equal time, right, day is equal to night on those equinoxes, and that happens on March 21st. And then we have other celebrations and you have a lot of celebrations for people around the world during that period of time. Then you have the summer solstice, which is June 21st, which is the longest day of the year. And then you have the Fall Equinox, which is again the halfway mark where day and night are equal. And that’s September 21st. So one of the things I started doing is because I absolutely love cosmology, and I’m a scientist, and I love all things that are relating to our world, when I started noticing these patterns, right, the solstices and equinoxes. And I noticed that during these change of seasons, things got kind of chaotic if I didn’t take time off to figure out how I wanted to move through the next season. And so it became very natural for me in my perfect year that I was creating for myself, that I would re-evaluate how things were going for myself at these marks. And I would take time off to go away and do that. Now, when I was raising young children, and I was working on my husband was working, sometimes those weekends would actually be I just spend overnight. I spent the night overnight, but it gave me time to think. And that is something that I want for you, when it comes to you creating your perfect life, we want to give you time to be able to think without a lot of resistance around you. Want to give you time to be able to plan and start organizing your life. So you have your vision board that we talked about at the top of the hour. And we were talking about how important that is. So when it comes to the creation of your perfect year, it’s time off to re-evaluate what you’re doing. And I take time off four times a year, and I do it around the weekends of the Winter Solstice, the Spring Equinox, the Summer Solstice and the Fall Equinox. These are natural times for organisms that wander around this beautiful planet of ours. These times have been part of the calendar of our existence since the beginning of mankind. And it is just natural that you would want to take a moment and figure out for yourself, even if you just take a couple of hours, and put your loved ones in the care of somebody you trust. And take a couple hours and sit by the lake somewhere with a cup of coffee or whatever and just take a couple hours to re-evaluate where you are and where you want to go, and then write down some of the things that you want to change in your life. I have found my life to be much more successful when I operated in this way. If you make vacation time or time off, where you go off by yourself, that’s wonderful. And then of course, set up your vacation for the year. January is the perfect time to set all that up. When are you going on vacation? Where are you going? You know, what are the things you’re going to do? What are the experiences you’re going to have and put those on your vision board. And that way you are assured of those things manifesting. The other thing about when you’re creating your perfect year is scheduling time for you to do what is important to you. And what that means is have you ever wanted to learn to play the piano. Just yesterday, I was talking with a student and she was telling me how she has had a piano sitting in her office space because she works from home, ever since she started working from home in 2005. And to this day, she still doesn’t know how to play it. And I said, Well, what’s holding you back and she realized she didn’t want to study. She has earned her doctorate. She is so tired of studying that the last thing she wants to do is take classes and study. And I went, I agree with you. When it comes to playing the piano, it should be fun. So why don’t you just open up the piano and for a couple of minutes every day, just hit on the keys until you hit the keys in a way that is pleasant to you and it sounds good. And then when you start playing around, just poke around on the piano for a little bit just learning the piano and the keys. And she goes, Oh, I know where middle C is and I went great. If you know where middle C is then just play around getting to know the piano and do that just for a month. just goofing off every day, take five minutes, you know and just goof off on the piano. Eventually, you’ll want to learn more. And then I recommend you get onto YouTube and you start learning from people who love teaching. Alright, you never want to learn a craft or a skill from somebody who isn’t estatic about it. So get on YouTube. There’s all these beautiful people that have how to play jazz and all this and they’re at the beginner level. You’ll love it. Just poke around and play and have fun with it. Make it a fun activity. And that’s what I’d like you to think about for your perfect year. What are some skill sets that you don’t have that you want to acquire? All right, and figure out how best to learn them for you and for your lifestyle and realize you have all the time there is. All it’s gonna take us time. So figure out how that’s going to work for you. All right, we’re going to take a break. But when we come back, we’re going to be discussing how to create your perfect week, how to take mini retreats, and how to work that perfect life into your daily schedule. Talk to you soon. See at the end of the hour.

Janine Bolon
Welcome back. This is Janine Bolon. I’m so glad that you’re here today and that you’re listening to the show, we are taking this January to talk to you about how to establish that perfect life for yourself. How to live that successful life. And one of the things that’s lovely about this topic is that everybody can do it in their own way. And that’s perfect.

Janine Bolon
I know a lot of people don’t understand that. But it’s like in order to have a successful life, you have to first define what is success to you. And don’t allow other people to tell you what that is, when I really gave up the whole concept of having other people tell me what was important or what I should be doing or what I could be doing. And when I really started living that life of freedom that I enjoy so much, I realized I had a lot of stuff in my head, that was not success in my terms. And when I started taking time, every January to create what we talked about at the top of the hour, your perfect life. And in the last segment, we were talking about your perfect year and how to set that up. And I call it the perfect year. Why? Because it’s perfect for me. All right, it may not be perfect for anyone else. And of course, I’m going to have good days and bad days. I’m aware of that. But perfect life is I’m living a successful life. And I’m living it every day. And for those of you who may be struggling right now, and you’ve lost a job or you’ve lost a loved one or you’re in a heavier place. Nothing is more annoying than somebody like me coming along and talking about how you can have a perfect life when you’re struggling right now. So I wanted to let you know, believe it or not, I have you in my heart. And I do have you in my mind when I’m speaking all this, I wanted to let you know how you can pull yourself out of that place. And these are some tools and tips and techniques that we use. Now, last Sunday, we had Gary Barnes come on to the show and he was talking about “get statements”, how you use those rather than resolutions or goal setting. You can listen to the playbacks go to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, and you can listen to that show where Gary talks about “get statements” work very powerful for him, because when he was learning how to use goal setting and planning that sort of thing, it wasn’t working for him, he had to change it up. And so he talks about it and whether it “gets statements” work for you or not with what Gary shares with you, that’s not the point. The point is to learn from others, how they adapted things, so it worked better for them. So I would like you to create your own system for how you’re going to be creating your perfect life like we talked about at the top of the hour, your perfect week. I’m sorry, your perfect life, your perfect year, and now we’re going to talk about your perfect week. Yeah, I got ahead of myself, right. Okay, so what do you do to create your perfect week, what you get to do is you get to spend one day a week and not the full day, it’s just you’re taking a couple hours. Now I choose Sundays, I have used Sundays, since 1987. This is how long I’ve had this habit, I would take Sunday morning, and I would do it before my children got up because I had four very small children. And I would take a couple hours on Sunday. And I would sit down and ask myself a series of questions. Now you may recognize this as the rock in the jar method. Or you may recognize this from other people. I happen to learn this process of planning my week from Hiram Smith. And he had created a time management system back in the 80s called the Franklin planner. And there are a lot of other people such as Stephen Covey who came along and started talking about the Compass planner and things took off from there. So it doesn’t matter where you have learned this thing, I just want to let you know is my teacher for this was Hiram Smith. And he was using the Franklin system and that’s back before we had digital the way we have it now. And we had these paper planners that we would have to use. And I got into the habit of creating my perfect week, every Sunday morning starting at 6:30 because that’s when I would normally or naturally would wake up. The process is take time every Sunday or one day a week. Figure out what day is best for you. But take time where you’re going to take an hour, I used to take two hours, I’m down to where I can do this in 30 minutes. But you’re going to ask yourself a series of questions and I’m going to have a template for you so that if you go to the show notes go to www.Janinebolon.com, and you look up the episodes it’ll be there next week. You will be able to download my perfect week template and these are the questions that you’re going to ask yourself. When you sit down you make sure you have a cup of coffee with you or whatever, and have a piece of paper, pencil and your calendar in front of you. However that works for you. You can do this all digital now, if you wish. And you want to focus on the five areas of your life that are most important to you, and you want to do a self assessment, this is not the time to beat yourself up by the way. This is not the time to tell you that you’re weak and that you need to do better and all that horrible self talk. This is about you saying, How am I going to improve next week? What am I going to do better? And that is the mindset that you have as you sit down to create your perfect week. And so one of the things that’s very important to me is my relationship with my source. Some people say God, some people say spirit, but my relationship, my spirituality is very important to me so I know meditation is very important. And if I noticed that my meditation wasn’t as deep as I wanted it to be, my prayers weren’t as focused as I want them to be, then I knew I needed to make changes in my life. So that’s something that I do every day. But when I sit down once a week, to establish my perfect week, I make sure that the time that I am spending to meditate is appropriate, or if I have to go to work early some morning, and I realize I need to get up earlier, this is how I kind of pre-plan for what I know is coming to me, okay? Sometimes we have those things that come out of nowhere that we can’t plan for, but you are able to plan for a lot that goes on in your life. And so I use that element of control during this perfect week on when I spend my time on Sundays. Okay, so the first thing I asked myself is how is my relationship with source? How am I doing with meditation? How am I doing with my spirituality? Also, in the morning, I like to take time to read positive books. And so I sit down and I do a little bit of reading, and then I do a bit of writing. And so this is kind of my routine, and I make sure that I’m keeping that up, because that keeps me in a healthy place. The next thing I talk to myself about is my body. Am I doing the things I need to do to keep myself healthy? Am I eating the way I need to? If I really fell off the wagon, and you know, trashed the diet last week. And when I say diet, I don’t mean it as if I’m trying to lose weight. I mean, how am I eating? What are my eating habits? And if my eating habits were all over the board last week, I make alterations to the week coming up, and I plan to either purchase different things from the grocery store, or I know I need to give myself more time to do the meal planning or what have you. And so that’s the second thing I focus on is the body. The third one is my mind, I am a scholar from the get go, if I am not learning something new, if I am not creating, it doesn’t work for me. So I sit down and I say am I reading? Am I giving myself enough time to read? Am I reading the books I want? What is the next book on my to read list? And I write that down to grab that book off the shelf and start carrying it with me in the car. And off the bat, I almost always have a book with me. You can say, hey, Janine, where’s your book, and I’ll say, oh, it’s in the car, I don’t want to carry it into the grocery store. So I always have a book. And if it’s not physically with me, because I prefer to read a physical book, if it’s not physically with me, I have a book I’m reading on my phone. Okay, so I’m a scholar, I know I need that. Maybe you have different things you need for your mental stimulation. Or maybe there’s something in your life, you need to get rid of, like maybe you’re watching too much television, you’re spending too much time on Netflix or Hulu. Maybe you’re using that as downtime, which is totally appropriate. But maybe you’re not doing as well, and so you’re watching way too much. You need to pull back on that. Make sure that when you decide to make a change like that, make sure you put another activity that brings you great joy in its place. Okay, so for me, it’s like, I’d rather create a new pencil case for my daughter who needs one. So I sit down and sew that pencil case, okay, because that’s something I enjoy, doing. I love creating things out of fabric. So it’s up to you how you want to do that. Okay, so the fourth thing that I focus on then is my heart, which is the creativity and beauty around me. I enjoy being around a beautiful space. I enjoy being around creative spaces, and I enjoy an uncluttered home. Now being highly creative, and having an uncluttered home is almost an oxymoron for me because I’m almost always in the middle of a project. So I have stuff strewn about. However, I like to contain it and be able to lay hands on things. So I spend time every week decluttering my home, I have a box that sits by my door that I fill up and I have an appointment with myself where I drop that box off at Goodwill once a week. So these are the sorts of things or routines that you set up so that you’re accomplishing the goals you have for yourself, and you don’t have to put a timeline on it. It isn’t a resolution. It’s an activity. It’s an activity that is moving you towards your goal. And you can do it every week. So I make sure that I put time in to go to the donation place that I need to go and then I drop that box off, and so it doesn’t matter how you go about doing that in your life. But just realize that if decluttering your home is something that you feel is appropriate right now, and that you want to have a place for everything and everything in its place, which that is just very helpful to my personality. That is something I focus on. So that’s how I set that up every week. How am I doing with that? Did I forget to go to Goodwill the previous week, I need to schedule time that I make sure that I go this week, right? Those are the type of things I focus on. The next if you’ve noticed, a lot of this stuff has been about me, myself, and I, right? I don’t bring family in until next. Now I start focusing on the family, but first you got to focus on yourself, right? Make sure that you’re in a good place, then you focus on your family. How are you doing? I list off every child? What do I need to do for that child in the coming week? And after I’ve done that, then I focus on my friends. Hey, have I been in touch with my friends the way I want? What do I need to do to get in touch with them? And then after that, I focus on my business. Because I do work from home, I run a full time business. I have 15 online courses, I’m constantly writing, I have students. So then I focus on my business. But so you see that over the course of that Sunday, over that hour, I’m thinking about my relationship with my source. I am focusing on how am I doing health wise, what am I doing for my scholarship? How am I doing as far as decluttering my home bringing beauty to me and my creativity? Am I writing as much as I want, am I drawing, am I sewing? All those things that I enjoy doing. And then I focus on family, friends and my business. And when you put the priorities in that way, and you set your week up for those sorts of systems. It is amazing what you can accomplish. And it is truly a thing of beauty. So next we’re going to talk about your perfect day after this break. We’ve talked about your perfect life, your perfect year, your perfect week. Now we’re going to talk about your perfect day. And I will see you after the break to discuss that with you. Chat with you in a moment.

Janine Bolon
Welcome back, this is Janine Bolon and we are talking about how to create your perfect life. And in the various segments, we’ve talked about how to create your perfect life by using a vision board. How to create your perfect year by setting up times that you go on retreat so that you can spend time kind of doing self evaluation with your life. And then the next one is your perfect week. And we were talking about how you sit down once a week on a Sunday, I usually spend Sunday from 630 to 730 in the morning, and I sit down and I asked myself questions and we have a downloadable template that you can use for yourself. And if you go to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, you will see in episodes this particular episode, which will be called Vision to Mission, and you click on that, and there will be a audio file there and a transcript but you’ll also have a downloadable template that you can tap on because I do have a tendency to talk fast and this will give you something that you can read about how you go about creating your perfect week. So we were talking about that and how you set up on Sunday, I prefer that people don’t start on Mondays with this sort of activity because if you wait until Monday, a lot of times your week is already in action. Whereas if you start on a Saturday or Sunday that you sit down and plan out your week, it kind of sets you up for more success in that regard. So we’re talking about how success is different for different types of people and how do you go about creating your perfect day? Believe it or not, it is all based on routines. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. It’s about routines. Sometimes people will tell me to Janine, oh my gosh, every time you say routines, or systems or automation, I guess it just bores me out of my brain. And these are usually very highly creative people. And I like to tell them, it’s through routines. It’s through my calendar that I am able to create, and I am able to spend as much time as I can creating the things I love, such as I love writing books, and I am now publishing book number 12 this year, and it’s one of those things that people are like, Oh my gosh, do you ever sleep because I homeschooled my four children. I ran a full time business. I was creating these books to the tune of one or two a year. They’re like how do you do all that? Aren’t you burnt out? And the answer is no. Because I have been running what I call my perfect life. That’s kind of tongue in cheek. It’s perfect when I have it planned and I have it all planned out and everything’s just beautiful and perfect, and I sit in that moment for a few minutes and then the first child walks in and rewrites my entire day because you know something needs to happen, right? But at the same time, there are routines that you can use to help you move forward with that perfect day. What is that? It starts with the morning routines and the evening routines that I have created. And when I first started with my routines, I had to write them down on a piece of paper and get into the habit of what I was going to be doing as my morning routine. What I was going to be doing is my evening routine. And one of the things that helps me with my successful life is I don’t get upset if I can’t do my routines perfectly. The fact that I have time in my day where I am focusing on creating the best morning I can and closing out the day, the best way I can is what helps me lead that successful life. It’s what helps create that perfect life for myself. And believe it or not that perfect life is perfect for me, not for anybody else. Okay, so that’s why I jokingly call it the perfect life. I mean, is it perfect is every day just sunshine and roses, unicorns and butterflies? Absolutely not. There are days where I’ve really struggled. But for the most part, I’d say 90% of the time, I’m doing great. And that is because I have the systems in place. So let’s talk about these routines and what they mean. In the previous segment, we were talking about how you go about creating your perfect week by setting up one day a week where you sit down and you ask yourself the five questions and you focus on what you want to accomplish in those five areas of your life. The way you implement them, is through the routines that you have for yourself every day, and you don’t bust on yourself if you fall short. These are targets I don’t want you to see them as goals, I want you to see them as targets. Why? Because for goals, you either get the shot in or you don’t you’d get the points or you don’t it’s very binary and it’s like you know, it sets up a negative sour. Whereas targets, you get points for aiming at it and throwing the dart, like maybe you weren’t able to exercise the full 30 minutes, you only could get five minutes in today because somebody you know, said Oh, and you heard water splashing and you had to dash up and take care of the bathroom or whatever, because somebody had overflowing the bathtub, who knows, right? These sorts of things happen all the time. So don’t bust on yourself that you weren’t able to exercise for the full 30 minutes. The fact is, is you threw the dart you started to exercise, something else intervened, okay, so give yourself points, right? That’s why I like to use the word targets, not goals. Anyway, what is this morning routine that I’m talking about? As I was telling you, it’s very important to me, my spirituality is very important. So every morning, I meditate, okay, so when I first wake up in the morning, open my eyes, I take care of my body, I get the coffee pot going, and I sit and I meditate. After I’m done with my meditation, I have my cup of coffee, and I read a book that is a positive book to me. And then after I read a little bit in my book, then I go about writing because I make sure I write every morning. Now this is kind of my morning routine. I’m meditating, I get my coffee in the morning, I’m reading of positive fieldbook. I’m starting off my day, and I will spend a good two hours of my day, doing things that are important to me that have nothing to do with anybody else. And that is how I’m able to achieve my successful life. Now you may be like, Janine, are you kidding? How on earth can you ever do that? Well, I get up at 4am, my alarm goes off at 4:05 and I take that time. Now this was a decision that I made based on a physiological fact for me. And that was, I noticed I was waking up every morning at 330 to 4am, and so instead of fighting that and thinking something was wrong with me, I started just getting up at that time and creating this routine for myself. Now, for those of you who are night owls, you may do this with your evening routine. And that’s why I talk about I have a morning routine, and I have an evening routine and they’re very different. My morning routine is all about taking care of me making sure I’m in the right headspace, making sure I’m doing what I need to do before I start work for the day. And yes, I may be self employed, I may be working from home. But I make sure that I am spending this two hours a day just taking care of me. And I have dedicated office hours to myself and I live by my calendar, ask any of my friends, and they’re like, Oh, well, if I’m not on Janine’s calendar, it’s not going to happen. And it’s true. Because I live by my calendar, because I want life to be as close to my perfect life that I have envisioned for myself as possible. And I’ve found I can do that through my calendar system. So the routine I have in the morning is all about me taking care of me, and then at the same time being able to then be fresh to take care of others. Now, when I was a mother and I had young children and I was working outside of the home, when I had that going on, I was only able to have a morning routine that lasted maybe 30 minutes, but I always noticed that my day went better when I took that 30 minutes and took care of myself. My children are now older, I’m able to take more time for myself so I have, and I also get up earlier than I did back when I was sleep deprived as a mom of young children. So you know, understand that this changes over time. The other thing is the evening routine. Now the evening routine takes me longer, it takes me about 30 minutes, I noticed something happening in my day, where I wasn’t able to sleep well. And I couldn’t understand what was going on. And I realized I didn’t have a good quality evening routine that would help me get ready for bed and sleep. And so one of the things I started doing was I put a timer on my phone, that would go off and remind me you need to get to bed here in the next few minutes. And I live by timers, and I have my timers going off a lot because I lose track of time I get involved in what I’m doing. I’m so focused on lose track of time. So I set a timer for myself, and that timer just said go put your pajamas on. That was all it did. That was all that timer was for was just for me to get my pajamas on. And then I would notice that I had clothes laying around so I put them in the hamper, I’d start a load of laundry, I’d pick out my outfit for the next day. Believe it or not, that is a huge time saver for me, it keeps me from decision fatigue, which is very important for people nowadays. And so I would pick out my outfit for tomorrow, I packed my lunch, brush my teeth, and then I’d say goodnight to my kiddos. They don’t need me to tuck them into bed anymore but I do say goodnight. I let them know, do you need anything, I’m getting ready to go to bed for the evening. And I turn off the lights in my room and then I’d meditate, and then I’d go to sleep listening to either an audio book or some pleasant music. And I have no difficulty falling asleep now when I started these morning and evening routines. Everybody’s routine is going to be different, every person is going to need different things. The thing is, if you don’t have that routine, then you’re kind of at the mercy of whatever life throws at you. And what I want for you is to have the same level of joy and the same level of success that I have had or more. I always tell people that I’m coaching, I’m like, I want you to have my level of success or more. And if you feel that I have more success than you then I want to be able to help you with that success. But if you want to have more success than I have, then that’s Bonnie to you, I want you to be able to have that as well. So we were talking about how you create your perfect life, your perfect year, your perfect week, and your perfect day. And so when we were talking about your perfect year, and your perfect life, you start off with a vision board. And I know a lot of people are like oh my God vision boards, uh, you know, I’m not a creative person, I don’t like it. Just take pictures of experiences that you want to have and slap them on a poster board that you get at your grocery store. Don’t make this complicated. Keep it very simple. What are the types of things you want to do and you need to suspend for the purposes of creating your vision board, you want to suspend time and you must suspend money, do not say, Oh, I can’t do that I never can afford it. Well, you’ve got to put it on the board. So you can afford it. Does that make sense? When you put a request or when you put a vision on your board, like I want to go fly a helicopter. Alright, it may take you a few years before you get to that place where you can fly that helicopter. But the thing is, if it’s not on your board, then you’ll just drop it off by the wayside, and never achieve it. The thing is, remind yourself that these are dreams that you have and you can achieve them. But you start with the vision board. And that’s how you start with that perfect life. Next, you start with your perfect year. And that’s what we were talking about. Make sure you set up times where you go on retreat for yourself, where you take vacation time, I don’t care if you are self employed, you have got to take time off, you will be more productive if you do that. Next, we talked about your perfect week how you would spend a time either on Saturday or Sunday for 30 minutes to an hour where you would sit down, look at your week, and make sure that you were living your life in accordance to your vision board. Am I moving toward my vision every day? And lastly, your perfect day is built on routines. So this is Janine Bolon and I hope that you have found this show helpful. Go to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, and you will find downloadables that will help you with this and if I can ever be of assistance, you will also find a link to my calendar on this show and I would love to be able to chat with you and help you achieve the life that you want to live for yourself. Have a great day and we will see you again next Sunday.

Bryan Hyde
Thank you for listening to the Janine Bolon show. Be sure to subscribe to our show notes by going to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, where you’ll find additional resources as well as the opportunity to sign up to receive our program in your email each week. Be sure to visit our sponsor at www.the8gates.com.