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I actually sent out an email this morning and I would like to do a whole podcast episode on it. So if you are on my email list you saw the email, but I’m going to expand upon it a little bit more here today. And it’s called the business lesson that I learned from watching Frozen 2.

So yesterday I took my 2 teenage girls to watch Frozen for the 2nd time in 2 weeks. And we saw it during opening weekend and we loved it, memorized all the songs, promptly went back. And I think that Frozen 2 is a more complicated storyline than the first one, but Disney did a great job. And I think that the second movie is a lot better than the first. I expected to laugh, and I expected to cry, but what I didn’t expect was to have this very profound and simple business lesson, that if you actually did what the movie preached you’d watch your life transform before your eyes.

And I said all this in my email when I sent it out. I am currently in the process of simplifying my life. And I think that all of us, when we get to a certain point in life, we are married maybe, we have kids maybe, we have a business maybe, we have customers. We create, we collect stuff along the way. We collect stuff, we collect people, we collect programs that we’ve launched that now have like a whole life of their own. And things often feel messier as you get older. We don’t see things in black and white as much, we see it in shades of gray. So I’m in the process of simplifying my life.

And if you’ve been following me, I started that simplification process in June, when I resigned from being a partner over at Clickfunnels. My life, my marriage, all these things were really exhausted beyond belief. I have 4 children, 3 of them are teenagers, and I looked at my life and said, “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know where to begin? Because there’s so many needs and so much going on, what can I start with?” And that really began sort of this season of my life of simplification.

And when we say, “Oh, we’re simplifying things.” It sounds cliché, it sounds trendy, it sounds like we’re getting a condo, it sounds like Eat, Pray, Love, but it is messy. It is hella messy, hard, complicated, not black and white, lots of shades of gray, and if you are trying to simplify your business or your life, and you have collected people and things along the way, this can feel like an unbelievable task.

So you end up having to turn over things that you figure, yeah, you’d just rather leave those things be. And I have felt that way in sort of undoing and looking at the stuff that I’ve built, looking at the stuff that I’ve done, relationships, the programs, the ideas, all of it and just saying, “Okay, where am I really making an impact? Where am I really making a difference? What is working, and what are things that are not serving me anymore?” And it’s not just selfish, serving me, but meaning also serving my customers or my kids, or my husband, or whatever it happens to be.

So for me, I’ve had to square up to the fact that I have this really bad habit of people pleasing. It is not a fun thing to have. And often times when I walk into a situation, I’m a very intuitive person, for those of you guys who do Meyers Briggs, I’m an INFJ, so the N and the F, I read a room, I read what people need, I know what they want, I can see. And it sets me up often times to say, “Oh, well if I give them that, they’re going to really like me.” So I can kind of morph to become what they want, or what they need in that moment to serve them.

But like anything that’s people pleasing, I eventually get tired of that because it’s not really me. So then I end up in a situation where I have two choices. I can either show up as the real me and risk rejection, or I can get really resentful. So I’ve had to work on this, and in my active simplifying my life and my business, I don’t know where to begin. It doesn’t feel simple.

So here’s where, and maybe you can relate to that, so here’s where Frozen 2 comes in. So Anna is in a cave, spoiler alert, she’s destroyed by the apparent death of her sister, plus the loss of her fiancé, her sidekick Olaff, she’s like, just her world is turned upside down. And she begins a song called the Next Right Thing. And there’s a line that says, “It’s all that I can do, the next right thing. I won’t look too far ahead, it’s too much for me to take, but break it down to this next step, this next choice, this next breath, is one that I can make.”

And it was so profound, and I just burst into tears in the theatre because I was like, it’s just the next right thing. We all know what the next right thing is. It’s a small, easy decision right in front of you, right now. And a lot of times we don’t take it because we’re too busy playing chess with all the moves and consequences ten steps ahead. We worry about a year from now, two years from now. We over think, we analyze, we talk ourselves in circles. But there is a business decision, or a life one, a small or big that’s sitting in front of you right now, as you’re listening to this, and your procrastination is most certainly a sign that you’re forecasting way beyond the next right thing. It’s making it very hard to do the next right thing right in front of you.

And it sounds so simple. Our temptation is to sort of just turn up our noses and be like, this is so simple. Because we expect the things to make the impact in life to be elaborate or complicated, but really just try it. Look at your to-do list today, look at your business, whatever it is that’s sort of plaguing you, and ask yourself, “What is the next right thing for me to do.” And if you’re like, ‘I don’t know, Julie. I honestly don’t know.” Then break down the decision even smaller. What is the next right thing that you can do to help you make the decision? Try that.

So I hope that helps. I hope that gives you an aha. For me, it gave me a big aha because I have decisions and every decision seems to have rabbit trails and side trails and just all kinds of stuff that makes me nervous, “Well, what if I make this wrong decision, then it has ramifications.” And that can really just totally throw you off, so instead you just say, “You know what, I’m just going to do what’s right in front of me.”

And the next right thing, honestly and most often, shows up as showing up, showing up in your world, in your relationships, in your business. Speaking the truth, the truth is always on your side, even when it feels like the truth will get you in trouble, the truth is on your side. Trusting your instincts, ignoring fear, fear is not a good predictor of success or making great decisions. Upholding your values, the things that important to you, moving towards your dreams, shaking off what is over complicated, trusting the process, even if the process feels uncomfortable, and most importantly, betting on yourself.

So I encourage you to go today, go and do the next right thing. I appreciate you all, talk to you soon.