1. Peak performance while traveling demands structure and boundaries.
Operating across multiple time zones is no small feat. What I’ve learned and shared with the team is that consistency, not circumstance, determines energy.  This month, I doubled down on discipline and planning, keeping my sleep and eating aligned with my Miami Beach schedule and protecting my recovery time through meditation, breathwork, and sauna sessions. Yes, that means 7:30 PM bedtimes and 4:00 AM mornings on the West Coast.  Excellence requires both boundaries and execution.

 

2. Hire people who are better than you and celebrate it.
When your team’s brilliance surpasses yours in specific areas, let it expand you, not shrink you. True leadership is the ability to shift from ego to elevation. I’ve been reminded this month that diverse gifts, lived experiences, and ways of thinking create a culture of excellence. Your strength as a leader grows when you allow others to shine in theirs.

 

3. Quality relationships are the foundational blueprint for a meaningful life.
The most significant moments this month didn’t happen on a stage or in a boardroom; they happened in everyday conversations that deepened trust, reminded me what matters, and re-anchored me in connection. I was reminded that love, friendship, and belonging often require us to be the one.   It requires us to be the one to reach out, to listen, to forgive, or to show up even when it feels uncomfortable or inconvenient.

 

Look up.

 

This phrase is engraved on the inside of my glasses as a daily reminder. Because if we’re honest, most of us are moving too fast to notice the miracles happening in real time.

 

When we get stuck in “business as usual,” success becomes a checklist, not an experience. We stop noticing beauty, breakthroughs, and breathtaking moments. I’ve found myself in this place too, realizing that my own drive sometimes crowds out margin and creativity.

 

This month, I’m recommitting to looking up more. From my phone. From my to-do list. From the internal noise that says I must “earn” rest. The truth for peak performance? Rest isn’t earned, it’s required. And when we pause to look up, we find that the best things are often right in front of us.

Leaders significantly impacted through our work: 164

 

We’re tracking this number monthly, not for vanity metrics, but as a reminder of the ripple effect created when we choose to live and lead from vision. Every interaction, workshop, keynote, and coaching conversation contributes to something bigger, evidence of what happens when purpose drives performance.

 

Our Vision: Be the one to show the world how truly great life can be.

Our Mission: Significantly impact the lives of over 1 million leaders by amplifying their gifts, voices, lives, and businesses through high-level collaboration, personal growth, and learning.

 

This month’s 164 leaders are part of that mission in motion, a living example of what it means to lead Above the Line, to lift others higher, and to embody what “Amplified Life” truly means.

 

Want to join us?  Click HERE to tell us about your team, and we’ll reach out to learn more!

 

Download the October Reflection Template → Click HERE to download.

Last week, flying from Miami to the West Coast, I caught myself in an old nervous system pattern, the one that whispers, “You have so much to do.”

 

It’s subtle, but it can creep up quickly, and it’s powerful. That thought immediately created an anxious energy inside me, narrowing my focus and shrinking my creativity and effectiveness. It reminded me how fast “I have a lot on my plate” can morph into “I am overwhelmed.”

 

The truth?
I didn’t have more to do than usual.
I was just feeling busy.

 

That feeling, for me, is years of conditioning I’ve worked hard to break—the chronic, daily overactivation of my nervous system, coupled with the pressure I put on myself and the desire to be accepted and approved. Maybe you can relate. It’s built in you; it’s for sure built in me, in my subconscious.

 

And left unchecked, even after all the work I’ve done to unwind that old patterned conditioning, it steals the very things that make me effective as a leader: clarity, innovation, calm, and presence.

 

Yet I also know I’ve built new neuropathways. I’ve built disciplines, systems, and standards that drive my life and leadership. For years, when this feeling would arise, I’d tell myself: “There is plenty of time and money for everything.”

 

Simple, and wildly effective. It shifts me from scarcity (not enough time, money, energy, staff) to grounded, focused attention.

 

So last week on the plane, I took four deep breaths, longer exhales than inhales, and did three things:

I felt deep appreciation that I recognized that old “busy” feeling quickly and realigned.

 

The truth that most people miss is that we toss around the phrase, “I’ve just been so busy.”

 

But busy isn’t a fact, it’s a state of mind. It’s how your nervous system interprets motion without meaning, effort without alignment, or urgency without clarity.

 

You can run a company, lead a team, train for a marathon, parent, and travel weekly and not feel busy.  You can also have one meeting on your calendar and feel overwhelmed.

 

Because busyness isn’t what’s on your plate, it’s how you’re holding it.

That’s the shift: chaotic motion → conscious momentum.

 

When that internal buzz of “I don’t have enough time” shows up, try this three-question reset:

Or pair it with my go-to affirmation + four deep breaths:
“There’s plenty of time and money for everything.”

 

Do this and watch how fast “busy” dissolves into clarity.

 

High achievers don’t need more hours. We need more presence in the hours we already have.

 

Leaders who live and lead Above the Line aren’t the ones who do the most, they’re the ones who do what matters most without losing themselves in the process.

 

So today, instead of saying “I’m busy,” try:
“I’m focused.”
“I’m present.”
“I’m doing the next right thing.”

 

When you lead from that place, your schedule doesn’t shrink; your capacity expands.

 

Drop it in the comments or email me at hello@carmenohling.com. I’d love to hear it and share a few back with the community.

 

I sat down on the tall brown stool on my balcony in Miami Beach, setting my journal, pen, coffee, and water gently on the table in front of me. I took a deep breath, felt my shoulders drop, and looked up. The early morning sun had just started illuminating the tops of the deep green palm trees. The ocean shimmered in the distance, calm and endless.

 

In that moment, no milestones reached for the day, no boxes checked on the to-do list, yet I felt fully alive.

Not because I had accomplished anything.

But because I had finally slowed down long enough to notice.

 

And I realized: This is happiness. Not the version we’re sold based on success, acquisition, or approval, but a state that’s always available, if we’re present enough to choose it.

 

At a recent keynote, Harvard professor and best-selling author Arthur Brooks (co-author of Build the Life You Want with Oprah) offered a deceptively simple formula for happiness:

 

 

No mention of titles. No need for a net worth benchmark. No endless list of goals.

 

Brooks calls these the macronutrients of happiness, essential, non-negotiable, and nourishing for the long game of life and leadership:

Brooks also identifies four pillars of a meaningful life:

Faith. Family. Friendship. Work.

Faith doesn’t have to be religious; it can be trust in something bigger than yourself. Nature. Service. Purpose.

 

And then he dropped this truth bomb:

For years, I was the high-functioning achiever. Maybe you are, too.

Chasing the next thing. Then the next. Then the next.

Each milestone moved the goalpost. Rest, play, or even celebration? It was all postponed because I hadn’t “earned it” yet. And every time I hit a goal, I raised the bar again, thinking this time the satisfaction would last.

But it never did.

It wasn’t until I slowed down, really slowed down, that I realized:

I had been bargaining with my happiness.

I believed I could buy it with productivity, perfection, or performance. But happiness isn’t a transaction. It’s a practice, simply because it’s always available.

Today, I measure success differently.  By what I feel, and by what I help others feel.

If the answer is yes, I know we are building something special, sustainable, and significantly impactful.

 

This isn’t about rejecting ambition. It’s about redefining it.

 

It’s building the internal landscape of a fulfilling life, one that you don’t have to escape from, numb out in, or earn back with hustle culture burnout.

If you’re a CEO, executive, founder, or changemaker, here’s the reality:

 

 

The energy you bring into a room, your presence, your clarity, your groundedness.  That’s what sets the tone. Teams don’t just follow what you say. They mirror what you model.

 

That’s why the leaders we coach aren’t just refining strategy, they’re redefining identity.

Because leadership isn’t just about what you do.
It’s about who you’re becoming in the process.

So I’ll leave you with the question I started with:

 

 

I’d love to hear what this sparked for you. Drop a comment below or email me directly at carmen@carmenohling.com

 

Let’s stop postponing peace.
Let’s build leadership legacies that feel as good on the inside as they look on paper.

I spent 16 years inside JPMorgan. I saw the culture Jamie Dimon built, and I met him a few times. One of those moments that stuck with me wasn’t a strategy session or a speech.

 

It was Jamie walking the floor in dad jeans and New Balance sneakers. No flash. No performance. Just a leader who was direct, visionary, no-BS, accountable, and, above all, an encourager.

 

 

And if you read his latest 2025 Shareholder Letter, you see why JPMorgan Chase is still at the top: he keeps hammering on the basics that most leaders ignore. Complacency, arrogance, bureaucracy, and BS kill companies. He says it outright. He pushes leaders to weed out bureaucracy every day, to run leaner, to listen harder, and to stay humble.

 

He told his executives, “It’s your job to coach. Don’t outsource it.”

 

That’s the truth most organizations miss. Titles don’t build culture. Coaching does. Not “rah rah” pep talks but the kind of coaching that holds people accountable, builds trust, and inspires vision.

 

 

And Dimon’s not just saying it in his letter. In his recent Fortune interview, he went further. He said the next CEO cannot simply be the “smartest in the room.” Instead, they need to be the pied piper.  Someone who can rally people forward, motivate through presence, and build a culture of trust from the inside out.

 

That’s how JPMorgan stays not just relevant, but dominant,  not just for the next five years, but for the next century.

 

This is exactly the kind of leadership shift we help organizations make every day. We take the principles Jamie Dimon is pointing to, coach, motivator, visionary, and make them practical, embodied, and real for leaders and teams.

 

Here’s what we specifically do:

We’ve seen firsthand how these shifts change organizations:

We specialize in leaders and organizations who are ready to be bold and elevate beyond “business as usual”:

What Jamie Dimon knows, and what most leaders are still waking up to,  is that the future belongs to coaches, not managers or in-the-moment performers. Leaders who build trust. Leaders who can speak a vision so clearly that people don’t just follow, they join.

 

That’s how JPMorgan Chase will write its next chapter.

And it’s how your organization can, too.

 

If the next CEO of JPMorgan must be a coach to keep the #1 bank in the world at the top, what does that say about your own leadership?

Last month, I received a message on LinkedIn that sparked a familiar and necessary conversation. It was about balance.  You know, that elusive state we’re all supposed to be striving for, especially as leaders.

In response to the LinkedIn message, I answered honestly. And when the next question came, “So how do you create balance?” I found myself intuitively knowing my answer, but what do others think, and is this something that people are searching for?  So, I did what many of us do: I Googled it.

 

I searched: “How do I have balance in life?”

 

Twenty-eight pages in, I stopped clicking. Not because I ran out of answers, but because none of the answers were actually helping. They were feeding the same loop of over-functioning and under-replenishing. Here’s a snapshot of what I found:

→ So I need more energy to search for more energy?

 

→ But what about joy? Restoration? Time to just be?

 

→ A great idea in theory, but how often do we actually do that, especially as leaders?

 

At The Amplified Life Company, we coach leaders to stop chasing balance and start living with intention. I shared three core principles that I return to again and again, both personally and in my work with teams:

 

1. Let Go of the Myth of Balance
Balance is not just hard; it’s unachievable. And believing we should be able to “do it all” creates guilt, comparison, and eventual burnout. Instead, aim for integration, which is a daily practice of aligning your time, energy, and presence with what matters most. It’s not perfect, and it won’t be evenly distributed. But it’s real. It’s sustainable.

 

2. Honor Your Season
This is a leadership mindset shift. Every leader, every team, every organization has seasons. What does this season require of you? What does it release you from? Stop dragging expectations from last quarter, or next year, into today’s decisions. When you name the season you’re in, your choices become clearer, your meetings become more focused, and your team feels more aligned.

 

3. Live from Your Best Self, Daily
Define who you are at your highest and reverse engineer your routines to support that version of you. For teams, this means clarifying roles, simplifying priorities, and focusing on what actually moves the needle. Ask: what are the 20 percent of activities that generate 80 percent of our impact and energy? And then ruthlessly protect time for those.

 

As a leader, your energy sets the tone for your team. When you’re constantly chasing balance, your team feels it. When you move with intention, clarity, and grace, they follow suit. And when you stop overcommitting and start choosing alignment, you create permission for your people to do the same.

 

Let’s be honest: moving from balance to integration may feel like a loss at first. We’ve been conditioned to measure our worth by our capacity to juggle. But real leadership is not about managing everything. It’s about discerning what truly matters and leading from that place, consistently.

 

That shift starts with you.

 

 

 

For me?
It feels like freedom.
It feels like alignment.
It feels like energy that replenishes instead of depletes.
It feels like leading from my best and inviting others to do the same.

 

Are you ready to let go of balance and lead from a place of meaningful integration?

 

Curious what this could look like for your team or leadership journey?  Message me on LinkedIn or visit carmenohling.com to learn more about how we help leaders and teams integrate what matters most.

September 15, 2025, marks the first day of a fast my husband and I are doing with our church, Transformation Church. Over the years, I’ve fasted from many things: sugar, alcohol, social media, and even TV.

 

This time, my husband smiled and said, “I think yours should be coffee.”

 

Instant resistance. I love my morning ritual. The warmth, the smell, the rhythm. I agreed, but inside I knew, I wasn’t convinced.

 

All weekend, the question lingered: Is coffee really what God is asking me to release?

 

If you’ve never prayed for direction, here’s what it feels like for me:

 

And then you wait. Sometimes the answer comes as a whisper. Sometimes it comes as the same lesson repeating itself until you finally learn.

 

That’s what happened to me over the past two weeks. Everywhere I looked, I saw nudges about focus, potential, and execution.

 

And then it hit me:

Here’s the guidance I received:

 

 

That stung. But it also freed me.

 

Instead of fasting from coffee, I’m fasting from false structures, the ones that make me feel productive but actually keep me from my 20%.

 

Here’s how it looks in practice:

The formula is simple:

Seeking < Solitude in Season + Structure = Synergy

 

And the leadership principle behind it is one I learned 27 years ago at JP Morgan Chase:

 

Most leaders know this. Fewer live it.

 

That’s why they stay exhausted, busy in the 80% instead of impactful in the 20%.

 

But you don’t have to. You can fast from what’s distracting you, and finally lead in the 20%.

 

So here’s my question for you: