Inspired Forward

Cut Through the Confusion and Chaos to Live a Well-Organized Life

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Why Encouraging Words Make You Stronger

Imagine it. You’re 100 yards from the finish line of the race, flagging badly. You don’t know if you can even make it to the end.

You’re Just. So. Tired.

You squint to look at the crowd of people up ahead and you see your dad waving to you. He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts. You can just barely make out his words.

“You can do it! I believe in you!”

Suddenly you feel invigorated! You can do this! You can reach the finish line of the race no problem! Your energy is renewed, and you muster the strength to put on a burst of speed.

You cross the finish line a few paces in front of the person behind you – who placed second.

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What just happened?

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Eighteen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week eighteen: June 10-16, 2018.

This week I got diverted from pre-set goals on a path that I think is going to bring a lot of good things.

Medium, the platform for anyone to write on.

I’ve started writing there, and so far I’m seeing really good results for only having written five unlocked posts.

In any case, this week is a lesson in following some rabbit trails that happen to pay off!

week eighteen road

What I Said I’d Do

  • Actually finish Simple Pin Master Course (since the FAST course took precedence for my call with Demir)
  • Schedule time to watch at least 2 of the remaining videos I have to watch from Mindset University (it’s been a while since I’ve watched those videos!)
  • Be intentional with my time tracking
  • Write out my quarterly goals for July – September
  • Finish scanning my hand-written notes into Evernote

What I Actually Worked On

  • Wrote short weekday posts on Medium
  • Decided to start sending out a second weekly email (not an RSS update on new posts, but an actual campaign with other updates including the links to Medium articles, AND a weekly recommendation from Amazon). The first email will go out on Thursday at 8 AM in your time zone, so be sure to sign up for the Inspired List!
  • I FINISHED SIMPLE PIN MASTER COURSE!
  • Watched 2 more Mindset University videos – this is so much faster at 2x speed!
  • Finished scanning hand-written notes into Evernote (but have yet to tag or appropriately name them)
  • Tracked my time for a second week in a row!

[Read more…]

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4 Things You Need to Realize Before Quitting

If there was ever a sure-fire formula to feeling shitty about yourself, it would be starting something good – working towards your goals – and then quitting.

Nobody wants to be a quitter.

I’m not talking about people who smoke or do drugs or other terrible vices that nobody should do – I’m talking about the things in life that make life worth living. Things that make life vibrant and awesome.

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Quitting is worse than never starting because of a few things:

  1. You’ve had a taste of success and fulfillment from doing the thing, and now all you taste is the ash in your mouth from giving up.
  2. People who have seen you doing the thing will now see you as a failure or a quitter – it’s not just self-image. It’s social image, too, even though I believe that social image shouldn’t matter for most things.
  3. It eats away at your mind as something you should pick up again, but –
  4. you don’t, because that would be admitting that you never should’ve quit, and you’ve lost all that time on it already anyway, so why even bother?

I quit this blog after three posts in 2017.

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Seventeen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week seventeen: June 3-9, 2018.

WOW.

This week has been a game-changer, despite my usual slump starting on Thursday.

Time tracking is going to be the key to getting shit done in my life; I can tell already how powerful it is.

My only regret is not starting my WAHS journey with the Focus & Control Time Mastery course.

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What I Said I’d Do

  • Finish the F.A.S.T. Course
  • Finish Simple Pin Master Course
  • Track my time down to the half-hour increments all week

What I Actually Worked On

  • Finished the F.A.S.T. Course! (Also known as the Focus & Control Time Mastery Course)
  • Tracked my time down to the half-hour increments for 7 days
  • Planned out much of the next 7 weeks in my time tracker

Sunday, Day 113 – Time Tracking

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” Joseph Campbell

Well, I’m a planner. I love planning things. I pretty much live by my plans. More recently though, I’ve been getting better at going with the flow and doing things that make me uncomfortable – because 1) I know I need to do them, and 2) I respect the people who asked me to do them, and I don’t want to let them down.

Maybe that’s what this quote means.

If I always lived according to plan, I’d never do anything uncomfortable.

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How to Stop Worrying About Imposter Syndrome

Have you ever felt like you’re just an imposter at work? Like you didn’t actually do anything to deserve the position you hold, and you wonder why your boss keeps you around. It’s not like you actually know what you’re doing, right? There’s a name for this: imposter syndrome.

I had imposter syndrome big time at my first real job. I never really felt like I knew what I was doing or if I was doing it particularly well. In reality, I must have known that I wouldn’t have been hired if I didn’t actually know what I was doing, but that didn’t help. 

Imposter syndrome is a form of self-invalidation.

  • “There’s someone else who knows more about this than I do. I don’t deserve this position.”
  • “I can’t believe I thought I could do this – I suck at this.”
  • “Why did she even hire me? I don’t know how to do anything!”
  • “I was just lucky – I doubt I could replicate that.”

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Honestly, I think all of us have these thoughts at some point in our careers. 

When we’re stepping into a new role, a new industry, it’s normal to ask questions, but we tell ourselves we should know it all already, and that we’ll look stupid or fake if we ask any questions.

Let me repeat that: it’s normal to ask questions.

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Sixteen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week sixteen: May 27-June 2, 2018.

The beginning of this week went great! I stuck to my planned work, shuffled things around when I needed to, and generally kept momentum.

Until Thursday.

For some reason on Thursday, I just had a “meh” day and that rolled into Friday, so for those two days, I didn’t really do any work besides the bare minimum of circulating Thursday’s post in a couple Facebook groups.

Saturday wasn’t that much different for most of the day, to be honest. I didn’t have a concrete plan of what I wanted to get done (since the last 2 days I hadn’t done anything) so I felt a little paralyzed. I compensated by reading a lot more Fanfiction than I should have and taking an unintended nap.

Unfortunately, with my derailment the last few days of this week, I did not finish Simple Pin Master Course.

Demir Bentley is right – we enjoy planned and structured time far more than we do during unstructured time.

Here’s to figuring out some shit and structuring my week better!

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What I Said I’d Do

  • Start and get through half of the F.A.S.T. Time Mastery course – I’m aiming to actually have this done in the next two weeks because my one-on-one call with Demir is on June 10th! That’ll put me right on track to be finished by the call.
  • Finish Time Management Magic
  • Finish Simple Pin Master Course
  • Add Ruth Soukup’s Do It Scared podcast to my regular Sunday routine
  • Outline a post that will be entirely about an affiliate product

[Read more…]

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My Favorite Ways to Use Nature Therapy

I grew up away from city lights. My parents live on five acres out in the woods, with quiet neighbors and a big open field that invites the stars to look down on their land. It’s the perfect place for nature therapy as a child.

Sometimes when it got stormy out at night – but didn’t rain – I would quietly go outside and stand in the backyard, looking out across our huge field and humbled by the power of the storm.

In those moments, I felt close to God and nature.

Those were the times it felt easiest to pray.

I remember one summer when I stayed with my godparents in Wyoming, a storm swept in. The winds were strong, the thunder impressive, and best of all, it was night.

I stood on their deck after dark and watched. I listened. And I spoke.

Nature is incredibly powerful. Storms, winds, hurricanes, tornadoes, natural disasters – all of these are awe-inspiring and deserve respect.

For me, standing in the storms felt calming. Watching thunder and lightning and rain pour down from an eastern Washington riverfront porch made me feel small, but also loved. It’s a form of therapy.

Watching thunder and lightning and rain pour down from an eastern Washington riverfront porch made me feel small, but also loved. It's a form of therapy. Click To Tweet

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No distractions from cell phones, TVs, or laptops. There isn’t any binge-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Doctor Who when you’re standing in the storms and listening.

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Fifteen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week fifteen: May 20-May 26, 2018.

I spent this week in some pretty muggy and hot weather.

Tulsa, Oklahoma is definitely not my favorite place, but I met a lot of good people and learned quite a bit from the RCA workshop I attended. In fact, it’s applicable to more than just investigating incidents and problems at work: root cause analysis gave me some tools to use in my personal and business lives too. 

JTM Week Fifteen Instagram

What I Said I’d Do

  • Send a re-engagement campaign to my subscribers
  • Finish getting GDPR compliant
  • Take some time to think about my strategies and plans. (so vague, I know)

What I Actually Worked On

  • Sent re-engagement campaign to subscribers.
  • Finished getting site GDPR compliant
  • Finished watching several summit interview videos on work performance
  • Progressed through several more videos from both Simple Pin Master Course and Time Management Magic

Sunday, Day 99 – Flight of the Suitcase Handle

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” John W. Gardner

I’ve never really liked using erasers. I liked that they made my work neater, sometimes, but using one meant I’d made a mistake and had to get rid of it in order to have a perfect end result. Sometimes the erasers would smudge, and you’d end up with an imperfect thing anyway.

Life doesn’t have any erasers.

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5 Reasons Why Pets Can Improve Your Mental Health

If you own a pet, I’m willing to bet that you’re less stressed than your non-pet-owning friends. In fact, there’s quite a bit of research and studies on how owning – or just petting – an animal can significantly decrease your stress levels, as well as all the negative health effects that come from being too stressed out.

I grew up with animals. My family had dogs (one at a time and the longest-lived were boxers), a cat, horses, chickens, fish, birds (at times), guinea pigs, rabbits, and even a hamster. My favorites among these were the dogs and the cat because they were the ones I was around the most.

I remember spending a lot of time with the dog, just petting her, hugging her, and keeping her close. I likely didn’t consciously realize it at the time, but petting those puppers helped with how I felt. The husband and I have a cat now, and I could immediately see the positive impact she’s had on our lives. We’re laughing more, smiling more, and I feel less wound up after having pet her.

Sometimes she acts like a dog and it’s so cute.

5 Reasons Why Your Mental Health is Better With a Pet

I’m feeling less stressed out just writing this!

I mentioned in my post on keeping your sanity in college that if there’s an animal shelter nearby, go volunteer there! The schools that put on those “Pet the Stress Away” events know what’s up. During dead week and finals week, what you really need is fifteen minutes petting a dog.

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Fourteen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week fourteen: May 13-May 19, 2018.

This week I was actually on business travel to Colorado Springs! I was able to take advantage of the great, slightly bipolar weather to hike, explore downtown, and participate in the Pokemon Go Community Day (Charmander!).

JTM Week Fourteen Instagram

What I Said I’d Do

  • Get my site GDPR compliant
  • Get the next 2 Thursday posts scheduled
  • Finish up the rest of last week’s to-do list (because the weekend was poorly scheduled).

What I Actually Worked On

  • Got a privacy policy done and uploaded
  • Started noting where I need to update forms
  • Added a cookie banner at the bottom of the site
  • Got the next 2 Thursday posts scheduled
  • Started working on future posts
  • Finished up last week’s to-do list!

Sunday, Day 92 – Mad Woman

“Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.” Alan Alda

Only you can be your version of creative. Only I can give you these weekly summaries exactly how I give them because it’s by me. I’m my own brand of creativity, just like everyone else is their own brands. That’s the cool thing about creative work – something one person does could not have been done by someone else.

Sure, you might end up with something similar, but never identical. That’s why schools take plagiarism so seriously. Plagiarism in itself is proof that no two people can ever independently produce the same piece of work.

So why shouldn’t you be your brand of creative?

It can be scary.

That’s why Alda asks you to be brave.

Be brave enough that your need to share your creativity is stronger than the fear holding you back.

Keep Reading!