Inspired Forward

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

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Twenty-Two

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week twenty-two: July 8-14, 2018.

This is going to be a very short JTM post because I spent my week volunteering at a day camp for Type 1 Diabetics. I’d gotten most everything ready to go beforehand: social media, scheduling posts, and shortlists for what to do each day.

I ignored a lot of it, to be honest.

In any case, this week felt both long and short, and I’m excited for next year!

week twenty-two camp boats

The lake where diabetes camp is hosted. Stunning day!

What I Said I’d Do

  • Write for 30 minutes each morning.

What I Actually Worked On

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25 Truth Bombs to Make You Re-Think Type 1 Diabetes

I’ve had type 1 diabetes since age two. Diabetes education is near and dear to my heart, especially since I volunteer every year at a day camp for young, and often newly-diagnosed type 1’s.

type 1 diabetes tools

Let’s dive right in.

1. Type 1 Diabetes is not preventable.

You either get it or you don’t. Changing your lifestyle won’t prevent your pancreas from attacking itself.

2. Type 1 Diabetes is not curable at the moment.

It’s only treatable. Insulin is not a cure, it’s a treatment.

The science community has been telling us that a cure is 5 years away for over 50 years. The closest we’ve gotten is cell replacement therapy, but that’s just trading insulin for anti-rejection medication.

Personally, I’m looking forward to artificial pancreases and closed-loop insulin pumps.

3. I’m “allowed” to have sugar. I just choose not to.

There are only two things I can’t have: poison, and cookies made with poison. It’s an old joke intended to get the point across that, as long as we correct appropriately, literally nothing is off limits. 

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Twenty-One

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week twenty-one: July 1-7, 2018.

I hope all my American readers had a great Fourth of July!

I capitalized on the time off work to spend on the blog, doing both writing and administrative work. In general, I feel like this week has been all right, especially in terms of my to-do lists. But I think I really knocked it out of the park on the writing part since all 5 of August’s Thursday posts got finished and scheduled!

Yay!

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What I Said I’d Do

  • Re-evaluating how much I can actually do in any given day, and cut out the to-dos that just don’t seem to get done.
  • Write a lot from Wednesday through Saturday to make the most of the holiday.
  • Finish Module 4 of Intentional Blog AND all their Action Steps
  • Make a plan for 30 Days or Less to VA Success

What I Actually Worked On

  • Got better at deciding which to-dos to actually DO
  • Scheduled the all 5 Thursday posts for August and got 2/3 of a post for September written

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10 Reasons to Write Every Day, Even If You Suck

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People who write on a regular basis are more likely to have their shit together.

I totally made that up, but you’re paying attention now, aren’t you?

What if I told you that if you sat down to write for at least ten minutes every day, you’d feel more in control of your life?

What if you kept writing every day until it became a habit that you pretty much couldn’t function without?

And what if those words you wrote every day eventually turned into a book or some other passion project?

All those things are possible.

For me, when I was in college, I wrote pretty much every day for my Fanfiction magnum opus, a 230,000 word Harry Potter story that’s still getting reviews, favorites, and follows to this day, and the last chapter was posted on December 11th, 2015.

What if you wrote every day and discovered that when you journal your feelings and emotions onto the page, you felt less burdened by them?

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Twenty

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week twenty: June 24-30, 2018.

This week felt like I was hanging on for dear life as time swept forward. While I still managed to track my time, I didn’t stick with my plans, mostly in the evenings. I usually write daily summaries in the evenings so that my weekends don’t get eaten up by writing this, yet this week I didn’t write any summaries at all before bed.

week twenty

What I Said I’d Do

  • Finish module 4 of Intentional Blog
  • Finish module 1 of 30 Days or Less to VA Success
  • Watch 2 more Mindset University videos
  • Finish writing my Thursday posts through August. I have them scheduled through July, so I only need to get 5 more done!
  • Pre-write Medium posts as the week goes on. My goal will be to have them ready through July 13th. A tall order, but I think I might be able to do it!

What I Actually Worked On

  • Wrote Medium posts only one day in advance. Didn’t get through July 13th.
  • Finished most of the content for 3/5 of the August Thursday posts.
  • Organized blog meta into Airtable
  • Finished Mindset University!

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Why Being Childfree Needs To Be Taken Seriously

I’m going to say two things together that are going to sound totally contradictory and might make some people mad.

I’m a conservative Christian, and a childfree woman.

Go ahead and pop some popcorn if you want, this is going to be a wild ride.

childfree choice two doors

When I was a little girl, I thought I’d grow up and be a mom.

When I was a teenager, I figured I’d eventually find a husband and have maybe two or three kids. I thought about what names I liked.

When I was in college, my ex-boyfriend and I discussed kids. Same thing – two or three, eventually.

There are many reasons for couples to have children, but none of those reasons should be “because it’s what couples do.”

The husband and I definitely discussed kids, and we were kind of “meh” about them until shortly after we married when we both simultaneously and separately realized that we, in fact, did not want children.

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The Journey to Magnificence: Week Nineteen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week nineteen: June 17-23, 2018.

So decision fatigue is real, and the end of this week really got whipped by it. I spent most of this week at a Management Kaizen class in Los Angeles and suffered the anxiety of dealing with Californian drivers in their natural habitat.

On the plus side, I published a piece on Medium every day, and finally got to see The Greatest Showman.

week nineteen

What I Said I’d Do

  • Continue writing a short post on Medium every weekday, and a locked post on Saturday
  • Finish Module 1 in 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success
  • Finish Module 3 in Intentional Blog, and start/finish Module 4
  • Watch 2 more videos in Mindset University
  • Continue fine-tuning my time budget/tracker

What I Actually Worked On

  • Achieved my Medium goals
  • Started Module 1 of 30 Days or Less to VA Success
  • Finished Module 3 of Intentional Blog, and got halfway through Module 4
  • Watched 2 more Mindset University videos
  • Tracked time for a third week 🙂
  • Networked with the people I met in the class in CA

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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.

encouraging words top

 

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!

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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.

4-things-you-need-to-realize-before-quitting

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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