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

May 21, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

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!).

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!

May 17, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

The Stress Associated with Type 1 Diabetes

I’ve mentioned before that I have Type 1 Diabetes. Put simply, that means my pancreas doesn’t produce insulin, and I have to give myself that insulin. I use an insulin pump, but others do injections.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to say “diabetes” and mean Type 1. Type 2 is a different disease.

Diabetes is considered an invisible illness. There are no outward, physically visible symptoms that show up. Unless you’re a regular Sherlock, one look at me wouldn’t tell you that I’m a diabetic.

My insulin pump is so slim that it hides neatly under my clothes. My CGM sensor sits on my arm, a little bump that’s usually unnoticeable.

But I see it all. I feel all the highs and the lows.

I feel the stress.

Diabetes isn’t a joke – it can kill people. Being too high or too low can spell disaster. The magic is hitting the sweet spot with my blood sugars – making them look like this:

I believe that my diabetes gave my mom gray hair. She woke up in the middle of the night every night to check my blood sugar when I was a kid. I sometimes wonder if she still wakes up at 2 AM thinking she has to go check me.

That’s what diabetes does to people.

It trains you into a new “normal” that never goes away.

Keep Reading!

May 14, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

The Journey to Magnificence: Week Thirteen

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week thirteen: May 6-May 12, 2018.

It makes sense to change the format of this post occasionally. If you’re a regular reader you’ll notice that the list of past posts is now at the bottom, so not to clutter the bulk of what I want to share with you about my week.

This week was actually a rousing success in terms of getting the planned stuff done! I kept my list SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. I was specific about time spent on things, the number of things, how many words to write, etc.

It looks like it worked out pretty well!

What I Said I’d Do

Spend an hour doing email management, since I have almost 800 unread emails. SOB
Watch one video from Simple Pin Master Course.
Watch two videos from Time Management Magic.
Finish and schedule the post for May 17th.
Write at least 1000 words for the post for May 24th.
And lastly, be intentional about my days and realistic about how much I can fit into them.

What I Actually Worked On

Spent an hour doing email management, but didn’t get many emails marked as read
Watched 2 videos from Time Management Magic
Finished and scheduled the post for May 17th
Wrote 852/1000 words on the post for May 24th
Was surprisingly successful at being more intentional about what I can fit into a day!

Keep Reading!

May 10, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

18 Tips for Not Losing Your Mind in College

I have a degree in mechanical engineering. It took me three and a half years to get it at a state school after transferring from a community college. Doing it this way allowed me to skip the obligatory freshman classes and all the general studies requirements. But still…

It was tough.

Sometimes I look back and think that getting my degree was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life.

I didn’t particularly like my classes. Some of the subject matter was interesting, sure, but mechanical engineering wasn’t (and still isn’t) my passion. I appreciated the good professors more than the subjects they taught – in some cases, my worst subjects were taught by my favorite professors.

However, I somehow made it through with only one meltdown (that I can remember) and no all-nighters. The closest I got to an all-nighter was 2 AM at a classmate’s apartment for a project due the next day.

Now, I’m three years out of the undergraduate grind, but the things I’m going to tell you are applicable to keeping your sanity while still taking classes.

Let’s dive right in!

1. Sleep. For the love of God, SLEEP.

You do yourself no favors by staying up all night and stumbling into your lab class half-awake, having forgotten your homework on your desk. There is research that sleeping helps to organize what you’ve learned, so studying right before bed will help you retain the knowledge – but only if you actually go to sleep! Staying up all night cramming for a test will do you more harm than good.

2. Find a food solution that works for you.

After my first year, I never set foot inside a dining hall again. It was cheap, low-quality food that somehow cost more than it did to go to Winco every weekend and make my own meals. Depending on your college, you might have a stellar dining hall, and will never have to cook for yourself in school.

Keep Reading!

May 7, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

The Journey to Magnificence: Week Twelve

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week twelve: April 29-May 5, 2018.

This week has been an exercise in ignoring my course to-do list. I’ve had Simple Pin Master Course and Time Management Magic (not to mention Intentional Blog) on my to-do list for weeks, and I haven’t made much headway on them for a bit. That goes, I guess, with an evolving list of priorities, the biggest priority of which is keeping up with blog content and not totally losing my mind.

That being said, the biggest things I’m feeling proud about are figuring out how to implement content upgrades through MailerLite – and getting them live on their respective posts:

What I Actually Worked On

Peak Work Performance videos
Content upgrades
Brainstorming for some new Fanfiction ideas (totally not blog related but – writing related. And I’m counting that towards my word counts!)

Keep Reading!

May 3, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

How to Recognize Fundamental Attribution Error

Have you ever heard the phrase “Fundamental Attribution Error” before? Put simply, it’s the term for when you attribute someone’s behavior to their character rather than their outside circumstances. Alternatively – holding someone else to a higher standard than you hold yourself.

Why could this be dangerous, and why is it called an error?

Unless you’re a saint on the road, everyone who drives falls victim to Fundamental Attribution Error.

On your drive to work, you get cut off. You honk at the offender, cursing his bad decision-making and decide he (or she) must be the stupidest driver to ever pass the licensing exam.

Of course, you would NEVER cut someone off.

Except…you did. Yesterday.

Perhaps… perhaps the person who just made a poor driving decision is late to a meeting. Maybe he’s rushing to the hospital to see his dying grandmother before she passes away.

Now, I’m not excusing his bad driving. I’m saying that there are other reasons to make poor decisions than innate character.

Unless you're a saint on the road, everyone who drives falls victim to Fundamental Attribution Error. Click To Tweet

When you cut someone off, you grimace and squeal “Sorry!!” even though they can’t hear you. You rationalize your decision based on external factors, like how late you are to work. It makes you feel better about what just happened, but the driver YOU just cut off is now thinking you’re the dumbest driver that ever lived.

We all do it.

And it’s dangerous.

Keep Reading!

April 30, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

The Journey to Magnificence: Week Eleven

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week eleven: April 22-28, 2018.

The Journey to Magnificence is a series of weekly summaries of my journey through courses and resources provided by or found through the Work at Home School, hosted and delivered by Caitlin Pyle.

If you missed a post or found this one first, the others can be found here:

I’m starting to feel the demotivation…yikes! It’s time to re-motivate myself!

While this week was pretty busy in terms of life, I still feel like I got some good stuff done. It does feel less than other weeks, and I have to learn to live with the ups and downs of productivity.

That’s for sure!

Course(s) of the Week

Intentional Blog
Simple Pin Master Course
Time Management Magic

Sunday, Day 71 – The Cat of the Matter

“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” Lyndon B. Johnson

Whatever your feelings are on LBJ, he’s right that we need to stop living in the past. There’s nothing we can do to change past mistakes, but we CAN change our actions and mindset going forward.

What’s done is done.

What’s next is changeable.

Keep Reading!

April 26, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

5 Reasons Why a Morning Routine Transformed My Life

Do you have a morning routine? Does it seem like literally everyone is asking you that question? Well, it’s my turn!

There’s a ton of blog posts and articles out there on why you should have a morning routine and why you should do some arbitrary number of things or it doesn’t count. They’ll include things that they think you should do because they think it’s important, like having breakfast or working out early. (I’ll write later about why telling somebody what they should do is a bad idea.)

The reason everyone and their dog is jostling to tell you about their morning routines and why you should have your own is that they WORK.

The intention of a morning routine (or any routine, really: it can be a nightly routine if you’re not an early bird) is to create consistency in your day so that you know what’s coming, you know what you’re going to do, and you have something familiar to return to if you feel like you’re drowning in chaos. For me, it’s a way to get several things done that I know I won’t be able to concentrate enough on in the evenings or might run out of time to do if I don’t do them first thing.

Keep Reading!

April 23, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

The Journey to Magnificence: Week Ten

Welcome to The Journey to Magnificence! This is week ten: April 15-21, 2018.

If you missed a post or found this one first, the others can be found here:

This week it feels like a plan is coming together. I’m getting a better idea of what I want to do and where I want to go. Sometimes I’m driven more by external motivators than internal ones – such as a trip in the future that I need to save for or meeting expectations of someone else. Now, I understand that this isn’t ideal. I should be more motivated by INTERNAL things, right? But my thing is that while the initial motivators are EXTERNAL, they become internal. I want to go on a trip in two years, so I have to save. I want to feel valued and valuable at my job, so I have to do good work. The key is to not let those motivators stay external.

Course(s) of the Week

Committed Coaching Calls
Simple Pin Master Course

Keep Reading!

April 19, 2018 by Colleen Mitchell

What You Need to Know About Gaslighting

You’re not crazy, insane, or overreacting. You’re human.

This is what you should remember when someone gaslights you.

What is gaslighting?

Gaslighting is when someone does or says something, and later tells you it didn’t happen the way you remember it or even happen at all.

It’s also the term for when you move all the living room furniture an inch to the left every day and act like your parents are crazy for stubbing their toes every night on the coffee table.

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Here’s an example:

Your mother-in-law makes a comment that you’re an unfit mother and that your child should live with her instead.

You react: “Excuse me?! WTF did you just say??”

“What? I didn’t say anything. You must have imagined it. You’re clearly overreacting to-” she huffs, “-SOMEthing.”

That’s gaslighting.

You're not crazy, insane, or overreacting. You're human. Click To Tweet

You have every right to feel upset because this person is insisting that you’re remembering wrong – or no, it didn’t even happen.

The definition of “gaslight” as a verb is “to manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.”

When you think of it like that, it’s so insidious and dark.

Keep Reading!