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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.
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!
Sunday, Day 134 – Welcome Encouragement & New Friends
“Body language and tone of voice – not words – are our most powerful assessment tools.” Christopher Voss
Have you ever had someone say something to you with their hands on their hips (or their arms are crossed), eyes rolling, tone extremely sarcastic, but their words were something like “Great job!”
Odds are, you wouldn’t believe them for one second.
In fact, tone and body language account for more of what you “say” than your words do, by a significant margin.
Let that be a reminder to always be aware of what our body and tone say because those might send a different message than the one you’re trying to achieve with your words.
This afternoon I had a call with one of the lovely admins of the WAHS Student Community Facebook group discussing my experience with the program. While I haven’t made my investment back yet, I have no doubt that I’m gaining the momentum that will get me there.
Day 22 of Time Tracking, Complete!
Monday, Day 135 – Strategy Session is Strategic
“For me, I don’t think about size – I focus more on being powerful and confident.” Simone Biles
It doesn’t matter how small or big we are—it’s how we use our power and confidence. Size doesn’t determine intelligence or drive. It just doesn’t. Thinking that short girls are dumb or that being tall destines one for a career in basketball is just stereotyping.
One of my best friends is a short girl and incredibly intelligent. I go to her to vent and for support when I’m solving my problems. She always says the right things to me.
One of my cousins is the shortest in her tall family, and she’s (in my opinion) the smartest person in my family.
She’s also an amazing travel partner.
No matter your size—tall or short, fat or thin—embrace your power and confidence to do whatever it is you want to do.
Don’t let anything hold you back.
Tonight I had a strategy call with one of the coaches from Lifehack Bootcamp, which is run by Demir & Carey Bentley. While right now the bootcamp is out of my price range, I know that eventually, I’m going to need to join a cohort in order to figure out some stuff.
I really need the accountability, despite having done pretty well so far on my own.
In any case, the session went really well and I got some very useful feedback and ideas on how to go about setting up a legitimate side hustle (like a VA gig) in addition to blogging and my day job.
Day 23 of Time Tracking, Complete!
Tuesday, Day 136 – In Which I Realize I Hate Spa Massage
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
Wow.
This one is so powerful.
We all strive for success as if, when we reach it, it’s a permanent state.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Success is NOT final. We have to keep working for it. We have to keep working at it.
On the flip side, failure isn’t going to kill you.
Every failure is simply an opportunity to learn what NOT to do the next time. The only way we ever progress and improve is by learning from mistakes. Learning from failures.
All that counts is our commitment and determination to practice everyday courage: where we do the scary shit anyway.
That’s how we make success eternal and failure non-existent.
Demir held another live training in his Facebook group today, this time on the power of accountability. I mentioned their system in my post on what to think about before quitting (coach, team, buddy, public) but Demir has so much energy and brings something new to each training even though I’d already heard about the 4 layers.
It’s also a great opportunity to connect with other group members!
So yesterday morning my right shoulder started to feel pinched, and I spent all of yesterday and today just kind of muddling through, waiting for my chiropractor appointment and massage tonight.
And man—let me just say that a lot of stuff moved a lot more than the chiro was expecting!
As for the massage, I hadn’t been exposed to the hot stones technique before and wanted to try it. It turns out that I can’t stand the surface stuff (the heat was nice though) and instead basically begged for an elbow in my shoulder.
I’m very pressure tolerant.
An elbow digging into my muscles (especially ones that are pinchy) is definitely what I needed!
Day 24 of Time Tracking, Complete!
Wednesday, Day 137 – First Money Made from Writing!
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell
This might be one of my favorite quotes.
All it takes to succeed is being prepared, and working hard. Failure is just the opportunity to learn how to do something differently.
Failure isn’t a guarantee of learning.
We have to accept that we’ve made mistakes and then CHOOSE to change our next approach to the problem.
There are no legitimate get-rich-quick schemes.
Not from the lottery, and not from a wealthy aunt bequeathing you her fortune.
And most certainly not with pyramid schemes or people marketing to you on Facebook.
It takes hard work.
Work that some days will make you want to quit.
The key is not to quit—and if you do, to come back to it after a set amount of time.
The only time you fail completely is by not taking the steps to keep moving forward.
Today marks the first day I’ve made money from writing! Medium paid out on my locked stories today. While it wasn’t enormous, having made $13.71 for two-and-a-bit weeks of content, not all of which was locked, is a huge win for me.
It means that this online income thing is real.
Like, actually real.
I’ve spent a year and a half putting my own money into this blog and my writing, and today was the first time I have something to show for it.
Pretty exciting!
I also spent some time cleaning up my budgeting system in YNAB to get a clearer picture of where our money is going. I had been lumping dining out and Starbucks runs together with grocery shopping, which isn’t an accurate representation of how much we actually spend at the grocery store.
Full disclosure that the YNAB link is a referral link. Not an affiliate link, but if you sign up for a free 34-day trial through that link and then subscribe, we both get a free month.
I was also able to find out exactly how much I’ve put into Inspired Forward so far. That gives me another goal to work towards with the side hustle strategy fleshed out with the Lifehack Bootcamp coach.
Day 25 of Time Tracking, Complete!
Thursday, Day 138 – Valid Choices Come in All Flavors
“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.” Oprah Winfrey
This week is full of quotes about failure!
A queen is not afraid to fail.
Even monarchs make mistakes. They have to learn how to rule a country somehow! While many monarchs are groomed for the throne, nothing beats learning how to rule than actually ruling.
Not being afraid to make mistakes means you’re more likely to grow into the kind of person of whom younger you would be proud.
You’ve got to risk failure in order to achieve greatness.
This morning I posted an article on why being childfree is a valid choice, which is also on Medium, that people need to take seriously. I shared it on my personal Facebook timeline and received a lot of really good, positive responses both from people who have children and friends who don’t.
It turns out that one of my really good friends from high school and his girlfriend are also childfree, which made me envision us being travel couple buddies!
I’m so excited!!!!
In any case, I’m really glad and grateful for the positive response from my friends and family about the choice the husband and I made to not have children.
Unfortunately, there are people out there who think they have the right to tell you that you’re wrong about all your decisions in life.
Day 26 of Time Tracking, Complete!
Friday, Day 139 – Airtable is Pretty Cool, and Now My New Obsession
“Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.” Donald Trump
Have you ever thrown yourself at a problem, hammering on it for so long that you get tired and frustrated and then give up?
And when you leave for a while to do something else, the solution pops into your noggin’ like “THIS SOLUTION IS THE MOST OBVIOUS THING EVER, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF IT BEFORE??”
That’s losing the battle in order to win the war.
Taking a step back from things that are frustrating, or choosing to let something go, are just ways of finding a better path to success.
Another good saying is “choose your battles.”
Pick the things you put energy into because picking the wrong things can drain you so fast.
So I sort of discovered Airtable today.
I’d been hearing about it for ages on Instagram and Facebook, but sort of dismissed it out of hand until I read a blog post on useful tools and they recommended Airtable.
Aaaaaaaand it might actually solve some problems I’ve been having with organizing and storing data about my blog posts.
I now have a “base” where all the relevant information about my blog posts, both here and on Medium, lives. Things like category, publication status, word count, meta description length, and links. All the stuff I need to quickly share on social media is now in one place and I don’t have to hunt through 3 different Evernote notes to record when things were published or what category they are.
That’s not anything against Evernote, but I’d been struggling with how I was organizing my blog post record in Evernote and Airtable fixed that problem.
I’m looking forward to playing around in it to see what else I can store there!
Day 27 of Time Tracking, Complete!
Saturday, Day 140 – Cousins Are Our First Friends
“Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.” Conan O’Brien
You know, it really might just be that simple.
Putting hard work into things and treating everyone with kindness and respect make you a better person and the world a better place.
When we focus positive energy into our efforts, we get positivity back.
On the flip side, negativity breeds negativity.
Choose to be positive, work hard, and be kind.
I made today this week’s comeback.
My biggest win of the day, besides writing literally all of this post, was finishing Mindset University!! While listening to the videos at 2x speed I was either working on preparing my Bullet Journal for July or scheduling social media posts for the next week.
On the subject of Bullet Journaling, though… Last year I started my first Bullet Journal. It went from June to December and I loved it. When I switched out journals for January, I ended up hating the new journal because nothing about it felt right. The paper was too heavy, the cover felt off, The only things I tracked in it were habits and my weight.
I ended up ordering another true Bullet Journal straight from the source for the July-June cycle to see if I can get back into it.
So far it’s looking promising! I love the feel of the paper in this journal.
Besides all that, the husband and I had lunch with a cousin that I haven’t seen in two and a half years.
We had a great time catching up over buffet food and trading stories about what we’ve been up to.
I’ve found that I appreciate my cousins more now that I’m older, but they were my first friends. We get to complain and laugh about our families because it’s something we have in common that doesn’t always need to be explained.
I love cousins 🙂
Day 28 of Time Tracking, Complete!
What’s Next?
- 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
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:
- Intro: Tell Your Inner Voice to Shut Up
- 1: I Started the Thing!
- 2: Step Out of My Comfort Zone
- 3: When Plans Go Out the Window
- 4: Trying Out a Magic Notebook
- 5: Lessons from Unintentional Black Ski Runs
- 6: In Which We Adopt a Cat!
- 7: Curious Cat Enjoys All Existing Cords as Snacks
- 8: Mother Gothel SUCKS
- 9: Black Panther’s Sister is My Spirit Animal
- 10: A Plan is Coming Together
- 11: A Great-Grand Cat
- 12: My Calves Are Dead
- 13: Being Intentional Works
- 14: I’ll Raise You a Flash Flood with Hail
- 15: I Remembered Why I Hate Muggy Weather
- 16: The Magic of Sticky Notes
- 17: Time Tracking is a F*cking GAME CHANGER
- 18: So I’m a Writer for Medium Now
- 19: LA Traffic Scares the Sh*t Out of Me