Master your internal environment 🚶‍♀️

Hey hey! I’m so inspired after attending the Week Long Advanced Retreat with the legendary Dr. Joe Dispenza. 🤩 I’d been dreaming of attending one of his in-person events for years—his books played a huge role in my 2020 mindset shift that led to the creation of Miss Excel. I’ll share the cool things I learned over the next few weeks (starting with this week’s life tip!).

OneNote’s Hidden Canvas

Today’s a first for The Workbook: We’re covering a OneNote tip! Earlier this month, a bunch of you (73, to be exact) voted to learn more about OneNote. You ask, we deliver. 🪄

Today, you’ll learn how to decorate your digital space with background images. This lets you write handwritten and/or text notes directly on top of an image.

While our example is a little messy (your girl was in a rush), you can see the potential of background images:

• 🍝 Upload a photo of a recipe to highlight specific ingredients and steps. Or, write notes such as “Try with less salt!” or “Pairs well with red wine.”

• 📍Insert an image of a map and use the ‘Draw’ tools to circle areas of interest that you’d like to visit.

• 💰 Place a screenshot of your budget and underline any amounts, items, or categories you need to focus on.

Adding background graphics is super easy. First, you navigate to ‘Online Pictures’ and search for what you want to insert (you can also upload pictures from your computer!).

When you first upload the picture you’ll be able to move it around. But you can’t go in and write anything on it.

This is an easy fix! Simply right-click on your image and select ‘Set Picture as Background.’ Now, you can go in and add your text boxes, drawings, or whatever else your heart desires.

P.S. To undo this, just right-click again and de-select!

PSA: This tip is from my OneNote Mini-Course! Use the code NOTE20 for a 20% discount if you’re ready to get organized with digital note-taking. 📝

Master Your Internal Environment

“I’m hungry. I’m cold. I’m bored. Ugh, I don’t want to be doing this.”

On a December morning in 2020, I was sitting on my couch, trying to slip into a 45-minute meditation—but my mind simply couldn’t slow down. This attempted meditation felt like the longest 45 minutes of my life. 🫠

Looking back, I realize why that meditation was so tough: I was a beginner (duh).

But it goes one layer deeper than this: My subconscious mind didn’t have a neural pathway to rely on yet. Let me explain: When you regularly practice something, your brain builds literal connections, or pathways, between neurons (nerve cells).

These neural pathways are like the first footsteps in fresh snow: The more steps are taken, the more solid the ground becomes, and the easier it becomes to walk through. 🚶‍♀️

In other words, frequent behavior creates neural pathways, and neural pathways reinforce the same behavior. So when something is new—and lacking these pathways—our minds find it difficult.

And if it’s difficult, well…we simply don’t want to do it.

When you’re trying something for the first time—whether it’s meditating, negotiating, or learning Excel—you’re bound to find all the reasons you can’t or shouldn’t. Weirdly, these reasons also tend to manifest as physical discomfort (i.e. hunger, boredom, anxiety, etc).

This is when mastering our internal environment comes into play. ✨

During my retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza, we learned that moments of discomfort are the most important times to rewire your mind. When we decide to push through them (and not let the chatter in our minds win) we build new neural pathways.

Today, I meditate every day. It’s been a huge catalyst for my business progress, and I’m so glad I told myself, “Nope, we’re sitting through this entire meditation,” until it became a second-nature habit. 

The next time you hear a voice that goes, “I don’t want to do [insert thing here],” remember: It’s just avoiding the effort of building a new path.

And by pushing through, you’ll learn to prioritize the thoughts that serve you—and dismiss the ones that don’t.

• It’s fantasy football season! Here’s how to pick your draft order (VBA style). 🏈

• These five iPhone keyboard hacks are guaranteed to up your typing speed.

• Loved this podcast episode with Erin Jones, the Founder of Human Design Blueprint!

• Is your Outlook inbox chaos? This video will show you how to get to inbox zero in 10 minutes. 🧘‍♀

• “This is the most useful YouTube short I’ve ever seen,” reads a comment about a video on the five-second rule. 👀

Thanks for being here! Before we part ways, this quote from Dr. Joe Dispenza really opened my eyes during the retreat: “Believe. Behave. Become.”

So often, the first step to achieving our goals comes from believing it's in our stars—until it becomes reality. 💫

Stay Excelent,

Kat