How to take care of yourself

And—how to freeze your panes in Excel 🥶

December 01, 2022

Hiya, Happy December! Can you believe it’s already the season of holiday office parties, ugly Christmas sweaters, and “let’s circle back next year” emails? Time flies! To celebrate the beginning of this new season, I’m hosting three free Microsoft Office trainings December 7-9th. If you want to level up your Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote skills before this year is up, this is for you. 🤗

Freezing Panes in Excel

Excuse me while I grab my jacket because—we’re going to learn how to freeze our panes in Excel!

Let's start with an example: Down below you'll see we have a large data set with each employee’s name, chargeability, bonus, and total bonus. All good stuff.

But if you scroll down in your worksheet, those headings go away. Depending on how many columns you have, this might be very confusing.

The solution is to freeze our panes, which allows us to freeze an area of our worksheet in place so it stays visible while we keep scrollin’. You can do this in two simple steps:

Step 1️⃣: Highlight the row below the area you wish to freeze. (It’s a weird rule, but hey, we do what we can). In our case, we’d highlight row three because we want to freeze row two.

Step 2️⃣: Navigate to the View tab in the ribbon and select “Freeze Panes.” You’re going to select the first option out of the three as this is what’ll lock your desired column!

Done! You’ve frozen row two. When you scroll down in the data, you’ll always know what each column is displaying.

Unconventional Self-Care

It was Spring of 2020, and I was building Miss Excel from scratch. It required lots of extra hours, multitasking, Starbucks, and late-night dance parties to keep my energy up. 🕺🏻While my efforts paid off, your girl knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer without balance.

So, I started being more intentional with self-care and scheduling time to reset and recharge. I quickly learned that the more me time I gave myself, the more my business grew.

It definitely felt unconventional (and even rebellious). How on Earth was meditating on a rock in rural Arizona more productive than creating marketing materials in Canva?! 🤣

But it was in those moments of reflection that I grounded myself. By getting aligned, I felt more patient, determined, and motivated to keep showing up as the best version of myself.

Because if I wanted to welcome abundance into my life, I had to open my energy field to give that abundance space to enter—so those self-care moments really came in handy.

While I’m all for the traditional self-care 💆‍♀️ (*cue face mask and good book*) I thought I’d share three unconventional self-care tips that have helped me level up:

1️⃣ Delegation → During the first year of Miss Excel, I handled everything from sales to customer service to marketing for over 10,000 students. This year, as a self-care gift, I hired my dream team—and it’s saved me so much time.

2️⃣ Roots → I spent 16 months being a digital nomad. While it was an *amazing* experience, being able to rely on a grounding routine has allowed me to grow much faster!

3️⃣ Community → My boyfriend Mike and I moved to Sedona not knowing a single soul. Today, we have a community of incredible entrepreneurs, founders, and builders—all friends!—who energize and inspire us every day.

Mike and I at our dream home in Sedona shortly after moving in! 🧡

The more self-care you invest in for yourself, the better equipped you are to handle the unexpected. So listen to what your soul needs and follow that ping. You’ll be so glad you did!

Is there anything in particular you'd like to learn more about? Manifestation? Solopreneurship? Let me know!

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Lately, I’ve found it useful to ask myself if I’m doing something because I genuinely enjoy it (nourishing) or because I’m looking to escape something deeper (numbing). 

There’s nothing wrong with Netflix and Ben and Jerry’s, of course (I had myself some Cherry Garcia last night, actually). But thinking about why we want something is a helpful tool for recentering ourselves.

The question of “is it numbing or nourishing?” helps us become more aware of our actions—and honor whichever choice we make.

Stay Excelent,

Kat