Dawn Trautman

Igniting the Experience of Discovery

Register now for any of the three great options:

  • Personalize: Explore who You were Created to Be
  • Organize: Create Order in your Inner and Outer World
  • Realize: From To-Do Lists to Life Long Goals and Back
  • Systematize: Define, Align and Refine 10 Facets of Your Life

All courses are firmly grounded in organizational psychology, theology and the very best philosophical thought from around the world. You'll meet interesting people that are working on the same things as you. Sign up now.
As an Urban Nomad I live and work without a permanent home. As a professional actress, I move all over the country to perform in various musicals. As a certified life coach with Master's degrees in Lutheran theology and organizational psychology, I see life lessons in all of my adventures. My sense of stability comes from strong connections to people and deep commitments to goals. My personal mission is to ignite the experience of discovery in myself and those around me. I believe in the highest quality while working within your resources. I believe in being prepared for unexpected opportunities. I believe in perseverance on the road to overnight success.
"Organize:
Create Order in Your Inner and Outer World"
Online Interactive eCourse

Welcome! "Organize" is one course in a series of Interactive eCourses along with "Personalize" and "Realize." Jump right in and start with whatever course you need at the moment!

In this course we'll cover:

  • Week 1: ASSESSMENT: What creates chaos in your life? How do you manage it?
  • Week 2: SPACE: Organize your home or office. What are your beliefs about your work, family and living space?
  • Week 3: TIME: Organize your schedule. How is your use of time affected by your beliefs about your health and spirituality?
  • Week 4: MONEY: Organize your finances. How do your beliefs about money affect your relationships?

"Organize" is not just about clearing a bit of clutter, although you'll do that in this course. Take this course when you want to understand how your thoughts influence your world around you, and how to set better patterns.

"Dawn's coaching has transformed how I get work done. Being organized has helped me honor my new job and my new marriage." - Erik, Youth Worker

After you register and pay for the course, you will be given access to a private blog, where a new post arrives every day at 6:00 am, six days a week for four weeks. You can log in at any time each day to do your assignment. Simply read the new content, complete the activity and add your answer to the comments on the blog. Before long, you will get to know the others in your e-course and want to comment on what they write, which starts an enriching conversation. Here's one session of the e-course.


Disorganized is not a Personality Trait
Good news: disorganized is not a personality trait. (I invite you to stop saying you are a disorganized person, and instead say that your things/money/schedule are not organized well right now.)

Organization is a skill, and skills can be learned. You can learn many of those skills over the next four weeks. Organization looks different for everyone, and we will figure out what it takes to bring order to your external world: your physical space, your finances and your time.
Just because organization is not a personality trait doesn't mean that psychology is not involved. In fact, bringing order to your inner world or private world is much harder. If it's harder, why bother? BECAUSE YOUR EXTERNAL WORLD IS A MIRROR OF YOUR INTERNAL WORLD. (Yes, I wrote in all caps because I'm yelling it. I won't yell often, but this is important.) You can't really make a lasting change to your external world without making a lasting change to your internal world. Thus, we will work to create order from the outside in AND the inside out. Again, why bother? Disorder does not create growth. Disorder can give you a stale, stagnant life. I am not in the business of encouraging stale, stagnant lives, and I don't suppose that's why you signed up for this course. Once you create order, you can start down the path to achieve many other things.

So now that you know about the hard part, let's start with the easy part (wheh!). Think of something that you could do to create some small bit of order in your external world in the next 5 minutes. Something tangible that you will be able to see a difference when it's done. Some ideas:
  • Clean out your e-mail inbox
  • Make an appointment for something that needs to get done, and put it on your calendar
  • File a few things
  • Pay a few bills (why aren't they auto-withdrawal?)
  • Hang up a few things
  • Wash something
WAIT! Do you have something in mind to do? No fair spending your whole 5 minutes thinking about what to do. You are probably already good at that, which is why you are in disorder to begin with. You think about it so long that you never take action. One of my friends would say that you are a stew-er, not a do-er. Be a do-er.  
Are you ready? Now here's the good news: you only need to spend 5 minutes, not a minute more (at least today). Go here and set the big stopwatch to count down from 5 minutes. When the alarm goes off, you get to stop.
Seriously, do something to create order, and then come back to this blog. I'm fine, I'll wait for you here. 
(5 minutes later)

So there's your first tip: set an alarm, and give yourself permission to stop cleaning/organizing/creating order when the alarm goes off. Chances are, you often won't want to stop, but if you do, at least you did more than if you'd never started.
How did it go? What did you do? Did you create order for more than 5 minutes? How did you feel about doing it when I might not ever find out whether you did it? What does your resistance or compliance say about your sense of self control?
Register now for Organize: Create Order in Your Inner and Outer World.

You may also be interested in these pages:

Interactive eCourses
Urban Nomad Blog
Urban Nomad Blog
1-on-1 Life Coaching
1-on-1 Life Coaching