So “Is Your Sales Funnel Broken?”… “Here’s how to fix it”…

Over the past few years, entrepreneurs have noticed a steady decline in website funnel opt-in rates.

It seems people are getting sick and tired of opting into the “same-old, same-old” squeeze pages!  Maybe you too?

I`m told of a genius marketer, one of the best on the planet who’s collected well over 1,000,000 emails and generated many many MILLION$ in sales using traditional website sales funnels.

BUT… I was shocked to hear he hardly uses the traditional website anymore!

He uses something brand new… BOT FUNNELS

>>>   Instead of getting a 21% email opt-in rate on paid traffic, his bot funnels get 61%

>>>   Instead of getting a 16% open rate on his emails, his bot funnels get 73%

>>>   Instead of getting a 1% sales conversion rate on clicks, his bot funnels get 4%

I’ll tell you, this is something new in internet marketing in a VERY long time.

So if you’re seeing your squeeze pages slumping, or maybe you’re struggling to get your funnels going in the first place, this is the solution…

>> You`ll be able to check if your sales funnel is broken? Here’s how to fix it…

Free bot training from the best in the business »

Feeling glum, feeling down, feeling like crap, feeling anxious, depressed, guilty, shamed….

Life can be a bastard at times! And we just have to manage!

A previous Australian Prime Minister was once quoted, “Life wasn`t meant to be easy!”.   Who can trust a politician?  I say.

How we manage is the key. What have we got in our lives, the big stuff, the small stuff, the relationships, work, money …  Blah, blah, blah!!!

Worrying and stressing about being unhappy is probably not going to help rid you of the cause or the symptons!

Check out this ‘true story’ and see what you can get from it! And thanks to Tim Lott

I am going to come out of the closet, and make a shocking, even shameful, admission. I am not a happy person. In fact I am the sort of chap who complete strangers come up to in the street and advise to cheer up, since it might never happen.

I am not, I should emphasise, an unhappy person either. I love to laugh, and some of my novels have been admired as pretty good comedies. I think I am pretty much like most people, with moods that shift and transform. Sometimes I am happy, sometimes sad, most of the time I am pretty much neutral, with my mind elsewhere. Disappointment, fear and loss are as much a part of my life as achievement, hope and joy. It is all of a piece.

However this indeterminate state no longer seems to be socially acceptable. It is required of me, both implicitly and explicitly, that I remain in a state of continual near-explosion – passionate about this, excited about that, looking forward to something else. If not, I am antisocial, a grumpy old man. Worst of all I am a failure, because if I was a success, I would be happy. Neither am I a good person, since happiness has come to be seen as a moral end in itself.

This kind of happiness fascism is a relatively recent import from America. The British, not so long ago, were perfectly at ease with being hacked off. Moaning was once a pleasurable and acceptable pastime. No longer. Everything, as the (ironic) theme song of the Lego Movie insists, is Awesome.

Happiness, we are confidently assured, is the objective of life and it is something we “get” by working hard, shopping, playing and exercising, giving to charitable causes and taking part in the drama of late capitalism …….

Read more?  Thanks to this author.   READ ON… it`s worth it!

I was hooked at this point, so click here now … or stay bloody unhappy!

In the 3^rd and last part of our series on professional time management, we’re going to expand our collection of guidelines on list-building to ensure that you will be able to maximize the benefits of this “life hack” technique.

The Best Practices in Creating To-Do Lists

1. Keep It Short & Sweet – I understand that many of you have a lot on their plate and initially, your to-do lists will be long and complex.

However, as you continue refining your grasp of prioritizing tasks and delegating work to others, you will soon discover that life (like your to-do list) can be so much simpler.

Strive to make your main to-do list, day list and future list short and concise. If your to-do lists become too detailed, you may feel demotivated to accomplish each of the items.

How many items should be in your to-do lists?

As a rule of thumb, I often limit my total to-do items to 20 items. If I have to add one more to this list, I often check off 5 or more to get ahead.

Again, listing down things won’t make you a good time manager. The list is the tool that will help you manage your time more efficiently. However, if you end up procrastinating or abandoning your to-do lists, then they won’t be any help at all.

2. Don’t Add Commonplace Activities – A to-do list is actually a way to manage your time when additional activities begin to pile up.

What shouldn’t you put in your to-do lists?

With this in mind, you don’t have to add things like “have breakfast” or “drive to work” on your to-do lists. You already know for sure that you’re going to perform these tasks, so it is actually counterproductive to list them as “to do” items.

Instead of adding activities and events that are bound to happen because they always do, focus on upcoming tasks that require more time than your usual tasks, like going to the dentists or getting an appointment somewhere.

3. Hammer the Hard Tasks First – There was a time when I focused too much on the easy tasks that I had little or no time left for the more difficult ones. It was very challenging to get back on track because the items left on my to-do list were all difficult and time-consuming.

You can avoid this scenario completely by balancing tough tasks and easy tasks. The first thing that you should try to accomplish in your day should a difficult or time-consuming task.

 Keep working on a difficult task until you’ve finished it or you finished at least 50% of the work needed to complete it.

Don’t start on a task only to leave it a few minutes later because it’s difficult. The difficulty level of a task is a big determinant of how much time you should spend working on it. As a task’s difficulty increases, so does the time you need to accomplish it.

4.Be Flexible and Adaptable – Flexibility is the most important trait that you can develop when you are managing your time. If you are inflexible with your own schedule, you may feel overwhelmed and frustrated at all the important things that you have yet to accomplish.

I know that I just asked you to perform at least one difficult task per day, but you must apply this guideline only when you’re prepared for the work ahead.

You know yourself better than anyone else on the planet so be mindful of how you feel and what you’re thinking when you’re planning the days ahead.

5. Work With Your Organic Schedule – Each person’s organic or natural working schedule is unique. Some individuals feel pumped up to work right after lunch time. People like me work better in the hours that lead to midnight. And still some individuals are more efficient workers when they set out to do their tasks after having breakfast.

If you are extremely productive in the evening, schedule your most difficult tasks in a way that they coincide with your “wave of productivity”.

Easier tasks should be reserved for those times of the day when your energy is a little low and you can only handle smaller tasks.

Of course, some people don’t have the option to move their work around. You can remedy this problem by putting “rest gaps” in between difficult tasks so you have a recovery period. This will ensure that you will not be overwhelmed with more difficult tasks even if you’re not mentally conditioned to do them at a particular time.

Another Resource I`d like to share with you is “The 12 Week Year” by Brian P Moran and Michael Lennington, New York Times Bestseller.

We also learned that in order to seize control of clutter, we have to be willing to let go of our old beliefs and habits so we can make some real progress with getting organized.

How does chronic clutter and disorganization cause stress?

Below are some of the common reasons why chronic disorganization can also lead to chronic stress:

1. Stressed Mind – The more you see clutter, the more your mind reacts to it whether you like it or not.

You can ignore clutter as much as you want, but below your mind’s surface, your subconscious mind is working overtime to find solutions to the clutter. Unfortunately, without conscious guidance your subconscious cannot create concrete and practical solutions.

2. Time Consuming – A cluttered environment is hard to manage and navigate. You will have to spend double or triple the normal time just trying to find the things that you need. Often, people look for things when they are urgently needed so the stress increases even more.

3. Things Are Lost – There will be situations where you won’t be able to find the things you need because of all the clutter. So you will spend a lot of time searching for stuff buried under the clutter and at the end of the day, your efforts will yield nothing. This is the harsh reality of disorganization that we have to accept in order to motivate ourselves to finally get organized.

4. Reduced Living Space – Clutter can easily consume your living space to the point that you will only have a small nook left to move about.

If you don’t believe me, trying watching shows like “Hoarders” to see some extreme examples of how organization problems can conflate to the point where people are actually threatened with eviction by landlords and housing councils if they don’t clean up the messes in their homes.

5. Social Isolation – If your home is chronically cluttered, you may feel embarrassed about the situation and this may lead to ignoring requests of friends to come over.

You may be limited to meeting friends in restaurants and other outdoor locations, which may not always be the most convenient option for all parties concerned.

How can you motivate yourself to become more organized?

Getting the right type of motivation can be hard especially if you’re “going solo” and your support network is very small. Don’t worry – you can still do it!

Here are some ways that you can motivate yourself to finally clean up your clutter at home or at work:

1. Create a De-Cluttering Schedule – Procrastination is the number one enemy of would-be clutter warriors. It’s very easy to say you’ll do something tomorrow, a week from now or 2 months from now.

The human mind cannot fully grasp the passage of time so a year’s worth of procrastination may feel like a week. You will have a much higher success rate if you set a specific day and hour for your first de-cluttering effort.

Do everything to remind yourself to clean up on the appointed day, even to the extent that you have to cancelling other appointments so you can get something done.

2. Kick-start Your Efforts With Visitors – This is one of the fastest and most practical ways to get motivated. Invite some friends over for dinner or a movie night so your mind can finally relinquish its inhibitions about getting organized.

Be sure to invite friends that you secretly want approval from so you will become really motivated to take action. It sounds silly at the outset, but trust me, the most brilliant ways to get rid of clutter come out when you’re having some great friends over.

3. Find Your Tolerance Level – This is extremely important for long-term management of clutter. Some people are averse to the idea of having clutter anywhere in their house while some are completely oblivious to disorganization.

You’re feeling stressed about the clutter at home or in the office because the clutter has exceeded your tolerance level.

You need to identify your tolerance level and use it as a benchmark for staying organized. If you start feeling stressed about the clutter, you have to do something immediately to relieve the stress (e.g. by cleaning up).

This is the only way that you will be able to remove this major stressor for good. Don’t worry – you will soon develop practical routines for getting clutter out of the way!

Disorganization is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a state in which everything is out of order”.

• When a person is disorganized, he/she often spends twice or thrice as much time looking for things that should otherwise be easy to find.
• He/she also feels periodically overwhelmed by the burgeoning amount of clutter that he has to contend with on a daily basis.

Adults and children have different tolerance levels for clutter.

Young children often don’t realize that there’s clutter in front of them unless an adult points it out.

This is due to their age and their cognitive maturity.

Some adults who live in perpetual clutter claim that disorganization don’t bother them at all.

Unless a person is suffering from conditions like compulsive hoarding, clutter is a major stressor that can cause substantial grief and stress to a family.

How organized are you?

• Not everyone is an expert at staying organized, but some individuals need more help than others.
• To gauge your organization skills, I’ve created a short list of items that you must grade from 0-3, with 0 being “no that’s not me” and 3 being “yes, this is exactly me!”.
• 1’s and 2’s represent the middle range (“this is sometimes true”).

1. You find it difficult to find things at home because of the volume of stuff you have and how they are arranged/stored inside your house.

2. When you open a drawer to look for something, it takes you more than 10 minutes to find what you need because of the clutter.

3. You find it difficult to come early or on time for scheduled events and appointments.

4. Procrastination is your middle name.

5. Paying bills is often a monthly exercise of asking “how many weeks do I have before this company starts calling?”

6. Family members, close friends or even colleagues are telling you to do something about the clutter you make at home or at work. You feel bad most of the time, but you feel that it’s hopeless or not worth your time.

7. You are chronically stressed by clutter at home and wished it would just go away.

8. You have a tendency to buy 2 or more copies of the same item so you wouldn’t have to spend time looking for the ones you misplaced.

9. You don’t normally use lists because you think they don’t work.

10. You often think that it’s going to take too much time to fix your clutter, so you let the clutter be.

Analysis:  Each person has a certain degree of disorganization.

• However, if the disorganization is already causing chronic stress then you have to do something about it right away.
• If you answered more than 3 items on the list with a 3, you need to step up your game and start remedying your clutter issues.
• This current series will help you achieve that.

What’s the first step to stay organized!

To beat down your clutter problems, you need to know why you have a tendency to cling to too much stuff. Here are some of the common excuses that people use to justify their clutter-field lives:

1. “What if I suddenly need this one day?”

2. “My mother gave this to me when I was 5 years old”

3. “Someone out there will pay good money for this thing”

4. “I can find something to match this someday”

5.  “Right now it’s broken but one day I will have it fixed and it’s going to work perfectly again”

6. “If I lose enough weight, this is going to look so good on me again”

7. “I’m sure that one of my kids will want to hand this down to their kids in 20 years or so”

8. “It’s such a waste to throw it away, I bought it bargain price”

9. “One day this is going to be a collectible and I’m going to have a true treasure sitting at home”

10. “One day I’m going to have enough free time to start reading again, I want this to be there on that day”

NB: If you find yourself making these excuses every single time you want to get organized, you’re only making things more complicated because you’re actually allowing the disorganization to continue.

NB: You need to stop rationalizing your old habits if you want to make any progress in getting organized.

NB: If you allow yourself to hold on to really old and nonfunctional items now, there’s no way you can guarantee yourself a clutter-free future.

If you have been reading this blog from its very first post, you may have already learned about the modern stress model or the sequence of events that lead to the physiological stress response.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, here’s the summary:

• Person experiences or thinks of something that is stressful. His negative thoughts and emotions combine at this phase.
• Person triggers psychological stress. He may begin experiencing signs of mental stress.
• Psychological stress, if left unregulated, triggers the physiological stress response. Person may experience physical symptoms of stress such as clammy hands and an elevated heart rate, even if he is at rest.

Why should you practice control over your own thoughts?

If we would look carefully at the modern stress model, we would come to the conclusion that the actual, physiological stress response only comes to the surface during moments of mental stress.

Mental stress on the other hand, doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. A person only experiences mental stress if his thought patterns and emotions are working toward this particular outcome.

With these facts in mind, it becomes very clear that in order to stop physiological stress in its tracks, you need to address the causative agent, which is mental stress.

Why do we think the way we do?

I often encounter individuals who beat themselves up over the fact that they have a tendency to think and feel in certain ways especially when they have to contend with common stressors.

Your habitual responses to stressors are actually determined by 3 different yet interlocking factors:

1. DNA – Your parents’ genes are partly responsible for your tendencies and general temperament.

In addition to the way you were raised, there’s also the fact that you inherited your parents’ chromosomes, which also means that you’ve inherited at least part of their personalities.

So if one or both of your parents are aggressive or hotheaded, you may have the same inclinations because of your DNA.

2. Childhood – Sigmund Freud, the old father of psychoanalysis, often analyzed people’s childhoods to get to the bottom of strange neuroses.

It turns out that Freud was spot on when he determined that early childhood experiences have a lot to do with how we fully develop and mature as adults.

Our individual responses to stressful situations are partly determined by how we were conditioned to respond when we were still young. So keep this in mind when you are raising your own children; your children are not only absorbing the world at large, they are also absorbing your behavior and thought patterns!

3. Life Itself – Our DNA and early childhood experiences comprise only a small portion of the totality called the self. Your experiences as you grow older are also strong determinants of your behavior toward stressful situations.

We can’t do anything about past experiences, may they be good or bad, but we can do something about our beliefs and values in the present time. We must not allow past negative experiences to dictate how we live in the present time.

***

Now that you are more familiar with how the mind works and why it operates in a particular manner with regards to stressful situation, it’s time that you learned how to control unstable and stressful thought patterns.

How can you control seemingly unstable thought patterns?

Thought patterns are powerful, but they are never more powerful than the person itself. A thought, no matter how destructive, does not have free will or a life of its own. All negative thoughts are vulnerable and extinguishable, remember that!

Easy Mind Control Exercise

•  Find a quiet place to perform the Easy Mind Control Exercise. Get a piece of paper and write down 5 of the most horrid thoughts you’ve been having for the past few months.
• Below the first 5 items, write down 5 beautiful thoughts, memories or ideas that are directly in contrast with the first 5 items you wrote down.
• Focus your mind’s power on each of the undesirable thoughts and as you do, give your mind a firm command to remove the thoughts.
• Visualize a blank space where each of the undesirable thoughts used to be. Begin placing pleasant thoughts on this blank space, to replace the bad ones that have just been driven out.
• Repeat the exercise until you are satisfied and try again tomorrow.

Stress management is an active and continuous process of controlling the way you react to common stressors present in everyday life.  

The main objective of stress management is to progressively revamp your thought patterns and lifestyle so you will no longer suffer from chronic, toxic stress on a daily basis.

Like other major endeavors, stress management is not without its own set of challenges. That’s why it’s important that you adequately prepare yourself for this important commitment because if you don’t, you’re going to end up being disappointed with the results.

How can you consistently succeed in stress management?

Here are some expert tips that will help demolish the obstacles to successful stress management:

1. Record Your Stressors – Each person has his own unique set of stressors. Stressors can be any of the following: situations, actions, events, general circumstances, objects, people, tasks, chores and work-related obligations.

To make things more organized, I would advise you to create a stress management journal.

What does a stress management journal look like?

One part of your journal should be separated and devoted specifically for recording stressors. Each page should have three columns with the following headings: time/date, stressor, stress level (1-10).

Evaluating your stress level is of paramount importance. When a stressor is rated a “1”, it means that you are only mildly annoyed for a brief period of time.

When you rate an item as a “10” that means that you experience not only mental signs of stress but also physical signs of stress such as a racing heart rate, cold hands and feet, etc.

Is it challenging to maintain a stress management journal?

Bear in mind that a stress management journal should not be difficult to maintain. If recording and journaling stresses you out, it’s possible that you are simply overdoing it.

You do not have to record every little stressor that comes your way – you only have to record the ones that you remember at the end of the day.

Some people can write on their journals every few hours; the majority of people cannot. Write only when it’s convenient for you but you have to write on your stress management journal every day.

2. Acknowledge Your Personal Beliefs & Values –

The battle against stress would be much easier if you came to terms with your personal beliefs and value system.

If you want to overcome negative beliefs and old values that don’t support your current goals, you have to identify them first. Below are some common beliefs and values that can directly impair your ability to manage stress:

1. “I have more important things to do than manage stress”
2. “Stress management won’t bring food to the table, my work does”

iii. “I have no time left for this sort of thing”

1. “I’d rather sleep than try to manage stress”
2. “I’m a hopeless case!”
3. “I’m not very good at learning new things”

vii. “How will I know if this will work?”

viii. “Stress management is just not ‘my thing’”

1. “I think it’s tedious and boring”
2. “I don’t have the energy to think about it”

3. Take the First Baby Steps –

Stress management isn’t just a vague concept – it’s a whole set of special skills that will allow you to evade or moderate the stress response so you will be healthier, happier and more productive.

How long will it take before you master stress management?

Stress management has spawned a whole industry of mentors and coaches because it’s not something that can be learned overnight.

With these facts in mind, it logically follows that if you want to learn how to manage stress, you have to muster the courage to take the first few baby steps to achieve your goals.

Managing chronic stress doesn’t require a lot of time.

• You can accomplish a lot of things within a 20-30 minute time-frame. If 20 minutes sounds overwhelming, try limiting your stress management sessions to 10-15 minutes.
• 10-15 minutes should give you enough time to think about the stressors you encountered for that day and how you reacted to the stressors. Self-analysis is your most important tool in managing stress.
• You have to be honest with yourself though. You must avoid justifying habitual, negative responses to stressors as this will impede personal breakthroughs.
• You must make it a point to identify harmful thoughts and behaviors so you can modify them. Behavioral modification, in order to be successful, must be gradual and you must be consistent in enforcing new behavior and rewarding yourself when you succeed in doing so.

This article has been sourced from The Huffington Post. The link back to the original article follows at the end of this post.

Science has shown that mindfulness meditation can have a positive impact on a huge range of health conditions, including cancer, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The practice has even been found to slow HIV progression and protect the brain from aging. 

Mindfulness seems to improve nearly every aspect of health — but how? While mounting research has revealed many of the numerous physical and mental health benefits of mindfulness, little is known of the mechanisms underlying these positive changes.

Now, a new study from Carnegie Mellon University, published on Jan. 29 in the journal Biological Psychiatry, demystifies the neurobiological effects of cultivating a focused awareness on the present moment.

……….

Huffington Post link http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/meditation-brain-changes-study_us_56b4b7aee4b04f9b57d93bef

Well, I always believe that high achievers do things differently! They are better planned, know how to manage time and most importantly have luck by their side. This is a bright insight to the fact, that every high achiever is disciplined and this discipline, hard work and perseverance help them reach the peak of success.

An eye-opener for all those who believe that success and achievements are a matter of luck!

Well- certainly not always! Hard work and a disciplined lifestyle is the key.

Believing in yourself is a discipline too – quite surprising for me.  Well NO!

I realize the importance of time management and believing in your abilities, but it’s interesting to know that every high achiever is committed to the belief. For all those to blame it on circumstances, about everyday interruptions and disturbances – another non negotiable discipline of high achievers is their ability to eliminate interruptions.

They are well aware of the interruptions but they know how to combat them too. Do you try to do this too or you simply walk away with the excuse?

Time management is something all of us need to think about. High achievers and successful people manage their time well. They value time and give it importance. To achieve something in life, time management is a discipline you can never ignore. Its important to be healthy and to ignore things which can interrupt your progress.

 Thanks, Patrick Allmond, this certainly made an interesting read. I am sure it is of much help, who are trying their best to stay motivated and reach their goals.

Copyright: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/profile_iqoncept’>iqoncept / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Like meditation, coloring is gently physical, adds creativity, is relaxing, allows positivity to surface.

Firstly thanks to Jade Small for this article.  It so fits the niche about Personal Development. There isn`t a friend of mine who doesn`t have uncomfortable moments of stress in there lives. Either work based, (and I have lots of teacher friends), or home, family, financial pressures. Stress is abundant.

On this blog, there are many articles about managing “the person”. It`s hard at times to be positive and not be negative. It`s hard to always be there for family and friends!  It`s hard to be there because of  lack of sleep, too many things on the To Do list. And I could go on.

Copyright: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/profile_dolgachov’>dolgachov / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

>> So lets have a look at coloring books as an option to relieve your stress!

Adult colouring books are increasing with popularity, and while we could all do with some stress relief, not all of us can afford to buy them.

So, we have gathered our favourite Mandalas and abstract colouring pages for you to print and colour at a fraction of the cost.

Read here more about The Best Alternative To Meditation, Coloring! 

Original Image Sources & where you can find even more printables!

http://joglokids.net/design-coloring-pages/adult-pattern-coloring-pages-4/

http://sea4waterman.com/new-coloring-pages/flower-mandala-coloring-pages-free-printable/?v=1

http://coolimages4free.com/printable-mandalas-for-coloring/

http://www.supercoloring.com/coloring-pages/mandala

http://printmandala.com/

http://www.uniquecoloringpages.com/mandala-coloring-pages-and-book.html

http://liveyourbliss.net/coloring-mandalas/

http://www.coloringcastle.com/mandala_coloring_pages.html

http://fatmumslim.com.au/five-of-the-best-adult-colouring-in-printables/

http://koloringpages.com/mandala-coloring-pages/

http://katibura.xyz/printable/adult-coloring-pages-printable-elephant

http://www.art-is-fun.com/free-adult-coloring-pages/

http://www.coloring-pages-adults.com/coloring-zen/

http://www.selfcoloringpages.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Butterflies-Coloring-Pages-For-Adults-1.jpg

https://www.etsy.com/listing/235451220/adult-colouring-pageoriginal-hand-draw

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/04/07/johanna_basford_enchanted_forest_secret_garden_addictive_coloring_books.html

http://www.colorpagesformom.com/coloringpages/flowers/flow36.jpg

This article 29 Printable Mandala & Abstract Colouring Pages Meditation & Stress Relief is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and www.the-open-mind.com. All links and sources must remain intact. 

Jade

Staff Writer and Social Media Manager for The Open Mind. I am a seeker of knowledge, striving to expand and help others on their quests!

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