It can be easy to fall into a pattern of living life based on what you already know. This is usually a zone you get into where you know what you’re doing and so you do it. With experience in any given field, especially if it’s a lot of experience, it can be easy to start to believe that you know everything about a topic, even if you don’t.

No area of life or topic is truly stagnant. There’s always something else that you can learn. You always want to make sure that you’re the kind of person who’s always leveling up with your education.

There are several good reasons for this. When you level up with what you know, it helps to make sure that you have the latest knowledge with whatever field you’re in. This can improve your skills and it allow you to be a lot more effective with reaching your goals.

If you don’t stay on top of what’s going on in your field or niche, then you’re no longer at the cutting edge. When you level up with your education, it can help you to develop your accomplishments.

It’s difficult to excel at something when you don’t know how things have changed or expanded. You might find that your skills in that area are leaving you behind and costing you valuable opportunities.

With the development of skills, you’ll feel more self-assured and up to whatever task you face in the area you’ve grown in. Growth is inevitable in any industry. By leveling up your education, you’ll be able to see a new view, which can lead to problem solving, introducing new ideas and more.

You want to track your educational efforts so that you aren’t simply sitting still and not practicing self-growth. Boosting your education doesn’t mean that you have to head back to college.

You can if you want. But you can also take classes online. You can take a course offered by someone who teaches in whatever area it is that you want to level up in.

You can develop habits that level up your education.

This might be something like determining to develop a new skill in your field. It might be by creating a circle of peers and using the power of collective knowledge to enhance yours.  Or you might find a mentor.

Join organizations that support the field you’re in and learn from the educational material offered. Go to in person training events. Find a tutor for what you want to learn. When you’re tracking, look over the new things that you’ve learned and see how it’s added to your success.

If you’re not being as productive as you’d like to be, there’s an underlying reason. You might be busy from the time that you rise until it’s time for bed - yet you don’t really feel like you’ve been as productive as you could have been.

It’s common for there to be several time zappers that occur during the day that end up causing you to waste time. Sometimes, one of the issues is that people don’t realize that a few five or ten minute breaks end up turning into something much longer.

One of the reasons for that is because when something disrupts your concentration, it takes a lot longer for you to get back into the flow of what you were doing. But by tracking your time zappers, you’ll be able to figure out what’s draining your productivity.

If you’re experiencing this, the first thing you want to check is your social media habits. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of “just checking” what’s going on in your favorite online hangout, but the next thing you know, a half hour or even an hour has passed.

It’s a distraction that can get in the way of the success that you want because it steals the time you could use to further your goals. Your time zapper might be daydreaming. When you daydream, you’re creating imaginative scenes.

Your mind is wandering as part of an escape or fantasy that pulls your focus away from whatever you’re doing or supposed to be thinking about. Your mind can use daydreaming to create a mental image of what you’d like to happen.

Many daydreams focus on money, relationships, fame or create a picture of you in some other setting. Some people have a favorite time zapper such as streaming entertainment through Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus or Amazon Prime.

It’s easy to get lost binge-watching shows or movies. You can plan to check these for just a second and then realize you watched an entire season for your favorite show. Sleeping might be what steals your time.

You should definitely make sure that you get enough rest. But if you’re sleeping more than what you need, it can steal your time. A big time zapper is eating and that’s probably because a lot of people combine eating with spending time talking with others, having a cup of coffee after the meal, sharing a leisurely dessert and so on.

People can cause you to lose time. Socializing is one of the top ten ways to waste time and is also known as a form of procrastination in many situations. If you can track your time, you’ll be able to locate all the things that are robbing you of the time you could have to do what really matters.

By tracking your time, you’ll gain the ability to manage it, which means you’ll be more productive and able to accomplish your goals instead of having to put stuff off because you wasted time.

Success doesn’t happen living in a bubble. You don’t just need to focus your attention on how well you’re doing and not be aware of the success of others. Having blinders on so that you’re self-focused doesn’t allow you to grow as efficiently.

By being aware of the success of others, especially in the same areas where you also have or want success, you can see how well they’re doing and how you might be able to apply that knowledge in your life.

This is different from being someone who’s seeing the success of other people and is letting that turn into a comparison game. Jealousy is counterproductive and only makes you waste time and opportunity.

You want to look at their progress and allow their success to inspire you. Take the value and the positivity of what you learn, not anything that creates a negative response.

Tracking someone else’s progress is a way to let their achievements create a stronger motivation within yourself. It allows you to think that you can have the same kind of progress.

You can do this by not allowing yourself to feel jealous but by seeing what they’re doing and then looking at how they’re doing it. Because you could learn something in their actions or life that can help you with your own progress.

Successful people will also track the progress of the people who are a part of their career. When you take this step, it allows you to see where the strengths are and prevents anyone from weakening the chain of progress.

Tracking other people’s success can push you outside your comfort zone. When you see their progress, you can see that what you want is just as doable. It lets you push past your own internal limitations.

The people that you pay attention to can affect your mindset. If you track people who are successful, that success can be contagious simply because it makes you feel fired up inside. You absorb from every successful person you track.

Your life can reflect the potential of other people, especially those who are successful and you feel challenge you to reach for the next level.

By tracking success of other people’s progress, you will inevitably emulate their best traits.

When you track other people’s progress, you’re giving your brain a success boost. You’ll absorb not just their ways and habits of other successful people, but you’ll absorb their attitude as well and be able to apply that in ways that help you to be more successful. When you track other people this way, it also gives you hope that you’re on the right path, too.

If you’re striving to reach a goal, you can bet that something will go wrong. You’ll be under pressure to finish something and the next thing you know, a deadline was missed or a project won’t turn out well.

In the fallout of things going wrong, you could end up losing money, spending too much time trying to unsnarl what happened and maybe you’ll lose clients over what happened if you’re running a business.

When things like this occur, it can be frustrating, especially if whatever happens halts your momentum. At this point, when everything is weighing on you, it’s easy for emotions to boil over because you’re upset and because problems in general cause a lot of stress.

But it’s important for those who lead not to assign blame to someone else. That doesn’t necessarily mean that someone isn’t to blame for whatever went wrong. The problem is that it can become a knee-jerk reaction to let the responsibility for whatever happened land at someone else’s feet.

The reason people don’t like taking responsibility is because whenever you do something that ends badly, it can be embarrassing or make you feel guilty - especially if it’s your fault and other people are impacted by the situation.

But instead of feeling bad about things or finding someone to blame, ask yourself what steps you need to take in order to find a solution. By not placing blame and instead accepting accountability, you open yourself up to be making progress toward your success.

To keep yourself accountable, you want to journal so that you’re checking in with yourself. This will enable you to track to see if you’re accepting the blame for whatever has happened.

When you have a setback or your goal is delayed because of whatever has happened, you don’t want to waste more time by trying to find who or what to blame. Instead, you just want to assign the responsibility to yourself so that you don’t get sidetracked.

You also don’t want to get sidetracked by the emotions that come with trying to figure out who or what’s to blame. It’s a waste of time and energy to let anger or irritation or anxiety wash over you when something goes wrong.

It’s better to have the mindset that something you didn’t plan or want happened and now you need to move on. By accepting accountability, it sets you free from a situation that could hold you back.

If you want to be successful, you should know your intentions. If you intend to do something, it means that you’re aiming for a goal. You mean to get there and you’d like to accomplish that in the end.

Intentions can be anything. You might have decided what you want your financial picture to look like. You can already see how you’re going to use your wealth once you reach those monetary goals.

You have action steps for reaching these goals. You know going into it what you’re going to have to do each step of the way to see that your goals become reality. Intentions aren’t like that at all.

With an intention, you don’t really have a concrete blueprint for accomplishing your goal in mind. You don’t have anything planned out in advance. You mean to get there, but you don’t have any idea whether or not getting there is actually going to occur - you’re just going to try.

Having intentions isn’t a bad thing. It’s just what people do when they hope for something and they’re going to head that direction. It’s not like a step by step blueprint that you follow.

That doesn’t mean intentions don’t work. So don’t discount the power of intentions. It depends on several different factors. They can either help or hurt your path to success. It all depends on what you do with your intentions if you do things that you can control.

For example, you can intend to win the lottery and buy a ticket, but you have no control over whether or not you’ll actually achieve that. You can intend to have your business make a million dollars in its first year, but you can’t control that, either.

All you can do is aim for that if it’s what you want. You can discover your intentions through journaling. This lets you track how well you do with what you’d hoped would happen.

As you journal, you can discover what interests you about your intention. It’s a way of allowing you to define a hope or dream. For example, you might intend to make more money.

But if you journal about that intention, you might discover that what interests you about it is so that you can quit your day job and be your own boss. By tracking your intentions, you’ll be able to tell if these intentions bear fruit or not.

You’ll be able to track if your efforts allow your intentions to come true. Having intentions can help you follow your own path with what you’d like to see in your life. However, that doesn’t mean that intentions can lead to guaranteed results.

You can put all your effort into something and sometimes, no matter how much you might want that thing to happen for you, your intention just doesn’t work out. That should lead you back to the drawing board for a more substantive plan.

Far too many people think the amount of money they have in their bank account determines whether or not they’re a success. If they don’t have much money, they feel that reflects personally on them.

But when you attribute the amount of money you have to your own worth, it can cripple your self-esteem to the point that it’ll make you feel like you can’t do anything. When you attempt to determine what you’re worth, how you feel about yourself and your success, you’ll always feel like you fall short.

That’s not because something is wrong with you. The problem is that you’re trying to give your self-worth a monetary attachment. When you feel like you have enough money, enough success, you’ll feel worthy and act like you can accomplish anything.

But when you don’t, the opposite will happen. And, as your money fluctuates, so will how you feel about yourself. There are consequences to making your success all about the money.

You can build an entire life and belief system that rests on feeling good because you’re wealthy. But if something happens to tear everything out from under you, the emotions will hit you hard and you’ll find it difficult to be able to function because the foundation that you stood on, that you based success on, changed.

You want your self-worth, just like your success, to be based on what doesn’t change. What doesn’t change is your character. Your character is who you are as a person as evidenced by your character traits such as you’re fair, responsible, optimistic, honest, and so on.

Your character is your true value. Your moral path is similar. You exhibit outward signs of the good that’s within you. This might be loyalty, having a strong sense of empathy, being courageous, or choosing to do what’s right even when it would be easier to do what’s wrong.

That should be figured in as what makes you successful. You want to look at the entire person that you are, not just your career, the amount of money that you have and where you are successfully versus where someone else is in life.

Measure who you are by defining what’s important to you and let that line up with your success. Because this is who you truly are. When you seek success based on what your personal values are rather than just chasing wealth, then you will find success.

By taking a look at who you are and what matters to you, you’ll be able to measure every aspect of yourself. These measures can easily be tracked in a journal. For example, you can measure how you experienced emotional growth and see how that intersects with your success.

By tracking your whole person, you’ll be able to see your own growth. But on the other hand, you’ll also be able to see areas where you can improve.

Journaling can be a great way to find clarity with your success or to develop self-improvement. That’s provided that it’s used as an effective measuring tool. But you do have to be careful that you don’t use it like a hammer to pound yourself harshly.

Sometimes when people journal to track their lives, they tend to have an agenda and that agenda doesn’t always leave any wiggle room. Instead, it’s strict and creates an either/or way of tallying maybe what they need, but not in the best way of getting it done.

When you journal so that you track success, it’s okay to have a goal for something that you want improvement on, but it doesn’t always have to be that strict. If you want to accomplish something such as taking your income up another level, the steps that you journal to get there don’t have to be rigid and leave you feeling like there’s no other alternative.

When you have an agenda for personal growth, that’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t make it one. It’s okay when you journal to just sit down and let your thoughts go in the direction that they go.

Don’t have a destination in mind. Just free your thoughts. Don’t give them a label of good or bad, just pour out what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling and whatever it is that your hopes or dreams are.

Give yourself love and kindness when you journal. You don’t have to always push yourself to take action. You don’t have to have a plan. You can just put into words what you’re dealing with or what you want to get out of your system.

Don’t force yourself to fit into a certain success box when you journal. This can happen when you fall into the thinking that if you’re going to track your success then you need to make sure you write down what is or isn’t working, what you are or aren’t doing every time you journal.

Just write whatever you want. Even if you just write something like how the scent of a candle made you feel like working or not. Or it reminded you of something you’d like to have in your life.

There are no rules to journaling for success or personal growth. What you might not realize is that when you’re doing a free-style type journal, it is a form of self-growth. That’s because you’re giving yourself the freedom to be who you are and what you feel like doing in that moment.

That doesn’t mean that the moment won’t change the next time you approach journaling. You can take the thoughts that you wrote when you were writing without an agenda and look them over.

This will let you revisit what you wrote when you’re in that working state of mind. You might look back and find nuggets of wisdom in what you wrote that will help take you in a new direction when you’re rereading the words.

Because life can get pretty hectic, it’s easy to overlook the importance of reflecting on your day. By taking the time to think about what happened, you can discover more about yourself, your goals, and the dreams that you have.

Doing this will allow you to create a foundation of self-growth that will help you to be more successful. Most people don’t even recognize that conscious reflection is needed to reach their goals.

Journaling using conscious reflection allows you to grow and stretch yourself every day. And with each of the realizations you experience, you see more progress. Look back on your day and allow yourself to examine it critically, to look for ways that you did improve and ways that you still have more growing to do.

This acts as a kind of performance review that helps to push you to do better things each day going forward. The best way to reflect is simply to question yourself as if you were giving yourself a performance review.

Start by asking what you could have done differently to improve your success that day. You’re not going to have a success streak without ever having any failures. Because you’re human, you’re going to make a mistake.

You’ll waste time, miss an opportunity, or mess up something that’s vital to your success. These failures will hamper your productivity. They’ll make your progress take twice as long and might even impede the completion of your project to the point you feel that you just didn’t have time to give it your best effort.

When you’re using conscious reflection, think over what happened and the steps that led to the failure. By understanding what happened, it helps you to be more aware of how to avoid having the same situation happen again.

Decide in advance what your reaction is going to be if there’s a similar situation in the future. Maybe during the day, you reacted badly when dealing with a loved one, a colleague or an employee.

If your goal is to be a more effective leader, then you need to make sure that your emotions don’t lead you regardless of what happens. By determining your behavior beforehand, you’ll not only be in control, but can improve relationships as well as connections that can be important to your success.

Look back over your day to see if there was a time when you should have spoken up, when you should have taken the lead but didn’t and you shirked the responsibility. Even if you didn’t mean to, not stepping up can affect your success.

As you’re reflecting on your day, think over all the tasks that you had to do and see if there were any areas where improving your skill level would have led to better performance - which in turn produces success. Though at times painful, true reflection can help you to be more successful.

All You Need To Know About Instagram Story Ads

Instagram Story Ads were only introduced in March 2019. This caused a lot of excitement among advertisers as the story format is very immersive. Around 50% of brands that use Instagram have made story posts. Time spent on Instagram rose to around 28 minutes when they introduced the story format.

What are Story ads?

Stories are available to Instagram users at the top of their news feed. An Instagram Story Ad will display inside Instagram stories. Usually you will see a Story Ad as you are transitioning from one story to another. It is not easy to tell a Story Ad apart from a normal story post so they tend to work very well and be accepted by the Instagram community.

As with all ads on Instagram a Story Ad will have the word “Sponsored” on it. Whether you go for an Image Story Ad or a Video Story Ad they will be full screen to the Instagram user. There are around 500 million Instagram users looking at stories every day so you have a huge marketing opportunity with this ad format.

It is best to use Story Ads if you want to promote a limited time offer. Why? Because all stories will disappear from Instagram after 24 hours. You can use a number of different call to action buttons with Story Ads and here is the complete list:

• Apply now
• Book now
• Call now
• Contact us
• Download

When you create a Story Ad you will be able to create a target audience (or use a previously saved one) and also specify how often your audience will see your Story Ad. You can enhance your Story Ad with filters, video effects and add text to make your ad really appealing.

Stories Image Ad

If you choose to go with an Instagram Stories Image Ad then you will be able to add up to 6 images and a swipe up facility that will guide your viewers to a destination URL (your website or online store). The ad will last for five seconds.

Here are the important specifications for a Instagram Stories Image Ad:

• The recommended resolution for an Instagram Stories Image Ad is 1080 X 1920 pixels
• The resolution should be a minimum of 600 X 1067 pixels
• The correct aspect ratio is 9:16
• Image format can be either PNG or JPG
• The maximum size of any one image is 30 MB

One of things that you need to be careful about with Instagram Stories Image Ads is the amount of text that you overlay on any image. If you go to far with this then Instagram will not accept your ad.

Stories Video Ad

When people are browsing through stories nothing captures their attention more than a video. One thing to bear in mind though is that when users are viewing stories they don’t usually turn on the sound. So you need to be able to deliver your advertising message with a Stories Video Ad with or without sound. The video length is 15 seconds.

Here are the important specifications for a Instagram Video Image Ad:

• The recommended resolution for an Instagram Stories Video Ad is 1080 X 1920 pixels
• The correct aspect ratio is 9:16
• Use either the MOV or MP4 movie format
• The minimum resolution of a Stories Video Ad is 720p
• Video size must not exceed 4GB

Avoid These Instagram Ad Mistakes

Many businesses are now turning to Instagram for new leads and customers. The platform is undergoing significant growth and using Instagram Ads is a great way to reach people that other methods can’t. But a lot of people make mistakes with Instagram Ads so we want to highlight these mistakes for you so that you can avoid them.

Not Aligning with Business Goals

A lot of people that use Instagram Ads do not align their advertising with their business goals. You can create some awesome Instagram Ads but if there is no alignment with your business goals then you are wasting your time.

So think about how your Instagram Ads can align with your overall goals. Do you want to increase the amount of awareness of your brand? Do you want to increase the amount of followers on your Instagram account? Or is your main goal to drive a lot more traffic to your website so that you can generate more email marketing leads?

It is not difficult to create goals for your Instagram advertising campaigns and you must do that. Take the time out to think about what you really want to achieve from your Instagram Ads. To do this ask yourself these questions:

• What results do you want from your Instagram Ads?
• Do you want new customers or existing customers to purchase again?
• Do you want to increase the traffic to your website?

Not Targeting the Correct Audience

You can easily identify your target audience when you use Instagram Ads. But to do this properly you need to have a good idea of who your audience are and what they are looking for. A lot of Instagram advertisers don’t spend enough time on this and end up targeting the wrong audience.

To identify the right audience for your business take a look at the products and services that you offer. Then ask yourself these questions:

• What needs do your products or services fill for people?
• What problems do you solve and what pain points do you alleviate?
• What kind of person would get the most out of your products?

Another good thing to do is to take a close look at what your competitors are doing. Who are their customers?

For your own customer base you need to know the demographics. This includes:

• Age range
• Gender
• Location
• Education
• Income
• Interests

Getting Ad Content Wrong

Even if you really know your audience well (which you must do) it is still possible to make mistakes with the content of your ads and a lot of advertisers do this. You must provide content in your Instagram ads that will connect with your audience.

Your content must accurately reflect your products and services and your brand positioning. Also it is essential that you do not over hype your content and make it too sales orientated. The aim is to provide value and inspire Instagram users.

Your Instagram Ads need persuasive captions. When you are creating your captions be sure that it reflects the image in your ad. Be sure to use the right hashtags and provide a compelling call to action.

Ignoring the quality of Images and Videos

It’s all about the visuals. Advertisers know that Instagram is a visual platform but a lot of them do not pay enough attention to the quality of their images and videos. There is no excuse for this as there are plenty of tools around to make your visuals great.

Pay special attention to the lighting. There are apps available to adjust this. Make your videos interesting by providing different perspectives. Consider what is in the background for your images and videos.