It’s time to see how November went in terms of lessons learned and blog stats. At the beginning of each month, I count the blessings and misfortunes of the previous one. Welcome to #SMartWednesday Monthly Learnings & Stats Edition! Keep reading to find out more.
EXPERIENCES & WHAT YOU SHOULD ALSO KNOW
In order to have the lifestyle you wish, you have to make the right and smart choices for you. Do what suits you best and what makes you happy. These are my choices for this month. I choose to share them as pieces of advice that you can adjust in your own lifestyle as needed.
- Declutter & simplify the way you live. Go through all your possesions by category and sort each one of them into three piles: keepers, donate, garbage. If you are emotionally attached to a certain item but you don’t use / look at it for weeks in a row, take a picture of it and let it go. For really important items, design a “Memory Box” and add them to it. Then put the box away so that it doesn’t take up your day to day space. Do one category at a time and don’t be pressured to finish. The calmer you are, the best choices you will be able to make.
- Let go of negative emotions. You can do this as often as you’d like. Start with once a month ad then go deeper, once a week to daily. All you have to do is to write down all the negative emotions you have felt in the last month, week, day. Have a column for the negative emotion and another one for its reason. Ask yourself why did you feel that, as many times as it takes to get to an answer that you feel it’s right for you. Then forgive those who have done you wrong, ask for forgiveness and most importantly, forgive yourself! Forgive and let go. It’s the most powerful thing you’ll ever experience.
- Find balance in life. All the elements in your day need to be aligned in order to help you train your body, mind and emotions to focus and produce better work by staying on schedule. With everything in balance, you don’t have to rethink how, why and when to do things every time you do them. It automates your daily schedule, your week, your month.
- Prioritise & simplify routines. If you don’t have established routines, work on building at least two: a morning and an evening one. Make them times of getting back to yourself. Begin and end the day with a clear and eased mind. It does wonder for your brain and way you approach things. Work on having a simple daily schedule and batch similar tasks together, as to save energy. Tweak it as many times as you need.
- Visualise your ideal lifestyle & note it all down on a piece of paper. Be as specific as you can be. When you are finished, grab a marker and go over the goals and plans you have in your description. Transcribe them on a separate paper and then work your way down this list, and assign plans and actions for each goal. Make weekly plans of action and daily tasks that will get you closer to your goals each day. Action is the key to all plans and goal setting. Do it!
- Go inwards & go deep. Allow yourself at least 10 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening to really stay silent and think about what your intentions are and what your day has been like respectively. Analyze your motivations, reasons and decisions and write down the most important three things for that day. Three intentions in the morning and three woderful things that happened. You could go even deeper and write an entire page for each. The choice is yours.
- Learn to unwind & let go of control. The world doesn’t stop if you don’t control it. Stop. Breathe. Be calm. You’ve done your best for the day. Unwind. Take a hottish shower and do some light stretches, just enough to losen those tight muscles. Close all distractions or put them in a different room: phone, TV, computer. Change into something comfortable, pour a glass of red wine and put on some music, or read a book, or simply lay in bed with your eyes closed. Let go of all things around you and just be. Re-lax, my dears, relax!
SMART CHOICE STATS & SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
This month I am upset. The Analytics part of my blog got screwed up by some annoying crawlers and spam links that scrambled the statistics I wanted to share with you.
Although the numer of unique visitors has gone up (546 - 70% new, 30% returning), the bounce rate was 93% (percent of leaving the site after a few seconds or just a few minutes) with an average of 32 seconds / session and of 2 pages / session.
Most of my referral traffic came from places like adf.ly (221 users), get-your-social-buttons.info (128 users), snip.to (51 users), site13545613.snip.to (25 users). It's pointless to get high on 500+ unique views when they have no value.
Social was the same as last month, the major traffic bringers were Facebook and Twitter. The most engaged social community was that on Instagram, with 42 new followers and 10+ comments. Twitter comes up second, with 11 new followers and 5+ retweets. Facebook was more layed back this month, with only three more likes.
Blog demographics changed for the better as this month: more than half of you guys were female, with ages between 25-34 (70.91%). The rest were from the upper age groups and / or male. The information on SMart Choice Lifestyle is specifically designed to fit the needs of this age group (female AND male), so I am happy about the outcome.
Most of you guys were from Northern America, Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia. The rest were from Western and Northern Europe, Australasia, South America, Southern Europe and Southeast Asia. Thank you Ontario, New York, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Kiev, Beijing, Amsterdam, Brighton, Brisbane, for being interested in this lifestyle platform.
The top 5 most read articles in November (click to read each article):
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
I am so grateful for the opportunity to write weekly articles on SMart Choice. I am even more grateful to have people interested in what I have to say. My day is happy if I make only a single one of you guys make the smart choices that will change your life in a positive & healthy way.
Thank you for letting me be a part of your life this month also!
This was all for this week’s #SMartWednesday! Thanks for being here!
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Love,
Alexis