#actively trying to counteract said trend. so.

[saintbleeding]

[ID: Digital painting of Daisy from TMA. She is a white woman with long, matted, blonde hair, brown eyes, and scars across her skin, most notably a sunburst and a graze from a bullet on her left shoulder. She is caked with dirt, her hair in disarray around her, and stares at the viewer with a vacant, haunted expression. The background is dark and foreboding around her. End ID.]

hand me my shovel im going in or whatever

[itsclydebitches]

Was planning on making this my own post, but I thought you would be more suited to discussing this sort of topic. Something I've noticed when it comes to the more prominent/important/strong female characters (Nora, Pyrrha, Penny, Robyn, Emerald, Sienna) is that RT often has the tendency of giving them masculine allusions (Thor, Achilles, Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Aladdin, Shere Khan) as if they are unable to stand on their own as characters unless they have that connection to a male character. 1/3

It is worth discussing! Yeah, I hesitate to call it a pattern just because, as you say, Team RWBY themselves are an exception to the rule  — and as the title characters of the story, they’re a pretty big exception. We also have good women allusions turned into good women characters (Glynda with The Good Witch, May with Maid Marian) and bad women allusions turned into good women characters (Winter with The Snow Queen — I don’t think she was ever meant to enter full antagonist territory, but that’s another post). So it’s not just a matter of saying, “RWBY models their strong women after male inspirations and turns all female inspirations into male characters.” It’s not that simple. But the fact that it’s not simple doesn’t mean there’s nothing there to unpack because I definitely understand the feeling you’re pointing to, anon. Team RWBY feels like it has the most thought put into it in terms of changing up these allusions, specifically when it comes to subversion: the little girl in a red hood who previously needed a hunter’s protection has become the hunter herself, Belle overcomes both her Gaston and the now evil Beast, Snow White extracts herself from her own abusive situation (with a little help from the Dwarves still), and Goldilocks is no longer lost and in need of basic necessities, but can rather punch her way out of any establishment  — like, say, a club. The execution of these themes aside (how Adam was handled, turning Jacques’ arrest into a joke, etc.), there’s a commonality here that works. Or at least, it works for me. Yet when we expand the allusions past our title team, things get... very messy. That’s when we start to hit on these concerns. 

I’d say the problem stems primarily from that lack of thought, not the act itself of turning women characters into men or vice versa. Meaning, as I’ve said in the past, RWBY’s use of allusions is terribly unreliable nowadays, and that’s not just in terms of plot expectations like, “Why did Penny have to become a flesh girl because Pinocchio, but Ironwood didn’t stay good because Tin Man?” It also includes these questions of why these changes were made and what sort of messages they send. As you lay out, why are so many of our heavy hitters  — the most talented huntress, the lightning-immune smasher, the Maiden android, etc.  — based on men? Why are many of the effeminate and “weaker” men  — Jaune the untrained, Ren the emotional councilor, Oscar the kid who wants to talk it all out  — based on women? Again, I don’t intend to sling any hard accusations, but rather to point out what’s likely a subtle, unconscious bias. To provide another example, I’ve seen talk recently about how RT (again, unconsciously) depicts the faunus, where all the good characters have culturally established “good” animal features and all the bad character have culturally established “bad” features. It’s cat ears, rabbit ears, sheep ears, monkey tails, dog tails, and beautifully changing skin color vs. scorpion tails, spiderwebs, bull horns, tiger ears, bat wings, and crocodile scales. Is it a perfect 1:1 divide? No, Ghira has panther claws and Fennec has fox ears, but there’s enough there for us to go, “RT tends to give the good guys cute features and/or features we associate with safe animals, whereas the bad guys tend to get ugly features and/or features we associate with dangerous animals.” I feel the same way here, that there’s a bit of a trend at play, with the caveat that there are more complications simply by virtue of these allusions being, well, complicated. But there’s enough there to make us stop and think, “What were RT’s intentions with this? If they just chose something based on the rule of cool, what might those inclinations tell us about gender norms in America?” Meaning, when someone goes, “Idk, we just thought it would be cool to change this up” there’s a lifetime of media consumption driving that choice. It’s not actually random, but based on whatever has been normalized  — unless you actively counteract that by thinking through what you want the change to do. 

Unconscious biases are always at work. When we analyze something like this it’s often not a matter of saying, “The author is [insert accusatory term here]” but rather just, “The author is falling into expectations, patterns, and normalized decisions based on the culture they’ve grown up in.” Which includes things like thinking, “Well, if this character is based on a male god, she must be crazy strong. If this character is based on a woman fighter, he’s probably more emotional.” Such biases may be driving a lot of decisions because, as said in the past, I really don’t think RT is putting much thought into these allusions, if any at this point. For me, Penny was proof of that  — the inability to see how following her allusion utterly destroyed her character growth  — but even if we don’t agree about Penny, what about Salem? Far from just using her name, this volume gave us a blatant reference to the events of Salem Trails in the 1690s. Namely, the burning of the witch. 

Except references like this can’t just look cool. This isn’t a video game Easter egg with no real connection to the story, it’s a cinematography/plot choice that carries meaning. So what is that meaning? Well, the thing about the women on trail at Salem is that they were innocent. This is what that reference says: “Hey, remember that real life event where women who weren’t witches were horrifically killed because others thought they were evil? None were actually burned, but culturally we tend to think they were. So that’s the image in our collective mind: innocent women on fire.” Except... Salem is actually a witch. Salem is evil. Salem is guilty. Or at least, the questions surrounding the extent of her guilt  — How much responsibility does she hold in comparison to the Gods? How much agency does she still have after the grimm pool?  — has not been acknowledged by the text. Yang just yelled at Salem for killing her mom and Oscar is about to blow her up. This is not a “Question Salem’s humanity” scene, it’s a “Kill the witch” scene... yet it uses an allusion that is contrary to what the moment is trying to achieve. So what are we supposed to take away from this? Do we adhere to the subtext and believe that Salem is innocent somehow, ignoring what the actual text says, or do we uphold the text and in doing so undermine the reliability of every other allusion in the show? If we can’t trust Salem’s, why would we trust, say, Penny’s? 

RWBY’s allusions are all over the place and yes, I think that lack of consideration extends to who they randomly decided to genderbend. There’s no acknowledgment of  — let alone engagement with  — how many of these characters and historical figures were trying to pass themselves off as another gender, nor does RWBY acknowledge how the need to do so feeds into our current and historic assumptions about gender as a whole. Why does the man dress as a woman? To keep himself safe and seen as a non-threat. Why does the woman dress as a man? To gain access to places previously barred from her and to gain the respect she otherwise wouldn’t be afforded. And, of course, in 2021 there’s the expectation that media will include trans characters, GNC characters, non-binary characters, cis characters uninterested in practicing traditional femininity/masculinity, etc. None of which RWBY tackles outside of May, a woman who references a systematic transphobia we otherwise never see in the show. May, as a minor character, is great and I am in all honesty thrilled that she exists in the RWBY canon. However, the rest of the show is built on an anime conception of gender  — combat skirts and bare midriffs in the snow  — while nevertheless engaging with the very complicated question of how you re-imagine canonically/historically gendered people. As a “girl power” show, RWBY has opened itself up to questions like, “Okay, it’s great that you made these four fairy tale girls kickass, but can we talk about making Joan of Arc into a bumbling guy whose presence as a blonde, blue-eyed, sword-wielding man taking up lots of important screen time has generated accusations about this being a male-centered show?” It’s not a “RWBY is horrible for doing this!” issue, but a “RWBY is deliberately playing with gender and marketing itself as a progressive show, so... let’s figure out what these individual choices are actually implying and whether or not we consider that progressive.” 

[delaferriere]

Our hair is the physical extension of our thoughts, it gives us direction throughout our lives; each of our hair represents ourselves, they are strong connection points both of our body and of our spirit according to indigenous peoples.

Men and women of wisdom have long hair; on the other hand, in places where tyranny has been presented in any of its forms, short hair has been obligatory and this, together with other factors, has culminated in the spiritual and physical defeat of the peoples.

Hair has its own language and character, and the way it is styled is extremely important to whoever wears it:

The line in the middle represents the alignment of thought.

The braid, the unity of thought with the heart.

Loose hair means security.

Hair up, conviction.

Currently people comb their hair without knowing the meaning of their actions and the style in which it is used, hair is important because leaving vanity or practicality aside, the way you wear your hair will directly affect our mood.

Going into the thinking of indigenous peoples we will find that the way of wearing hair combed was of utmost importance because this way their participation in various events was described and announced: marriage or war, joy or mourning.

Through the hair and headdresses he wore, you could know the maturity of people, their status in society or the times of peace and war.

Hairstyles were like the seasons; They changed on public, private, and ceremonial occasions.

The hair represented the individual's thoughts and spiritual state; showing the bonds and spiritual unity of his family and defining the cultural harmony and spiritual alignment of his community.

The hair represented the states of nature, flowed in a straight line like waterfalls, or rippled like river water.

Indigenous children were taught to wash and rinse their hair.

In the teachings of many indigenous tribes, cutting hair represented a process of mourning or proximity to death.

Hair was a mystical element in all of them.

They did not allow anyone to touch their hair without their permission.

On the importance of long hair:

For a long time, peoples of different cultures have not cut their hair, because it is a part of who they are.

When the hair is allowed to reach its maximum length, then phosphorus, calcium, and vitamin D are produced, and enter the lymphatic fluid and finally the cerebrospinal fluid through two ducts in the upper part of the brain.

This ionic change makes memory more efficient and leads to increased physical energy, increased endurance, and stoicism.

If you decide to cut your hair, not only will this extra energy and nutrients be lost, but your body will need to provide a large amount of vital energy and nutrients to regrow lost hair.

Also, the hairs are the antennas that collect and channel the energy of the sun or (prana) to the frontal lobes, the part of the brain that is used for meditation and visualization.

These antennas act as conduits to achieve a greater amount of subtle energy, cosmic energy.

It takes approximately three years from the last time the hair was cut to form new antennae at the tips of the hair.

Wet hair:

When you pick up wet hair, it will tend to shrink and pinch a little, and even break as it dries.

A better idea is to take the time to sit in the sun once in a while and allow your clean, damp hair to dry naturally and absorb extra vitamin D.

Yogis recommend washing your hair every 72 hours (or more frequently if your scalp sweats a lot). It may also be beneficial to wash your hair after being upset or angry, to help process emotions.

Haircut:

Often when people were conquered or enslaved, their hair was cut as a sign of slavery, helplessness, and humiliation.

The bones of the forehead are porous and their function is to transmit light to the pineal gland, which affects brain activity, as well as the thyroid and sex hormones.

Just as tribes and entire societies were conquered, the haircut became so prevalent that the importance of hair was lost after a few generations, and hairstyles and fashion became the focus.

Closing cycles:

Our hair, like every cell in our body, has a memory, which is why it is common that when we close a chapter of our life, our being asks us for a haircut, unconsciously due to the need for renewal, as when trees loosen their bark, until to regain its vitality.

Wooden comb:

Yogis also recommend using a wooden comb or brush to comb your hair, as it offers a great deal of circulation and stimulation to the scalp, and the wood does not generate static electricity, causing a loss of energy. from the hair to the brain.

You will notice that if you comb from front to back, back to front, and then several times to the right and to the left, it will refresh you, no matter how long your hair is.

All the weariness of the day will be gone.

For women, using this technique to comb hair twice a day is said to help maintain youth, a healthy menstrual cycle, and good eyesight.

If you have balding problems, the lack of energy in your hair can be counteracted with more meditation.

If you are finding some strands of silver (gray hair) in your hair, be aware that silver or white color increases the flow of energy and vitamins to compensate for aging.

For brain health, as you age, try to keep your hair as healthy and natural as possible.

It is said that when you allow the hair to grow to its full length and wind it around the crown of the head, the energy of the Sun, the prana, the vital energy, goes down the spine.

To counter that downward trend, the Kundalini life energy rises to create balance.

Your hair is not there by mistake. It has a purpose."~

~unknown

[talabib]

Simple Stress-Busting Strategies That Deliver.

It’s often said that the past is a foreign country. That certainly applies to the world of work. From the perspective of our relentless 24/7 business culture today, the old days of nine-to-five shifts and three-martini lunches look about as mysterious and decadent as the lives of the late Roman emperors. Today, it’s hard enough switching off in your free time, never mind during office hours!

That’s hardly surprising. After all, the mid-twentieth century and the present are, technologically speaking, light-years apart. Innovations like the internet, email and smartphones have made it harder than ever before to get away from work. If you have an iPhone, your boss is always right there in your pocket waiting for you to open that email she sent at 10:00 p.m.

And that’s starting to take its toll. Professionals have never been so stressed and sleep-deprived. They’re unhappier, less productive and staring down the barrel of burnout. So it’s high time to make some changes! This post walks you through a series of simple, stress-busting strategies and explains the science behind them. Start integrating them into your professional life today, and you’ll be amazed at how much better you’ll soon feel.

Life is becoming increasingly hectic, and stress levels are on the rise.

There’s no sugarcoating it – life has become more stressful. Getting up at six, grinding out a grueling shift at the metaphorical coalface and collapsing into bed at eleven in the evening is the new normal. But it wasn’t always like this. In fact, things have gotten a whole lot crazier over the last decade.

So, what’s behind our increasingly hectic work lives? Well, let’s rewind to 2008. The economy was in freefall, and companies were scrambling to adjust to the harsh new realities. Lots of companies only managed to survive by downsizing their staff and restructuring workloads. The result was fewer people shouldering a whole lot more than their fair share of responsibilities.

Then there’s the smartphone. Apple launched its first iPhone in 2007. Soon enough, it had taken over the world. According to a 2012 study in the MIT Technology Review, the iPhone conquered 40 percent of the American mobile phone market within just a couple of years. That’s pretty astonishing when you consider the fact that it took computers fourteen years to achieve anything close to that level of market penetration.

The problem, however, is that smartphones don’t just make life more convenient and fun. Sure, you can check Instagram and send tweets, but this also means you’re always on standby mode. Your work is never more than a click away. A 2013 study carried out by the Center for Creative Leadership highlighted this trend. The surveyed executives and managers with smartphones spent an astonishing 72 hours every week engaged in work-related activities!

That’s not sustainable. When work gets too hectic, our stress levels shoot through the roof. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, 33 percent of all Americans suffered acute work-related stress in 2013, while 48 percent claimed that their stress levels had increased over the previous five years.

A full 83 percent of interviewees in the study believed that stress was negatively affecting their health. They’re not wrong! When the Benson-Henry Institute in Massachusetts looked into the matter, they found that between 60 and 90 percent of all trips to the doctor were stress-related.

Practicing mindfulness counteracts the natural fight-or-flight response triggered by stress.

Have you ever had the urge to jump out of your office chair, run right out the door and never come back? That’s a pretty good sign you might be suffering from work-related stress. The desire to flee is one of the body’s natural responses to stress. That’s part of the “fight-or-flight” response, a cerebral and hormonal reaction to life-endangering events. Here’s how it works.

Imagine someone jumps out from behind a corner with a weapon. Your brain – or, more precisely, the command center of your brain known as the thalamus – is the first to react. This, in turn, triggers the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions. This then activates the hypothalamus, the area in charge of regulating the autonomic nervous system, which transmits a message to your adrenal glands. These start pumping out adrenaline – a hormone that prepares your body to react quickly and, if need be, violently. Once it runs out of adrenaline, your body switches to cortisol, another hormone with a similar effect.

This reaction makes you more alert and prepares you to fight or flee. Strange as it may sound, a difficult boss or impossible deadlines are just as likely to trigger this response as a knife-wielding maniac. That’s a problem. If you’re sitting in your office producing adrenaline and cortisol for hours on end, this creates a hormonal imbalance that can be damaging to your health.

So here’s a great tip: learn to beat the fight-or-flight reaction by practicing mindfulness. A quick and dirty mindfulness routine involves nothing more than focusing on your breathing. Take ten deep breaths followed by a pause, and you’ll already feel a lot better.

The second option requires a bit more practice, but it’s an invaluable anti-stress tool: meditation. That’s not just good for your mental well-being – it’s also good for your physical health. That’s the conclusion of a 2000 study by Herbert Benson, a professor at Harvard Medical School. It showed that regular meditation could actually shrink the size of the amygdala and thus counteract that unwanted stress response!

The best way to minimize stress is to develop a supportive daily work rhythm.

You’ve probably heard the old Chinese proverb that says giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, but teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. That’s also a good motto when it comes to stress reduction. Quick fixes like nipping out for a coffee have their uses, especially when you’re in a pinch, but the best way to minimize stress is to develop a long-term anti-stress plan.

Here’s an idea: start by trying to work out a supportive daily work rhythm. That’s precisely what Hilton Hotels CEO Chris Nassetta did. In his case, that involved getting up earlier to free up time to mull over his day’s responsibilities. Nassetta gets up at five every morning and aims to be in the office by six at the latest. Since his work officially only starts somewhere between eight and nine, that gives him at least two hours to prepare for the day ahead. The upshot? He can think through his tasks without losing focus or worrying about what’s coming up later. Rather than drifting off in the middle of a conversation because he’s worried about what he’ll say in an upcoming meeting, he can be fully present and engage with the people he’s talking to.

 It’s worth noting at the outset that you won’t always pull off your ideal work rhythm. In practice, you’ll have to be flexible and roll with the punches. Take it from Crystal Cooper, the vice president for public representation at global IT company Unisys. She initially resented the demands her work placed on her schedule. No wonder – being on call 24/7 is pretty intense! But after a while, she decided to go with the flow and adapt her expectations. Rather than planning to spend two hours of quality time with her family between seven and nine in the evening, she made sure she fit those hours in whenever the chance presented itself throughout the day.

Having clear routines and feedback systems supports you both personally and professionally.

Imagine you had to summon all your willpower to do even the most mundane tasks, like brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces. Life would be unbearably exhausting, right? Luckily the human mind has an autopilot function that helps you do these things without wasting too much brainpower. And here’s the thing – you can get the most out of that nifty cerebral technology by cultivating routines. That’s good news for your personal life.

So, how can you start putting that into practice? Well, there are three words you need to remember: cue, routine and reward.

Let’s take Patricia as an example to see how it works. Jeff met Patricia at a workshop, where she told him about a routine she’d developed. When she got home from work, she entered her house through a side door that leads to a small washroom. That was her cue to take out her phone and plug it into the charger attached to a socket above the washing machine – that’s the routine part. Once she’d done that, she could spend the evening with her family, free from all distractions – that’s the reward. Because the reward was something she genuinely enjoyed, the routine was quickly established.

What about work, though? Well, if you want to improve your professional life, you might want to think about establishing feedback systems. Take Doug, a man struggling with his role as a project leader. The issue was simple: Doug’s colleagues weren’t happy with the way he always focused on the negatives.

Rather than ignoring the problem, Doug took this feedback to heart and resolved to change his ways. He developed a feedback mechanism. Every time he started getting too negative, his colleagues gave him a signal by raising three fingers. It was an informal and friendly gesture that allowed him to directly and effectively address an uncomfortable issue. The result? A happier, more efficient and satisfied team!

Exercise is a highly effective stress remedy.

Lots of people accept stress as a fact of life and try to put a brave face on it. It’s only when they finally burn out or get seriously ill that they start considering changes. But that’s not the right approach. In fact, you can spare yourself no end of suffering by taking action today. And here’s the good news: you don’t even need to make particularly radical changes to boost your well-being.

Sometimes all it takes to beat work-related stress is exercise. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking out a gym membership, though. Simple rhythmic and repetitive movements like walking, jogging, cycling, dancing or even going through some yoga poses can significantly reduce stress.

Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First off, movement helps your body eliminate those stress hormones that were mentioned earlier. Nothing purges them from your system like a spot of exercise. Then there are the psychological effects of movement. Focusing on your body for a few minutes is an excellent way of getting out of your head and interrupting those obsessive thoughts that go hand-in-hand with stress.

That’s not just a theory, either. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal reporting on the results of a one-year study of professionals, workers who regularly used a treadmill experienced less stress, interacted more with their colleagues and were more productive than their peers who didn’t exercise.

That said, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Your best bet is to try out different types of exercise and see what works for you. The most important point to remember is that if you choose something you enjoy, you’re much more likely to stick with it. If you like taking walks around the park, do that. If you prefer jogging with a friend, well, do that. What you opt for will also depend on your commitments. If you need to be super-flexible, developing an exercise routine you can do in your office might be a good idea. If you’re the organized type, weekly swimming lessons might be the way to go.

Visualizing stress-free success and savoring the moment are also useful stress-busters.

As we’ve seen, physical movement is an excellent way of relieving stress. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can do whenever we need a bit of relief. After all, you can’t just leave your office to go for a jog whenever you feel like it! That means it’s also a good idea to develop some cognitive strategies to quiet your mind. Lets look at two top techniques that’ll help you do just that.

Let’s start with being in the moment. Stress is all about worrying about the past or the future. Learning to appreciate the present pushes those anxiety-inducing thoughts to the back of your mind. Best of all? You can start practicing this kind of mindfulness without making any changes to your routine. The reason for that is simple. Remember those autopilot activities like brushing your teeth we talked about earlier? Well, those are the kinds of things you can focus on to become more present!

All you have to do is make a conscious effort not to zone out and instead direct your attention to what you’re doing. That’s about learning how to appreciate, say, the way the water is running down your body or feels on your skin when you take a shower. Whenever you find your mind wandering, make an effort to refocus it on those sensations.

The second technique involves visualizing stress-free success. Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve and then concentrate on what it is you’d need to do to pull that off. If you’ve got an important presentation coming up, for example, and you really want to impress the audience, what would that take? Well, you’d need to be well-rested, prepared and punctual. Visualize those steps and work backward from there. What do you need to do to make sure you’re well-rested, for example? This is a great way of pushing vague anxieties out of your mind and really honing in on the things that are in your control – a guaranteed stress-reliever.

Cultivating new friendships and staying in contact with old friends is great for your mental health.

What’s worse than those endless shifts that bite into your evening? Getting off work and not having anything to do or anyone to do it with. The simple truth is that isolation just isn’t good for your mental health. Friends matter – a lot!

That means it’s in your best interest to make an effort to stay in touch with old friends. How you do that depends on your personality type. As Susan Cain points out in her book Quiet, introverts will generally prefer seeing more of fewer people. Cain, a self-professed introvert, says she spends 80 percent of her free time with just 10 percent of the people she knows. That means it’s important for her to regularly reach out and give a select number of old friends a call or invite them out for a drink.  

Extroverts are the opposite. They generally prefer seeing more people less often. Take psychologist and author Adam Grant. He goes out of his way to reconnect with someone he hasn’t seen in a while once a month. That’s a great way of reactivating old contacts and keeping the connection alive.

Then there are new friendships. Few things can help you beat stress more effectively than cultivating new friends in your workplace. Why? Well, as a 2006 Gallup study showed, having just one good friend at work increases your morale and engagement levels up to seven times more than the normal amount. That’s easier said than done, of course, so let’s take a look at a couple of tips you can use to help you get to know your colleagues.

The simplest option is to respond enthusiastically when colleagues reach out to ask for help or invite you to take part in some after-work activity. If you’re pressed for time, you can be more strategic. Position yourself outside the main exit at lunchtime and pretend you’re waiting for someone and you’ll have a great opportunity to exchange a couple of words with your colleagues.

Being grateful can help you beat stress.

We’ve talked a lot about stress and how to overcome it. As we’ve seen, stress is inherently harmful. That’s why one of the simplest and most effective ways of getting it out of your system is to stay positive.

That means learning to be genuinely grateful for the things that are going well. Take Kaye Foster-Cheek, a senior executive at the Boston Consulting Group. She’s found that making time to experience gratitude has boosted her well-being significantly. So it’s the first thing she does when she wakes up. Rather than jumping out of bed, she takes a moment to reflect on how grateful she feels to simply be lying there with a new day ahead of her.

Alanson Van Fleet, an executive in the financial sector, takes a similar approach. His moment of gratitude comes when he walks through his office door and sees the small statue of the Buddha he keeps next to his computer, which reminds him how grateful he is that his company pays for his personal office space.

Those are great examples of how paying attention to those little details we all too often take for granted can help you beat stress. Here’s another tip: use visual cues in your workplace to reconnect with your core values.

When you’re under intense pressure and feeling adrift, catching sight of something familiar and loved can be a real lifesaver. Personal manager Tracy Columbus, for example, keeps Native American art in her office. Whenever she’s feeling blue, she turns to the images and their joyful colors. Peter Block does something similar. When he looks at the artwork in his office, he thinks of the time, patience and dedication the artists put into their creations – a reminder that that’s also something he seeks to do.

That goes to show that stress isn’t inevitable or inescapable. So, if you’re feeling under pressure, try out some of these stress-relieving strategies. You’ll be amazed at what a difference a couple of minutes of mindfulness or a quick walk around the park can make to your personal and professional life!

Increased workloads, demanding bosses, increasingly intrusive tech and a 24/7 business culture – no wonder today’s workforce is more stressed than ever. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Follow the simple stress-busting strategies in this post and you’ll be well on your way to beating burnout!

 Action plan: Get a coaching partner. Building a new routine is hard work, especially in the early stages. That’s why it’s a good idea to find a coaching partner who’s embarked on the same path as you. Together, you can support each other on your journey. Whether that’s just a phone call to check in now and again or a gym buddy, having a partner who’s got your back is the best way to make sure you follow through on your resolutions.

[realinstafollowers]

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In today's world, there is no overstatement to write that a lot of people spend hours on social networks. The whole generation lives by the motto "It didn’t happen, unless you haven’t posted it". Social media is a common part of people's lives and daily routines. It is not uncommon for reviewing social networks feeds to be the last thing until falling asleep and the first one just after waking up. The necessity and enormous amount of time we as consumers spend on social media, it's hardly surprising, and by the end of 2019 long past news, that businesses and advertisers are moving to the social platforms where their target audiences are also.

Although the attention span of "Generation Instagram" is just about as long as it takes to double-tap an image on a smartphone screen. No doubt we all are looking for popularity and bigger amount of real followers. Users could try out these cool https://reachbyfollowers.com/contact-us/ to get cheap and instant result. Competition is constantly increasing, which is why profiles are finding it harder and harder to get noticed by potential consumers. Therefore, a neat social media marketing strategy is irreplaceable for companies.

1. Ephemeral content stays popular Ephemeral content only stays available for not a long time and then vanishes. Instagram and Snapchat Stories are great at showing this kind of content. Nowadays, the path users prefer to see the content varies from how it looked a couple of years ago. That’s why, formats like Stories have become viral. They are short, engaging, and encourage users to spend hours looking through story after story. They're also seen as more authentic and approachable than the through-scheduled and curated feed. This is used in the amazing growth in daily active users of Instagram Stories as well.

2. Niche platforms will increase As a bonus to the 2 platforms that have always been the first in the social media world such as Facebook and Instagram, last years have showed also some other social networks platforms pop up, but get more popularity as well. TikTok is an example how this platform was launched in 2016 and grew to huge popularity among youth. B2B companies look up to LinkedIn for their social media ideas, while the gaming group follows Twitch.

Such "small" platforms should be kept in mind as they will continue to emerge and gain popularity. It is important to decide whether it makes sense to be active on such a platform at all. Can one's own target group even be found here? How can they be reached? Is there a long-term concept? Are there concrete goals? If you just "recycle" content, you will most likely have less success than brands that take a close look at the network and its user structure and understand how to address the users there. But the established platforms are also evolving: In Brazil, a new Instagram service called "Reels" was recently launched, which is strikingly reminiscent of the hype app TikTok in terms of appearance and function. Those who remember the launch of Instagram Stories know that the strategy of copying popular competitor services has brought the Facebook subsidiary success before. In 2016, Instagram launched a frontal attack on competitor platform Snapchat with its Stories, whose growth then stagnated for the next three years.

3. Instagram removes Likes With more than billion registered users, Instagram is one of the largest social networks. Any major changes implemented here could have a continued influence on the social media horizon for good. One of these big differences is that the number of likes for a post could be hidden any time now. After test phases in Australia and Canada, among others, the first accounts in this country are also already no longer seeing like counts. Instagram itself justifies this idea most importantly with the perspective of having painful effect of likes as a meaning of self-faith on the mental health of youth basically. However, there are also many observers who are of the opinion that Instagram simply wants to implement this change in order to generate more sales.

Brands sometimes pay influencers huge money to promote their products. But nothing goes to Instagram. In addition, influencer marketing is now very popular and some brands are already looking for other ways of ads. Whether Instagram doesn’t show likes, brands won't have the opportunity to check the impact of their influencer campaigns as not hard as they have the possibility now. They will then need to believe the influencers to measure the metrics, which poses a risk of manipulation.

Other voices, however, praise the push to hide Instagram Likes. It counteracts the pressure to compete and succeed that many users feel and that is primarily checked by how many likes it has. If Instagram successfully deletes likes and motivates more brands to go to its own ad format, this could bring wonderful changes to social media marketing on other platforms as well.

4. Video content is going to be the most popular Follow these amazing https://later.com/blog/instagram-aesthetic-trends/ that actually will help your account grow. The increasing importance of video content for brands in the social media sector is therefore obvious. Brands that have not yet included video content in their social media strategy should therefore think about their video content strategy. IGTV is another format that Instagram will surely put a lot of effort into and make bigger very soon.

5. Influencer marketing will go on with growth Influencer marketing is not a new idea, but it will 100% remain with us for some time. There are thousands of influencers big and small in today's social media landscape, and new ones are being added every day. Still the world of influencers is quite disorganized, there is a lot of fake activity, embellished media kits, likebots, so-called comment pods, etc. Nevertheless, there seems to be no end to the influencer marketing trend and the annual budgets of companies for influencer campaigns are increasing every year.

In 2021 we will witness a further growth in micro-influencer ads. They not seldom have much higher involvement numbers, not so high-priced, and are believed to be more true than their celebrity counterparts with hundreds of thousands of followers. Many brands will rely on many "small" influencers, rather than one "big" influencer, or consider both groups in their campaigns. A perfect brand fit will also become more important. Brands will place a high value on selecting influencers for their campaigns who truly embody the company's values and form long-term partnerships with them, rather than relying on one-off collaborations in individual campaign. The days of booking influencers solely because they have the right follower count are coming to an end. And that's a good thing. Influencers who clearly position themselves in a niche are benefiting from this trend.

In conclusion needs to be said that a lot is happening in social media - and these are far from all the trends we will see next year on Instagram and the like. Social business is going to be other not less necessary item, the implementation of automatic reality, live streaming like on Twitch and the overall trend of sustainability are topics we will be the most popular in social media. What will not change is the dynamic and fast-moving nature of social media platforms and their trends. What is trending today may no longer be relevant next week. You don't have to follow every trend, but in case you wish to remain in the social media game, you need to know what interest’s users and constantly adapt.

[breakingmllc]

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Under control no real help for the states and local governments trying to fill the vacuum of leadership from the White House no real help for children and educators for small businesses and front line workers that halted there ones holding our country together instead he’s issuing executive orders making promises that the end will defined the Social Security system on insisting that this virus will disappear the Joe Biden Harris administration to compress a Principal We All Grow Together Plants T Shirt plan to meet the challenge of 19 and turned the corner on this pandemic masking Claire science based guidance dramatically scaling up testing getting states and local governments resources they need to open his goals a business safely we can do this we just need a president and vice president willing to lead take responsibility this president says my fall the government the governor should thank me more is an old saying goes give me a break in an economic crisis more than 16 million Americans 16 million still out of work. Know my dad was an honorable decent man he got knocked down a few times pretty hard when he always got back up he worked hard to build a great middle class life our family is to say joey I would expect the government to solve my problems but I sure as hell expect and understand the many say joey a job is about a lot more than a paycheck despite your dignity it’s about respect as much a place in the community not been able to cure kidney is a honey is going to be okay and made never forgotten those lessons that’s why my economic plan is all about jobs dignity respecting community together we can and will rebuild our economy and when we do will not only billback will be met better with modern roads bridges highways broadband ports and airports is a new foundation for economic growth with pipes of transport clean water to every community with 5 million new manufacturing and technology jobs so the future is made in america with a healthcare system that lowers premiums deductibles drug prices by building. Law dramatically with taking it is frightening trail old time for the ordinary tour in his life that kind of I live just one live as long America one live stream will reporting was related to neighboring Georgia record while encouraging the did not know consider the party down a number silly 83 days have come election day and today Joe Biden Harris will make their first appearance in Wilmington Delaware as running mate American major party previously major during president the 21st century See Other related products: unicorn shirts and shirt

[angeltriestoblog]

The state of the world has once again taken a turn for the worse, and like all other similar instances, I turn to the comfort of the written word. With that being said, I wanted to put it out there that I have no intention of speaking over the narratives of those who need to be heard the most during this time. (I guess it pays that I don’t really have much of an audience here.) It’s just that I’ve always said that writing helps me compartmentalize my feelings and figure out my next course of action, and I guess this time is no different. I need to get my thoughts down somewhere I can see them instead of having them flit around aimlessly in the deep recesses of my brain.

—

These past few days, I have been made more and more aware of my smallness. Following the (first degree) murder of George Floyd, I’ve had access to all the information surrounding his death: who did it, how they did it and why, the implications of the act, and the several ways black people of color and their allies are standing in solidarity to counteract this brutal display of injustice. I’ve come across several petitions that hope to hold certain individuals accountable or raise issues to the national level, funding sites that aim to provide financial assistance to those most in need, and resources with the intent to educate that demand to be circulated on a wide scale. While these have technically showed me how I’m not entirely powerless, that I do in fact have the ability to enact some sort of change, it’s still difficult to stomach that the change I am capable of making is not as substantial as I want it to be.

I understand that what I’m feeling is a hassle, at worst—nothing compared to those on the streets, to the black people of color who have to fight for rights that are supposedly inherent to all human beings, who demand justice for all those who have fallen because of police brutality only to have these cries fall on deaf ears. I do not have to face various forms of oppression and microaggressions not just when this topic is trending, but throughout the course of my entire life. I do not carry this lingering fear that every step I take outside of my front door could be my last. What happens to their community is absolutely sickening but the thing is, we haven’t even seen all of it. Keeping tabs on social media, checking up with actual victims of structural racism often deludes us into thinking we know exactly what’s going on and how hard it must be, but access to all of this information doesn’t erase the fact that I am watching everything from afar.

So instead of sulking so much that my reaction could be misconstrued as an attempt to make the conversation about me, I tried to channel all this frustration in a more productive manner. I’ve reduced my Twitter time because my timeline has magically morphed into a raging cesspool spewing hatred and anger and is thus getting in the way of my journey towards being an effective ally and concerned citizen. I’m definitely not saying this because the people I follow only ever tweet about the resurfacing of the #BlackLivesMatter movement—hopefully, at this point of the post, I’ve already made it clear that I am far from apolitical. It’s just that my following can easily be classified into two groups: those who wear their ignorance on their sleeve and actively resist any form of education, and those who are so ruthlessly divisive that they scare away anyone who wishes to be educated. The world is already unforgiving enough as it is and I refuse to take part in that kind of culture. I have been trying to ease my way back in though by looking at tweets almost exclusively in the likes of some of my most politically aware friends (hi Pat, Ryen, and Alyanna—I hope you never have to see this) and checking the trends sporadically for any live updates.

Not only have I realized just how many hours in a day going on that stupid bird app actually eats up, but I’ve also had a lot of time to educate myself and reflect on my previous actions. I figured that if I’m so upset about how my impact on a global scale is terribly lacking, I can always start on a more personal level, which is probably just as revolutionary. I’ve watched movies, gone through articles, and even started on this book called White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which debunks why exactly it’s so hard to talk about racism with white people. In this process, I’ve learned that everything I knew about the concept was surprisingly shallow and surface-level. Having first claimed my badge of wokeness when I was 15 (and engaged in some pretty performative activism at the time, if I do say so myself), I was shocked to find out that everything I collected from viral hot takes and recommended YouTube videos that claim to be an extensive guide to fundamental social movements possessed an unforgivable degree of inaccuracy.

For instance, all this time, I was under the impression that I could only be a racist if I called someone ugly because of their dark skin or curly hair, or said the n-word whenever I sang along to Caroline by Amine. As long as I didn’t do those things, or any other form of discrimination towards a marginalized group, I was in the clear and had nothing to worry about—I could get a star on the Good Noodle board. In reality, to quote Scott Woods, racism is “a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not”. It is not something we actively choose to participate in, but something that we are born into—literally who would have thought!

Because racism has been demonized by everyone with working mental faculties (as it should be), it’s hard to own up to the fact that at some point, we have subconsciously picked up racist behaviors or exhibited racist tendencies at some point in our lives. Every time someone tries to point out where we went wrong in the hopes of giving constructive criticism, we have our defenses up, a list of receipts of all the times we tweeted the #BLM hashtag prepared to show that we are, in fact, not the villain that we were made out to be. This is a counterproductive exercise that helps nobody. If we truly want to step up and show our support for the movement and those working to make it happen, we must first be open to the possibility that we have done wrong and we have so much more to learn.

As a kid, my beauty standards were very Eurocentric, like most Filipinos: according to a study conducted by me based on years of personal observations and experience, we are the country most obsessed with whitening soap and hair rebonding treatments. I called my friends the n-word as a term of endearment and previously used AAVE (African American Vernacular English) in my tweets to give them a little bit of personality. I chose not to watch chick flicks that revolved around interracial couples because I felt that the difference in their skin color got in the way of their chemistry. One time, when my mom and I were walking to WalMart during a vacation to the States, we came across a stocky black man and my initial reaction was to hold my purse closer to my body. I remain deeply ashamed of these beliefs I held, which were admittedly born out of ignorance, and I acknowledge my responsibility to continue to eradicate any traces of these I may still have.

I am also doing my best to extend the same compassion I have for black people of color during these trying times towards my own countrymen. We’ve struggled enough during this pandemic thanks to the sorry state of our healthcare system, and now the government seems hell-bent on speeding up the passage of the anti-terrorism bill. This threatens to impede our freedom of speech and help government officials get away with incompetence and even abuse of authority. If anyone gets a hold of this blog post and chooses to interpret this paragraph as an open threat to the President, this could be the last time you could ever hear from me, and this frightens me beyond words.

I know this isn’t a new contribution to the discussion but here are some links to helpful masterposts containing a variety of resources should you wish to donate, learn, or sign. This goes for both issues in our motherland and what is supposedly the land of the free. Let’s stay vigilant, let’s stay compassionate. Wishing you all the love and light the world still has left to offer.

[sciencespies]

The 10 Best Wellness Trends Of The 2010’s

https://sciencespies.com/news/the-10-best-wellness-trends-of-the-2010s/

The 10 Best Wellness Trends Of The 2010’s

With the sun having set on the 2010s, what are the top wellness trends to take into the New Year … [+] 2020? (Photo: Getty Images)

Getty

Every chocolate eclair has a golden lining. While the 2010’s have had its share of bogus and bad wellness trends, it’s also had its good ones. On the last day of the past decade, I covered for Forbes the Top 10 worst wellness trends of the twenty-teens. Let’s use the New Year to cover the really good ones. Now without further doggie-doo, here are the Top 10 best:

10. Athleisure, activewear, and eco-friendly apparel

“Athleisure” or “activewear” clothes are more comfortable but also stylish garbs that you can wear during athletic activities as well as others such work, going to school, attending parties, and getting arrested at protests. It’s basically melding sportswear with everyday wear, making it easier to meld physical activity with everything else. Why not? After all, many classic office-wear clothing items make about as much sense as the lyrics of the song Ice, Ice Baby. For example, neckties have little practical purpose, except to dab the tears in your eyes from your dreams being slowly crushed by your boss.

Then there are eco-friendly clothes, those that are less likely to pollute the environment. For example, they may be made out of natural fibers rather than petroleum-based clothing, which can be a source of microplastics, making oceans look like a bedazzler gone overboard, so to speak, as I’ve covered before for Forbes.

More clothing lines emerged that merged athletic activities with other activities. (Photo: Getty … [+] Images)

Getty

9. More flexible work hours and more attention to family leave policies

While I was in medical school, an anesthesiologist once told me, “the best thing about anesthesiology is that you get into work at 6 am and then.” Everything sort of went hazy after he said that, because, to borrow a quote from the movie Jerry McGuire, he definitely didn’t have me at 6 am. Even if he had continued by saying,”they provided gold bars and sushi,” that workday start-time basically ruled out anesthesiology as a career option for me.

Fortunately, the 2010s saw increasing recognition that not everyone operates best at the same hours. On one end of the spectrum are night owls, who prefer later-to-rise-and-later-to-bed hours. At the other end are people whose sole purpose is to make night owls miserable: the early morning people, the larks. Then, there is a whole continuum of people in between. Over the past decade, more and more workplaces began offering more flex hours, allowing employees to better tailor their “on times” to their own personal working styles.

Another trend was paying more attention to having more reasonable family leave policies. Note that the words are “paying more attention to” and not actually changing them. While some organizations have responded by offering longer family leave, not all are allowing mothers and fathers much time with, you know, those living, breathing, peeing, and pooping things that have appeared in their houses and apartments. As John Oliver pointed out in this 2015 episode of Last Week Tonight, the U.S. still lags most of the world (except for perhaps Papa New Guinea) in this area:

8. Doing something about the sitting problem

Is sitting literally the new smoking, as some began claiming that it is? Not exactly, unless you are doing something really weird with your bottom. What this saying is supposed to highlight are the dangers of sitting around too much, which can lead to an increased risk of obesity and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The 2010s saw various trends aimed at decreasing your sitting time, such as standing desks, conducting meetings while standing, desk cycles, computer screen reminders to periodically get off of your butt, and the movie “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” to get you moving more or out of your seat. Not all of these will necessarily sit well with time though. Standing too long has its perils too, such as back and foot issues, and people asking you to stop blocking their view in the movie theater. And if you’ve got a standing desk, you’ve got to be real careful when propping your feet on the desk.

Standing desks became a thing in many workplaces. (Photo: Getty Images)

Getty

7. More plant-based diets

Eating more plants and less meat can be better for not only your health but also the environment. Fruits and vegetables are naturally lower in saturated fat and sodium and can be higher in sodium and many types of nutrients and antioxidants. Plus, meat production can add lots of carbon and other types of pollution to the environment, and it’s not just from cows farting. The past decade did see an increase in plant-awareness and plant-based options. Heck, there is even meat-free haggis now, which is a bit like Game of Thrones without the killing and the sex. Keep in mind, though, plant-based doesn’t automatically mean healthy. Some plant-based dishes can have plenty of bad stuff added such as saturated fat, salt, sugar, and artificial ingredients. Also, if you are vegan, don’t go acting like the Todd Ingram vegan character in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Being vegan won’t automatically make you better than others, as this tweet references:

6. Waking up to sleep problems

What you do in bed matters, a lot. No, not that the stuff that takes on average 5.4 minutes to do with a range of 0.55 minutes to 44.1 minutes, based on a study of men in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, and the United States published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Instead, I’m referring to what you usually do in bed, which is sleep or, at least try to sleep. Getting less than seven hours of sleep a night is linked to increased risk of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, frequent mental distress, and death. And if you are dead, you can’t do that other stuff in bed, at least you really shouldn’t. A study published in the February 19, 2016, issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that more than a third of Americans regularly fall below this seven hour threshold. While many of these sleep problems have not yet been adequately solved, at least there seems to be more awareness for now.

The increasing use of smartphones and other devices may be affecting sleep. (Photo: Getty Images)

Getty

5. Meditation and mindfulness

And Zen there’s this trend. It isn’t a completely new trend. In fact, various meditation and mindfulness practices have been common for hundreds of years in many parts of Asia. What’s new is these practices are becoming more mainstream in the U.S. For example, my previous article in Forbes covered how the NBA has incorporated such practices into its Rookie Transition Program. Being more in touch with your mind, your feelings, and your environment can’t be a bad thing. Maybe mindfulness can help counteract another trend that’s happening on social media: mindlessness.

Here is a video from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) on the origins and traditions of meditation:

4. Personalized health, nutrition, etc.

Surprise, surprise. Everyone is not the same. You all don’t have the same bodies, the same minds, and the same circumstances. You all don’t like to dab. For too many years, too many people, whether its medical researchers, people trying to sell stuff like diets and medications, or people making policies and guidelines, have overlooked the individual and tried to lump people together into gigantic buckets. The 2010s saw increased realization that this just doesn’t work, that you actually have to, gasp, get to know someone before making many judgments and giving advice.

3. Talking more about mental health

If you have a bleeding arm, would you ever try to hide it or fear that someone will say, “ha, ha, that’s the bleeding arm guy, look at how bleeding his arm is.” Similarly, hiding mental health issues for fear of stigma and social and career implications makes little sense. You can’t address an issue if you don’t know about it. The 2010s had a number of athletes, movie and television stars, and other celebrities be more frank about their mental health challenges. For example, in this Today show segment, celebrities Carson Daly, Kristen Bell, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Love and Michael Phelps discuss their anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges:

2. Efforts to increase sports participation and make it more inclusive.

Physical inactivity has become a major worldwide problem that’s gotten worse in the 2010s. Sport participation, especially among kids, dropped in the 2000s and much of the 2010’s with sports becoming too expensive, too competitive, and too inaccessible to play for many and a range of more sedentary activities like social media and putting Tide Pods in your mouth competing for attention.

But there is hope. The past decade witnessed increasing diversity among professional and other high profile athletes. Events like the 2019 Women’s World Cup provided a greater showcase for women’s sports:

Kosovare Asllani of Sweden (R) battles for the ball with Samantha Mewis of United States (L) during … [+] the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup France group F match between Sweden and USA at on June 20, 2019 in Le Havre, France. (Photo by Marcio Machado/Getty Images)

Getty Images

The tail end of Ichiro Suzuki’s major league baseball career, the spectacular beginning of Jeremy Lin’s NBA career, and Chloe Kim’s gold-medal-winning 2018 Winter Olympic debut got more people used to seeing those of Asian descent as top athletes.

Jeremy Lin #17 of the New York Knicks in action against Jason Maxiell #54 of the Detroit Pistons on … [+] March 24, 2012 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Knicks defeated the Pistons 101-79. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

Getty Images

The 2010s also saw more Black athletes dominate in roles, such as being an NFL quarterback, that not too long ago seemed reserved for White athletes. Moreover, initiatives like Project Play 2020, which I have described previously for Forbes, launched to increase youth participation in sports.

1.Finding ways to decrease sugar and salt consumption.

Oh sugar, who would have thought that drinking sugar water would be a bad thing? In the 2010s, there was finally a whole lot more attention paid to the dangers of adding sugar to everything. This included trying to find ways to curb the consumption of sugary drinks, such as warning labels and soda taxes, and helping people better understand how much sugar is being added to food. One example is when First Lady-at-the-time Michelle Obama worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add a new category to the Nutrition Facts label: “Added Sugars.” The actual implementation of this change has been delayed under President Donald Trump’s administration.

On August 22, 2017, KIND Healthy Snacks dumped over 45,000 pounds of sugar in Times Square to … [+] represent how much added sugar American children consume each day. (Photo by Vanessa Carvalho/Brazil Photo Press/LatinContent via Getty Images)

LatinContent via Getty Images

This list certainly ain’t everything that was good about wellness the 2010s. Also, some wellness trends in the decade were a bit mixed. For example, wearables really became a thing. The good thing about these tech devices is that you can wear them on your body to monitor what you do. The bad thing is that you can wear them on your body to monitor what you do. Questions remain about the usefulness of the information being collected and the impact of others knowing this information.

Alas, 2020 is no longer just name of a television show or a perfect reading on an eye exam. It is now when we are. How many of these best wellness trends will continue and expand? You may want to sleep on it.

#News

[cathrynstreich]

The Bull Case for Industry Search & IDX

[Editor’s note: We’re trying something new–collaborative thought pieces written by the Geek Estate Mastermind community. The goal is to make the absolute best argument possible, derived from the collective expertise of members. The first two articles are bull and bear arguments for industry search and IDX, a topic initiated by Greg Fischer over a year ago.

Bull: The industry must not cede search to the portals. Meeting buyer expectations and owned, perpetual lead generation are table stakes to agency.

Bear: The portals have already won the minds of buyers. Search is an undifferentiated lost cause. If you can’t “win,” why play at all? Read the full argument here.

Without further ado, here we go with the bull argument…]

Bull: Meeting Buyer Expectations and Owned, Perpetual Lead Generation Are Table Stakes to Agency

By: Ted Adler

One of the great fallacies of real estate digital marketing is that Zillow cannot be beat. 

Yes, Zillow has put itself between the real estate broker and the consumer when it comes to the search experience: The word “Zillow” has replaced “real estate“ as the most likely additional phrase for people looking to find a home for sale. The millions of monthly visitors it attracts dwarfs that of any ad-free industry player, by a landslide. Take out Redfin from the equation, and it’s a complete romping.

Traditional property search (but not visual search) has been commoditized online, yet it is still a fundamental component to a real estate business. Consumer expectations are high and there’s a sense of entitlement, so if a potential buyer client arrives to an agent/broker website (however they get there) and is not given the option to search listings, the user experience is 100% compromised. That’s not to say they won’t work with an agent, but brand equity takes a hit and that buyer will have to be reached again some other way.

Search can yield true insight around when and why to communicate with a consumer, improving that experience and building a relationship. For most local brokerages, it’s a tool to convert traffic from multiple channels, not to win a web ranking contest.

Continued investment is essential as a way to serve buyers, generate leads, and avoid irrelevance. It’s true: Portals have the minds of buyers. But they have not won their hearts; that’s only something a person can do. 

PERPETUAL LEAD GENERATION MACHINE

Brokers are in the business of helping people own the most important asset: their home. Yet when it comes to their primary marketing tool (their website) in the dominant marketing media (the internet), they seem willing to rent their leads. These names, emails, and sometimes phone numbers–which are sprayed out to an array of brokers–run in the ballpark of $150/each.  When you stop paying that rent, you’re evicted from this lead pool.

The alternative of developing a strong website with a solid technical SEO foundation that can capture long-tail searches in a perpetual lead generation machine is a far better strategy. Beyond generating online leads to power the broker’s business annually, it serves as a quantifiable asset that can be monetized in a transaction.  

The biggest issue is not the website, but what is done after the website goes live. Long gone are the days of the internet as a “field of dreams.” If you build it, they won’t come. Billboards in the basement are seen by no one. Ranking well takes time, resources, and know how. In an era when reading is hard (and watching a video is easy), who really wants to spend time creating content and doing technical search engine optimization–much less the hard part, organic link building? Only those brokers who understand the digital landscape and want to win. Keep in mind: The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes.

The Bears (which include the portals themselves) have convinced many brokers competing for traffic is not worth the required time or capital. In the aggregate, there is merit to that argument that no site (agent/broker websites, BPP, consumer MLS portals, Upstream, etc) will displace Zillow in 2020, or even 2025 for that matter. 

However, what real estate agent or brokerage cares about buyers nationwide? None of them. They care about hyperlocal. Competing for search phrases in an agent/broker’s “farm” is all that is required to make an IDX & SEO investment worthwhile.

As brokers are not technical by nature (a common college major for brokers is psychology), convincing them to invest in other areas isn’t hard. When it comes to their vehicle lease, brokers will throw down $700/month for an Audi Q7 and then debate the value of a website platform at $79, $149, or $199 a month. One will drive a handful of their clients around on a monthly basis.  The other will be the first drive everyone they know (and many people they do not know) will take with their brand. The former is irrelevant without the latter.

HYPER LOCAL SPECIALIZATION

The last mile of real estate search–property addresses and long-tail search queries pertinent to buyers further down the purchase funnel–accounts for 92.42% of queries according to ahrefs. When it comes to hyper local, Zillow can be beat. I know this as fact because we help clients do it every day.

Ranking number one for a specific property address is the ultimate “local” of digital marketing.  Appearing number one for your own listings is a highly valuable result, which could lead to impressing sellers in the research phase (a listing presentation asset) and converting buyers to conversations. 

Strategies/tactics for ranking well for hyper local:

Specializing in a specific neighborhood or even handful of buildings (link: https://www.campionre.com/luxury_buildings/millennium-tower/). 

Adding additional property descriptions & comments to your listings on your site.

Posting a comparative market analysis to counteract the automated “estimates” that seem to cause so much confusion and contention. 

Posting listing videos in YouTube with links back to individual property detail views (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT8dFKvl7o&feature=emb_logo)

Lifestyle Searches / Specialized Filters: Predefined searches with specific and desirable filters that are unavailable or difficult for people to do through the large portals. Ex. Fix-and-flip homes, or properties with potential to improve their value or “Near me” searches which have skyrocketed in popularity (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=real%20estate%20agent%20near%20me)

It’s not a coincidence that all of this is part of Redfin’s repertoire of differentiation. 

INDUSTRY SEARCH SOLUTIONS

IDX is marketing magic. Using IDX content opens up a swiss army knife of marketing and sales capabilities.

Any cooperating member participant (agent or brokerage) of any size who opts into IDX policy may access and display a very comprehensive set of on- and off-market properties. Typically, that inventory is as or more comprehensive than any portal. It is vital to attract buyers who have had their first course of portal listings–or listings displayed in the window of agency’s in year’s past–and are ready to get serious with the actual local MLS database on a broker site. 

Historically, IDX has served three primary purposes:

Power a buyer experience with all inventory (in real-time).

Allow the agent/broker to engage, track, capture, and convert traffic (ultimate goal of a website).

Enhance the brand of the brokerage as a go-to place for information about the local market.  

In addition to engaging and converting traffic, IDX should be part of a larger strategy to:

Increase time on website.

Reduce bounce rate.

Gain insight on client’s search activity and track search behavior. (Ie, “They said their budget is $400K and yet they keep going back and looking at properties in the $480K range.”)

Lend credibility to agent. Portals rely on 3rd party data so often inaccurate and out of date.

Offer a personalized consumer experience (as opposed to a mass portal experience).

Meet consumer expectations.

A world without IDX, would: 

cripple buyer-agency, as many buyer leads would only be distributed inter-brokerage. All pocket listings, all the time. 

lead to agents/brokers selectively sharing listing info with portals over local competition. 

cause SMB sized brokerages to get squeezed out or rolled up by incumbents who possess listing inventory control.

Nearly 20 years after IDX was made available, today it’s more relevant than ever. Gone are the days of the vanilla ‘boxed in’ (i.e. framed / I-framed) MLS search box. “Disassembling” IDX wouldn’t abandon a ghost town. To the contrary, it would cripple a utility that is required to maintain a sense of agency with buyers. Afterall, if professionals aren’t even facilitating the most basic online home discovery process, what are they doing at all?

THE AGGREGATION THEORY

Consumer MLS websites and the Broker Public Portal have the same goals as IDX: a comprehensive search experience, free from ads from competing agents. And not having to pay for leads. The difference is they add marketing muscle in the form of many agents promoting the same website.

Consumer-driven traffic is just one part of the equation. Agent-driven traffic is a very different animal with a much higher correlation to closings. Don’t ignore the potential of MLS-wide adoption of an agent-to-consumer mobile search tool.

Broker Public Portal, the joint venture with Homesnap, is aggregating consumers by leveraging agents on a nationwide scale. While they aren’t at the top of the traffic charts yet, it takes time. With continued efforts, they will crack the top five most trafficked real estate search portals.

HamptonsRE.com is a new portal to combat Zillow’s acquisition of Hamptons Real Estate Online (re-branded to Out East). HAR.com is the gold standard of what a consumer MLS portal can be. Granted, it was started years before any other MLS was considering how to combat the online portals existence. But, it is clear proof consumer MLS portals can gain an audience if cards are played correctly. 

DON’T GIVE UP

While search is an undifferentiated cause, it’s not “lost”–it is simply evolved table stakes where general feature parity with national portals should be maintained. 

Without IDX, you can be certain that it will be more difficult for consumers to make an educated decision around buying a house. An anti-competitive landscape is not one the industry wants. 

Agents and brokers shouldn’t cede search to the portals without a fight (especially since Zillow is now a competitor not a partner). Left unchecked, Zillow will go from buyer traffic domination to annihilation. It will have all the leverage in the world without someone to challenge it.

The industry’s investment in search must continue–real estate agency as we know it depends on it. Without a role in the top of the funnel, agents and brokers will fall into the abyss of irrelevance.

Wrap-Up

Thanks to the other contributors to the thinking behind this bull argument:

Greg Fischer from West + Main Homes

Jeff Corbett from GreenSpaceLLC

Terry Dwye

Christian Sterner from WellcomeMat

Drew Meyers from Geek Estate>

Paul Eastwood from Blue Fire Group

If you’re interested in learning more about membership in the Geek Estate Mastermind, which I usually describe as a think-tank for real estate tech, have a read here.

The post The Bull Case for Industry Search & IDX appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.

The Bull Case for Industry Search & IDX published first on https://thegardenresidences.tumblr.com/

[clarencevancleave]

The Bull Case for Industry Search & IDX

[Editor’s note: We’re trying something new–collaborative thought pieces written by the Geek Estate Mastermind community. The goal is to make the absolute best argument possible, derived from the collective expertise of members. The first two articles are bull and bear arguments for industry search and IDX, a topic initiated by Greg Fischer over a year ago.

Bull: The industry must not cede search to the portals. Meeting buyer expectations and owned, perpetual lead generation are table stakes to agency.

Bear: The portals have already won the minds of buyers. Search is an undifferentiated lost cause. If you can’t “win,” why play at all? Read the full argument here.

Without further ado, here we go with the bull argument…]

Bull: Meeting Buyer Expectations and Owned, Perpetual Lead Generation Are Table Stakes to Agency

By: Ted Adler

One of the great fallacies of real estate digital marketing is that Zillow cannot be beat. 

Yes, Zillow has put itself between the real estate broker and the consumer when it comes to the search experience: The word “Zillow” has replaced “real estate“ as the most likely additional phrase for people looking to find a home for sale. The millions of monthly visitors it attracts dwarfs that of any ad-free industry player, by a landslide. Take out Redfin from the equation, and it’s a complete romping.

Traditional property search (but not visual search) has been commoditized online, yet it is still a fundamental component to a real estate business. Consumer expectations are high and there’s a sense of entitlement, so if a potential buyer client arrives to an agent/broker website (however they get there) and is not given the option to search listings, the user experience is 100% compromised. That’s not to say they won’t work with an agent, but brand equity takes a hit and that buyer will have to be reached again some other way.

Search can yield true insight around when and why to communicate with a consumer, improving that experience and building a relationship. For most local brokerages, it’s a tool to convert traffic from multiple channels, not to win a web ranking contest.

Continued investment is essential as a way to serve buyers, generate leads, and avoid irrelevance. It’s true: Portals have the minds of buyers. But they have not won their hearts; that’s only something a person can do. 

PERPETUAL LEAD GENERATION MACHINE

Brokers are in the business of helping people own the most important asset: their home. Yet when it comes to their primary marketing tool (their website) in the dominant marketing media (the internet), they seem willing to rent their leads. These names, emails, and sometimes phone numbers–which are sprayed out to an array of brokers–run in the ballpark of $150/each.  When you stop paying that rent, you’re evicted from this lead pool.

The alternative of developing a strong website with a solid technical SEO foundation that can capture long-tail searches in a perpetual lead generation machine is a far better strategy. Beyond generating online leads to power the broker’s business annually, it serves as a quantifiable asset that can be monetized in a transaction.  

The biggest issue is not the website, but what is done after the website goes live. Long gone are the days of the internet as a “field of dreams.” If you build it, they won’t come. Billboards in the basement are seen by no one. Ranking well takes time, resources, and know how. In an era when reading is hard (and watching a video is easy), who really wants to spend time creating content and doing technical search engine optimization–much less the hard part, organic link building? Only those brokers who understand the digital landscape and want to win. Keep in mind: The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes.

The Bears (which include the portals themselves) have convinced many brokers competing for traffic is not worth the required time or capital. In the aggregate, there is merit to that argument that no site (agent/broker websites, BPP, consumer MLS portals, Upstream, etc) will displace Zillow in 2020, or even 2025 for that matter. 

However, what real estate agent or brokerage cares about buyers nationwide? None of them. They care about hyperlocal. Competing for search phrases in an agent/broker’s “farm” is all that is required to make an IDX & SEO investment worthwhile.

As brokers are not technical by nature (a common college major for brokers is psychology), convincing them to invest in other areas isn’t hard. When it comes to their vehicle lease, brokers will throw down $700/month for an Audi Q7 and then debate the value of a website platform at $79, $149, or $199 a month. One will drive a handful of their clients around on a monthly basis.  The other will be the first drive everyone they know (and many people they do not know) will take with their brand. The former is irrelevant without the latter.

HYPER LOCAL SPECIALIZATION

The last mile of real estate search–property addresses and long-tail search queries pertinent to buyers further down the purchase funnel–accounts for 92.42% of queries according to ahrefs. When it comes to hyper local, Zillow can be beat. I know this as fact because we help clients do it every day.

Ranking number one for a specific property address is the ultimate “local�� of digital marketing.  Appearing number one for your own listings is a highly valuable result, which could lead to impressing sellers in the research phase (a listing presentation asset) and converting buyers to conversations. 

Strategies/tactics for ranking well for hyper local:

Specializing in a specific neighborhood or even handful of buildings (link: https://www.campionre.com/luxury_buildings/millennium-tower/). 

Adding additional property descriptions & comments to your listings on your site.

Posting a comparative market analysis to counteract the automated “estimates” that seem to cause so much confusion and contention. 

Posting listing videos in YouTube with links back to individual property detail views (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFT8dFKvl7o&feature=emb_logo)

Lifestyle Searches / Specialized Filters: Predefined searches with specific and desirable filters that are unavailable or difficult for people to do through the large portals. Ex. Fix-and-flip homes, or properties with potential to improve their value or “Near me” searches which have skyrocketed in popularity (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=real%20estate%20agent%20near%20me)

It’s not a coincidence that all of this is part of Redfin’s repertoire of differentiation. 

INDUSTRY SEARCH SOLUTIONS

IDX is marketing magic. Using IDX content opens up a swiss army knife of marketing and sales capabilities.

Any cooperating member participant (agent or brokerage) of any size who opts into IDX policy may access and display a very comprehensive set of on- and off-market properties. Typically, that inventory is as or more comprehensive than any portal. It is vital to attract buyers who have had their first course of portal listings–or listings displayed in the window of agency’s in year’s past–and are ready to get serious with the actual local MLS database on a broker site. 

Historically, IDX has served three primary purposes:

Power a buyer experience with all inventory (in real-time).

Allow the agent/broker to engage, track, capture, and convert traffic (ultimate goal of a website).

Enhance the brand of the brokerage as a go-to place for information about the local market.  

In addition to engaging and converting traffic, IDX should be part of a larger strategy to:

Increase time on website.

Reduce bounce rate.

Gain insight on client’s search activity and track search behavior. (Ie, “They said their budget is $400K and yet they keep going back and looking at properties in the $480K range.”)

Lend credibility to agent. Portals rely on 3rd party data so often inaccurate and out of date.

Offer a personalized consumer experience (as opposed to a mass portal experience).

Meet consumer expectations.

A world without IDX, would: 

cripple buyer-agency, as many buyer leads would only be distributed inter-brokerage. All pocket listings, all the time. 

lead to agents/brokers selectively sharing listing info with portals over local competition. 

cause SMB sized brokerages to get squeezed out or rolled up by incumbents who possess listing inventory control.

Nearly 20 years after IDX was made available, today it’s more relevant than ever. Gone are the days of the vanilla ‘boxed in’ (i.e. framed / I-framed) MLS search box. “Disassembling” IDX wouldn’t abandon a ghost town. To the contrary, it would cripple a utility that is required to maintain a sense of agency with buyers. Afterall, if professionals aren’t even facilitating the most basic online home discovery process, what are they doing at all?

THE AGGREGATION THEORY

Consumer MLS websites and the Broker Public Portal have the same goals as IDX: a comprehensive search experience, free from ads from competing agents. And not having to pay for leads. The difference is they add marketing muscle in the form of many agents promoting the same website.

Consumer-driven traffic is just one part of the equation. Agent-driven traffic is a very different animal with a much higher correlation to closings. Don’t ignore the potential of MLS-wide adoption of an agent-to-consumer mobile search tool.

Broker Public Portal, the joint venture with Homesnap, is aggregating consumers by leveraging agents on a nationwide scale. While they aren’t at the top of the traffic charts yet, it takes time. With continued efforts, they will crack the top five most trafficked real estate search portals.

HamptonsRE.com is a new portal to combat Zillow’s acquisition of Hamptons Real Estate Online (re-branded to Out East). HAR.com is the gold standard of what a consumer MLS portal can be. Granted, it was started years before any other MLS was considering how to combat the online portals existence. But, it is clear proof consumer MLS portals can gain an audience if cards are played correctly. 

DON’T GIVE UP

While search is an undifferentiated cause, it’s not “lost”–it is simply evolved table stakes where general feature parity with national portals should be maintained. 

Without IDX, you can be certain that it will be more difficult for consumers to make an educated decision around buying a house. An anti-competitive landscape is not one the industry wants. 

Agents and brokers shouldn’t cede search to the portals without a fight (especially since Zillow is now a competitor not a partner). Left unchecked, Zillow will go from buyer traffic domination to annihilation. It will have all the leverage in the world without someone to challenge it.

The industry’s investment in search must continue–real estate agency as we know it depends on it. Without a role in the top of the funnel, agents and brokers will fall into the abyss of irrelevance.

Wrap-Up

Thanks to the other contributors to the thinking behind this bull argument:

Greg Fischer from West + Main Homes

Jeff Corbett from GreenSpaceLLC

Terry Dwyer

Christian Sterner from WellcomeMat

Drew Meyers from Geek Estate

Paul Eastwood from Blue Fire Group

If you’re interested in learning more about membership in the Geek Estate Mastermind, which I usually describe as a think-tank for real estate tech, have a read here.

The post The Bull Case for Industry Search & IDX appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230574 https://ift.tt/2RmLVib via IFTTT

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN APPLE

Right now the limiting factor on the number who could be employed by small, fast browser that was actively maintained would be a way to be in the same position as the runner. Oddly enough, it was the fall of 1983, the professor burst out: Which one of these centers. They also generally provide a better education. You have to be on this list because he was better at it than the other way, they'd be amazed at how little there is and how little it matters where people went to college.1 That's the lower bound there for practical reasons. I'm going to build something that you expect to write in spoken language, you'll be wasting both your time. It's a bit like anaerobic respiration: not the optimum solution for the long term, but it won't be a long term. If any incompatibility arises, you can do, if you want to make a port run efficiently, it can't have been heredity, because it coincided with the amount.

Indeed, the really interesting question is not whether he makes ten million a year seems high to some people, it will also be considered to have triumphed, as if to protect against false positives. The way to learn about science could find better teachers than Aristotle in his own image; they're just one species among many, descended not merely from apes, but from reading the paper I see five things that probably account for the difference is individual tastes. You have to approach it somewhat obliquely. If there's one thing all startups have in common? Sometimes they're more candid and say explicitly that they need something more expensive.2 So let the path grow out the project. Who's right? Which means when there is a downside here, it is exciting to them. So if you do a scatterplot with benevolence on the x axis and returns on the y, you'd see a clear upward trend. In theory it seemed that the conclusion of a really good language for writing programs like yours, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up shit.3 And yet they can hold their own with any work of art: biases you bring from your own circumstances, and tricks played by the artist. But, like us, they don't realize it yet or not.

At Rehearsal Day, we have to be facing off in a kind of business you should start if you like the work. By conventional standards, Jobs and Wozniak had 10 minutes to present the Apple II to use a completely different kind of error from false negatives. Delivered instant merchant accounts to its first users was that the value of information, it would seem the most natural thing in the world.4 But you're not thinking that way about a class project and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. If I'd had to wait till they graduate. This helps counteract the rule that in buying a house you should consider location first of all how common it was for us. Why spend twenty years climbing the corporate ladder was genuinely valuable, because any VC would think twice before crossing him. So you must consciously discount for that. I call the Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over your life for a lot of arrogant people. It's when they're on the right things.

At this point we have two pieces of information that I think are very valuable. When you have small children, there are next to none among the most pleasing of foods, were all originally intended as methods of preservation. One of the two paths should you take, expect a struggle. I think the actual explanation is less sinister.5 The fund managers, professional athletes. I defending the current patent system. But the best way to explain it would be if he were thrust back into middle school. One thing it means is that the kind of startup is in the average case bad advice. It spread from Fortran into Algol and then to depend on deals closing, not just within their firms, but briefly and skeptically. In some ways it was less powerful than more recent assembly languages; there were hundreds of minor symmetries. Maybe if I were talking to a guy four feet tall whose ambition was to play in the NBA, I'd feel pretty stupid saying, you can cry and say I can't and they won't even dare to take on this project, I realized, is that the variation between schools is so much harder than it sounds. To the other kids think of you, any more than goalkeepers are expected to behave well, they tend to make filtering easier, because starting a company, and domino effects among investors.

The job of your site is about. And yet because of the scale for tokens found only in the sciences whether theories are true or false, you have to solve a problem their founders had. But I think it's because they seem so ridiculous by contrast. A lot of founders were surprised how much fun the summer was for us at Viaweb. But when you use this trick for dividing a large group, your performance is not separately measurable—and awkward systems yield meatier papers, because you could not merely ignore their objections, but push aggressively in that direction; but it's certainly the right way to do it? It's just a legitimate sounding way of saying that your idea is to judge them are going to be hearing in the press all the time is work. Intelligence and wisdom are obviously not mutually exclusive. Investors August 2013 When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually not realizing they have to make a car better, we stick tail fins on it, or friends with those who are. And so I just gave up. At first we tried to conceal it. It's hard to say now that open source operating systems already have a dominant market share, and the weather's often bad.

For example, any work of art that would appeal to users in a hundred years. Whatever job people do, they do end up paying more. Still Life Effect Why does this sound familiar? Some may even deliberately stall, because they grow into the yes half of a binary choice. Godel's incompleteness theorem seems like a stinker to me. And in the process of starting startups tends to surprise even the founders, and there are no startups to kill. In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer.

Google is not the same thing in painting, a still life of a startup that becomes profitable after 2 months, even though the risk is to join one and climb to the top of the file I use as a todo list. You also need Florence in 1450. It's the job equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch. What excites them, both consciously and unconsciously, is the Internet. Here's where benevolence comes in.6 Which means they're inevitable.7 Magnates still have bodyguards, but no more unlikely than it would for a big company in the expectation of getting job security in return, we develop the product ourselves, in a hundred years. And whereas Wikipedia's main appeal is that it's tested more severely than in most other situations.

'' August 2002. In England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, it was over by the time most people hear about it. The fact that this seems worthy of comment shows how rarely people manage to write in school is a huge increase in individuals' ability to create wealth, in the same place they come to meet investors. Instead, you should wait. 16. If you want to discover things that have been readjusted. It would be hard to convince people to part with large sums of money. Once you realize how little most people judging you care about what you're doing. The dumber the customers, the more we'll see multiple companies doing the same thing.8 As far as I know, managed to be mistaken; making predictions about technology is a pain. Let's look at our case.

Notes

Few technologies have one clear inventor.

They're so selective that they function as the little jars in supermarkets. Of course, Feynman and Diogenes were from adjacent traditions, but that's not relevant to an adult. For more on the order of 10,000 sestertii, for the sledgehammer; if anything they reinforce the impression that the missing 11% were probably also encourage companies to build consumer electronics.

Sam Altman wrote: My feeling with the founders'. The books we now call the years after Lisp 1. We may never do that. Perhaps realizing this will make it harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can respond by simply removing whitespace, periods, commas, etc.

A handful of VCs even have positive returns. Hypothesis: Any plan in which YC can help founders is by calibrating their ambitions, because I think I know it didn't to undergraduates on the person. Ed.

But startups are simply the embodiment of some logical reason e. What's the connection? You may be the technology business. I've twice come close to starting startups since Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be good.

If you invest in these funds have no decision-making power.

The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them so founders can get for 500 today would say we depend on closing a deal led by a big company. I've come to them rather than trying to make a conscious effort to make a brief entry listing the gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day.

But you're not sure. By all means crack down on these. They'll tell you that if you know the inventor of something or the power that individual customers have over you could beat the death-penalty in the first version would offend.

[talabib]

Simple Stress-Busting Strategies That Deliver.

It’s often said that the past is a foreign country. That certainly applies to the world of work. From the perspective of our relentless 24/7 business culture today, the old days of nine-to-five shifts and three-martini lunches look about as mysterious and decadent as the lives of the late Roman emperors. Today, it’s hard enough switching off in your free time, never mind during office hours!

That’s hardly surprising. After all, the mid-twentieth century and the present are, technologically speaking, light-years apart. Innovations like the internet, email and smartphones have made it harder than ever before to get away from work. If you have an iPhone, your boss is always right there in your pocket waiting for you to open that email she sent at 10:00 p.m.

And that’s starting to take its toll. Professionals have never been so stressed and sleep-deprived. They’re unhappier, less productive and staring down the barrel of burnout. So it’s high time to make some changes! This post walks you through a series of simple, stress-busting strategies and explains the science behind them. Start integrating them into your professional life today, and you’ll be amazed at how much better you’ll soon feel.

Life is becoming increasingly hectic, and stress levels are on the rise.

There’s no sugarcoating it – life has become more stressful. Getting up at six, grinding out a grueling shift at the metaphorical coalface and collapsing into bed at eleven in the evening is the new normal. But it wasn’t always like this. In fact, things have gotten a whole lot crazier over the last decade.

So, what’s behind our increasingly hectic work lives? Well, let’s rewind to 2008. The economy was in freefall, and companies were scrambling to adjust to the harsh new realities. Lots of companies only managed to survive by downsizing their staff and restructuring workloads. The result was fewer people shouldering a whole lot more than their fair share of responsibilities.

Then there’s the smartphone. Apple launched its first iPhone in 2007. Soon enough, it had taken over the world. According to a 2012 study in the MIT Technology Review, the iPhone conquered 40 percent of the American mobile phone market within just a couple of years. That’s pretty astonishing when you consider the fact that it took computers fourteen years to achieve anything close to that level of market penetration.

The problem, however, is that smartphones don’t just make life more convenient and fun. Sure, you can check Instagram and send tweets, but this also means you’re always on standby mode. Your work is never more than a click away. A 2013 study carried out by the Center for Creative Leadership highlighted this trend. The surveyed executives and managers with smartphones spent an astonishing 72 hours every week engaged in work-related activities!

That’s not sustainable. When work gets too hectic, our stress levels shoot through the roof. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, 33 percent of all Americans suffered acute work-related stress in 2013, while 48 percent claimed that their stress levels had increased over the previous five years.

A full 83 percent of interviewees in the study believed that stress was negatively affecting their health. They’re not wrong! When the Benson-Henry Institute in Massachusetts looked into the matter, they found that between 60 and 90 percent of all trips to the doctor were stress-related.

Practicing mindfulness counteracts the natural fight-or-flight response triggered by stress.

Have you ever had the urge to jump out of your office chair, run right out the door and never come back? That’s a pretty good sign you might be suffering from work-related stress. The desire to flee is one of the body’s natural responses to stress. That’s part of the “fight-or-flight” response, a cerebral and hormonal reaction to life-endangering events. Here’s how it works.

Imagine someone jumps out from behind a corner with a weapon. Your brain – or, more precisely, the command center of your brain known as the thalamus – is the first to react. This, in turn, triggers the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions. This then activates the hypothalamus, the area in charge of regulating the autonomic nervous system, which transmits a message to your adrenal glands. These start pumping out adrenaline – a hormone that prepares your body to react quickly and, if need be, violently. Once it runs out of adrenaline, your body switches to cortisol, another hormone with a similar effect.

This reaction makes you more alert and prepares you to fight or flee. Strange as it may sound, a difficult boss or impossible deadlines are just as likely to trigger this response as a knife-wielding maniac. That’s a problem. If you’re sitting in your office producing adrenaline and cortisol for hours on end, this creates a hormonal imbalance that can be damaging to your health.

So here’s a great tip: learn to beat the fight-or-flight reaction by practicing mindfulness. A quick and dirty mindfulness routine involves nothing more than focusing on your breathing. Take ten deep breaths followed by a pause, and you’ll already feel a lot better.

The second option requires a bit more practice, but it’s an invaluable anti-stress tool: meditation. That’s not just good for your mental well-being – it’s also good for your physical health. That’s the conclusion of a 2000 study by Herbert Benson, a professor at Harvard Medical School. It showed that regular meditation could actually shrink the size of the amygdala and thus counteract that unwanted stress response!

The best way to minimize stress is to develop a supportive daily work rhythm.

You’ve probably heard the old Chinese proverb that says giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, but teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. That’s also a good motto when it comes to stress reduction. Quick fixes like nipping out for a coffee have their uses, especially when you’re in a pinch, but the best way to minimize stress is to develop a long-term anti-stress plan.

Here’s an idea: start by trying to work out a supportive daily work rhythm. That’s precisely what Hilton Hotels CEO Chris Nassetta did. In his case, that involved getting up earlier to free up time to mull over his day’s responsibilities. Nassetta gets up at five every morning and aims to be in the office by six at the latest. Since his work officially only starts somewhere between eight and nine, that gives him at least two hours to prepare for the day ahead. The upshot? He can think through his tasks without losing focus or worrying about what’s coming up later. Rather than drifting off in the middle of a conversation because he’s worried about what he’ll say in an upcoming meeting, he can be fully present and engage with the people he’s talking to.

 It’s worth noting at the outset that you won’t always pull off your ideal work rhythm. In practice, you’ll have to be flexible and roll with the punches. Take it from Crystal Cooper, the vice president for public representation at global IT company Unisys. She initially resented the demands her work placed on her schedule. No wonder – being on call 24/7 is pretty intense! But after a while, she decided to go with the flow and adapt her expectations. Rather than planning to spend two hours of quality time with her family between seven and nine in the evening, she made sure she fit those hours in whenever the chance presented itself throughout the day.

Having clear routines and feedback systems supports you both personally and professionally.

Imagine you had to summon all your willpower to do even the most mundane tasks, like brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces. Life would be unbearably exhausting, right? Luckily the human mind has an autopilot function that helps you do these things without wasting too much brainpower. And here’s the thing – you can get the most out of that nifty cerebral technology by cultivating routines. That’s good news for your personal life.

So, how can you start putting that into practice? Well, there are three words you need to remember: cue, routine and reward.

Let’s take Patricia as an example to see how it works. Jeff met Patricia at a workshop, where she told him about a routine she’d developed. When she got home from work, she entered her house through a side door that leads to a small washroom. That was her cue to take out her phone and plug it into the charger attached to a socket above the washing machine – that’s the routine part. Once she’d done that, she could spend the evening with her family, free from all distractions – that’s the reward. Because the reward was something she genuinely enjoyed, the routine was quickly established.

What about work, though? Well, if you want to improve your professional life, you might want to think about establishing feedback systems. Take Doug, a man struggling with his role as a project leader. The issue was simple: Doug’s colleagues weren’t happy with the way he always focused on the negatives.

Rather than ignoring the problem, Doug took this feedback to heart and resolved to change his ways. He developed a feedback mechanism. Every time he started getting too negative, his colleagues gave him a signal by raising three fingers. It was an informal and friendly gesture that allowed him to directly and effectively address an uncomfortable issue. The result? A happier, more efficient and satisfied team!

Exercise is a highly effective stress remedy.

Lots of people accept stress as a fact of life and try to put a brave face on it. It’s only when they finally burn out or get seriously ill that they start considering changes. But that’s not the right approach. In fact, you can spare yourself no end of suffering by taking action today. And here’s the good news: you don’t even need to make particularly radical changes to boost your well-being.

Sometimes all it takes to beat work-related stress is exercise. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking out a gym membership, though. Simple rhythmic and repetitive movements like walking, jogging, cycling, dancing or even going through some yoga poses can significantly reduce stress.

Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First off, movement helps your body eliminate those stress hormones that were mentioned earlier. Nothing purges them from your system like a spot of exercise. Then there are the psychological effects of movement. Focusing on your body for a few minutes is an excellent way of getting out of your head and interrupting those obsessive thoughts that go hand-in-hand with stress.

That’s not just a theory, either. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal reporting on the results of a one-year study of professionals, workers who regularly used a treadmill experienced less stress, interacted more with their colleagues and were more productive than their peers who didn’t exercise.

That said, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Your best bet is to try out different types of exercise and see what works for you. The most important point to remember is that if you choose something you enjoy, you’re much more likely to stick with it. If you like taking walks around the park, do that. If you prefer jogging with a friend, well, do that. What you opt for will also depend on your commitments. If you need to be super-flexible, developing an exercise routine you can do in your office might be a good idea. If you’re the organized type, weekly swimming lessons might be the way to go.

Visualizing stress-free success and savoring the moment are also useful stress-busters.

As we’ve seen, physical movement is an excellent way of relieving stress. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can do whenever we need a bit of relief. After all, you can’t just leave your office to go for a jog whenever you feel like it! That means it’s also a good idea to develop some cognitive strategies to quiet your mind. Lets look at two top techniques that’ll help you do just that.

Let’s start with being in the moment. Stress is all about worrying about the past or the future. Learning to appreciate the present pushes those anxiety-inducing thoughts to the back of your mind. Best of all? You can start practicing this kind of mindfulness without making any changes to your routine. The reason for that is simple. Remember those autopilot activities like brushing your teeth we talked about earlier? Well, those are the kinds of things you can focus on to become more present!

All you have to do is make a conscious effort not to zone out and instead direct your attention to what you’re doing. That’s about learning how to appreciate, say, the way the water is running down your body or feels on your skin when you take a shower. Whenever you find your mind wandering, make an effort to refocus it on those sensations.

The second technique involves visualizing stress-free success. Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve and then concentrate on what it is you’d need to do to pull that off. If you’ve got an important presentation coming up, for example, and you really want to impress the audience, what would that take? Well, you’d need to be well-rested, prepared and punctual. Visualize those steps and work backward from there. What do you need to do to make sure you’re well-rested, for example? This is a great way of pushing vague anxieties out of your mind and really honing in on the things that are in your control – a guaranteed stress-reliever.

Cultivating new friendships and staying in contact with old friends is great for your mental health.

What’s worse than those endless shifts that bite into your evening? Getting off work and not having anything to do or anyone to do it with. The simple truth is that isolation just isn’t good for your mental health. Friends matter – a lot!

That means it’s in your best interest to make an effort to stay in touch with old friends. How you do that depends on your personality type. As Susan Cain points out in her book Quiet, introverts will generally prefer seeing more of fewer people. Cain, a self-professed introvert, says she spends 80 percent of her free time with just 10 percent of the people she knows. That means it’s important for her to regularly reach out and give a select number of old friends a call or invite them out for a drink.  

Extroverts are the opposite. They generally prefer seeing more people less often. Take psychologist and author Adam Grant. He goes out of his way to reconnect with someone he hasn’t seen in a while once a month. That’s a great way of reactivating old contacts and keeping the connection alive.

Then there are new friendships. Few things can help you beat stress more effectively than cultivating new friends in your workplace. Why? Well, as a 2006 Gallup study showed, having just one good friend at work increases your morale and engagement levels up to seven times more than the normal amount. That’s easier said than done, of course, so let’s take a look at a couple of tips you can use to help you get to know your colleagues.

The simplest option is to respond enthusiastically when colleagues reach out to ask for help or invite you to take part in some after-work activity. If you’re pressed for time, you can be more strategic. Position yourself outside the main exit at lunchtime and pretend you’re waiting for someone and you’ll have a great opportunity to exchange a couple of words with your colleagues.

Being grateful can help you beat stress.

We’ve talked a lot about stress and how to overcome it. As we’ve seen, stress is inherently harmful. That’s why one of the simplest and most effective ways of getting it out of your system is to stay positive.

That means learning to be genuinely grateful for the things that are going well. Take Kaye Foster-Cheek, a senior executive at the Boston Consulting Group. She’s found that making time to experience gratitude has boosted her well-being significantly. So it’s the first thing she does when she wakes up. Rather than jumping out of bed, she takes a moment to reflect on how grateful she feels to simply be lying there with a new day ahead of her.

Alanson Van Fleet, an executive in the financial sector, takes a similar approach. His moment of gratitude comes when he walks through his office door and sees the small statue of the Buddha he keeps next to his computer, which reminds him how grateful he is that his company pays for his personal office space.

Those are great examples of how paying attention to those little details we all too often take for granted can help you beat stress. Here’s another tip: use visual cues in your workplace to reconnect with your core values.

When you’re under intense pressure and feeling adrift, catching sight of something familiar and loved can be a real lifesaver. Personal manager Tracy Columbus, for example, keeps Native American art in her office. Whenever she’s feeling blue, she turns to the images and their joyful colors. Peter Block does something similar. When he looks at the artwork in his office, he thinks of the time, patience and dedication the artists put into their creations – a reminder that that’s also something he seeks to do.

That goes to show that stress isn’t inevitable or inescapable. So, if you’re feeling under pressure, try out some of these stress-relieving strategies. You’ll be amazed at what a difference a couple of minutes of mindfulness or a quick walk around the park can make to your personal and professional life!

Increased workloads, demanding bosses, increasingly intrusive tech and a 24/7 business culture – no wonder today’s workforce is more stressed than ever. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Follow the simple stress-busting strategies in this post and you’ll be well on your way to beating burnout!

 Action plan: Get a coaching partner. Building a new routine is hard work, especially in the early stages. That’s why it’s a good idea to find a coaching partner who’s embarked on the same path as you. Together, you can support each other on your journey. Whether that’s just a phone call to check in now and again or a gym buddy, having a partner who’s got your back is the best way to make sure you follow through on your resolutions.

[srber123-blog]

Digital Marketing Trends in 2019: What's important?

Once again this year a lot has happened in the SEO and content marketing world. The online marketing agency Pixxoma the most important developments and introduces 10 SEO and content marketing trends for the year 2019.

SEO-Trends 2019: That will occupy the industry next year

Many of the topics from this year will remain relevant in 2019 as well. Among other things, user experience, voice search, mobile first index and the indexing of Javascript applications, which we explain here for you. Here are our SEO trends for the year 2019 summarized for you: 1. Mobile First The Mobile First Index, rolled out this year, will continue to play a big role next year, as the transition is likely to continue for some time. As a website owner, however, you should make sure as soon as possible that you can offer your users a mobile-optimized site.  From a SEO perspective, it's not just the fact that Google rates sites based on their mobile version. Much more important are the users. More and more people are surfing on their mobile devices. With a mobile-optimized website you will therefore meet the needs of your users at best. Our tip: Create your website in a responsive web design. The mobile optimization test lets you see if your site's mobile presence is accurate and usable. Also, check your markup structure: Use at least one relevant markup per page and make sure the markup is the same for both the desktop version and the mobile variant. 2. Website Speed With the "Speed ​​Update" in July 2018, the load times of a website have become a ranking factor for the mobile search . For slow websites, even small load time improvements can have a positive impact on the ranking. This gives the performance an ever higher priority.  Although Google made it clear that this factor is just one of many influencing the ranking. Nevertheless, site operators are advised to optimize the load time of their websites. Because users want to get answers to their searches as quickly as possible, they often jump off slow-loading sites and return to the search results page. This sends a negative user signal to the search engine regarding the website. Meanwhile Google even ships Warnings to slow websites . Our tip: To review website performance, we recommend Google's newly redesigned PageSpeed ​​Insights tool. 3. User signals In 2018, user signals were a big topic. Next year, they will continue to employ the online marketing industry. User signals such. Dwell time, bounce rate, CTR and the back-to-SERP rate have an impact on the ranking. The CTR (Click Through Rate) indicates how often users actually click through from the search results page to a website.  The back-to-SERP rate, on the other hand, indicates how often users return from a webpage to the search results page because they may not have received a satisfactory response on the website. This year the importance of user signals is increasing for the following reasons : User signals provide a lot of data about the behavior and the intention of the usersSearch engines increasingly rely on machine learning, ie Artificial Intelligence, to optimize their productsArtificial intelligence is particularly good at recognizing patterns from large data sets and thus drawing conclusions about the users' intentions. These can in turn be used for the optimization of the rankings The measures to improve the user signals are recommended for each website. Regardless of whether they directly influence rankings on search results pages or not. Our tip: Check how accurately your tracking tools measure user traffic from your website. If these settings do not produce meaningful data, you'd better set up your own events to track your users' behavior (here's an example of bounce tracking optimization ). 4. Voice Search The great breakthrough in voice search is still waiting, but reports show the increasing sales of virtual speech assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Co. In Germany have according to representative survey of Next Media Hamburg in May only 14 percent of a virtual voice assistant.  Forecasts assume, however, that the number of users worldwide will increase by almost 35 percent next year . Compared to written search queries, the spoken ones are usually longer and more complex. Often they are even formulated as a whole question. In addition, usually only one result is read from the hits of the search results page.  In addition, Google is currently testing so-called selected news publishers Speakable markup . This structured record identifies passages in articles that can be easily read by language assistants. If the test is successful, each website may be given the opportunity to use this markup to provide text assistants with readable text passages. Our tip: In order to be prepared for the future in digital marketing, you should therefore optimize your website in terms of voice search . Find out which questions your audience is asking and answer them briefly and succinctly on your website. For example, in the form of FAQ pages. Use questions such as AnswerThePublic or Ubersuggest to research questions . Alternatively, you can ask your customer support to track the questions your customers ask. 5. OnSERP SEO Ranking one on Google's search results page no longer means being shown there first. Instead, Google plays more and more selected content on the so-called position 0 and plans to do so in the future even more. This content includes so-called Featured Snippets , Direct Answer boxes and carousels for pictures and videos.  So the user can often find the answer to his question directly on the Google search results page. Without having to go to the actual website that provides the information. This is good for the users but potentially bad for you as a website owner. Our tip: You can counteract this development in two ways. Try tweaking the content on your website to show it at position 0 by Google. In many cases this will increase your traffic or at least attract attention for your brand. For this, probably next year, the structured awards of FAQs and instructions are important. Second, you should put a lot of emphasis on establishing your brand in the minds of your users. This will make you more independent of Google as a traffic source. 6. Rich Content On the topic of OnSERP SEO Google has also announced that visual content such as videos and images (so-called rich content) should be more important in the search.  For example, in the future, videos can also increasingly be played as Featured Snippets. In addition, Google has repeatedly tested this year to upgrade Snippets with small thumbnails. Search engines are getting better at recognizing images and videos. The breakthrough of visual search, where images can be uploaded as an alternative to search terms, and search engine actually searches for similar images based on the characteristics of the original, is also approaching soon. For example, Google Lens already shows the potential of this type of search. Our tip: Say good bye to Stock Photos and create your own, meaningful images and videos for your websites. At the moment the file name, the alt tag and the caption should definitely be optimized for relevant keywords if this describes the content of the image well. 7. JavaScript and SEO JavaScript is becoming increasingly popular and the number of websites based on JavaScript is increasing. For a long time, however, JavaScript and SEO have not really got along.  Because Google and Co. could not crawl the JS code, making this content for the search engines were not useful. With improved technology, this has however changed now , and Google, for example, be able to crawl JavaScript and rendering.  From a SEO point of view, it can no longer be said that JavaScript is not suitable for websites. In October 2018, John Mueller of Google also announced that the importance of JavaScript for SEOs will increase. Our tip: Develop a basic understanding of JavaScript and learn what matters in search engine optimization of JavaScript applications. Explore the possibilities of dynamic rendering and use tools like prerender.io to optimize the rendering of JS pages.

Content Marketing Trends 2019

Also in Content Marketing you should definitely keep an eye on a few topics in the new year. This includes: 1. Livestreaming How do you let your customers participate in big events, live, location-independent and in color? Of course via livestreams. Streaming conference talks or announcing new products via stream is becoming increasingly popular.  Currently, many platforms offer the possibility to implement livestreams. These include, for example, YouTube, Facebook, IGTV and Twitch.  However, the enormous potential for companies to come into direct contact with their target group is not yet fully exploited. In addition to virtual participation in major events, live streaming can also be used to provide insights into the daily lives of companies or special employees. Our tip: If you are looking for influencers for your next advertising campaign or looking for a new distribution channel for short ads, then take a look at the Twitch streaming platform. Or try a livestream yourself . 2. Stories First Customers want sympathetic companies to touch. Let customers use your stories to look into your business and participate in activities. Because stories are no longer on the rise . Stories now outnumber the feeds of their respective platform.  Snapchat got the story-ruble going, Instagram was very successful and Facebook, WhatsApp and other platforms use the popular feature. Facebook now wants to bring the stories into the groups of its platform so that even non-followers with a specific interest can be addressed directly. Our tip: The most popular stories are those that are close to life. You do not have to be professionally raised because the onlooker wants to see what it really is. Show your customers interesting, funny or new things about your company. 3. Transparency Every second person, according to a study, finds influencers untrustworthy . Influencers, like marketers and sales agents, try to sell products. The result of the study shows above all: Consumers are becoming increasingly critical.  Exaggerated promises can even be perceived as fraudulent. In addition, the consumer will find numerous information and reviews on the Internet, even on products with defects. That is why many companies are now pursuing the strategy of acting as transparently as possible. If a product obviously has a defect, it will not hurt if you try to cover it up. Better acknowledge your weaknesses and address negative feedback directly. In the long term, transparent communication also binds the customer to the brand. Our tip: Communicate with your customers transparently and be open-minded with negative criticism. Also govern the feedback promptly, so that no shitstorm arises.

Conclusion

In order to be successful in digital marketing in 2019, SEOs and content marketers should not be put off by well-known statements that have also played a role in digital marketing in recent years: "SEO is dead!", The competition is too high, Google even mixes in position 0 as a competitor on the SERPs and the old tactics have minimal effects.  As the challenges for online marketers increase and complexity increases, the reward will be even greater in the event of success.  Individual SEO and content measures may be dying out. Optimizing websites for users and search engines will remain a relevant discipline in the New Year as well.  The type of optimization is constantly changing. Have potential strategies such as voice search, visual search, Include OnSERP SEO or Livestreaming in Marketing Planning.  To find the best tactics for successful optimization in these areas, you need to test what works and stay up to date. Knowledge is a hard currency, especially in the SEO and online marketing industry.  For this reason, further education programs for employees and teams are essential. Fact is, companies will benefit from this investment in the future. Read the full article

[paulbespoketailorhoian-blog]

Should You Wear Pleated Pants?

Should You Wear Pleated Pants?

For some, the very mention of pleated pants is enough to evoke flashbacks to the worst menswear fashions of the ‘80s and ‘90s. With current trends favoring flat-front cuts, the question of whether you should wear pleats today is often answered with a resounding “no.” It’s time we shed our existing negative perceptions and rethink pleated pants; you can definitely wear them, and we’ll tell you how.

What are Pleated Pants?

In the world of menswear, pleats can be defined as gathered folds of fabric located below the waist, in the area known as the rise, or simply the front, on a pair of trousers. On flat-front trousers, as the name states, the fabric in this area is smooth. Pleats can either be forward facing, in which the folded fabric points inward, toward the fly of your pants, or reverse—pointing in the direction of the pockets. The British style generally favors inward-facing pleats whereas pants in a more Italian, specifically, Neapolitan style usually face outward. In terms of which is better, forward pleats usually receive less criticism as they tend to remain flat, while outward ones may open and stay open, resulting in ballooning fabric. The number of pleats that you have can vary: usually, one or two, though some men have experimented with three and even four pleats.

Double inward-facing pleats on Styleforum.

Why Do Pleated Pants Have a Bad Reputation?

The short answer is that they are simply out of style. In line with the material excesses of the ‘80s, pants from that decade often displayed an excess of material in the form of pleats. Because pleats gather extra fabric in the rise area of a pair of pants, below the waist, if too much fabric is added there it can result in unsightly ballooning in the groin area. Some poor trouser designs also expanded this concept, rather literally, to create more room throughout the pants, especially in the legs. This resulted in a baggy, voluminous garment stereotypically identified with middle-management drones wearing big khakis on casual Friday.

Don Johnson wearing pleated pants (and a large shouldered jacket) typical of the 1980s.

However, if you look at menswear fashion illustrations, advertisements or actors from earlier eras, you’ll often see fuller garments and an abundance of pleats that make them look sharp. Cary Grant wore suits with pleated pants as did Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. Thus, the disdain for pleated pants nowadays stems from the overall preference for slimmer and more fitted looks rather than anything inherently wrong with pleats.

British born actor Cary Grant (1904 – 1986) walking outdoors wearing a pinstripe jacket and a hat, 1940s. (Photo by Getty Images)

Some of the scorn is a matter of generational bias. Pleated pants are weighed down with the connotations of being traditional and stodgy, what your parents or grandparents wore, the garment of old men, as opposed to the youthful minimalism of slim, flat-fronted pants. Gentleman’s Gazette readers, who enjoy classic style, are less likely to reject pleated pants on the basis of traditionalism, but those who do prefer contemporary style will also find versions that appeal to them.

Vintage illustration of suits featuring double pleats from Kuppenheimer, a menswear retailer based in Chicago, photographed by John Blah.

Pleated Pants Today

Some of the issues of past decades have been solved simply by putting pleats on an otherwise more close-fitting pair of trousers, and beginning around 2016 we began seeing these on the designer menswear runways. However, regardless of the vagaries and vacillations of fashion from decade to decade or year to year, it is always possible to find moderately cut pleated pants that are in the “Goldilocks zone”–just right–neither too slim nor too loose fitting and thus timeless. When seeking enduring style, it’s hard to go wrong, no matter your age,  by taking the middle ground, just like choosing a moderate lapel and tie width instead of going too skinny or too wide.

Simon Crompton of Permanent Style wearing Ambrosi pleated pants with a moderate cut

So, Who Should Wear Pleated Pants?

Because of the extra fabric directly below the waist, those who want more comfort and ease of movement of the lower body would be wise to wear pleats. One situation that demands this is if you have some weight around your middle; pleats can help disguise this where more fitted flat-front pants would emphasize the shape of your belly. This is especially true if you wear your pants at your natural waist rather than low on your hips. The extra fabric provided by the pleats and the visual details they offer is enough to hide the size of your waistline.

In the case of Sven Raphael Schneider, he favors pleated pants for a reason that many men experience: they have thicker thighs that are simply not accommodated by modern, slimmer cuts.

Traditionally, pleats are recommended for thicker body types.

On the other hand, it’s usually said that if you have a thin build, pleated pants are a risky proposition because wearing them will give you a baggy, unkempt appearance. However, this is only true if you go for cheap, mass-manufactured pleated pants that are loose all over. If you are lean and like pleats, you can pull off the look by emulating the Italians, especially the style of Naples. They wear pleated trousers with well-fitted legs and often in lighter weight fabrics that avoid a heavy, blousy look. The key is, again, to ensure the cut of the pants is not too full. Otherwise, the result will, at best, give you a definitively retro appearance or, at worst, make you look clownish.

Blogger Blue Loafers shows how pleated pants can look good on a thin frame if properly fitted.

If you frequent menswear forums and comment pages online, you’re likely to encounter the complaints of men who have developed large thighs or seats from working out and are trying to find well-fitting trousers. A simple solution for these guys might be to try wearing pleated pants. The fact that this isn’t usually proposed as an option speaks to the average person’s negative bias against the style. Hopefully, we can counteract this perception.

Interestingly, pleats can be useful both if you sit for a long time and if you are highly active. Long-term sitting, besides increasing your risk of dying, can be more uncomfortable with the greater constriction of flat front pants. They eventually feel snug. On the other hand, if you have a job where you get up and down a lot and are moving about, the opening of the pleats can give you some extra mobility. Lastly, although it has been a rather taboo subject, it should also be mentioned that if you simply want more room for your privates, pleated pants will do the trick.

Paul Lux wearing trousers with open pleats.

How to Wear Pleated Pants

In addition to choosing an appropriate overall fit, there are several things you can do when wearing pleated pants to enhance their appearance.

Start with Lighter Fabrics

To my eye, pleats look best on lighter-weight fabrics. The heavier weight of a material like flannel contributes to the sense of volume created by pleats and can lead to a more old-fashioned look. It can certainly still be done with winter-weight cloth, but proper fit is even more crucial. A cuff can also help add weight to the hem of heavier-weight pleated pants for a trimmer look.

Opt for Fewer Pleats

Single pleats on dress pants blend into and continue the crease that runs up the center of each leg. This creates a longer and sharper line than in flat front pants, where the crease is broken by the smooth rise. So, single pleats are safe, but double pleats can look more relaxed or may be required if your body type demands them.

Single pleated pants present an elegant continuous crease from hem to waistband.

Pair Pleats with a High Rise

The contemporary style of wearing pants at the hips with a low rise is more suitable to flat-front trousers than pleated ones. The added fabric and the pleats themselves generally create a higher rise on the finished garment, which requires wearing them around your waistline. Worn in this way, they also do their job of flattering and disguising a stomach that isn’t perfectly flat.

Pleated pants should be worn high on the waist.

…with or without Cuffs

A search of images online will show a roughly 50-50 divide of pleated pants with or without cuffs. The idea behind getting cuffs is that they add visual weight and emphasis at the bottom of the trousers to counterbalance the appearance of pleats at the top. Cuffs do make the pants a bit more informal and some might see them as more traditional; for a more contemporary look, omit them.

Tailor Them with No Break

Given the potential associations of pleated pants with retro style, you’ll want to avoid a break to look modern. A break at the bottom of your trouser legs can enforce the perception of pleated trousers as sloppy looking. Moreover, a break, as the name suggests, interrupts the continuous crease down the front of your pants legs that a pleat can give you, so if you want to emphasize that sharp look, avoid a break. Lastly, if you decide on cuffs for your pleated pants, as with any pair of cuffed trousers, the convention is to have them just touching the top of your shoe.

Salvatore Ambrosi and Atte Rytkönen wearing suits with cuffed pleated trousers and no break.

Combine Pleated Pants with a Jacket

If you’re cautious about pleats, the easiest way to wear them would be with a jacket, usually as the bottoms of a suit. The jacket minimizes the visibility of the pleats but lets them do their job. They’re still a feature but not too obvious, and it looks like you could very well be wearing flat-front trousers if your jacket is buttoned. With a suit, you may want to go with inward pleats, because of their association with greater formality, and no cuffs. If you are bolder and want a stronger emphasis on your pleats, I recommend observing what the Neapolitan tailors do, especially Salvatore Ambrosi. Wear them high waisted with side adjusters along with an unbuttoned sport coat to carry a sense of summer sprezzatura or invoke a Mediterranean vibe. Alternatively, really flaunt your pleated pants by wearing them with a shirt alone, either a polo or a dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up.

Pleated trousers and a shirt with no jacket at Pitti Uomo

Conclusion

Though it may be difficult to get the man on the street to choose pleated pants, those with a true appreciation of style and an interest in variety know their value. Ultimately, although pleated pants are especially suitable for specific body types, nearly any man can wear them–it’s just a matter of getting ones that fit well and trying them on yourself. Perhaps, if you don’t have them yet, you can broaden your wardrobe and expand your style. Are we “preaching to the choir”? Do you already enjoy pleated pants, or are they something you would take a pass on? Share your views!

PAUL BESPOKE TAILOR

Danang Branch: Best in-house tailor in Da Nang

Add: 17A Hung Vuong, Hai Chau, Danang City.

Email: danang@paultailor.net

Tel: 0236.3537757

Hoi An Branch: Best in-house tailor in Hoi An

Add: 672 Hai Ba Trung, Hoi An City.

Email: hoian@paultailor.net

Tel: 0235.3926879

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Kia Nurse is Just Getting Started

When she talks about recognition, Kia Nurse is justifiably frustrated. Although she has an active following in Toronto and her nearby hometown of Hamilton, Ontario—she even overlooks a basketball court in Toronto's Harbourfront neighbourhood, in mural form—the gatekeepers didn't make it easy for those in her hometown to watch the rise of her rookie year with the WNBA's New York Liberty.

The WNBA offers an online streaming service, similar to other pro sports like the NBA's League Pass, and in Canada games are occasionally shown on premium channel NBA TV. Broadly, though, these are still barriers to accessing the WNBA if you're from where Nurse is from, leaving her in a weird purgatory of being known but not seen.

"This is where people know me, this is where my family is, and for them to not be able to see games, it gets frustrating in its own sense," Nurse recently told VICE Sports. "For us, it's a matter of trying to get recognition, trying to get visibility for young girls here so they can see it on TV and they don’t have to ask their parents to buy an app in order for them to watch a game."

Even if the platform isn't there, the talent demands for one. Nurse made her name in four years at the University of Connecticut, a tenure remembered for two national championships, an NCAA Defensive Player of the Year award and that iconic 111-game winning streak. In her final season, the school chose to host a regular-season game against Duquesne at Ryerson University in Toronto, finally getting her in front of some of those eyeballs from home. The tickets sold out.

Then she went to the WNBA, where, thanks to the variety of her experiences, she found that the pros weren't so new after all. "The transition was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I'm pretty fortunate to have come from UConn and the program there," Nurse said. "And I think that for me, there was a familiarity in being able to say, 'I've played against the Maya Moores and the Team USAs at the Olympics' and I've been able to be in that situation and that environment."

A week ago, Canada watched as Nurse went off for 29 points and six 3-pointers to lead Canada past Korea at the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup; in the next game, she dropped 18 with six assists to key a second-half run and come-from-behind win over No. 4 France to go 3-0 in group play. Things didn't go as hoped in the knockout stage, but Nurse was steady as Canada’s leading scorer and her 17 points were crucial in salvaging a 73-72 win and seventh-place finish over Nigeria on Sunday.

With involvement dating back to when she was 15 years old, the national team has watched Nurse grow into a driving force. For the tournament, her average of 18.2 points per game trailed only Australia's Liz Cambage, who famously set the WNBA’s scoring record in July with a 53-point game for the Dallas Wings (against Nurse and the Liberty), and Belgium's Emma Meesseman. The feature role for Canada, where Natalie Achonwa is the team's only other active WNBAer, is just another spotlight that Nurse has stepped into, and she should be a cornerstone for years to come.

At every stop, whether the NCAA, FIBA or WNBA, Nurse's upward arc keeps chugging along. When the Liberty selected her with the No. 10 overall pick in this April's draft, player profiles around the WNBA-minded internet identified her as a top 3-and-D player. While 3-point shooting and defence are obviously the identifiers of the mold, it still tends to connote a standstill catch-and-shoot type, someone waved off to the corner and trusted with little else.

In the months since the draft, Nurse has made a case that she can be more than that, that she can put the ball on the floor or threaten to score off screens. In the motion offence installed by Katie Smith in her first year as the Liberty coach, these were freedoms that she thrived in.

"She's added some pieces to her game, she's becoming more versatile offensively—finishing around the basket in different ways, shooting the ball coming off screens, integrating the pull-up a little bit more—so I think that's maybe the biggest growth area that she's made over the last year or so," Canadian assistant coach Carly Clarke told VICE Sports.

Within the flow of chances for the Liberty, Nurse was adaptable, attacking close-outs or secondary pick-and-rolls. In FIBA play, where she takes on more responsibility for Canada, she's showing that she can do the things that actual initiators must, like pull up from behind the three-point line.

When the WNBA announced its All-Rookie Team, Nurse wasn't awarded. Amid a deep rookie class, it isn't so surprising—the scoring breakdown for the Liberty last season shows perennial All-Star Tina Charles leading with 19.7 points per game, and then everybody else clustered along the single-digit spectrum. Even while coming off the bench for most of her rookie season, Nurse's 9.1 points were good for second on the team, but, you know, still only 9.1 points.

Her defence, which she describes as a big key to her game, was where the pros felt most like the pros. "The biggest thing about the pros is that it's not necessarily your speed, quickness or athleticism that's going to outdo them. It's more that they have so much experience, they have the basketball IQ. They know pretty much how to counteract everything that you throw at them."

Although bookended by a strong start and a strong finish—34 points as a reserve in her fourth game, 28 as a starter in her last—Nurse's splits during the season's bridge month of July dipped to lows across the board, including in minutes played. Like for many young players, the lulls between the flashes were her issue.

Still, as it does with the Canadian team, the potential shows. At 22 years old, Nurse's trajectory is without question pointing up. The Liberty face the real possibility that Charles leaves in free agency after a franchise-worst 7-27 year, which may soon become more responsibility for Nurse to fill. She, along with point guard Brittany Boyd, likely represents the team's best chance at cultivating a new offence. The question, if she accepts this role, is how much her game grows toward creating for others in addition to herself, and how often she brings that on a nightly basis.

Like many other WNBA players, Nurse will spend her nominal offseason playing overseas. Now concluded with the national team, her next destination is Australia and the WNBL's Canberra Capitals for a mid-October season tip-off. So far, things have been trending in her favour.

"A big part of the WNBA, and once you get up into that level, is consistency and understanding how you can be consistent on a daily basis," she says. "Understanding, if I'm helping the team in any way [while] I'm out on the court, how can I be consistent with that throughout my entire career?"

Nurse continues to ask the right questions, and maybe, in time, the recognition will follow.

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports CA.

Kia Nurse is Just Getting Started published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[antionetterparker]

Modere: Is “Sharing the Love” Really Enough for This MLM? [Review]

When you see this MLM’s website, you’ll be hooked…

The products are attractive. Modere seems dedicated to creating a business that’s good for you and the Earth. And every purchase feeds a child.

Still, you have to wonder how simply sharing the love can help you rise through the ranks.

Modere is a multi-level marketing company that sells personal care and common household products. The company was founded in 1987 as Images and Attitudes… was renamed Neways International in 1992… relaunched in 2015 as Modere.

They seem to be honestly dedicated to their values: Modere has its own manufacturing facility that operates solely on wind power, and they sell their products primarily through social networking websites.

The company is off to a promising start and has a chance to establish itself as a strong and trustworthy company.

FAQ

1. What does Modere sell? Modere sells health and wellness, personal care, and household care products that give you safe, effective, clean label options on the products you use every day. Their goal is to help you reduce or eliminate your exposure to controversial chemicals, so your family can be safe and healthy in the home environment.

2. What are Modere’s most popular products? Modere has a unique line of anti-aging products: Mineral Supplement leads the way, with over $1 billion in sales. Collagen Sciences products are relatively new — they support joint, muscle and connective tissue health; counteract skin photoaging; restore youthful skin; and support healthy hair, nails, gums, and eyes. The Lean Body Sculpting System includes products that burn fat and promote lean body composition.

3. How much does it cost to join Modere? Step 1 is to choose your Starter Kit (the least expensive costs $49.99). Step 2 is choosing your standing monthly order. There are 5 options, most of which are $99.99.

4. Is Modere a scam? No, Modere is a legitimate business. Anyone may visit their website and purchase their products. To ensure the quality of their products, Modere has a Scientific Board of scientists, medical doctors, and industry experts who offer insight into the latest nutrition science trends and holistic well-being.

5. What is Modere’s BBB rating? B

6. How long has Modere been in business? Most resources, including the BBB, say the company was started in 1992. However, Bloomberg reports it was founded in 1987 — which explains the company’s celebration of 30+ years in business.

7. What is Modere’s revenue? $4.9 million

8. How many Modere distributors are there? Modere hasn’t published any statements about the number of distributors, aka Social Marketers, who are working with them.

9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2016, Nerium International accused Modere of stealing Nerium’s sales force and customers. [1] In 2017, AdvoCare sued Modere for interference with contract, trade secret misappropriation, and civil conspiracy. [2] In 2018, a lawsuit was filed against Modere by Jessie Lee Ward for defamation, emotional distress, interference with business relations, and conspiracy. [3]

10. Comparable companies: Herbalife, Beachbody, AdvoCare

So should you get involved with Modere?

Product-wise this company might be legit, but if you’re just interested in the business opportunity, there are better options out there…

Click here for my #1 recommendation

Either way, here’s the full review on Modere.

Products

Modere has a rather large collection of products, most of which fall into one of three categories:

Personal Care – Several lines of personal care products, including those specifically designed for skin, hair, body, and mouth care, as well as a line designed for men.

Health & Wellness – Several lines of health and wellness products with a focus on anti-aging, weight management, active health, and several more targeted areas of health and nutrition.

Household Care – A smaller collection of products, but one that includes laundry detergent, kitchen cleaning products (see: Sunrider, Norwex, or Amway), and more.

Compensation Plan

Modere invites consumers of its products to become part of the company as representatives — known as “Social Marketers” who share the love. These marketers pay a startup cost of $49.99, but are encouraged to buy a Ultimate Collection package for $699.99. Buying this package increases the number of ways that marketers can earn income from the company.

The full compensation plan offered by Modere is quite extensive and rather complicated. Part of the reason for this is because there is no shortage of bonus and incentive programs set up by the company, including the following:

Customer POD Bonus

Promoter Development Bonus

First Order Bonus & Get 3 Doubler

Monthly Team Builder Bonus

Generational Unilevel

Dynamic Team Leader & Director Bonus

4 & More Elite Bonus

Leadership Development Bonus

Coded Mentor Bonus

Power Bonus

Marketers also take part in a points system in which they can earn gifts, free shipping, product samples, and other incentives.

Here are some pros about Modere:

One part of Modere that stands out above most other multi-level marketing companies is its transparency. The company has an in-house Lifestyle Advisory Board that examines the company’s products and makes recommendations on any changes that need to be made on a yearly basis.

Modere also floods its website with information about its products, as well as advice for customers who use them or are considering using them. This is definitely a rarity in the multi-level marketing industry, and this kind of transparency by Modere is a great effort by such a young company to build trust with potential consumers.

Modere also stands out in the stance it takes on important issues that companies often overlook. The company is strict about not placing any potentially harmful ingredients in its products, which is not something that can be said about all multi-level marketing firms, especially those that sell health and wellness products.

Modere is also committed to selling its products in packaging that’s 100% recyclable, making them a company that’s eco-friendly [4].

Finally, the bonus and incentive programs Modere offers its independent marketers beyond profits from retail sales is quite impressive. For instance, each month the company chooses one marketer to win a Lifetime Experience. This can include premium access to concerts or sporting events, a skydiving trip, six months worth of massages, access to a personal stylist, and among other options that are equally amazing. This is on top of the vast array of bonuses and other perks the company offers to its top-performing marketers.

Here are some cons about Modere:

The downside of Modere’s compensation plan is that it can be difficult to make a meaningful amount of money for those who are new to multi-level marketing or only have a casual interest in it. Commissions on retail sales are modest at best and will force marketers to grow a large customer base to make money.

There are also auto-ship requirements for those marketers unable to reach a certain volume of sales, which is difficult for MLM newcomers to afford. On top of that, the Plus Collection package, which the company says is the most popular enrollment kit, costs $499.99, which is on the high end compared to other MLM companies.

In addition to some of the difficulties those new to multi-level marketing may experience with Modere, there’s little evidence that the company provides any kind of training to its marketers.

This isn’t all that surprising for a company that’s young and still trying to find its place, but without any kind of training or guidance outside of telling marketers to get their family and friends on board, it will be difficult to rise through the ranks of Modere and take advantage of its exciting compensation plan.

Finally, and not so surprisingly, there is little information about Modere available online, so it’s difficult to assess whether it’s a company you want to work with.

There are some negative reviews of the company that suggest customer support isn’t reliable. And because of these reviews, the Better Business Bureau has only given it a rating of B.

Add to that the lawsuits that have piled up over the last few years, and you have to wonder if Modere has ethical business standards you can trust.

The fact that so little information is available from the Better Business Bureau and elsewhere online is a bit puzzling, especially when you consider that Modere conducts so much of its business through social media sites. A company that’s actively pursuing a social media presence should have more information about it available online.

Recap

Joining a young company like Modere is almost always going to be a risky venture, simply because there isn’t enough feedback from those within the company.

From what we can gather, Modere’s compensation plan is not conducive to someone who’s new to multi-level marketing or someone who lacks proper sales and marketing training. However, those that do such skills might have a decent opportunity to advance in a company that offers plenty of bonus opportunities and unique incentives.

Just don’t expect to get rich from this gig. There are better options if you are looking to make sustainable money…

Look, I’ve been involved with network marketing for over ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.

After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:

Click here for my #1 recommendation

via https://mlmcompanies.org/modere/