#ig this is a good way to hit 300 followers!

[venusianmystique]

It’s so crazy how anonymity really gives ppl the courage to talk and act in the ways they would never in real life. And it’s never for good but to harass people and to be mean and nasty. I knew this before but now it’s really hit me with the whole thing with my ig. I used to allow ppl to send me questions, etc. anonymously. And at first it was fun and I was having fun conversations on there but then ppl started to ask me really invasive questions about my life which I would just ignore because that’s none of y’all business. But then ppl started sending me very sexual anons to the point that you can tell it was surrounding a very specific kink and the person is trying to engage me in their kink and get off on it. I would ignore it because it made me uncomfortable but the person would just keep asking me. And what’s so crazy about all of this, my ig is private and I have less than 300 followers and most of the ppl who follow me I know in real life. So it’s really starting to make me question the ppl surrounding me

[lucypeachesss]

The rest of the questionnaire!

51. Are you scared of spiders?

Not really

52. Favorite food?

Anything from the islands since It's what I grew up with, like fish cakes, sweet macaroni, curry chicken exc

53. Favorite foreign food?

Really like Tteok-bokki

54. Are you a clean or messy person?

Very clean and organized

55. Most used phrased?

Huh?

56. Most used word?

What? Lol

57. How long does it take for you to get ready?

30 mins

58. Do you have much of an ego?

Surprisingly no...

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops?

Both

60. Do you talk to yourself?

Talking to myself rn as I fill this in

61. Do you sing to yourself?

Yup

62. Are you a good singer?

Yuuuuuppp :)

63. Biggest Fear?

The ocean and what lies deep within it

64. Are you a gossip?

No

65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen?

The Greatest Showman

66. Do you like long or short hair?

Long, I cut my hair short and kept burning myself with the flat iron when it was short

67. Can you name all 50 states of America?

Ofcourse not 🙃

68. Favorite school subject?

Science but English was a close 2nd.

69. Extrovert or Introvert?

Introvert

70. Have you ever been scuba diving?

No and I probably will never do that 😅

71. What makes you nervous?

Life.

72. Are you scared of the dark?

Not really

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?

Never, im very passive.

74. Are you ticklish?

I say im not but I am lol

75. Have you ever started a rumor?

No

76. Have you ever been in a position of authority?

No

77. Have you ever drank underage?

Nope

78. Have you ever done drugs?

..

79. Who was your first real crush?

My kindergarten crush was a real crush lol. 😤 His name was Felipe

80. How many piercings do you have?

Just my ears, I had wanted more when I was 15 but my mom wouldnt allow it and I just never did it after i turned 18

81. Can you roll your Rs?

Little bit

82. How fast can you type?

Fast but I never took the test so idk how many words per min

83. How fast can you run?

Not very, i hate running.

84. What color is your hair?

Brown, theres alot of red and orange mixed in though. I also have one blonde strand.

85. What color is your eyes?

Brown

86. What are you allergic to?

Nothing I know of

87. Do you keep a journal?

Not anymore, i did back in middle school until my mom found it 😩

88. What do your parents do?

Moms a Nurse

89. Do you like your age?

Sure i guess. Only tried it out for a week though so who knows 🤷🏽‍♀️

90. What makes you angry?

When people ignore what I just said 😩

91. Do you like your own name?

Yea. Its ~Unique~

92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they?

I haaaave. 👼👼

93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child?

Probably a boy first but I'm fine with either

94. What are you strengths?

I like to think im a bit nice .. that's a strength to me. 👉🏽👈🏽

95. What are your weaknesses?

People see my kindness as a weakness so

96. How did you get your name?

Grandma babysat a girl with this name and loved it. I got my middle name, lucy, after my other grandma passed away.

97. Were your ancestors royalty?

Idk but my cousin is the prime minister on the islands.. he's hated over there so its not a good thing 😅

98. Do you have any scars?

Yess. My finger and knee

99. Color of your bedspread?

Brown

100. Color of your room?

White, i want to paint it. 😔

Just hit 300 followers! Thanks everyone! Love you all! 😘💕

[destinyc1020]

Agree with the other anon about ppl calling Z and T selfish for no reason because they don’t post. Like ppl need to wake and realize that social media isn’t it. Like for me I don’t even go on ig I’m this close to deactivating my account. I use to have about like 400 followers on my account and pretty removed about 300 of them because I don’t talk to the majority of these ppl so why should they have inside of my life yk. And I wish I never opened social media when I was 11 or 12. It done more damage made me more insecure when ppl wouldn’t like my post. I see my friend get about 200 likes per post and I felt like I want good enough. It messed me up big time. When the pandemic hit I was like nope social media isn’t for me it not like everyone is living a fake life on it. You can’t really believe what you see.

Ppl will show you want they want to show you. and yeah I don’t care for social media at all and ppl shouldn’t be mad at all.

Good for you for putting your mental and emotional health first. 😔

I have a friend who doesn't even have social media at all! She's an "old soul" though lol.... But she just doesn't like it. She's never had it. She's the only one of my friends who's this way, but I respect her decision. Social media is fine for a quick fun escape, but it shouldn't be the pinnacle of your life or anything. :( Have you ever seen the documentary "The Social Dilemma"?? If you haven't, I highly suggest watching it! 😃 It describes the phenomenon of what you just mentioned...how some people feel less than when they are on social media too much. 😔 Tom has even said the same thing before in an interview.

The Full movie is here on YouTube (Netflix made it available for free)

Here's the trailer:

This movie was very eye-opening to me.

[raavasgf]

Hit 300 followers, so just wanted to share sumn things about why I became active on this blog🥺

Had tumblr for a while, but never really knew what to dedicate it to. Rewatched atla and watched lok over the summer and couldnt believe how much of myself i saw in Korra. (She’s practically a mirror of me im crying)

So i hopped back on here to hoard gifs of korra that liked. Then i stumbled on a wave of Korra hate that i felt like she didnt deserve and it felt personal. So i got comfortable enough to share my opinions and defend Korra, because honestly it felt like i was defending myself

Then i got more comfortable and made gifs of moments i really liked. Then just comfortable enough to just be myself on this blog ig? (And theres such a big lgbtq+ community on here that i really needed because i dont have much of that in my real life so it feels good surrond myself with people just like me and it helps me feel normal and comfortable about myself) (;_;)

Either way what im tryna say, is im probably one of the most unorganized blogs to exist out here, yet you still pressed follow, and accepted me and my korra brainrot, So thank you.❣️

once i develop talent i will do something special for my next milestone. 💫

[fvstboi]

[ jesus castro, he/him, 29 ] pietro maximoff has been spotted in gotham city! the hero is publicly known as quicksilver, and have often been described as determined, but also arrogant. they have also been affiliated with the avengers, and said to mainly operate in new york city. will they help find answers, or add to the chaos? [ han, she/her, 23, mst ]

triggers: childhood trauma , kidnapping , experimentation , HYDRA mentions , minor violence , auschwitz mentioned , mental illness , death. 

hey fam !! here’s my fast boi , pietro maximoff. i love him bunches. 

so first things first: he is comics based with mcu tie-ins. and comics before marvel ruined his backstory by making him not actually erik and magda’s son and not a mutant. can u tell i love my son and hate what marvel has done to him ? keep on reading to find out. 

pietro was born in the wundagore mountains to magda eisenhardt , a romani woman that magneto met and fell in love with. ( she survived auschwitz because of him i stan ). although pietro and wanda didn’t know it at the time and wouldn’t for many years , erik lehnsherr / magneto / max eisenhardt was their father. magda didn’t stay around for very long , though. not long after , magda fled into the woods with the fear that her husband would find her. pietro and his twin sister would soon enough be given to the maximoff’s , a romani couple who lived down the mountain and had always wanted children. ( note: while pietro was both raised romani and is romani in heritage , a lot of it was lost to him after his adopted parents died which was when he was quite young. he does want to make sure his daughter knows about it and where she comes from but he’s not an expert since everyone from the romani side of his family is dead. )

he was literally that obnoxious older brother but he’s also hella protective and loyal ? he’s a bit of an ass . scratch that , he is 100% an asshole :’)

pietro and his twin , wanda , were raised in transia / sokovia by the maximoff’s , who were an amazing couple and even better parents. eventually , their “ adoptive “ father , django , began to steal food so that he could feed his family. enraged villagers attacked the ( romani ) camp they were living in. pietro was able to get him and wanda out , thankfully , but the trauma from that event was so severe that they wouldn’t be able to recall anything from their childhood for years and not even small details. they had nothing. they’d then travel across europe , fending for themselves and only relying on each other. the streets were really hard. they were hungry and tired on most days and pietro would steal food and warm clothes with his powers but wanda would always say he would get caught one day. ( he didn’t ).

one day , wanda accidentally caused a house to burst into flame through her hex powers , which she could not yet control. superstitious townspeople began chasing her. pietro would try his best to protect and defend her but they were outnumbered and overpowered. thankfully , magneto ( dad !!! ) came to their rescue. they would then join the brotherhood of evil mutants , feeling like they had to serve him since he saved them from what would have been horrible mob violence.

when magneto was defeated in a battle against some powerful guy who took him away from earth , pietro and wanda took it as their chance to leave and went back to transia / sokovia / whatever it’s being called now.

( mcu tie ins ) pietro and wanda were kidnapped by HYDRA ( aka not willingly joining HYDRA ) and experimented on with one of the infinity stones , which only augmented their powers. the second HYDRA fell , they left it and joined ultron ( pietro blaming tony stark for the reason why sokovia / transia was in such turmoil due to seeing stark industries on a shell that hit their home that trapped pietro and wanda for nearly two days ). at some point the twins allied themselves with the avengers and also joined them and fought against ultron , who they had previously sided with. 

pietro was injured in the battle against ultron and almost died and so he stayed with the inhumans for awhile. he formed a relationship with crystalia amaquelin , princess of the inhumans. the whole thing was somewhat forbidden since he’s not an inhuman but they soon enough got married. it was p rushed, which is super on brand for pietro. they eventually had their daughter , luna and ? not only did he find out that magneto is his dad during this time but pietro’s a dick and almost killed her by putting her in the terrigensis ( this was much later on , not right after she was born omg ) but hey , she got powers so ! he’s never been the best dad , honestly ? he’s run away from a lot of responsibility , even stuff that wasn’t luna related lol. but he’s trying ? ( with pietro’s age , luna is about ? 5-6 years old. his lil princess. )

the relationship that pietro had with crystal would become rocky due to pietro’s mind being elsewhere and not paying all that much attention to his wife. crystal would then cheat on pietro ,,,, ( note: crystal left some other guy for pietro sksksk ) pietro wouldn’t forgive her and “ vowed vengeance on her and all those he perceived as having wronged him “ but !! crystal’s cousin , maximus , was manipulating his mind and augmenting pietro’s anger towards crystal which was prob meant more for the avengers. he did a lot of dumb shit during this time basically. moreso than usual. but he wasn’t in control of himself or what he was doing so really ? it wasn’t his fault. 

pietro and crystal had a messy relationship after that. they’d reconcile , get back together , breakup , fight , get back together , fight together , etc. it was a messy relationship for awhile. 

pietro lost his powers for a bit and ,,, it was hard fam he was actually depowered due to m day but i’m just saying he lost his powers w/o m day since it’s a big part of him

honestly !! pietro was in a pretty horrible state at this time. he was taken to attila which is basically inhumans hq , where his medical injuries were taken care of. pietro couldn’t stand being human so much that he underwent terrigensis even though king black bolt said no since it can kill u ! wtf u doing pietro !! he then started to plan a way to steal and bring the terrigensis crystals to earth. pietro ,,, no. angel boi. slow down u gonna kill everyone. 

then he made his daughter undergo terrigen ,,,, which could’ve killed her since nobody knew if her inhumans genes would just cancel out her mutant ones.

lots of shit happened ,,,, its just 2 much 

pietro was then put in jail and while there he had a serious of hallucinations. o boi

but ig it was also the end of his episode , u could call it ?? his powers were restored and he rediscovered his desire to be a hero !!

pietro recovered the remaining terrigenesis crystals returning them to the inhumans and clearing his name of criminal charges through a lie that a skrull committed all of his felonies. 

he joined all new x-factor which was his half-sister’s x-men team !

he actually just claimed to have a falling out with the avengers ,,, which wasn’t rly tru ,,, lorna’s ex bf , alex summers , just wanted pietro to spy on her sksksk 

but like ? pietro in x-factor with lorna was one of the best things marvel could’ve done. just siblings working together and on a team together who usually never interact. goals. ( might lowkey have a thing for a certain cajun mutant ) 

he taught at avengers academy for a hot second !

he’s paid a ton of money for luna to go to a fancy school in england which she eventually just ,,, ran away from lmfao

he’s a hero. but he also doesn’t pay much attention to authority and if he thinks someone is wrong and he’s right then he’ll follow his own path and ignore everyone else. he’s tried to repower mutants with the inhuman crystals and continued to do so after mutants got sick and some even died. while that’s not really canon it does give a good insight to who pietro is. he’s not bad and most of his bad ideas do have good intentions. 

he’s been off and on with the avengers for awhile and never stays with them for extended periods of time but they all mean a great deal to him. he loves many of the founding / returning members and cares more for them than he’d ever care to admit. 

pietro once ran 300+ miles so he could punch erik in the face lol [ x ]

pietro is in gotham to see what’s going on ? he also has luna while crystal is away doing stuff. so single dad pietro ! he’s never been alone with luna for more than a few days before ! it’ll be fun ! 

tldr; pietro is messy, an asshole and a drama queen but he’s trying HIS BEST.

stats - tba / pinterest / wiki page.

[wannawrite]

Let’s Just Laze [ day ver ]

• who?: Wanna One's Bae Jinyoung • genre: 🌸 • type: bullet point night version • lazy days with your boyfriend, Bae Jinyoung • when you wake up from your lazy night with Baejin yayyy! the day version is finally here, it’s kinda similar i’m sorry :(( and doshdkdjso our inbox got spammed and i'm super super happy liKE YESSSS THANK YOU GUYS 💓 soon to come: 1. DIMH pt.2 2. flower boy Justin Huang 3. fall cuddles w/ Daehwi 4. college bf! Baejin 5. when you love someone [ by day6 ] w/ Jisung 6. soulmate! AU [ possible series ] w/ Ong 7. bf! Lee Euiwoong 8. fake dating au! w/ Guanlin 9. high school! Woojin 10. soulmate! AU w/ I.M omf i'll be busy - Admin L 

• so first of all, the only reason(s) you wake up is/are because... • a. the sun is flittering in and annoying you • b. baejin's side of the bed is cold • c. you can smell food • d. you can kinda hear a lot of clattering in the kitchen and jinyoung's cursing • w o w • imagine Bae Jinyoung cursing • NEXT • you still feel sleepy and barely half awake but that is understandable like you guys did face masks at 4am ??? • fell asleep at 5am • it's probably 11.30am almost 12pm maybe • lol half the day is already gone • you pay a visit to the washroom to make sure you still look cute and presentable • Jinyoung would put a ring on you if he gets to wake up to that every day • :") u know he's a keeper when he sees u in your worse but still loves you • you look adorable so you pad out in your pyjamas to find your boyfriend • the smell of food cooking lures you into the kitchen • Jinyoung is there attemptingg to make breakfast for the two of you • no offence but he's totally the kind to serve you bfast in bed and just talk in the mornings bc why not • who isn't down for that tbh? • jinyoung set his alarm an hour earlier so he could wake up just to cook breakfast • he made sure the alarm wasn't loud enough to wake you up bc he wants you to rest and rejuvenate • crept out of bed at 10am • it's been 1h 30 mins and he's lowkey still struggle • baejin lowkey extra so he wants the best of the best for his baby • pulls a Gordon Ramsay   • you know you eating good for breakfast • actually, he's doing really well • not a surprise • is there anything he cannot do? • no of course not, he's Bae Jinyoung • you are proud • baejin is proud you are his baby   • okay breakfast • but why does he need breakfast • when you're a whole meal • bYe i'M SORRY • while he's dishing the food, you come and hug him from behind • the oldest yet cutest cliche in the book • he gasps a little in shock but his lips curve into a happy smile • maybe he's a little upset he doesn't get to surprise you with breakfast in bed • but you are you and he'll have it no other way • turns around to hug you back and kisses the top of your head • "good morning, baby" • "did you sleep well?" • "i'm sorry if i woke you up." • he lifts the plates and gestures for you to lead the way to the living room • you two settle down on the sofa, food on the coffee table, jinyoung grabs the TV remote • "babe, what do you feel like watching?" • you aren't in the best mood to watch programmes but gives in to jinyoung's suggestion of his favourite TV series/cartoon • somehow, you grow to enjoy it too • "no! why? how dare she???" • you get super engrossed in the show that you stop eating • jinyoung realises that after he's done eating, downed two cups of coffee while you aren't at the halfway mark yet • "yah, babe, you should eat. breakfast is important." • "wait shush nothing is more important than this scene she's going to find out if-" • you yelp in surprise when your boyfriend wraps his arms around your torso just to bring you closer to his chest • he lifts up a forkful of food and beams at you • "ahh you just want to be pampered" • speaking of pampered, thanks to jinyoung's innisfree sponsorship and their masks, your skin is healthy, hydrated and glowing • you open your mouth to receive the food • baejin sighs in faux irritation • "what am i going to do? Y/N only wants to be pampered and cared for" • you stick out your tongue playfully at him • secretly, he is loving it • let him live he knows he is making his significant other happy and satisfied • jinyoung ends up feeding you as you continue raving about the show • ya'll cute i'm screaming • after that, you insist on doing the dishes since he cooked and he ventures of to wash up and change • the speakers are blasting Wanna One's songs courtesy of you • wow he can hear himself singing from all the way across the house • Jinyoung blushes in embarrassment but it fades when he sees you're having a solo jam session in the kitchen • you manage to hit Jaewhan's high note • * ring ring * • "hello?" • "hi hyung you're fired" • stop! sidetracking! • the dishes are gleaming when you put them back in their original storage place • professional • you go to freshen up and change into another one of Jinyoung's shirts but retain the same pair of shorts • for a short time, both of you are busy with your phones, updating your parents  and whatnot • your parents are relieved to know you are alive and well, they know how well your boyfriend takes care of you • after everyone is reassured you're alive you get off your phone and stare at the ceiling for awhile • it isn't weird bc you're lounging on Jinyoung's lap on his bed • then, you poke Jinyoung • "babe, do you want to do anything?" • it's like 1.30pm and you just officially 'woke up' • b l e s s • a look of deep thought crosses his face before he puts his phone down and drags a huge box out from one of his drawers • boom! it's another box of skin care products • various creams, scented waters, moisturisers, pore strips • you are not surprised • skincare is pretty fun, especially when you're doing it with someone else • again, Baejin has to show off to his large IG following • take care of your skin guys!! • since there isn't much to do, Jinyoung asks you to revamp this closet • e.g, it's time for you to claim more of his clothes • "darling, i have my cousin's wedding next week, what should I wear?" • yoU ARE ON IT LIKE YOU ARE WANNA ONE'S STYLIST • pulling out the fanciest stuff he has bc your man should look the best • jinyoung just watches with an amused and joyous smile on his face as you throw clothing items at him • you come up with a total of three looks • and a total of 300 shirts you're going to take home • you guys are bored and extra so he ends up trying all of them on • his house becomes a runway

• + mini polaroid photoshoot in his backyard • sigh looks like you guys are tired out again • what it's like 3pm ??? • okay, afternoon nap time • "hey jin," • "hmm yes love?" • imAGINE HIM CALLING YOU LOVE • YES L O V E • hAHAHAH BYE • you're back in his comfy bed - it feels like your own now - air conditioner is on, you're snuggled up to his side • "can you tell me a story?" • Jinyoung smiles lovingly at you and nods • "once upon a time, there was a prince named Bae Jinyoung and he fell in love with a royal from another kingdom called Y/N....." • listening to Jinyoung's voice is so soothing that you fall asleep still tucked into his side • the day is still young it's 4pm • he decides to sleep too • warm cuddles • mhmm so soft • this sounds so peaceful and relaxing • the stress just melts right off you and jinyoung • everything is so calm and quiet • and at the same time, you guys are bonding • how sweet is that ???? • extremely • you really couldn't ask for anything better than more lazy days with Baejin

[gethealthy18-blog]

341: Q&A With Katie: Motivation, Magnesium, Homeschooling & Parenting Teens

New Post has been published on https://healingawerness.com/news/341-qa-with-katie-motivation-magnesium-homeschooling-parenting-teens/

341: Q&A With Katie: Motivation, Magnesium, Homeschooling & Parenting Teens

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This podcast is sponsored by Jigsaw Health, my source for magnesium. You probably know, if you’ve read my blog, that magnesium is responsible for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body. It impacts blood pressure, metabolism, immune function, and many other aspects of health, including hormones. It’s known as the master mineral and it’s one of the few supplements I take regularly. And I have found a specific way to take it that works best for me in very specific forms because if magnesium is taken in the wrong way it can lead to digestive upset or if it’s taken too quickly it can cause all kinds of problems. So, I take two supplements. One called MagSRT which is a slow release form of the dimagnesium malate. The slow release technology makes it easier on the digestive system. So I don’t get any of the digestive disturbance that comes with some forms of magnesium. I take this form in the morning and at lunch. So, two capsules with breakfast, two capsules with lunch. And at night, I take a different product MagSoothe, which is magnesium glycinate which is magnesium bound with the amino acid glycine to help sleep. And in combination, I noticed the biggest effect from those two particular products. You can check them both out and save by going to jigsawhealth.com/wellnessmama. And the code wellness10 will give you $10 off any order.

This episode is sponsored by Everlywell – at-home lab tests that you can get without a doctor’s order! I’ve used many of their tests and can recommend a couple that have been especially helpful. They have an at-home allergy test for 40 of the most common allergens using the same CLIA-certified labs used by Allergists and Doctors. The labs are reviewed by an independent physician and this lab test measures IgE levels of common allergens including pet dander, mold, trees, grasses, and more. But you can do it at home with a finger stick. I also really like their food sensitivity tests that test for IgG reactions. This was a big key for me in my health recovery, as there were foods that didn’t show up as an allergy that were causing inflammation for me. I used an elimination diet as well, but this food sensitivity test also filled in the missing pieces of the puzzle for me. Through healing my gut, I’ve been able to remove all sensitivities except for eggs. Finding out I was highly sensitive to eggs made a huge difference as I ate them often as an inexpensive protein source. I feel so much better now that I don’t eat eggs and I would never have known that without this test! I also use their at-home Vitamin D test to keep an eye on those levels. Check out all of their tests at wellnessmama.com/go/everlywell and use code MAMA10 for 10% off.

Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com our new line of natural personal care products that work as well or better than their conventional chemical alternatives and you can check those out at wellnesse.com that’s wellness with an E on the end where we have hair care, toothpaste and now hand sanitizer available. In this episode, I am answering some questions that you guys submitted and going into detail on a few things that I got an especially a number of questions on including homeschooling, our power parenting differently now that we have teenagers, staying motivated, magnesium and a few others I hope will be a really fun episode. I would love as always to hear your feedback in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm and I can answer questions there. If there are any follow-up questions.

I also want to say a big thank you to all of you who filled out the podcast survey and gave feedback on things that I can improve with the podcast. Definitely took your feedback to heart and have a sign right now I’m looking at to remind me to speak more slowly. I know that’s something I struggle with. Also, will be playing with moving around and shortening the ads to hopefully provide a better experience that way. And I loved that you guys recommended having certain guests on for round two, which I often talk about but haven’t done with a lot of these guests. So thank you all for the honest feedback. It was extremely helpful. Without further ado, I’m just going to start reading some user questions and going into detail about how I handle them.

So from both Ruth and Mariana asked about homeschooling, how we figured out a curriculum, how we structure it, and if anything has changed now that we have older kids. And as a follow-up, Melinda asked, she said, “I heard that you homeschool. If so, can you give tips on how you choose curriculum? Give us the insight information on the early years. Also wondering how you made your decision to keep your kids home and create a culture of learning at home.”

And this is one of my favorite topics and I’m hopefully gonna be able to share some usable stuff today. I’m going to go deep on our whole system and kind of from the ground up how we built it. Also you can hear a lot of this in a podcast I did with my oldest son. Not specifically the homeschool side, but how it’s manifesting all the different things that we’re doing. With him now that he’s older. You probably have heard me talk about how I don’t really post about my kids on social media.

They’re not visible on the blog and their names have not been used and we wanted to give them the freedom to not have an online presence if they wanted to. We wanted it to be their choice. And now that he is 13 and has proven he’s incredibly responsible, we’re letting this be his decision. So he just released a cookbook, it’s called Chef Junior. I’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out. But this is one of his first projects that’s been public facing. And so because of that, he’s chosen to have a social media presence and to be more publicly visible. But in the podcast I did with him, we talk about some aspects of homeschooling. We also talk about the entrepreneur program we do with them, which I’m going to talk about in a couple of minutes and just how his opinion of how all of this has been from his side.

So it’s kind of the balance to me just explaining the parent and teacher side of this. So that link will be in the show notes. If you want to check out that episode. It’s a pretty good compliment to this one. But in general, we started from scratch when it came to homeschooling, when our kids were about to hit school age. We didn’t want to just recreate regular school at home and I didn’t even just want to follow a curriculum and make a normal homeschool scenario. I tried to really step back and think through what actually is the best way to teach kids in today’s world. And I reconsidered all of the traditional methods because I feel like a lot of homeschool programs while they do offer a lot more flexibility and many certainly have their strengths they do kind of sort of build on the just the same system they teach in schools.

So when I say I questioned all of those things, I even questioned things like traditional grades, the traditional subjects and orders and even writing methods. If you have been a listener for a while or reader, you might’ve heard me mention the 80/20 rule and I definitely applied that here as well. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically the idea that 20% of inputs give 80% of the results. And in business, the flip is also true that often 80% of problems are caused by 20% customers. This plays out in a lot of different fields. But I wanted to see how this would apply to school. So basically figuring out what are the 20% of skills, subjects, etc., that they need to be successful as adults no matter what area they go into as an adult and focus on those as the core and then let them specialize beyond that.

And before I started building the practical side of a curriculum, I wanted to really map out the objectives. Like what are the key objectives that I want my kids to get to adulthood having intact. So I thought through what are the most important qualities that my kids are likely going to need as adults in today’s world. And I realized no matter what they decided to do, whether it be a more traditional educational path and our traditional career, or whether it be something entrepreneurial or something that doesn’t even exist yet. Because certainly what I do for a living did not exist when I was some of their ages. And so I wanted skills that would help them in any of those scenarios. And we honed in on the skills of critical thinking, creativity, innovation, ability to connect dots where other people don’t see them, the ability and willingness to question authority when needed and the foundations be able to learn new skills quickly. And we felt like those were things that could not easily be outsourced to technology and that would serve them in whatever area they decided to pursue.

We also wanted them to at least have the foundational skills to be entrepreneurs if they decided to. So on that note, we don’t prioritize college, but I wanted them to be able to get in easily if they wanted to. I didn’t know college was optional, truly until I got there and my kids will definitely have a different experience that way. But I’m not just teaching them skills that will get them to college. I’m not training them to be good test takers. Like I was trying to be a good test taker. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I wanted them to have the usable real life skills and being able to take tests and being able to get into college if they wanted to, to be just a secondary skill of that.

What I realized is that technology is rapidly changing work culture. So it’s impossible to know truly what their adult world will look like, especially for the little ones. And I thought about, like I mentioned, even in my life being a blogger and a podcaster, these things weren’t even options when I was six years old. So if someone had asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I wouldn’t have ever thought to think of them because they didn’t exist. So in a time where they might be living in a completely different world in 10, 12 years because of technology, how can I best prepare them for that constantly changing scenario? And it made me really reflect and ask, does a traditional school culture do that or do even most homeschool curriculums do this? And I found that for me at least, the answer didn’t seem to be that they did, or at least that there were better ways, to prepare kids for adult life that would still teach the things they needed to learn with, but in a way that maintained those core traits that were so important.

So I took the 20% of the 80/20 rule and I ran it through those criteria of maintaining those core traits. And I tried to figure out ways to teach it that met those standards. This was pretty easy at early ages because kids are naturally so curious and we of course wanted to maintain their natural curiosity. And so often it was as simple as answering their questions when they ask why or how or encouraging follow up questions and researching with them. So many times when they were little and still with the little ones, now they ask a question. I’ll say things like, I don’t know, but let’s research it together and find out. We spend a lot of time just researching random topics and learning and reading. We followed some basic programs for phonics and reading when they were really young just to help them make that jump.

But really also just read a lot with them when they were really little. From there I assembled the curriculum we use completely from scratch. I will also say that this is no small job with six kids and trying to individualize the curriculum to each of them. So my parents live nearby and my dad is a retired college professor. And it’s really helpful to have extra hands on deck. It’s been a tremendous advantage because my kids essentially have four teachers, which is really helpful when there are six of them. And they also, they have other teachers besides just me. But to get more specific because the questions from you guys were somewhat more specific. That’s kind of the overarching idea that we built on. And because of that, some of the things that we do differently, I think even then most homeschool curriculum one example we grade backwards and what I mean by that is we don’t start with a hundred and you lose points if you get something wrong.

We start with zero and we build, and this was very intentional because with my personality in school, like I said, I got really good at taking tests, but I viewed anything below a hundred as a failure. And I was scared to make mistakes. And I’m not saying that just traditional school grading was the reason for that. They were aspects of my personality that would have responded that way I think no matter what. But it was important to me. I didn’t want my kids to fear making mistakes and I didn’t want them to fear failure. And so I wanted them to be focused basically on a growth mindset versus being penalized for making mistakes. Because in real life you often grow and learn some of your best lessons from mistakes. And it’s in correcting mistakes that you often come to success. So we backwards grade let them start from zero and build up just so that it’s the growth focus versus the penalization for making mistakes.

We also don’t structure schoolwork to fill time, but the key objective is mastery of a topic. So they don’t just get worksheets to pass a certain number of hours per day and when they can demonstrate that any subject reliably that they understand it and have mastery of it, they can move on from that. They don’t have to stay with the concept once they’ve actually obtained the skill. And that also kind of ties in with the 80/20. It’s not about just filling time or just hitting eight hours a day. It’s about mastery of the subject. And that’s also incentivizing them to actually learn it versus just go through the motions. Based on one thing. I, in my own school, I don’t expect them to show their work a certain way, especially in things like math. If they can explain an answer and how they got there, no matter how they did it, then I let them count because I actually want them to think outside the box solutions.

And in that same line, if they can get an accurate answer in their head reliably and consistently without showing work, they don’t have to show the work. As long as that is very strongly, they are consistently getting the right answer. I also listen to them when they come with questions about a subject or want to move past a subject. I remember very clearly being in high school and having discussions with teachers about why do we have to do so many of these worksheets and why do we have to keep doing these drills and being told, well, you won’t always have a calculator with you. And I laugh now because we all do have our phones with us all the time and we have an incredible computer that sits in our back pocket all the time. And so again, try to keep in mind what is adult life going to likely look like for them. And how do you best prepare them for that?

So rather than focusing on fundamentals, how can we build on technology that will likely still be there? We also have unusual subjects but beyond the basic ones. So we do 80/20, and they do get the typical basic math and science and reading, etc. But we have new subjects. There’s one called topics and this is, it encourages them to research something new each day. And this is with the focus on maintaining curiosity and asking questions and it can be any topic. And so they might research boats or bananas or llamas or whatever it may be, but they learn these fun facts about different topics. And then it’s always fun, dinnertime conversation based on some of the fun things they’ve learned that day or my older son often is researching technology or environmental topics and have actually going deep on the science.

But our goal there was to kind of just mentally get them in a habit of always wanting to learn and pursue new things. And so they get time every day, just blocked off to read fun things that interest them. Also when they finish their work, they’re done for the day. We don’t follow a timeline, I alluded to that. But unlike a regular school, I don’t need them to sit in a desk from eight to three. So it’s about efficiency and if they can finish their work correctly more quickly, they’re done for the day and they can go then play outside, which we definitely encourage and play with their friends. We also do a lot of hands on and experiments and this is with that encouraging innovation and out of the box thinking. So whether it be things like trying to design some kind of contraption that would keep an egg from breaking when we throw it off the roof, whether it be physics or chemistry experiments.

And often we’ll do the experiment and then work backwards so they’ll see the thing and then have to figure out why it happened the way it happened. Or we do a lot of Socratic type things where like question asking and talking through it versus taking a test being like trying to be told there was one right answer. For a long time we took field trips once a week as well, so every Friday we would dedicate to going to a museum or a Marine center or even a business manufacturing plant somewhere they could learn something that was outside of their normal day and it was really fun just to talk to local businesses. They weren’t all by any means like a normal school field trip to get to go to places and see how things were made or how the inside of a business ran. That was something that I think was really impactful for them as well.

Another thing we do differently, both from a parenting perspective and this also crosses over into homeschooling, is we encourage them to question authority respectfully and even and especially me. So they’ll often hear me say, you know, ask questions, always ask questions when you’re told something, don’t take it at face value. And my oldest son, when he was younger, he said, even you, I should even question you? And I said, even, and especially me, because right now I represent authority in your life and if you can’t respectfully question me now or have the ability to cognitively do that, you won’t be able to do that in adult life when you need to. And of course, the respectful side, it’s always important there because in adult life that’s, that’s really important as well.

But I wanted them to get in the habit of not just when an authority figure told them something, not just taking it at face value, but being able to ask the why and the how questions to back up that answer and to think through it on their own. A practical tip, this came from a former podcast guest, Naveen Jain, who is an entrepreneur. He’s been, he’s started many companies and he has three adult children. Who are all doing pretty spectacular things. And so I asked him, what are some things that you did that you think helped give them the skills to pursue whatever they want to now pursue as adults? And what are some things that as parents we can do to help our kids develop those skills? And one piece of advice that he gave was to let them watch TED talks each morning.

And so we try to often let our kids watch three unrelated TED talks. And this goes toward that core value of wanting them to learn how to connect the dots and think outside the box. So kids are natural pattern recognizers and when you give them three topics or three videos that are unrelated, they’re still gonna try to find connections and correlation. And so we’ll have them watch three different TED talks. And TED talks are amazing in their own right because you have people who are the best in their field and this is their whole life work and they’re summarizing it into 16 minutes. So you’re getting incredible information in a very short amount of time. And by having them watch unrelated things are hoping that they start to see patterns where other people aren’t connecting the dots. So whether they’re watching a TED talk on mushrooms and something to do with the environment and some kind of technology. If those can be used somehow, synergistically, and one practical thing that came from this, you can hear more about it in my son’s podcast episode this week but we now have, he’s raising super worms in his closet in our house and other types of worms and larva and various phases in our garden. And I think this was maybe indirectly related to a TED talk, but he had a theory that these worms could be used to break down certain types of plastic that are not recyclable. And he explains it much better than I can, but it was the idea of connecting the dots where other people wouldn’t necessarily think to do that. And then being willing to experiment and take risks and see if it actually works.

I mentioned I wanted them to be able to go to college if they decided to. So I am teaching them the game of testing in case they decide to go to college. And to be clear, I do consider it a game. I was a really good test taker and it’s a completely worthless life skill for the most part. But like anything, there are systems and you can 80/20 test taking as well. And so my kids are taking the PSAT and they’ll take the SAT and the ACT, but they know it’s a game and I’m teaching them how to beat the game. But they don’t view this as an objective marker of their intelligence or their ability to do well in life. They view this as a game that they could beat and I really strongly feel that’s what it is. So if they want to go to college, they will be able to do that. But I won’t really encourage college unless they want to specialize in something that actually needs it like medicine or I guess accounting would be one thing that needs a degree and a license to be able to practice. That said if they also just want to go to college for the social side and they acknowledge that that’s why they want to go and they are willing to pay for it. I fully support that as well. I just don’t want them to go with the idea that I had that there’s no other options or that that’s going to be the only path to a career for them. We also try very hard to cater curriculum and treat every child individually because even just with six of them, they all learn so differently and some of them do wonderful on their own. Others need a little bit more one-on-one help or explanation. Some of them are incredible at art and extremely creative naturally whereas, a couple of them were extremely analytical and understand math and science, but art is a struggle. And so trying to cater the curriculum to them individually to play on their strengths but also challenge them and encourage them to get out of their comfort zone on their weaknesses.

As they get older, we also want to really encourage and help support them in whether we encourage, hopefully, them starting a business or if they want to learn a trade versus traditional college, start some kind of business venture. And so we are now with our older ones in the phases of kind of shifting school away from bookwork now that they’ve pretty much done that 20% of the central skills they need and into the hands on practice of whatever that’s going to be for them, whether it’s starting a business, etc. And one thing that came up this week that I loved my oldest was interviewed on another podcast as well. And one of the questions that came through from that podcast was, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he’s never been asked that question by us because we, we purposely avoid that one. We try to ask them questions like, what problems will you solve? Who will you help when you grow up? What hard questions will you answer when you grow up? But get them to think in that mindset versus like what traditional just job role are you going to fill? Because we don’t want them to feel like they’re defined by their job. And statistically they will likely have many careers or at least several. And it was really encouraging to hear him respond to that question on the podcast by saying, I don’t think that’s the right question to ask. Why do we have to be defined by a job? Why not ask, you know, some of those questions, what problems will you solve or who will you help? And so we fostered this by asking versions of those questions daily, even in small interactions with them. Like if there’s a disagreement between siblings instead of us and an acting and the law, we’ll start with questions of how can you solve this problem? How can you find an answer that’s mutually agreeable so that we don’t have to step in, there doesn’t have to be timeout or we don’t have to mitigate the situation. We also ask them questions like, everyday, what hard questions did you ask today? What did you fail at today? And what did you learn from that? What are you grateful for today? And some of the best parenting moments and lessons have come just from those little interactions with them that it’ll lead to the deeper conversations that you can’t ever fully just facilitate.

I’ve also mentioned before that we have a contract with our kids that before they can have a car or their own phone, they have to have a profitable business for a year. Does not mean it has to be a wildly profitable business, but it does have to be a business that they run that shows a profit for a period of a year. And we are helping them do this. We’ve built a business incubator of sorts where we’re not just obviously throwing them out into the world and telling them to start a business. We’re helping them do that because entrepreneurship is a really important key skill for us and so our older ones are beginning the phases of that now as they finish their traditional school. And that’s the reason we have things like worms in our closets where he’s growing that he’s also written the cookbook and he’s starting a podcast. Our oldest is and those all have the potential to be profitable and we’ll see how that plays out. He’s about a year and a half from being able to get a driver’s permit. So I think he’s motivated and we’ll see which one ends up being a profitable business. But our reasoning with that is, that some of these skills we want them to get to adulthood with can most easily be taught in a hands on way through learning how to run a business because you’re learning the financial side, which a lot of kids get to adulthood without having a clear idea of how to manage finances. Also the idea that it’s not just about revenue but profit and understanding how finances work, understanding how debt works and when it’s good and when it’s bad, but also just more day to day skills like consistency and having to show up when it’s hard and working through problems and working through risk adversity because I think a lot of kids, at least for me, I made it to college, afraid to take risks because I gotten good at the school model and entrepreneurship was a big jump for me and having to figure it out as I went. And so I wanted to give them all of the tools in our toolkit if they decided to do that.

I also got a question from Jamie. Are there any books or approaches for parenting/homeschooling that has been helpful to you for particularly for ages three and up? And how would you describe your parenting approach? I feel like our parenting approach probably has a lot of turnover with the things I’ve just explained for homeschooling. I do love the positive parenting solutions course. I recently interviewed her and that’s a great one. I’ll link to in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. I also love for the learning side to circle back on homeschooling. I love Jim Kwik’s information on rapid learning and maintaining creativity. He’s a really good resource. But as far as books that have helped for parenting I found that often the books that gave me the most applicable helpful information for homeschooling and for parenting were not parenting books at all. I was able to pull parenting lessons from them, but they were not designed to be parenting books in the least. Whereas some of the parenting books, often were just rules or systems that you should follow directly, versus actually how do you cultivate with each individual child, kind of those things that we talked about. So, I’ll link all these books in the show notes. These are some of the ones that I have found helpful. I have quite a few introverts. Well one of my kids. And there’s a really cool test called the Fascinate Test by Sally Hogshead and it kind of ranks you based on core motivations and like what drives you. And one of mine is mystique of just kind of like a more introverted private type of trait. And all of my kids got that, I think, from me. So I have a lot of introverts and I really liked the book, “Quiet the power of,” I believe it’s the “power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking” or something along that lines. I will link it in the show notes. That was really helpful to me and learning how to parent my introvert kids without like shutting them down and with getting them to open up when they needed to and just interact with them most efficiently. So that, and, and also for introvert friends and it was also helpful just for myself as well.

“Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown was helpful, really helpful from a parenting perspective, it’s meant to be a leadership book but I think in a very real way, parents are leaders within the home. And that really helped me reframe how I was talking to my kids and fostering that communication in a way that made room for vulnerability and made room for them to talk to me. And that’s something that’s increasingly important as they get older. And as I find teenagers are not just as talkative at first glance as a four year old would be. So you have to find ways to really nurture that relationship and keep it strong.

I also like “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni, of course a business book talking about business teams, but again, there’s crossover into family teams. And that one was helpful for me in just the management side and also the interpersonal side with the family. One that is more in the parenting realm that I liked was “Free Range Kids” and I’ve written before I can link in the show notes about kind of our approach to parenting in that way and not wanting to keep our kids inside very much, wanting them to be outside, to be able to take risks, to play outside.

And another one along that in that vein would be “The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less.” So those are the two probably parenting specific ones that I found personally helpful. From the learning one, there’s one called “Moonwalking with Einstein,” which I found really fascinating, just in developing our homeschool approach and also in trying to maintain that inherent curiosity in my kids. Simon Sinek “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.” Again, kind of thinking of parents as the leadership role in the house rather than a dictatorship role. I tried to think of that as instead of forcing my kids to take action, because in business, I don’t force my team to do anything. We all work together toward a common goal and everybody kind of knows what their roles are, but I don’t just yell at them and nag them and force them to do things. And so how could I inspire that same thing in my household? So some of these leadership books were really helpful in that method of how do I get my kids to want to be part of this team and to want to take action.

There’s also one called “Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur.” Again, it’s an entrepreneurial book, but lots of crossover into leadership and parenting as well. Another parenting specific one is “No Drama Discipline.” I didn’t like everything about that book but I was able to pull some helpful tips from that one. And there’s a new one, “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk” and the “Conscious Parent.” Those were some that I have been able to pull some tips from.

I don’t agree with everything in any of those, but there’s some really helpful stuff in there. And then one of course I’ve mentioned many times before is “The Four Hour Workweek.” That’s where I first heard about 80/20. I followed Tim Ferriss for a long time and that book helps me in business. That also helped in just learning to think in that way of being efficient and effective and it applies to a lot within the home as well. So separate of all of those things, that was more the homeschooling and parenting side. I think something else is really important to our approach is that we prioritize things that help brain development through movement. And I’ve had Carol Garner Houston on this podcast. We can link to those as well in the show notes. But she talks about how basically today’s kids, a lot of times, are not doing enough of certain kinds of movements to fully develop their vestibular and their limbic systems and this can have crossover effects into school and make things harder for them.

And so we try to do things that or like encourage them to do things that how are movement based and that fully developed their limbic and vestibular systems. So things like pole vaulting, gymnastics, music, art, gardening, lots and lots of time outside playing, climbing trees, running, slackline, jumping, helping with projects around the house. So they’re learning how to use tools, which are an extension of the brain in various ways. And then we’ve set up a Ninja course in our backyard so they can do all of the running, jumping, climbing, hanging things that help with that aspect of kid development.

And then lastly, I also think one thing we probably do differently than a lot of parents may be, certainly in a lot of school, we don’t do the whole follow your passion or do what makes you happy or like I said, we don’t do a whole, what do you want to be when you grow up? With them, we try to focus on, even right now at your current age, what can you master that improves the world in some way? What can you right now become the top 1% in the world at and then build skills like that. So kind of teaching them the idea of mastery, which is a much more, I feel like effective goal than just getting through a school year or checking a box. And the idea of being in business as well. If they can keep that rapid learning ability whatever they decide to do in the future, they’ll have the tools to learn it and to execute and to hopefully master.

And then to circle back to Melinda’s question about why we decided to homeschool and create that learning culture at home. I explained this a little bit, but I just, I felt like a lot of things about our current educational, system would not accomplish those core objectives with our kids and it wouldn’t get them to adulthood with those core skills intact. And of course there are outliers and exceptions. I know there are many great schools, many great things about many curriculums that I’m not trying to downplay that at all, but for our family, we realized that we could create a stronger culture of learning at home. We were willing to kind of innovate from the ground up and do a lot of the things that we’re trying to teach them. And in some ways it’s also made things easier because it solved for a lot of variables in schools that we don’t have to kind of worry about whether it be school lunches not being as nutritionally optimal as many parents would like or the constant EMF exposure or waking up too early when there’s a lot of data saying teenagers should sleep in and that like, we really need to prioritize sleep for the proper development of a teenage brain.

So lots of reasons we went into that. Happy to talk about that more. If anybody wants to hear more in depth on that, you can leave questions in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm or always ping me on Instagram and I can do some follow-ups. A little bit related. SJ asked, “What are your food rules now with having teens?” And I love this question because it has changed for me a little bit over the years. I’ve written before about our basic food rules in general that they never have to eat if they’re not truly hungry. But there’s no complaining about food. We don’t use vegetables as a bribe for other things. When they’re little we try to encourage them to just try one bite of all of the different foods that are available and just see if they like it without the commitment of facing a whole plate of it.

And we focus on nutrients, not macros. We gear our food toward our genes. So I run all of our genes as a family and I cook for the family in a way that is supportive of all of our genetic factors. And then add in like some of our kids do better with more carbs, so I’ll add in rice or potatoes for them. And then we try to often eat together whenever possible. And then lastly, food is not a reward or punishment. It’s a fuel. So they don’t get bribed to eat something by eating something that’s “healthy.” And we’ve tried to just focus on family dinner. I often cook, although now the older ones are cooking more and more but the idea being my responsibility as their mom is to make sure that there’s nutrient dense food available for them when they’re hungry and their responsibility is to decide if they are hungry or not and if they’re gonna eat that food or not.

So I don’t force them to eat if they are not hungry or often that means if they’re being picky, they don’t have to eat, but they don’t get a separate meal just because they don’t like a certain food. So there’s no peanut butter and jelly sandwich because you don’t like what was cooked, but you’re welcome to wait until the next meal. We kind of joke that picky has another name in our house and it’s called fasting. But with teenagers there is the acknowledgement they do need more fuel, especially protein, especially things like greens to bind to excess hormones as they go through puberty and healthy fats to support all of the aspects of hormone and brain development that are happening because after the early infant and toddler years, the teenage years, it’s an intense phase of growth for them. So I did want to make sure we were being really cognizant of supporting them nutritionally.

So in those meals that we cook at home, I had lots of olive oil to their diets for the good fats. I work in greens whenever possible. They take a few key supplements that really seem to help. So I can link to these in the show notes. They take Just Thrive probiotics and K2-7. And then depending on their specific genes, they take a couple other things as well. I found with teenagers and pre-teens that very often, when grumpy, add food, so they do, especially when they’re working out, they do eat more often. We don’t typically do a lot of snacking between meals, but with them in these ages, I have been doing that a lot more. So I’ll always just keep like supplies of vegetables or healthy proteins, beef sticks. There’s a list of foods they know they can always eat that are pretty much protein and vegetable based.

And so if they’re truly hungry, they can always get those foods without having to come ask. I also think it’s important to remember with teens, that the goal of the teenage years is for teenagers to become independent and very soon they will have to make their own food choices. So I don’t ever want to demonize a food or make it a forbidden thing that they want more of because they can’t have it. I try to keep in mind that you certainly cannot control teenagers. It doesn’t work for two year olds and it certainly doesn’t work on teenagers. And so rather than trying to dictate food choices I try to approach that from a perspective of respecting their autonomy and giving them the tools to make good decisions, but not forcing what those decisions are. So I love to get them more involved in cooking at this age.

I mentioned that my oldest just wrote a cookbook with his friends and he is able to cook entire meals from scratch and he does this relatively often. In fact about once a week he has a lot of our neighborhood kids over. I think the most I’ve seen in my house was about 25 all working together to cook something from scratch. So he’s kind of actually teaching the younger ones as well, but he’s completely capable of cooking a meal from scratch and they do get more leeway if he wants to cook something on his own from scratch. Of course he gets to pick what it is and he gets more choice there. But I think at any age when you get kids involved in cooking, they have a vested interest in wanting to eat the food. And they’re also just more likely to, without complaining. For younger ones, I recommend the “Kids Cook Real Food” course from Kitchen Stewardship and I can link that in the show notes as well, but it’s a really good primer on all of the essential kitchen skills they need to eventually be able to cook entire meals. And then his cookbook as well is geared toward children so they can learn to cook by making recipes that they will love and get those kitchen skills as well. Just a few other core things. We almost always eat clean at home. So kind of in line with the 80/20 rule. I look at, we eat at home much more than 80% of the time actually. When we’re at home and I only have clean food available and then I don’t stress as much if we’re not at home. I educate when they ask and I, I also educate gently when it can be worked in without me trying to dictate their food choices.

But then beyond that, especially with teenagers, I don’t stress when they’re not home. So my kids can go to friend’s house and they might very well eat sugar and food dyes and gluten and all of those things. And I don’t, I try to control that when they’re not at my house because again, they’re going to be making all of their food decisions very quickly and they now having eaten the way we eat for their whole lives, they notice they don’t feel as well when they eat certain things and they almost always still make good food choices when they’re not home and when they don’t truly eating a few cupcakes or chips or whatever it may be, is not going to ruin them when they’re eating nutrient dense at home.

This podcast is sponsored by Jigsaw Health, my source for magnesium. You probably know, if you’ve read my blog, that magnesium is responsible for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body. It impacts blood pressure, metabolism, immune function, and many other aspects of health, including hormones. It’s known as the master mineral and it’s one of the few supplements I take regularly. And I have found a specific way to take it that works best for me in very specific forms because if magnesium is taken in the wrong way it can lead to digestive upset or if it’s taken too quickly it can cause all kinds of problems. So, I take two supplements. One called MagSRT which is a slow release form of the dimagnesium malate. The slow release technology makes it easier on the digestive system. So I don’t get any of the digestive disturbance that comes with some forms of magnesium. I take this form in the morning and at lunch. So, two capsules with breakfast, two capsules with lunch. And at night, I take a different product MagSoothe, which is magnesium glycinate which is magnesium bound with the amino acid glycine to help sleep. And in combination, I noticed the biggest effect from those two particular products. You can check them both out and save by going to jigsawhealth.com/wellnessmama. And the code wellness10 will give you $10 off any order.

This episode is sponsored by EverlyWell – at-home lab tests that you can get without a doctor’s order! I’ve used many of their tests and can recommend a couple that have been especially helpful. They have an at-home allergy test for 40 of the most common allergens using the same CLIA-certified labs used by Allergists and Doctors. The labs are reviewed by an independent physician and this lab test measures IgE levels of common allergens including pet dander, mold, trees, grasses, and more. But you can do it at home with a finger stick. I also really like their food sensitivity tests that test for IgG reactions. This was a big key for me in my health recovery, as there were foods that didn’t show up as an allergy that were causing inflammation for me. I used an elimination diet as well, but this food sensitivity test also filled in the missing pieces of the puzzle for me. Through healing my gut, I’ve been able to remove all sensitivities except for eggs. Finding out I was highly sensitive to eggs made a huge difference as I ate them often as an inexpensive protein source. I feel so much better now that I don’t eat eggs and I would never have known that without this test! I also use their at-home Vitamin D test to keep an eye on those levels. Check out all of their tests at wellnessmama.com/go/everlywell and use code MAMA10 for 10% off.

A few other just teen related things. You asked about food rules, but a couple of things that I’m shifting in, just having teenagers is, like I said, the key objective for now as teenagers is them learning to be kind and self-sufficient and then to integrate as an adult soon.

So focus on those things versus control and rules. I know as a teenager I definitely did not enjoy rules and tended to push back on things. So I’m trying very hard to foster an environment where my kids don’t feel like they need to push back and they feel like they’re being listened to and understood. And again, check out the podcast with my son if you want to hear his take because this of course is me talking, but if you want to hear his honest feedback on that and it’s fun cause he actually questions me a couple of times in the podcast as well, but go listen to that one. One tip I got from the positive parenting solutions course that I mentioned is to use the phrase “convince me.”

So when they want to do something as teenagers that I feel is slightly beyond their ability level, instead of just saying no, I list my objections and then say, okay, now convince me. If you can come to me with a plan that addresses these objections and shows me that you can handle this in a responsible way, then I will listen with an open mind and I will consider it. So things like that, trying to make sure that they feel and actually realistically do have autonomy in any area that I can give it to them. Of course, actually listening to them versus just say no and enforcing rules right away, I think as a teenager, from what I remember, I desperately wanted to feel understood and heard. So trying to do everything I can to sure that my kids know, even in the times when I do have to say no, I’m listening and I understand and there are reasons why they can’t do this particular thing, but they can always come to me and I will always listen.

And as they get older, that’s making time for unstructured conversation. I’ve gotten advice from several parents of older kids that some of the best places for that are in the car because they don’t have to look right at you. So trying to take a kid with me on errands or just have time in the car. So if they want to talk about something, it’s a less stressful way or whether it be on a walk or just, I try to take different kids out for coffee once in a while, giving time where they can bring stuff up that they want, but there is no pressure. And then defaulting to letting them make decisions whenever possible. Encouraging them to have healthy friendships and supporting that. I feel like a lot of teenagers push back because friendships are important but psychologically that whole building into autonomy and developing social circles that does depend on friendships in the teenage years.

So rather than trying to fight them on having friends, encouraging them to have healthy friendships and to be the one, the place where they can all, they can always bring their friends over, they can always hang out. I’ll always feed anybody in my house. But that way they don’t feel like they have it a lack there or that they need to sneak out or hide things for them to have friends. And then also as teenagers, I’m finding it’s really important for them to have a sense of purpose, of some kind of work that that actually contributes both to the family and like with starting the business financially because it’s like a goal and something they feel like they’re accomplishing and also an activity they love that is an outlet.

So my kids all do pole vaulting and I’ve recently, I started doing this as well. They are definitively all much better than I am, which is great. But it’s been amazing to watch my daughters, especially because I remember being 12 and being kind of uncomfortable in my body. And especially as things started changing, I was very focused on how my body looks so different all of a sudden and how weird that was. And I see my daughters and to them, their bodies are these incredible tools and machines that they can use to do these really cool activities they want to do. So, of course they’re not grown yet, but I’m hopeful that having those activities and having the focus on that will give them a different perspective as they go through puberty and through the teenage years.

She also asked, “What would you do differently in your parenting?” I’m not a big fan of just sitting and wishing the past could be different but I do think we can always of course learn from the past. I think I would have been less dogmatic and more spontaneous and creative early on when they were really young. As I was trying to figure it all out, I was like following parenting rules or trying to figure out how do you get a two year old to do what you want. And I think it would have made more time for spontaneity and just creative activities when they were little. Also, I know it gets said all the time, but savor the small moments because it goes by so, so, so fast. Everyday I’m reminded of that. Just I look at my oldest and remember him as a baby. What feels like yesterday and it’s just, it’s crazy to have watched it go by so fast.

And then lastly, one that I’ve learned over time, I wish I could just go gift to myself as an early mom would be to put systems in place much earlier that take the mental stress out so that my kids could have had a calmer mom earlier. I’ve talked about this some, and I’m actually writing a whole book that kind of walks through this process in your life. But it’s not, I don’t think, all the things we have to do that often stresses us out. It’s the mental, and emotional responsibility of balancing those things. And so I discovered when I applied some of the same principles that work in business to home life, just like I did with some of those parenting books, it took away the mental stress and I was able to actually get more done so I wasn’t having to do any less but get more done, but without the stress. So those would be some of my top tips. But yeah, enjoy the small moments would be the top one.

From Sarah, she said, “How do you stay motivated to stay away from sugar or chocolate? I know so much about what’s good for me, but I can’t seem to stick to it. I don’t touch fast food. Rather, I struggle with so-called healthier food and other processed junk that appears to be healthy but really isn’t.” I think there’s a few tips here. First, I will say as a confession, I don’t fully stay away from sugar or chocolate. I don’t typically eat refined sugar, but I do sometimes eat chocolate. I do sometimes eat dessert. In fact, in the last couple of years with all of my shifts, I even sometimes eat gluten and I sometimes do eat processed food. I’m not a hundred percent off of everything.

And I think long-term the goal is actually to have that balance because it’s very hard to have a complete all or nothing policy. But I don’t think you start there. So I think the first part is realizing that your body is trying to tell you something. So if it’s sugar, if it’s craving certain things, look at any potential deficiencies, look at gut health. Those were both big keys for me as well as hormone health. And so I have to start there. You will have a very difficult time resisting if your body needs something for a particular reason. If there’s a deficiency or a gut issue, it’s very difficult to fight your physiology when it’s something that’s that core and that internal. So realize your body’s trying to tell you something and start trying to test for what those things might be. I also had to shift my mindset away from avoiding certain things to consuming enough of the good things.

So making the mindset shift of from the negative and the deficiency to the positive. So I didn’t wake up thinking, okay, I’m not gonna eat any junk food today. I woke up thinking, how am I going to consume all the good things my body needs today? And that alone shifted the focus because I didn’t feel like I was being deprived. So I didn’t crave those things as much that I would have wanted anyway. And it gave me metrics to make sure I was getting enough protein, make sure I was getting enough greens, the things that I knew that would support my hormones and my gut health. And it also made me much less hungry for those other things. And there’s some key tips, like if you get enough protein early in the day, you typically have fewer cravings at night. If you get enough leafy greens, which bind to extra estrogen in the body and give you magnesium, you typically crave less sugar.

But those are slow shifts. So making those baby steps over time your body will start to naturally start to crave more of the good things.

I think meal planning is also really key when it comes to this. I meal plan, I have to, with our family, I use a tool called “Real Plans,” which I’ll link to in the show notes. It’s an amazing tool that lets you plan based on what you already have in your house or based on food preferences or allergies and whatever nutritional criteria you have. So I use that and then I prepare food in advance as much as possible once a week so that I already have the healthy food ready to go. Which takes the decision-fatigue out of it and also takes the stress out of it.

When I was really trying to work through cravings, I found it helpful to write out ahead of time, like the day before what I was going to eat the next day to make sure I did get all those good things in. So I would write down, you know, breakfast and what it was going to be including however many ounces of vegetable, however many ounces of protein. Same with lunch, same with dinner. And that way I already had a plan so it wasn’t like, okay, it’s lunchtime. I could eat something healthy, but really I’d rather just eat this. I already knew that I had that ahead of time. For me also protein was a big key. There’s something called the therapeutic effect of food and protein requires a lot of energy to break down. That also is really essential for a lot of reactions in the body. And for me when I was craving things, I was not getting enough protein and I had to make a conscious effort to track and then start eating enough protein and that really reduced my cravings because my body was needing certain things and I think it really only knew like it needed magnesium and only knew to crave chocolate. And so I had to kind of retrain that effect by getting enough of the actual building blocks it needed. And so that kind of went along with that mindset of hitting the good macros versus restricting. It wasn’t avoiding calories or avoiding carbs, it was getting enough protein, getting enough greens, getting enough healthy fats, which for me is olive oil. Also for me, fasting helped. And a caveat here, I don’t think this applies to everyone. I don’t think anyone with certain hormone problems should try it at all. But for me, doing several longer fasts and then doing regular circadian fast where I didn’t eat after dark at all, really helped reset my hunger hormones. I don’t think that that will work the same for everyone. But it was really helpful for me.

And then on the deficiency side, I personally needed more zinc and selenium, choline and certain B vitamins and that really helped my cravings as well. And I really recommend Dr. Chris Masterjohn and his “Vitamins and Minerals 101.” He has a book and a course that helps you figure out based on symptoms and experimentation what you specifically need. And he does have a whole testing protocol as well if you want to go down that road. I will link to those in the show notes. One of the most in depth and helpful resources I’ve ever found for that. And unusual one that also helped it is getting sunlight every morning. So as soon as possible after waking up, going outside and getting natural sunlight that helped retrain my ghrelin and leptin and hunger hormones, I think and balance out my other hormones. And I find I have less hunger and less cravings when I do that and when I get some kind of movement every day.

And then lastly, I will say the trauma aspect was also a huge key for me. I don’t know if this is the case for you. I hope it’s not, I hope it’s not the case for most of you, but you can listen to episode 309 of this podcast and that explains that whole side of my transition and my transformation. But what I found part of that was that basically my subconscious was holding onto weight for safety. There was a reason for that and I couldn’t fight my subconscious because it thought it was protecting me. And so it wasn’t until I actually addressed the trauma that I could let go of that subconscious and I had to deal with that first. And what, ironically for me that meant once I fixed that I’m now actually eating more food. I need more calories and I have lost a lot of weight by doing that and I don’t crave the bad stuff anymore.

From Sandra “I asked my doctor a year ago to test my magnesium levels and per the results she says it’s fine, but does a standard blood test provide the best results?” and from Ivalice, I hope I’m saying that right. “I Would love to hear your opinion and thoughts on magnesium supplements. I am low, no matter how much magnesium rich food I eat. So I’m forced to supplement. I suffer from migraines, anxiety, and insomnia, which is enhanced by low magnesium. My struggle is that with all the different types out there, I’m noticing they have different effects on my body and I don’t know which one is best or safest. Oxate was great for the migraines, but wrecked my gut. Trying glyconate now, but not sure it’s helping with the migraines. What are your thoughts?” Okay, so several thoughts on magnesium.

I had to work up slowly because a lot of magnesium caused issues for me and even the ones that didn’t mess up my digestion, they caused my skin to itch because of some histamine issues I had. But to address the blood test question, normally only about 1% of the total magnesium in the body is present in the blood. And this makes it difficult to get an accurate measurement of total magnesium from the blood test alone. However, this test can still be useful to some degree. Again, this is an area where I would recommend Dr. Chris Masterjohn’s work. He actually has a lot of this on this Instagram that you can find. Dr. Chris Masterjohn, but his Vitamins and Minerals 101 is super, super helpful and he has, on his Facebook page, if you go to that and sign up for his messenger, he has an amazing free messenger course that goes through all of the vitamins and minerals and let’s you figure out how to figure out which ones you specifically need.

So I would start there for figuring it out. And here’s why magnesium is so important. Magnesium is responsible for over 300 reactions to the body and it impacts things like blood pressure, metabolism, immune function, and as, as she mentioned, anxiety, migraines, etc. Some experts say that magnesium deficiency is actually one of the single largest problems in our world today. And there are many reasons potentially that magnesium deficiency is so widespread from depleted soil, overuse of chemicals like chlorine and fluoride. And then some common things that we all do daily can deplete magnesium, like sugar, caffeine, stress, you know, if any of those things sound like they might be things in your life. But there’s also any people with celiac or Crohn’s disease are more likely to be deficient. People who consume a lot of processed foods or conventional dairy who are on city water, who have type two diabetes who don’t eat a lot of leafy greens.

So lots of factors that can come into play. I personally take a supplement called MagSRT daily and I also use topical magnesium. I can link to both of those in the show notes, but I started really slowly and worked up and I feel like you can take a, kind of a symptoms based approach to magnesium levels if you’re paying attention to your body, which is kind of what I did, but also do check out Chris Masterjohn’s work. Regarding the question about taking magnesium and still having low levels. I personally also look at gut issues again and absorption because even though you’re taking it, if the body is not absorbing it for some reason, perhaps a gut issue that could be why you’re not seeing the effect. I personally found that probiotics, made a big difference for me in magnesium absorption.

I take the Just Thrive brand and I’ll put a discount code for that in the show notes as well if you guys want to check it out. And K2-7 and vitamin D, which seemed to be synergistic. So those were all factors that I had to optimize to get magnesium to feel efficient to me.

So all that to say I answered. I think, all of those questions for today, there are many more. So there will definitely be more Q and A rounds and if you have questions you would like me to answer in future podcast episodes, please leave those in the show notes or DM me on Instagram or reach out with those and I will add them to the list. Still many more things I look forward to covering in future episodes. I hope this one was helpful and I would love to hear your take on any of these things as well. So if you homeschool, I’d love to hear any tips that you have, any parenting tips, especially for older teens because I’m not there yet. Or any other health related tips that you have. Always feel free to share those. I love to hear from you guys and as always, I’m so grateful to you for spending your time with me today. I’m so, so glad that you did. It’s always an honor to spend this time with you and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/parenting-teens/

[minnievirizarry]

5 Instagram marketing trends changing the industry in 2019

Social media is continually evolving. Every year, everything from algorithm updates to emerging trends changes the way we interact online.

The question is, how do you make sure you’re getting the most out of your Instagram campaigns?

The last thing you want to do is waste your time on vintage filters and GIFs if they’re not going to do anything for your ROI. However, with an impressive 1 billion users to delight and impress, you can’t afford to miss out on the latest Instagram marketing trends either.

Today we’re going to examine the Instagram trends 2019 marketing teams need to know about if they want to thrive in the era of engagement. From IGTV to sensational stories, let’s start the new year right.

1.     IGTV presses play in 2019

Launched in June this year, IGTV is the brand-new video platform designed for mobile users.

Instagram created IGTV to be a source of long form streaming videos. The platform isn’t here to replace YouTube. Instead, IGTV gives marketers a way to connect with their mobile audience through vertical video playback and authentic “in the moment” content.

Brands are already discovering the power of IGTV for themselves. Chipotle used the IGTV format to engage their audience with a video of their delicious food.

Instagram already had a video content creation option available in the form of short, auto-deleting Stories. However, the new IGTV channel gives marketers the opportunity to expand into longer video content of up to an hour that doesn’t disappear.

Why?

Well, let’s look at the demographics for Instagram. Around 59% of IG users are between the ages of 18 and 29. As the rise of streaming services like Netflix shows, younger people love watching streamed content and vloggers on their phone. Instagram is now competing with YouTube to let vloggers create videos for the vertical screen format.

How to take advantage of this Instagram marketing trend

To make the most of IGTV, brands on Instagram first need to get used to the vertical video format. Once they’ve done that, it’s possible to:

Use IGTV to broadcast exclusive content, like Louis Vuitton did here, showing their new Spring/Summer line.

Share exciting news and upcoming changes for the brand.

Create a series of videos or how-to content to delight and inform users.

Remember to track the performance of your IGTV campaigns to tailor each future video to the preferences of your audience. Sprout Social’s advanced social listening options will help you find out what people are saying about the topics you plan content around.

2.     Instagram Stories expand your social narrative

Instagram Stories currently make up a vital component of any IG marketing strategy.

With around 300 million active users per day, it’s safe to say that people love their Stories.

The demand for stories makes sense. Many Instagram marketing trends this year seem to focus on the value of video – a format that delivers 1,200% more shares than images and text combined. The good news is that stories don’t have to be complicated to be effective. Try:

Showing behind-the-scenes peeks into your office

Launching polls to ask opinions on products

Sharing a new sale or limited-time promotion

How to take advantage of this Instagram marketing trend

To accelerate the impact of Stories, Instagram has added a bunch of exciting new features over the last year or so – ideal for engagement. For instance:

Stories Ads: Stories ads insert promotional banners between the slides of other people’s stories. Just make sure your ads look fantastic and target the right people to deliver relevant ROI.

Stories Reshare: Cross-promote your regular posts on Instagram Stories. Instagram began testing a reshare feature in September 2018. This could be an ideal alternative to the time-consuming option of having to screenshot content to share it in your Stories. If this feature fully rolls out, you can use it to drive attention to a new campaign or highlight your followers’ related content.

Stories Polls: Since social media marketing thrives on engagement, Stories Polls are one of the best Instagram trends 2019 has to offer. Ask your customers questions, track their answers and even direct them to your website with links inside your story.

Instagram Stories have their own engagement metrics, including replies, exits and taps forward or back. Sprout Social offers Instagram Stories reporting features, so you can track each of your new Stories solutions resonate with your customers. With Instagram Stories now twice as big as Snapchat, it’s time to find your narrative.

3.     Engagement reigns supreme

With the rise of features like Stories polls transforming today’s Instagram marketing trends, it’s no surprise that “engagement” is the name of the game.

For years, social media marketers have been using customer personas and other details to improve their chances of engagement. The more you know about your audience, the more likely you are to connect with them. In 2019, Instagram will be delivering even more ways to build on those connections and pave the way for brand loyalty.

How to take advantage of this Instagram marketing trend

From making the channel more ecommerce friendly, to delivering more opportunities for contextual conversations, Instagram has made some incredible engagement upgrades this year. For instance:

The emoji slider: The emoji slider is just one of the latest updates to hit Instagram Stories. Acting similarly to a poll, the slider allows users to decide how much they like or dislike something with an animated emoji. The feature both drives action from your audience and gives you useful information about the people you’re connecting with at the same time.

Frequently asked questions: Ever wished you had a better way to answer all your customers’ most pressing issues? Now you do. Answer questions in your Instagram Stories, then showcase your FAQ on your Stories Highlight section.

4.     Shoppable posts continue to perform

Recently, Instagram has been growing increasingly more attractive for businesses, sellers and ecommerce brands. Advertising on the platform has risen to a new level as companies discover that 70% of Instagram users use their mobile to purchase products online.

Shoppable Posts continued to expand in 2018, with support in more countries and through more formats, including Stories. Instagram is a perfect platform for showing your best-selling products in the most attractive light and allowing your customers to easily purchase directly through a familiar platform.

It’s the ultimate way to streamline your audiences’ path to purchase.

How to take advantage of this Instagram marketing trend

Helping your customers buy from you through Instagram is probably the best form of engagement available. Shoppable posts on Instagram Stories and static images make eCommerce on the platform easier than ever.

By tapping on the “Shop Now” button, users will be transported automatically from your Instagram page to a product page on the seller’s website. Shoppable posts have been around for a little while now, but as the platform continues to grow and add more content formats, they’re still sure to have an impact when it comes to the Instagram trends 2019 has to offer.

5.     Instagram becomes more “pay to play”

At first glance, Instagram looks like a marketer’s dream come true. As the platform grows increasingly popular, the 1 billion user count is sure to capture your interest, particularly since 42% of Instagrammers earn over $75k per year.

Of course, the more people there are on Instagram, the more competition you’ll have to face and the more clutter you’ll need to get through to reach your audience. Combine that with the fact that the Instagram algorithm evolved to concentrate on more “timely” posts in March 2018 and today’s marketers need to work even harder to stay ahead of the game.

If you want to connect with people on Instagram in 2019, then you need to embrace the concept of paid posting.

How to take advantage of this Instagram marketing trend

Around 8 out of 10 users follow at least one business in 2018, and the channel is likely to grow more congested in the years to come. Fortunately, you can improve your chances of success by exploring the benefits of promotion.

Promoting your Instagram posts isn’t necessarily the same as running an ad campaign. However, it does help you make sure that your content stands out from the crowd. Of course, you’ll need to know which ads to boost before you start spending your cash. Make sure you:

Check out your aggregated reach data on Instagram Insights. (You’ll need a business account to do this).

Expand the scope of your reporting with tools like Sprout Social.

Track your promoted Instagram posts carefully and use A/B testing to determine which pieces of content deliver the most conversions and engagement.

While organic reach may not disappear entirely in 2019, it will become much harder to maintain high engagement without a paid strategy.

Are you up to date with what’s #trending?

Instagram grows more attractive to both businesses and consumers every year.

However, unless you adapt to the changing trends of the platform, you won’t be able to keep up with the needs of your target audience.

Though it seems tough to stay ahead of an ever-evolving social media channel, a little commitment and the right social tools ensure that your Instagram budget doesn’t go to waste.

What are the best Instagram marketing trends you’ve seen this year and what do you predict for 2019? Let us know in the comments!

This post 5 Instagram marketing trends changing the industry in 2019 originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from SM Tips By Minnie https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-trends-for-every-marketer/

[topicprinter]

Hey good people! So - I have been obsessing over Instagram for a bit more than an year and I have been through so much. I can't even begin to tell you.In the following blog I will share with you all my experiences, failures and successes with facts backing me up.I started out on Instagram with a Travel niche account about 11 months ago. This account I wanted to build 100% genuinely. No botting. No faking. Nothing. I spent 3-4 hours a day on Instagram. Liking and commenting on content that I actually adored. Not just spamming likes/comments to get attention.It took a lot of patience. I started with 700 followers (family/friends mostly) and ended up with 11.3K followers. We are talking about 3-4 hours a day for 11 freaking months.During these 11 months. I've done everything from buying and using virtually every bot out there. Opening around 30 accounts with different niches (botted). Buying offshore servers and running Fake Agent scripts. FL, MP, VT - I did it all. I bought 1000 Instagram accounts at one point. I botted them. Lost 300 of those accounts (got caught) - other 700 are still running. Spent a fortune on proxies, VPN, VPS, off-shore servers, FA, Bots and PVA accounts.Let me back up a bit (Glossary) VPN / VPS (Virtual private servers - I can't bot 1000 accounts on my laptop. I had to buy access to VPS with high config (24 cores / 64 gb ram) to run bots as they are resource intensive Proxies/IP (You can run 5 Instagram accounts on one IP address. So on my main IP (home) I ran 5 accounts. If I ran more than 5 I would get blocked. So I bought proxies. (dedicated proxies) I ran 3 accounts per proxy. FL,MP, VT - These are just some of the bots I used.Here is what I learned overtime. Something you will eventually realize yourself. Most of this you already know.FACTS / LESSONS1. Instagram IntroInstagram isn't stupid. Botting is not going to help in the long run. Yes I did manage to grow accounts from 0 to 38K in like 6 months but those days are long gone. Instagram has improved a lot! Its literally working 24x7 to crack down on these bots. So - this is a NO NO. Once again - this could have been done before. But no longer. Every other day I'm running into new problems with botting. My advice - don't chase this. (FL,MP ... all will soon go off)2. The Righteous MenGrowing 100% genuine is retarded. And I was one of the retards. Face it. Everyone is doing hanky panky with social media. Politicians, Celebs, Kids ... everyone.https://gizmodo.com/5970857/youtube-took-2-billion-views-away-from-sony-universal-and-others https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hhhuuRGfaU& http://www.refinery29.com/2017/06/157127/katy-perry-fake-twitter-followersAs you can see - everyone from Sony to Katy Perry to POTUS has fake followers. So - you are the one who is losing out by not making any hanky panky. This is a FACT.You can never grow BIG by being righteous unless you wanna waste a decade on it. If you got time. Then you can.3. World of SpamEven kids have learned to spam and grow. This has become a trend. Look into follow train / like train. Find out on Instagram about this. You will see what I mean.Example: https://www.instagram.com/p/BbyinUwlVtx/?taken-by=kyliejennerLatest post by famous Kylie Jenner. See her comments. You'll find tens of thousands of teens commenting LB, CB and some other non sense. These are SPAM tactics used by teens and kids. LB = Like back. You like their photo. They'll like back. CB = comment back. FB = follow back.WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK EVERY ONE IS RESORTING TO FAKE FOLLOWERS, SPAM TACTICS, FAKE VIEWS, PODS, BOTS? (Something to think about)Anyways - you can spam on top celeb accounts (LB,CB) and if you are obsessed with it. You can get 1-2k likes and upto 100 comments. (Res assured these comments will be SUPER generic and copy paste)4. Engagement PodsTo me this was the closest way to make engagement happen. These are groups of people on Slack, Telegram, Whatsapp and EVEN in Instagram DMs who engage with each other.Its simple. I will like your photo. You like mine.But these 'pods' (if you find the right ones) are well moderated by admins - have decent people. Good quality Instagram accounts and all.You can safely get 2K likes and 500+ comments if you are in the right pods. It will be a lot of work but its worth itThe trick to engagement pods is to join ones that have high quality bloggers. There are also some networks that have exclusive pods for 10k+ accounts, 50k+ accounts and 100k+ accounts. You can imagine what miracles these can do for your posts. Getting 100 comments and 1000 likes from 100K+ profiles is MAGICAL.Advice - DO NOT use engagement pods that have 'rounds'. Those are filled with spam like / CPA Instagrammers who are there only for the purpose of scamming people.Join engagement pods that are of continuous cycle. I'll make a post on engagement pods and secrets to using them if I get a lot of requests for those down below.5. Holy Grail - the Instagram AlgorithmWhile everyone will beat around the bush as they don't know any better. At the time of this article being published - this is Instagram Algorithm.Instagram gives you 3 options to go big. 1. Pay them cash ( a ton of it - my advice? NEVER do that unless you're a millionaire) 2. Reach top post page for your hashtag (this will get you noticed between your niche audience) 3. Reach explore page (this is just pushing your content out into the 'front page' of Instagram)Lets talk about 2 and 3. Algorithm =If your post gets a TON of traction within first 60 minutes of going live on Instagram you will reach top post page for your hashtag.Case Study - I reach top post page for the most competitive hashtag once while learning about this.love (hashtag love)I made a post and injected 30,000+ likes to it (purchased) within first 10 minutes of post going live. I then managed to get 50 comments from 100K+ profiles via engagement pods.By 15th minute I was on #love top post page.This is how to reach the top post page.Lets say your hashag is #travel. You wanna get to top post page for that? Its easy. Search for #travel and see top posts under that and see how many likes they are getting. Find out average likes of all posts under top post page.So among 9 posts maybe average likes is 7000 likes for #travel.You need to get 7000++++ likes within first 60 minutes to reach top post page for that hashtag.If the hashtag is BIG and you keep your engagement running for first 60 minutes then you will probably stay on top post page for 24 hours.RESULT? Millions of people will naturally bump into your post. Make it pretty so they end up following you.LESSON Faking likes and reaching top post page = real traffic + real likes + real people / followersAbout reach explore page. You need way more traction than this.Technique is to reach top post page for 15 competitive hashtags. That by itself pushes your posts to explore.CASE : Once I targeted 30 top hashtags. Injected 30k likes to my post. Managed to get 177 comments in under 60 minutes via engagement pods from HQ accounts (10k+,50K+,100k+) ...I hit the explore page.RESULT? I gained 1100 followers in under 24 hours. They all engage with me till this day.This can be down on a massive scale.6. Content is KingYes it is. But everyone has good content these days. Every kid is decent at Photoshop and Lightroom and every iPhone is capable of doing wonderful things in terms of photography.Content is king - I guess so. Don't sweat on it. That part everyone can do and easy.Thats all for now. God damn. Haha. I had a lot on my plate I guess. Haha.One more thing - this is all that I have seen and noticed. Not encouraging anyone to juice stats or leave bots that they are already using or start buying fake shit. Do what you feel is right.I'll do another post on this sharing in depth about each topic (Engagement Pod, IG Algo in depth, Techniques used by Celebs, Social agencies to grow fast by faking it)Let me know if you guys need any of those topics covered!Cheers!