#is his ability to analyse and explain what it means to be an athlete

[bluespring864]

Part 1: On being nervous, ups and downs during a match and the illusion of control.

Novak Djokovic, Vice Sports interview (2019) in Serbian (with English subtitles)

[yuzusorbet]

Continuing to translate Kikuchi-san's book ‘Strongly, beautifully, 30 methods to train’ (book on amazonjp)

Chapter 1, part 3. Adjusting the body's axis during a jump

As Yuzuru the athlete's body continued to grow, the content of our conversation during massage also changed a little.

For example, elementary school 4th grader Yuzuru asked me about taking in water during training and competition.

"Sensei, during training and before a competition, how should we drink water?"

"In our days, no matter how thirsty we were during training, we could not  drink water.  But that approach is incorrect.  Now for all of you,  staying well hydrated is crucial,"  I explained and he listened with  great interest.

"Oh?  Then can I drink it all up at once?" he said.

"No, no, you can only drink what your body can absorb.  If you exceed that  amount, won't the water be churning in your stomach?  Then you won't be  able to jump,"  I answered.  "First, take a sip to moisten your mouth,  then take 2 sips;  if your throat is still thirsty, you can only take one more sip," I taught him.

There were also questions related to competition.

"Before the 6-minute practice, what is a good way to warm up?”

For figure skaters, just before the actual competition, there is a period of 6 minutes for practice.  At that time, I didn't know anything about it, but I have the experience of practising Shorinji Kempo (t/n. Japanese martial arts inspired by Shaolin Kungfu), so I used the warm-up for martial arts as a guide to answer him.

Looking back now, figure skating and martial arts are 2 completely different  events..... I had done a very careless thing.  But still, Yuzuru was responding "mm" and listening attentively.

Another time, I talked about jumping, Yuzuru looked very interested and listened to me quietly.

"When you jump, your legs must stretch fully and straighten...... (t/n. I just translated the first and last few lines of his jumping theory)..... To use the reaction force from the ground effectively, the axis must not drift.  If your legs are fully straightened, the axis will not be off.  Therefore, the hip joint and the ankle must be in a straight line."

These words made Yuzuru's eyes light up.

To be honest, it was all about jumping on land, totally different from jumping on ice in figure skating.  I realised it after a while and kept quiet.

The great thing about this child is that he can think independently.  He can analyse my words in his own way, "stretching my legs straight, is that a good way to jump on ice",  he can digest it for himself.  For an  elementary school child, it's rather amazing.

When he entered Tohoku High School, he said this to me, "When I was in elementary school, the jump knowledge sensei taught me, it's the theory for jumping on land, right?"

"Actually, at that time, I also thought it should be different for figure skating jumps," I could only reply like that.

"But what you told me at that time, to fully straighten my legs, I think I found the feeling," he said.

That child always took my words and tried to understand in his own way, always thinking about how to do it in order to use it for himself.

(t/n. rest of this section is about exercise methods and theories, not translated) (pic of 4th grader Yuzu above, credits: unknown)

Chapter 1, part 4.  Dashing onto the world stage

When Yuzuru started middle school (junior high), travels clashed with training time, so he had to "graduate" from 'torso training  class'.  But during his elementary school period, the body torso and other necessary abilities had received continuous exercise, to a certain degree.

He participated in 'abilities exercise' every week.  I instructed him on "the need to pay attention to the central axis when moving the body".  His body's axis became stable, unnecessary movements decreased, and his sense of balance also became better.

Also, I often had him do the training of making different actions according to the signals;  the muscles and joints respond quickly and appropriately to information entering the brain through sight (eyes) and hearing (ears);  this also helped to raise the senses.

But I instructed other children in the same way too.  Yuzuru was different from others in that, from elementary school age, he was sensitive to words like "become stronger", "become better",  "win".  Perhaps we can even call it 'greed'.

And also, he was very open and frank.  The desire to excel at figure skating, to be stronger, to win....  His awareness was so strong.  As a result, he listened earnestly to even someone like me who had no knowledge of figure skating.  In my words, he searched for any tiny bit that might help him improve.

In junior level, his competition awareness was already very strong.

When he was 15 years old, before he won the Junior World Championship, he told me, "I must win Junior Worlds."   He continued, "The competition standard will be very high, so I definitely want to win."

That child had just won the Junior Grand Prix Final, but he was not satisfied with just that.

Before Junior Worlds, he injured his knee.  So he asked me to teach him how to do taping, I naturally taught him all that I could.

Even though his competitions are now on the international stage, he still came to my clinic when he returned and after daily training, getting treatments like massage, tui-na, taping and such.

When I saw him at those times, he was just an ordinary boy.  Once, I helped to remove the tape around his injured instep, he said, "Sensei, the pain is gone!" and was happily dancing around.  He was boasting a little. (t/n. seems like he was boasting about his own abilities because he had done the taping himself.)   So I jokingly said, "I can't do this job anymore!"  Hearing my words, he pouted his lips.  He was already fighting his battles on the world stage, but in front of me, he was just an ordinary junior high student.

Photo: Kikuchi-san is wearing the Junior GPF 2009 gold medal. :)  Yuzu had just turned 15 in this photo and had just won the competition which was held in Tokyo that year. (pic credits: unknown)

I don’t have the book yet so I translated from a Chinese translation in weibo, much thanks to QuailAries.  (I left out 2 or 3 sentences; they do not affect the meaning and flow of the section.)

Next parts, 1.5 and 1.6, were already posted earlier (cos I translated them first).  

[litwitlady]

Send Me Home (1/?)

Read on AO3.

‘The Braves are down to their last at bat, Jeff. And it’s Michael Guerin in the on-deck circle. What’s Ramon’s strategy here? Does he try to jam him up inside or keep firing fastballs and hope Guerin can’t catch up?’

It’s September in Atlanta and the Braves are playing the Marlins. Every game counts as both teams vy for a spot in October baseball. Michael Guerin is a lead candidate for MVP, and he’s always a threat in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the bases loaded. The sellout crowd roars as his walk-up music begins to play.

I was born to the desert And to the desert I’ll return Sun-soaked and leathered Tattered and tethered Send me home, send me home, send me home

‘Ramon’s got that curveball, Chip. I’m not sure Guerin’s ever met a fastball he couldn’t hit. Especially in the bottom of the ninth. So, I think Ramon starts with the curveball even if that’s exactly what Guerin’s expecting.’

Michael steps into the batter’s box and takes a couple of quick practice swings, eyes wide and watching Ramon’s every move. He squares his hips and lowers his hands on the bat just a touch. It’s an adjustment he’s been working on for the past month or so with great success. Ramon lets loose his first pitch. As expected, it’s a nasty curveball and a pitch Michael has struck out on more than once during his twelve year career. But this time he’s prepared and anticipates perfectly where the bottom of the curve will land. He shoots a laser to shallow right field, and it drops in for a walk-off single. The dugout empties and everyone tackles him as he crosses home plate, one game closer to October.

--------

Later that night, Michael sits on the tailgate of his Chevy, beer in hand and staring up at the stars like so many nights before. Several of the guys had harassed him about going out to celebrate, but he’s not in the mood. He’s never in the mood these days. The winning still feels good and the possibility of the MVP is a dream. But for a long time now, he’s felt like there’s something missing in his life. Something essential, something elusive, something just out of his reach.

The truth is that he’s lonely. It’s a truth he can admit to himself when he’s alone underneath the cosmos watching the stars blink down at him against the wide expanse of space.

There have been relationships along the way. Women he’s dated earnestly. Once upon a time, maybe even a couple he could have loved. When he was younger, there had also been a few men. But none recently. The deeply rooted homophobia of baseball to blame. Mostly anyway. It’s strange now - everyone knows he’s bisexual, a simple Google search is all it takes. But he’s fairly certain baseball collectively decided to ignore his sexuality altogether after he got called up to the majors all those years ago.

He wants to believe he’s not afraid to be seen with men. He tells himself it’s just simpler this way, less complicated. Fewer awkward questions and the focus remaining on his athletic abilities rather than his sex life. Besides, only two major league players have ever come out and they both only did so after they’d retired. He supposes maybe he counts as the third. It’s not the stuff of fairytales, and Michael had learned that lesson during his brief stint in Double-A ball.

That feels like a lifetime ago.

Alex Manes’ new album drifts through the truck’s windows. His low, throaty voice practically purring into Michael’s ears. He’s been a big fan of Alex and his music for several years now. They’re both from New Mexico and the way he sings about the desert rings true enough to Michael that listening to one of his songs sends him right back home. Despite their many issues, he misses his brother and sister so badly sometimes he can barely breathe. Alex’s music reminds him of all the things and all the people he’s left behind - for better or worse. A couple of years ago, he’d had the opportunity to see Alex perform live but he’d turned it down. He still can’t explain why.

The night stretches out before him. Beer and music lulling him into a peaceful sleep until a bright light flashes in his face and startles him awake. He sits up and raises his hands peacefully. ‘Hey, Ernie.’

‘Oh, Mr. Guerin. I didn’t recognize you. What are you still doing here? It’s past midnight.’ He clicks the flashlight off and clips it back onto his belt. ‘Congrats on the walk-off!’

Michael shrugs. ‘Thanks. Didn’t want to go home just yet. Like watching the stars at night. But I haven’t seen you in a while. The grandkids still running circles around you?’

‘You know it! Caleb just turned five and is a holy terror. Michelle is eight going on eighteen. I can barely get a word in edgewise between the two of them.’ His eyes shine even in the darkness, crinkling at the edges.

Michael’s heart aches at Ernie’s easy, simple joy, but he manages a genuine smile thanks to the night’s shadows softening the edges of his jaw. ‘That sounds nice.’ He hops off his tailgate. ‘I’ll get out of your hair. Got an early game anyway. Need to get some sleep.’

‘Well, now, don’t let me chase you off. I don’t mind the company. It gets a little spooky at night. You can always come knock on my door if you ever need anything.’ Ernie opens the Chevy’s door for Michael and shuts it behind him. ‘All these other guys with their flashy sports cars and you in this old rust bucket. You’re a weird one, Mr. Guerin. But I like that about you.’

Michael runs his hands around the cracked steering wheel. ‘Most days this truck is about the closest thing to home I’ve got. There’s still desert dirt in the bed and an engine I rebuilt myself. What the fuck would I do with a Ferrari?’

They both laugh and Michael waves and honks his horn as he pulls out of the player’s lot. The streets are mostly empty, cars keeping to the well-lit interstate at night. He decides to stay on surface roads and take the long way home, radio softly playing old country songs. His thoughts drift to tomorrow’s game and the rookie pitcher the Marlins are starting. His own rookie year had been tough, and he makes a mental note to speak to the kid at some point during the game, ask him how he’s doing and if he’s being treated well.

The streetlights along Peachtree illuminate his path through Brookhaven. He crosses into Atlanta city limits and enters Buckhead just as ‘Lay Me Down’ by Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson starts to play through his speakers. And all too soon, he turns down his street and opens the cedar gate at the end of his driveway, parking his truck and sitting in the darkness until the song comes to an end.

Climbing out of his truck, he unlocks the front door with his telekinesis, slipping inside quietly and deactivating his alarm system. He’d bought the house in foreclosure, spending most of his money on remodeling the mid-century ranch. It’s not extravagant, but it’s the most expensive thing he owns. He’d even let Isobel fly out to decorate the place within a very strict budget, and he’d had to admit she’d done a great job - one side of his front door Atlanta, the other side New Mexico.

But even so, it has never felt like home.

The first few nights he’d spent in the house had been rough. It was too quiet and too soft and too much. More than once he’d grabbed his ancient, worn sleeping bag and crawled into the bed of his truck. Sleeping hard on the uncomfortable. ribbed metal but beneath the stars he loved so much. The morning dew waking him with the sun each morning.

These days he manages to sleep in bed at night, but only because he’d installed two skylights overhead so that the stars would always be his. And only his. He rarely brings anyone home anymore, preferring their house to his. But when he does, he takes them to a guest bedroom. None of them ever seem to mind how empty the space is or how devoid of personality. Four blank walls and a lone bed filling the room. Why would they? It’s not Michael the foster kid from the desert they’re sleeping with. It’s Michael Guerin the multi-millionaire first baseman with the single-season home run record and the aw-shucks, good boy smile.

Tonight he doesn’t bother turning on any lights. He just pads through the kitchen to grab an apple and a bottle of water, undresses and climbs into bed. He takes a large bite of the granny smith and pulls out his phone, calling Isobel.

‘Congrats on the walk-off!’ He can hear another game in the background. Isobel had never watched a baseball game in her life - including any of his - until the day he’d gotten drafted right out of high school. But now she watches all of them. Or as many of them as possible. Her scouting reports are better than anything stamped official and readily available in the team clubhouse.

‘Thanks. Didn’t really see the ball that well tonight, though. Is Max there?’ It’s stupid to ask when he already knows the answer.

‘Out with Liz. They’ve been inseparable ever since she moved back to Roswell. It’s gross and I miss you.’ The sound on her tv goes silent and he knows she’s settling in for a long conversation. ‘Tell me about tomorrow. Any surprises?’

‘No. New kid on the mound just called up. Got a mean slider. Torres has some pain in his wrist so he’ll be benched.’ Michael finishes his apple in two large bites and guzzles his water, listening to Isobel pound away at her keyboard already deep in research mode. ‘Might get me moved up to the number two slot.’

They spend fifteen minutes strategizing. It’s what they do most nights. Isobel critiquing the numbers based on intuition and her own database of knowledge concerning the human psyche, while he runs statistical analyses and probabilities in his head faster than humanly possible. Michael suggests more than once that she’d make a great scout and that maybe when he retires they can go into business together. He’s told her this a million times, but she only laughs him off and reminds him that she already has a job.

‘A worthless job that doesn’t pay you what you deserve.’ He reaches for the tv remote on his nightstand but can’t find it. Not that it matters. He switches the television on with his mind and nods his head through the channels, stopping on an old western and muting the volume.

‘Philanthropy is not worthless, Michael!’ She sighs loudly to punctuate her exasperation. ‘And my salary is not the point - the point is helping people. Besides, I have all of Noah’s money and can negotiate more pay any time I choose.’

That he believes. ‘How’d your date go last night?’ Asking Isobel about her date absolutely means she’ll push him to share something just as personal. But it was her first official date with a woman and he genuinely wants to know how it went. No matter the price he’ll pay.

‘Really, really, really well.’ He can hear the grin in her voice and it makes him smile. ‘She’s a cardiologist and very good with her hands. Valenti makes a pretty superb matchmaker. Maybe I’ll ship him your way because you could certainly use the help.’

Michael rolls his eyes and fakes a groan. ‘You can keep Valenti. Don’t you think it’s weird to have your ex setting you up on dates? Do you really think he’s the best judge of character?’

‘Kyle knows me better than most. He was my first relationship after Noah and he put up with a lot. I trust him implicitly with my heart and yours. Plus, I was the one who broke up with him.’

‘My heart is fine, thanks.’ He lies smoothly and knows exactly how she’s going to respond.

‘I can’t stand the thought of you all the way across the country in that foreign place with no one to go home to at night.’

He snorts. ‘It’s called Georgia, Iz. And I’m not home enough for a relationship to work right now.’

‘Half the guys on your team - on any team! - are married. So that’s a pisspoor excuse. You keep pushing everyone away. Don’t forget who you’re talking to. I know you, Michael. As soon as you start to feel something, the doors slam shut and you become another stereotypical lonewolf cowboy.’ Her voice is loud now, vehement and self-righteous. They’ve reenacted this scene so many times it feels very paint by number at this point. ‘I hardly ever hear a smile in your voice anymore.’

She’s right and she knows it. He used to love dating, meeting new people. First kisses and first fucks. Last kisses and farewell fucks. He lived for those moments and now he hardly ever looks anyone in the eye. ‘We have this conversation at least once a month. And nothing has changed. It’s too hard right now, Iz. I’m too known to ever really be known. Not the way I would want to be. Not in any way that I would trust.’

There’s no use arguing so they move on to easier topics. Max and LIz’s ongoing romance, details of Isobel’s date, Maria’s remodel of the Pony thanks to a very generous anonymous donation. Every word out of her mouth squeezes his heart a little bit tighter until it’s too much and he says goodnight.

Flipping onto his side, he reaches his arm out to the other side of the bed, running his hand over the cold, unwrinkled sheet. His eyes land on the empty pillow no head ever touches and tries to imagine a face looking back at him. A face that might smile suggestively or quietly murmur goodnight. But he’s unable to conjure anything beyond a blank, shapeless outline. It makes him feel pathetic so he yanks the pillow underneath his own head and forces his eyes shut, trying in vain to quiet his mind. Despite his best efforts, sleep takes its sweet time finding him.

The next morning he’s exhausted but gets to the field early. He’d woken up to a cryptic message from Isobel. There’s a surprise waiting for you after the game! Stick around this time, Michael. Don’t make me get on a plane. He’s sure that can’t mean anything good, but he attempts to put it out of his mind for now.

The ballpark is already bustling with activity. Michael heads into the clubhouse to change. He stops and asks Stan, their hitting coach, for some extra work before the rest of the team arrives. He’s worried about how he’s been shifting his wrists recently and wants someone else’s opinion. The adjustments he’d made last night seem to be working, but he’s worried about straining a muscle or tweaking the wrong tendon. Two of his teammates are already on the IL with wrist pain. He doesn’t want to be next, especially with the postseason race and his run at MVP on the line.

Michael finds Danny Marks asleep in one of the clubhouse’s leather chairs. He swats him on the head on the way to his locker, laughing at Danny’s loud yelp. ‘Fuck, man, you’re always asleep. How did you manage to stay awake on the mound long enough to put together two Cy Young seasons?’

‘Talent, Guerin. Talent. You should try it sometime. Maybe then you’ll win MVP.’ Danny yawns and stretches his arms over his head. Michael glares at him. ‘Don’t worry. You’re still the favorite. Our very own diamond darling. No one else is getting their own personal concert any time soon.’

‘What?’ He sits on the chair at his locker, blinking at Danny in confusion. ‘Personal concert?’ Isobel’s strange text message flashes through his head again while he inwardly groans.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Danny grins and crosses his ankles on the table in front of him, brashly enjoying the way Michael squirms. ‘Alex Manes is traveling down from Nashville just for you - baseball’s most beloved first baseman.’ He throws a toy football at Michael’s head, chuckling when it bounces off his curls. ‘He’s not bad looking, you know.’

‘Stop.’ Danny is Michael’s best friend on the team and the only one he feels comfortable enough to have this conversation with. ‘Whose idea was this? Did Isobel do something? Or was this you?’

Michael doesn’t want this. Not at all. And he can’t exactly explain why. Music is personal to him - profoundly personal. Always has been since he was nothing but an unloved kid trapped in various violent foster homes. It was music that had kept him warm at night and music that had loved him best. The only escape available to him during most of his darkest hours.

Over the years, there have been many artists he’s considered favorites. Most of them old country crooners or folk song heroes. Much like Alex Manes. But with Alex, it’s something more. Something he has a hard time vocalizing. They are both from New Mexico. Both spent a chunk of their formative years in Roswell. Michael has read or watched multiple interviews with Alex where he’s alluded heavily to an abusive father. His lyrics certainly do the same. Lots of kids grow up that way - Michael knows he’s not alone in that particular fate - but the way Alex puts that pain to music settles something inside his chest that has never been settled before.

So the thought of meeting Alex worries Michael. They say don’t meet your heroes for a reason. In his head, Alex represents a sense of safety, a sense of home. What happens when they meet and that’s taken from him? Because maybe Alex is a liar. Or maybe he’s a dick. Either possibility is very real. He’s also a vet, and Michael hates, hates, hates the military. And he doesn’t want to hate Alex. Doesn’t want to lose his music. Cannot emotionally afford to lose his music if he’s being honest.

‘Isobel apparently knows someone who knows someone who knows someone. I just didn’t try and stop her. Or Lena.’ Danny’s wife is Isobel’s favorite human. It’s the worst thing that’s happened to Michael since meeting Danny. The two of them have done nothing but make his life one unasked for surprise after another. ‘Besides, even if you hate it, the team could really use some fun before heading into the postseason. Some good old-fashioned team bonding, my friend. And this time, you don’t get to run away. The guys need to see their captain smile every once in a while.’

Michael sighs and changes into his warmups. Danny’s phone rings and he grins one last time at Michael before disappearing for some privacy. Michael decides to push Alex Manes to the back of his mind and concentrate on the game ahead of him. Stan is waiting, anyway. So he’ll focus on his wrists for now and worry about everything else later. The one thing he does do, however, is pull out his phone and send Isobel a very pointed text.

You should have gotten my permission first.

Isobel’s text response is nothing but the angel halo emoji. Michael wishes his telekinesis was strong enough to travel across state lines because he’d like to throw her phone into the wall. Since that option is not available to him, he sends Max a text instead.

Your sister is a menace.

He pockets his phone, not bothering to wait on an answer. Max tends to be too busy these days. Not that that’s anything new really. Unless your name is Liz Ortecho or Isobel Evans, he doesn’t have much time for you.

The morning stretches by as gametime approaches. Batting practice goes well and Michael works with Stan on keeping his wrists from turning too much when he swings. His teammates have all found out about the concert by the time the first pitch is thrown and none of them will let him forget it. Each time his walk-up music begins to play, Danny leads a small group of particularly bad vocalists in a sing-a-long. All of them belting out the lyrics at the top of their lungs. Michael tries to keep the stupid grin off his face and almost suceeds.

He won’t admit it, but he actually begins to get excited. Doesn’t even mind when Max only ends up responding with a snarky text.

Try living less than five miles from her.

He’d give anything to live five miles from Isobel. Michael loves his teammates. He really does. Atlanta has one of the best team dynamics in baseball. Maybe the best. They support each other, love one another, and when they say family, they mean it. Team dinners and family outings are normal even during the off season. Michael doesn’t avoid spending time with them because he dislikes anyone - although there have been various tiffs in the past but nothing long lasting. He avoids them because he loves them enough to let his mouth loosen too much, all his secrets threatening to tumble out with no regard for his safety or the safety of his siblings.

He knows this because it has happened on more than one occasion. Years ago during his rookie years when living hard and drinker harder were his nightly norm. On any given night you’d find him at the bar, four fingers deep into a bottle of bourbon, mouthing off about moving things with his mind. It wasn’t the booze talking; it was his loneliness. The throbbing homesick ache in his chest that only Max and Isobel could smooth away. Once he knew his teammates were shitfaced, he’d let some little comment slip about his abilities. Half of them never paid any attention to the things he said and the other half merely laughed at him.

He’d told Isobel one night about the things he said and she’d yelled at him solidly for an hour. The next day he’d gotten a nasty phone call from Max and has kept his mouth shut ever since that conversation.

Keeping their secret is important. Michael understands that, but the lying exhausts him. He loves Danny and hates that the most important part of himself Danny and Lena can never know. He loves his other teammates, and he doesn’t want to hide this huge part of himself from them forever. The lying has always made him feel unclean - distant and deceptive. Back in Roswell, it had been easier. He hadn’t had many friends and the people closest to him shared the same secret. But now, the people he sees every single day aren’t allowed to know the real him. It breaks his heart in a way he could never have anticipated, making him feel truly alien.

Michael and Isobel had jumped through enormous hoops to keep his DNA secret from team doctors and drug testers. It’s the only reason he’d ever agreed to her mind influence.

A major league baseball player cannot have telekinetic superpowers, alien or not. The cheating accusations would be immediate and relentless - his career over and his name shamed forever. Regardless of the fact that he would never dream of cheating to advance his career. Besides, he’s self-aware enough - or perhaps cocky enough - to understand that his level of talent doesn’t require any telekinetic assistance. Michael Guerin is just that fucking good.

During his last at bat in the eighth inning, Alex Manes’ face flashes on the digital scoreboard high above centerfield advertising the aftergame concert. Michael concentrates on keeping his wrists tight and imagines that Alex is somewhere in the stadium watching him. He swings at the first pitch - a fastball left too high over the plate - and knows he’s gotten every piece of it by the cracking sound his bat makes. He starts a slow run to first base and watches the ball sail over the leftfield wall. With his signature two claps, he rounds first and enjoys the cheering crowd chanting his name. Stepping on the bag at home plate, his eyes glance back up at the scoreboard, but Alex’s face has disappeared. And suddenly his nerves have returned tenfold at the realization that soon he’ll be face to face with a man he has no idea how to talk to - what to say or even if he’ll get a chance to say anything at all.

Despite the cheers and happy butt slaps from his teammates, the pit in Michael’s stomach stretches wide. In the clubhouse, he checks his phone again and one last final message from Isobel lights up his screen.

He wants to meet you first.

[bangtanmythology]

In The Name Of Song. Truth Uncovered.

About: Y/N finds out the whole story of what she has become and who those around her are. Her training starts and her and Jimin become the siblings he’s always known they were.

Brother!Jimin x Reader, Mermaid!Jimin, Angel!Yoongi. BTS Supernatural AU.

Words: 2.9K

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“I understand the parent’s side of things. My Great, Great Grandmother betrayed a group of witches by having an affair with the head witches’ husband, who was a human and had a child, so they cursed her. The curse meant that she would never be able to marry a regular human or another mermaid, if she did fall in love with any of these then she was destined to kill him with her voice. Right? So, when she sang a lullaby to her baby, the husband died. The baby, who was my great grandmother, ended up marrying an nasty, rebelling mermaid, their female baby was born half mermaid, the other half became what was known as a siren because the baby, our grandmother, used her powers for evil things, she’d lure sailors in, killing them and using them, never falling in love but instead simply killing them. When we use our siren form to lure people instead of making them fall in love, we will simply kill them. Grandma used the sailors and ended up having a baby with one of them, she abandoned this baby and another mermaid raised mum.” You rambled,

The story was beyond complicated, your head spinning round in circles as Jimin stared at you, nodding every so often with a focused look on his face. He reached his hand out and placed it gently on your ankle, in the few hours that Yoongi had left you alone with Jimin you came to realise that he was an extremely clingy person.

“Yes, that’s all correct and then you know the story with mum and dad, we are now indebted to the reapers but the devils and angels work along side these reapers and when an angel falls, instead of becoming a devil, they are stuck wandering around the earth however they retain some of their angel powers. Yoongi is a fallen angel because he betrayed Michael, the archangel. He has not told me what he did to this day. He is stuck on earth, he begged the reapers to kill him again, to take him from this world and place him as a devil in the next but they would not do it. He begged for a purpose, for something to do, for something to protect, they told him that his debt would be payed off if he spent his life watching over our families. They told him that when we turned 18 he had to bring us here and watch us, make sure that we weren’t causing harm to the reality that we were in, this is the 7th Reality, we’re from the first reality which is the main reality. He had some other mermaids brought here to train me, our grandmother is here, she’s going to help you, along with me, we’re going to train you.” Jimin’s voice was soothing, his words somehow sinking fully into you and making it seem as though maybe all of this would be okay. 

“Right, so he is a fallen angel, a bad one? He stares at me funny.” You mumbled, looking down at Jimin’s hand that was now gently running over the smaller grazes on your calves. Jimin looked up at you, shaking his head and laughing,

“He’s not bad, he was kicked out of the angel realm, that’s all, he’s grumpy, I mean he basically looks after this world all alone, the reapers went extinct 9 years ago and nobody else was sent to care for everything. Half of this world is dead, only magical creatures and hybrids live here. There’s human’s who are sent here to repent their sins, a lot of the creatures and hybrids feast on them. Werewolves and vampires are the worst, we have those in our reality too, they are aggressive, dangerous cannibals who feast on people and kill them. Of course, the werewolves and vampires here take care of those who are criminals. Quite often the ones sent here are either humans who commit serious crimes that they get put into life imprisonment or death row. We also have monsters who fight amongst themselves sent here. This is basically a training ground for a lot of people who are supernatural. We only stay here for a coupe of years and then we go back to the reality we are from. Originally, Yoongi was going to be sent to the 2nd reality to purge it, it is a hell reality, everything burns there, everything is crime and corruption. Of course, that would have been an awful place for us to be seeing as we’re weak to fire after all.” Jimin was rambling, his head now on your thighs as you ran your fingers through his hair, petting down the stray hairs that always seemed to stick up around his face.

“Well, if we’re weak to fire, what actually are our powers and what exactly am I doing here? How long will I be here?” you were looking around the cave, the water placing you in a trance as your eyes focused and unfocused on the shapes beneath it.

“Well, our skin is like that of a fish, of course when we are in our human form it doesn’t look like it or feel like it, but it definitely still is. You will notice that you’re now comforted when you are in the water, in fact if you really need to you can actually manipulate the water, nothing intricate, we can’t make patterns or anything but we can make ripples, waves, if we work together in groups we can even cause tsunamis. The ocean is where we are the strongest. I read a few books that say that if we meet another being, we can give them the ability to breath underwater which is obviously one of our strengths. Fire burns us severely, even the slightest touch will scald our skin and burn us, fire will kill us 3 times faster than it will kill anything else. When we sing, we attract others, they become enchanted by the sounds of our voices and we can lure them in, make them fall in love with us. I’ve done so with many girls, that’s why I have a bit of a reputation,” His voice trailed off at the end, his tone turning into a cheeky, playful tone that had you chuckling slightly. The small, adorable guy who was currently half asleep on your lap did not seem like he could be seducing anyone. His cheeky, lazy smile put doubt into you when I t came to his adorable clingy personality and you were sure that he could be a scary person when needed.

“I highly doubt that you are luring any women in with this clinginess Jimin, plus I haven’t sung a day in my life, nor will I, I sound like a trampled cat when I sing and it really isn’t pleasant,” Your voice was full of laughter and playfulness, mimicking his tone. The fever you had been burning up in had since disappeared and Yoongi explained that it was because he dumped you straight into the water as soon as you got here and you had transformed into your mermaid body, the reason behind the cuts, bruises and scrapes across your legs. You had not remembered anything because apparently it had been excruciating and Jimin convinced Yoongi to erase your memory of the pain.

“Hey! I lure plenty of women in I’ll have you know,” Jimin mumbled. You gazed down at him, a loud laugh escaping your mouth as his cheeks burned bright pink. He was half asleep, a huge smile of his face as your fingers continued carding through your hair.

“Y’know, both of us were left with parent’s that knew what we’d become, they’re humans who come from special families, protectors, they take in orphaned supernatural children and babies. I hated them when I first went there, I was 6, I understood what was going on, I wouldn’t talk to them, I lashed out, I did not want to be there. I wanted to go back to you, I wanted my little sister, I’ve known all these years that I had a sister, that I couldn’t contact her, that there was a little girl out there who needed me and I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t try hard enough, I’m a fai-“

“shut up. Do not talk like that Jimin. You couldn’t have done anything, we were separated for a reason, I didn’t know you existed, I was always protected, I never had problems. I used to be different you know, I used to be cheerful and naïve, I had someone in my life, an older brother figure, he protected me. Sure, he betrayed my trust but because of that I became careful, I stopped trusting people, I can analyse people, I closed myself off. Of course, he came back, and he’s kept his promise to this day, but I think something is weird about him. I think he’s like us, he disappears once a month for like a week or so and then he comes back always in a good mood and happy and he’s really athletic, strangely so, he’s really protective as well,” You were rambling, your brain trying to process that Seokjin may be something other than human. That everyone in your life might be more than human.

“He’s not like us, sounds like a werewolf to me,” Jimin sounded angry, his jaw clenching and unclenching to calm himself down, his fingers gripping his sweatpants.

“No way. You said that werewolves are nasty, evil creatures. Seokjin is lovely, he taught me to ride a bike, he took me to my first swimming lesson, he even spoke to my boyfriend when he embarrassed me and broke up with me in front of the whole school,” Your fingers had stilled in his hair, instead resting them on his forehead. Jimin let out a breathy laugh,

“Then he had an ulterior motive, he must have known about you being a mermaid, there is no way he’d do that purely for care for you. He knows more than he is giving up. Also, let me guess, you never saw that guy ever again?” Jimin was looking up at you, dark brown eyes shimmering, luminescent flecks lighting up his iris.

“Well no, I didn’t actually. That’s not like Seokjin, why would he use me for something like that, I knew him for 18 years, you know, I’ll bet that the years that he was gone was because he was here.” Your words were unsure and Jimin’s eyes were scanning over your face, a small pout set on his lips.

“Y/N, you don’t even believe what is coming out of your mouth right now. Anyway, I am sleepy, and I’d rather not sleep now, I’d like to be asleep and not out and about at night because I do not want an encounter with a vampire thank you very much.” Jimin was stretching his legs, raising himself to his feet, stretching his hand out to help you stand up with him. You stood with a groan, your legs protesting, knees feeling as though they were splitting in half from having been crossed for so long.

“How about I teach you how to change into your mermaid form, I mean, we only have a few hours of day light left and if you turn at night, you become a siren, not a mermaid. I’ve never seen one in person, but I’ve heard many rumours, apparently its not pretty, sorry Y/N.” Jimin had a big grin on his face, his previous radiant, happy attitude coming right back.

“You know what, I’d love that.” You smiled, your eyes looking around the cave, then down at your legs, wiggling your toes, patting the slightly damp floor of the cave with the sole of your foot. Your eyes flitted back up to meet Jimin’s.

“I have no idea how this works,” You chuckled, a nervousness creeping into your belly, he laughed and raised his hands above his head, intertwining his fingers and stretching them high above his head, leaning from side to side and then straight down, his hands touching the floor, his body surprisingly flexible.

“Well, first you’re going to need to be naked, there’s no way you can do it with clothes on. I won’t look, I promise, although, it’s not like I haven’t seen a naked woman before you know, and it’s not weird because all the mermaids have to see each other naked and also you’re my sister so I wont look at you in that way.” Jimin was laughing as he spoke, probably a reaction to the disgusted face you were giving him. You shook your head and pursed your lips.

“Definitely not, you need to close your eyes, then I’ll take my clothes off.” You told him, your voice pointed, echoing against the humid grey walls. He nodded his head and turned around, pulling his sweatpants down and jumping into the water, swimming a few feet away and keeping his back to you. You stood still for a moment, ensuring he was not going to turn around and embarrass you. Once he had been facing away from you for a few moments you began to undo your bikini top. Your brain suddenly remembered the words Yoongi had told you.

“Wait. Yoongi said that when I got here, he put me in the water and I transformed, does that mean that I was naked, and he put me back into my bikini?” You mumbled, cheeks heating up as you gripped the material of your bikini top in your hands. You saw Jimin shrug, his shoulders tucking into his neck as he raised his arms up in the air.

“when I got here, you were dressed but you definitely couldn’t have transformed with your clothes on. That’s one thing that Grandma made sure I never did.” He sounded bored and you quickly pushed your bottoms down your legs, stepping out of them and slowly lowering yourself into the water. You sighed as the pain in your legs seemed to disappear, the water seeping into your wounds as the water sparkled and the cuts, grazes and nicks in your skin seem to vanish slowly.

“erm, what’s happening to my legs?” You mumbled, your jaw hanging low as shock set into your body,

“Oh, well this water has been here for years, it’s connected to the sea of life, who even knows I don’t understand it either, this is the only body of water that does that, even the rest of the sea of life doesn’t do that,” He was smiling, you could tell by his tone. His hands clapped together as he mumbled a small ‘right then’ under his breath.

“okay, you need to picture your tail in your head. Close your eyes and imagine a fish, it is a beautiful, shiny fish, it is sparkling and swimming freely, zooming through the sea, it is happy, content with its life. Feel the water graze over its fins, it is warm, flowing in and out of coral and then, it becomes a human, with a beautiful, long tail.” His words are painting an exact picture into your head. You picture an emerald green fish, the colour of Jimin’s tail with golden colouration around its tail. It swam, shining, weaving between rocks, coral and other large fishes around it. The fish became engulfed by a bright light as a sharp shooting pain engulfed your legs and you could hear a faint voice.

“Keep focused, ignore the pain, focus on the fish,”

The bright light faded into a yellow hue, shortly replaced by a turquoise wave that seemed to break directly into your face before the wave disappeared. Small bubbles spread out in the water, a woman with beautiful green hair had her back to you, golden scales over her hips and waist, a large expanse of her back was clear, beautiful skin, the skin merging with the scales on the small of her back. Your eyes moved down to where her legs should have been, the golden scales faded into a beautiful emerald green, the gold returning down the sides of her beautiful, long tail. The bottom fin of her tail was a completely translucent golden colour, shimmering inside of the water. The fin was long, at least a half the size of the tail, split down the middle, two sides forming two curved, soft scalene triangle shapes that fluttered inside the water.

“you did it!”

Your eyes shot open, staring ahead of you. You felt the same, completely normal.

“No, I didn’t. I feel the same,” You mumbled, disappointment sinking into your features. Jimin laughed and shook his head, flicking his emerald tail as he swam towards you, reaching his hands out to grab at your feet, your arms stretch out behind you to balance yourself on the rocks behind you. His eyes glistened a brilliant green as they stared down at your tail.

Tail.

“oh my god! I did it!” You were screaming, the noise bouncing off the walls, a musical symphony piercing your ears, your eyes widened as you heard it, sending chills down yours and Jimin’s spines. You looked down at yourself, the beautiful gold and emerald tail you had seen in your mind was yours. Your chest was a translucent, shiny golden colour, it wasn’t scaly like your tail but more like the skin of a frog, glistening and smooth, your breasts completely covered in the golden colouring.

“Wow, this is amazing,” You laughed, a loud, airy laugh as you wiggled your tail out of Jimin’s grasp

[adamgdooley]

Rise of the Virtual Super-Teacher

How AI-powered personalization and immersive technologies are set to fundamentally transform the way we learn.

“It seems to me that it is through this machine that for the first time we will be able to have a one-to-one relationship between information source and information consumer.”

These are the eerily prophetic words of the late Science Fiction author and futurist visionary Isaac Asimov, long before Google became a verb.

“In the old days people would hire a tutor for their children and they’d adapt their teaching to the tastes and abilities of their students. But how many people could afford to hire a pedagogue? Most children went uneducated, and the only way to educate the masses was to have one teacher for a great many students, and to organize this they followed a curriculum. So we either had a one-to-one relationship for the few or a one-to-many relationship for the many, but now, there’s a possibility of a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of the gathered knowledge of the human species.”

Asimov’s tantalizing promise of scaling one-to-one instruction would, quite literally, give students the best of all worlds.

Now let’s take this one step further, and imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly. This would give teachers super-powers they could not dream of leveraging in normal classroom environment.

That scenario might actually be much closer than we might think, with the advent of immersive technologies that integrate with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since Virtual Reality (VR) relies on motion capture to work, it already has the inbuilt mechanisms capable of capturing and interpreting body language to create a “digital footprint” of each user.

The next step then is to use AI and machine learning to “teach” systems to filter, adapt and personalize interactions accordingly. It would be the ultimate fulfilment of Asimov’s vision, and something that leading academics in this space have long predicted.

“VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history,” says Jeremy Bailenson, Communications Professor at Stanford University. In his recently published book Experience on Demand, Bailenson recounts how, although he’s been studying VR and its practical applications since the 1990’s, he is often taken aback by how much more impactful it is compared to other media, particularly where it is applied to learning, which led him to confidently assert that “almost any skill can be improved by virtual instruction.”

In his study of transformed social interaction Bailenson investigated how this could work in practice: “Unlike telephone conversations and video-conferences, interactants in virtual environments have the ability to systematically filter the physical appearance and behavioral actions of their avatars in the eyes of their conversational partners, amplifying or suppressing features and nonverbal signals in real time for strategic purposes. These transformations can have a drastic impact on interactants’ persuasive and instructional abilities.” In other words, the amount of engagement that a teacher’s avatar had with its virtual students had demonstrable impact on their engagement – and consequently in their learning.

The reason which makes VR such an effective and impactful learning tool is that it allows learners to achieve what is known as psychological presence. This essentially means that when we enter a virtual environment, we believe we are present, in spite of our conscious brains telling us that this is indeed a simulation. An important element in achieving such psychological presence is the concept of embodied cognition, which tells us that people absorb information better when performing actions themselves – rather than watching others do so or hearing/reading about them.

“Embodied cognition acknowledges that the mind and body are agents working together to make meaning of our experiences. It’s the idea that our mind alone does not dictate our worldview but instead that our cognition is shaped by the relationship between our mind and our body to inform and navigate our world, make meaning from our environments, and ultimately to result in learning,” explains educational and developmental psychologist Lindsay Portnoy.

Emerging research on VR indicate that the environment is a powerful tool from which we can create meaningful experiences that can effect great changes in our ability to perceive and understand the world around us. One study demonstrated that immersive VR provides better learning of physical movements than a two-dimensional video, and researchers from the University of Chicago found that simple gesturing in elementary students could potentially change and improve their knowledge. Current research by Disney, on the other hand, shows how VR is fast becoming seamless enough to enable it to replicate and synchronize with physical world behaviours such as catching a ball.

The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning technology will enable such datasets to be leveraged in a responsive and contextual way. This combination of AI and immersive capabilities means that future learning environments will become increasingly personalized, adapting to the individual needs of each user in real-time by analysing their “digital footprint” data.

“I’m reminded of an article I read about a father who felt “super human” while using his Amazon Echo. He and his kids loved interacting with the speaker and found the ability to call Ubers, order pizza and play music to be truly empowering and immersive – it really felt like they were interacting with an actual person,” says Ryan Andal, president and co-founder at Secret Location, who says he’s felt the same “super human” effect while using VR: “When I imagine how many jobs will be lost through automation and AI, I’m encouraged by how VR can combine with AR to allow us to be ‘super human’ and decrease knowledge gaps, learning curves and barriers for collaboration. VR will essentially allow declining markets to rejuvenate much faster than normal because of how powerful it can be as an educational and training tool.”

Andal believes that when VR becomes more accessible and affordable, distance learning could be the medium’s most important use case, opening the doors to spreading education – in its broadest possible sense – into areas typically shut out from it.

“We often think of education in the traditional sense – children in a classroom – but I believe VR is best used for training and learning new skills or trades. In that sense, VR is a complete overhaul of what’s possible! It eliminates the need for expensive materials to practice on and can put students in an array of situations that cannot normally be simulated for training purposes. VR means students will get that coveted “real-life work” experience sooner than usual.”

We are, in fact, already seeing such practical training applications emerging in a broad range of areas. The U.S. alpine team recently turned to VR to allow American racers to memorize the hill and take hundreds of virtual runs down a fast, tricky course in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics. They are the first known Olympic team in the world to utilize virtual reality in their training.

Troy Taylor, high performance director for U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, believes giving a racer the ability to experience the course in VR multiple times ahead of the games gives his team a crucial competitive advantage. STRIVR, the company which developed the simulation, has been working for many years with various sports outfits such as the NFL and NBA to improve athlete’s performance through virtual training. This has been so effective, in fact that some players reported having flashbacks to games they’d only experienced in VR.

Walmart is also leveraging this to train its employees following a successful pilot program last year. The company is also working with STRIVR to incorporate VR more widely in its training. The goal, STRIVR CEO Derek Belch told The Verge in a recent interview, is to put employees in scenarios that would be inconvenient to physically re-create — like dealing with spills, or preparing for a Black Friday shopping spree.

“We’re using computer vision to map scenes, so we literally know exactly where someone’s looking,” says Belch. “Wearers might look around an environment and find the spill, for example, then answer a multiple-choice question about what effect it could have on the store,” he explains.

The global EdTech is set to grow to an estimated $252 billion by 2020, and VR is expected to capture a large proportion of that booming market. The combination of ideological and commercial incentives will therefore likely lead to accelerated development of applications and capabilities that will empower teachers and learners like never before.

Where the Internet has made great strides towards democratizing knowledge, VR will democratize experiences. Immersive technologies represent a revolution in the way we transmit knowledge and will shape how we learn and conduct business more collaboratively in a globalized, boundaryless world.

The implications of this are profound according to Bailenson: “I firmly believe that for people who love to learn, the future is going to be filled with thrilling educational experiences,” he concludes.

For those interested in exploring the potential of Immersive Technologies in Learning, the Global Education and Skills Forum will be hosting an Immersive Learning Showcase and series of insightful discussions on the 17th and 18th March 2018. GESF 2018 is an initiative of the Varkey Foundation to improve standards of education for underprivileged children around the world.

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[fedesalcidopblblog]

Trigger #1 Professional Identity & Future.

Which skills and competences are necessary to get a better employability?

 Which skills do we need in the future?

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) completed a major exercise to discover what employers really look for in workers to meet their current and future skills needs. 

Personal Attributes that contribute to overall employability

•Loyalty

•Commitment

•Honesty and Integrity

•Enthusiasm

•Reliablity

•Personal Presentation

•Common Sense

•Positive self-esteem

•A sense of humor

Skills 

•Communication that contributes to productive and harmonious relations between employees and customers.

•Team Work that contributes to productive working relationships and outcomes.

•Problem Solving that contributes to productive outcomes.

•Self Management that contributes to employee satisfaction and growth.

•Planning and Organizing that contributes to long and short term strategic planning.

•Technology that contributes to the effetive execution of tasks.

•Learning that contributes to ongoing improvement and expansion in employee and company operations and outcomes.

•Initiative and enterprise that contributes to innovative outcomes.

http://www.voced.edu.au/content/ngv%3A12484

How should education be in the future?

Diverse time and place. Students will have more opportunities to learn at different times in different places. eLearning tools facilitate opportunities for remote, self-paced learning. Classrooms will be flipped, which means the theoretical part is learned outside the classroom, whereas the practical part shall be taught face to face, interactively.

Personalized learning. Students will learn with study tools that adapt to the capabilities of a student. This means above average students shall be challenges with harder tasks and questions when a certain level is achieved. Students will be positively reinforced during their learning processes.

Free Choice. Though every subject that is taught aims for the same destination, the road leading towards that destination can vary per student. Similarly to the personalized learning experience, students will be able to modify their learning process with tools they feel are necessary for them. Students will learn with different devices, different programs and techniques based on their own prefereence.

Project Based. As careers are adapting to the future, freelance economy, students of today will adapt to projectt based learning and working. This means they have to learn how to apply their skills in shorter termns to a variety of situations. Students should already get acquainted with project based learning in high school. This is when organizational, collaborative and time management skills can be taught as basics taht every student can use intherir further academic careers

Field experience. Because technology can facilitate more efficiency in certain domains, curricula will make room for skills that solely require human knowledge and face-to-face interaction. Thus, experience in ‘the field’ will be emphasized within courses. Schools will provide more opportunities for students to obtain real-world skills that are representative to their jobs. This means curricula will create more room for students to fulfill internships, mentoring projects and collaboration projects (e.g.).

Data Interpretation  Though mathematics is considered one of three literacies, it is without a doubt that the manual part of this literacy will become irrelevant in the near future. Computers will soon take care of every statistical analysis, and describe and analyse data and predict future trends. Therefore, the human interpretation of these data will become a much more important part of the future curricula. Applying the theoretical knowledge to numbers, and using human reasoning to infer logic and trends from these data will become a fundamental new aspect of this literacy.

Exams will change completely.  As courseware platforms will assess students capabilities at each step, measuring their competencies through Q&A might become irrelevant, or might not suffice. Many argue that exams are now designed in such a way, that students cram their materials, and forget the next day. Educators worry that exams might not validly measure what students should be capable of when they enter their first job. As the factual knowledge of a student can be measured during their learning process, the application of their knowledge is best tested when they work on projects in the field.

Student Ownership.  Students will become more and more involved in forming their curricula. Maintaining a curriculum that is contemporary, up-to-date and useful is only realistic when professionals as well as ‘youngsters’ are involved. Critical input from students on the content and durability of their courses is a must for an all-embracing study program.

Mentoring will become more important. Students will become more and more involved in forming their curricula. Maintaining a curriculum that is contemporary, up-to-date and useful is only realistic when professionals as well as ‘youngsters’ are involved. Critical input from students on the content and durability of their courses is a must for an all-embracing study program.

https://elearningindustry.com/tips-measure-employee-engagement-smb-learning-management-system

How to stay motivated in the future?

1. Set a goal and visualize it down to the most minute detail. See it, feel it, hear the sounds that accompany the end result (wind rushing through your hair, applause). Elite athletes visualize their performance ahead of time — right down to the smell of the sweat dripping down their face as they cross the finish line.

2. Make a list of the reasons you want to accomplish the goal. In our busy, distracting world, it’s easy to get blown off course. This is why you need to ground yourself in your goal. For extra “success insurance,” write your list with a pen. Studies show that when we write by hand and connect the letters manually, we engage the brain more actively in the process. Because typing is an automatic function that involves merely selecting letters, there’s less of a mental connection.

3. Break the goal down into smaller pieces and set intermediary targets — and rewards. I’ve called this “chunking” long before there was a Wikipedia to explain that there are eight variations of the concept. To me it’s the best non-pharmaceutical antidote to ADHD. Tony Robbins, arguably the foremost motivational speaker and personal development coach, says: “A major source of stress in our lives comes from the feeling that we have an impossible number of things to do. If you take on a project and try to do the whole thing all at once, you’re going to be overwhelmed.”

4. Have a strategy, but be prepared to change course. Let Thomas Edison inspire you in this department: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up." "The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

5. Get the help you need. It doesn’t necessarily take a village, but even if you could theoretically accomplish your objective alone, there’s inherent value in sharing your plan. It’s why people get married in front of witnesses. Announcing your intentions sends a strong message to the world and, more important, to your unconscious mind, which can sometimes sabotage our best efforts. Also, we often overestimate our abilities. The flip side is being highly selective about whom you tell and ask for help. It’s akin to the builder’s rule to always get “the right tool for the right job.”

6. Pre-determine how you will deal with flagging motivation. This is not defeatist thinking. On the contrary! It’s (almost) inevitable that at some point along the way, whether because of temporary setbacks or sheer exhaustion, you will need a little boost. When that happens, I think of what others have endured to reach their targets and to quash even the beginning of a pity party, I invoke the most hard-core endurance models I can think of: friends fighting serious diseases and Holocaust survivors.

7. Continually check in with your reasons for carrying on. Despite his all-too-human flaws, Steve Jobs embodied this brilliantly. He once told an interviewer: “I think most people that are able to make a sustained contribution over time — rather than just a peak — are very internally driven. You have to be. Because, in the ebb and tide of people's opinions and of fads, there are going to be times when you are criticized, and criticism's very difficult. And so when you're criticized, you learn to pull back a little and listen to your own drummer. And to some extent, that isolates you from the praise, if you eventually get it, too. The praise becomes a little less important to you and the criticism becomes a little less important to you, in the same measure. And you become more internally driven.” 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/07/19/how-to-stay-motivated-and-accomplish-anything/#21a459c32a5d

[sherristockman]

How to Help Heal Mental Disorders With Nutrition Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Can you use specific nutrients to improve your mental health? Yes, you can. William Walsh, Ph.D., president of the nonprofit Walsh Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois, and author of “Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain,” specializes in nutrient-based psychiatry and nutritional medicine. He and I are both fellows of the American College of Nutrition. He’s designed nutritional programs for Olympic athletes, NBA players and major league baseball players. More importantly, he’s spent a great deal of his career seeking to improve mental health through nutrition. “I started off in the hard science. I was an experimentalist,” Walsh says. “I worked, in the beginning, in the nuclear field … with places like Los Alamos, the Institute for Atomic Research and University of Michigan Research Institute. I wound up at Argonne National Laboratory. While working as a scientist there, I started a volunteer project at the local prison, Stateville Penitentiary. I eventually got really interested in why people were violent … [W]hen we started the ex-offender program, I got to meet the families that had produced a criminal. I found some wonderful families, caring and capable families, that have other children who turned out just fine … I began to realize we didn’t understand why people had bad behavior. We then asked the question, ‘Could it be something related to their brain chemistry or the body chemistry?’… I started doing lab studies of their blood, their urine and hair. I found out that they were very, very different from the rest of the population. That’s how I got started.” Biochemistry and the Criminal Brain Walsh received valuable direction after meeting Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, who was doing work on heavy metals and schizophrenia. As it turns out, levels of metals, including copper, zinc and manganese, were all abnormal in criminals compared to the general population. Walsh discovered four biochemical types of violent people. One of these was the sociopaths, all of whom had severe zinc deficiency, pyrrole disorder, low blood spermine and undermethylation. In all, it’s an unusual combination of bad biochemistry. A collaborative investigation with Pfeiffer resulted in nutrient therapies for each of the behavior types. Pyrrole disorder is a stress condition commonly found in brain disorders. A urine test developed by niacin expert Abram Hoffer and Pfeiffer is the gold standard test for this genetic condition, which involves altered biochemistry in your bone marrow and spleen. People who have pyrrole disorder may produce five to 10 times more pyrroles than normal — a byproduct of natural reactions, like the formation of hemoglobin. While harmless in and of itself, pyrroles bind to and draw out anything that is an aldehyde, such as B-6. It also sharply depletes zinc. As a result, people with pyrroles disorder have exceptionally low levels of B-6, and zinc which can have serious effects on brain function, affecting their memory and ability to read, for example. B-6 deficiency is quite common among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well. The Earlier the Treatment the Better the Results “Eventually, [Pfeiffer] and I jointly evaluated 500 patients, mostly violent adults and violent children. We got our best results with the kids, young people with the same kind of chemistry, who were mostly very violent,” Walsh says. “I have to say we didn’t really succeed in finding a way to help the adult criminals. They would get better for six to eight months, and then I’d find out they were back in prison. That had a lot to do with the fact that they were abusing alcohol and illegal drugs … At about 1990, we decided to focus on children … It’s been very successful. If we can get a child before their lives are ruined, before they pass puberty perhaps, our success rate [is] very high … The doctors report a striking improvement in behavior. Most of these kids, of course, [are] on drugs, everything from Ritalin to powerful antipsychotic medications. Usually when we’re finished and [have] balanced their chemistry, they can wean off the medication. They usually are fine without it …” Nutrients Involved in Synthesis or Functioning of Neurotransmitters Dictate Mental Function Later on, Walsh expanded to also include children with autism and ADHD. Fond of numbers, Walsh began amassing enormous databases. At present, he has one of the world’s largest chemistry database for autism, depression and behavior disorders. “When you look at these millions of chemical analyses of blood, urine and tissues, it’s obvious that there are very great differences,” he says. “I found that for mental disorders, about six or seven chemical imbalances dominate mental function. There are hundreds and hundreds of important nutrients in the body, but in the brain, there are about six or seven that [seem] to dominate everything. Eventually, I found out why … [T]hese are the nutrient factors that are either involved in synthesis of a neurotransmitter or the functioning of a neurotransmitter. They include methylation — undermethylation or overmethylation. In our database, 70 percent of all humans in the United States have normal, typical methylation; 22 percent are undermethylated … 8 percent are overmethylated. About 70 percent of all people who have a mental disorder have one of these methylation disorders. The symptoms are completely different, and the treatment they need is completely different. We also found that most people [who have mental disorders] are depleted or deficient in zinc. That’s the most common [deficiency] we see … Virtually everyone with a mental disorder seems to need zinc and improve on it.” Copper Overload Linked to Autism, Schizophrenia and Postpartum Depression Copper is another important trace metal, as it plays a distinct role in the synthesis of norepinephrine, a major neurotransmitter. Divalent copper (Cu2+) is a dramatic factor in the ratio of dopamine and norepinephrine. Animal studies have shown that when animals are starved of copper until they only have 25 percent of the normal amount of copper in their blood, the ratio between norepinephrine and dopamine is changed by more than a factor of three. Most of us have the ability to homeostatically control copper. However, some do not have that ability. “It all has to do with an enzyme called metallothionein that is genetically expressed. Some people don’t have that system working,” Walsh explains. “These persons have copper overload, which we find virtually in every autistic patient, most patients with schizophrenia and almost everyone with postpartum depression. That’s a recipe for very high norepinephrine — which means anxiety and depression — and low dopamine (a feel-good neurotransmitter), which is a hallmark of ADHD … a nasty combination. We find the sociopaths innately have low copper levels. People who have undermethylation tend to have low normal copper levels … The good news for mental disorders is that there are more than 100 really important biochemicals in the body, but only a few dominate mental disorders. If we had to do lab testing for 100 of them, it would be really difficult. If we had to adjust the levels of these and normalize 100 different factors, it would make life very difficult. But we found that by just focusing on maybe seven or eight nutrient factors, we could help 95 percent of the patients we see with nutrient therapy.” How to Measure Your Zinc and Copper Status Zinc experts typically agree that plasma zinc provides the most accurate measurement. The taste test has some minor value but is among the least reliable. To accurately measure copper, serum copper is the way to go, and most labs throughout the world provide good copper assays. Walsh recommends doing a ceruloplasmin test at the same time, because then you can determine how much free radical copper you have, which gives you a good indication of your level of oxidative stress. A high sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) test would also be useful as a marker of inflammation. “By the way, oxidative stress runs through every single mental disorder we see, without exception,” Walsh says. “Every one of them seems to have extraordinary oxidative stress — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, a violent child or an autistic child.” Unfortunately, our modern lifestyle strongly promotes oxidative stress, with processed foods, processed vegetable oils, excessive net carbs and excessive protein being some of the most potent factors. This kind of diet causes a reduction in ketones and a radical increase in reactive oxygen species and secondary free radicals. Exposure to non-native electromagnetic fields, glyphosate and other pesticides, fluoride-contaminated water and other toxic exposures only add to the problem. Typically, copper and ceruloplasmin levels tend to go hand in hand, being either high or low together. The ideal level for copper, with respect to mental health, is somewhere between 75 and 100 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL) in serum. The ideal amount of ceruloplasmin has to do with whatever your level of copper is. Ideally, the percentage of copper in your ceruloplasmin should be around 85 to 90 percent. “It’s really great to do both simultaneously, because then you have a really good picture of not only the copper situation, but also the level of oxidative stress,” Walsh says. The Importance of Methylation in Mental Health Walsh was among the first people to alert the world to the importance of methylation in mental health, especially autism. The No. 1 causes of undermethylation are single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or mutations in the enzymes for the one-carbon cycle (the methylation cycle). “The No. 1 factor is the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), which is one of the enzymes. That’s the rate-limiting step for that whole cycle, for most people,” Walsh explains. “Genetic testing services such as 23andMe can provide this kind of information. However, most human beings have enormous numbers of SNPs. They’ve already found 10 million snips (or mutations) in the human genome. Every human being has thousands of these SNPs. A really high percentage of people have even the more serious MTHFR SNPs — the C677T, the A1298C that people are always talking about. The thing that is often mistaken by nutritional scientists is that if a person has the homozygous, the double copies of the C677T, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re undermethylated. It certainly doesn’t mean that they will benefit if you give them methylfolate. That’s one of the problems that we’re finding. The reason is epigenetics. You have to consider the epigenetics and the methylation at the same time. There are three nutrient factors that affect epigenetics more than anything else: folates, methionine and S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe). These have a really powerful impact on epigenetics.” How Folates Affect Epigenetics Folates are serotonin reuptake promoters. However, even if an individual is undermethylated and has a problem related to low serotonin activity, such as depression or anxiety, folates should not be given, Walsh warns. The reason? If you give folate, their methylation will improve and the patient will actually get worse. The reason for this worsening is because, epigenetically, folates act as deacetylase inhibitors and sharply lower serotonin activity. Most autistic individuals will not have a serotonin problem and will thrive on methyl folate. However, an estimated 10 percent of autistic children and adults do have a serotonin issue and will severely regress if given methyl folate. “We’ve had thousands of patients who were undermethylated depressives. I’ve seen more than 3,000 cases of clinical depression. I’ve got this huge database. The largest phenotype … is undermethylation. But if you gave them any form of folate, they would get worse. Their methylation would improve, they would get worse, because it has a dramatic impact on serotonin reuptake. In contrast, methionine and SAMe are natural serotonin reuptake inhibitors. They do essentially the same thing that Prozac and Paxil do. Folates have the opposite effect. Folates are wonderful if you want to knock dopamine level down in schizophrenics or people who have high anxiety — overmethylated people. It’s counterintuitive because folates are excellent methylating agents..” To reiterate, some undermethylated people are intolerant to folates, and some overmethylated people thrive on folates even though folates improve methylation. As you can see, there are epigenetic complexities involved here, making self-diagnosis and self-treatment highly inadvisable. It could be quite risky to take these bits and pieces of information and try to apply them on your own. There are simply too many variables. So, the bottom line here is to make sure you’re being treated by a knowledgeable professional. Heavy Metals and the Autistic Brain Walsh has tested 6,500 autistic patients. As a group, they have much higher toxic metal levels than their siblings or the general population. Walsh believes their toxic burden is likely due to an inborn predisposition that makes them more likely to accumulate toxins and/or vulnerable to the effects of toxins. “Thousands of these parents, maybe more than half, told a very sad story of how they had a child who was developing normally, was beginning to speak and was singing and charming their grandparents. Then maybe the child got sick. They took him to a pediatrician and the pediatrician — I’ve heard this story hundreds of times — said, ‘Oh, you’re behind on your shots. You’re behind on your vaccinations.’ They took a sick child and gave them multiple vaccinations, at that time, with thimerosal and mercury. Hundreds of these families said that within a day or two, their child changed forever. Lost all speech, the personality changed, they became sick. They became intolerant to served foods. They were just very troubled little human beings. When they went to specialists, eventually they wound up with the diagnosis of autism and were told that it was incurable and that there was no hope really for recovery. We’ve seen a lot of human misery just talking with these families. It’s just a shocking and terrible thing.” Walsh suspects autistic children have an insufficiency of natural antioxidants such as glutathione and metallothionein, rendering them more vulnerable to the effects of environmental exposures, including vaccines and poor diet. It’s worth noting that 1 in 3 children diagnosed with autism does not have true autism caused by epigenetic variations. Many of these children have a good chance of recovery, whereas classic Kanner autism is a permanent, life-long epigenetic condition (named after Leo Kanner, who discovered autism in the 1940s1), although some measure of improvement can be made even in these cases. On Thimerosal Walsh has also investigated the thimerosal issue, looking for evidence of mercury toxicity in the brains of autistic children. In fact, he was the first person to actually measure mercury in autistic brains. He was able to receive brain tissue samples from Johns Hopkins, and using the Argonne facility called the Advanced Photon Source, he did over 1 million chemical analyses on brain tissue from autistic and non-autistic children. Every autistic child analyzed had received thimerosal-containing vaccinations. However, no mercury could be found in the brain tissue. One explanation for this is that the tests were done years after the vaccinations. The half-life of mercury in the human body is 42 days. The half-life of ethyl or methyl mercury in the brain is 70 days. “I think what it amounts to is that mercury is a terrible poison. It’s a terrible insult,” he says. “I think these vulnerable kids should never be exposed to it. However, it doesn’t stay in the body and it doesn’t do continuing damage. I think after a year or so, it has left the body, even though there are tens of thousands of families who are trying therapies that will take the mercury out of their child’s brain when it’s no longer there.” Metallothionein Promotion Nutrient Therapy for Autism The fact that autistic children tend to have extraordinary copper and zinc imbalances means their metallothionein protein is not functioning. Metallothionein is required for homeostatic control of copper and zinc. Walsh has developed a metallothionein promotion nutrient therapy: a formulation of 22 nutrients known to enhance genetic expression and function of metallothionein. This protocol has been used on more than 2,000 autistic patients, with measurable improvements in outcome. “The most important antioxidants in the brain are somewhat different than the rest of the body. I call them the three musketeers. It’s glutathione, metallothionein and selenium. It’s specific to the brain,” he explains. Technically, selenium is not an antioxidant per se, but it does increase glutathione levels and enhances the function of metallothionein and, in the brain, glutathione and metallothionein work together. Glutathione is your first line of defense. The problem is, autistic children typically have a poor diet (it’s hard to get them to eat anything) and with the oxidative overload, they quickly run out of glutathione. When you run low on glutathione in your brain, your metallothionein level increases. “Metallothionein doesn’t work unless you have oxidized glutathione. It’s a hand in glove situation. It’s the backup system for glutathione in the brain, and we know that without selenium, that whole system doesn’t work well,” Walsh explains. I take selenium every day. It’s a trace mineral, so you don’t need much, up to about 200 mcg per day, and you definitely need to be mindful not to overdose. As noted by Walsh, of all the trace metals, selenium has the narrowest division between deficiency and overload, so you need to be careful when supplementing. Zinc also needs to be normalized, as it is the No. 1 factor for enabling metallothionein to function and support glutathione. According to Walsh, for mental and physical health, you need a plasma zinc level between 90 and 130 mcg/dL. Many mental patients have a genetic weakness in zinc normalization; they’re born with zinc deficiency, and need far higher amounts than typical to maintain a healthy zinc level. Changing the Face of Psychiatry Walsh is convinced the use of psychiatric medication will eventually fade away as we learn more about normalizing brain function through nutritional interventions. “These powerful drugs … they do not normalize the brain. They cause an abnormal condition,” he warns. “They might correct depression or anxiety, but you wind up with something that’s not normal.” The Walsh Research Institute is a public charity with no financial interests, and they are slowly but surely helping to change mainstream psychiatry. Walsh has given talks at the highest levels, including the Surgeon General’s office, the U.S. Senate and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He’s also spoken at American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual meetings several times. “The last time I went there, they finally listened to me … I was there about two and a half years ago. I gave an invited talk on depression. I basically explained to them they’re doing depression wrong. They actually listened to me. I showed them our huge chemistry database and explained that depression is a name given to at least five completely different disorders, each involving different symptoms and each involving different neurotransmitters that are malfunctioning. Then I described each one of these biotypes and actually showed them that if they would simply do some inexpensive blood and urine testing, they could identify which people would be good candidates for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or which ones would do better on benzodiazepine, but even more importantly, how they can correct it with nutrients.” There were 17,000 psychiatrists at this meeting from all over the world, and Walsh was 1 of 4 speakers at a well-attended session. Afterward, there was tremendous demand for more information, which gives hope. Walsh also offers a training program for doctors. In the U.S., 45 psychiatrists went through the program last year. In all, 500 physicians and psychiatrists in 32 countries have taken his program so far. Why SSRIs Induce Violence One major problem with SSRI antidepressants is the risk of self-harm and aggression as a side effect. Overmethylated, low-folate depressors are intolerant so SSRIs, and evidence suggests this genetic intolerance may have been a factor in many school shootings. Walsh, who has studied this phenomenon, notes 42 of the 50 major school shootings in the U.S. since 1990 were done by teens or young adults taking an SSRI. “I discussed this … before the APA … I tried to explain to them that they … can do a blood test; they can find out which children or which adults are more likely to become violent if they get an SSRI. I’ve written about this several times; published it in magazines … If you buy Prozac or Paxil, the insert inside warns that some people … are prone to suicidal or homicidal behavior. We now know which ones they are!” More Information To learn more, visit http://ift.tt/1qoQkdZ. There you can also purchase Walsh’s book, “Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain.” Questions and information requests can be sent to Dana@WalshInstitute.org, or you can call (630) 506-5066. “Our website has a resources section that recommends quality labs, compounding pharmacies and a list of doctors who we’ve trained, who are now able to do this kind of therapy,” Walsh says.

[creativityworks-s4]

Danielle Dash- The Loud and Proud, Wrong and Strong writer!

When I first met Danielle Dash I was captivated by her poise, boldness and the way she projected herself with such intelligence to an audience. As besotted, as my first encounter with her seems, I was smitten. I whispered to my friend throughout her dialogue, that I loved her! She was all that I hoped to be; articulate yet spunky or as she defines herself the “loud and proud, wrong and strong” writer. Being an advocate for black women and “people of colour in general”, Dash is known for articles that criticise and to some extent cripple those who display “unrepentant ignorance”.  Lena Dunham was one of many to feel the wrath of Dash’s words after she “sexualised an innocuous encounter with Odell Beckham Jnr.

‘I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, "That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog." It wasn't mean — he just seemed confused. The vibe was very much like, "Do I want to fuck it? Is it wearing a … yep, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm going to go back to my cell phone." It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, "This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes."’

Shunning Dunham for what Dash identified as “toxic white feminism”, Dash wittingly wrote a “clapback” explaining that her comment “inadvertently fed into a racist narrative that perpetuates a myth that all black men are sexual predators.” She then addressed the acidity of her feminism “when you ignore people of colour but especially women of colour who voice disappointment in your actions, you erase us from the narrative. Therein lies the toxicity of white feminism.”

Known for these beguiling pieces, Dash assembles her thoughts eloquently to the pleasure of her readers. Surely, writing and sharing the narratives of black people gets tedious? And the “solipsism” of others is galling? However, speaking with Dash about her unapologetic writing led to a great conversation:

In a recent article on the revelation of Beyoncé’s pregnancy you said that ‘If the happiness was a ship in the night Janet Street-Porter CBE, Rosie Millard, Rebbeca Farley, Leandra Medine, Micaiah Bilger and Sarah Vine were all drilling holes in the hull and shredding the sails. The most alarming thing is these women are all white and their disdain towards pregnancy announcements is reserved exclusively for this black woman.’ As a black writer, are you inclined to criticize the actions of white women? Surely the topic of a ‘distasteful reaction’ could be towards the pregnancy itself.

I'm inclined to criticise white women, absolutely and read in isolation, my articles about Beyoncé's pregnancy, Melania Trump and Lena Dunham, it could be understood that my only aim is to reprimand white women for gaffes and missteps they make, but that isn't the case. Liberal leaning white women in both America and here in Britain often fail to realise the racism in their feminism and I've made a space for myself to openly analyse their failings with energetic, punchy think pieces. The "distasteful reaction" could be just about pregnancy if that was the same reaction from across the board; if both white women and women of colour shared in their disdain of the pictures, but a pattern emerged from the articles I collated and needed to be explored. I challenge schools of thought by everyone. In this specific instance those white women were at fault.

As a black writer doesn’t the topics of ‘afros’, ‘gentrification’ or ‘having to assimilate your image to fall in line with the industry get tiring?

I'll only stop writing about it when we live in a truly post racial society and white people truly, without reservation treat black people and all people of colour the way they treat themselves and their children. Until then I'm happy to spend time educating others and myself about the ways in which racism and misogynoir works to disenfranchise me and people who look like me. I do feel tired sometimes, almost like I'm repeating myself but that's ok because I can rest, get back up and go again. The people who have lost their lives like Sarah Reed and Mzee Mohammad because they were not afforded the benefit of the doubt afforded to white people in similar situations, will never be able to get up again. I write for them.

As a black writer/content producer do you feel like you have to ‘placate and coddle whiteness’ to get your work published?  

Never. I have been blessed to work for white people who value my ability to identify and articulate the differences in our experiences. I cherish this privilege. Also in publishing my work and creating my web series; I'm the boss and blackness and the uplighting and cantering of blackness is my only concern. I write white characters and have written articles in support or defence of white people but ultimately blackness is my focus.

As an educated, ‘loud and proud’ black woman have you felt marginalized or faced discrimination?

Yes, however, my name is a white woman's name. No one sees the name Danielle Scott-Haughton and thinks they're going to meet a loud black woman. It's gotten me into a lot of doors. My job begins once I've bypassed the challenges of having a nonwhite name and proving that my blackness is an asset. The discrimination I've faced has mostly come in the form of micro-aggressions in the work place. "Dani, you're so aggressive" when I was simply sad. Or "Dani, you're too big for that boy, you'll break him" when I was being kind to a young member of staff. I learned not to hesitate and challenge all instances where my race was clearly the reason people were saying untoward things to me. It's taken time but I now have the vocabulary and confidence to challenge people without coming across as confrontational. This is tiring because the extra time I take to check I'm not being "aggressive" while defending myself against misogynoir isn't a universal step all women have to take.

If black women are so "scary", why do you think the British Public/media are so comfortable mistreating them?

The truth is their fear of black women is a myth, a fairy tale used to deny us the fullness of our emotions that simultaneously allows them to continue to mistreat us.

Studies show that British journalism is 94% white and 55% male- how can this statistic be tackled?  

Enforced quotas. Left to their own devices people in power will not share spaces with people of colour and/or women therefore the implementation of mandatory quotas is our only answer and I do not care one bit about the idea that "POC didn't get there on merit" nobody scrutinises the nepotism that got many white people their positions. And if white people feel upset about these quotas they should investigate why they are comfortable to work in environments that are not representative of the world they live in. The onus is on those in positions of power to do better.

How can we combat racial profiling in the media?

The industry has to be more inclusive. People have to start talking to one another. No one knows everything about a community they are not a part of. Without communication and a willingness to learn about the experiences of people who are different to you and not just tell their stories but equip them to tell their own stories we will be caught in this cycle in perpetuity.

[End]

After thanking Danielle for what seemed almost eternal, she closed with “you’re always welcome lovely”, accompanied by an outburst of hugs and kisses!

Monique Boreland

[gabrielcollignon]

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

In his 2003 book Moneyball, Michael Lewis recounts how the management of the Oakland Athletics revolutionized baseball by relying on statistical analyses rather than intuition to choose new players. Before General Manager Billy Beane turned a single metric — on-base plus slugging (OPS) — into his North Star for every decision, team managers preferred strategies that were unlikely to fail rather than those that seemed most efficient. “The pain of looking bad,” Lewis writes, “is worse than the gain of making the best move.”

As a content marketing manager tasked with delivering my quota of MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) and hitting publication dates, I get it. Picking an approach that seems unlikely to fail is safe. Proposing a radical new management system seems not only bad, but foolhardy. “Why,” managers the world over ask every day, “should we try to fix something that isn’t broken?”

Unfortunately for status-quo fans everywhere, visionaries and innovators understand that what counts as “broken” is constantly in flux. In 2001, before Beane began his quiet revolution inside Major League Baseball, no other team’s decision-making style appeared broken. Yet Beane would soon overtake them because his success depended on breaking things.

Likewise, in the increasingly noisy and densely populated online world, the success of our content relies on its ability to break things. We have to break through to audiences underwhelmed by mediocre marketing. We have to break the habits of consumers who have always used a competing product or read a competitor’s newsletter. And, most importantly, we have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams.

We have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams, says @andreafryrear. Click To Tweet

Although, really, it’s just the last part, the management part, that we have to break — and by break, I mean teams must decide on their own structure without heavy-handed interference from management. Before the accusations of marketing communism begin to fly, let me be clear: I’m not advocating the dissolution of management altogether. I’m proposing that on a modern content marketing team (whose goals, obstacles, and workloads are typically so huge that it’s a wonder they don’t all sleep under their desks), a manager’s job is to hire amazing people, empower them using Agile principles and processes, and then work like hell to keep anyone else from interfering.

That’s a lot to do, so let’s start from the top.

Agile marketing team – what is it?

Some teams are naturally adaptive and data-driven, and could technically be considered agile (lowercase “a”). To qualify as Agile (capital “A”), a marketing team needs a structure that enables it to adapt and iterate.

This structure could take various forms, including Scrum (the classic Agile process based around sprints), Kanban (a pull-based system that uses work-in-progress limits), or a hybrid of the team’s invention. Most Agile teams work in sprints — set periods during which team members aim to complete a set amount of work that’s connected to a long-term plan. Each sprint lasts between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common duration.

A mainstay of the Agile approach is the stand-up — a 15-minute meeting, usually held at the beginning of every work day, during which team members stay on their feet. They take turns updating everyone on what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what obstacles they need help to overcome.

Whatever form the structure takes, some kind of systematic foundation is needed to keep an Agile team from descending into frenetic reactions disconnected from a long-term plan.

Changing your mind all the time does not make you Agile.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

Step 1 – Hire amazing people

Much has been written (some of it on this blog and in CCO magazine) about the growing talent crunch plaguing content marketing, so we don’t need to go into a lot of depth on this topic. The harsh truth is, it’s hard to find good content help these days. But the interviews, networking, and early-morning coffee meetings more than pay off when you consider the impact that truly passionate and skilled content creators have on your organization.

In an interconnected, digital world, great marketing can spread at the speed of a click. It doesn’t matter if it came from a team with a multimillion-dollar budget or a solopreneur doing it all on her own. The internet is nothing if not democratic.

That means finding — and retaining — creators who can consistently produce legitimately awesome work that gives you a regular shot at hitting the digital jackpot. There is no greater source of competitive advantage in content marketing than a talented team.

But those teams need the space and freedom to create or the legitimately awesome will rapidly devolve into lethargic and yawn-inducing.

#Content teams need space to create or the legitimately awesome will devolve into lethargy. @AndreaFryrear Click To Tweet

Step 2 – Empower teams with agility

Whether it’s through an Agile iteration or sprint (set length of time during which a team commits to producing a set amount of content) or work-in-progress limits (inflexible limit on how much content can be in any given state such as research, writing, editing, review at one time), Agile teams are governed by limitations on their workflow. This isn’t because they’re lazy or can’t handle the workload. It’s because when people have a split focus, they do terrible work (and it takes them longer to do it).

For example, let’s imagine that your current content plans include creating a new webinar, whose launch you will support with an e-book and a series of blog posts. You plan each piece, make assignments, and send the team off to work. A week passes and you check on progress. It turns out that one person got derailed when sales asked for lead-generation collateral, another lost a day to responding to angry customer tweets, and your CEO wanted a home-page rewrite that took precedence over the blog posts.

Now you’ve got three half-finished content items, which is like having none at all.

You can’t give a webinar that ends abruptly halfway through. Nobody wants to download an e-book that’s just an outline. And blog posts just don’t work if they’re composed entirely of headlines, header tags, and target keywords.

An Agile content team, on the other hand, would have focused on finishing one piece before starting something else. Its members could have told sales and the CEO that their requests would be added to content’s Agile backlog (a prioritized to-do list that serves as the source of all work done by the team), not to the top of the list of immediate to-do’s.

An #Agile content team focuses on finishing one piece before starting something else, says @AndreaFryrear. Click To Tweet

As a bonus, not only do Agile teams produce more content in less time, they also make team members happier and more engaged. And that means team members stick around longer, are easier to recruit, and help solve that thorny talent problem we talked about earlier.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Stop Working So Hard: Agile Marketers Work Smarter

Step 3 – Get in other people’s way

You might have expected me to close by telling you to get out of the way so your team can work their Agile magic, but that’s not the final step. On our hypothetical content team, we had external requests being thrown in from all sides and derailing our content creators. Even on an Agile team, not everybody will happily chirp, “Nope,” when an executive tries to interrupt their work. Agile teams are empowered, but that doesn’t mean they have super powers.

Managers need to act like an offensive line, getting in the way of people who are trying to disrupt their team while they’re executing a beautiful play. They attend daily stand-up meetings, listening attentively and volunteering to help remove roadblocks (and then doing it). They genuinely value the creative force that their team can wield, and they actively work to create a situation where it can do its thing.

Respect tradition … or profit from it

Marketing, like baseball, has ways it’s always been done. We can choose to adhere to traditional ways of managing and creating content, or we can look outside our own typical way of thinking to gain the upper hand. Someone in your niche will be using an Agile approach to start breaking things very soon. Imagine what would happen if it was you.

Hear Andrea Fryrear explain user-story mapping at the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30 in Las Vegas. Register today and use BLOG100 to save $100.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

[lucyariablog]

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

In his 2003 book Moneyball, Michael Lewis recounts how the management of the Oakland Athletics revolutionized baseball by relying on statistical analyses rather than intuition to choose new players. Before General Manager Billy Beane turned a single metric — on-base plus slugging (OPS) — into his North Star for every decision, team managers preferred strategies that were unlikely to fail rather than those that seemed most efficient. “The pain of looking bad,” Lewis writes, “is worse than the gain of making the best move.”

As a content marketing manager tasked with delivering my quota of MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) and hitting publication dates, I get it. Picking an approach that seems unlikely to fail is safe. Proposing a radical new management system seems not only bad, but foolhardy. “Why,” managers the world over ask every day, “should we try to fix something that isn’t broken?”

Unfortunately for status-quo fans everywhere, visionaries and innovators understand that what counts as “broken” is constantly in flux. In 2001, before Beane began his quiet revolution inside Major League Baseball, no other team’s decision-making style appeared broken. Yet Beane would soon overtake them because his success depended on breaking things.

Likewise, in the increasingly noisy and densely populated online world, the success of our content relies on its ability to break things. We have to break through to audiences underwhelmed by mediocre marketing. We have to break the habits of consumers who have always used a competing product or read a competitor’s newsletter. And, most importantly, we have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams.

We have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams, says @andreafryrear. Click To Tweet

Although, really, it’s just the last part, the management part, that we have to break — and by break, I mean teams must decide on their own structure without heavy-handed interference from management. Before the accusations of marketing communism begin to fly, let me be clear: I’m not advocating the dissolution of management altogether. I’m proposing that on a modern content marketing team (whose goals, obstacles, and workloads are typically so huge that it’s a wonder they don’t all sleep under their desks), a manager’s job is to hire amazing people, empower them using Agile principles and processes, and then work like hell to keep anyone else from interfering.

That’s a lot to do, so let’s start from the top.

Agile marketing team – what is it?

Some teams are naturally adaptive and data-driven, and could technically be considered agile (lowercase “a”). To qualify as Agile (capital “A”), a marketing team needs a structure that enables it to adapt and iterate.

This structure could take various forms, including Scrum (the classic Agile process based around sprints), Kanban (a pull-based system that uses work-in-progress limits), or a hybrid of the team’s invention. Most Agile teams work in sprints — set periods during which team members aim to complete a set amount of work that’s connected to a long-term plan. Each sprint lasts between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common duration.

A mainstay of the Agile approach is the stand-up — a 15-minute meeting, usually held at the beginning of every work day, during which team members stay on their feet. They take turns updating everyone on what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what obstacles they need help to overcome.

Whatever form the structure takes, some kind of systematic foundation is needed to keep an Agile team from descending into frenetic reactions disconnected from a long-term plan.

Changing your mind all the time does not make you Agile.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

Step 1 – Hire amazing people

Much has been written (some of it on this blog and in CCO magazine) about the growing talent crunch plaguing content marketing, so we don’t need to go into a lot of depth on this topic. The harsh truth is, it’s hard to find good content help these days. But the interviews, networking, and early-morning coffee meetings more than pay off when you consider the impact that truly passionate and skilled content creators have on your organization.

In an interconnected, digital world, great marketing can spread at the speed of a click. It doesn’t matter if it came from a team with a multimillion-dollar budget or a solopreneur doing it all on her own. The internet is nothing if not democratic.

That means finding — and retaining — creators who can consistently produce legitimately awesome work that gives you a regular shot at hitting the digital jackpot. There is no greater source of competitive advantage in content marketing than a talented team.

But those teams need the space and freedom to create or the legitimately awesome will rapidly devolve into lethargic and yawn-inducing.

#Content teams need space to create or the legitimately awesome will devolve into lethargy. @AndreaFryrear Click To Tweet

Step 2 – Empower teams with agility

Whether it’s through an Agile iteration or sprint (set length of time during which a team commits to producing a set amount of content) or work-in-progress limits (inflexible limit on how much content can be in any given state such as research, writing, editing, review at one time), Agile teams are governed by limitations on their workflow. This isn’t because they’re lazy or can’t handle the workload. It’s because when people have a split focus, they do terrible work (and it takes them longer to do it).

For example, let’s imagine that your current content plans include creating a new webinar, whose launch you will support with an e-book and a series of blog posts. You plan each piece, make assignments, and send the team off to work. A week passes and you check on progress. It turns out that one person got derailed when sales asked for lead-generation collateral, another lost a day to responding to angry customer tweets, and your CEO wanted a home-page rewrite that took precedence over the blog posts.

Now you’ve got three half-finished content items, which is like having none at all.

You can’t give a webinar that ends abruptly halfway through. Nobody wants to download an e-book that’s just an outline. And blog posts just don’t work if they’re composed entirely of headlines, header tags, and target keywords.

An Agile content team, on the other hand, would have focused on finishing one piece before starting something else. Its members could have told sales and the CEO that their requests would be added to content’s Agile backlog (a prioritized to-do list that serves as the source of all work done by the team), not to the top of the list of immediate to-do’s.

An #Agile content team focuses on finishing one piece before starting something else, says @AndreaFryrear. Click To Tweet

As a bonus, not only do Agile teams produce more content in less time, they also make team members happier and more engaged. And that means team members stick around longer, are easier to recruit, and help solve that thorny talent problem we talked about earlier.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Stop Working So Hard: Agile Marketers Work Smarter

Step 3 – Get in other people’s way

You might have expected me to close by telling you to get out of the way so your team can work their Agile magic, but that’s not the final step. On our hypothetical content team, we had external requests being thrown in from all sides and derailing our content creators. Even on an Agile team, not everybody will happily chirp, “Nope,” when an executive tries to interrupt their work. Agile teams are empowered, but that doesn’t mean they have super powers.

Managers need to act like an offensive line, getting in the way of people who are trying to disrupt their team while they’re executing a beautiful play. They attend daily stand-up meetings, listening attentively and volunteering to help remove roadblocks (and then doing it). They genuinely value the creative force that their team can wield, and they actively work to create a situation where it can do its thing.

Respect tradition … or profit from it

Marketing, like baseball, has ways it’s always been done. We can choose to adhere to traditional ways of managing and creating content, or we can look outside our own typical way of thinking to gain the upper hand. Someone in your niche will be using an Agile approach to start breaking things very soon. Imagine what would happen if it was you.

Hear Andrea Fryrear explain user-story mapping at the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30 in Las Vegas. Register today and use BLOG100 to save $100.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/03/disconnected-teams-high-performers/

[yuzusorbet]

Yuzuru Hanyu’s Mentality that Continues to Win. --article by sports writer Toshimi Oriyama, from magazine '文藝春秋 2017年 02 月号' (published in Jan 2017), translated by me.

(it's a very long and good article)

Last year, in the figure skating Grand Prix Final (GPF) held in Marseille, France, Yuzuru Hanyu achieved a 4th consecutive victory, something that no one has done before. On the first day, his short programme (SP) was almost perfect and he was in 1st place, then 2 days later, for the free programme (FP), he made some mistakes. But he managed to escape the chase by younger skaters, Nathan Chen and Shoma Uno.

The 22 year-old, who is the Sochi Olympic gold medalist and who has since broken the world records a few times, thought back calmly about GPF 2016. "As a goal, I am very proud of the 4th straight victory. But I am not satisfied with my performance. I am extremely 'kuyashii' (frustrated/regretful) about the FP score which was in 3rd place. I did a good performance for SP and I thought if I did a fairly good one for FP, I could aim for world highest score; I need to review this point within myself."

GPF is the high point of the first half of the season. It is a competition that shows the world's best, similar to World Championship of the 2nd half. Hanyu's 4th victory puts him on par with the 'emperor' Evgeny Plushenko (Russia). However, for Hanyu, instead of the joy of victory, he felt more of the regret that he 'could not do a convincing performance'. And this ambition and hungriness is the mentality that is the source of Hanyu's strength.

2010, Hanyu won the World Junior Championship, and the next season, he moved to the senior competitions. From that time, his supple and graceful performances already had a charm and the beauty of his jumps had a good reputation. Then, in 2011, in his hometown of Sendai, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck; that painful experience and recurring thoughts like "I think I will not be able to skate again" surely led him to grow as a person.

However, to possess that special mental strength to be able to stand at the highest point at the Olympics and to continue winning after that, there were 3 other turning points. The presence of Patrick Chan (Canada) who was called 'the absolute champion'. The 'kuyashii' (regretful) gold medal at Sochi Olympics. The accident at 2014 Cup of China.

Hanyu's mental strength that could be seen in glimpses from the time of his debut, the 2013-2014 season added 'calmness' and a 'spirit of study' to that. The year before, he had moved to the Cricket Club in Canada to train under Brian Orser and his abilities continued to blossom. And there was a rival who was a big impetus for him. 3-time World champion Patrick Chan who also won GPF twice and was acknowledged to have the best skating skills in the world, plus huge battle strength on the big stage.

Hanyu faced Chan in 2 GP series competitions in 2013. The 1st one was Skate Canada where his score was lower than Chan's by 27 points and the 2nd one was Trophee Eric Bompard where the gap was 32 points. He was 2nd place in both competitions and you could say it was a crushing defeat.

But these 2 straight losses caused Hanyu to change. Especially Chan's clean performances at Trophee Eric Bompard that hit record scores for both SP and FP, "it was a trigger for me to look at my own abilities objectively". "I had nothing but respect and admiration for Patrick's perfect performance. But at that competition, if both Patrick and I did perfect performances, I knew clearly how much of a gap there would be, and that made a big impact. At that time, I would have lost by about 5 points."

No matter how perfectly he himself skated, there was a difference in the difficulty of jumps, the level of programme components and such; the reality was that if the opponent does not make mistakes, he (Hanyu) would lose. That was thrusted clearly at him in the form of results. "To cover the gap between Patrick and me, there was a need to increase PCS. To do that, I had to relook at /improve my skating skills which is the foundation, and I had to be more aware of maintaining my expressive abilities during the run-through practice of the physically demanding programme. In addition, I had to get points for spins and steps, and higher GOE for jumps, I thought about all these things."

Being conscious of the specific scores, having a strategy in the programme, he also came to have a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the practice that Coach Orser laid out for attaining high scores.

Also, he got a hint for his own growth from the words that Chan said. During the press conference after the competition, sitting next to him, Chan was explaining in detail to the reporters how he was mindful about the way he used his body to express the music. Hanyu listened and "it was a good reference for my own performance". After moving to Toronto, he had started learning English, so he probably understood the words between Chan and the reporter.

Hanyu at that time was only 19 (t/n. it was just before his 19th birthday). I have interviewed many athletes, not just figure skaters. But at press conferences of international competitions where foreign reporters overwhelm, even I feel that the nervousness is very pressurising. To turn that situation into a "learning area", that 'spirit of desire' deserves special mention.

When he received that impetus from Chan, at the same time there were words that made one feel the power of Hanyu's inquiring mind. "Surrounded by reporters and being interviewed on-the-spot is useful," he said. "After a competition, media people surround me; in the exchange that I have with reporters, I can look back at my performance and talk about it right after I finish performing. I like to analyse my own performance, so it is very stimulating to have questions flying at me from various view points, and also, it enables me to think in a way that's different from before. Interviews become a place for learning."

Even veteran athletes find it hard to say something like this. It clearly shows his youth, and stemming from it, his frankness and inquiring mind.

The result of the impetus and learning points from Chan was seen quickly, at the GPF merely 3 weeks after the crushing defeat at Eric Bompard. Hanyu rewrote the world's highest score for SP that was previously held by Chan, and his FP score was also his personal best. His total score was 13 points more than Chan and he won his first senior GPF.

Using the gold medal

Maintaining that energy/momentum was the key to the Olympic stage 2 months later.

His SP was a masterpiece and, for the 1st time in history, the score went above 100. He was in 1st place with 101.45. But for the FP, he fell at the 4S and 3F. He thought Chan who was 2nd after SP, would overtake him to be the winner. However, Chan also made mistakes and the result was that Hanyu won the gold medal.

"When I finished my performance, I thought the gold medal was not possible anymore. The failure of my FP made me realise the fearfulness of the Olympics, and I also felt the weight of the Olympics. I don't know why but somehow my body could not move at all."

The Olympic stage that's once in 4 years. Participating for the first time and suddenly, he stood right at the top. Winning the first figure skating men's gold medal for Japan, Hanyu decided immediately after that he would continue to evolve.

"In these next 4 years from now on, the pressure and the attention from the media and such, I think there will be a lot more of these extra things following me. In competitions, judges will not give me a higher evaluation just because I am an Olympic champion. How others see me does not matter. I myself must give a performance that's worthy of a champion and really receive a gold medal evaluation. In this sense, I must make use of the position of 'Olympic Champion'. Because it is a chance for me to keep putting pressure on myself. Like telling myself, 'Oi, show us an Olympic champion-like performance! Hanyu Yuzuru, show some growth!' (laughs)"

Then, the performance that left regrets on the Olympic stage, it became the will and desire to move forward to the next step. Thinking back, he said, "For the FP at Sochi, if I had landed the quad salchow and done a no-miss performance, I would very likely be dragged by the Olympic champion result. Precisely because the Sochi gold medal was one that was carrying regretful thoughts, that's why the present me exists. I got the Olympic gold medal at such a young age, and in addition, I received some problems to work on. As an athlete, this was really a lavish situation."

A shocking collision

The season after Sochi, just as he said, he grew further, stepping his foot into unknown territory. To prepare for the coming era of quads, he put a 4S and two 4Ts in his FP, and one of the 4T was in the 2nd half where more points would be given. To get used to this, he also put a 4T in the 2nd half of his SP. He spoke about the objective. "It's also preparation/groundwork for incorporating other kinds of quad jumps in future."

However, his efforts met an unexpected setback at the 1st competition of the season, Cup of China (CoC). In the 6 minute warm-up before FP, there was an accident; he and Han Yan of China crashed into each other. Blood could be seen dripping from Hanyu's head (t/n. his chin) and there were screams from the audience. Coach Orser quickly called the doctors (t/n. U.S. team doctors came to help). After checking him, the doctors said there were no signs of concussion, but people around him told him not to skate.

However, Hanyu was stubborn. "I will skate."

Orser reluctantly sent him into the rink, but of course, it was not the performance (that was planned). His whole body was battered and there was no strength, he fell a total of 5 times. What was pushing him on was his will power alone. After this, he continued to compete until GPF, but the venture to make his performance one rank higher had to be shelved.

At the end of the year, due to intermittent abdominal pain, he went to the hospital for a checkup. He was found to have Urachal Remnant Disorder and underwent surgery. After that, he needed to rest and recover for one month. When he started to train again, he sprained his right ankle. Due to all this, he was 2nd in the World Championship that he was aiming for a 2nd straight victory. Even though he had a 2nd straight win at GPF, to him it was a year of stagnation.

After Worlds, he looked back on the season that was troubled by many accidents. "The injuries and illnesses were hard on not only the body but on the mind/spirit as well. But even under those circumstances, I could at the very least leave some results; to me this experience was not not totally negative. For the accident at CoC, there was insufficient attention on my part, so it triggered a re-looking at the way I entered into the competition, including the way I manage my body condition. And also, more than anything else, the way I was supported by my coaches and the people around me, it was a season where I felt it even more deeply than the Olympic season. All these experiences will be a plus in my competitive skating life, and also in my 2nd career after I retire."

He also thought about the development of figure skating as a competitive sport. Based on his own accident, he said, "figure skating is a sport with an element of danger that can be a risk to life --that this is known to more people is a plus to the development of the sport."  He also said he was happy that it gave rise to a tide of thoughts on what is necessary to prevent concussions and other life-threatening accidents.

No matter what 'minus' elements there are, he transforms them into 'plus', seizes them and looks ahead. As a reporter, this attitude of his amazes me from time to time.

Even when he is bleeding from his head, he is determined that he must go on with the competition; it was also due to the pride that comes because of achieving the title of Olympic champion (t/n. 'pride' in the positive meaning). Hanyu very naturally has that on him.

The next season, 2015-2016, Hanyu once again challenged the programmes with a quad in the 2nd half.

In the 1st competition, Skate Canada, he was too conscious of the "quad in 2nd half" and made some unthinkable mistakes. As a result, he lost to Chan who had just returned from a year of rest.

However, it was different from before. Chan's programme layout was lower in difficulty than his own, and he lost to Chan's 'safe driving' performance. It made him check/confirm if the direction and path that he was going was correct. "Seeking even greater evolution is what is most like me."

For his SP, in exchange for not having a quad in the 2nd half, he put 2 quads in the first half, 4S and 4T, making it even more difficult. No matter what, he wants to challenge himself and this also raised his concentration power.  At the next competition, he scored 322.40, the first above-300 points in history. And then at GPF, he broke his own records with 330.43. With difficult programmes and clean performances back-to-back, it was a stunning victory over rivals Chan and Fernandez.

Storming through the 300-mark which no one has even touched before, Hanyu's mental aspect has also reached that high level which normal people cannot comprehend.

"At Sochi Olympics, my free skate performance failed. When I finished, I thought 'the gold medal is gone'. And at that moment, I realised, 'ah, so I was conscious of the gold medal and I was nervous'. This time, that experience at Sochi was put to good use. Before entering the venue, I was aware that I was thinking 'I want to surpass 300 points'. So first, I acknowledged that I am thinking about that and putting pressure on myself, and then, 'if so, I have to do this' and I think I controlled well my mental state."

In a situation of being closely chased, the strength to look at himself calmly brought forth a spectacular feat.

For the 2016-2017 season, he decided on new challenges, having a quad loop in both SP and FP and a layout that's more difficult. When 2016 started, the pain in his left foot (t/n. lisfranc injury) became worse, and after Worlds, even walking was not allowed and this restriction period continued for one and a half months. But in spite of that, he still aimed for further evolution.

Connection with the audience

But it was also an inevitable decision. The previous season, Boyang Jin (China) had 3 types of quads, including the most difficult (of the quads jumped til now) quad lutz, and 6 quads in total for SP and FP and he was 3rd in Worlds. Then Shoma Uno did the world's 1st quad flip in the Team Challenge Cup in April.

Hanyu himself opened up the frontier of 300 points. Rising young skaters have quads as weapons to challenge him. And it's not just about having quads, it is about the number of quads and how well they are done; this era of competition has come.

This season, in addition to jumps and layout, Hanyu is widening his range of expression. This can be said as his real value/ ability.

His SP is Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy'. It's rock music that brings to mind his Sochi Olympics SP 'Parisienne Walkways'. FP is 'Hope and Legacy' which is a combination of 2 pieces of piano music from Joe Hisaishi that Hanyu likes very much. They are 2 contrasting types of music. SP is an uptempo music that Hanyu is very good at; FP piano music has a rhythm and sounds that are harder to grasp for jump timing. Having 2 completely opposite types of music was for raising his own expressive abilities. At GP Final which he won for the 4th consecutive time, he spoke of being aware of a 'connection with the audience'.

"This season's SP, I am performing it like a rock star having a live concert, so it's a programme that is not possible without the audience. In France (GPF), the audience also became very excited and it was very fun. Then for the FP, I could perform while feeling the music with my whole body. It's different from the SP, it's not a programme where the audience becomes more and more excited and clap and go WA!!! But during the performance, I could feel the gaze of the audience, and when I did my jumps, I could see there were people praying for me. I connected with the audience, in other words, our feelings became one, and I felt this happiness."

Something that is in the beat and the meaning of the lyrics of Prince; abandoning yourself to the piano music of Joe Hisaishi and feeling the wind, the trees, the air and other things of nature. Sharing with the audience the world that you express through skating, wanting to create a programme that's like having a conversation with the audience -- that is one of the complete forms of figure skating which is sports and also art.

From TV and books etc, Hanyu studies the ways of thinking of athletes from other sports and reflects them in skating. He often says that this is his weapon. Recently, gymnast Kohei Uchimura who won a consecutive victory at Rio Olympics said, "I had to win, it was good." Words in which you could feel the heavy pressure on someone who stood at the top, those words left a deep impression on him. Without being imprisoned by existing boundaries, he wants to pursue figure skating further and further, this is his thinking.

"Receiving the programmes from the choreographer, integrating jumps into it and performing it, that is my job/work. When all the jumps are completed beautifully, then it can be called a real performance. That is why I am so regretful (kuyashii); while adding in a new quad and doing a layout that's more difficult than last season, I am still not able to make a new personal best score this season. If I speak my true feelings, I want to raise my scores and become the Yuzuru Hanyu that no one can catch."

For his own growth, for figure skating as a sport, his desire/greed never fades, and this is his true strength as a skater. And it can also be said that this is why he makes us feel that for him there are infinite possibilities.

-- original article by sports writer Ms.Toshimi Oriyama;  very sorry if I didn’t translate it well enough. 

[hotspreadpage]

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

In his 2003 book Moneyball, Michael Lewis recounts how the management of the Oakland Athletics revolutionized baseball by relying on statistical analyses rather than intuition to choose new players. Before General Manager Billy Beane turned a single metric — on-base plus slugging (OPS) — into his North Star for every decision, team managers preferred strategies that were unlikely to fail rather than those that seemed most efficient. “The pain of looking bad,” Lewis writes, “is worse than the gain of making the best move.”

As a content marketing manager tasked with delivering my quota of MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) and hitting publication dates, I get it. Picking an approach that seems unlikely to fail is safe. Proposing a radical new management system seems not only bad, but foolhardy. “Why,” managers the world over ask every day, “should we try to fix something that isn’t broken?”

Unfortunately for status-quo fans everywhere, visionaries and innovators understand that what counts as “broken” is constantly in flux. In 2001, before Beane began his quiet revolution inside Major League Baseball, no other team’s decision-making style appeared broken. Yet Beane would soon overtake them because his success depended on breaking things.

Likewise, in the increasingly noisy and densely populated online world, the success of our content relies on its ability to break things. We have to break through to audiences underwhelmed by mediocre marketing. We have to break the habits of consumers who have always used a competing product or read a competitor’s newsletter. And, most importantly, we have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams.

We have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams, says @andreafryrear. Click To Tweet

Although, really, it’s just the last part, the management part, that we have to break — and by break, I mean teams must decide on their own structure without heavy-handed interference from management. Before the accusations of marketing communism begin to fly, let me be clear: I’m not advocating the dissolution of management altogether. I’m proposing that on a modern content marketing team (whose goals, obstacles, and workloads are typically so huge that it’s a wonder they don’t all sleep under their desks), a manager’s job is to hire amazing people, empower them using Agile principles and processes, and then work like hell to keep anyone else from interfering.

That’s a lot to do, so let’s start from the top.

Agile marketing team – what is it?

Some teams are naturally adaptive and data-driven, and could technically be considered agile (lowercase “a”). To qualify as Agile (capital “A”), a marketing team needs a structure that enables it to adapt and iterate.

This structure could take various forms, including Scrum (the classic Agile process based around sprints), Kanban (a pull-based system that uses work-in-progress limits), or a hybrid of the team’s invention. Most Agile teams work in sprints — set periods during which team members aim to complete a set amount of work that’s connected to a long-term plan. Each sprint lasts between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common duration.

A mainstay of the Agile approach is the stand-up — a 15-minute meeting, usually held at the beginning of every work day, during which team members stay on their feet. They take turns updating everyone on what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what obstacles they need help to overcome.

Whatever form the structure takes, some kind of systematic foundation is needed to keep an Agile team from descending into frenetic reactions disconnected from a long-term plan.

Changing your mind all the time does not make you Agile.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

Step 1 – Hire amazing people

Much has been written (some of it on this blog and in CCO magazine) about the growing talent crunch plaguing content marketing, so we don’t need to go into a lot of depth on this topic. The harsh truth is, it’s hard to find good content help these days. But the interviews, networking, and early-morning coffee meetings more than pay off when you consider the impact that truly passionate and skilled content creators have on your organization.

In an interconnected, digital world, great marketing can spread at the speed of a click. It doesn’t matter if it came from a team with a multimillion-dollar budget or a solopreneur doing it all on her own. The internet is nothing if not democratic.

That means finding — and retaining — creators who can consistently produce legitimately awesome work that gives you a regular shot at hitting the digital jackpot. There is no greater source of competitive advantage in content marketing than a talented team.

But those teams need the space and freedom to create or the legitimately awesome will rapidly devolve into lethargic and yawn-inducing.

#Content teams need space to create or the legitimately awesome will devolve into lethargy. @AndreaFryrear Click To Tweet

Step 2 – Empower teams with agility

Whether it’s through an Agile iteration or sprint (set length of time during which a team commits to producing a set amount of content) or work-in-progress limits (inflexible limit on how much content can be in any given state such as research, writing, editing, review at one time), Agile teams are governed by limitations on their workflow. This isn’t because they’re lazy or can’t handle the workload. It’s because when people have a split focus, they do terrible work (and it takes them longer to do it).

For example, let’s imagine that your current content plans include creating a new webinar, whose launch you will support with an e-book and a series of blog posts. You plan each piece, make assignments, and send the team off to work. A week passes and you check on progress. It turns out that one person got derailed when sales asked for lead-generation collateral, another lost a day to responding to angry customer tweets, and your CEO wanted a home-page rewrite that took precedence over the blog posts.

Now you’ve got three half-finished content items, which is like having none at all.

You can’t give a webinar that ends abruptly halfway through. Nobody wants to download an e-book that’s just an outline. And blog posts just don’t work if they’re composed entirely of headlines, header tags, and target keywords.

An Agile content team, on the other hand, would have focused on finishing one piece before starting something else. Its members could have told sales and the CEO that their requests would be added to content’s Agile backlog (a prioritized to-do list that serves as the source of all work done by the team), not to the top of the list of immediate to-do’s.

An #Agile content team focuses on finishing one piece before starting something else, says @AndreaFryrear. Click To Tweet

As a bonus, not only do Agile teams produce more content in less time, they also make team members happier and more engaged. And that means team members stick around longer, are easier to recruit, and help solve that thorny talent problem we talked about earlier.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Stop Working So Hard: Agile Marketers Work Smarter

Step 3 – Get in other people’s way

You might have expected me to close by telling you to get out of the way so your team can work their Agile magic, but that’s not the final step. On our hypothetical content team, we had external requests being thrown in from all sides and derailing our content creators. Even on an Agile team, not everybody will happily chirp, “Nope,” when an executive tries to interrupt their work. Agile teams are empowered, but that doesn’t mean they have super powers.

Managers need to act like an offensive line, getting in the way of people who are trying to disrupt their team while they’re executing a beautiful play. They attend daily stand-up meetings, listening attentively and volunteering to help remove roadblocks (and then doing it). They genuinely value the creative force that their team can wield, and they actively work to create a situation where it can do its thing.

Respect tradition … or profit from it

Marketing, like baseball, has ways it’s always been done. We can choose to adhere to traditional ways of managing and creating content, or we can look outside our own typical way of thinking to gain the upper hand. Someone in your niche will be using an Agile approach to start breaking things very soon. Imagine what would happen if it was you.

Hear Andrea Fryrear explain user-story mapping at the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30 in Las Vegas. Register today and use BLOG100 to save $100.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers syndicated from http://ift.tt/2maPRjm

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Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers

In his 2003 book Moneyball, Michael Lewis recounts how the management of the Oakland Athletics revolutionized baseball by relying on statistical analyses rather than intuition to choose new players. Before General Manager Billy Beane turned a single metric — on-base plus slugging (OPS) — into his North Star for every decision, team managers preferred strategies that were unlikely to fail rather than those that seemed most efficient. “The pain of looking bad,” Lewis writes, “is worse than the gain of making the best move.”

As a content marketing manager tasked with delivering my quota of MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) and hitting publication dates, I get it. Picking an approach that seems unlikely to fail is safe. Proposing a radical new management system seems not only bad, but foolhardy. “Why,” managers the world over ask every day, “should we try to fix something that isn’t broken?”

Unfortunately for status-quo fans everywhere, visionaries and innovators understand that what counts as “broken” is constantly in flux. In 2001, before Beane began his quiet revolution inside Major League Baseball, no other team’s decision-making style appeared broken. Yet Beane would soon overtake them because his success depended on breaking things.

Likewise, in the increasingly noisy and densely populated online world, the success of our content relies on its ability to break things. We have to break through to audiences underwhelmed by mediocre marketing. We have to break the habits of consumers who have always used a competing product or read a competitor’s newsletter. And, most importantly, we have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams.

We have to break the way we manage and structure our content teams, says @andreafryrear. Click To Tweet

Although, really, it’s just the last part, the management part, that we have to break — and by break, I mean teams must decide on their own structure without heavy-handed interference from management. Before the accusations of marketing communism begin to fly, let me be clear: I’m not advocating the dissolution of management altogether. I’m proposing that on a modern content marketing team (whose goals, obstacles, and workloads are typically so huge that it’s a wonder they don’t all sleep under their desks), a manager’s job is to hire amazing people, empower them using Agile principles and processes, and then work like hell to keep anyone else from interfering.

That’s a lot to do, so let’s start from the top.

Agile marketing team – what is it?

Some teams are naturally adaptive and data-driven, and could technically be considered agile (lowercase “a”). To qualify as Agile (capital “A”), a marketing team needs a structure that enables it to adapt and iterate.

This structure could take various forms, including Scrum (the classic Agile process based around sprints), Kanban (a pull-based system that uses work-in-progress limits), or a hybrid of the team’s invention. Most Agile teams work in sprints — set periods during which team members aim to complete a set amount of work that’s connected to a long-term plan. Each sprint lasts between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common duration.

A mainstay of the Agile approach is the stand-up — a 15-minute meeting, usually held at the beginning of every work day, during which team members stay on their feet. They take turns updating everyone on what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what obstacles they need help to overcome.

Whatever form the structure takes, some kind of systematic foundation is needed to keep an Agile team from descending into frenetic reactions disconnected from a long-term plan.

Changing your mind all the time does not make you Agile.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered [With Video]

Step 1 – Hire amazing people

Much has been written (some of it on this blog and in CCO magazine) about the growing talent crunch plaguing content marketing, so we don’t need to go into a lot of depth on this topic. The harsh truth is, it’s hard to find good content help these days. But the interviews, networking, and early-morning coffee meetings more than pay off when you consider the impact that truly passionate and skilled content creators have on your organization.

In an interconnected, digital world, great marketing can spread at the speed of a click. It doesn’t matter if it came from a team with a multimillion-dollar budget or a solopreneur doing it all on her own. The internet is nothing if not democratic.

That means finding — and retaining — creators who can consistently produce legitimately awesome work that gives you a regular shot at hitting the digital jackpot. There is no greater source of competitive advantage in content marketing than a talented team.

But those teams need the space and freedom to create or the legitimately awesome will rapidly devolve into lethargic and yawn-inducing.

#Content teams need space to create or the legitimately awesome will devolve into lethargy. @AndreaFryrear Click To Tweet

Step 2 – Empower teams with agility

Whether it’s through an Agile iteration or sprint (set length of time during which a team commits to producing a set amount of content) or work-in-progress limits (inflexible limit on how much content can be in any given state such as research, writing, editing, review at one time), Agile teams are governed by limitations on their workflow. This isn’t because they’re lazy or can’t handle the workload. It’s because when people have a split focus, they do terrible work (and it takes them longer to do it).

For example, let’s imagine that your current content plans include creating a new webinar, whose launch you will support with an e-book and a series of blog posts. You plan each piece, make assignments, and send the team off to work. A week passes and you check on progress. It turns out that one person got derailed when sales asked for lead-generation collateral, another lost a day to responding to angry customer tweets, and your CEO wanted a home-page rewrite that took precedence over the blog posts.

Now you’ve got three half-finished content items, which is like having none at all.

You can’t give a webinar that ends abruptly halfway through. Nobody wants to download an e-book that’s just an outline. And blog posts just don’t work if they’re composed entirely of headlines, header tags, and target keywords.

An Agile content team, on the other hand, would have focused on finishing one piece before starting something else. Its members could have told sales and the CEO that their requests would be added to content’s Agile backlog (a prioritized to-do list that serves as the source of all work done by the team), not to the top of the list of immediate to-do’s.

An #Agile content team focuses on finishing one piece before starting something else, says @AndreaFryrear. Click To Tweet

As a bonus, not only do Agile teams produce more content in less time, they also make team members happier and more engaged. And that means team members stick around longer, are easier to recruit, and help solve that thorny talent problem we talked about earlier.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Stop Working So Hard: Agile Marketers Work Smarter

Step 3 – Get in other people’s way

You might have expected me to close by telling you to get out of the way so your team can work their Agile magic, but that’s not the final step. On our hypothetical content team, we had external requests being thrown in from all sides and derailing our content creators. Even on an Agile team, not everybody will happily chirp, “Nope,” when an executive tries to interrupt their work. Agile teams are empowered, but that doesn’t mean they have super powers.

Managers need to act like an offensive line, getting in the way of people who are trying to disrupt their team while they’re executing a beautiful play. They attend daily stand-up meetings, listening attentively and volunteering to help remove roadblocks (and then doing it). They genuinely value the creative force that their team can wield, and they actively work to create a situation where it can do its thing.

Respect tradition … or profit from it

Marketing, like baseball, has ways it’s always been done. We can choose to adhere to traditional ways of managing and creating content, or we can look outside our own typical way of thinking to gain the upper hand. Someone in your niche will be using an Agile approach to start breaking things very soon. Imagine what would happen if it was you.

Hear Andrea Fryrear explain user-story mapping at the Intelligent Content Conference March 28-30 in Las Vegas. Register today and use BLOG100 to save $100.

This article originally appeared in the February issue of CCO magazine. Subscribe for your free print copy today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Play Marketball: Turn Disconnected Teams Into High Performers posted first on http://ift.tt/2maTWEr