#just reframing your perception of something to fit your own wants

[marc--chilton]

house says to wilson, "you can't be going out with cuddy because you're straight"

i'm going to be so honest i did not clock that as house insulting cuddy thru implying she's transfem (and that being a bad thing?) at first for a good little while there i thought that was him insulting wilson for being in the closet (you COULD be going out with cuddy, oh, but straight (cis) people only go for straight (cis) people, right? hmm how about that)

or it's the double edged sword of insults. "you're BOTH gay" wow he really is so smart at being a total cunt

[adamevetips25]

A Discussion On The Psychological Benefits of Wearing Sexy Lingerie

Wearing sexy lingerie isn’t just about external appearance—it can deeply influence how individuals feel about themselves, both emotionally and psychologically. Here's a thoughtful exploration of the psychological benefits of wearing sexy lingerie, especially in terms of self-esteem, empowerment, and identity:

💖 1. Boosting Self-Esteem from Within Private Confidence: Lingerie often works like a “secret armor.” Knowing you’re wearing something beautiful underneath—even if no one else sees it—can create a quiet internal boost Affirmation of Self-Worth: Choosing and wearing pieces that celebrate one’s body reinforces the belief: "I am worth this effort. I deserve to feel sexy." Body Neutrality & Acceptance: For many, sexy lingerie becomes a form of reclaiming or appreciating their body, moving beyond shame or insecurity.

Quote from expert: “When a woman wears lingerie she loves, she’s not performing for anyone—it’s a conversation with herself,” says Dr. Jennifer Baumgartner, clinical psychologist and author of You Are What You Wear.

💪 2. Empowerment and Personal Agency Choice Equals Power: The very act of selecting lingerie that aligns with your mood, aesthetic, or fantasy is a form of self-expression and control over one’s image. Non-Sexual Empowerment: While lingerie is associated with sex appeal, many wearers say it has nothing to do with partners. It’s about personal empowerment, independence, and feeling grounded in their identity.

Real insight: Savage X Fenty's success lies in its message that lingerie is for everyone, regardless of gender, size, or shape—removing the “performative” aspect and focusing on self-love.

🧠 3. Psychological Ritual and Mood Shifting Morning Ritual: Putting on well-fitted, attractive lingerie can become a daily practice that signals self-care—like applying perfume or wearing red lipstick. Mood Influence: Soft lace, rich colors, and flattering cuts can alter perception of the day ahead. Feeling “put-together” underneath often encourages more confident decisions and posture throughout the day.

Therapeutic note: Therapists sometimes suggest upgrading intimate wear for individuals healing from trauma or rebuilding post-divorce to reconnect with sensuality and personal pleasure.

🌈 4. Gender Identity and Personal Expression Beyond the Binary: Sexy lingerie provides a form of gender expression for non-binary and transgender individuals. It can affirm identity and create safety and joy in the body. Diverse Representation: With inclusive brands now showcasing all gender identities in lingerie campaigns, more people feel seen, valid, and celebrated.

💬 5. Freedom from Shame and Societal Expectations Wearing lingerie can be a form of rebellion against shame-based narratives around sexuality, body image, or aging. For many, it reclaims femininity or sensuality on their own terms—not based on societal or patriarchal expectations.

In the words of lingerie designer Karolina Laskowska: “True luxury lingerie is less about seduction and more about autonomy—wearing it because you want to feel powerful, not to please anyone else.”

✅ Summary: The Feel-Good Effects of Lingerie Psychological Benefit How It Manifests Increased Self-Esteem Private confidence boost, body celebration Personal Empowerment Assertion of agency and identity Mood Regulation Lingerie as part of mood-enhancing daily rituals Gender Affirmation Expression and validation of identity Rejection of Shame Reframing lingerie as a tool of self-love, not objectification

[onlinecoursesguniguru]

How to Improve Self-Esteem: Simple Steps to Build Lasting Confidence

Confidence is not loud. It’s not arrogance. It’s a quiet knowing—a grounded belief in your worth and your path.

It begins with knowing your worth. This is your anchor. Your value isn't tied to performance or perception—it’s inherent. When you internalize this, you stop shrinking to fit into boxes that were never built for you.

Then comes intention. Confidence is not accidental—it is intentional. Ask yourself, what am I moving toward? and who am I becoming in the process? Intentions are the compass of a confident life.

You might not realize it, but your style tells your story. When you embrace what feels like you, confidence follows naturally. Fashion becomes an act of self-love. Explore this further through GuniGuru’s 10X Confidence course—designed to help you harness your unique presence and power.

Confidence also flourishes where there's self-compassion. Talk to yourself like someone you love. Hold space for imperfection. Trust that progress matters more than perfection.

A positive mindset doesn’t deny struggle; it reframes it. Confidence grows when we choose to see setbacks as setups for something greater. It’s in how we rise, how we reframe, and how we move forward.

Posture matters, too. Stand tall. Own your space. The way you carry yourself tells others how you feel about you. And here’s the truth: you don’t wait until you feel confident to act—you act until you feel it.

Every challenge holds a lesson. Let each one be a building block of your growth. Learn. Adapt. Evolve. Your resilience becomes your confidence.

Surround yourself with people who see your light, even on days when you don’t. A strong circle reminds you of your strength and reflects the best version of you.

Speak like you believe in your voice. Boost confidence. Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Speak with the power of someone who has a right to be heard—because you do.

Finally, celebrate yourself. Not just the milestones, but the moments in between. Progress, however small, is still a victory.

Confidence isn’t a destination. It’s a way of walking through life. When you live boldly and beautifully, the world begins to respond in kind.

2. Listicle Style — “10 Easy Ways to Supercharge Your Confidence Today”

Want to glow from the inside out? Confidence is your secret weapon. Here are 10 real, doable ways to make it part of your everyday life:

1. Know Your Worth Remind yourself: I bring value, just by being me. Start here, and the rest follows.

2. Set Clear Intentions Write down your goals. Be specific. This helps you show up with purpose.

3. Dress Your Power Wear what makes you feel unstoppable. Want to go deeper? GuniGuru’s 10X Confidence course teaches you how to match your inner confidence with your outward style.

4. Be Kinder to Yourself Talk to yourself like your own best friend. No harsh self-talk allowed.

5. Choose Positivity Daily When in doubt, focus on what’s going right. Confidence thrives in gratitude.

6. Stand Like You Mean It Posture is power. Shoulders back, head high—you’ll feel the difference.

7. Flip the Script on Challenges Ask, “What can I learn?” instead of “Why me?” Every problem is a stepping stone.

8. Find Your Cheerleaders Surround yourself with people who lift you up—not those who tear you down.

9. Speak Boldly Ditch the “I think” and “maybe.” Say what you mean. Be clear. Be proud.

10. Celebrate Every Win Yes, even the tiny ones. Confidence grows when you recognize your own progress.

Confidence isn’t just for the big stages—it’s built in daily moments. Use these tips and step into your power today.

3. Guide Format — “Your Confidence Roadmap: From Self-Doubt to Self-Belief”

Welcome to your personal confidence roadmap. Whether you're just starting or simply need a boost, these steps will help you live boldly and beautifully.

🧭 Step 1: Know Your Worth

Start with a solid foundation. List your strengths, achievements, and values. Remind yourself that you deserve to take up space.

✍️ Step 2: Set Your Intentions

Confidence loves clarity. Define what “living confidently” looks like for you. Is it speaking up more? Leading a project? Write it down.

👗 Step 3: Express Through Style

What you wear influences how you feel. Let your style reflect your energy. Not sure where to start? Check out 10X Confidence by GuniGuru for real transformation inside and out.

💬 Step 4: Speak Kindly to Yourself

Replace self-criticism with encouragement. Start a habit of daily affirmations or journaling what you're proud of.

🌱 Step 5: Focus on Growth

Adopt a “what can I learn?” mindset. Confidence grows in curiosity and resilience—not perfection.

🧍 Step 6: Use Body Language

Practice standing tall, keeping eye contact, and using open gestures. Confidence is seen before it’s heard.

🧗 Step 7: Embrace the Hard Stuff

Each challenge is a training ground. Reflect on past obstacles you've overcome—they’re proof you’re capable.

🤝 Step 8: Curate Your Circle

Confidence blooms in supportive soil. Choose friends, mentors, and communities that reinforce your belief in yourself.

🗣️ Step 9: Communicate with Clarity

Say what you mean without shrinking your voice. Confidence sounds like conviction—backed by authenticity.

🪞 Step 10: Reflect and Celebrate

End each week with a reflection: What did I do well? What grew my confidence? Track your wins to build momentum.

Confidence is cultivated. It's not born—it’s built. Follow this roadmap, and you'll discover a version of yourself that doesn’t just dream but acts with boldness and beauty.

[floatingbook]

I've no idea if this is the right place to ask this, probably not but I'm a bit desperate since I've got no one to talk to irl about this. I feel massive, my bmi is considered healthy, people would describe me as average in every aspect, at least from the side. From the front I feel I look like a personified bulldog, an ox, stupid dumb eyes, weirdly shaped mouth, and my face is still kind of my main selling point. I've got big shoulders, broad hips and upper tights, mostly muscle, I done very little to get them. When I went to the gym I built up a bit more muscle and quit immediately it just highlighted everything even more, that stuff luckily went away after a while but only as far as what I gained through the exercises, the rest stayed. I probably would be completely ok with myself if I had grown a bit taller, the proportions would fit a lot better then.

Next to other women (and enough men) I feel like a cartoon character that was placed into the wrong series, a completely other "drawing style" for lack of better words. I hate myself so much, I don't leave the house other than for work and chores anymore, I always feel like a clown. I apologize for the word vomit, but I'm desperate, do you have any suggestions? Anything I could read, listen to?

You seem to have a very skewered perception of your body. From what you have written, you’re healthy and strong, so you have little to worry about health wise? You don’t describe having trouble to carry out any action physically, so you are in good physical condition? And apparently, you get strong fast when you put yourself into it? All of this sound great to me. We often aren’t good judges of wether we’ve put a lot of work into getting things done, so I’m taking your affirmation that you did very little to earn your muscles with a grain of salt. It’s more likely that you have fallen into a habit of discounting your own work. That, and the fact that not all women have the same metabolism. We don’t all built muscle the same way, and in that case you’d certainly be better served by working into looking at it gratefully, instead of putting yourself down for something you’re naturally better at than other women. Life is not a competition, we have different characteristics and advantages from the beginning, and denying it or pretending it has any moral weight does not help you move forward.

You’re not a clown, you very likely look nothing like a bulldog nor an ox. You’re maybe a little on the short side, but a strong woman. You would feel better about yourself if you focused on what you have: a functioning, healthy, strong body, one which allows you to carry out the tasks you want to do. What others think about your face is irrelevant, because 1. you can’t do anything about it (you can’t control their minds) 2. you can’t do anything about it (are you going to get plastic surgery? to switch bodies?) 3. do you really want to hold yourself to the irrealistic standards of social media? there’s nothing genuine about full make-up photoshopped faces and bodies, so your scale of judgement is never going to be satisfied 4. why do you let others have all the power over your feelings about yourself?

Do you judge other women you see in the street like this? Do you think to yourself “oh she’s an elephant”, “oh she has a dog’s face”, “oh her proportions are crazy”? I bet not. You’re walking and worrying about how they judge you. Except they aren’t, just like you they are wondering “does she think i’m too short and too wide?”, “does she think my haircut makes me look old?”, … There are way less people judging you than you think, and for those who do, do you think they obsess over you specifically all day? At worst, they see you, you register in their brain, they make a comment to themselves, and then they move on. You don’t live rent-free in people’s heads. We all have better things to do and bigger fish to fry than ponder the BMI of strangers on the street and then obsess over it for days.

A small exercise to put things into perspective, would you talk about one of your friend like this? Would you disparage her like this? Then why is it acceptable to do it to you? You should treat yourself like you would a friend. You need to be your own friend.

Being short is not a moral failing, it’s just a fact. Being strong, having big shoulders, broad hips, strong thighs and muscle is not a bad thing. It only makes you a normal woman. And we all have to accept that we are just ourselves, nothing more, and that we’ll never be anybody else. There’s no point in wishing you were more like “other women” because it won’t happen, you’re just setting yourself up for lifelong misery. I guarantee you that you are not a cartoon character next to other women. Women have an extensive range of body shapes, we’re not all just carbon-copies of each other with you as the single outlier.

Maybe you’re not looking at yourself enough, or looking at yourself too much with others’ eyes. By the latter I mean that you’re always looking at yourself in mirrors or in pictures, in the reflections in glass windows when you go out. You’re not looking directly at yourself. You’re looking at a distorted, at a filtered image of yourself. You’re looking at something distinct from yourself, something alien. Cover mirrors, stop taking selfies, try to forget that constructed image for a while. Look at yourself with your own two eyes and nothing else if you really have to look. Don’t focus so much on having an appearance while you exist and instead focus on existing. Pretend you’re invisible. Wear your sloppiest clothes on a grocery errand and realise that no one cares. You’re not going to be arrested over it, the cashier is not going to refuse your money for it. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to matter.

You have nothing you need to hate yourself for. You are just a woman, alive. That’s what you should focus on. You’re fine, you’re normal, you’re average, you’re just alive. Push yourself a little, get out there, nothing will happen to you and it will become easier.

If anyone has any reading or listening to suggest, feel free to link it in the notes. But I think that what you need most, here, is to cultivate an attitude of not caring about it. Try to relax about existing. There’s mental reframing to do, certainly, but most important is repeated practise. Go out there and exist.

[intheseautumnhands]

More Sorting Hat Chats

All right, I have had Daughter stuck in my head all day, and I want to talk about Abigail Hobbs.

(I basically always want to talk about Abigail Hobbs, she is my favorite television character and would make a good running for my singular favorite character ever if I could ever pick one.  If you are considering if this is an invitation, please take it as one. But, I digress.)

As I can tell, there’s been discussion of Will and Hannibal’s sortings, and nobody else in the show. I’d love to dig in and do the whole rest of the show, but I don’t feel like I’ve rewatched recently enough to do everybody. I can always talk about Abigail, though!

As I continue to be exceedingly wordy as I do these things (whoops. I tried...), under a cut it goes again.

Let’s start on the Primary. We know pretty clearly that a lot of what Abigail has done has been focused on survival above all. We know for a fact that her darkest actions were: we see her kill Boyle in self-defense, and when she’s discussing helping her father, she says outright, “I knew it was them or me.” That... doesn’t actually help narrow it down, of course, because none of the houses have a claim on survival, and you could come at that feeling from any start point. But what it points to for me is that whatever her Primary is, it’s Burnt, and probably pretty badly. She hasn’t had the ability to come at decisions from a standpoint of what’s right, or what’s good for anyone else, or hell, even what’s good for her -- it’s all about what will get me through this alive.

When she does talk about what she’s done, it all feels very instinctive: “I’m a monster.” “Some places are stained now. Some people too. I know I am.” Even this: “I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t feel ugly when I killed Nick Boyle. I felt good. That’s why it was so easy to lie about it.” There doesn’t seem to be any weighing or rationalizing behind it, and every time she does try to come off as doing things from a rational place, it feels extremely put on -- that first scene after she wakes up, when she talks to Alana, for example, and Alana immediately sees through her.

So, not a Bird. She could be a Lion, instinctively knowing that what she’s done for her own safety is wrong and trying to fight that feelings -- it would fit with her judgements of herself, and with how she talks to Will about killing, trying to find someone else to rationalize it for her. But: I’m going to argue that’s she’s an extremely Burned Badger Primary.

First: why Badger, not Snake, when she’s shut herself down until she’s the only person she’s looking out for and that’s basically the original definition of a Petrified Snake? Because Abigail isn’t shutting herself off from connections in general. As soon as Hannibal reaches out, Abigail doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t try to back away from that connection; she leans into it, tells him about her nightmares and trusts him when he asks her. She pushes Will away -- until she’s reassured that he’ll accept enough of what she’s done that she doesn’t have to, and then she’s so quick to accept him and talk to him about it that she almost reveals her other secret in the very next conversation we see them have. She even opens up a little to Freddie, despite the fact that she has to know that’s a bad idea.

That conversation is also one of the reasons I’m going to call Badger, not Lion -- specifically, her view on Nick Boyle sounds so hard like either depersonalizing him to make herself feel better, or trying and failing to depersonalize him to make herself feel better. “I blame Nick Boyle for Nick Boyle’s death. He killed Marissa, he got what was coming to him.” We the audience already know this isn’t true to some extent -- we’ve seen Boyle crop up in Abigail’s dream, among the girls she clearly still feels guilty about, but it doesn’t feel like something she’s saying entirely for Freddie’s benefit either. It’s so emphatic, and it’s not a lie that will necessarily make her look better -- it makes so much more sense if it’s what she wants to believe.

And then Freddie blows it up, reframes it all and makes the guilt flood back in. And it could be either Lion or Badger -- he’s no longer such a bad guy, so having killed him is no longer something she can even try to frame as okay. But, even if Boyle wasn’t a killer, it was still self-defense. Reframing who he was doesn’t necessarily reframe what happened, and the fact that it still changes her feelings on it so thoroughly is part of what makes me go to Badger instead.

She doesn’t react to Hannibal the way I imagine a Lion with all that guilt would, either. Even after she knows for certain that he’s a killer, in the 3x09 flashbacks -- even when she’s outright saying that she’s not sure it’s smart to trust or accept him, she’s not really that guarded with him. If she’s a Lion, her talk with Freddie about Boyle and her guilt for the part she played under duress in her father’s killings speaks to some pretty intense gut feelings about killing and people who have done it. I see absolutely none of that in how she talks to Hannibal immediately after he confesses to killing more people than her father.

(There is some debate about how accurate the 3x09 flashbacks are, I believe, whether they’re closer to Will’s hallucinations of Abigail than actual memories; I do think some of the details may be embellished or changed by Hannibal’s memories, but I’m going to assume they’re more accurate than not to make this easier on myself.)

There’s also what she says in the therapy flashback, and yes, it’s clearly led and influence by Hannibal, but it still appears to be her words and her emotions:

He was as good to me as he knew how to be. Hunting with him was the best time I ever had.

And there’s the simple fact that this is the tact Hannibal takes with her, over and over, which I think can be read into. Hannibal is perceptive, very good at reading and manipulating people, and over and over again, when he wants a way to connect to or manipulate Abigail, he puts himself in a position where she can mentally link him with her father and her family. The tea and the dinner in 1x04, the dinner with Freddie and comforting Abigail in the kitchen in 1x09, “You accepted your father. Would it be so difficult to accept me?” -- it’s the tact he takes with Will too, to encourage his desire to bond with Abigail, pushing him to think of the three of them as family. It makes sense if it’s because he can feel both of them looking for that connection, and knows it’ll serve his desires and plans best if they find it with him and each other.

(I don’t want to go into this too long because I’ve already talked a lot, but there’s also something so fascinating about the idea of Abigail, whose trauma is about fathers and family and girls like her, whose downfall is in who she gives her trust to, being a Badger. And that’s not, y’know, a reason to sort her that way -- but it does add a really interesting layer to her if she is one.)

Okay. Let’s see if I can do the Secondary in under a thousand words this time.

Abigail is trying so hard to perform Snake, or maybe a really fast Bird. She’s trying to manipulate, to show everything what they need to see to want to protect or help her, to have a plan, to be one step ahead of everybody else.

And she’s really, really bad at it. Because Abigail has a loud, screaming Lion Secondary that hates every second of what she’s doing. All the decisions that give her any sense of control, all the decisions that seem to come from what she wants to do instead of what she thinks is best -- going back home to confront what happened, unburying Boyle, going back with Will again in 1x12, even, to some extent, agreeing to work with Freddie -- are impulsive, and involve facing the issues instead of trying to bury them. And the biggest one of all, the thing she does to feel like she has control, unburying Boyle -- it’s the worst possible thing she could do, to try and keep herself safe, but not having to wait for it to happen, to be able to confront it head-on, is the part that matters to her.

She’s just really bad at lying in general, too. Every time she’s around somebody she likes or who knows the smallest part of her secret, she says something that hints about what else is going on. Again, the first time we see her talk to Will alone after she’s stopped trying to push him away, she almost gives it all away: “I wish I had killed him. For killing my mom. For killing all those girls, for making me...” Then there���s what she says to Jack while standing over Nick Boyle’s body, her speech about how she survived -- she’s trying to dismiss suspicion, but she can’t help some honesty leaking out even though it does nothing to help her sound innocent. Alana pegs her as trying to manipulate people and trying to be too practical in their very first conversation, that one that seems so far removed from what she’s like in private, with people she does trust to any extent.

It’s also notable that even with all her manipulation and masks being so see-through to everyone around her, she still ends up with some of that reaction she’s looking for anyway, and not just in Will’s crusade to protect her -- Alana says she can’t help but care about her as well. (You could easily argue Freddie seems to have some extent of genuine feeling towards her as well, sympathy if nothing else, though that’s more debatable. Hannibal is entirely debatable as to whether he has genuine feelings for her or not, but if you view their relationship that way, there’s that as well.) Lion Secondary’s accidental inspiration maybe, twisted and warped by that manipulative performance and the situation altogether?

In conclusion: Badly Burnt Badger Primary / Lion Secondary (probably at least somewhat burnt, or at least repressed) with inexpert Snake and Bird Performances layered on top.

[aspire-to-the-light]

Micro-disability

I cannot follow pointer fingers, or rotate objects in my head. If you point at an object on a table of objects, I usually can't pick out the one you're talking about unless you get close enough to almost touch it; I just can't draw that invisible line in space and select the object you're trying to indicate. If you're giving me directions, you can't point to a house and say "turn left there" - all I'll do is look puzzled and repeatedly ask where you mean until you clarify with a description.

I knew someone once with an old shoulder injury that meant he couldn't lift one arm directly above his head. He could lift it most of the way, but not the whole way, so his reach was just a little less than others might have assumed, and sometimes he got odd looks if he had to ask for help reaching a high shelf.

A partner of mine can't be in rooms where too many conversations are happening at once. His brain can't filter out the ones he isn't listening to from the one he is, so he quickly gets overwhelmed and distressed and needs to leave.

I can't walk quickly without it taking up my entire concentration and becoming tiring very fast. I walk at an astonishingly slow pace naturally, and if I consciously speed up my steps then they subconsciously get smaller, and if I consciously lengthen my steps then they subconsciously get slower. Something about going faster is just very rapidly physically and psychologically exhausting, and I don't know precisely what it is. I can run forever without dropping at my comfortably mid-speed loping pace, but I can't go much faster than it.

None of these things fit the criteria to be disabilities, under the 'standard' definition. We aren't incapable of holding jobs or having fulfilling home lives because of these limitations. We don't need paid carers, or the government to give us benefits because we can't work, and it probably isn't worth medical help to fix the problem.

At the same time, a huge amount of the discourse around disability rights is valid and useful for discussing these problems. My partner ought to be able to say that a room is overwhelming because of the number of conversations happening, and people ought to respect that by taking him elsewhere to continue their own conversation. He shouldn't be judged for it, or have people assume he just isn't trying hard enough, or be shamed. He certainly shouldn't be fired for it; accommodations should be made.

Like with 'full' disabilities, micro-disabilities can become more disabling when there's an intersection of them. I also have auditory processing disorder; I struggle to hear people if there's background noise, or if they're looking away from me and not projecting towards me. In other words, if you're walking in front of me, I can't hear you - and because I walk slowly, I'm almost always trailing behind the back of the group. It makes me feel constantly excluded and dismissed from conversations while I'm walking with people, like nobody values me enough to slow down so that I can hear them.

The concept illustrates some aspects of how we think about providing accommodations, asking for evidence, and validating disabilities. Often, the policy of institutions is to require evidence of a disability before they will accommodate it. You can't get free medical treatment unless a doctor certifies you actually have the disease, or you can't get extra time on tests unless you fail some other tests, or you can't sue your employer for firing you unless you can demonstrate it's actually your disability that's making you late all the time. The thing about micro-disabilities is that almost nobody will ever be able to prove that they have one, because it simply isn't worth diagnosing. I can't go to a doctor and get a certificate that says I get nauseous if I wake up too early, or I struggle to follow pointer fingers, or I have to keep my hair short because I find it painful to hit a tangle when I'm brushing my hair, or I get stomach bugs more often because of my hopeless addiction to biting my nails.

My doctor simply does not have the time or inclination to measure my ability to understand finger-pointing, decide whether it falls below some threshold, and issue a certificate that says I am now Officially Disabled and my employer will be in Big Trouble if they fire me for being unable to follow pointer fingers. So if I want this to be accommodated - if I want people to give me descriptive directions rather than assuming I can see what they're gesturing at - I have to simply ask them to trust that I really am trying my hardest, I just can't do this.

How you treat micro-disability is, I think, a good lens into whether you truly respect the needs of disabled people. If you'll grudgingly provide accommodations to those who can prove they are really disabled, that's one thing. But people with micro-disabilities aren't really disabled. They're just... a little bit disabled. So do we accommodate them? Do we respect them when they say 'hey, I can't do this' or do we raise our eyebrows and ask them to try harder? Do we listen when they say things are harder for them than for others, or do we look at them oddly and tell them we've never heard of that disability before?

It's a more complicated question than it might seem, I think. Because we accommodate all sorts of micro-disabilities all the time - the ones that are ordinary enough that we don't even think of them as disabilities. Being too short to reach high shelves, or too weak of grip to open jars, or too broad-shouldered for a small-size jacket; these are things we accommodate all the time.

We don't think of someone as disabled for needing reading glasses, but neither do we think that they're faking because they only need the glasses sometimes.

The micro-disabilities people doubt are the odd ones, the ones we struggle to explain and understand. Neither I nor doctors understand why I walk slowly, and it isn't a common problem to have, and that's precisely why people assume I could just try harder and keep up.

Which is awkward when micro-disabilities are so often just tiny, rarely-reported or lesser-known symptoms of "official" disabilities. I have a diagnosis of ADHD, and the common perception is that that means that I can't concentrate or sit down. But it actually affects so much more than that. How many of my tiny mental symptoms are my ADHD expressing itself in ways nobody knows are associated with ADHD? Who knows.

It is meant to illustrate that disability is a spectrum. We cannot draw a line, anywhere in the progression from 'gets tired easily when walking' to 'walks with a limp' to 'can only walk with a cane' to 'can't walk and uses a wheelchair', and say with confidence that people on one side of the line are really fully disabled and those on the other side aren't. 'Micro-disability' merely points at the existence of some centre place between fully abled and being so disabled that it majorly impairs your ability to have an ordinary life; it's still a fuzzy category, with boundaries that almost make less sense the more you think about them.

It's a more inclusive view of disability, certainly. Almost everyone has some kind of micro-disability, whether it's slow reading or a food sensitivity or a chronically infected toenail that hurts when stepped on. Disabled people aren't some odd group of cripples hidden away in hospitals that you'll never meet; disabled people are everyone who can't do certain things that others can do, for reasons that aren't their fault. Some of us may need more or less help and support than others, but all of us just deserve people to listen to us about what we need.

It took a long time, but I ended up reframing a lot of my little difficulties in this way, and I think it makes my life better. I don't force myself to just try harder to navigate any more; I just take my phone everywhere and use Google Maps, rotating the screen for every turn I take because I can't do it in my head. It's... a thing worth introspecting about.

[inappropriatefangirlneeds]

Gotham s5ep3 “Penguin, Our Hero” Personal Review

 “His methods will be our salvation.”    Warning spoilers below   

“Mr. Penn´s head” So MR. PENN shielded Oswald from the state of things? “I simply couldn't stand seeing you upset while you were recovering.” Which really makes me wonder, either he did it before too, just not wanting to deal with Penguins outbursts which would partly explain Oswald´s distorted view of what´s going on but with the way he was pressing on the issues of food, starvation, failing bullets in 5x01 that seems highly unlikely, which either means the outbursts got to a critical point where it was unbearable or he actually cared about Oswald´s well being? Which kind of fits that he apologized to Oswald after being shot but that means that it must have been terrible difficult for him to work for Oswald, Sofia and Carmine at the same time also why? How did Oswald win him over? I wannt to know everything, and as far as I´m concerned he is still there.  Also Penn still directing the (former Gertrud Kapelput Memorial Choir) choir might suggest he had a leading role in getting the people to Haven? I´d really like to have seen him in a position of reason that gets people out of a precarious situation but the episode made it look like he only did it because now it was specifically his head on the line. (Unless, that was something that Oswald said every 27 minutes, which .. is also likely) OSWALD COBBLEPOT okay so looks like Oswald wasn´t at all meant to be cruel, merely delusional? It seems Oswald really cared about Penn, thinking it would have been good for him to stay with him. He really believed his people were in a better situation than the slaves of other gangs.  He genuinely doesn´t seem to get why people would prefer Haven instead of his territory.  //  “I'm sorry, Mr. Cobblepot.” “You fool! This never would have happened if you stayed with me. Why did you leave?” “Everyone hated you.”  // “They probably go back to being slaves, I guess. My people, on the other hand, will go back to their regular lives, with their bellies full of gruel and their heads full of wonderful thoughts about their grand protector, me.”  //  “I kept people safe. I protected them from chaos. They should have loved me. Instead, they came here, to this pigsty, to be covered in fleas and filth. Why? What makes this place so special?” Oswald does´t think he´s a dictator or authoritarian he thinks he is living the “Great man theory” I´m glad that history moved past this and recognized that there is so much more to reality than a “great man” after another. Sadly that notion is one that´s hard to kill. You still have people thinking they benefit from a “strong” leader ruling with a firm hand. A strong man that´s guiding the nation is the only way to be protected and thrive. Someone that does act, someone that does do something! Not that It really matters much what that something is, as long as it isn´t weak. That way you get people praising Putin instead of being worried about the devaluation of democracy, that way you get orange fools that scream for a great wall instead of caring about facts, that way you get people saying Duterte doing good for his nation while soaking it´s soil with blood.  At leas the show didn´t portray his underlings buying into this, they just showed Oswald believing it. Which is still .. ?? Oswald was living the “Strong man politics” (okay with the cult of personality tuned up on the higher setting) and I´m kind of glad they showed how there´s nothing behind it but I can´t believe that Oswald wouldn´t know that, that people need more than someone to praise and the general assurance that yes they are a strong nation, be proud and quit complaining!  I like that Oswald not understanding why his approach didn´t work could maybe be meant to be a faint warning for people who call for men that lead like that? Okay I´m reading too much into this but can´t you see Trump being like why U no love me when I want the wall to protect you, when I kept your bellies full with the best fast food  .. ?  Just that it´s not a good fit for the Character previous Oswald was perceptive, seeing what people need and want and love. It wasn´t just about what he needs “the love of the people”, even when it was about his selfish gains he still had a strong grip on understanding the needs of others (and better than a bland abstract “they want safety and protection”) and used them.  Like I could get that he´s just done, paranoid and afraid and just not able to deal with the issues, brushing the needs of others aside, everyone can get to a point where it´s too much, but this way it just looks like he really did care and believed he was doing good .. which  means he was just being stupid.  On the other hand when Oswald went into politics he had to be convinced that people want him there and genuinely like him. Granted there was plenty of reason for Oswald to not quite believe this. Now we have him not believing that people hate him. Which is a nice circle but the second half doesn´t make any sense.   “Hope can only go so far.” And sometimes it runs circles. They really had JIM GORDON give another unreasonable promise to a CHILD but now he had BRUCE WAYNE sitting on his side, not only going along with it but with asking Jim to talk to the boy kind of being the reason for that to happen. I´m sure there´s more to say about this .. * “That's a good point. We didn't really think this through.” Street Demonz guys really got a talent to get to the heart of things with stating the obvious. “Well, whoever did just started one hell of a war.” (Tank 5x02) * Same with the “But, uh, they have guns.” comment “So do I and mine is most certainly loaded.” And I really thought, uh Oswald do you really want to point a gun on all the people round you? But wow he got a point with that. * I know it was short lived but for a moment I was like awwwww not both Oswald and Edward have their own personal STREET DEMON(Z) * What I liked is that they still have OSWALD COBBLEPOT be damn good at reframing and changing narratives. He´s out of people and needs others? Ah, nope wrong they are actually lucky to help him, let me tell you why “You're in luck, my friend. .as our interests are now aligned, I have decided that you may live.” * “You return our people and Edward”  I´m kind of ehh with the dog thing but that distinction made me giggle. *  “Rumors say pup went willingly.” Oh Olga  “I'm not yours to lose. You can't stop me from going after Jeremiah. But I am asking you for help.”   I saw that SELINA KYLE line somewhere online and thought oh no but turns out she teamed up with BRUCE WAYNE and it was actually nice. For a while. Sure that Selina getting murderous business is going to be a problem but I´m gonna ignore it as long as possible. Also yes! Jeremiah shot her because of Bruce .. rubbish .. I live for Selina rejecting the whole premise of that. I´m not overly fond of revenge but I like that they made it hers and not about Bruce in any way. (well, for now. Selina wasn´t too keen on Bridgit Firefly Pike roasting that kidnapper ring alive I guess that kind of reservation is over now) I feared that the line might be in the context of them going different paths but that it was followed by them agreeing to work together just made it more impactful. There is a possible relationship there but it´s not on these icky anyone belongs to anyone terms! I also liked that Selina didn´t just go out into the chaos but investigated. “These people come from all over Gotham, Bruce. Someone has to know something.” For all her reclusive attitude she obviously networked back in the early seasons, so she got to have a talent to talk/connect to people, I´d like to have seen more of this in that episode.

* “You didn't have to hurt him like that.” “He was trying to kill me, Bruce, just like Jeremiah tried to kill me. So as far as I'm concerned he got off easy.”  Bruce subscribed to the JIM GORDONs way of things Selina to HARVEY BULLOCKs [“Three months ago, I would’ve lost my badge for that.” ..  “You want rules for this game? I’ll tell you. I’ll make it simple, okay? You win or you die. Next time, shoot to kill.”  5x01]  * Selina´s fight choreography against the Mutant Leader was awesome! A catoreography! * Selina sweeping a curtsey and playing along with the The Church of Jeremiah Valeska theatrics was equally awesome.  * Oddly I didn´t like ECCO/HARLEY, her eyebrow is cool but for once I thought he acting was not stellar .. but that´s probably just me? The Ping didn´t impress me .. * One of the church boys is wearing a skirt, least their dresscode is better * Whoever blew up Haven: Fuck You! * CRACK THEORY:  It might be Jeremiah acting through the Mutants. The Mutant leader said “Kill you. Kill Jeremiah.” but elaborated  “Old Town North, okay? We don't mess with him.” so a contradictory statement. I guess the first was just posing, trying to keep the threatful appearance and the second statement the truth. They might still work for him, refusing it might count as messing with him?  Oddly they guy talking to Selina about the rumours said that: “If you go to the Dark Zone, Jeremiah is the least of your worries. Everyone there is insane. Look at what they did to my friend.” which would suggest Jeremiah is less of a threat but that might just be perspective, Jeremiah might cultivate his church/cult image, laying low on the chaos and mayhem front for a while, while still having others creating it for him in that area.  What I want to say I don´t think the Mutants have a motive for the destruction of Haven but I need them to be connected to it because I found it odd that they chased a person with an explosive device and watched that guy blow up in the same episode. They, if Selina is right are also responsible for the carved up person in Haven “Now we know who carved "kill" into that guy's chest.” So I´m naturally suspicious. What if the “kill” carvings were just meant to conceal the cuts where someone put explosives into that person? People bombs! (With Pyg we already had a grenade in a belly) Problem1: This needed more people like that. Which someone might have noticed, also why would they have been spread out in the buildings, I guess the medic area was just in one place. Problem2: I think Jeremiah has a motive, he put Gotham into this state and Haven is trying to remedy this aka. undoing/undermining his work, to it would naturally be a target but why would he not just do it himself? Problem3: The “Edward” and Street Demonz thing got Oswald to got there, it would be odd if an explosion right after that issue would be an unconnected coincidence * BARBARA KEAN remembers Season 1 and undermines the (repeated) Jim the Hero narrative, although there would be better arguments even talking to Harvey Bullock. “He, the idealistic rookie. You, the cynical veteran.” “You were sane.” “Now you carry his laundry. Do you ever wonder what your life might've been like if you'd never met Jim Gordon? I'd be dead, or wishing I was.” “You're delusional, Harvey. Just like all the sad saps who think the government is just gonna sail in and save them.” “Maybe.”

[worthyofluv]

Redefining What it Means to be a Strong Woman

I used to cringe when someone would tell me that I was a strong black woman. It literally made me sick to feel like the world mostly only saw me as strong, when deep down I knew I was more than that. And to be honest, I didn’t feel strong, I felt weak, and what I needed most was to be seen, heard, understood and felt as opposed to being told to persevere through any and everything. I had been strong long enough and I was tired. Tired of pushing myself beyond my limits, tired of walking out into the world with a mask, tired of abusive relationships, just fucking tired. I was so over life that I contemplated death many times. “Who would care?” “Do I even matter?” are the questions that would cross my mind. Being strong was killing me, literally. 

What I Observed From Working With White Women

In most of my roles, I was usually “the only one” or one out of a few WOC. While working at one particular job (that shall remain unnamed) I noticed that the women carried themselves with a certain kind of ease that I personally had to give myself permission to access. These white women danced so effortlessly in their femininity as if they had their own personal choreographer. It was thought provoking.

Being raised by resilient black queens, naturally, I embody strength, but I had never been taught to embody softness. Too many of us were raised in broken households and had front row seats to the single mother struggle, so we go out into the world with all this fire, but no awareness on how to put it out sometimes. We develop a rigorous work ethic, get into relationships where we want to be the boss and try to be everything for everyone and wonder why we’re so burned out. I am grateful for the resilience that has been passed down in my DNA, but what I learned on my journey is that being strong all the time isn’t my true nature, it’s actually counterintuitive to my true nature. So, it makes perfect sense that life was overwhelming for me, because I wasn’t in alignment with my inner being.

At first glance, it appeared that these women were privileged to be able to live a life true to their womanhood, knowing that they’d always be safe and protected. But then, I realized that I too had access to this way of being and that it is my birthright to be everything that I am meant to be. I learned that I can reclaim my power back by reframing my beliefs around a situation, or finding the better feeling thought; the thought that is most in alignment with my true self.

Intimate Relationships

I saw a post on Instagram that said something along the lines of “Being a martyr is not synonymous with being loyal. Abuse, disrespect and neglect are not prerequisites for a relationship and that as women, we need to dead the idea that we have to go through hell and back to be worthy of love.”

And that’s all I gotta say about that.

What Does it Mean to be a Strong Woman?

In my personal journey, I had to get to know every part of myself, every part of what makes me who I am (and I’m still learning.) I believe that we are multidimensional beings with multiple egos; multiple identities. But during our conditioning, we somehow adapt to what we are told we should become, and we lose sight of our inner child. That part of us that knows no limits, that wants to be an artist, a dancer, a police officer and a chef all in the same day. We forget how to play; we get serious and we conform to a life that many don’t even realize they have conformed to until they have a midlife crisis. Without a strong foundation of self, we become a reflection of what society tells us to be. In a world that is constantly trying to tell you how to live your life, true strength is taking the time to get to know yourself and existing as your fullest expression of self. Furthermore, strength isn’t always about doing or executing. Sometimes there is strength in taking a step back, pausing, or just chilling the fuck out.

Some examples of strength might include:

Your manager telling you “you’re just not the right fit,” and your ability to walk out of her office without reacting and simultaneously telling yourself “she’s wrong, I AM qualified and capable, but it wasn’t my blessing.”

Allowing yourself to rest when tired

Allowing yourself to do the bare minimum when you just can’t that day

Taking a day off to do nothing

Surrendering

Giving yourself permission to play

Asking for what you want/need

Shutting down the Christian mother of the guy who you hooked up with when she tried to slut shame you. I can be both a Queen and sexually liberated. It’s my body and I have autonomy over how I use it.

Walking away from an unhealthy relationship even though you love that person

Crying

Seeking therapy

Giving yourself permission to feel the feels

Feeling hurt, but operating from a place of integrity

Not knowing the answer and being ok with not knowing the answer

Forgiving others

Forgiving your self

Apologizing

Speaking your truth

Listening

Protecting your energy

Saying “damn, I fucked up. What could I have done differently in that situation”?

Immediately blocking a guy who asks you for your IG, and his first comment is “wow, you lost allot of weight” ….by your standards, I may not be fat anymore, but lemme tell you what is phat. Lol. Your loss asshole.

Saying “actually, I like my body the way it is”

Saying “I disagree”

Saying “you were right”

Saying “I need help”

Saying “I need you”

Prioritizing your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing above all, even if that means losing people, places and things in the process of becoming your greatest version

I am learning not to fear my emotions but instead, be with them, observe and allow them to pass like the clouds in the sky. Knowing that they will always pass and that good feelings are always available to me, I am able to ride the waves with grace.

-Divine

My Interpretation of What a Strong Woman is

To me, strength is like the glue that holds all the other myriad of qualities that make up my being together. Yes, I am strong at the core, but I can also be vulnerable, soft, emotional, empathic, nurturing, silly, intuitive, insecure, eloquent, afraid, passionate, sad, angry, anxious, a bitch, depressed, sensual, sexual, introverted, intelligent, and kind. Now i understand that when people would tell me I was strong, they were acknowledging something in me that I wasn’t completely aware of. It wasn’t a bad thing at all, but I knew there was more to me than what met the eye.  It was on me, however, to explore the layers of who I am. And it will continue to be on me to walk my path as my most authentic self. Being strong to me means standing in the truth of your whole entire self, not just one aspect of yourself. It’s giving yourself the gift of self-exploration so that you can become self-aware. It is knowing who the fuck you are but still allowing room for growth. I am not the same person I was a year ago and I will certainly be a different person five years from now. If the seasons of nature are constantly in flux, why wouldn’t that also be the case for our evolution? We were not created to be just one thing, we were created to be everything our heart desires and more.

So, the next time someone tells me how strong I am, I will smile and thank them. There’s no need to internalize what someone else thinks of me, because the perception that I have of myself is greater than the perception that anyone has of me. Yes, I am strong, but I am so much more than that.

-Divine

[salamanderink]

Now there’s something to understand here: “anti-tag” or “not[character] friendly” tag is something entirely different than “dark [character]” or “[grey] character”. They have nothing at all in common.

A character can very much be the author’s darling, or the hero of the story while having their character expressed as an anti-hero or even as a villain. It’s an author’s choice then to explore how it could have happened or how it would affect the character.

Yet, when that’s the case, the author is still doing their best to honor that character. They like them, root for them. (They might not win, but that’s not the point. Not everyone writing Loki for example, or Hannibal, does so by making them nice, after all. And of someone were to write Will Graham as a murderer, that is usually not because they’re unfriendly to him, it’s because they want a “murder husband” endgame. At least, that’s the most usual version I saw.)

In that case, asking the author to tag for a dark!Will is perfectly okay, of course! However, it’s decidedly not a “character bashing” or “not character friendly” or “anti character” tag.

On the other hand, the “not [character] friendly” tag is fairly obviously different. In the hp fandom you’d easily call in “bashing”. The author either feels pretty salty about the original content/character, or they did need an antagonist for the plot and, well, having a villain is pretty convenient sometimes.

Regardless, as opposed to “dark” or “grey” tag where you simply spin the characters moral compass while still doing your best to show them in a flattering way, a bashing story will often actually distort or caricature the evilness of a character (aka: Ron Weasley might have actually been paid by Dumbledore to become Harry’s friend, and be so jealous of his fame and fortune he in truth can’t stand him).

A “not character friendly” tag might instead be something more of a revenge fantasy, or a way to show what the canon version did wrong, and might actually be somzth of a narrative essay of what all the character did wrong and why. There might also be a distorted narrative lens there, a way to show how delusional the character was being or how manipulative or secretly hateful (something that happens pretty often when canon makes their character do an ooc bad thing that makes the fan reframe all their previous perception of the character and feel betrayed) (Civil War made a lot of “not [character/team] friendly” tags happen)

Again, bashing and unfriendliness are often pretty related. It is something that the authors usually do tag, since it has a specific audience and people who can’t stand it either, it kinda deserves its warning.

Actually, the usual policy would be “better too many warnings than not enough”. One of the best things about AO3 is that you can curate your own reading experience, and usually authors will listen if you respectfully ask for a tag that actually fits the story (iif theres no already preexisting tag)

Be careful however. If your story is a “dark!character” don’t ask for a “bashing character” tag. Usually you can tell the difference, but in doubt, just calling them “antagonist” as you’ve done so far is the safest bet.

Two examples I’ve seen of people asking for a tag:

In one case the author was not actually aware of there being actually problematic content inside the fic, though readers were pretty unanimous about there being an issue. Someone asked for “domestic abuse” to be tagged and the author did end up putting the tag up even though they themselves didn’t see the issue.

In another case, someone asked for a “rape-non con” tag on a story that was clearly did not have anything of the sort happening in there. While some characters believed that something else (not rape) was happening, that other thing was clearly tagged, along with moral ambiguity; and the story showed in the end that it was a misunderstanding and a roleplay. As such asking for a “rape non-con” tag was inappropriate: the one potentially triggering thing was appropriately tagged and the non-con tag was both irrelevant and rude.

So. What I mean is. Sometimes authors are new to tagging or to the AO3 format. Sometimes they just don’t bother tagging much (which. Fair enough).

But you can ask for tags if you are worried that something has or will upset someone. Sometimes authors just don’t realize, or think it deserves a tag. Most often, if authors realize that something they wrote could be triggering, they will be happy enough to tag it. I myself had a friend indicate to me that I should put down a “self-harm” tag in one of my fics and so I did, to make sure people stayed safely away from anything potentially triggering. But that tag did refer to something that did happen in the fic, and there was no other tag that covered it.

However, be mindful before you ask. Is what you are asking to tag appropriate? Does it really fit the fic that you’re asking it about? Is the fic already tagged and you just didn’t read them? (I know it happens, I’m guilty of it sometimes. But if you read after being warned, then you only have yourself to blame for not reading the warnings.)

Remember, authors are people too, and throwing around accusations of writing stuff that they did not deliberately write can be upsetting, especially if that’s not actually the case. So. Respect is important. Be nice to the writers.

Still, the format ao3commentoftheday gave you should be more than ok.

I recently read a fic in which a character I like a decent amount was not quite the main villain, but certainly an antagonist. There was no mention of this in the tags, and that character is not a villain in the source material. The fic is a year old, so I'm not sure how to ask the author to tag the fic to show that the character is an antagonist, or even if I should. I want to ask in a way that doesn't admonish the author, as I'm not upset that they wrote the fic, just that there was no warning

Since the fic was posted a year ago, the author might or might not tag it at your suggestion. That said, here are some suggestions

comment something you liked about the fic itself before you talk about the tag

ask if the author would be willing to add a tag such as #Character is an antagonist

point out that adding that tag could help the fic find readers who are looking for that kind of content

You could say something along the lines of, “hi! I liked [aspect of the fic], but I was a bit surprised that X was an antagonist. It might be useful to mention that in the tags maybe as [example tag]?  That way folks who are interested in that take on the character can find it, but also readers who might be uncomfortable with it have a heads up. Thank you for sharing your story!”

What do the rest of you think? Would you be open to adding a tag like this to your own work? How have you approached authors about tags in the past?

[infpisme]

10 Life-Changing Pieces Of Advice For Empaths And Highly Sensitive People

“And those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.” ― Nietzsche

Highly sensitive people are too often perceived as weak or broken.  But to feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the characteristic of a truly alive and compassionate human being.  It is not the sensitive person who is broken, it is society’s understanding that has become dysfunctional and emotionally incapacitated.  There is zero shame in expressing your authentic feelings.  Those who are at times described as being ‘too emotional’ or ‘complicated’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more thoughtful, caring, humane world.  Never be ashamed to let your feelings, smiles and tears shine a light in this world.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, because it can be so confusing, right? … Why you get overwhelmed by run-of-the-mill tasks that others take in stride.  Why you mull over slights that ought to be forgotten.  Why subtleties are magnified for you and yet lost on others.

It’s like you were born missing a protective layer of skin that others seem to have.

You try to hide it.  Numb it.  Tune it out.  But the comments still pierce your armor: “You’re overthinking things.  You’re too sensitive.  Toughen up!”

You’re left wondering what on earth is wrong with you.

I know, because I was in my mid-40s when I stumbled across the term ‘highly sensitive people.’  This led me to discover how delicious it feels to be one of thousands saying, “You do that?  Me too!”

Since then, I’ve learned that many sensitive people feel isolated from others.  They feel misunderstood and different, and they usually don’t know why.  They just don’t realize that they have a simple trait that explains their confusing array of symptoms and quirks.

There’s even a scientific term for it: Sensory Processing Sensitivity.  Dr. Elaine Aron, a psychotherapist and researcher, estimates that 15-20% of people have nervous systems that process stimuli intensely.  They think deeply.  They feel deeply (physically and emotionally).  They easily become over-stimulated.

According to my research several successful historical figures were highly sensitive, such as Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, and Steve Jobs.  I see this as great news, because it means us sensitive types aren’t inherently disadvantaged.

But when we don’t realize how to handle our sensitivity, we end up pushing too hard to keep up with everyone else.  We try to do what others seem to handle with ease, and try to do it better than them.  And this leads to problems.

For a time, we do a first-rate job of using our natural gifts: we’re creative students, conscientious employees, and devoted family members.  But when we hammer on beyond our limits, doing so can eventually take its toll.  It shows up in things like unrelenting health conditions, muscle tension we can’t get rid of, and being endlessly fatigued or on edge for no good reason.

If you resonate with any of this, here are 10 actions you can take to stop struggling and start thriving:

1. Quit searching for someone or something to fix you.

Sensitivity is a temperament trait, not a medical disorder.  So nothing is inherently wrong with you.  Sadly, though, many certified health practitioners don’t understand this because sensory processing sensitivity is a recent area of health research.

Sure, highly sensitive people are more likely to have allergies or sensitivities to food, chemicals, medication, and so forth.  And they’re more prone to overstimulation, thus quicker to feel stress — which can lead to other health issues.  But sensitivity in itself is not something that needs fixing.

Successful sensitive types realize that they’re not “broken.”  If your mind is exhausted from busily researching yet another solution to take away your “flaws,” know that the answers to living in harmony with your sensitive nature lie inside you.

2. Tell yourself, as often as necessary, that you are not a fraud.

Impostor syndrome isn’t exclusive to highly sensitive people.  Many conscientious and high achieving people fall victim to this nagging fear.  But the simmering discomfort about being found out is often constant for a sensitive person.

Why wouldn’t it be, considering you’ve spent a lifetime of feeling different from others and trying to fit in?  Maybe you blame your tears on dust in your eye during that cheesy TV commercial; or you sign up for the company fun run, even though you hate running and you know you’ll feel ashamed of how long your body takes to recover.  But even if you grew up displaying your sensitivity with pride, it’s unlikely you escaped the cultural pressure motivating you to disguise your real self to fit the norms.

Successful sensitive types respect that their nervous systems are wired differently from 80-85% of people.  If you’re constantly thinking about who you should be but aren’t, and what you should be doing but can’t, understand that valuing your achievements and signature strengths allows you to show yourself as you truly are, more comfortably — even when you’re the odd one out.

3. Seek out kindred spirits (and know that you are NOT alone).

You probably feel different and alone.  But the truth is, you’re not.  Many have experienced confusion in isolation before discovering that hordes of people have some idea of what it’s like to be you.  They’ve felt the surge of power that comes from being supported by like-minded souls.  And they want to pay it forward.

The key whenever possible is to hang out with sensitive people who are already flourishing, or at least open to those possibilities.  They understand not only how to manage their sensitivity, but also how to wield its superpowers.  They know what it’s like for you to feel endlessly under siege, and they can offer firsthand experience and wisdom to help you make your sensitivities work in your favor.

Successful sensitive types appreciate and relish the strengths of sensitivity, in themselves and others.  If you’re feeling unsupported or misunderstood, find a sensitively knowledgeable coach, mentor, or community who gets you … and nurture that connection.

4. Look for the hidden positivity in every situation and soak it up.

The brain is a powerful filter that molds experiences and perceptions of reality.  If you think the world is a dangerous place, your brain is wired to hunt for evidence of danger.  If you believe it’s a loving place, you spot more loving opportunities.  What you focus on, you get more of.

As a highly sensitive person, the more negative the environment, the more you suffer.  But the opposite is also true — the more positive, the more you thrive (even compared to others).

Thoughts are stimuli for your nervous system.  One of the most important things a sensitive person can do is acknowledge the negative (not ignore it — because what you resist, persists), but then let it go… immerse yourself in positive thoughts and situations that make you feel good, or at least give you a soothing sense of relief.

Successful sensitive types decide to see the world brimming with opportunities to feel grateful for, and to marinate in that positive vibe.  If you’re feeling at the mercy of your emotions and circumstances, understand that your thoughts (and the emotional charges they trigger) are always within your control.

5. Find new spins on old flaws.

Your gifts of sensitivity include deep reflection and an instinct to see all angles and consequences.  But by being so deeply tuned into details, you’re easily overwhelmed and exhausted by unyielding stimulation.  And when you don’t understand why you feel and behave in the ways you do, it’s easy to frame these as flaws.

In truth, these “weaknesses” are simply your unmet needs and unique gifts to nourish.  In reframing your past and nurturing your present, you set yourself up for success in your future.

Successful sensitive types rethink old perceptions in light of their deeper understandings of sensitivity.  If you’re weighed down by the hypersensitive and neglected (even, despised) parts of yourself, seek to discover the other side of the coin … where you’ll find some of your greatest strengths: intuition, vision, conscientiousness — and the list goes on.

6. Treat yourself with compassion.

As a highly sensitive person you are deeply compassionate.  So much so that putting others’ comfort and needs before your own is second nature.  On top of that, you’re often your own biggest critic.  You push yourself hard, and then you beat up on yourself when you miss the mark.  You criticize yourself in ways you’d never dream of judging others.

Controlling your nagging inner critic is essential to self-compassion.  But contrary to popular belief, you shouldn’t do so by relentlessly ignoring it.  Deep thinking is one of your gifts, so why not embrace that power?  Take control by hearing your thoughts without judgment (after all, there might be gems of wisdom hidden deep) and then pivoting to thoughts that trigger kinder and more loving emotions in your body.  From that better-feeling place, you’re better able to choose actions to care for yourself and others.

Successful sensitive types show themselves the same loving compassion that they’re naturally good at giving others.  It may feel selfish or vain at first, but it’s not.  If your critical inner voice is devaluing who you are, answer back with self-kindness … this is the antidote.

7. Create healthy boundaries, not rigid emotional walls.

We live in a culture that values “take a painkiller and push on” far more than it values sensitivity.  We grow up hearing: “no pain, no gain; survival of the fittest; life isn’t fair — get used to it.”  We admire those who show grit to prevail over their terrible plights.

As a highly sensitive person your reflex reaction may be to freeze up or struggle to toughen up.  You build walls to shield yourself from hurt …  Emotional walls, such as suppressing feelings or creating dramatic turmoil to distract from the real causes of pain.  Physical walls, such as piling on layers of weight to hide behind.  Mental walls, such as tuning out with alcohol or drugs.

Or, you may let all your boundaries collapse at once, thereby unconsciously absorbing others’ energies and feeling devoured by unpredictable events and emotions.  You try to escape the feelings by getting caught up in overthinking everything: endlessly planning and searching and analyzing, while completely losing touch with your intuition.  And in the process you confuse conscientiousness with overwork, empathy with over-identification, compassion with over-tolerance.  So you beat yourself up about how you know you should have better boundaries.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Successful sensitive types embody gentle but firm personal boundaries.  If you struggle to put your own needs first (which doesn’t come naturally to a highly sensitive person), make a conscious choice to practice the skill of saying “no” with love and grace, or carving out alone time to recharge … and decide to feel good about that.

8. Tune in to your body (to avoid seesawing between emotional extremes).

Many highly sensitive people learn to ignore the messages their bodies are sending them.  They switch it off to avoid overwhelm or they tune in to others’ needs instead of their own to meet what’s expected of them.  Does this sound familiar?

Doing so leaves you swinging like a pendulum.  Too much, too little.  Too fast, too slow.  Too in, too out.  Back and forth between being over-stimulated and mind-numbingly bored, dieting and then bingeing, or exercising hard and then needing several days to recover.  And so on and so forth.

Successful sensitive types tune in to the physical sensations in their bodies; they accept that it’s not always comfortable, but they trust their bodies to guide them.  If you have a habit of hiding from feelings or passing the point of overwhelm, learn to recognize your body’s subtle signs of overstimulation.  You’ll spend less time being thrown out of balance, and more time swaying gently within your nervous system’s range of optimal arousal.

9. Design healthy habits that fit your unique needs.

Eventually, it all catches up with you.  Grueling hours at work, followed by hard sweat at the gym and keeping on top of chaos around home — all fueled by crappy diets and minimal sleep or downtime.  It’s an easy trap to fall into because you’re simply living the way you see most people get by on.

What’s more, some seemingly healthy habits hit hard on a sensitive nervous system — like “health” foods that are heavily processed and pumped with sugar and artificial additives, or intense exercise that’s not balanced with ample recovery time. If you allow too much stimulation and too lousy replenishment, you run the risk of chronic illnesses (as many sensitive types have learned the hard way).  At the same time, if you overprotect yourself, your genius goes unexpressed, and that also can lead to stress and ill health.

Successful sensitive types practice habits that truly nourish them.  If you struggle with energy or well-being issues, prioritize habits that nurture these areas of your life (such as more sleep and alone time), and limit those that over-stimulate or drain you (such as too many high pressures activities — even if they are so-called healthy).

10. Stop smothering your sensitivity.

After a lifetime of being bombarded by stimuli, it becomes second nature to push sensitivity out of the conscious awareness.  Tuning out from relentless sensations, for example, so you can pretend you don’t give a darn.  Toning down intense feelings (good and bad) so you aren’t on a roller coaster.  Suppressing emotions to get a break from feeling anything at all.

This self-protective mechanism might fool your conscious mind, but it doesn’t fool your sensitive body.  This oozes into your health, your relationships, your career, every aspect of your life … or, it builds tension inside until something has to give.

Successful sensitive types let go of the grasp for control.  When you free the energy used to hold yourself tight, you free the gifts of sensitivity that have been lost to you: empathy, creativity, and heightened joy, to name a few.  And you allow your true potential to blossom.

By MarcAndAngel

[keithtlamb-blog]

A Job Shouldn't Rule Your Life. Here's How to Find Fulfillment Outside Work

Throughout history, our sources of purpose have shifted. First, our purpose was simply to survive. Then we built families and embraced religion. But now, we increasingly look to our jobs as a source of meaning.

And who could blame us? Our society idolizes people like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs, who romanticize work and tell us to do what we love. But according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, thatâs led us to a point where Americans are highly isolated and unhappy.

Looking to our jobs for purpose is risky business, says Jeremy Smith, an expert on purpose and an editor for the University of California, Berkeleyâs Greater Good Science Center magazine.

âThe problem with finding a sense of purpose in a job is that you can get fired,â Smith says. âItâs really that simple. Most employment is conditional.â

Despite this, members of Generation Y (aka millennials) â now the largest generation in the workforce â look to their jobs for meaning at a higher rate than previous generations, according to Gallup research.

The lines between work and life are getting blurred, explains Nate Dvorak, a researcher for Gallup and an expert on well-being. Millennials increasingly want to work for a company that invests in them as employees and as people, in a holistic sense.

But in most cases, theyâre not finding it.

In that context, itâs easy to see the disconnect, or as Smith likes to call it, the âcrisis of purpose.â

Aaron Castillo, a content strategist for a marketing company in Florida, exemplifies most of Gallupâs findings to a T. Like most of Gen Y, he struggles to find a sense of purpose in his day job. Most days, he does the number-crunching side of marketing, but he much prefers creative work, especially videography and photography. Those opportunities are few and far between.

How to Find Your Purpose Outside Your Job

An important part of finding a sense of purpose is to diversify your sources. Then, your purpose isnât attached too heavily on any one thing, especially not a job that is at the whims of the economy or a tyrannical boss.

Dvorak says that jobs are indeed important, but there are several other factors to overall well-being to consider. He warns against putting too much emphasis on one element.

âWell-being is more about life evaluation,â he says. âNot just happiness. Not just satisfaction.â

Gallup defines well-being using these five main factors:

Purpose (Enjoying what you do every day. Jobs can be a big part of this one.)

Social (Having supportive and loving relationships.)

Financial (Managing your money so you can live a less stressful life.)

Community (Feeling safe and having pride in where you live.)

Physical (Being healthy and energetic enough to do what you want.)

As you can see, the majority of well-being has little to do with your day job.

Smith notes that we can also tap into âhuman capacitiesâ to live more meaningful lives â capacities such as social connection, awe, gratitude, compassion, forgiveness, mindfulness and empathy.  

With both Gallup and the Greater Good Science Center research on the aspects on well-being in mind, there are plenty of practical ways to find a sense of meaning outside the office. Here are a few.

Cultivate Meaningful Relationships

Social well-being is something Americans struggle with. While we have hundreds, if not thousands, of friends on social media, we lack genuine, deep connections with one another.

âBy many, many measures,â Smith says, âAmericans are more isolated than they have been in the past.â

And he isnât referring to romantic relationships. This spans the gamut. Friendships, families and partnerships are all areas we need to actively cultivate a more meaningful connection.

Dvorak suggests that the lack of connection could be because millennials are focusing too much on their careers and not enough on friends and family.

âSocial well-being is not about a number of friends you have. Itâs about the quality of friends you have,â he says.

So the next time youâre socializing, think twice about immediately responding when your phone buzzes. I promise, the notification will be there later.

Volunteer for a Cause You Like

Volunteering is a great way to add fulfillment to your life, and it certainly develops human capacities like compassion and empathy. It also allows you to develop new skills and try new things that have nothing to do with your professional life.

In the Greater Good Science Centerâs Greater Good magazine, Smith writes that altruism is one such way to have a greater sense of purpose.

When Castillo reached the point where his job didnât feel fulfilling, he turned to a local volunteer organization that focused on keeping the Tampa Bay community clean, a cause more personal than professional. Cleaning up beaches helped him find a greater sense of community. And suddenly his world was a little bigger. The boring days at work didnât mean so much.

But sometimes itâs hard to find time to volunteer.

To combat your scheduling woes, Dvorak  proposes âdouble dipping,â i.e. combining multiple aspects of well-being into one activity. So donât just volunteer alone. Rally your friends and family to your local food pantry or run a 5K race that raises money for your favorite charity.

Join a Professional Group

Smith makes a clear distinction between your job and your work. Jobs are temporary, he says. Even if youâre lucky enough to have the same one for 40 years, itâs still temporary. But your work is a greater cause.

So if you arenât happy with your current job, but you do enjoy the sense of work or the field that youâre in, professional groups can be fulfilling on multiple levels.

A nonprofit, professional advertising organization for Gen Y called Ad 2 Tampa Bay helps Castillo balance out those number-crunching days at his marketing job. It allows him to pursue the creative side of advertising, and it sharpened his videography and photography skills.

He was able to bring that fresh set of skills back to his day job and incorporate more creativity at work.

Thereâs also the hugely important social aspect of professional organizations.

âOne of the primary reason for me joining Ad 2 in the first place was because I didnât know anyone in the field,â Castillo says. âIt seemed like a good way to get out of my comfort zone and meet new people and experience new things.â

Start a New Hobby or Nurture a Passion Project

Depending on which hobby or project you choose, you can support several aspects of well-being simultaneously. Hobbies like rock climbing or CrossFit support physical and social well-being for sure, but Smith highly recommends reading and writing.

He notes that social isolation can lead to a lack of meaning, but these solitary activities are big exceptions. They actually increase the human capacities mentioned above.

For example, reading can foster insight and empathy by introducing you to someone you would have never met otherwise. And writing, especially about your own experiences and life, can help you find a sense of meaning.

âTry turning [your life] into a story with a beginning, a middle and an end,â Smith says. âThat can allow you to project your story out into the future.â

Reframe Your Mindset About Your Job

If youâre like me, you may put a little too much emphasis on the work category of your overall well-being. Whether you love or hate your job, itâs easy to get caught up in it and have the issues of the day or month or year follow you home.

Iâve been on both ends of the spectrum. A bad work environment when I lived in South Korea would have tainted my whole perception of the country if I had let it. On the other hand, there have been instances where I get so amped about a project that I forget to eat dinner. By the time I put my laptop down, itâs bedtime.

Neither example is a good place to be consistently.

To redistribute some of the importance that you place on your job into other areas like physical or social well-being, you can reframe how you view it.

âI think the important thing is not what your external circumstances are, but how you feel about those circumstances,â Smith says, noting that itâs entirely possible to be in prison and have a strong sense of purpose. âAs long as you have enough to eat and a roof over your head, thereâs hope.â

Similar to writing about your life story, this mindset can help bring a bigger perspective to your life.

âWhy do we have jobs? We have jobs so that we can make money and pay the rent and eat,â Smith says. âUnhitch⦠your self-esteem from your job.â

In other words, view your job as a paycheck that allows you to enjoy the other aspects of your life, not as a main source of fulfillment itself.

Practice Mindfulness

Research shows that mindfulness has several benefits. Sometimes those benefits are exaggerated. But we do know that when done properly, mindfulness can help increase your attention, improve your mental health and positively affect your relationships, among several other things.

But Smith warns against âself-destructiveâ perceptions of mindfulness. For example, some people think that isolating yourself on top of a mountain is a good way to reach enlightenment. But that could actually have negative effects (beyond the dangers of, you know, slipping and falling to certain death).

âEven monks who take a vow of silence for decades have a connection to a monastery,â he says. âThat path to enlightenment is oftentimes connected to a larger religious organization.â

As you incorporate some (or none) of these suggestions, itâs important to keep in mind that this list is in no way definitive. These are merely examples of activities to increase your chances of overall well-being.

So get creative and come up with activities of your own that fit your schedule.

âThereâs not a certain amount of boxes to check on your road to purpose. People can take many different paths,â Smith says. âThe important thing is youâre really listening to your life⦠listening and responding to it.â

Adam Hardy is an editorial assistant on the Make Money team at The Penny Hoarder. He lives off a diet of stale puns and iced coffee. Read his full bio here, or say hi on Twitter @hardyjournalism.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here's why you can trust us and how we make money.

[yankeesabralimey]

Demo Day? Don’t

One of my portfolio company founders recently asked me if he or she should participate in a demo day.

My answer was a clear no. Here’s why:

What is a demo day? Definitions might vary, but I’ll define a “demo day” as any situation where a founder is asked to publicly pitch his or her startup to an audience of investors. This could be on-stage or online. It could be organized by an accelerator, an early-stage investor, a corporate, an angel group, a law firm, or anyone else. It can range in format from 2–5 minutes to much longer. And, critically, it can involve a demo(nstration) of the actual product/technology or not. Most importantly, a “demo day” is an event organized for the purpose of pitching a company (1) as an investment opportunity and (2) to investors. When you get up on stage at an industry conference or a “tech” conference (TechCrunch Disrupt, for example) to show your product to potential customers, that’s not a demo day. But getting up on stage to pitch your company as an investment most surely is.

Never participate in a demo day. Ever. Basically, my advice to anyone who wants it is never participate in a demo day. Ever. A few reasons why not (and then two highly specific caveats).

Why not?

Demo days declare that you are fundraising to the world. By getting on stage and telling the world you are fundraising — guess what? Everyone now knows you are fundraising. In my experience, that is not a good thing. Your cash position, your valuation, your stage, your traction — these are pieces of information that you want to share only with investors that you trust. And you’ll want to share them gradually over time in a controlled way. By getting on stage at a demo day, few of these things will remain a mystery for long. VCs prefer to see deals that have not been shopped around the entire planet. Like everyone else, they want to deal with people and opportunities that are perceived to be exclusive and special. Getting on stage and telling the world what you are doing flies in the face of that logic.

Demo days expose you needlessly to the risk of perceived failure. One of the biggest problems with declaring to the world that you are fundraising is the possibility that you may not succeed at first in your fundraising. For any number of a long list of very good reasons, it may take you longer to fundraise than you were expecting. But getting on stage and obviously and publicly trying to fundraise, you automatically create a situation where any (normal, natural) delay in fundraising will get perceived as a failure. (“Wait…didn’t I see that company on stage a year go? And they are still trying to raise a seed round?”) The same applies to business and product decisions: You get on stage and say you will have 100 paying SMBs in six months and — guess what — you shift to an enterprise strategy. Or perhaps that huge beta customer you talked about on stage decides to pull the project… None of this will stop a good investor from investing — but it creates confusion and just makes your fundraising job harder on the margin.

Demo days rarely if ever get you in front of any investors you can’t get to otherwise. VCs and other investors are some of the most highly networked people around. It’s very easy to get your company in front of them. And you are always better off getting a warm introduction from a founder, fellow investor, or other connection. Yes, VCs show up at demo days. But they do so, in many cases, mostly to network with other VCs and not really to listen intently to the pitches on stage. Demo days, therefore, are not really a short cut to getting in front of investors. If anything, they make it that much harder for you to control who sees you, with what intro, and when.

Demo days waste your own time by democratizing your process when you should be doing the opposite. Not all investors are created equal. It’s your job as CEO to find and select the best investors for your specific company. Getting on stage is basically an open invitation for investors of all kinds to reach out to you and start wasting your time. This could lead to a fundraising process driven by your inbox as opposed to your strategic objectives.

Demo days fail to communicate your uniqueness. Most demo days try to cram 5–25 startups into a few hours of pitching. That typically leaves a founder with 2–10 minutes to explain why their company is viable, unique, and potentially very valuable. Most of the genuinely interesting startups I’ve encountered in my career have taken at least an hour to begin to understand. If you can explain your company’s unique value proposition in 3 minutes, it’s probably not that unique. You should have a killer five-sentence elevator pitch, and you should use that to get a series of long, serious meetings with relevant investors who want to dig into the details.

Demo days create a false perception of understanding and relationships. As a result of the difficulty of conveying anything of substance in the demo day format, demo days create a false perception among entrepreneurs that “they have pitched” and a false perception among some investors that “they have heard the pitch.” These false perceptions destroy value. Entrepreneur are denying themselves the opportunity for a real pitch and investors are denying themselves the opportunity to hear a real pitch. There is nothing wrong with saying: “I would love to explain to you why our approach to zero-day information leakage prevention is a game-changer, but in order to do that properly, I’ll need an hour of your time.”

Demo days commoditize you and your company. Another painful side-effect of the demo-day format is the commoditization of companies and founders. Since you can’t really explain what your company does in five minutes, what are you going to do in those five minutes instead? All too often, you are going to use those five minutes to convince the world that you are the next Steve Jobs. Instead of helping founders show the world their uniqueness, demo days encourage founders to try to fit into some vague pre-conceived canned notion of what a “hot” founder looks like. This normally involves dramatic pauses, slick minimalistic slides, graphs going up and to the right with no numbers, vague technical claims, and — sometimes — black turtlenecks and phrases like “for the first time ever.”

Demo Day Fatigue. As an investor, I get at least one demo day invitation a week. Sometimes more than one. I suspect most investors are, by now, totally fatigued by the plethora of demo days demanding attention. Reach out to the right investors, one by one, with a cold email or (preferably) a warm introduction that speaks to why the match actually makes sense. Demo days were cool five years ago, but not any more.

To this list of why not to demo day, I want to add two caveats:

Y-Combinator. It’s probably a subject for another post, but Y-Combinator is the clear exception to this rule. Y-Combinator organized one of the original demo days, and has emerged as — by far — one of the most successful accelerator programs in the world. Most of the YC companies that pitch on demo day have already raised money in some form. In many ways, the YC Demo Day is a bit of a fiction (few actual demos, all the good startups have already raised), but it’s a useful fiction. YC’s impact on a startup’s network and brand is so profound that the demo day is a justifiable cost.

If you are already committed to an accelerator program. Naturally, if you are already committed to an accelerator program, political realities might mean you have to participate in a demo day. There is nothing wrong with this, so long as you do so with your eyes open.

So if you have to “demo day”, how do you do it?

Admittedly, it’s a bit naïve to assume that start-up CEOs will be able to resist the need to participate in demo days from time to time. Here’s how I would approach it.

Be yourself. It’s fine to benefit from some public speaking coaching. But resist any and all advice to be anything other than yourself. You don’t want rock music, refuse to go on stage to rock music. If you don’t want to speak in crazy superlatives — just don’t do it. You are not Steve Jobs. You are you. Relax and enjoy it.

Reframe the demo day as a public speaking practice opportunity, NOT as a fundraising exercise. As a CEO, public speaking is part of the job. Consider the demo day as an opportunity to practice that skill: an opportunity to explain what you are working on, why it is interesting, and why people should be excited about learning more. Talk about technology, customers, validation, product, learnings. Just be interesting. Make people want to learn more.

Recognize the limitations of the format. Under most circumstances, even the best investment opportunity will not be able to convince any serious investor to invest in a 5 minute speaking slot. So don’t even try. Don’t talk about fundraising, cash balance, valuation, milestones, etc. Put enough useful/interesting information on the table so that a smart investor can decide to reach out to you. That’s all you need to do.

Teach, don’t beseech. Take the opportunity to teach your audience something genuinely interesting about the world that they could not find out for themselves in a five minute Google search. (If you do not have any to teach, you probably haven’t figure much out…). This is your opportunity to be genuinely interesting and novel. Avoid the impulse to beseech your audience for their love, interest, or investment dollars. Instead, win their interest by establishing yourself as an expert in something.

I hope that was helpful and not too depressing…

As for me, I’ll still get all those demo day emails, and I’ll still go occasionally. But I’ll always believe that the best way to meet a startup is eye-to-eye over a coffee. Reach out. Let’s talk.

My AngelList syndicate to back the best in European & Israeli enterprise companies is now one of the largest syndicates based outside the US. We are now at well over $1.3M in backing per deal.

The syndicate has made six investments so far: all oversubscribed and all with quality co-investors. I’d be honored if you’d consider backing the syndicate — you’ll be in pretty good company and there are quite a few awesome companies in the pipeline…

[ageloire]

How Cards Against Humanity Helped Us Shape Our Product Story

Cards Against Humanity is more than just a game to me -- it led to an epiphany that shaped the way my company developed its product story around content personalization.

If you think about it, playing Cards Against Humanity and personalizing content are surprisingly similar actions. Both require you to know your audience members, understand what resonates with them, and deliver a relevant message. Both also build over time: a message that works at the start might need to evolve to remain relevant. In Cards Against Humanity, the person who delivers the most engaging experience over multiple rounds wins. In business, the company that consistently engages its audience succeeds.

Before I reframed my thinking, our company struggled to communicate what personalization meant in our industry. References to personalization almost always referred to either ecommerce or conversion rate optimization, and everyone wanted to talk about the greatness of Amazon and Netflix. While CRO might be relevant to our customers, ecommerce rarely is, so the B2C construct didn't hold water for us. We found ourselves explaining what our product wasn't more than what it was -- a content-driven experience that liberates brands from the confines of one-size-fits-all information architecture.

With a little inspiration from Cards Against Humanity, we were able to tell a content personalization story that people easily understood. Read on to find out how we did this, and how your brand can use an analogy to tell your product story effectively, as well.

An Effortless Approach to Product Story

Cards Against Humanity became more than an inspiration for us; it became a metaphor for our product story. With a simple analogy, we turned convoluted explanations about what we do into something people could immediately grasp.

Conversations that were once frustrating became absurdly easy: “Ever play Cards Against Humanity? You know how you have to learn what people respond to if you want them to pick your card? That’s what we do for your website -- make it relevant to different audiences by personalizing the experience.”

People immediately understood our company and were eager to learn more. Sales pitches that once took several minutes were reduced to one effective sentence. When we advertised at conferences, people flocked to our booth to play our customized expansion deck of Cards Against Humanity (appropriately named Marketers Avoid Calamity). Industry influencers gave us shout-outs on social media. Most importantly, this new approach landed us one of our biggest clients, a Fortune 500 software company.

Our association with the game was all about disrupting perceptions of personalization. To dispel personalization's longstanding association with ecommerce, we needed a way to tell our story with brevity and clarity. Cards Against Humanity allowed us to use something familiar and fun to clarify what we mean by personalization.

The ironic beauty of Cards Against Humanity is that it is not all that personal. Every deck of cards is exactly the same. It’s the unique combinations of cards, and the personalized uses of those cards among players, that makes the difference.

Brands cannot change to fit the needs of every consumer, but they can adapt their story to appeal to people in different ways.

How to Develop Your Own Product Story

My company’s experience with Cards Against Humanity is special to us, but it’s not the only way to tell a simple, effective product story. Other brands can do the same by following a few basic steps.

One great way to tell a product story is to tap into the power of analogy. We used a simple card game to explain our complex business, and people immediately understood what we meant. Many brands try to use analogies for this purpose, but their attempts don’t always hold up. The key is to identify something familiar and easily understood, which allows your audience to easily connect the dots between your example and your business.

In his book, “Winning the Story Wars,” Jonah Sachs identifies three story elements that capture audience attention: freaks, cheats, and familiars. In our case, we leveraged familiars by using an analogy that helped our audience arrive at the intended understanding on their own.

Pick something that works for your brand, and then find ways to make it your own. Infuse your brand’s personality into the analogy. Our third-party Cards Against Humanity expansion pack highlighted our sense of humor while maintaining a high level of relevance for our audience of content marketers and strategists.

That relevance will determine whether your analogy succeeds or flops. According to Content Science, audiences that perceive content as relevant are eight times more likely to feel they accomplished a goal than users who do not perceive relevance. Having clear goals and the path to meet them is a surefire way to create flow in the digital experience.

Throughout this process, focus on the experience. We were able to leverage the tactile, interactive elements of a card game, which felt completely different than a digital experience. That approach worked for us, but feel free to lean on virtual reality or whatever experience works best for your brand.

Whatever analogy avenue you choose, make it easy for audience members to engage with the experience. Gallup reports that only 20 percent of B2B customers are fully engaged, but those customers provide 23% more value than their disengaged peers.

Cards Against Humanity provided us with both the inspiration and the vessel to create a personalized message that captured our audience’s attention. As Brian Clark said, “The right analogy, at the right time, told the right way, may be exactly what they need to do business with you.”

For us, the right analogy for B2B website personalization was a rowdy party game. Inspiration can come from the strangest places -- what unexpected analogy can help you tell your story?

Sean Schroeder is CCO of blueriver and co-founder of the Mura Digital Experience Platform. He’s currently consumed with creating content-driven experiences that spark meaningful, relevant connections.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/cards-against-humanity

[ahmednabel2289]

The Science of Happiness Help!

Life, Death, and the Science of Happiness

Feeling happier has been proven to have many benefits. Possessing meaningful, higher excellent relationships drives happiness. The only means to happiness is to quit seeking it.

Told you it’s as easy as A-B-C. Create a Habitat for Happiness Space plays a significant role in our perception of the planet. How gratitude ought to be incorporated into your everyday journalling practice.

buy essay

Optimism has ever given me energy and happiness whilst pessimism and self-criticism has ever done the opposite. You may reward yourself but be cautious not to overindulge on whatever may lead to addiction. Higher consciousness is connected with a sense of self-worth and inner peace.

It’s about what you’ve got to supply others. It’s so easy and rather than simply giving money anonymously to charity you can actually feellike you’re a component of their journey which then makes it possible to to feel connected with the world in a true way. But happy men and women are somewhat more likely to be prosperous.

It’s something which comes and goes. https://www2.palomar.edu/telescope/2016/12/11/grand-canyon-university-representative-comes-to-palomar/ If that is what has always worked for you go for it and do not produce a morning habit only for the interest of it. So the good thing is that going blind isn’t likely to make you as unhappy as you think that it will.

Science of Happiness Options

Good for student teachers It’s also perfect for student teachers. The discipline of neuroscience has increased our knowledge of the human brain markedly in the very last decades. Actually, there’s no other approach to build such a science.

Career Services are readily available to alumni up to ten years from graduation. You have all of the tools and resources you want. All classes must be approved which demonstrates that the leadership team attempts to guarantee the classes taught are not harmful to the students.

There are a great deal of good YouTube videos and TED Talks available on the matter. If this describes https://buyessay.net/ you, this month gives you a great deal of fun and intriguing ideas about getting more engaged in life. Thus, to raise your lasting degree of happiness, you’ve got to change how you’re feeling about your past, how you consider the future, and the way you experience the present.

The Rise of the Science of Happiness

It’s accountable for the uptake of vital nutrients we receive from the food that we eat. Sensory feedback generated by the impacts of the ANS contribute to a number of the familiar feelings related to emotions. It’s the propensity to feel optimistic emotions, the ability to recover from negative emotions quickly, and holding a feeling of purpose.

The outcomes of this meta-analysis imply that happiness may not only be a result of these successes in life, but in addition a cause. Ayurveda is not only a treatment, it’s the way to enhance the method of living in simple together with easy actions. They show that it’s likely a two-way street, in that those who practice gratitude on a regular basis are more likely to report high levels of happiness, and those who are happy are more likely to feel high levels of gratitude.

Life After the Science of Happiness

A weekend might not be enough to offer the complete spectrum of the normal undergraduate experience. The confrontational talk has to be non-judgmental, in order for your partner is a great recipient to your concerns. You must make a determination, she explained.

Boundless opportunity arrives to people who are thriving in their present situation. Emphasis is put on the practical implementation of the hottest scientific discoveries on psychological well-being. However, the experience will be much more delightful than a new suit.

To begin with, subjects were given a succinct survey to ascertain how happy they are. We consider more options once we work with people that are different from us. That is dependent upon the individual’s experiences.

These 3 sets of questions provide a surprisingly efficient way to get to know someone and boost your connection. Actually, you are going to be a lot more ready to produce an impact after proper rest. Your brain could possibly be regarded as a consciousness machine.

The exact same principle is true for money. However beautiful you’re. If this comes to pass, it’s not an issue.

There are a lot of methods in which employee happiness can positively influence an organization’s performance. Another way I follow what I’ve learned from data is I don’t chase dollars now I have enough of them, because I understand that it is going to take a huge quantity of money to improve my happiness by a little quantity. Keep in mind the mind-body connection.

You will be a little less happy for a couple weeks or months, but then you will be back at your set-point. If you’re at home, have a quick nap for around 20-30 minutes. Easier said than done, and the very last counts for a whole lot of individuals.

Success is getting what you would like. At the start, you wish to engineer in some compact wins. Values only really matter when they’re tested, or so the birth of my first child was a perfect chance to check them.

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What You Need to Know About the Science of Happiness

WE WERE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACES the majority of people have some notion of what it is that they think it can take to attain happiness. It’s so easy and rather than simply giving money anonymously to charity you can actually feellike you’re a component of their journey which then makes it possible to to feel connected with the world in a true way. Put simply, those who are kind to others are somewhat more well-liked.

Part of being a true dad is attempting to honour that gift. Few days before, a buddy of minewas very sad.

The Basics of the Science of Happiness

In reality, 10 minutes might be sufficient. To be fair, this matter of Time isn’t all negative. You finally get one, and perhaps you truly feel happy about it for a couple weeks.

Success is getting what you would like. Science, you always begin with the baseline. I was hooked after the very first lecture.

The Basics of the Science of Happiness

This course can help you tackle one of life’s most important questions. There are increasing quantities of psychology research supporting the science of gratitude. Actually, there’s no other approach to build such a science.

Your essay can assist the readers decide. This is among those times when something is precisely what it sounds like it’s about the science behinds what happiness is and the way to experience it, what happy folks do differently, and what we can do in order to feel happier. It is a dynamic, ongoing process that has the potential to change the world, one person at a time and it can start today with you!

Contrary to what most people think, the world won’t end from taking a rest from your work. Unsurprisingly, Sanderson is one of the most well-known teachers at Amherst. However, human experience demonstrates that pleasant experiences aren’t restricted to the material.

These 3 sets of questions provide a surprisingly efficient way to get to know someone and boost your connection. These experiences have a tendency to satisfy increased order requirements, specifically the demand for social connectedness and vitalitya feeling of being alive. We could begin with ordinary things like your ability to comprehend and to think for yourself.

I wrote this report to reframe and alleviate the quantity of stress which often comes with developing a successful and fulfilled life. Money is part of the equation, but it isn’t the full equation. Not many men and women are comfortable with the idea of money or wealth.

There are a lot of methods in which employee happiness can positively influence an organization’s performance. Since you’re not making headway on the job, might too devote the time shaping yourself up. The most important thing it conveys is what is needed to build a business which focusses on building something that’s ever enduring.

A weekend might not be enough to offer the complete spectrum of the normal undergraduate experience. The confrontational talk has to be non-judgmental, in order for your partner is a great recipient to your concerns. Or even if you simply have a step toward a goal.

But quite a few things want to get considered. Within this collection of posts, I’ll share my favourite user psychology frameworks which will help you design more delightful product experiences. And I believe that that is a valuable method to they think about any these form of discussions.

We explored this question and a couple of others. We consider more options once we work with people that are different from us. Men and women that are clinically depressed often appear to lack the capability to reframe events.

Your eyes might be open or closed, but you could discover that it’s much easier to keep up your focus if you close your eyes. The more you do that, the more you’ll see and appreciate the great thing about this existence, and the happier you’ll be. Just realize that your mind has wandered.

Feeling fit and full of energy is just one of the happiest feelings which I am fortunate to enjoy. There’s no generic happiness formula’, you have to discover what works for you in your very own special way. Money offers you choices to a certain degree, but it does not provide you happiness.

Humans are especially bad at being aware of what makes them really contented. It cannot process complex emotions. Higher consciousness is connected with a sense of self-worth and inner peace.

It’s accountable for the uptake of vital nutrients we receive from the food that we eat. Sensory feedback generated by the impacts of the ANS contribute to a number of the familiar feelings related to emotions. It’s the propensity to feel optimistic emotions, the ability to recover from negative emotions quickly, and holding a feeling of purpose.

The outcomes of this meta-analysis imply that happiness may not only be a result of these successes in life, but in addition a cause. Ayurveda has several added benefits. They show that it’s likely a two-way street, in that those who practice gratitude on a regular basis are more likely to report high levels of happiness, and those who are happy are more likely to feel high levels of gratitude.

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The Basics of the Science of Happiness

But in the long run, it’s the ideal measure of a joyful life. This clears up your mind and offers you a fast boost. We could begin with ordinary things like your ability to comprehend and to think for yourself.

The exact same principle is true for money. The issue with the role of the brain is it’s tough to quantify. The issue comes in the very long run.

In all instances, adapting our communication and style so we are able to collaborate is vital. Another way I follow what I’ve learned from data is I don’t chase dollars now I have enough of them, because I understand that it is going to take a huge quantity of money to improve my happiness by a little quantity. The most important thing it conveys is what is needed to build a business which focusses on building something that’s ever enduring.

The Chronicles of the Science of Happiness

Sometimes it is helpful to select a number such as three to five things you will determine each week. Granted you have a life that may be considered comfortable, still, there appears to be an immense void waiting to be filled in. You could be genetically wired to be somewhat happy a lot of the moment.

By marinating in every fantastic moment, Hanson states. At the start, you wish to engineer in some compact wins. I was hooked after the very first lecture.

The Battle Over the Science of Happiness and How to Win It

This course can help you tackle one of life’s most important questions. The discipline of neuroscience has increased our knowledge of the human brain markedly in the very last decades. It’s very easy to advise based on science or that which we know we SHOULD do.

It was among the best conversations they’ve ever had. This is among those times when something is precisely what it sounds like it’s about the science behinds what happiness is and the way to experience it, what happy folks do differently, and what we can do in order to feel happier. Maintain a gratitude journal.

It’s possible for you to make yourself happier and nurture your relationship with somebody else by writing a thank-you letter expressing your pleasure and appreciation of that individual’s influence on your life. Your life doesn’t need to be about impressing different people or a successive collection of achievements. This month will provide you with the tools and know-how to block the spiral of negative ideas and live more in the present.

Science of Happiness Secrets That No One Else Knows About

But this illness can offer you an opportunity to know yourself more and realize some strengths of your character which you never think of. Maximizing these circumstances is usually pricey, hard, and not too practical. Take for example, yawning.

As a result of all of the animosity against him, this election is about Trump. Instead of attempting to change your circumstance, search for means by which you may change your emotions, ideas and actions to your basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy and connection. You’re going to be in uncharted territory.

What You Need to Know About the Science of Happiness

The working inhabitants of a contemporary city are those who live in a machine to be batted around by its wheels. Almost all of us love being spontaneous and adventurous in regards to life, but we seem to be tad hesitant concerning the spirit of adventure in regards to jobs. It isn’t constant pleasure.

Actually, the typical state of a person watching TV is mildly depressed. We’re discussing emotional well-being. So the good thing is that going blind isn’t likely to make you as unhappy as you think that it will.

She is the ideal illustration of that which we look for an amazingly talented professor who can entertain as much as she is able to educate,” Schragis explained. Research also suggests that we are more inclined to remember something that has emotional context instead of something that doesn’t. It suggests that I will be employed for a long time to come.

Boundless opportunity arrives to people who are thriving in their present situation. If you get a very good explanation for what you’ve completed the recruiters are made to believe in you. However, the experience will be much more delightful than a new suit.

It will become a mind-set. For example, if you will find a better pay, if you’re fit for the role, if you have the required understanding, avoid mistakes you have made previously, if you are going to have a superior working environment, a fantastic boss, breaks, games, and the list continues. Getting healthy is normally a reactive choice.

Your eyes might be open or closed, but you could discover that it’s much easier to keep up your focus if you close your eyes. The more you do that, the more you’ll see and appreciate the great thing about this existence, and the happier you’ll be. Living a life of purpose can be difficult, and it has a very long time frame once it comes to happiness.

Told you it’s as easy as A-B-C. Create a Habitat for Happiness Space plays a significant role in our perception of the planet. You said gratitude because you may feel grateful but not necessarily content.

Humans are especially bad at being aware of what makes them really contented. Virtues are a really good point to strive for. Relationships are far more conducive to a joyful life than money.

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Marketing For Agency Strategists

Curiously, many people find their way to advertising agencies or in-house marketing departments at major brands without being educated or trained in the basics of marketing. And inside agencies, even more curiously, there is no additional training in marketing beyond the on the job variety. Which is a wonderful way to ensure that you will always be at least one step behind the MBAs.

Let’s cover some of the key concepts today starting with the marketing mix – the Four P’s which was developed in the late 1950s. Of the four, three of them – Product, Price and Place – are assigned to the agency 99% of the time. The agency gets to skin the last P, Promotion. This is flawed. Separating promotion from the other parts is an outmoded thought. This is especially true with digital products, which may actually only have 2 Ps. Product, Place and Promotion may all be the same thing.

Agencies have become much more involved in Place. There are countless great examples of experiential campaigns and executions that help re-contextualize the Product or brand for consumers. For example, 360i helped Nestle’s Lean Cuisine reframe the promise of the product by executing an experiential campaign in public spaces like New York’s Grand Central Station. They invited women to define how they would like to be measured instead of weight – choosing attributes and descriptions of their accomplishments instead of pounds. An artist helped bring each to life by painting a scale which the women were invited to hand in an exhibit showcasing all of the scales. Women used phrases like “Back in College at 55” or “Caring for over 200 homeless children per day” to show that lives are more than just one metric on the scale.

The most effective client/agency relationships allow for collaboration across the spectrum of the marketing mix.

When Crispin Porter + Bogusky found research that showed consumers were eating even more on the go than was understood in 2004, they created a product – not an ad – for Burger King: Chicken Fries. The packaging is designed to fit in a car’s cupholder. The product was an initial hit, and when the brand pulled Chicken Fries off the menu, fans begged for their return via reddit and other online forums. They’ve been on the menu ever since.

Takeaway: If you are going to make an impact on your client’s business, you need to be thinking about the entire business and not waiting for the last P. Understanding how they arrived at the product and pricing – if not advising on those elements proactively – is critical.

I’m not the first to suggest the Four Ps are no longer relevant. There were attempts to add three more P’s (People, Process, Physical Evidence). There are also dozens of models that have been introduced to replace it. For example, The Four C’s. There are probably five models called the Four Cs that can be found. Professor Bob Lauterborn introduced his Four C’s in the early 1990’s which updated the Four P’s with modern terms. Consumer Wants and Needs which replaces Product, Convenience to Buy which replaces Place, Cost to Satisfy standing in for Price and Communication for Promotion. Professor Koichi Shimizu authored his own updated version: Commodity, Cost, Communication, Channel.

Another version of the next Four C’s adds new dimension. Clarity means making your message simple and understandable. Consistency means reinforcing that simple message repeatedly to break through. Credibility means serving messages that consumers can find believable and worthy of paying attention to. Competitiveness means explaining how the brand or product is different or better than competitors.

Before we go too far with messaging nuance, let’s look at overarching modes of communication. Today, there is a push towards the societal concept of marketing management (think: Toms Shoes or Even Stevens subs). Some brands are thinking more broadly about their message, a far cry from product or selling concept. Product concept says if we create something great, we will not need to market it. Selling concept says if we promote the hell out of our product we will drive sales. Marketing concept says we should identify a consumer need and design products to meet that need. This is known today as product market fit. In the product concept, we are much more tactical and less focused on the brand promise. This usually applies to highly specialized products and markets today. Societal concept is most interesting because in essence it closes a loop back to a product focus, while hiding that fact in a brand message that is powerful to a specific audience.

Toms Shoes offers a powerful societal message. For each pair you buy you trigger a donation to someone with no shoes. That is a powerful and unique value proposition. Could this work with a luxury car or private jet flight? Not likely. Because most of us don’t consume those things, or think people are truly ‘in need’ of them. It wouldn’t work for private jet flight, but might work for coach domestic air travel. Pay attention to the types of products and brands that use the societal concept. They are typically lower in the commodity chain. In fact, the first designs of Toms Shoes were on the plain side. People didn’t buy them for looks. They bought them because compared to Keds or another utilitarian type of footwear, they served the same purpose, made a statement normally hard to share – and actually helped someone.

Ridesharing brands like Uber and Lyft would never be able to use the societal concept. Until maybe now. Initially, Uber was treated like a luxury; the private driver for everyone. In fact, the approach used was initially marketing concept, then transitioned to product concept. In Uber’s case, 70% of the communication you’ve ever seen has been recruiting for drivers – not recruiting customers!

With the emergence of Lyft, Flywheel and dozens of other brands the time might be right for a rideshare brand to use societal concept. In fact, Lyft was initially conceived as a social good to reduce the number of cars (and their ecological damage) on the road but this hasn’t made it into their consumer marketing as they’ve scaled.

Now that ride sharing has become widely accepted and commoditized, a brand could shift. For every ride, we donate to a transit service in Haiti or donate subway cards in inner cities. That might be a meaningful differentiator between Brand A and Brand B in this space.

What I’m describing is part of product positioning. How do people think about the product in the context of their category. There are a lot of shoe brands, Toms is the one that gives back. There are a lot of rideshare brands, Uber is the evil one. Axe deodorant creates desirability for those who wear it but Degree keeps you drier longer, a factor in social acceptance.

Takeaway: All of this is usually decided by the brand’s marketing team before they brief you. Sometimes, the claim they ask you to make isn’t very strong or might be true but isn’t compelling. Make it your business to understand and have a point of view on how you will sell, based on what will motivate the audience.

Joy – Pain = Value

To describe all the mental processes we make when we consider a brand I would have to write all about neuroeconomics. Luckily, Phil Barden already wrote Decoded.

To boil down what is critical for strategists to understand – different sets of mental operators drive the way we think as consumers. We essentially weigh the joy we will derive from a product. This is heavily skewed by our perception of the brand.

Once our brains score how much joy the thing will provide, we begin deducting points for pain. This could be things like high price, effort to buy or waiting for delivery. If the pain doesn’t cut too far into the joy, we act. We click. We subscribe. We buy.

Inside an agency, there is often fierce debate about brand ads versus promotional ads. It’s possible to do both, as many great restaurant brands have proven in their TV ads, with 25 seconds for branding and five seconds for the value or promotion.

But this goes further than the brand and the offer. People lose joy whenever they encounter friction. Starbucks has mastered reducing friction. Customers walk in, order, wave their phone and leave. Better yet, they order on the app before they arrive, pick up their drink and leave. It’s no coincidence that sales increased shortly after they introduced this feature to their app. It reduced pain and increased value.

But, sales started to wane because there was different pain being caused. Non-users waiting while mobile orders were prepared ahead of theirs. A reduction in conversation and engagement with baristas due to technology. For non-users of the app, pain increased and value decreased.

Takeaway:  As you think about messaging in campaigns, find the right weight for increasing the joy and diminishing the pain. As you think about execution, find ways to make it easier for people to engage. Increase joy. Decrease pain. Whatever those may be to the end user.

Satisfaction Is Not Enough

Satisfaction is a traditional and now weak measure of brand or product success. This is often measured and reported by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power among others.

When you last ate at McDonald’s were you satisfied? Were your very basic needs and expectations met? Most likely yes. Great! Success for the brand! What if I asked if you to rank the experience at McDonald’s on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being Nordstrom service with Lyft convenience and Houston’s food? Still satisfied?

What if I asked you the basic Net Promoter question – would you recommend this McDonald’s based on this experience? Comparing the value of ‘satisfied’ customers to the value of Net Promoters tells us that satisfaction is baseline. If customers aren’t satisfied you don’t have a business. But it takes much more to sustain and grow.

Takeaway: Satisfaction was a common measurement device before brands began designing delightful experiences. Just satisfying customers means losing them soon. Design programs to overachieve and measure more significant indicators to prove success and brand growth. Satisfaction is now meaningless. Aim higher.

You don’t need an MBA to think strategically about brand marketing. But you do need to understand the key concepts well enough to communicate and to know what they’re trying to do. The concepts above are basic items that are often discussed on the brand side, and rarely mentioned inside the agency.

A lot of the foundational pieces of marketing don’t make sense anymore given the way consumers find products. And the way consumers market for products on behalf of brands. But it’s important to understand. Most musical virtuosos don’t start that way. They learn the basics before breaking the rules and creating their own. Understand how marketing works so you can know how to bend it to your goals.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

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Marketing For Agency Strategists

Curiously, many people find their way to advertising agencies or in-house marketing departments at major brands without being educated or trained in the basics of marketing. And inside agencies, even more curiously, there is no additional training in marketing beyond the on the job variety. Which is a wonderful way to ensure that you will always be at least one step behind the MBAs.

Let’s cover some of the key concepts today starting with the marketing mix – the Four P’s which was developed in the late 1950s. Of the four, three of them – Product, Price and Place – are assigned to the agency 99% of the time. The agency gets to skin the last P, Promotion. This is flawed. Separating promotion from the other parts is an outmoded thought. This is especially true with digital products, which may actually only have 2 Ps. Product, Place and Promotion may all be the same thing.

Agencies have become much more involved in Place. There are countless great examples of experiential campaigns and executions that help re-contextualize the Product or brand for consumers. For example, 360i helped Nestle’s Lean Cuisine reframe the promise of the product by executing an experiential campaign in public spaces like New York’s Grand Central Station. They invited women to define how they would like to be measured instead of weight – choosing attributes and descriptions of their accomplishments instead of pounds. An artist helped bring each to life by painting a scale which the women were invited to hand in an exhibit showcasing all of the scales. Women used phrases like “Back in College at 55” or “Caring for over 200 homeless children per day” to show that lives are more than just one metric on the scale.

The most effective client/agency relationships allow for collaboration across the spectrum of the marketing mix.

When Crispin Porter + Bogusky found research that showed consumers were eating even more on the go than was understood in 2004, they created a product – not an ad – for Burger King: Chicken Fries. The packaging is designed to fit in a car’s cupholder. The product was an initial hit, and when the brand pulled Chicken Fries off the menu, fans begged for their return via reddit and other online forums. They’ve been on the menu ever since.

Takeaway: If you are going to make an impact on your client’s business, you need to be thinking about the entire business and not waiting for the last P. Understanding how they arrived at the product and pricing – if not advising on those elements proactively – is critical.

I’m not the first to suggest the Four Ps are no longer relevant. There were attempts to add three more P’s (People, Process, Physical Evidence). There are also dozens of models that have been introduced to replace it. For example, The Four C’s. There are probably five models called the Four Cs that can be found. Professor Bob Lauterborn introduced his Four C’s in the early 1990’s which updated the Four P’s with modern terms. Consumer Wants and Needs which replaces Product, Convenience to Buy which replaces Place, Cost to Satisfy standing in for Price and Communication for Promotion. Professor Koichi Shimizu authored his own updated version: Commodity, Cost, Communication, Channel.

Another version of the next Four C’s adds new dimension. Clarity means making your message simple and understandable. Consistency means reinforcing that simple message repeatedly to break through. Credibility means serving messages that consumers can find believable and worthy of paying attention to. Competitiveness means explaining how the brand or product is different or better than competitors.

Before we go too far with messaging nuance, let’s look at overarching modes of communication. Today, there is a push towards the societal concept of marketing management (think: Toms Shoes or Even Stevens subs). Some brands are thinking more broadly about their message, a far cry from product or selling concept. Product concept says if we create something great, we will not need to market it. Selling concept says if we promote the hell out of our product we will drive sales. Marketing concept says we should identify a consumer need and design products to meet that need. This is known today as product market fit. In the product concept, we are much more tactical and less focused on the brand promise. This usually applies to highly specialized products and markets today. Societal concept is most interesting because in essence it closes a loop back to a product focus, while hiding that fact in a brand message that is powerful to a specific audience.

Toms Shoes offers a powerful societal message. For each pair you buy you trigger a donation to someone with no shoes. That is a powerful and unique value proposition. Could this work with a luxury car or private jet flight? Not likely. Because most of us don’t consume those things, or think people are truly ‘in need’ of them. It wouldn’t work for private jet flight, but might work for coach domestic air travel. Pay attention to the types of products and brands that use the societal concept. They are typically lower in the commodity chain. In fact, the first designs of Toms Shoes were on the plain side. People didn’t buy them for looks. They bought them because compared to Keds or another utilitarian type of footwear, they served the same purpose, made a statement normally hard to share – and actually helped someone.

Ridesharing brands like Uber and Lyft would never be able to use the societal concept. Until maybe now. Initially, Uber was treated like a luxury; the private driver for everyone. In fact, the approach used was initially marketing concept, then transitioned to product concept. In Uber’s case, 70% of the communication you’ve ever seen has been recruiting for drivers – not recruiting customers!

With the emergence of Lyft, Flywheel and dozens of other brands the time might be right for a rideshare brand to use societal concept. In fact, Lyft was initially conceived as a social good to reduce the number of cars (and their ecological damage) on the road but this hasn’t made it into their consumer marketing as they’ve scaled.

Now that ride sharing has become widely accepted and commoditized, a brand could shift. For every ride, we donate to a transit service in Haiti or donate subway cards in inner cities. That might be a meaningful differentiator between Brand A and Brand B in this space.

What I’m describing is part of product positioning. How do people think about the product in the context of their category. There are a lot of shoe brands, Toms is the one that gives back. There are a lot of rideshare brands, Uber is the evil one. Axe deodorant creates desirability for those who wear it but Degree keeps you drier longer, a factor in social acceptance.

Takeaway: All of this is usually decided by the brand’s marketing team before they brief you. Sometimes, the claim they ask you to make isn’t very strong or might be true but isn’t compelling. Make it your business to understand and have a point of view on how you will sell, based on what will motivate the audience.

Joy – Pain = Value

To describe all the mental processes we make when we consider a brand I would have to write all about neuroeconomics. Luckily, Phil Barden already wrote Decoded.

To boil down what is critical for strategists to understand – different sets of mental operators drive the way we think as consumers. We essentially weigh the joy we will derive from a product. This is heavily skewed by our perception of the brand.

Once our brains score how much joy the thing will provide, we begin deducting points for pain. This could be things like high price, effort to buy or waiting for delivery. If the pain doesn’t cut too far into the joy, we act. We click. We subscribe. We buy.

Inside an agency, there is often fierce debate about brand ads versus promotional ads. It’s possible to do both, as many great restaurant brands have proven in their TV ads, with 25 seconds for branding and five seconds for the value or promotion.

But this goes further than the brand and the offer. People lose joy whenever they encounter friction. Starbucks has mastered reducing friction. Customers walk in, order, wave their phone and leave. Better yet, they order on the app before they arrive, pick up their drink and leave. It’s no coincidence that sales increased shortly after they introduced this feature to their app. It reduced pain and increased value.

But, sales started to wane because there was different pain being caused. Non-users waiting while mobile orders were prepared ahead of theirs. A reduction in conversation and engagement with baristas due to technology. For non-users of the app, pain increased and value decreased.

Takeaway:  As you think about messaging in campaigns, find the right weight for increasing the joy and diminishing the pain. As you think about execution, find ways to make it easier for people to engage. Increase joy. Decrease pain. Whatever those may be to the end user.

Satisfaction Is Not Enough

Satisfaction is a traditional and now weak measure of brand or product success. This is often measured and reported by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power among others.

When you last ate at McDonald’s were you satisfied? Were your very basic needs and expectations met? Most likely yes. Great! Success for the brand! What if I asked if you to rank the experience at McDonald’s on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being Nordstrom service with Lyft convenience and Houston’s food? Still satisfied?

What if I asked you the basic Net Promoter question – would you recommend this McDonald’s based on this experience? Comparing the value of ‘satisfied’ customers to the value of Net Promoters tells us that satisfaction is baseline. If customers aren’t satisfied you don’t have a business. But it takes much more to sustain and grow.

Takeaway: Satisfaction was a common measurement device before brands began designing delightful experiences. Just satisfying customers means losing them soon. Design programs to overachieve and measure more significant indicators to prove success and brand growth. Satisfaction is now meaningless. Aim higher.

You don’t need an MBA to think strategically about brand marketing. But you do need to understand the key concepts well enough to communicate and to know what they’re trying to do. The concepts above are basic items that are often discussed on the brand side, and rarely mentioned inside the agency.

A lot of the foundational pieces of marketing don’t make sense anymore given the way consumers find products. And the way consumers market for products on behalf of brands. But it’s important to understand. Most musical virtuosos don’t start that way. They learn the basics before breaking the rules and creating their own. Understand how marketing works so you can know how to bend it to your goals.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers