#like..... it seems one produce a decent blog and then everyone steal it. put enough words to make it google algorithm likely

[nonsensical-gashi]

Some time ago my add blocked told me "het, we have a new option, where we can keep non invasive add, and keep blocking everything else"

And it's wonderful!!! Specially for those sites that REALLY need money (small business) that actually don't use invasive stuff, but before got blocked anyways.

I don't mind getting some Add at the side of the stuff I'm reading. The problem is that today's add look like virus page from 15 years ago, and somehow that seems to be normal now...

Website: Pwease disable your adblock? 🥺👉👈

My adblock:

[mikazukikannagisjourney]

Law of Attraction: Do Opposites Really Attract?

IF this was the topic sentence then it should look like this: It's been a long while since the Law of Attraction (LOA) busted out into mainstream culture, but seriously is making so many heads turn away and eyes rolling up the sky. I wonder why? Could it be that the law was wrong? Misrepresented? Misleading? A big mistake? Well, whether that's true or not, one thing is for sure: Attraction is what drives human passion, and whether or not it's due to similarities or polarities will all depend on who's wielding the whole attraction field.

Warning: Very long post, so I did my best to make it in such a way that you can scan and speed read stuff so you can still get something here. Thank you for reading. Oh, and there’s a summary and conclusion portion at the end of this post so if you’re tl;dr mode you’re welcome lol

Hey guys, what's up? Bet you didn't see this post coming lol yeah I know even I was surprised to be typing this today, but it has been bugging me for a few days now so I guess I have to get this out of my head and get a good night's rest. Also, I kept getting weird songs in my head singing that opposites attract, and me, a sucker of the Law of Attraction (LOA) stuff for quite a while now and somewhat unearthing all the stuff hidden from common knowledge since I discovered this (and other universal laws that apparently affect our lives one way or another) have been getting conflicting results so I shall be sharing the stuff that I found out and whatever I'm going to type in this post (tah-dah, channeled stuff lol) for everyone who's been frustrated at making this universal law work for their own favor.

The Premise: What you think about is what you'll attract. Therefore, change your thoughts to change what you pull into your world. What the mainstream isn't telling the people: Your SUBCONSCIOUS MIND is the one that DRIVES what YOU pull into your world, whether you like it or not. How I came up with this stuff: I discovered LOA around the same time that I consciously awakened, and desperate to shift my shitty life, I decided there and then to undertake the task of leveling-up my shadow work so that I could rid everything that has been keeping me in a crappy state of mind and reality. Also the depressive state has gotten to me so much that I was literally wallowing in self-pity before sleeping each night. So yeah, when I started manifesting "nice" stuff, like a plane trip to somewhere I haven't been in before, having some pocket money for that, and for some weird reason being able to live despite a lot of "lacks", I started believing in the idea that "thoughts become reality." It was pretty awesome, until sometime later I started manifesting the "crappy" stuff: Manifesting a job that only seemed "nice" on the surface but was really like a can of worms that only waited for me to open it up and change it all permanently, for a lot of people.

Honestly it was scary and each time I think about it, I am actually scared that I bring chaos everywhere I go, but at this point I am just thinking that if things were as they were and there were no hidden agendas, it won't be a can of worms to begin with. I have already accepted the fact that anything rooted in lies can and will get uprooted to show the truth and be transformed into whatever its true form was. But this wasn't just in the workplace, but also for me, personally. I attracted the wrong kind of people, those that prey on insecurities and the people pleasers and all that crappy stuff that apparently were still in my subconscious and in my energetic field. They all seem nice and shiny until the time that they show their true selves, which can really heck you up, big time. Weirdly a lot of people let down their guard around me and show their true selves, like even psychically I could feel out what kind of person these people were. I don't mind if those are just the stuff that I originally sense from them and then later find out that I'm on point, but are just benign nuances that I could live with. But there were times when I feel scared even just thinking about it because there was a time when I kept getting some ultra-low vibes, like from a sexual predator within the area, and, well, they kinda showed up, in my face. I was scared for my life. I guess some saving grace that I am still thankful for despite the events were that someone was around the area as well, so the predatory attacks were minimized to some degree which I can manage and escape from. Not fun, but it happens.

But I did everything to clear my thoughts!!!

Well, turns out my subconscious programming of not being enough, my constant depressive state that was at some point labeled as "high-functioning depression" which allowed me to hold a decent job while wanting to die at the same time (yeah I know it happens), being too-desperate for someone to fawn over me and tell me how nice and whatever I am, all those insecurities that were all a huge bunch of snow about to fall into a massive avalanche, the stuff that I didn't get to uncover through shadow work, these beliefs and ideas and notions of who I am as a person attracted really shady characters that, one way or another made me question my life choices over and over again. It's still a miracle that despite the crappy results, I am still OK putting myself out there, or at least seeing that as an option in the future.

Seriously, after what happened, if I can hide any further or bury myself in the ground just to make the pain stop, I would have done that. But at the same time, I am still doing my best to hold on to any form of hope that everything will get better. That at the very least, I can improve my discernment of people so that I can put my trust  on the right people at the right time. I am still hoping for that to happen, but right now, as the world is starting to feel the energies from the higher dimensional realms, I have consciously chosen to focus more on my own growth, because seriously, I have a lot of subconscious programming that are really hecked up, like big time.

For instance: I am more than willing to sell myself less that what I'm really worth, just to make do. Which, translated to conscious terms: I am not worthy to be recognized (and paid in all energetic ways) and be given what is rightfully due of me. How I am healing that idea at the moment: Building my skills as well as self-confidence through subconscious reprogramming that whatever I am right now, I am enough, and worthy of love from the universe. How I check if this belief has been changed: Muscle test, feelings test, because the subconscious mind can give answers to any Yes-No questions, or just paint a vivid picture of whatever it wants to say. Like. it doesn't even bother to spell or write. It just paints a picture and pulls up feelings and emotions that are familiar or alien to us, however that feels for us.

OK but we still haven't touched the topic of "Do opposites really attract?", Like don't keep us waiting here.

No worries fam, Mika-chi's got you. And this is what I really want to write here, but it would seem weird without my weird rambling premise above because I don't know, maybe it would seem to make sense once this part gets built.

Premise: Opposites attract I beg to differ, and offer this idea instead: You get attracted to anything that you "think" you don't have yet. Conversely, you don't get attracted to anything that you already have or you don't like because subconsciously you already have whatever that is.

I will be writing this through the lenses of being in a relationship of any kind, because that's what I can think about right now that may have some sense to most people. Also relationships are extremely over-rated or even misrepresented through mass media, so this notion might break the illusion to most, if not some.

How did I come up with such a dumb idea anyway?

Well, I did say it's going to be based on relationships, and because that's the kind of stuff I may have some experience on, that's what I'll post here. If you think or feel that I am ringing my own bells for writing stuff here that I have personally experienced, uhm.. I'd rather do that than steal someone else's blog and paste their own crap here. I may be blowing my own horns but at least I don't steal. My personal integrity is my most valuable possession right now, and I am doing my best to take care of it and help it grow. Also as a content creator here, or elsewhere, I recognize the value of creativity and anything that a person makes through their own skills and efforts, and I expect to get that same respect. I don't care if the creator of that content thinks it's ugly AF. If you ask me what I think, if you did it with all your heart and effort then it's beautiful AF, and I could feel that beauty energetically, hands down. Besides, if a person wants to improve, there's always a way to improve: do it everyday, learn and grow everyday.

Which brings me to the idea that opposites do not attract per se, but that what one lacks in itself, it tries to get for itself.

Case in point: Plants

Why do plants grow towards the sun? Like, even if you plant them upside-down, they will always do their best to grow to where the sun is.

Why is that?

Simple, plants know what they need, and they need sunlight. Sunlight to produce their own food. The sunlight helps the chlorophyll convert nutrients as well as the atmospheric carbon into sugars that they can store as food (photosynthesis, light reactions) But they don't have that sunlight all the time, so they grow more cells (leaf cells) to catch more sunlight, grow more cells to keep going towards the sun (vascular tissues aka their stems), so that they can keep going to where the sunlight shines the most.

OK, so how can I apply this to me and my own relationships? I don't photosynthesize and shit.

Yeah, great question you got there, and Mika-chi's got you covered.

But first, I will ask you something:

Think of your crush. Or your special person. Or your significant other, if you're blessed to have one right now. Now, think clearly, without the rose-tinted glasses, what made you sway towards them? Why do you like them? What makes them likeable to you? List as much as you can, take your time.

OK, now you've probably listed like what, 1, 3, 20, or how many reasons you got for liking that particular person.

NOW, for more hecking-ups, and be ABSOLUTELY HONEST with yourself, ok?

As you are right now, do you think YOU DON'T HAVE these attributes within you? Lemme rephrase that: In your list of "Why do I like/love my special person/significant other", DO YOU BELIEVE, that YOU DON'T HAVE ANY OF THOSE LIKEABLE STUFF RIGHT NOW?

Now, why did I even ask something as dumb and as triggering as that?

Simple really, it's likely that you liked that person because they probably have something that you secretly wanted, or subconsciously wanted to covet. Reaaaaaally think about that for a moment.

It can be that they're really nice and kind and warm. Or that they're thoughtful. Or they make you laugh and feel at ease. Or they're super-smart, tech-savvy, updated with the new stuff. Or maybe they're beautiful, handsome, aesthetically-pleasing. Can sing really good, or draws really well. Or good at games, console or not, digital or not. Or have really good leadership skills, or money skills, or they’re super-analytical logical. Or just being super-confident, self-assured, emotionally-secure.

Basically whatever you think is attractive.

But have you ever thought about the idea that... What if YOU started CULTIVATING those same stuff INSIDE YOU?

What would happen then? Would you still like them in the same way right now?

Now, just let the ideas sink in. You can leave this post right now and ponder about the ideas and come back later.

OR....

Just keep reading.

OK fam, whatever it is you’re thinking right now, I hate to break this to you but.... Whatever the case is, it all boils down to a basic idea:  You don't have those attributes yet so when you see someone with those traits you immediately hone in on them. And to be honest, this is something subconscious. You may "think" you don't know why, but unfortunately, this is probably the WHY.

BUT WHY????? How dare you say these blasphemous things!

Yeah, precisely, that's what I was thinking before I got my epiphany 7 years ago. It was both horrible and yet at the same time empowering, AF. It was also scary, and that's what got me thinking about how the entire thing about "opposites attract" was just one large piece of crap, which was later somewhat uppended by the LOA because again, the law states that YOU ATTRACT WHAT YOU THINK/BELIEVE. And if you keep attracting crappy stuff, that's the subconscious beliefs thinking THAT'S WHAT YOU DESERVE, no matter how many positive affirmations your conscious mind eats everyday.

OK, putting this in a relationship perspective again, here's how I came up with that notion:

In my previous relationship, I basically tuned in to this dude because he has a lot of attributes that, in my 3D dead asleep mind found quite attractive, such as a tall height (cries in 5' lol but hey now I'm 5' 3/4" so yeah lol), really good with math (the dude's an engineering student), really commanding (somewhat Caucasian) facial features (laughs in my Southeast-Asian face lol), nice singing voice, good reasoning skills, clear and focused thinking, knows how to commit and attend to scheduled activities, draws structures, isometric drawings, and manga characters in ink really well (technical drawings especially inks do require a lot more skills than freehand penciling), can ride a big motorbike, and to be honest, is also an otaku like yours truly. In my 3D dead asleep way of thinking, I don't have a lot of these attributes, ok maybe I do have some like the OK singing voice, the commanding facial features (but with the looks of a typical Southeast-Asian), substantial reasoning skills (that's a requirement for science degrees lol), committment to schedules (as needed), and some substantial drawing skills (needed to draw bacterial cells, cheek cells, and chromosomes lol), but the other stuff, I don't have back then.

But then things changed when the Fire Nation attacked. LOL just kidding, NOT.

OK, so when the breakup happened (gah what a terrible segue lol) and after sometime, I strongly felt the need to build my self-esteem and self-confidence again, because let me tell you, getting dumped or rejected one way or another can really, REALLY take a toll on your entire being. Especially when you take any form of rejection as a personal attack, as a child. Yeah, I know right, it sucks. But some of us are programmed like that. And we have to degunk that junk so that we can heal ourselves and all that jazz. But at the time when that happened to me, I was still somewhat in the 3D dead asleep state, and what's worse was that aside from getting no resolution nor proper closure from the breakup (still have no idea why but I've gotten past that somehow), surprise, surprise, I've lost the ability to walk without enduring excruciating pain. I was basically living in my bed, no physical therapy other than me doing that on my own, and desperately trying to piece back whatever scraps of life I still hold in my hand. So I did something that felt so alien to me.

I started learning Math. Mind you, not college level math. Not even high school math. Yep. I learned elementary math. Primary level math. That was my major waterloo. I can't do that shit. I didn't even know the entire multiplication table back then. Yeah I survived and even graduated with a Science degree without knowing that basic shit. Laugh all you want, but I survived through college with a scientific calculator that was older than me and some basic knowledge of statistics. I flunked some subjects but they're math so yeah. But I still finished that science course which was full of math (suprise, surprise, I’m a Biology graduate, specialized in Genetics and that shit was full of math lol), even if I had to crawl.

But that was a long time ago, and being at my lowest low (back then) I needed something to fill in the void and help me become complete. So I learned primary math. I learned how to do long division (former boyfriend taught me but forgot a lot because I didn't get to use them a lot, just to get through the Civil Service Exam), recall the multiplication table better, divide decimals, and all the primary math stuff I don't know. I do get well with fractions and percentages though, so I guess at some point I have come to believe that I wasn't half as dumb as I thought I was.

I also took the time (before I lost my lower-limb powers) to learn how to draw realistic portraits of people, just to prove to myself that I have some self-worth of some sort. This drew in mixed reactions to people within my former social media network, ranging from "wow that's cool" to "stop wasting time get back to work". Of course, as with all of my efforts, I didn't learn the techniques as fast as I wanted them to learn, but there came a time that everything just clicked and things fell into place (I am eternally grateful to EXO for this, lol). It was a harsh, uphill battle to build my self-esteem to even half of what it was, and in a way, I was able to recover, for a while. Yeah, I know it wasn't the best way but at that time, I was hopelessly burying the gnawing pain of loss by doing the stuff that I thought I didn't have, but turns out that I actually did.

A few years in, I was feeling great, and I felt that nicer things were coming my way again. I started driving to work (my workplace was quite far), started to mentor thesis students again, and everything was going well despite some aspects that were still sucky. In a way, building myself back up to be stronger was a great plan, back then, just so I could show myself to the world again, and do stuff. I thought I was OK, but deep inside I was still wanting to have that closure that I never had, and by this time I haven't learned to BE CAREFUL OF WHAT TO WISH FOR, because boy oh boy the universe can get batshit crazy.

Due to a series of events, I ended up meeting the former boyfriend, like I have zero clue that it was even possible. I mean, back then, I felt that the universe was so mean to make it happen, because after that meetup there was STILL no closure. No apologies, no reasons given, nothing. And to be honest, I am still kicking myself every now and then because I SHOULD HAVE MOVED ON AFTER ALL THAT SHIT. In the end, I was unable to go to the deep roots of grieving for my original loss, and because that had a shaky foundation that only focused on the external stuff, it broke me.

SO it was time to step up to "why did I even like this person - Ver 2.0".

This process took quite a long time that by the time I was about to finish I was already at a screwed up place and feeling that same feeling again, of breaking and shattering again. It was just horrible AF but that time I had to kick myself in the butt to sincerely, just forgive and move on. That despite what happened to me, I can still come back on top and be my self-assured self. I had to build my mental capacity to be OK with being sucky and making mistakes. Not easy but doable, and by the time I was healed, I was already looking forward to having a fresh new start with someone MORE LIKE ME, maybe not now but in the future. I was, and still am doing my best to enjoy being a self-assured single grandma lol but also still being open to the idea of meeting someone better in the future, despite the pandemic right now. I mean, miracles can happen so I don't see why it can't lol

OK but you still haven't said anything about attracting or getting attracted to someone that seems your polar opposite, or not opposite.

Oh yeah, thank you for reminding me about that. Yeah, I was getting to that part..

So after meeting the former boyfriend and getting to chat and whatnot, I found out, energetically and through his mannerisms and speech that after all these years, HE WAS STILL THE SAME. But even more disturbing for me at that time, and probably still, is that HE WAS NOT WILLING TO LEARN AND CHANGE. To some degree. Maybe he held some contempt for me, maybe for him I'm just the crazy ex-gf, I'll probably never know (because we don't talk anymore lol but also at this point I’m like yeah sure whatever makes him happy I just don't care much anymore lol). So at that point, I was starting to think "Why did I fell for this dude again?" Like seriously, I didn’t know anymore. We've drifted so far apart that we're basically polar opposites, and to be honest I feel a bit disappointed with myself that I actually fell for someone like that. I mean, yeah, sure, he has his good points, but the fact that through all the years I was with this person, I could strongly feel that he was keeping a lot of stuff from me, maybe just to keep the peace, maybe just to shut me up, and here I was having strong alarm bells ringing and telling me that "this dude be lyin." And the more I pushed him to be honest, the more he rebelled.

In the end, looking back, he never felt safe to be vulnerable with me, in the entirety of that relationship, and up to this day I still feel horrible that I was unable to be the safe haven for him like he was for me. For him, he probably valued peace and harmony more than being honest with whatever he was feeling inside. I personally value honesty and transparency more than the harmony and peace, because the reality of life is that if a person is kind enough, even though your ideas and beliefs are disharmonious, if the person has some kindness inside them, the differences can easily be overlooked because kindness brings upon respect. Unfortunately in our case, we weren't woke enough to even realize that. Even worse was that my insecurities due to my hecked up childhood more likely pushed him to the farthest regions of the universe, so I won't blame him if he thinks I'm worse than the stinkiest food in the world. Heck, even I still cringe whenever I remember being such an insecure bitch, really, like that was so far from me right now, but at the same time I am doing my best to embrace that insecure bitch because at the end of it all, if I never realized that, I'm still probably stuck in the same space, and still pining for a person who will never, ever love me back the way I wanted to be loved, nor could I ever give hime the love he wanted and needed. Well, to be honest, that whole shit was a karmic thing anyway so I am just doing my best to forgive the past, to grow to be a much more loving, compassionate person, but at the same time taking zero shit from everyone. Yeah still building the no-BS musculature so I could love others as much as I can love myself. I think that's fair, right?

So right now, at present, based on what I have gathered so far from my past experiences, everything that I felt that I didn’t have, I did my best to build inside me. To the best of my abilities. And each time I uncover one shadow after another, I do my best to forgive and accept that shadow as a part of me. In a way, it healed me, and brought me self-assurance of what I am and what I am worth. It also helped me decide on what would be the most important traits or characteristics for me in finding that special someone in the future. For instance, realizing what are the things and beliefs that I deem important, for me, if I do not see that in another person, or worse, if they're totally the polar opposite of what I believe in, I see a huge opportunity to move on fast. Because it does not reflect what I have. For example, if a person is not in the path of self-development, self-improvement or in the journey of spiritual awakening or whatever the heck I am in right now, that's already one major thing that would help me walk away in the other direction. Or, if a person choses to be extremely polarized and not wanting to see any other perspectives with regards to problems or issues, I'd start walking out the door. Or if a person just underestimates my capabilities, or thinks I'm dumb and I don't know what I'm talking about, without even listening or hearing me at all, I'd fly away as fast as I can right there and then. Or the biggie, when a person has zero empathic skills and always looks down on others or laughs at the shortcomings of other people without evaluating the person as a whole. I'd take the first train out of there, because seriously, why choose such people to be with, other than being scared of loneliness? Honestly, I'd rather be alone than be with a person that I can't stand to be with, just because society or my insecurities dictate it. I love myself enough to walk away from such "securities" in my life, because at the end of the day, I deserve better things. And these people also deserve to be with people that reflects who they are deep inside, no hard feelings there.

Of course, despite all that esoteric stuff, finding an aesthetically-pleasing tall-statured dude is still on my list, but this time, with more bearings on the internal traits, which are mostly what I already have with me, so that I can let go of all the relationship dramas that society deems "normal". Because really, it is possible to remove dramas in relationships, I mean, dramas are really just optional garbage that everyone can opt out of, but to make that happen it takes two to tango. Still doable though, which is why the concept of "conscious uncoupling" exists, as well as "conscious coupling". And honestly, I would really, really want to give the idea of "conscious coupling" a try, because frankly, if a person can move past the subconscious programming and make improvements in such a way that all relationships become healthy for everyone involved, I don't see any reasons for hearts being broken, nor families and individuals becoming broken through doing a lot of unconscious processes aka 3D dead asleep consciousness. Otherwise, repeating patterns and cycles of negativity, abuse, and just overall sucky relationships will keep coming back in various shapes or forms, with different people and circumstances, until one way or another, a person chooses to do something totally different and to consciously change.

Oh glob, this was quite a long-ass post, but I hopefully made my points clear. If not, I'll make a summary and conclusion portion here:

The idea that opposites attract have long been deemed as something legitimate and logical, due to magnetic poles, but this notion directly opposes the Law of Attraction through the implementation processes, as LOA states that attraction to or of something happens with anything or everything that you want and/or already have. But looking past that, it must be clearly stated that in order for LOA to work as normal and not allow the "Opposites Attract" paradigm to occur, a subconscious clearing of any opposing beliefs must be in order. Otherwise, what a person wants will not come to them but what is the opposite, because the subconscious wants something else and this something else is what gets magnified through subconscious manifestations and gets magnetized into the person's life, hence the operation of the "Opposites Attract" paradigm into the person's life and not the LOA. With such premises, these concepts are also applicable to the nature of human relationships, wherein a person's subconscious beliefs about themselves and their own perceived self will keep attracting the same kind of love that people around them imprinted to them during their early years, which can manifest as having low self-esteem, low self-worth, near-zero self-confidence, not feeling enough, and the person they get into a relationship with will keep reflecting these beliefs to them by getting the kind of treatment their subconscious believes that they deserve, until these people become consciously aware of these patterns and correlate these to how other people treated them in the past and still do in the present. As such, it needs a strong, conscious decision and a committed effort to reprogram the subconscious mind to stop the "Opposites Attract" paradigm and to allow the true LOA to work for people, because in the end, LOA is a formidable force that works for all people in all walks of life, awakened and consciously living, or not.

Again, thank you so much for reading this very long post, but I hope it helped you in any way.

Wishing you all the best that life has to offer, I remain your friend, Mikazuki

PS. If you found the information in this post to be very helpful, insightful, and of great value to you and your own personal journey, please feel free to reblog, share and heart/like, or if you feel super-generous, energetic exchanges are welcomed! Please click here and use this email address: may_chan_otaku@yahoo.com

Thank you so much and be blessed!

PSS. If you’re interested to get a personal card and energetic reading, for inquires please send an email or an anonymous ask in this page. Thank you! =)

[lindawood]

How to Pull Off a Professional Video Call From Home

Like parsley in your teeth or a hole in your pants, a bad video-call setup is something you’ll hear about only from people who care about you. But even if you have the best webcam, there’s a good chance that your lighting, your backdrop, your connection, or even your unconscious habits are making your Web meetings less polished than they could be.

Nearly every meeting at Wirecutter is a Web-video meeting, and over more than five years of talking to one another through tiny cameras, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Here’s the best advice from Wirecutter staff, as well as from a few of our expert sources, for getting good video and audio. Whether you’re occasionally working from home, regularly meeting while working remotely, or preparing for a rare video job interview, these tips will help make your virtual presence pleasing and professional.

Check your settings

Zoom, our chosen Web-conference software, has good default settings, and so do most Web-meeting apps. No matter what app you use, though, we recommend checking its settings for these features:

Video: Enable mirror effect. When you raise your left hand, your hand on the left of your screen rises. This effect prevents confusion when you show people things, or when you have to hide something you notice in the video view.

Audio: Always mute microphone when joining a meeting. It can be annoying to start talking and realize that you have to unmute, but it’s far better than the alternative—everyone hearing you swearing because you can’t figure out why your headphones aren’t working.

Audio: Automatically adjust microphone or mic level. This setting is usually enabled by default, and fine to leave on, but if you hear complaints from others that your voice is fading in or out or echoing, try disabling this. Other software on your computer, or the microphone itself, maybe be applying changes or effects that are competing with the Web-conference software’s settings.

What a great home-office video-calling setup looks like. Illustration: Ryan Hines

Minimize network and computer disruptions

Close competing applications: The folks behind Zoom have tips for making the best Zoom calls that really apply to any video-meeting software. Key among them is limiting the applications that use the two resources precious to any Web-conference app: processor power and network bandwidth. As the writer for Zoom’s blog post puts it:

When streaming 30 frames per second, your camera is taking 30 pictures of you each and every second, then sending them to the processor with instructions to forward the images through Zoom. Zoom uses your processor to send the images to your network card, which transmits the data to its destination. This process requires the energy of your CPU. To engage in the smoothest possible meetings, close any applications you don’t need to use for the meeting itself. It’s that simple.

The best way to find the applications that are eating CPU cycles, bandwidth, and (to a slightly lesser extent) memory is to open your system’s task manager. On Windows, hold down Control+Shift and press Esc. On a Mac, open the Activity Monitor app in the Utilities folder. Chromebooks have a task monitor, too: Hold the Search button and press Esc. On each platform, you’ll get a window that lists your apps and background processes, with CPU and Network columns showing the percentages and amounts of each that they’re using. Close any app you’ve launched that’s consuming notable amounts of CPU (consistently more than 25 percent), bandwidth (any sizable chunk of what you know your connection speed to be), or memory (significantly more than other apps), unless you need that app for the meeting. Avoid shutting down anything you can’t identify, especially those items that seem like system processes.

Test Wi-Fi before the call: This is the most important rule, but also the most ignored. Your connection may seem fine for Web browsing, but that task uses a lot less network bandwidth than a video call. Head to Speedtest, the go-to site for seeing how fast your computer can transfer data across the wider Internet. Zoom uses 1.2 Mbps (megabits per second), both upload (from you to the Internet) and download (from the Internet to you), for a group video call, and 1.5 Mbps both ways if you want to see all the participants in a thumbnail video gallery. Skype and Google Hangouts suggest even more bandwidth for group video calls: 1 to 2.5 Mbps up and 2 to 8 Mbps down for a call with three to seven people. (FaceTime doesn’t specify a minimum bandwidth but is generally a lower-bandwidth service than full conference-call apps.)

If Speedtest shows that your connection isn’t fast enough, try some of the following fixes:

Try to get closer to your router, and try different rooms to see if interference from other Wi-Fi networks or other devices is a problem.

If your router supports two frequencies, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, try switching between them and running speed tests on each. The 5 GHz channel can be faster but has shorter range; 2.4 GHz generally offers better reception over longer distances, but a lot of devices (and neighboring routers) use 2.4 GHz, so trying both is always worth it.

If all else fails, use an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi to connect to your router, and see if your connection improves. If you’re at your house and too far away from the router to use even a long Ethernet cable, consider a powerline networking kit for your home office.

Use a good camera and the right lighting

Photo: Andrew Cunningham

Some computers have a decent built-in camera, but most are mediocre, and the angle from the laptop to your face often produces an inattentive, off-putting look. And if you use a monitor at your desk, with your laptop off to the side, the result is even worse. Buy a webcam, put it on your monitor, and look at the people you’re talking to.

But even with a good webcam, lighting is the trickiest part of setting up a home office or another room for a video chat. As with photography, it’s better to have the light source behind the camera, rather than behind the subject, but nobody wants to put their computer in front of their window. Here are some easy ways to improve your lighting.

Make use of lamps: You can angle and redirect LED desk lamps, and they have multiple brightness levels and color temperatures. Wirecutter photo editor Michael Hession suggests bouncing the lamp light off a nearby wall rather than pointing it straight at your face. If that doesn’t work, you could try taping diffusion material over your lamp, but you’re better off trying different lighting setups and angles at first.

Try not to mix light sources: Natural light is great for an office space, but for the light that’s reaching your face, stick to either a lamp setup or a window slightly off to your side—not both.

Don’t use venetian blinds behind you: The light streaming in through the slats will wreak havoc on many a camera’s automatic light adjustments. Better to use blackout shades or curtains, and to bring in other light (lamps).

Don’t buy specialty YouTube/vlogger gear: Nobody should buy a softbox just to impress their boss. But you can steal one idea from this Wistia tutorial and this podcast setup guide: Put your lighting at your eye height. Defining your eyes allows you to express more on video, to seem more like yourself. That makes a video call feel more like an in-person meeting, which is as good as a Web meeting can get.

Get good sound

Photo: Nick Guy

Just as important as being seen is being heard—in our meetings, audio problems are a much bigger obstacle to communication than video issues. Here are some ways to improve how you sound.

Use an external microphone: Almost any plug-in device—a desktop USB mic, a USB headset or wireless headset, or the built-in microphone on our USB webcam pick—will sound better than the built-in microphone on a laptop. Just make sure your add-on mic is selected in your meeting software’s settings as the input source.

Place your microphone 5 to 6 inches from your mouth: If you can’t get that close or don’t want to use a separate microphone, try to place your microphone in the path your voice normally projects during a meeting.

Use headphones whenever possible: Although some laptops and software can automatically mute the microphone when other people are talking, they’re not perfect. Headphones will prevent feedback loops that result from your mic picking up other people speaking.

Add fabrics to counter echo: If other people are hearing room echo on your calls, the most practical solution is adding fabric to the room to absorb sound. Area rugs, carpeting, drapes, and blinds are reasonable things to try before considering extreme measures like foam soundproofing.

Optimize camera position and backgrounds

Keep your webcam slightly above your eye level: Assuming you have your monitor set up ergonomically—with your gaze falling about 2 inches below the top edge of the screen—this means you’ll be looking straight ahead at people on the call, which feels more like an in-person meeting. You should also shrink your video window for the call and move it to the top of your screen, near your webcam, to keep your gaze there.

Not too personal, not too sterile: Dan Roche, a former VP of marketing for webcasting firm TalkPoint, told Liane Cassavoy of PCWorld that you should avoid a Web-call background that is too personal (dishes, dirty clothes, bed sheets), or too sterile and professional (an empty white wall). A bookcase or lightly adorned shelves work, as do houseplants.

Keep it professional

Minimize or eliminate interference: Avoid dogs, cats, children, spouses, siblings, or anything else moving behind you. Sometimes it’s cute, but it often derails a train of thought or undercuts a moment. To that end, try not to have a door behind you. If your office or room has a door you can close, consider adding a sign, or even a light, announcing when you are in meetings.

Don’t wear a strapless top or deep V-neck: Besides the potential appearance of being topless when cropped on video, you risk exposure because your video camera is (if you took our advice) positioned above you.

Avoid reflective or jangling jewelry: Also skip clothing with intricate patterns or notable sheen. This is standard stage and video direction that also applies to being on webcam.

Don’t spin or roll in your wheeled chair: The effect is disconcerting on video, and the resulting vibrations may sound louder than you realize when your microphone picks them up.

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How to Pull Off a Professional Video Call From Home

Like parsley in your teeth or a hole in your pants, a bad video-call setup is something you’ll hear about only from people who care about you. But even if you have the best webcam, there’s a good chance that your lighting, your backdrop, your connection, or even your unconscious habits are making your Web meetings less polished than they could be.

Nearly every meeting at Wirecutter is a Web-video meeting, and over more than five years of talking to one another through tiny cameras, we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Here’s the best advice from Wirecutter staff, as well as from a few of our expert sources, for getting good video and audio. Whether you’re occasionally working from home, regularly meeting while working remotely, or preparing for a rare video job interview, these tips will help make your virtual presence pleasing and professional.

Check your settings

Zoom, our chosen Web-conference software, has good default settings, and so do most Web-meeting apps. No matter what app you use, though, we recommend checking its settings for these features:

Video: Enable mirror effect. When you raise your left hand, your hand on the left of your screen rises. This effect prevents confusion when you show people things, or when you have to hide something you notice in the video view.

Audio: Always mute microphone when joining a meeting. It can be annoying to start talking and realize that you have to unmute, but it’s far better than the alternative—everyone hearing you swearing because you can’t figure out why your headphones aren’t working.

Audio: Automatically adjust microphone or mic level. This setting is usually enabled by default, and fine to leave on, but if you hear complaints from others that your voice is fading in or out or echoing, try disabling this. Other software on your computer, or the microphone itself, maybe be applying changes or effects that are competing with the Web-conference software’s settings.

What a great home-office video-calling setup looks like. Illustration: Ryan Hines

Minimize network and computer disruptions

Close competing applications: The folks behind Zoom have tips for making the best Zoom calls that really apply to any video-meeting software. Key among them is limiting the applications that use the two resources precious to any Web-conference app: processor power and network bandwidth. As the writer for Zoom’s blog post puts it:

When streaming 30 frames per second, your camera is taking 30 pictures of you each and every second, then sending them to the processor with instructions to forward the images through Zoom. Zoom uses your processor to send the images to your network card, which transmits the data to its destination. This process requires the energy of your CPU. To engage in the smoothest possible meetings, close any applications you don’t need to use for the meeting itself. It’s that simple.

The best way to find the applications that are eating CPU cycles, bandwidth, and (to a slightly lesser extent) memory is to open your system’s task manager. On Windows, hold down Control+Shift and press Esc. On a Mac, open the Activity Monitor app in the Utilities folder. Chromebooks have a task monitor, too: Hold the Search button and press Esc. On each platform, you’ll get a window that lists your apps and background processes, with CPU and Network columns showing the percentages and amounts of each that they’re using. Close any app you’ve launched that’s consuming notable amounts of CPU (consistently more than 25 percent), bandwidth (any sizable chunk of what you know your connection speed to be), or memory (significantly more than other apps), unless you need that app for the meeting. Avoid shutting down anything you can’t identify, especially those items that seem like system processes.

Test Wi-Fi before the call: This is the most important rule, but also the most ignored. Your connection may seem fine for Web browsing, but that task uses a lot less network bandwidth than a video call. Head to Speedtest, the go-to site for seeing how fast your computer can transfer data across the wider Internet. Zoom uses 1.2 Mbps (megabits per second), both upload (from you to the Internet) and download (from the Internet to you), for a group video call, and 1.5 Mbps both ways if you want to see all the participants in a thumbnail video gallery. Skype and Google Hangouts suggest even more bandwidth for group video calls: 1 to 2.5 Mbps up and 2 to 8 Mbps down for a call with three to seven people. (FaceTime doesn’t specify a minimum bandwidth but is generally a lower-bandwidth service than full conference-call apps.)

If Speedtest shows that your connection isn’t fast enough, try some of the following fixes:

Try to get closer to your router, and try different rooms to see if interference from other Wi-Fi networks or other devices is a problem.

If your router supports two frequencies, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, try switching between them and running speed tests on each. The 5 GHz channel can be faster but has shorter range; 2.4 GHz generally offers better reception over longer distances, but a lot of devices (and neighboring routers) use 2.4 GHz, so trying both is always worth it.

If all else fails, use an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi to connect to your router, and see if your connection improves. If you’re at your house and too far away from the router to use even a long Ethernet cable, consider a powerline networking kit for your home office.

Use a good camera and the right lighting

Photo: Andrew Cunningham

Some computers have a decent built-in camera, but most are mediocre, and the angle from the laptop to your face often produces an inattentive, off-putting look. And if you use a monitor at your desk, with your laptop off to the side, the result is even worse. Buy a webcam, put it on your monitor, and look at the people you’re talking to.

But even with a good webcam, lighting is the trickiest part of setting up a home office or another room for a video chat. As with photography, it’s better to have the light source behind the camera, rather than behind the subject, but nobody wants to put their computer in front of their window. Here are some easy ways to improve your lighting.

Make use of lamps: You can angle and redirect LED desk lamps, and they have multiple brightness levels and color temperatures. Wirecutter photo editor Michael Hession suggests bouncing the lamp light off a nearby wall rather than pointing it straight at your face. If that doesn’t work, you could try taping diffusion material over your lamp, but you’re better off trying different lighting setups and angles at first.

Try not to mix light sources: Natural light is great for an office space, but for the light that’s reaching your face, stick to either a lamp setup or a window slightly off to your side—not both.

Don’t use venetian blinds behind you: The light streaming in through the slats will wreak havoc on many a camera’s automatic light adjustments. Better to use blackout shades or curtains, and to bring in other light (lamps).

Don’t buy specialty YouTube/vlogger gear: Nobody should buy a softbox just to impress their boss. But you can steal one idea from this Wistia tutorial and this podcast setup guide: Put your lighting at your eye height. Defining your eyes allows you to express more on video, to seem more like yourself. That makes a video call feel more like an in-person meeting, which is as good as a Web meeting can get.

Get good sound

Photo: Nick Guy

Just as important as being seen is being heard—in our meetings, audio problems are a much bigger obstacle to communication than video issues. Here are some ways to improve how you sound.

Use an external microphone: Almost any plug-in device—a desktop USB mic, a USB headset or wireless headset, or the built-in microphone on our USB webcam pick—will sound better than the built-in microphone on a laptop. Just make sure your add-on mic is selected in your meeting software’s settings as the input source.

Place your microphone 5 to 6 inches from your mouth: If you can’t get that close or don’t want to use a separate microphone, try to place your microphone in the path your voice normally projects during a meeting.

Use headphones whenever possible: Although some laptops and software can automatically mute the microphone when other people are talking, they’re not perfect. Headphones will prevent feedback loops that result from your mic picking up other people speaking.

Add fabrics to counter echo: If other people are hearing room echo on your calls, the most practical solution is adding fabric to the room to absorb sound. Area rugs, carpeting, drapes, and blinds are reasonable things to try before considering extreme measures like foam soundproofing.

Optimize camera position and backgrounds

Keep your webcam slightly above your eye level: Assuming you have your monitor set up ergonomically—with your gaze falling about 2 inches below the top edge of the screen—this means you’ll be looking straight ahead at people on the call, which feels more like an in-person meeting. You should also shrink your video window for the call and move it to the top of your screen, near your webcam, to keep your gaze there.

Not too personal, not too sterile: Dan Roche, a former VP of marketing for webcasting firm TalkPoint, told Liane Cassavoy of PCWorld that you should avoid a Web-call background that is too personal (dishes, dirty clothes, bed sheets), or too sterile and professional (an empty white wall). A bookcase or lightly adorned shelves work, as do houseplants.

Keep it professional

Minimize or eliminate interference: Avoid dogs, cats, children, spouses, siblings, or anything else moving behind you. Sometimes it’s cute, but it often derails a train of thought or undercuts a moment. To that end, try not to have a door behind you. If your office or room has a door you can close, consider adding a sign, or even a light, announcing when you are in meetings.

Don’t wear a strapless top or deep V-neck: Besides the potential appearance of being topless when cropped on video, you risk exposure because your video camera is (if you took our advice) positioned above you.

Avoid reflective or jangling jewelry: Also skip clothing with intricate patterns or notable sheen. This is standard stage and video direction that also applies to being on webcam.

Don’t spin or roll in your wheeled chair: The effect is disconcerting on video, and the resulting vibrations may sound louder than you realize when your microphone picks them up.