#so i end up being sort of wishy washy about picking out specific guys

[sleepdepravity]

ALSO speaking of Umineko I recently finished it and I would like to know who your favorite characters from it are

haha, nice, i hope you enjoyed it!

hm...it's been a while, to be honest, don't know if I can answer this well, but I remember liking George...I sort of end up liking a lot of mild guys I think. Beatrice is great of course. So is Battler because even if he's a sucker, by virtue of being the protag he gets to show off some smarts and i appreciate that in a character. amongst the adults I think I liked Eva and Hideyoshi. And maybe Natsuhi?? I feel like I would've liked Kyrie more if she had some more focus, but I think she never really got a lot going on. I cried over Maria the most. I preferred Lambdadelta over Bernkastel.

[y0d00p]

I only recently followed so idk if you've already received a question like this before, but could you share some Morpho Knight headcanons?

Hell YEA my dude

I’ve been rethinking their Origin Story so that’s a bit wishy washy still. They... are an emissary of death of sorts but the physical Morpho Knight Morpho is just a small piece of it. There’s something analogous to dark matter, something between a hivemind of beings and just an Inherent Cosmic Force, maybe it’s like soul matter in its purest form or something? Anyway point is this thing, and the drones that come from it (that looks like orange butterflies) deals in matters of death/afterlife/reincarnation and all that good stuff. The butterflies are more like projections than physical beings and generally have very little individuality; they spawn from and are absorbed back into the mass often, without care. One big fiery surperorganism of death.

So The Orange Butterfly is sort of Morpho specifically and sort of not, you understand. Galacta’s half-alive semi-canon nature and the sheer amount of Death surrounding the guy makes him a very um... noticeable/familiar target of sorts of the Death Orb, it/Morpho had been watching him for a long time and had grown some kind of attachment to him. The end result of this is some... small part of the entity going out of its way to follow him around until an opportunity for change presented itself. When that opportunity arrived “Morpho” I guess, used Galacta as a gateway from Death Dimension to Real Alive Dimension.

The knight in SA was an unbalanced fusion of the two, and after being abruptly forced to fight off like 16 people at once they seemingly disappeared but really they just kinda fucked off somewhere safe for Morpho to finish their transit. Morpho takes a chunk of Galacta’s nuclear explosive excess energy and crawls out of his body into the petite little vessel they made out of it. Then they ran off naked to go touch grass and eat bugs and feel things for the first time, leaving Galacta unconscious in the dirt to deal with the injuries himself.

Thankfully the... I guess I’ll just call it soul matter, has like, seen enough of people to not be completely ignorant in how to Be A Person, but experiencing physical sensations and actually interacting with people were still entirely new to them.

Their social skills are lacking, particularly in groups. They’re out of touch and quirky and jokes go over their head sometimes. It takes them awhile to learn not to just completely fuckin ignore people or suddenly just leave in the middle of a conversation or something because they’re used to not being seen. This also makes them very anxious in groups, they have some paranoia around being watched/seen/stared at.

They do much better when 1-on-1 with someone. They have a lot of confidence and can be very chatty and peppy, they like learning from/about people, and they’re very honest, but kind. The change when put in front of a group is immediately noticeable, they freeze up and go quiet, they appear blank and shy and only speak when spoken to, they’re also much more concerned with being “presentable” and interacting “correctly” with people.

They’re very small, like under 5 feet, but unlike a Certain Other Manlet, they don’t mind it at all, they love being picked up and carried and hugged lol. They’re graceful and well coordinated and very quiet, it’s pretty common for them to startle people from accidentally sneaking up on them. They love nature, but can’t swim and don’t do well in the cold. They’re immune to fire/burning and always feel pretty warm to the touch, but in cold areas/seasons their... inner furnace or whatever struggles a bit.

They don’t eat or sleep consistently and have a terrible perception of time in general, they wake and nap at random times throughout the day. When they drink (alcohol) they get super relaxed and sleepy (they’re also less anxious talking in a group but it’s not like you could get an interesting conversation out of them lol). They can’t hold their alcohol at all. They like sweet and light foods, but also have a very high tolerance for spice.

They like flowers, bright colours, and cute clothes. They’re really good with kids!

I think that’s all I got right now jhglasjkdh thank you for reading all that! And thank you for the ask!! I love Morpho.

[hayleysutton]

hi I don’t have any gifs of crystal reed on this computer so have a gif of rapunzel instead??

I was gonna try to make this sound poetic or whatever but honestly I’m tired of trying to pretty up something that just isn’t pretty. Over the past 5 months I have been going to a new therapist and this one is finally getting me somewhere. And I’m not gonna really expand on that - point is I’ve come to explain a few things, I guess. I know I’m not obligated to, and half of you probably don’t even come on so you’ll never even see this but it’s gonna make me feel better to know it’s here.

So, if you ever wondered “Hey, why does Brittany (or Hayley) seem wishy-washy, contradictory, etc.?” “Why did Brittany say she was gonna do this thing and then not get to it?” or anything to do with “Why did Brittany do (insert said thing here) that doesn’t seem like her?” -- OR “Hey! Why did Brittany just disappear off the face of the Earth while we were roleplaying?” I’m here to answer all of this. If you have your own pressing question about “Why did Brittany (or Hayley) do (this specific thing you have a question about)?” And it doesn’t seem to get answered below feel free to message me over here on my personal.

Let’s get this thing started before my anxiety kicks in and I chicken out LOL.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t want any of you to read this and wonder why the hell I’m posting this so I’m gonna make it super clear right off the bat. This is for me, first - and if it helps you learn, or it makes you feel better in some way, then it is also for you. I’m not trying to toot my own horn and say “Wow, look I’m learning how to be a better person.” It’s not like that -- I have lived with a lot of guilt, sadness, regret, and general yuckyness ever since this roleplay started to close and I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want you guys to think in any way you could have changed anything, or that you caused anything -- this entire “yuck” thing happening was a long time coming in my life and previous events had built up to get me to where I am today. It was never you guys doing anything, or any other roleplay I joined before or after this. But I feel close enough to all of you on here to put this out here, rather than somewhere else.

Okay, according to this blog archive I joined Exchange October 31, 2014. Sooo, almost four years ago - and I can still remember being eighteen and excited to be in another roleplay. And for a while (I think?) it was all good. I don’t know exactly when my anxiety started to leak in, but it did - because it has in every roleplay since this one. I’m not gonna track down the exact posts where things started to get a bit wonky on my end, but I know it’s in there somewhere.

I made a post a while back about being a different person than I was back when I played Hayley, and that much still holds true. I could not possibly play Hayley the way I did back when this was still up and running. I couldn’t embody my worry the way I did back then. Hayley became an outlet for basically all of my good energy, and all of the negative as well. Hayley was inconsistent as a character because I was inconsistent as a writer, Hayley was contradictory in her life because I wanted so badly to pick the “right answer” for everything that I wanted both at once. I spent so long getting to replies because I wanted to get everything “just right” because I had to make sure you guys would like whatever I was writing. And if I’m honest, I have very fond memories of all of you and chatting OOC and making memories -- But I hated playing Hayley. I hated getting on here and fearing screwing up.

So as things gradually dropped down the hill that I was tumbling down I started making promises, that I had every intention of keeping. I still have drafts saved of things that I fully intended to do. But then this little (huge) unhealthy coping mechanism would kick in -- And this is honestly my biggest problem to this day that I’m actively working on as I type this -- I would just shut down. I do this thing where I think about how big and scary everything is that I have to do and I get very overwhelmed and I shut off. And that’s not anything anyone caused, really, but because of previous trauma this is what my brain has been doing to survive. And so, for the past... Basically 10-ish years of my life I have been battling with this.

-- So there’s a huge chunk of the questions answered.

I guess another one that might have come up is “Why do you feel so badly about this in the first place?” There might be a “get over it” tacked on in there somewhere. And to that I say - Yeah, I plan to once I post this and answer any lingering questions that might come in. But to answer the actual question that I posed. I feel bad because I have spent a lot of my time trying to be seen as perfect (or at least as “perfect” as possible). I have never wanted people to see any of my flaws because I thought if they did they wouldn’t like me, or they would think negatively of me. And from there I thought people wouldn’t want to be my friend if they could see something negative. And trying to be “perfect” all the time has turned me into kind of a shitty person. (Some of you are gonna be like “what are you talking about Brittany you’re always so (insert whatever positive thing here)” and yes, thank you for that I have tried to be - but I’ve also just kind of blatantly avoided ever talking about anything wrong I’ve done)

I’ve never been good with confrontation, and it still makes me wildly uncomfortable - especially when I’m involved in it - but I encourage you to message me privately if you have ever had some sort of unresolved issue with me. Because if we ever did -- I’ve probably avoided even paying attention to it and I’m willing to have a civilized conversation. (If you’re like “Brittany, it’s old news I don’t care anymore.” That’s cool, too.)

-- I think that about sums everything up. Like I said I’ll answer questions about whatever you wanna know, really.

If you made it this far thanks for reading. Don’t know how you made it through that essay but I appreciate it if you did.

Signing off,

Brittany // Hayley ;)

[pixelonline]

(I am so sorry, mobile users. This is really long.)

My Mass Effect Andromeda thoughts:

1. I was gonna stream the trial, but proceeded to use almost all 10 hours at once because I couldn’t stop playing. I suppose this is a good thing. I’m definitely streaming it once it’s actually out.

2. I hate the character customization. Mass Effect has always been ugly as fuck when it comes to making characters, but my dudes it is 2017 what is going on here.

2a. Side note but I laughed for like 15 minutes that there is only one “White People” face and it is honestly the ugliest thing. Cool feature (sorta not but I’m viewing it as a positive) is that there are designated skin tones with each face set. Speaking of sets, all facial features are stuck to a specific preset face. You can slightly move them, but there’s no changing. I’m hoping this is just for the trial, as other things in the game were locked off until it’s official release.

2b. so many pony tails. no undercut. despite reports saying that hairstyles would be less militaristic as you’re not a soldier, they’re more or less the same. let me be the woman i want to be dammit. There were braids, but only one style. Still double the representation compared to previously I guess? I have very much so white people hair so I don’t feel comfortable having an opinion on that subject. I will say that the braids are exclusive to fem!Ryder and m!Ryder gets 2 different textured styles. I, personally, cannot wait for the beautiful mod community to fix this hair travesty, both with representation variation and all these fucking ponytails. Maybe they can make something happen with the faces, but I hold little hope. They had “alt” hair colors, so it’s already way better than ME Original Trilogy. My Ryder has blue hair, because of course she does. There’s not much shade difference in the colors available, and some of the unnatural colors were, in fact, so unnatural looking that it was hard to accept as a hair color. dyed hair doesn’t reflect light the way it did in game and it didn’t look like much shade variation between the strands so it occasionally looked like the hair hadn’t actually finished rendering. The color selection suggested a more soft ombre look than was actually present.

3. I like that you can customize your twin also, but limits on the CC still drives me crazy. Male hair diversity isn’t super, like I said before, but it just felt like more than the female counterpart. I just really, really hate ponytails you guys.

3a. In your CC options, you can pick story bits. The only options that connect to the previous games is a selection between your Shepard having been male or female. I suppose that’s so pronouns are correct later on.

4. Prologue: I feel it takes too long, the tutorial is honestly not that great. SAM, your AI, is down for most of it, so you have no idea what anything is. It was fine at first, adding to the worldbuilding and urgency and whatnot but it got irritating by the 30th “unknown” enemy.

5. The Omni-Scanner is a neat addition, but it felt sort of...forced at times. More on that later.

6. The prologue story is okay. The ending of it, and the beginning of the actual game, was actually pretty dramatic and I didn’t expect it given the hype around certain characters that Bioware has tried to generate.

6a. Dad Ryder seemed really one dimensional with his kid. Like, never referred to them affectionately even at the last bit. This is sort of explained when you go to his room later, but it felt really hollow to me as a whole. Cool dad fact: CC of your Ryder and their twin decides what Dad looks like. Mine had obscenely blue eyes but grey hair.

6b. Evil dude looked really sad during his introduction and I wanted to be friends with him. This feels like a failed attempt at showing off the ominous silent bad guy, as I immediately started rooting for him. You go, evil dude, touch the stuff and let your dreams be true.

7. I hate the weapon interface. Inventory functions like ME1, allowing you to see the items you’ve picked up (both upgrades and actual weapons) but you cannot equip them. I couldn’t until the first mission after getting my ship. Which is terrible, as I got a sniper rifle I wanted to use and couldn’t for the prologue portion.

8. The Hyperion’s travel system is awful. There’s very little instruction about it. The tram looks as if it’s a one way thing, from the ark to the new citadel-like port, but in actuality you use it to travel around the ark itself too. Didn’t notice until my camera turned slightly to the right and another thing on the board was selectable.

8a. Not travel related, but you do get more info about the ending of the prologue and a new ongoing mission on the Hyperion. It felt like a bit of a slap. It’s all “Here’s this cool new power and a friend BUT ALSO FUCK YOU JON SNOW YOU KNOW NOTHING and you’ll never find out until you go look for these things randomly around. But not around here! Fuck you twice!” It was clearly created to push the story more later on, which is all fine and good, it just ticked me off at this moment.

9. The new Citadel is a goddamn mess. I’m not a huge fan of it right now, though what I’m 100% sure will happen is that as you make more homesteads, the place gets nicer until you’re at endgame and have a fully functional hub. I’ll like it more once it starts changing. It looks like it has really good potential. I hope it functions more than the keep in DA:I, and your choices really DO have an effect on what is opened up and how the society there builds itself.

9a. The Original Trilogy made each race very distinct, with their own speech patterns and everything. I didn’t really get that from this game’s other races. The Salarians didn’t speak in fast bursts with lots of words jammed together, and the Turians more often than not didn’t have that robotic twinge to their speech, and weren’t all that hostile. It seems unlikely to me that there wouldn’t be any left over anger as they left for Andromeda seeing as it’s possible some actually fought in the first contact war. It is about 30 years apart. It was something constantly prevalent in the previous trilogy, which every NPC lived during (at least ME1)

9b. I do, however, love super not Krogan Krogan lady. She’s perfect and I wish I could romance her. You do talk about the genophage. Sucks that she and her clan have no idea that there’s been a cure for over 500 years now.

10. The ship, Tempest, is really nice. I always felt like Normandy was very irritating to navigate around. ME1 especially, but 3 wasn’t so hot either. This one isn’t as large, but it has a really nice flow that I liked. Pathfinder quarters were way better than Shepard’s.

10a. It has a system like the Dragon Age: Inquisition war table where you have timed missions that NPC complete for materials, items, and intel. Seems interesting, but I didn’t see one to completion. They’re still running.

10b. the R&D table is interesting, and I like the separation between the two, but it didn’t feel like a huge asset so early in the game.

11. The traveling system is beautiful. Visually it gets 100% approval. However, it’s extremely slow paced. any selection of a new planet or system takes you back to where you were originally, lets you stare at it a moment, then flies you to the next place where you zoom in for another moment before zooming out and then FINALLY getting information about it. It’s nice, but by the 12th time I was incredibly tired of it.

12. Your Salarian pilot is cool. Not especially Salarian-like, but still I liked him. Cannot kiss. I tried.

13. Material gathering is kind of limited. You scan a whole system, and you have the option to scan planets, but there’s not much point to it as SAM tells you if there’s something worth scanning there. Usually it’s a single deposit of a mineral.

14. I hated the MAKO in ME1, but this one isn’t so bad. I think it helps knowing that I can customize it later.

15. Speaking of customization, you can change the colors of your casual clothes and your armor. It’s the same color selection tool as in CC, so it’s awful. The dial to change the color overlaps with the bubble to select the actual shade so there’s a lot of trial and error involved. Once again, no indication that [SPACE] is necessary to confirm your color choices. I hate the whole design of it.

16. You do meet some companions that you’ll pick up, but you barely interact with them. Good intros though. Really gave them personality right off the bat.

17. ROMANCE: Being fem!Ryder is rough at the start.

17a. Gil is one of the ship’s crew. He’s one of the few genuinely attractive males in all of Mass Effect’s history. As a woman, you can flirt with him, but he turns you down solidly. He’s kind, but firm. He states that he’s interested in men. Which is awesome, because now I have a reason to play a male Ryder after my first play through is done. Female Ryder apologizes, nothing is weird (unlike other interactions) and it actually made me like him more as a character.

17b. Liam kind of blows off your advances but it definitely felt like a rejection. As he wasn’t very clear, I don’t know if he’s a bi character that you have to develop a friendship with first, or if he’s gay and just doesn’t want to come out to your Ryder. I didn’t like the wishy-washiness of the interaction but we’ll just have to see what’s what when the full game is out.

17c. Doc. I forgot her name, so now she’s Doc. I knew this interaction wouldn’t go well, as I’ve read articles about it. She definitely turns you down because you’re a patient. I’ve read that she has a crush on the Krogan that joins you, so is he not a patient too? Either way, she’s very professional about it and as with Gil it made me appreciate her character. Knowing that it’s Natalie Dormer and I’ll never hear her tell me she loves me hurts me deep in my soul though. Why does the world hate me like this???

17d. Blonde biotic woman with the goddamn hair that I want on my Ryder. Cora. I don’t like her. You have the option to hit on her early on, and her reaction felt really awful to me. She gets kind of hostile and all “I already told [person you never met] that I’m not interested in women and I’m telling you too.” Like, ok. Damn. You aren’t my type anyways. I just wanted to see the option play out. 0/10 poor way to handle the interaction. I’m not super fond of the Asari commando thing either. Jack was a kickass biotic too and she was treated like a monster. This woman gets to take part in something very culturally specific like it’s nbd? jnasdlfknasdivhbna, not a fan of her. She looks somewhere between confused and murderous all the time. Also, she walks like Stretch Armstrong. It makes me laugh.

17e. Vetra. The only individual that actually reacts positively to fem!Ryder flirting with her. Even then she really only takes it like a compliment. But, as I love Vetra and much like Garrus I would die for her from first glance, I’ll take it. I think it’ll be a beautiful relationship. She’s also really tall. And pretty. One thing I thought was strange with her is that it always looks like she’s posing when she’s just standing around. One hip is thrust out and her arms are crossed. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they rigged her to always be in mysterious seductress pose.

17f. I couldn’t flirt with the pilot. Let me kiss the Salarian, damn you Bioware. Also, our nice Scottish friend Suvi can’t be flirted with, but she sounds really soothing to talk to. I’m def a fan of all these non-American, thicker than previously heard, accents on the ship. The Original Trilogy was full of light British accents or full on American. Sort of hard to believe the Alliance was multinational when everyone spoke like they were from the US.

18. Combat: I mostly use the sniper rifle and the pistol. Pistol was nice. I love the sniper rifle in this game. Other ME games it was hard for me to confirm headshots but this one was a clean and clear animation. Very nice. The companion AI was strange at times, as they’d just use their abilities but in odd places so the skills would get stuck in corners or just go off to nowhere. There was combat stutter on the first planet you can visit but I think that’s more my graphics card. The update refuses to finish so I’m stuck 2 updates behind where I should be.

I have, like, an hour I think left so I’m gonna try to rush through a male Ryder play and see how companion reactions differ. I’m really only in this for the romance, you know.

[imagine-those-skaters]

*picks up and hugs* YOU'RE AWESOME YA KNOW THAT! ! Headcannons for Minako and SO during Valentines day and for chin daddy of course *if thats okay*

Oh goodness, you’re so cute, darling! Of course it’s okay~ At last someone asks for a serious chin daddy imagine, I’m over the moon

-Minako is, in actuality, really excited for Valentine’s day because she just loves treating NOT ONLY you but also herself because it’s a day where couples celebrate EACH OTHER not just one person-uh huh… sure boo… you sure it’s because you just wanted to go dutch on lunch…..-She’ll INSIST she just does it for the sake of Valentine’s Day-Minako’s a goof about it, but she’s actually very sweet-She doesn’t want it to be OVERLY ROMANTIC AND GUSHY but… -Like, take it as the adults you are, and just… be homey and SWEET rather than ROMANTIC as possible-and also not go crazy with the budget.-She’s just a sucker for small sweet things, is basically the sum of it-So Minako insists to hold you hand for the whole day as you guys go out!!-You go to a cafe that recently opened and she tells you there was a treat that made her think of you, so you should definitely try it!!-You give her a bite of it and she nods thoughtfully-”Mm, not bad.”-She was right, it was definitely more for you than her-Window shopping is also nice! Especially with your s/o-So that’s what she does, and sometimes she gets overwhelmed because gosh!!!!!-She’s got such a sweet s/o, and she’s not lonely on Valentine’s Day like she usually was before and just, she’s so lucky-Minako isn’t one to usually get wishy-washy but today she can’t help herself, and because of that, you’ll find yourself pointing out something in a shop-And she’ll give you a noise of acknowledgement, before rubbing her cheek against yours, like a cat-It’s so cute, omg babe what are…. i thought you said you were an adult… pl s…-After that, she lets you choose where you guys are taking lunch and you choose some place or another-Minako’s still holdin your hand, occasionally swinging it because she’s just… happy. That’s an excuse for being a little childish, yeah??-After lunch, you walk a little more, and you mention that it’s a little nippy, so it’s probably best if you head home-And she’s really surprised because not once did she think of the cold!! But she agrees and when you’re home you two cuddle on the couch, watchin dumb videos on Youtube-And she kisses you, making sure not to seem shy or anything about it-”Happy Valentine’s Day, thank for paying for half of lunch.”-Nailed that not-so-romatnic stuff, babe, thank you, love you too-She’s happy though and hopes you are too, don’t worry-NO she doesn’t get stupidly drunk because it’s a SPECIAL DAY……BUT…. i mean if ur both in the mood she MIGHT try and start a little somethin giggity giggity

-CHIN DADDY IS SO!!! EXCITED!!-Celestino loves any chance he can take to show you how much he loves you holy heck!!!-It’s his favorite, and he’d definitely spoil the shit out of you if you’d let him-BUT YOU GOTTA REMIND HIM TO TAKE IT EASY…. ILY BABE BUT PLEASE…-So!! Celestino usually likes to go for a traditional style, a movie, dinner, walk in the park sort of thing but!!! Dammit it’s time for something a little less traditional!!-He offers you his arm before you step out the house, and you laugh, as you link your arm with his-And you two head out-Now, he lets you select any shop you guys pass, at least 5 shops-And when you choose one, you both go inside, and he insists that you both split up and the first thing you see that reminds you of the other, you buy it-NOW it has to be a small trinket… nothing big or fancy even though Heaven KNOWS Celestino wants that-And so!!! the hunt begins!!! And it actually takes quite a while, because there are so many things that you want to get him, but at last, the both of you pick up five things from each of the five stores you’ve chosen-Celestino carries the bags in one hand while he has you on his arm, and he’s now!! Taking you to a lovely dinner-It’s not lavishingly expensive as he’d hoped you’d let it to be, but he continues to treat you like royalty, so it certainly feels like it-He lets you try some of his food, and you do the same, and it’s super fucking cute and mushy like god… thi s guy… is so in love with you and happy bout it like give it a REST sweetie-Eventually the two of you realize you like the other’s dish more than your own so you switch and still give each other little tries of your new dish-It’s so fuckin silly and dopey but it’s sweet all the same-And when all is said and done, you head back home, but he insists on carrying you inside because he’s a romantic dude and he wants to sweep you off your feet-And once you’re both comfy on the couch, with a warm drink, you exchange your gifts, and you both enjoy them immensely-Celestino’s eyes are glimmering and he peppers your face with kisses and you laugh because CHILL BOO!!! GOSH!!! SO CUTE!!! HECK!!!-It just makes him so happy to be with you, and to love you, and knowing that there’s a specific day that celebrates it just thrills him to no end-And yes, if things get a little carried away, he makes sure to express it… passionately.

[thedramafilesblog-blog]

Welcome to our ‘End of Year Review/Awards’ post. Yes it’s in January because we’re doing it in line with Chinese New Year! So Happy New Year Everyone!

RedRosette J: Hey Everyone! we were really behind on the end of year reviews and awards posts that everyone was doing at the end of 2016, so we decided to do it in line with Chinese New Year because technically 2016 just ended (LOL)! We came up with random categories based on what we thought was deserving of a best/worst/whatever award. We also are basing this list off the dramas that we watched this year (we have not watched some of them so those aren’t included in this list). So….Enjoy!

Jubiemon J: We had this idea a while back but remembered it now! Yes, Chinese New Year ended recently. This is probably going to be a savage post, so let’s hope you’ll like this!

Best Couple

RR: So it’s really hard to say which couple is THE best, but there are a few strong contenders in the running for best couple. I wouldn’t award this title to one particular couple per se, but would award it to a few couples because I think that they were all ‘best’ in their own way. My picks for Best Couple are: Shopping King Louie, Descendants of the Sun, and Oh Hae Young Again. All of these couples had redeeming qualities. SKL was really all about their devotion to each other and the cuteness, DOTS was about two people who learned to be with each other while still remaining very much a part of their own established lives and OHYA was about two people overcoming their insecurities to be with each other (sort of). At least that’s what I got out of them. These are all qualities that a ‘best couple’ should have so, I’m choosing to award this title as a combo award!

Worst Couple

RR: I think the Worst Couple title should go to IU and Lee Jun Ki in Scarlet Heart Ryeo. If anyone is curious as to why we’re awarding this, please read our reviews on this drama. We go on ad nauseum about how badly these two are as a couple.

JM: Yes, the Worst Couple award goes to these two. I still think IU and Kang Haneul had more going on…. *face palm* Yes, we did extensive reviews about their relationship, so please check out those posts!

Other Contenders for the Title: Kim Woo Bin and Suzy in Uncontrollaby Fond and Hye Ri and Ji Sung in The Entertainer.

Cringiest Drama

RR: Scarlet Hear Ryeo. Ugh. Again for reasons see previous review posts.

JM: Agreed! Especially the awful editing and multiple versions floating around and . . . well, check our reviews.

Drama “that had shit going on and then shit hit the fan and everything died” Award

RR: This category was created specifically for W – Two Worlds because when it started out it was amazing and we were all glued to our screens and freaking out and yelling and gasping and it was awesome. Then episode 6 or 7 happened and everything just went south. All of a sudden, none of it made sense and it just became a hot mess so it gets its own special category.

JM: The title of that award came from me, just saying. ;) Sorry for the long-ass title, but I think it summed up W very well. We didn’t review this drama because we hadn’t started our blog yet. However, both of us watched it and like RR said we were literally SO into this drama INITIALLY. Then . . . he kept dying, reliving, the dad also kept dying, reliving, etc. Oh my god. No.

Worst Legal Drama

RR: If you’ve been following us, you will know how we feel about this drama….Woman With A Suitcase! It was so awful that we had to stop reviewing it halfway. If you decide to do a legal drama, make sure you have a legal consultant is all I have to say for this drama.

JM: I think what made Woman with a Suitcase awful was that the lawyers solved the legal problems in a very similar fashion for each case. More details can be found in our reviews.

Most Ridiculous Action Drama

RR: This is also a special category that we created for The K2 because it was just completely ridiculous. The plot was a big mess and consisted of ridiculously long action scenes, Yoona acting like an infantilized Bambi, and the evil Mother lady directing everyone from her secret supercomputer in an even more secret underground lair. Seriously? (We actually reviewed this whole drama too -_-)

JM: I have to be frank. I watched the first episode and saw that she was running for 90% of the ep. I knew that this action drama would be a mess. I don’t know how RR stuck with this drama. I fast-forwarded through the first episode and finished it in less than 10 minutes. All I got from it was this: she ran.

Most Pointless Adaptation from US TV Shows

RR: Entourage gets this award. Unlike the other adaptions which got better reviews (I didn’t watch those so I can’t comment on those), this was just an excuse to have penis jokes and watch dudes walking around in their underwear. The characters apart from Jo Jin Woong and Park Min Jung really fell flat and didn’t really do anything much. Most of the time the 60 minutes felt really long and pointless, hence it deserves this award.

JM: Ah, I tried to watch this drama too but then dropped it after the first few episodes. We were really looking forward to potentially reviewing this, but . . . no. The first few episodes were just the guys talking and talking and talking. Nothing really happened. *Yawns*

Most Underrated Drama

RR: When Age of Youth started out, I honestly didn’t see it going the way it did. I really liked the way it portrayed the girls’ friendships and individual struggles. They were all really relatable. Maybe it’s because I’m also a twenty-something struggling through trying to figure out life, but it really resonated with me. I liked how this drama also left the ending very broad and open, as if to say that the characters struggles continue on and it’s not something that can get wrapped up neatly in a bow at the end as how it is with life in reality. It was definitely the most underrated drama of 2016 in my opinion.

JM: Jesus, Age of Youth is SO underrated. I wished we had started this blog earlier so that we could review this drama. I have to say the ending was kind of rushed and could have had more, but overall I still really enjoyed watching this drama. There was just the right amount of suspense, gossip, mystery, friendship, love, and drama. This drama is perfect for those going into their late teens to mid twenties. So many of the problems that the characters face are realistic and interesting.

Best Remake

RR: Being a huge fan of the original drama, I was a little skeptical about the remake but 1% of Something really delivered and is totally deserving of this title. Ha Seok Jin and Jeon So Min were the perfect Lee Jae In and Kim Da Hyun. It was the perfect contract dating love story, and I think that’s where the perfection lies: in its predictability and normality. Plus Ha Seok Jin had much better hair than Kang Dong Won in the original. It was a really good remake. I’d recommend watching it if anyone hasn’t already.

Best Reverse Harem Drama

RR: I would award this title to Cinderella and the Four Knights. It was a bit all over the place and Ahn Jae Hyun spent most of it brooding over Son Na Eun‘s dull as ditch water character and Jung Il Woo was an ass for most it. But once you get over it and focus on the cutesies, it’s not awful. Its still a lot better than the reverse harem nightmare in Scarlet Heart Ryeo so I will give it that!

JM: Personally, I couldn’t get into this drama so much. Maybe in the end . . . where there were more cute fluffy scenes and I wanted to watch some cuteness. But yeah . . . this drama was kind of stereotypical? I did like the character who was the musician.

Worst Web Drama

RR: So I actually gave up watching Seven First Kisses after the Lee Jun Ki episode. NO ONE KISSED ANYONE!!! WTF?!?! How is this okay? You get all these hot guys and no one is kissing anyone? The title of this show is the epitome of misrepresentation! -_-

JM: This was the drama I watched when there was nothing else to do and I needed to pass around 10 mins of my time. I watched the whole thing because I wanted to know whether she would get kissed. I mean, the actors and the actress really got it easy for their roles. They didn’t even have to KISS each other. Even as an advertisement, this failed. I still have no idea what Lotte Duty Free is selling. A lifestyle? A romance? A fantasy that will never be fulfilled?

Contenders for Best Web Drama: High End Crush and The Miracle

Worst Character – The One You Most Want To Push Off A Cliff

RR: If I absolutely HAD to pick one character, I’d choose……IU’s character on Scarlet Heart Ryeo. I just couldn’t deal with the wishy washy-ness going between Kang Ha Neul and Lee Jun Ki  and just her attitude in general. Ugh. Off the cliff you go!

JM: Soo from SHR. Yup. She was super weak, flat, stupid, selfish and more. How could she not So even be with his daughter? Huh? That really boggles my mind. Guh.

Worst Mom

RR: Hands down the Mom in Scarlet Heart Ryeo is the worst drama Mom of 2016. I’m guessing that EVERYONE has seen this drama so it warrants no further explanation. If you don’t know what I’m talking about watch this train wreck and you’ll see.

JM: Oh dear. I forgot about her until RR mentioned her. LOL. I guess she was such a bad mom that I had to blank her out. I still don’t understand why she hated So. LOL.

a) Evilest Mother in Law

RR: As a sub-category under Worst Mom we’re doing the ‘Evilest Mother in Law’. This title goes to…….the Mother in Law in Happy Home who used emotional and psychological terrorism to subjugate the daughter in law. It was frankly quite terrifying to watch. Honourable mentions in this category should also be: Do Kyung’s mom (the money stealing mom) in Oh Hae Young Again, the whole in-law family (they killed the daughter-in-law’s mother and father) in My Daughter Geum Sa Wol and Gab Dol’s mom (abusive mother in law) in Our Gab Soon (this one is still airing though so it doesn’t technically count).

Second Leads:

a) Who Should Be First Leads

RR:  Hands down this title goes to Baek In Ho in Cheese in the Trap, although arguably this did happen for like half a second so…..But he gave us all the feels with the moping….

Other Contenders for the Title: Ryu Jun Yeol’s character in Reply 1988 and Lee Joon’s character in Woman With A Suitcase.

b) Best Male Second Lead

RR: The adorable Gong Myung’s puppy character with the crush on Park Ha Sun‘s character on Drinking Solo was by far the best second lead. And because you know that he can never be the equivalent of a first lead, it really was the one character that gave you a real case of Second Lead Syndrome.

Other Contenders for the Title:  Go Kyung Po’s character in Jealousy Incarnate, and Ohn Joo Wan’s character in Beautiful Gong Shim.

c) Best Female Second Lead

RR: I honestly can’t think of any second leads who are decent and not absolutely horrible people. Except maybe Shin Hye Sun’s character on Legend of the Blue Sea (but technically its not included as 2016 drama because it ended in 2017 so it doesn’t count)

d) Bitchiest Second Leads

RR: Most female second leads are by default absolute bitches so it’s really really hard to pick one particular character. For this reason, I’m going with a combo award again. I’m choosing Seo Hyo Rim (the sister) in Beautiful Gong Shim, Jeon Hye Bin (the sister) in Woman With A Suitcase, Park Se Young (the adopted sister) in My Daughter Geum Sa Wol, and Lee Sung Kyung (the twin sister) in Cheese in the Trap for the Bitchiest Second Lead title. Is anyone else sensing a trend with the evil sister thing in 2016?

JM: I concur. Bitchiest everywhere. Man.

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Worst Actor-Please Go Back to Acting Class Award

RR:  By far the Worst Actor title goes to Baekhyun on Scarlet Heart Ryeo. It was just terrible. Too much of everything. Please. Go back and get some acting lessons.

JM: I think they made him do aegyo WAY too much. I get that his character is supposed to be really innocent and cheerful, but . . . yeah. If he does pursue acting, I agree that he should take more acting lessons!

Candiest Candy

RR: I absolutely love Gong Hyo Jin, but her character on Jealousy Incarnate was the Candiest Candy character of 2016. Candy characters annoy me but oddly, I didn’t hate her version of Pyo Na Ri which I think is the point. She was dogged and clingy but not in a creepy or desperate way. Also, her fashion in this drama was absolutely on point so….Kudos girl!

Worst Kiss

RR: OMG. These were the absolute worst kisses in the 2016 dramaverse. The IU and Lee Jun Ki kiss on Scarlet Heart Ryeo (they were all horrible so you can choose which one you hate more) and the Park Shin Hye and Kim Rae Won in Doctors (also known as the ‘Dancing In The Rain Kiss’). These were all equally horrible in their own right. Mostly because a) the kissing was bad and because b) it was super awkwardly positioned. Ugh. How hard is it to mess up a kiss scene?

JM: SHR for me. RR actually showed the “better” kiss scene from SHR. I’m telling you, the worst kiss in that drama has to be the initial forced kiss from So. The director even filmed the kiss upside down so you couldn’t see much of the action at all. The kiss was reflected from a pond. LOL. (Yes I know LJK has said in an interview that he hasn’t been that good with kiss scenes in the past, so I was kind of looking forward to seeing some improvement on his hand for SHR. Unfortunately, those scenes didn’t show . . . much. I wished they had created better kiss scenes.)

Best Kiss

RR: Hands down, the best kiss of 2016 goes to……Seo Hyun Jin and Eric (also known as the ‘Wall Kiss’) in Oh Hae Young Again. This kiss is totally deserving of this title. It was very much what you would expect a real kiss to be; all the tongues and hands and feelings. So very realistic. An honourable mention should also go to Gong Hyo Jin and Jo Jung Seok (also known as the ‘Locker Room Kiss’) on Jealousy Incarnate. *fans face*

Best Makjang (Or worst depending on your approach to Makjangs)

RR: I would award this title to…..My Daughter Geum Sa Wol! It had a little bit of everything; fires, death, birth switches, birth secrets, love affairs, awful in-laws, noble idiocy, poverty, a Romeo-Juliet-esque love story etc etc. It was all super intense and very much in your face all the time and made you want to scream and/or pull your hair out. It was great.

a) Best Family Drama

RR: In line with the Makjang is the Best Family Drama title. I would award this to Five Children. It’s all about a blended family coming together and their extended family drama. If nothing else, the scene stealing Sung Hoon and Shin Hye Sun put this drama on the map with their super awkward ‘Supremely Obnoxious Jock Falls For Nerdy School Teacher’ love story!

Best Costumes

RR: The costumes in Moonlight Drawn by Clouds were absolutely beautiful!

JM: Yes. So pretty.

Worst Costumes

RR: The outfits and style choices in Lucky Romance were absolutely atrocious. They made Hwang Jung Eum look like some New York city bag lady. It was absolutely terrible! An honourable mention for worst costumes also goes to…..Hwarang: Poet Warrior Youth for its god awful drowned rat hair! (it’s technically still airing so it doesn’t count but I think it deserves to be included twice in this category for both 2016 and 17!)

Worst Script

RR: I mean there is no contest for this……Scarlet Heart Ryeo (If you want to know the reasons why please read our review posts on this)

JM: SHR!!!!! They had a NOVEL and a Chinese script to work with. Things shouldn’t have gone wrong.

Worst Editing

RR: Again, no contest….Scarlet Heart Ryeo

JM: SHR. Cutting off the actor/actress’s speech before the scene ended? Having multiple versions going on? What? No.

Worst Manhwa Adaptation

RR: When you basically make the Male Lead disappear and replace him with the Second Lead for half the show which is totally not what is in the Webtoon, you deserve this title. Cheese in the Trap, I’m talking to you!

JM: My God. The webtoon is SO MUCH BETTER. Guys just read the webtoon and ignore this drama. What a waste of Park Hae Jin. He’s a really good actor. (Watch him in Bad Guys).

Most Underused Talent Award

RR: Talk about a waste of talent. This title goes to Ji Sung in The Entertainer. This whole drama was pointless in the first place, but to cast Ji Sung and then have him do barely anything and give him have an awkward love line with Hye Ri? Really? That’s the best you could do? -_-

Actor Who Did A 180 Award

RR: Honestly, I didn’t see this coming. When UEE was cast in Marriage Contract, I must admit that I was less than excited. But, she totally proved me wrong by really killing it in the role. Oh My God. She gave me all the feelings. It was a job very well done. *applause*

Rising Star Award

RR: I didn’t really notice any newbies that really took my breath away in 2016 except maybe Kim Min Suk who was Private Kim Ki Bum and Jin Goo’s little ‘brother’ character on Descendants of the Sun. He also went on to play a cute doctor on Doctors later in the year as well. He’s doing quite well playing resident puppy roles. Keep it up!

Best Drama

RR: For me, this year’s Best Drama Award should go to Descendants of the Sun. In spite of some of its cheesiness, what I really liked best about this show was the characters’ dedication to their own lives and careers and choice to be with each other without giving these up. They remained very much their own person until the very end and were not willing to compromise things that made them, them. This is often not the case with most drama characters, so it was really refreshing to see a love story being portrayed in such a way. Its really the twenty-something struggle (love vs career) and these two really figured it out amidst the landmines and natural disasters.

JM: For me, the best drama goes to SIGNAL. If I could vote Signal for everything, I could try to squeeze it in for anything. ;) I’m sort of biased because I adore watching murder mysteries. I find the suspense to be fascinating. All of the actors were great. However, the younger male police lead (Lee Je Hoon) . . . he was decent but still not as skilled as the veteran actors. The cases were also very interesting and I heard they were based on real cases which makes the drama even more fascinating. I think the drama also brings on some social issues to light which is great. BRING ON A SEQUEL or another wonderful murder mystery drama for 2017. PLEASE.

RR: That’s it for our 2016 wrap up! Goodbye 2016! You will not be missed!

End of Year Drama Awards – 2016 Welcome to our 'End of Year Review/Awards' post. Yes it's in January because we're doing it in line with Chinese New Year!

[albertcaldwellne]

Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers: the world’s favorite super hero team. If ticket sales are any indication, we love them more than the X-Men. And I suspect we’ll like them more than the Justice League. It’s been a great ride for this disparate group of heroes, and their recent blockbuster is no different.

We If you’re one of the few people who aren’t really following along, Age of Ultron is the direct sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, and the 11th overall film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–a cohesive series of movies, tv shows, and digital shorts that tell individual parts of a larger story drawn from the pages of Marvel Comics.

“The Avengers” are a group of super heroes who, despite their differences, work together towards common purpose…usually saving the world or something like that.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain the premise of the Avengers, because if by this point in time you haven’t been at least peripherally exposed to ELEVEN of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time, and you don’t know about super hero team ups, you’ve beyond my help.

If you’re not into this, I don’t know how to talk to you. We’re not friends. For the rest of you, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss some #realness.

So. The Avengers. What an awesome group of badasses, right?

Right. But in addition to just loving them for their entertainment value and the way they inspire us to get jacked like a super hero, I believe they can teach us a few things.

In fact, I think that looking at a movie about super hero teams can teach us a lot; not just how to save the world while looking awesome in spandex (harder than it looks), and not just when it’s appropriate to break out some snappy one-liners for high level quippery (always), but some actual life lessons.

The most important of these are about teams. Not just teamwork—but the value of teams themselves. 

Being part of a team—and knowing—how to be both part of a team, and successful on a team, is a fundamental skill that I think everyone needs to learn. 

ONE is Better than One

The first thing you can learn from the Avengers is math: ONE is better than one. Meaning that one team is better than one person. This is very different than saying “five is better than one.”

Sure, a group of 5 individuals can probably accomplish more than just one person alone…but it is only once that group of 5 becomes ONE that you see the magic happen. When you’re part of a team–a truly cohesive unit that functions with a single purpose–you can accomplish wonders. A single team can do more in a few days than one person can do in a month, or a bunch of individuals can do in a week.

The hard part is making those 5 into ONE. Being able to do this requires that all members put their respective egos aside, and trust one another.

For the Avengers, this is sometimes hard. Captain America and Iron Man, for example, have pretty different worldview, and compromise doesn’t come easy.

But despite their disagreements, they respect and trust one another, because they can see the value each brings to the table. When things get crazy and they really need to work together, they each fall into their roles seamlessly.

If you’re going to be part of a truly successful team, you have to learn to let go of a lot of your general attitudes and preconceived notions. You just need to trust in the people around you, and earn their trust as well.

While it’s certainly difficult, actively setting aside ego is going to make you a better teammate, better employees, better boss…as well as a better parent, spouse, or friend.

The abandonment of ego is what allows you to become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This hasn’t always been easy for me, and it’s still a challenge.

In fact, the only thing that’s really helped me is to be constantly reminded that I don’t know everything, and I can’t do it all on my own. Trying and failing is part of it, but the larger piece of success has simply to become part of a number of teams, and focus on playing ONE specific role, rather than trying to do everything myself.

Which brings us to lesson number two…

Know Your Role (And Seek Diversity)

If you truly want to become successful, especially has part of a team, learning how to play a single role is important.

This is something I learned many years ago, back when I was 12 and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my friend’s basement. Much like the Avengers, D&D functions on the basic premise that in order to be successful, you and your group (known as an adventuring party) need to work together.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to know how to work together; you need to work together with people who are fundamentally different than you are. In D&D, a balanced party will have characters that play different roles and bring different skills to the table. It’s important to have warriors, but you also need people who can cast spells, or hide in the shadows, or whatever else you need. Basically, a good party can deal with everything from magic to picking locks to a swarm of ocs.

This is very much like the Avengers. Every member of the team serves a different purpose. At a macro level, Iron Man is the brains; Cap is the moral center; Hulk is the muscle; Thor has the best hair (and can hammer things, I guess); Black Widow brings all sorts of espionage to the table. And they all have a role…but NO ONE Avenger is more important than the others.

oh my god this money shot

This is something we can all take to heart. And, as I touched on above, seeking these people out is one of the easiest ways to learn how to set ego aside.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

A few years back, I was contracted to handle the nutrition for UFC fighter Uriah Hall, in preparation for a fight.

Most of the time, I do everything for my clients; with Uriah, I was hired ONLY for nutrition. And that was hard, at first.

My job was only that one thing—to calculate his nutritional needs and tell him how to fill them. My boy Scot Prohaska, on the other hand, took care of the training aspect—that was his role. He designs the strength and conditioning programs. And of course Uriah has a coach for stand up, one for grappling, and so on.

Working with higher levels athletes is one of the only situations in which a trainer/coach will be part of such a large team. Anyone who says this isn’t a challenge is either a better man than I can imagine, or just lying.

At the start, it was very weird to sublimate the urge to make adjustments to a piece of the puzzle that wasn’t my responsibility. It’s limiting in some ways, and liberating in others. But most of all, it makes you think, and helps you learn.

While I was responsible for his nutrition, I promise I did not prescribe Bud Light.

I just kept telling myself, “be the nutrition guy; handle the nutrition. Don’t worry about the conditioning. Don’t think about trying to make changes to the training program.”

My job was to look those other things over and estimating the demands training and conditioning and fight practice place upon the athlete, then to address support and recovery through nutrition. My job was to incorporate every piece of information into my assessments, and recommendation, but it was NOT to make changes. At first, it was a real challenge.

Over time, it became more and more natural, and I learned a lot from the people around me—which was really the best part of the entire experience, and part of the reason I signed up, anyway.

If you’re not bound by ego, watching people do things differently is more of an honor than a burden; you just have to be open minded and trust the members of your team, even if they do things that you haven’t done. Having an understanding of the other facets helps tremendously, but at the end of the day being part of a team means just doing your job—not all the jobs.

Not only is it likely that you can’t do that job as well as someone else, but trying to do so would drive you crazy, and keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Perhaps most importantly, it would be detrimental to the team as a whole.

The lesson here is this: in life, you can’t be good at everything—but you can find people who are good at what you’re not. If you surround yourself with people who help shore up your weaknesses, you’re going to be more successful overall.

Without sounds to wishy-washy about it, I think we can all agree that learn to appreciate others for the ways they’re different from us is probably the key to world peace. Or, at least, from stopping an army of AI-driven robots from destroying us all.

Now, onto lesson number three.

Iron Sharpens Iron

If you follow any writing concerned with self-edification, you’ve almost definitely heard the expression “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is generally used as a warning against hanging out with people who’ll drag you down.

Personally, I have always hated that expression. Why? Because it completely minimizes personal responsibility for your development, as well as your own contribution to that of others.

Here’s the thing: yes, you are, in many ways, a product of your environment, and the people you hang out with are bound to have a huge influence on everything from your ambition to the way you speak and present yourself.

The probably with the expression is that it completely ignores the other side of the coin: if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.

That’s why I prefer the maxim “iron sharpens iron.” It’s older by far (like, Bible old), and means that spending time with other people makes you stronger, and better…but only if they are on your level to begin with.

Tin does not sharpen iron. Nor does wood, or gold, or brass. But the thing is, iron can be used to shape and sharpen those things. Changes can still be made, things can still be built, but the relationship is one sided. The iron is doing all the work, and the softer substance is undergoing all of the change.

It is only when you have two pieces of iron—two people of similar quality—that they can REALLY engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Avengers are a group for whom this is painfully true. While they’re all impressive individuals on their own, it’s only by spending time and working together that they improve—not only as a team, but also as individuals. Of course, the process of  iron sharpening iron can have some…hiccups…

Cap and Thor helping each other get sharp.

But, it’s always a worthwhile process, because it helps everyone. For example, spending time with Steve Rogers has dulled Tony’s arrogance; Black Widow has helped Captain America become more world aware; Clint Barton’s continued friendship repeatedly shows Natasha Romanoff there’s more to her than the assassin she was trained to be.

And, on the more extreme side, hanging out with Tony has helped reclusive Bruce Banner come out of his shell.

Each of the Avengers helps the others get better; not only because they “see” value in one another, but because they actually have things to offer each other. While it’s tempting to think of the Avengers as being a slightly imbalanced team (the tragically human Hawkeye and Black Widow being the weak links compared to super soldiers, demi-gods, and ragemonsters), but the fact is, every single member of the team earned a spot and has something to bring to the table.

My point is, while it’s certainly true you should seek always to spend time with people who make you better and prune your social circle, you have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better, and always be getting better.

If we accept that you’re 1/5 of the personal development equation for each of these people, then in order to make them better YOU have to make sure that your iron is as hard as theirs, and vice versa.

A lot of us have the tendency to hang out with people who are a bit above us, because it makes us feel “cool”, or a bit below us, because it makes us feel “big.” But unless we’re constantly striving to become better—unless we take personal responsibility for our own development—we’re not going to get the most out of those relationships. And we certainly aren’t going to bring our best to them.

If there’s one thing you take away from this piece, let it be this: water finds its own level, and no matter how many individual drops there are, it all rises (or falls) together. 

Closing Thoughts

Okay. Maybe to you, the Avengers is just a super hero movie in a long line of similar films. And on some levels, it is.

But, like anything else, I think that if you look at things with eye, there are lessons to be learned from all great adventure stories. At the very least, they can tweak your memory and get you thinking differently about things you already knew, or perhaps add a new layer to your understanding.

The Avengers, like any team, is made up of a group of deeply flawed individuals. But it shows us that under the right set of circumstances, and with the right group of people around us, just about anyone can be better, and make those around them better.

Or, if not…at least there’s a ton of sweet jokes. Love that Joss Whedon wit.

The post Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

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[johnclapperne]

Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers: the world’s favorite super hero team. If ticket sales are any indication, we love them more than the X-Men. And I suspect we��ll like them more than the Justice League. It’s been a great ride for this disparate group of heroes, and their recent blockbuster is no different.

We If you’re one of the few people who aren’t really following along, Age of Ultron is the direct sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, and the 11th overall film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–a cohesive series of movies, tv shows, and digital shorts that tell individual parts of a larger story drawn from the pages of Marvel Comics.

“The Avengers” are a group of super heroes who, despite their differences, work together towards common purpose…usually saving the world or something like that.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain the premise of the Avengers, because if by this point in time you haven’t been at least peripherally exposed to ELEVEN of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time, and you don’t know about super hero team ups, you’ve beyond my help.

If you’re not into this, I don’t know how to talk to you. We’re not friends. For the rest of you, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss some #realness.

So. The Avengers. What an awesome group of badasses, right?

Right. But in addition to just loving them for their entertainment value and the way they inspire us to get jacked like a super hero, I believe they can teach us a few things.

In fact, I think that looking at a movie about super hero teams can teach us a lot; not just how to save the world while looking awesome in spandex (harder than it looks), and not just when it’s appropriate to break out some snappy one-liners for high level quippery (always), but some actual life lessons.

The most important of these are about teams. Not just teamwork—but the value of teams themselves. 

Being part of a team—and knowing—how to be both part of a team, and successful on a team, is a fundamental skill that I think everyone needs to learn. 

ONE is Better than One

The first thing you can learn from the Avengers is math: ONE is better than one. Meaning that one team is better than one person. This is very different than saying “five is better than one.”

Sure, a group of 5 individuals can probably accomplish more than just one person alone…but it is only once that group of 5 becomes ONE that you see the magic happen. When you’re part of a team–a truly cohesive unit that functions with a single purpose–you can accomplish wonders. A single team can do more in a few days than one person can do in a month, or a bunch of individuals can do in a week.

The hard part is making those 5 into ONE. Being able to do this requires that all members put their respective egos aside, and trust one another.

For the Avengers, this is sometimes hard. Captain America and Iron Man, for example, have pretty different worldview, and compromise doesn’t come easy.

But despite their disagreements, they respect and trust one another, because they can see the value each brings to the table. When things get crazy and they really need to work together, they each fall into their roles seamlessly.

If you’re going to be part of a truly successful team, you have to learn to let go of a lot of your general attitudes and preconceived notions. You just need to trust in the people around you, and earn their trust as well.

While it’s certainly difficult, actively setting aside ego is going to make you a better teammate, better employees, better boss…as well as a better parent, spouse, or friend.

The abandonment of ego is what allows you to become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This hasn’t always been easy for me, and it’s still a challenge.

In fact, the only thing that’s really helped me is to be constantly reminded that I don’t know everything, and I can’t do it all on my own. Trying and failing is part of it, but the larger piece of success has simply to become part of a number of teams, and focus on playing ONE specific role, rather than trying to do everything myself.

Which brings us to lesson number two…

Know Your Role (And Seek Diversity)

If you truly want to become successful, especially has part of a team, learning how to play a single role is important.

This is something I learned many years ago, back when I was 12 and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my friend’s basement. Much like the Avengers, D&D functions on the basic premise that in order to be successful, you and your group (known as an adventuring party) need to work together.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to know how to work together; you need to work together with people who are fundamentally different than you are. In D&D, a balanced party will have characters that play different roles and bring different skills to the table. It’s important to have warriors, but you also need people who can cast spells, or hide in the shadows, or whatever else you need. Basically, a good party can deal with everything from magic to picking locks to a swarm of ocs.

This is very much like the Avengers. Every member of the team serves a different purpose. At a macro level, Iron Man is the brains; Cap is the moral center; Hulk is the muscle; Thor has the best hair (and can hammer things, I guess); Black Widow brings all sorts of espionage to the table. And they all have a role…but NO ONE Avenger is more important than the others.

oh my god this money shot

This is something we can all take to heart. And, as I touched on above, seeking these people out is one of the easiest ways to learn how to set ego aside.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

A few years back, I was contracted to handle the nutrition for UFC fighter Uriah Hall, in preparation for a fight.

Most of the time, I do everything for my clients; with Uriah, I was hired ONLY for nutrition. And that was hard, at first.

My job was only that one thing—to calculate his nutritional needs and tell him how to fill them. My boy Scot Prohaska, on the other hand, took care of the training aspect—that was his role. He designs the strength and conditioning programs. And of course Uriah has a coach for stand up, one for grappling, and so on.

Working with higher levels athletes is one of the only situations in which a trainer/coach will be part of such a large team. Anyone who says this isn’t a challenge is either a better man than I can imagine, or just lying.

At the start, it was very weird to sublimate the urge to make adjustments to a piece of the puzzle that wasn’t my responsibility. It’s limiting in some ways, and liberating in others. But most of all, it makes you think, and helps you learn.

While I was responsible for his nutrition, I promise I did not prescribe Bud Light.

I just kept telling myself, “be the nutrition guy; handle the nutrition. Don’t worry about the conditioning. Don’t think about trying to make changes to the training program.”

My job was to look those other things over and estimating the demands training and conditioning and fight practice place upon the athlete, then to address support and recovery through nutrition. My job was to incorporate every piece of information into my assessments, and recommendation, but it was NOT to make changes. At first, it was a real challenge.

Over time, it became more and more natural, and I learned a lot from the people around me—which was really the best part of the entire experience, and part of the reason I signed up, anyway.

If you’re not bound by ego, watching people do things differently is more of an honor than a burden; you just have to be open minded and trust the members of your team, even if they do things that you haven’t done. Having an understanding of the other facets helps tremendously, but at the end of the day being part of a team means just doing your job—not all the jobs.

Not only is it likely that you can’t do that job as well as someone else, but trying to do so would drive you crazy, and keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Perhaps most importantly, it would be detrimental to the team as a whole.

The lesson here is this: in life, you can’t be good at everything—but you can find people who are good at what you’re not. If you surround yourself with people who help shore up your weaknesses, you’re going to be more successful overall.

Without sounds to wishy-washy about it, I think we can all agree that learn to appreciate others for the ways they’re different from us is probably the key to world peace. Or, at least, from stopping an army of AI-driven robots from destroying us all.

Now, onto lesson number three.

Iron Sharpens Iron

If you follow any writing concerned with self-edification, you’ve almost definitely heard the expression “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is generally used as a warning against hanging out with people who’ll drag you down.

Personally, I have always hated that expression. Why? Because it completely minimizes personal responsibility for your development, as well as your own contribution to that of others.

Here’s the thing: yes, you are, in many ways, a product of your environment, and the people you hang out with are bound to have a huge influence on everything from your ambition to the way you speak and present yourself.

The probably with the expression is that it completely ignores the other side of the coin: if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.

That’s why I prefer the maxim “iron sharpens iron.” It’s older by far (like, Bible old), and means that spending time with other people makes you stronger, and better…but only if they are on your level to begin with.

Tin does not sharpen iron. Nor does wood, or gold, or brass. But the thing is, iron can be used to shape and sharpen those things. Changes can still be made, things can still be built, but the relationship is one sided. The iron is doing all the work, and the softer substance is undergoing all of the change.

It is only when you have two pieces of iron—two people of similar quality—that they can REALLY engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Avengers are a group for whom this is painfully true. While they’re all impressive individuals on their own, it’s only by spending time and working together that they improve—not only as a team, but also as individuals. Of course, the process of  iron sharpening iron can have some…hiccups…

Cap and Thor helping each other get sharp.

But, it’s always a worthwhile process, because it helps everyone. For example, spending time with Steve Rogers has dulled Tony’s arrogance; Black Widow has helped Captain America become more world aware; Clint Barton’s continued friendship repeatedly shows Natasha Romanoff there’s more to her than the assassin she was trained to be.

And, on the more extreme side, hanging out with Tony has helped reclusive Bruce Banner come out of his shell.

Each of the Avengers helps the others get better; not only because they “see” value in one another, but because they actually have things to offer each other. While it’s tempting to think of the Avengers as being a slightly imbalanced team (the tragically human Hawkeye and Black Widow being the weak links compared to super soldiers, demi-gods, and ragemonsters), but the fact is, every single member of the team earned a spot and has something to bring to the table.

My point is, while it’s certainly true you should seek always to spend time with people who make you better and prune your social circle, you have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better, and always be getting better.

If we accept that you’re 1/5 of the personal development equation for each of these people, then in order to make them better YOU have to make sure that your iron is as hard as theirs, and vice versa.

A lot of us have the tendency to hang out with people who are a bit above us, because it makes us feel “cool”, or a bit below us, because it makes us feel “big.” But unless we’re constantly striving to become better—unless we take personal responsibility for our own development—we’re not going to get the most out of those relationships. And we certainly aren’t going to bring our best to them.

If there’s one thing you take away from this piece, let it be this: water finds its own level, and no matter how many individual drops there are, it all rises (or falls) together. 

Closing Thoughts

Okay. Maybe to you, the Avengers is just a super hero movie in a long line of similar films. And on some levels, it is.

But, like anything else, I think that if you look at things with eye, there are lessons to be learned from all great adventure stories. At the very least, they can tweak your memory and get you thinking differently about things you already knew, or perhaps add a new layer to your understanding.

The Avengers, like any team, is made up of a group of deeply flawed individuals. But it shows us that under the right set of circumstances, and with the right group of people around us, just about anyone can be better, and make those around them better.

Or, if not…at least there’s a ton of sweet jokes. Love that Joss Whedon wit.

The post Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

https://ift.tt/2L6zMfx

[neilmillerne]

Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers: the world’s favorite super hero team. If ticket sales are any indication, we love them more than the X-Men. And I suspect we’ll like them more than the Justice League. It’s been a great ride for this disparate group of heroes, and their recent blockbuster is no different.

We If you’re one of the few people who aren’t really following along, Age of Ultron is the direct sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, and the 11th overall film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–a cohesive series of movies, tv shows, and digital shorts that tell individual parts of a larger story drawn from the pages of Marvel Comics.

“The Avengers” are a group of super heroes who, despite their differences, work together towards common purpose…usually saving the world or something like that.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain the premise of the Avengers, because if by this point in time you haven’t been at least peripherally exposed to ELEVEN of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time, and you don’t know about super hero team ups, you’ve beyond my help.

If you’re not into this, I don’t know how to talk to you. We’re not friends. For the rest of you, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss some #realness.

So. The Avengers. What an awesome group of badasses, right?

Right. But in addition to just loving them for their entertainment value and the way they inspire us to get jacked like a super hero, I believe they can teach us a few things.

In fact, I think that looking at a movie about super hero teams can teach us a lot; not just how to save the world while looking awesome in spandex (harder than it looks), and not just when it’s appropriate to break out some snappy one-liners for high level quippery (always), but some actual life lessons.

The most important of these are about teams. Not just teamwork—but the value of teams themselves. 

Being part of a team—and knowing—how to be both part of a team, and successful on a team, is a fundamental skill that I think everyone needs to learn. 

ONE is Better than One

The first thing you can learn from the Avengers is math: ONE is better than one. Meaning that one team is better than one person. This is very different than saying “five is better than one.”

Sure, a group of 5 individuals can probably accomplish more than just one person alone…but it is only once that group of 5 becomes ONE that you see the magic happen. When you’re part of a team–a truly cohesive unit that functions with a single purpose–you can accomplish wonders. A single team can do more in a few days than one person can do in a month, or a bunch of individuals can do in a week.

The hard part is making those 5 into ONE. Being able to do this requires that all members put their respective egos aside, and trust one another.

For the Avengers, this is sometimes hard. Captain America and Iron Man, for example, have pretty different worldview, and compromise doesn’t come easy.

But despite their disagreements, they respect and trust one another, because they can see the value each brings to the table. When things get crazy and they really need to work together, they each fall into their roles seamlessly.

If you’re going to be part of a truly successful team, you have to learn to let go of a lot of your general attitudes and preconceived notions. You just need to trust in the people around you, and earn their trust as well.

While it’s certainly difficult, actively setting aside ego is going to make you a better teammate, better employees, better boss…as well as a better parent, spouse, or friend.

The abandonment of ego is what allows you to become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This hasn’t always been easy for me, and it’s still a challenge.

In fact, the only thing that’s really helped me is to be constantly reminded that I don’t know everything, and I can’t do it all on my own. Trying and failing is part of it, but the larger piece of success has simply to become part of a number of teams, and focus on playing ONE specific role, rather than trying to do everything myself.

Which brings us to lesson number two…

Know Your Role (And Seek Diversity)

If you truly want to become successful, especially has part of a team, learning how to play a single role is important.

This is something I learned many years ago, back when I was 12 and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my friend’s basement. Much like the Avengers, D&D functions on the basic premise that in order to be successful, you and your group (known as an adventuring party) need to work together.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to know how to work together; you need to work together with people who are fundamentally different than you are. In D&D, a balanced party will have characters that play different roles and bring different skills to the table. It’s important to have warriors, but you also need people who can cast spells, or hide in the shadows, or whatever else you need. Basically, a good party can deal with everything from magic to picking locks to a swarm of ocs.

This is very much like the Avengers. Every member of the team serves a different purpose. At a macro level, Iron Man is the brains; Cap is the moral center; Hulk is the muscle; Thor has the best hair (and can hammer things, I guess); Black Widow brings all sorts of espionage to the table. And they all have a role…but NO ONE Avenger is more important than the others.

oh my god this money shot

This is something we can all take to heart. And, as I touched on above, seeking these people out is one of the easiest ways to learn how to set ego aside.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

A few years back, I was contracted to handle the nutrition for UFC fighter Uriah Hall, in preparation for a fight.

Most of the time, I do everything for my clients; with Uriah, I was hired ONLY for nutrition. And that was hard, at first.

My job was only that one thing—to calculate his nutritional needs and tell him how to fill them. My boy Scot Prohaska, on the other hand, took care of the training aspect—that was his role. He designs the strength and conditioning programs. And of course Uriah has a coach for stand up, one for grappling, and so on.

Working with higher levels athletes is one of the only situations in which a trainer/coach will be part of such a large team. Anyone who says this isn’t a challenge is either a better man than I can imagine, or just lying.

At the start, it was very weird to sublimate the urge to make adjustments to a piece of the puzzle that wasn’t my responsibility. It’s limiting in some ways, and liberating in others. But most of all, it makes you think, and helps you learn.

While I was responsible for his nutrition, I promise I did not prescribe Bud Light.

I just kept telling myself, “be the nutrition guy; handle the nutrition. Don’t worry about the conditioning. Don’t think about trying to make changes to the training program.”

My job was to look those other things over and estimating the demands training and conditioning and fight practice place upon the athlete, then to address support and recovery through nutrition. My job was to incorporate every piece of information into my assessments, and recommendation, but it was NOT to make changes. At first, it was a real challenge.

Over time, it became more and more natural, and I learned a lot from the people around me—which was really the best part of the entire experience, and part of the reason I signed up, anyway.

If you’re not bound by ego, watching people do things differently is more of an honor than a burden; you just have to be open minded and trust the members of your team, even if they do things that you haven’t done. Having an understanding of the other facets helps tremendously, but at the end of the day being part of a team means just doing your job—not all the jobs.

Not only is it likely that you can’t do that job as well as someone else, but trying to do so would drive you crazy, and keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Perhaps most importantly, it would be detrimental to the team as a whole.

The lesson here is this: in life, you can’t be good at everything—but you can find people who are good at what you’re not. If you surround yourself with people who help shore up your weaknesses, you’re going to be more successful overall.

Without sounds to wishy-washy about it, I think we can all agree that learn to appreciate others for the ways they’re different from us is probably the key to world peace. Or, at least, from stopping an army of AI-driven robots from destroying us all.

Now, onto lesson number three.

Iron Sharpens Iron

If you follow any writing concerned with self-edification, you’ve almost definitely heard the expression “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is generally used as a warning against hanging out with people who’ll drag you down.

Personally, I have always hated that expression. Why? Because it completely minimizes personal responsibility for your development, as well as your own contribution to that of others.

Here’s the thing: yes, you are, in many ways, a product of your environment, and the people you hang out with are bound to have a huge influence on everything from your ambition to the way you speak and present yourself.

The probably with the expression is that it completely ignores the other side of the coin: if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.

That’s why I prefer the maxim “iron sharpens iron.” It’s older by far (like, Bible old), and means that spending time with other people makes you stronger, and better…but only if they are on your level to begin with.

Tin does not sharpen iron. Nor does wood, or gold, or brass. But the thing is, iron can be used to shape and sharpen those things. Changes can still be made, things can still be built, but the relationship is one sided. The iron is doing all the work, and the softer substance is undergoing all of the change.

It is only when you have two pieces of iron—two people of similar quality—that they can REALLY engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Avengers are a group for whom this is painfully true. While they’re all impressive individuals on their own, it’s only by spending time and working together that they improve—not only as a team, but also as individuals. Of course, the process of  iron sharpening iron can have some…hiccups…

Cap and Thor helping each other get sharp.

But, it’s always a worthwhile process, because it helps everyone. For example, spending time with Steve Rogers has dulled Tony’s arrogance; Black Widow has helped Captain America become more world aware; Clint Barton’s continued friendship repeatedly shows Natasha Romanoff there’s more to her than the assassin she was trained to be.

And, on the more extreme side, hanging out with Tony has helped reclusive Bruce Banner come out of his shell.

Each of the Avengers helps the others get better; not only because they “see” value in one another, but because they actually have things to offer each other. While it’s tempting to think of the Avengers as being a slightly imbalanced team (the tragically human Hawkeye and Black Widow being the weak links compared to super soldiers, demi-gods, and ragemonsters), but the fact is, every single member of the team earned a spot and has something to bring to the table.

My point is, while it’s certainly true you should seek always to spend time with people who make you better and prune your social circle, you have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better, and always be getting better.

If we accept that you’re 1/5 of the personal development equation for each of these people, then in order to make them better YOU have to make sure that your iron is as hard as theirs, and vice versa.

A lot of us have the tendency to hang out with people who are a bit above us, because it makes us feel “cool”, or a bit below us, because it makes us feel “big.” But unless we’re constantly striving to become better—unless we take personal responsibility for our own development—we’re not going to get the most out of those relationships. And we certainly aren’t going to bring our best to them.

If there’s one thing you take away from this piece, let it be this: water finds its own level, and no matter how many individual drops there are, it all rises (or falls) together. 

Closing Thoughts

Okay. Maybe to you, the Avengers is just a super hero movie in a long line of similar films. And on some levels, it is.

But, like anything else, I think that if you look at things with eye, there are lessons to be learned from all great adventure stories. At the very least, they can tweak your memory and get you thinking differently about things you already knew, or perhaps add a new layer to your understanding.

The Avengers, like any team, is made up of a group of deeply flawed individuals. But it shows us that under the right set of circumstances, and with the right group of people around us, just about anyone can be better, and make those around them better.

Or, if not…at least there’s a ton of sweet jokes. Love that Joss Whedon wit.

The post Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

https://ift.tt/2L6zMfx

[ruthellisneda]

Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers: the world’s favorite super hero team. If ticket sales are any indication, we love them more than the X-Men. And I suspect we’ll like them more than the Justice League. It’s been a great ride for this disparate group of heroes, and their recent blockbuster is no different.

We If you’re one of the few people who aren’t really following along, Age of Ultron is the direct sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, and the 11th overall film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–a cohesive series of movies, tv shows, and digital shorts that tell individual parts of a larger story drawn from the pages of Marvel Comics.

“The Avengers” are a group of super heroes who, despite their differences, work together towards common purpose…usually saving the world or something like that.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain the premise of the Avengers, because if by this point in time you haven’t been at least peripherally exposed to ELEVEN of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time, and you don’t know about super hero team ups, you’ve beyond my help.

If you’re not into this, I don’t know how to talk to you. We’re not friends. For the rest of you, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss some #realness.

So. The Avengers. What an awesome group of badasses, right?

Right. But in addition to just loving them for their entertainment value and the way they inspire us to get jacked like a super hero, I believe they can teach us a few things.

In fact, I think that looking at a movie about super hero teams can teach us a lot; not just how to save the world while looking awesome in spandex (harder than it looks), and not just when it’s appropriate to break out some snappy one-liners for high level quippery (always), but some actual life lessons.

The most important of these are about teams. Not just teamwork—but the value of teams themselves. 

Being part of a team—and knowing—how to be both part of a team, and successful on a team, is a fundamental skill that I think everyone needs to learn. 

ONE is Better than One

The first thing you can learn from the Avengers is math: ONE is better than one. Meaning that one team is better than one person. This is very different than saying “five is better than one.”

Sure, a group of 5 individuals can probably accomplish more than just one person alone…but it is only once that group of 5 becomes ONE that you see the magic happen. When you’re part of a team–a truly cohesive unit that functions with a single purpose–you can accomplish wonders. A single team can do more in a few days than one person can do in a month, or a bunch of individuals can do in a week.

The hard part is making those 5 into ONE. Being able to do this requires that all members put their respective egos aside, and trust one another.

For the Avengers, this is sometimes hard. Captain America and Iron Man, for example, have pretty different worldview, and compromise doesn’t come easy.

But despite their disagreements, they respect and trust one another, because they can see the value each brings to the table. When things get crazy and they really need to work together, they each fall into their roles seamlessly.

If you’re going to be part of a truly successful team, you have to learn to let go of a lot of your general attitudes and preconceived notions. You just need to trust in the people around you, and earn their trust as well.

While it’s certainly difficult, actively setting aside ego is going to make you a better teammate, better employees, better boss…as well as a better parent, spouse, or friend.

The abandonment of ego is what allows you to become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This hasn’t always been easy for me, and it’s still a challenge.

In fact, the only thing that’s really helped me is to be constantly reminded that I don’t know everything, and I can’t do it all on my own. Trying and failing is part of it, but the larger piece of success has simply to become part of a number of teams, and focus on playing ONE specific role, rather than trying to do everything myself.

Which brings us to lesson number two…

Know Your Role (And Seek Diversity)

If you truly want to become successful, especially has part of a team, learning how to play a single role is important.

This is something I learned many years ago, back when I was 12 and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my friend’s basement. Much like the Avengers, D&D functions on the basic premise that in order to be successful, you and your group (known as an adventuring party) need to work together.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to know how to work together; you need to work together with people who are fundamentally different than you are. In D&D, a balanced party will have characters that play different roles and bring different skills to the table. It’s important to have warriors, but you also need people who can cast spells, or hide in the shadows, or whatever else you need. Basically, a good party can deal with everything from magic to picking locks to a swarm of ocs.

This is very much like the Avengers. Every member of the team serves a different purpose. At a macro level, Iron Man is the brains; Cap is the moral center; Hulk is the muscle; Thor has the best hair (and can hammer things, I guess); Black Widow brings all sorts of espionage to the table. And they all have a role…but NO ONE Avenger is more important than the others.

oh my god this money shot

This is something we can all take to heart. And, as I touched on above, seeking these people out is one of the easiest ways to learn how to set ego aside.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

A few years back, I was contracted to handle the nutrition for UFC fighter Uriah Hall, in preparation for a fight.

Most of the time, I do everything for my clients; with Uriah, I was hired ONLY for nutrition. And that was hard, at first.

My job was only that one thing—to calculate his nutritional needs and tell him how to fill them. My boy Scot Prohaska, on the other hand, took care of the training aspect—that was his role. He designs the strength and conditioning programs. And of course Uriah has a coach for stand up, one for grappling, and so on.

Working with higher levels athletes is one of the only situations in which a trainer/coach will be part of such a large team. Anyone who says this isn’t a challenge is either a better man than I can imagine, or just lying.

At the start, it was very weird to sublimate the urge to make adjustments to a piece of the puzzle that wasn’t my responsibility. It’s limiting in some ways, and liberating in others. But most of all, it makes you think, and helps you learn.

While I was responsible for his nutrition, I promise I did not prescribe Bud Light.

I just kept telling myself, “be the nutrition guy; handle the nutrition. Don’t worry about the conditioning. Don’t think about trying to make changes to the training program.”

My job was to look those other things over and estimating the demands training and conditioning and fight practice place upon the athlete, then to address support and recovery through nutrition. My job was to incorporate every piece of information into my assessments, and recommendation, but it was NOT to make changes. At first, it was a real challenge.

Over time, it became more and more natural, and I learned a lot from the people around me—which was really the best part of the entire experience, and part of the reason I signed up, anyway.

If you’re not bound by ego, watching people do things differently is more of an honor than a burden; you just have to be open minded and trust the members of your team, even if they do things that you haven’t done. Having an understanding of the other facets helps tremendously, but at the end of the day being part of a team means just doing your job—not all the jobs.

Not only is it likely that you can’t do that job as well as someone else, but trying to do so would drive you crazy, and keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Perhaps most importantly, it would be detrimental to the team as a whole.

The lesson here is this: in life, you can’t be good at everything—but you can find people who are good at what you’re not. If you surround yourself with people who help shore up your weaknesses, you’re going to be more successful overall.

Without sounds to wishy-washy about it, I think we can all agree that learn to appreciate others for the ways they’re different from us is probably the key to world peace. Or, at least, from stopping an army of AI-driven robots from destroying us all.

Now, onto lesson number three.

Iron Sharpens Iron

If you follow any writing concerned with self-edification, you’ve almost definitely heard the expression “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is generally used as a warning against hanging out with people who’ll drag you down.

Personally, I have always hated that expression. Why? Because it completely minimizes personal responsibility for your development, as well as your own contribution to that of others.

Here’s the thing: yes, you are, in many ways, a product of your environment, and the people you hang out with are bound to have a huge influence on everything from your ambition to the way you speak and present yourself.

The probably with the expression is that it completely ignores the other side of the coin: if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.

That’s why I prefer the maxim “iron sharpens iron.” It’s older by far (like, Bible old), and means that spending time with other people makes you stronger, and better…but only if they are on your level to begin with.

Tin does not sharpen iron. Nor does wood, or gold, or brass. But the thing is, iron can be used to shape and sharpen those things. Changes can still be made, things can still be built, but the relationship is one sided. The iron is doing all the work, and the softer substance is undergoing all of the change.

It is only when you have two pieces of iron—two people of similar quality—that they can REALLY engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Avengers are a group for whom this is painfully true. While they’re all impressive individuals on their own, it’s only by spending time and working together that they improve—not only as a team, but also as individuals. Of course, the process of  iron sharpening iron can have some…hiccups…

Cap and Thor helping each other get sharp.

But, it’s always a worthwhile process, because it helps everyone. For example, spending time with Steve Rogers has dulled Tony’s arrogance; Black Widow has helped Captain America become more world aware; Clint Barton’s continued friendship repeatedly shows Natasha Romanoff there’s more to her than the assassin she was trained to be.

And, on the more extreme side, hanging out with Tony has helped reclusive Bruce Banner come out of his shell.

Each of the Avengers helps the others get better; not only because they “see” value in one another, but because they actually have things to offer each other. While it’s tempting to think of the Avengers as being a slightly imbalanced team (the tragically human Hawkeye and Black Widow being the weak links compared to super soldiers, demi-gods, and ragemonsters), but the fact is, every single member of the team earned a spot and has something to bring to the table.

My point is, while it’s certainly true you should seek always to spend time with people who make you better and prune your social circle, you have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better, and always be getting better.

If we accept that you’re 1/5 of the personal development equation for each of these people, then in order to make them better YOU have to make sure that your iron is as hard as theirs, and vice versa.

A lot of us have the tendency to hang out with people who are a bit above us, because it makes us feel “cool”, or a bit below us, because it makes us feel “big.” But unless we’re constantly striving to become better—unless we take personal responsibility for our own development—we’re not going to get the most out of those relationships. And we certainly aren’t going to bring our best to them.

If there’s one thing you take away from this piece, let it be this: water finds its own level, and no matter how many individual drops there are, it all rises (or falls) together. 

Closing Thoughts

Okay. Maybe to you, the Avengers is just a super hero movie in a long line of similar films. And on some levels, it is.

But, like anything else, I think that if you look at things with eye, there are lessons to be learned from all great adventure stories. At the very least, they can tweak your memory and get you thinking differently about things you already knew, or perhaps add a new layer to your understanding.

The Avengers, like any team, is made up of a group of deeply flawed individuals. But it shows us that under the right set of circumstances, and with the right group of people around us, just about anyone can be better, and make those around them better.

Or, if not…at least there’s a ton of sweet jokes. Love that Joss Whedon wit.

The post Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

https://ift.tt/2L6zMfx

[joshuabradleyn]

Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers: the world’s favorite super hero team. If ticket sales are any indication, we love them more than the X-Men. And I suspect we’ll like them more than the Justice League. It’s been a great ride for this disparate group of heroes, and their recent blockbuster is no different.

We If you’re one of the few people who aren’t really following along, Age of Ultron is the direct sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, and the 11th overall film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–a cohesive series of movies, tv shows, and digital shorts that tell individual parts of a larger story drawn from the pages of Marvel Comics.

“The Avengers” are a group of super heroes who, despite their differences, work together towards common purpose…usually saving the world or something like that.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain the premise of the Avengers, because if by this point in time you haven’t been at least peripherally exposed to ELEVEN of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time, and you don’t know about super hero team ups, you’ve beyond my help.

If you’re not into this, I don’t know how to talk to you. We’re not friends. For the rest of you, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss some #realness.

So. The Avengers. What an awesome group of badasses, right?

Right. But in addition to just loving them for their entertainment value and the way they inspire us to get jacked like a super hero, I believe they can teach us a few things.

In fact, I think that looking at a movie about super hero teams can teach us a lot; not just how to save the world while looking awesome in spandex (harder than it looks), and not just when it’s appropriate to break out some snappy one-liners for high level quippery (always), but some actual life lessons.

The most important of these are about teams. Not just teamwork—but the value of teams themselves. 

Being part of a team—and knowing—how to be both part of a team, and successful on a team, is a fundamental skill that I think everyone needs to learn. 

ONE is Better than One

The first thing you can learn from the Avengers is math: ONE is better than one. Meaning that one team is better than one person. This is very different than saying “five is better than one.”

Sure, a group of 5 individuals can probably accomplish more than just one person alone…but it is only once that group of 5 becomes ONE that you see the magic happen. When you’re part of a team–a truly cohesive unit that functions with a single purpose–you can accomplish wonders. A single team can do more in a few days than one person can do in a month, or a bunch of individuals can do in a week.

The hard part is making those 5 into ONE. Being able to do this requires that all members put their respective egos aside, and trust one another.

For the Avengers, this is sometimes hard. Captain America and Iron Man, for example, have pretty different worldview, and compromise doesn’t come easy.

But despite their disagreements, they respect and trust one another, because they can see the value each brings to the table. When things get crazy and they really need to work together, they each fall into their roles seamlessly.

If you’re going to be part of a truly successful team, you have to learn to let go of a lot of your general attitudes and preconceived notions. You just need to trust in the people around you, and earn their trust as well.

While it’s certainly difficult, actively setting aside ego is going to make you a better teammate, better employees, better boss…as well as a better parent, spouse, or friend.

The abandonment of ego is what allows you to become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This hasn’t always been easy for me, and it’s still a challenge.

In fact, the only thing that’s really helped me is to be constantly reminded that I don’t know everything, and I can’t do it all on my own. Trying and failing is part of it, but the larger piece of success has simply to become part of a number of teams, and focus on playing ONE specific role, rather than trying to do everything myself.

Which brings us to lesson number two…

Know Your Role (And Seek Diversity)

If you truly want to become successful, especially has part of a team, learning how to play a single role is important.

This is something I learned many years ago, back when I was 12 and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my friend’s basement. Much like the Avengers, D&D functions on the basic premise that in order to be successful, you and your group (known as an adventuring party) need to work together.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to know how to work together; you need to work together with people who are fundamentally different than you are. In D&D, a balanced party will have characters that play different roles and bring different skills to the table. It’s important to have warriors, but you also need people who can cast spells, or hide in the shadows, or whatever else you need. Basically, a good party can deal with everything from magic to picking locks to a swarm of ocs.

This is very much like the Avengers. Every member of the team serves a different purpose. At a macro level, Iron Man is the brains; Cap is the moral center; Hulk is the muscle; Thor has the best hair (and can hammer things, I guess); Black Widow brings all sorts of espionage to the table. And they all have a role…but NO ONE Avenger is more important than the others.

oh my god this money shot

This is something we can all take to heart. And, as I touched on above, seeking these people out is one of the easiest ways to learn how to set ego aside.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

A few years back, I was contracted to handle the nutrition for UFC fighter Uriah Hall, in preparation for a fight.

Most of the time, I do everything for my clients; with Uriah, I was hired ONLY for nutrition. And that was hard, at first.

My job was only that one thing—to calculate his nutritional needs and tell him how to fill them. My boy Scot Prohaska, on the other hand, took care of the training aspect—that was his role. He designs the strength and conditioning programs. And of course Uriah has a coach for stand up, one for grappling, and so on.

Working with higher levels athletes is one of the only situations in which a trainer/coach will be part of such a large team. Anyone who says this isn’t a challenge is either a better man than I can imagine, or just lying.

At the start, it was very weird to sublimate the urge to make adjustments to a piece of the puzzle that wasn’t my responsibility. It’s limiting in some ways, and liberating in others. But most of all, it makes you think, and helps you learn.

While I was responsible for his nutrition, I promise I did not prescribe Bud Light.

I just kept telling myself, “be the nutrition guy; handle the nutrition. Don’t worry about the conditioning. Don’t think about trying to make changes to the training program.”

My job was to look those other things over and estimating the demands training and conditioning and fight practice place upon the athlete, then to address support and recovery through nutrition. My job was to incorporate every piece of information into my assessments, and recommendation, but it was NOT to make changes. At first, it was a real challenge.

Over time, it became more and more natural, and I learned a lot from the people around me—which was really the best part of the entire experience, and part of the reason I signed up, anyway.

If you’re not bound by ego, watching people do things differently is more of an honor than a burden; you just have to be open minded and trust the members of your team, even if they do things that you haven’t done. Having an understanding of the other facets helps tremendously, but at the end of the day being part of a team means just doing your job—not all the jobs.

Not only is it likely that you can’t do that job as well as someone else, but trying to do so would drive you crazy, and keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Perhaps most importantly, it would be detrimental to the team as a whole.

The lesson here is this: in life, you can’t be good at everything—but you can find people who are good at what you’re not. If you surround yourself with people who help shore up your weaknesses, you’re going to be more successful overall.

Without sounds to wishy-washy about it, I think we can all agree that learn to appreciate others for the ways they’re different from us is probably the key to world peace. Or, at least, from stopping an army of AI-driven robots from destroying us all.

Now, onto lesson number three.

Iron Sharpens Iron

If you follow any writing concerned with self-edification, you’ve almost definitely heard the expression “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is generally used as a warning against hanging out with people who’ll drag you down.

Personally, I have always hated that expression. Why? Because it completely minimizes personal responsibility for your development, as well as your own contribution to that of others.

Here’s the thing: yes, you are, in many ways, a product of your environment, and the people you hang out with are bound to have a huge influence on everything from your ambition to the way you speak and present yourself.

The probably with the expression is that it completely ignores the other side of the coin: if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.

That’s why I prefer the maxim “iron sharpens iron.” It’s older by far (like, Bible old), and means that spending time with other people makes you stronger, and better…but only if they are on your level to begin with.

Tin does not sharpen iron. Nor does wood, or gold, or brass. But the thing is, iron can be used to shape and sharpen those things. Changes can still be made, things can still be built, but the relationship is one sided. The iron is doing all the work, and the softer substance is undergoing all of the change.

It is only when you have two pieces of iron—two people of similar quality—that they can REALLY engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Avengers are a group for whom this is painfully true. While they’re all impressive individuals on their own, it’s only by spending time and working together that they improve—not only as a team, but also as individuals. Of course, the process of  iron sharpening iron can have some…hiccups…

Cap and Thor helping each other get sharp.

But, it’s always a worthwhile process, because it helps everyone. For example, spending time with Steve Rogers has dulled Tony’s arrogance; Black Widow has helped Captain America become more world aware; Clint Barton’s continued friendship repeatedly shows Natasha Romanoff there’s more to her than the assassin she was trained to be.

And, on the more extreme side, hanging out with Tony has helped reclusive Bruce Banner come out of his shell.

Each of the Avengers helps the others get better; not only because they “see” value in one another, but because they actually have things to offer each other. While it’s tempting to think of the Avengers as being a slightly imbalanced team (the tragically human Hawkeye and Black Widow being the weak links compared to super soldiers, demi-gods, and ragemonsters), but the fact is, every single member of the team earned a spot and has something to bring to the table.

My point is, while it’s certainly true you should seek always to spend time with people who make you better and prune your social circle, you have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better, and always be getting better.

If we accept that you’re 1/5 of the personal development equation for each of these people, then in order to make them better YOU have to make sure that your iron is as hard as theirs, and vice versa.

A lot of us have the tendency to hang out with people who are a bit above us, because it makes us feel “cool”, or a bit below us, because it makes us feel “big.” But unless we’re constantly striving to become better—unless we take personal responsibility for our own development—we’re not going to get the most out of those relationships. And we certainly aren’t going to bring our best to them.

If there’s one thing you take away from this piece, let it be this: water finds its own level, and no matter how many individual drops there are, it all rises (or falls) together. 

Closing Thoughts

Okay. Maybe to you, the Avengers is just a super hero movie in a long line of similar films. And on some levels, it is.

But, like anything else, I think that if you look at things with eye, there are lessons to be learned from all great adventure stories. At the very least, they can tweak your memory and get you thinking differently about things you already knew, or perhaps add a new layer to your understanding.

The Avengers, like any team, is made up of a group of deeply flawed individuals. But it shows us that under the right set of circumstances, and with the right group of people around us, just about anyone can be better, and make those around them better.

Or, if not…at least there’s a ton of sweet jokes. Love that Joss Whedon wit.

The post Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

https://ift.tt/2L6zMfx

[almajonesnjna]

Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers

Ah, the Avengers: the world’s favorite super hero team. If ticket sales are any indication, we love them more than the X-Men. And I suspect we’ll like them more than the Justice League. It’s been a great ride for this disparate group of heroes, and their recent blockbuster is no different.

We If you’re one of the few people who aren’t really following along, Age of Ultron is the direct sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, and the 11th overall film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–a cohesive series of movies, tv shows, and digital shorts that tell individual parts of a larger story drawn from the pages of Marvel Comics.

“The Avengers” are a group of super heroes who, despite their differences, work together towards common purpose…usually saving the world or something like that.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain the premise of the Avengers, because if by this point in time you haven’t been at least peripherally exposed to ELEVEN of the biggest blockbuster movies of all time, and you don’t know about super hero team ups, you’ve beyond my help.

If you’re not into this, I don’t know how to talk to you. We’re not friends. For the rest of you, let’s get down to brass tacks and discuss some #realness.

So. The Avengers. What an awesome group of badasses, right?

Right. But in addition to just loving them for their entertainment value and the way they inspire us to get jacked like a super hero, I believe they can teach us a few things.

In fact, I think that looking at a movie about super hero teams can teach us a lot; not just how to save the world while looking awesome in spandex (harder than it looks), and not just when it’s appropriate to break out some snappy one-liners for high level quippery (always), but some actual life lessons.

The most important of these are about teams. Not just teamwork—but the value of teams themselves. 

Being part of a team—and knowing—how to be both part of a team, and successful on a team, is a fundamental skill that I think everyone needs to learn. 

ONE is Better than One

The first thing you can learn from the Avengers is math: ONE is better than one. Meaning that one team is better than one person. This is very different than saying “five is better than one.”

Sure, a group of 5 individuals can probably accomplish more than just one person alone…but it is only once that group of 5 becomes ONE that you see the magic happen. When you’re part of a team–a truly cohesive unit that functions with a single purpose–you can accomplish wonders. A single team can do more in a few days than one person can do in a month, or a bunch of individuals can do in a week.

The hard part is making those 5 into ONE. Being able to do this requires that all members put their respective egos aside, and trust one another.

For the Avengers, this is sometimes hard. Captain America and Iron Man, for example, have pretty different worldview, and compromise doesn’t come easy.

But despite their disagreements, they respect and trust one another, because they can see the value each brings to the table. When things get crazy and they really need to work together, they each fall into their roles seamlessly.

If you’re going to be part of a truly successful team, you have to learn to let go of a lot of your general attitudes and preconceived notions. You just need to trust in the people around you, and earn their trust as well.

While it’s certainly difficult, actively setting aside ego is going to make you a better teammate, better employees, better boss…as well as a better parent, spouse, or friend.

The abandonment of ego is what allows you to become part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This hasn’t always been easy for me, and it’s still a challenge.

In fact, the only thing that’s really helped me is to be constantly reminded that I don’t know everything, and I can’t do it all on my own. Trying and failing is part of it, but the larger piece of success has simply to become part of a number of teams, and focus on playing ONE specific role, rather than trying to do everything myself.

Which brings us to lesson number two…

Know Your Role (And Seek Diversity)

If you truly want to become successful, especially has part of a team, learning how to play a single role is important.

This is something I learned many years ago, back when I was 12 and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my friend’s basement. Much like the Avengers, D&D functions on the basic premise that in order to be successful, you and your group (known as an adventuring party) need to work together.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to know how to work together; you need to work together with people who are fundamentally different than you are. In D&D, a balanced party will have characters that play different roles and bring different skills to the table. It’s important to have warriors, but you also need people who can cast spells, or hide in the shadows, or whatever else you need. Basically, a good party can deal with everything from magic to picking locks to a swarm of ocs.

This is very much like the Avengers. Every member of the team serves a different purpose. At a macro level, Iron Man is the brains; Cap is the moral center; Hulk is the muscle; Thor has the best hair (and can hammer things, I guess); Black Widow brings all sorts of espionage to the table. And they all have a role…but NO ONE Avenger is more important than the others.

oh my god this money shot

This is something we can all take to heart. And, as I touched on above, seeking these people out is one of the easiest ways to learn how to set ego aside.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

A few years back, I was contracted to handle the nutrition for UFC fighter Uriah Hall, in preparation for a fight.

Most of the time, I do everything for my clients; with Uriah, I was hired ONLY for nutrition. And that was hard, at first.

My job was only that one thing—to calculate his nutritional needs and tell him how to fill them. My boy Scot Prohaska, on the other hand, took care of the training aspect—that was his role. He designs the strength and conditioning programs. And of course Uriah has a coach for stand up, one for grappling, and so on.

Working with higher levels athletes is one of the only situations in which a trainer/coach will be part of such a large team. Anyone who says this isn’t a challenge is either a better man than I can imagine, or just lying.

At the start, it was very weird to sublimate the urge to make adjustments to a piece of the puzzle that wasn’t my responsibility. It’s limiting in some ways, and liberating in others. But most of all, it makes you think, and helps you learn.

While I was responsible for his nutrition, I promise I did not prescribe Bud Light.

I just kept telling myself, “be the nutrition guy; handle the nutrition. Don’t worry about the conditioning. Don’t think about trying to make changes to the training program.”

My job was to look those other things over and estimating the demands training and conditioning and fight practice place upon the athlete, then to address support and recovery through nutrition. My job was to incorporate every piece of information into my assessments, and recommendation, but it was NOT to make changes. At first, it was a real challenge.

Over time, it became more and more natural, and I learned a lot from the people around me—which was really the best part of the entire experience, and part of the reason I signed up, anyway.

If you’re not bound by ego, watching people do things differently is more of an honor than a burden; you just have to be open minded and trust the members of your team, even if they do things that you haven’t done. Having an understanding of the other facets helps tremendously, but at the end of the day being part of a team means just doing your job—not all the jobs.

Not only is it likely that you can’t do that job as well as someone else, but trying to do so would drive you crazy, and keep you from fulfilling your purpose. Perhaps most importantly, it would be detrimental to the team as a whole.

The lesson here is this: in life, you can’t be good at everything—but you can find people who are good at what you’re not. If you surround yourself with people who help shore up your weaknesses, you’re going to be more successful overall.

Without sounds to wishy-washy about it, I think we can all agree that learn to appreciate others for the ways they’re different from us is probably the key to world peace. Or, at least, from stopping an army of AI-driven robots from destroying us all.

Now, onto lesson number three.

Iron Sharpens Iron

If you follow any writing concerned with self-edification, you’ve almost definitely heard the expression “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This is generally used as a warning against hanging out with people who’ll drag you down.

Personally, I have always hated that expression. Why? Because it completely minimizes personal responsibility for your development, as well as your own contribution to that of others.

Here’s the thing: yes, you are, in many ways, a product of your environment, and the people you hang out with are bound to have a huge influence on everything from your ambition to the way you speak and present yourself.

The probably with the expression is that it completely ignores the other side of the coin: if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, then you’re also 1/5 of the equation for each of those people, and anyone else in your immediate orbit.

That’s why I prefer the maxim “iron sharpens iron.” It’s older by far (like, Bible old), and means that spending time with other people makes you stronger, and better…but only if they are on your level to begin with.

Tin does not sharpen iron. Nor does wood, or gold, or brass. But the thing is, iron can be used to shape and sharpen those things. Changes can still be made, things can still be built, but the relationship is one sided. The iron is doing all the work, and the softer substance is undergoing all of the change.

It is only when you have two pieces of iron—two people of similar quality—that they can REALLY engage in a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Avengers are a group for whom this is painfully true. While they’re all impressive individuals on their own, it’s only by spending time and working together that they improve—not only as a team, but also as individuals. Of course, the process of  iron sharpening iron can have some…hiccups…

Cap and Thor helping each other get sharp.

But, it’s always a worthwhile process, because it helps everyone. For example, spending time with Steve Rogers has dulled Tony’s arrogance; Black Widow has helped Captain America become more world aware; Clint Barton’s continued friendship repeatedly shows Natasha Romanoff there’s more to her than the assassin she was trained to be.

And, on the more extreme side, hanging out with Tony has helped reclusive Bruce Banner come out of his shell.

Each of the Avengers helps the others get better; not only because they “see” value in one another, but because they actually have things to offer each other. While it’s tempting to think of the Avengers as being a slightly imbalanced team (the tragically human Hawkeye and Black Widow being the weak links compared to super soldiers, demi-gods, and ragemonsters), but the fact is, every single member of the team earned a spot and has something to bring to the table.

My point is, while it’s certainly true you should seek always to spend time with people who make you better and prune your social circle, you have a responsibility to the people you care about to be better, and always be getting better.

If we accept that you’re 1/5 of the personal development equation for each of these people, then in order to make them better YOU have to make sure that your iron is as hard as theirs, and vice versa.

A lot of us have the tendency to hang out with people who are a bit above us, because it makes us feel “cool”, or a bit below us, because it makes us feel “big.” But unless we’re constantly striving to become better—unless we take personal responsibility for our own development—we’re not going to get the most out of those relationships. And we certainly aren’t going to bring our best to them.

If there’s one thing you take away from this piece, let it be this: water finds its own level, and no matter how many individual drops there are, it all rises (or falls) together. 

Closing Thoughts

Okay. Maybe to you, the Avengers is just a super hero movie in a long line of similar films. And on some levels, it is.

But, like anything else, I think that if you look at things with eye, there are lessons to be learned from all great adventure stories. At the very least, they can tweak your memory and get you thinking differently about things you already knew, or perhaps add a new layer to your understanding.

The Avengers, like any team, is made up of a group of deeply flawed individuals. But it shows us that under the right set of circumstances, and with the right group of people around us, just about anyone can be better, and make those around them better.

Or, if not…at least there’s a ton of sweet jokes. Love that Joss Whedon wit.

The post Three Important Life Lessons From The Avengers appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

https://ift.tt/2L6zMfx

[thewidowstanton]

Katharine Arnold, aerialist on cage, rope, hoop and silks, Black Cat Cabaret

A Londoner born and bred, Katharine Arnold graduated from Middlesex University in performing arts before switching to circus. She is an experienced international aerial specialist on cage, rope, hoop and silks – her aerial duo partner is Hugo Desmarais – and has also done flying trapeze and hand-to-hand. Katharine must have one of the most impressive and diverse CVs ever, having worked frequently in film and on television and for many high-profile shows, cabarets and events. These include a season in the 7 Fingers’ Traces, being a body double for Madonna, and coaching Torvill and Dean for their aerial Bolero.

Katharine has appeared at Sydney Opera House in La Soirée and at Le Cabaret in Monte Carlo, as well as in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics and the closing ceremony of the Paralympics. More recently she has also worked as an aerial consultant, creative director and choreographer. Fresh from finishing filming on Tim Burton’s live-action remake of Disney’s Dumbo, and just before returning to the line-up of The Black Cat Cabaret on 30 November, she chats to Liz Arratoon. The show runs at the Underbelly Christmas Spiegeltent in London’s Leicester Square on specific dates until 31 December 2017.

The Widow Stanton: How did you start out? Katharine Arnold: My background from when I was tiny was ballet. I started when I was three and did lots and lots. I was desperate to go to White Lodge when I was ten but my parents said: “Nope, we want you to have a good education. You’ve got to go and do an academic schooling.” So I did that. I was very interested in acting and was still dancing throughout school and did quite a lot of musical theatre; National Youth Music Theatre and that kind of thing. And then I ran away with the circus. [Laughs]

I was alway going to do something like that. I got very interested in kind of physical theatre at Middlesex, when Complicité were around a lot more and lots of DV8. I ended up doing a physical theatre show and a company called Fevered Sleep came in and did a workshop that involved doing a bit of trapeze and stuff. I thought it was really fun so I started going to Circus Space to do adult education classes in the evening. I did it as a hobby for a bit and did some dancing jobs and some acting jobs and it was all a bit wishy-washy. Then I thought I’d get a proper job and I got an internship at Bloomberg [laughs] so I went and worked in the City for a few months. They have a live TV channel where they bring in CEOs to talk about the markets and I was basically working on Bloomberg telly, prepping them with their questions and taking them through the studio, that kind of thing.

That’s a world away from circus! I had a really convoluted route into circus, and at the beginning I was really self-taught. I had a good background because I’d done so much dancing and stuff but I didn’t really have formal training in the way a lot or people have. While I was at Bloomberg I had a call from a really old family friend, who is the godmother of Nell Gifford of Giffords Circus. She said: “I know you’ve just got this new job, you’re probably not interested but Nell is starting this new circus. I know you can do trapeze and would you be interested in going to audition?”

So I did and I got the job. I went and did a summer season with them, and completely got the circus bug. After that I met The Flying Dudes. They basically took me under their wing, because I was still fledging circus at that point, and trained me. I did flying trapeze with them for a couple of years, a sort of musical touring show; we all played instruments and then learnt other little disciplines. And that was it; that was the beginning.

Is there any showbiz in your family? Not really! My mum’s a civil servant and my dad was a lawyer. My mum’s very musical; she plays the piano and did ballet when she was younger. She’s very into the arts but no, no history of anyone else performing. They’ve all got really normal jobs, which is weird because I’ve got two sisters and all of us are freelance somehow in the arts. My next sister down is Phoebe Arnold and she is a fashion editor and works in the fashion industry, and then my littlest sister Lily Arnold is a theatre designer and does sets. She works a lot for the RSC and does lots of things. She was named Lilian because the house we grew up in used to belong to Lilian Baylis. My mum’s always wondered if something… living in that house made us all go into the arts. [Laughs]

Was there anything in particular that initially drew you to aerial? I’d literally never thought about it before I tried it for the first time. It wasn’t really on my radar and then I tried it and I just automatically kind of got a bug for it. I just knew… it’s kind of like dancing but you do it in the air. That for me was just a really attractive thing.

You have many aerial skills, do you have a preference? I love working with Hugo when we do our cage act, because there’s something really nice about being in the air with another person. That’s one of my favourites just because it’s both of us up there.

Were any of the skills harder for you to learn than others or did you easily adapt? Technically flying trapeze was the hardest for sure, in terms of having to really be on it and do the right thing at the right time. It’s all about timing and tempo and you’re working wth other people if you’re flying to a catcher, so that’s the hardest discipline. But they all have their own specific challenges, which is what I love. There are things that you can take from one and give to another, that you learn from one skill that make other things easier and things that are just totally different you have to sort of relearn from scratch. But I like that; I really like being able to mix it up a little bit and be on a hoop one day and a rope the next.

Did you ever have any fear of heights? No, never, so I was lucky…

If I’m on a high ledge I feel a pull to fling myself down. [Laughs] I know. I don’t really love heights if I’m sort of… on a bridge… If I’m not in control of it it’s quite a different thing but if I’m holding on to something then I’m absolutely fine with them. When I did the London Olympics opening ceremony where we were all Mary Poppins, that was a time when I was aware of how high I was because it’s was 65 metres and we were on back pick-up harnesses. So basically, you’ve got a line coming out of your lower back but you’re kind of face down to the ground, which is 65 metres below you, with nothing to hold on to, so it was quite a different feeling and the first few times we went over the edge, that was … I kind of, yeah, had a little waaah! ‘I might die; I don’t want to die!’.

For people thinking of aerial, what advice would you give them? With any aerial discipline, you kind of can’t get away from the fact that you have to start off by conditioning. You just need to get stronger; you need to have a really strong core, you need to work on your arms, your upper body, your shoulders, your lats; you need to have all of that stuff there in order to progress. I would say the same thing with flexibility as well. It’s really important to work on that, not just for looking pretty but if you’re doing things like a pike inversion, if you can’t fold, if you haven’t got long enough hamstrings to fold, it makes all of those things much more difficult. If you’ve got a decent degree of flexibility everything becomes much easier. When I’m teaching, I tend to spend quite a bit of time at the beginning just doing drills and conditioning and that kind of thing.

You’re a regular in Black Cat Cabaret; tell us about the show. The thing that’s really nice about it is that there are lots of cabaret shows out there and Black Cat has a really specific aesthetic, because it’s kind of period, it’s set in the 1920s, so it has an overall aesthetic, vibe, theme, which holds it together. That’s a really nice thing. I really like working with David Harris, he’s a great producer. It’s a simple formula but he almost always has Dusty [Limits] hosting – and Dusty’s brilliant – and it’s always just a nice show to do.

It’s variable; we did a few at the Southbank over the summer where it had a little bit of narrative; it was more interactive so we had a bit of ensemble stuff. I did a little bit with Nathan and Isis, we did a trio together, and that kind of thing. But this time it’s a line-up show; Dusty hosting, there are a few links and then it’s just people doing their acts. I think the line-up for each show might be slightly different but I’m doing all of them from now on. I think Jo Moss is, too.

I love that format! I love it, too. As long as you get strong acts, it works really well.

How was it being in Traces? That was an absolute baptism of fire for me because I was not supposed to be in it, but Geneviève Morin, the girl in it, got injured on the Friday night and I got a call at about 11pm saying they needed me for the matinée the next day. I remember it really clearly. It was my then-boyfriend’s birthday and I was on my fourth vodka or something and feeling quite tipsy. I went in at 11 in the morning, learnt the show and was onstage at half past two in the afternoon!

And what are you able to tell us about Dumbo and the sublime Eva Green? It was a mammoth mission. It’s been shooting at Pinewood Studios. I’ve basically been there full time since April getting up at half four in the morning doing 12 or 14 hour days so it’s literally taken over my life since then. I had a bit of a weird mixture of roles. I went onboard to help when they were still in production, me and an amazing guy called Kristian Kristof. He’s Hungarian, an incredible fourth-generation circus person. He’s a gentleman juggler and has a Guinness World Record for doing a quadruple pirouette while three cigar boxes are in the air. He’s done all of the big festivals… he’s always in Monte Carlo. He was brought on as overall circus consultant and I came in to help specifically with the aerial stuff.

They had to rewrite the story to have some humans in it so they cast Eva Green, the French actress, as this incredible trapeze artist. We had to create this role for her and decide what she was going to do physically, what her aerial equipment could be. I trained her every day and I stunt-doubled her. I did most of her aerial although she was pretty good by the end and did some of her own. She’s a hard worker. I have to say she is one of the most incredibly lovely human beings I’ve ever met. She’s so not-actressy, she’s so delightful. It was really refreshing. She’s absolutely wonderful.

I know you were also a stunt performer in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Are you on the stunt register? I’m not. I always thought you completely had to be on the stunt register but I’ve effectively been on a stunt contract for the whole of Dumbo as a double. If you work for the right stunt coordinator there are exceptions to the rule. They will hire people if they know they’ll be doing a very specific thing that’s within their skill base.

Can you pick out some favourite career moments? I absolutely love working for La Soirée. It’s kind of my favourite job working on that show just because it’s such a family feel. It’s an amazing company, the show’s always incredible and I get to tour with them. So I’ve been to Australia lots of times, Hong Kong and the Philippines; I just love them. I think 2010 was my first time and I’ve done it consistently since then. I’ll be jumping in this season in London after Christmas, as well.

Also anything cage-related with Hugo, I really love. And I did a year at the Friedrichstadt-Palast, living in Berlin, when I was much younger and that sticks out as a favourite because it’s such a cool city and that was my first big, proper away circus job and I really loved it, too. Some of the stuff I love doing is not the money work. To be honest corporate events and stuff, I’ve done so many over the years and I find them soulless now. I feel they’re all such a formula, you’re a moving decoration… that’s why I really like cabaret; Black Cat, La Soirée, I work at The Box, I do Circus in Covent Garden. All of those places you can do what you want, make your own act exactly as you want it to be, choose your own music and that’s much more enjoyable.

Do you have any special future plans or ambitions? Um… lie down and go to sleep. [Laughs] I’m really, really, really, really bad at doing nothing. I’m really frustrating for lots of people that I know. You know, I’ve been working on a movie for eight months and everyone’s like: “Have a bloody holiday!” But I finished last week and I went to Montreal and trained there for four days and then came back and taught at NCCA this morning. I love it. I love working and I’m kind of aware that there a shelf-life on this stuff and I’ve been doing it for quite a long time. I just enjoy it. I’m going to keep going, keep training and see what happens. I’m not a big planner. I like to go with the flow and I guess I’ve been lucky that stuff has always just come up and I have enough work in London to keep me going.

Katharine appears in The Black Cat Cabaret at the Underbelly Christmas Spiegeltent in London’s Leicester Square on 30 November and on specific dates until 31 December 2017. For dates and tickets click here

After Christmas, she also joins the line-up in La Soirée at the Aldwych Theatre in London. For tickets click here

Kathariine’s website and Instagram   

Twitter: @circusK @cabaretblackcat @lasoireelive    

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