#there were some small publishers who tried to jump on the trend

[tenrose]

Romantasy is the new bit-lit

[mabelpodcast]

some (non-Mabel-related) news

I went to a bookstore.

It’s a beautiful bookstore, maybe one of the world’s perfect bookstores. It sells used and new books, and there are comfortable seats and beautifully-curated collections created by the people who work there, people who obviously love books, and there are nooks and crannies and secret rooms and areas for children and art and bathrooms and no one will bother you if you want to wander and read first chapters for three hours, which we did. I bought a signed copy of a Caitlín R Kieran book for four dollars. I loved being there.

I also hated being there. This bookstore is Instagram famous. A solid fifty percent of the customers were influencers. They blocked aisles to stage photos. They pretended to read in the most aesthetic poses, with books whose covers complimented their outfits. There was an entire section of the store dedicated to “Book-Tok faves”. I tried to read some of these books, and found them unilaterally depressing - not because of their subject matter, or even because of their shocking lack of copyediting, but because of the clear and heartbreaking hoops each and every author so obviously had to jump through in order to sell their work. The game, as my wife put it, they all had to play. Social media. Followers and likes. The cultural capitol of diversity points. The apologism for lack thereof.

For the past year I have been writing romance novels. I’m going to be painfully honest about the three reasons I’ve been doing so: first, because I’m good at it (I’m a fast, skilled writer); second, because I like romance novels; and third, because I wanted money. I believe in the sanctity of art but also in the bills I have to pay. I wrote these books in a way that meant I would not be ashamed of them, nor of my attachment to them. They are not deeply, religiously personal, like HETTIE AND THE GHOST, but they are about flawed and damaged people trying as hard as they can to find one another, and that is a story-arc I will always stand behind. Also? They are funny. And I write good sex scenes. They are good books.

For the past three months I have been working towards publishing them. It’s been going well. I have had some meetings. Of the twelve literary agents I queried, three have offered representation. I have enough familiarity with the publishing industry to understand what this means: my work is considered marketable enough that I could, with a lot of work but with definite feasibility, make a career from these novels.

Here’s the problem. It’s come to my attention that I hate this industry. I hate the pandering, the reduction of story down to audiences and trends. I hate the “elevator pitch”, I hate the lack of ethics and environmental consideration in printing mass quantities of books, I hate advertising and marketing myself and making sure that I am palatable - just queer enough, just marginalized enough - to sell rather than put off. I hate participating in a system that I fundamentally despise; I came up with Cantrap Press’s barter system because I hate it. On a long journey home at night, surrounded by suburban sprawl, I realised that I couldn’t make this my career. It would drive me insane. These stories will not change the world but all stories are alive and to pinch and snip them into shapes palatable enough so a Big Publishing Company can successfully pimp them to a world of Book-Tok influencers sounds, to me, like a living nightmare. I won’t do it.

But: I have another problem. I do believe with all my heart that art should be accessible. At the same time, I also believe with all my heart that artists should be fairly compensated for their work. Running a small press is a wonderful and worthwhile endeavor, but it is a labour of love, like putting out a podcast entirely for free. It’s also a labour of money, and the rising costs involved mean that I wouldn’t break close to even if I were to print these books myself.

So what’s the solution? Here’s mine. I’m giving them away. I’ve done this before, and it felt like the purest form of myself. The books will be, always, entirely free to whoever wants them, under the domain of a Creative Commons License. There will be a donation button. You can pay what you like for them, pay what you think they’re worth, pay what you can afford, or pay nothing at all. No pressure. No judgement. My barter policy will apply to these, too, if you want to compensate me but don’t have the funds. I’ve come to terms with the fact that refusing to play the game means I’ll never make a lot of money from these books. I may not make any at all. But these are my beliefs. I have to abide by them. I’ll be able to look myself in the eye; you’ll get fun fiction for free.

In a post-apocalyptic society maybe I’d be riding a donkey around the countryside telling stories, and you’d repay me for my skills by making sure I had enough turnips and deer jerky and tinder and donkey medicine. Instead I’m a person who lives in a house with electricity and gas bills. The farmers I buy my vegetables from at the market deserve to be repaid for those vegetables and the weight of labour, capitol and resources they represent. I don’t resent anyone for their participation in the system. I resent the ever-tightening ropes around us all. The ways we are tracked and compelled and sold to, the advertisements masquerading as entertainment, and worse, as art, how it seems we are being moved increasingly towards a model of consumption as definition, but only under very specific umbrellas - four companies own all stories, now what will you buy to define yourself by their characters and worlds? If I choose not to participate, no company can own my stories. And now, neither can you.

Introducing Anarchic Candy.

And my first book to be released, COMEBACK.

PS: in a twist of fate that, as my wife put it, would be completely unbelievable if it appeared in a story, one of the agents who enthusiastically offered representation also represents the author of one of those Book-Tok-famous books I saw at the used bookstore. This didn’t make up my mind (I’d already made up my mind before that agent even contacted me) but it’s an ironic coincidence I really can’t ignore.

[ibroughtyoumybullets]

actually ive decided my whole bingo card was an act of prophecy and all of them are going to happen. this is how it goes down: 

1. geoff rickly bullets tell all article     - officially endorsed by the band, meant as promo. however, there is a throwaway line in there about how ‘frank and gerard were super close from the jump, and clearly meant to perform together’

2. a tabloid, looking to get clicks from the reunion tour, takes that line from geoff’s article and runs with it. they do some half-assed internet sleuthing and release a long form article about “the secret punk-rock romance that was”      - the article doesn’t make huge waves until we pick it up and start talking about it. we accidentally trend it on twitter. frank comes online and sees it, and has a meltdown about it. @’s the tabloid that published it, and makes a ‘joke’ about why don’t we talk about his crush on laura jane grace instead of rehashing old bullshit rumours. 

3. LJG see’s frank’s meltdown tweets, and replies to the one about his crush on her with “awww thats cute”. frank tweets “jesus fucking christ”, sets his pfp to black, and goes offline for a month.      - a small amount of discourse about whether it’s now okay to talk about frank/laura since he “”””canonically”””” has a crush on her. that dies down quickly, however. 

4. with the tour several months away, people start talking about what the old band members might be doing now - since geoff mentioned otter a lot in his article. a member of mcr stan twitter ‘does some digging’ and leaks the exactly work location and home address of Otter.     - drama about how doxxing people isnt okay, especially if they haven’t done anything wrong. somebody tries to visit Otter’s work and gets arrested. this goes down in fandom history alongside the taylor swift fan who went to prison because she refused to fight in the IDF. 

5. frank comes back to twitter to promo MCR’s new merch line. it’s not new merch. it’s a bunch of rare bullets/revenge merch that they have started printing again. the t-shirts START at $75 because they are ‘collectors items’.     - people try to cancel mcr for selling merch. this splits the fandom in two for several weeks. 

6. the fandom gets over the merch argument because the MCR account publishes a photo set of ‘aesthetic photos’ that seem to largely revolve around southern gothic imagery. we debate HEAVILY over whether this is signaling for a new era.      - drama about whether or not mcr are “appropriating southern gothic imagery” because none of them are from the south. the answer seems to be collectively no, but some fans from the south are really pressed about it still. 

7. new era aesthetic argument dies because gerard releases a new set of soundcloud songs. most of them are just noise, except one or two that seem to be him playing the banjo. in the description of the banjo song, he writes a length paragraph about how this set of songs was inspired by characters he ‘really sees himself in”. this becomes known as the official gerard way kin list.     - with the tour only weeks away, people are furious at gerard for releasing new solo music and not talking about mcr at all. also, we argue about whether or not kinning is problematic. 

8. new grant morrison interview where they talk briefly about their past collaborations with gerard, as well as their friendship. they call gerard their “artistic, platonic, and sexual soulmate”. they do not address it further than that.    - online meltdown mode. people start arguing about whether now its okay to ship grant/gerard since its “””canon””. this brings back up the LJG/Frank argument. 

9. tour starts, and mcr does a new interview. within the course of the interview “the secret punk-rock romance that was” gets brought up. gerard gives a line about political statements that are no longer needed, and frank refers to himself as an ex-bisexual when the interviewer (who is a #woke twitter blue check, for some reason) presses about whether or not they were “undeservingly reclaiming public acts of homosexual affection” by doing that.     - people try to cancel frank for calling himself an ex-bisexual. other people argue that you cant cancel him for that because ‘its a valid identity”

10. the used are opening for mcr on tour. the day after the ex-bisexual interview goes live, bert joins mcr onstage for prison and kisses gerard square on the mouth. the next night, during the used’s set, bert makes a statement about how you can’t outgrow a vital part of you.     - this restarts the used vs. mcr fan drama. this continues for the rest of the year, and is spurred on by frank occasionally vague tweeting bert. 

11. the night after bert’s speech, frank goes super hard during prison and smashes pansy again.     - people are deeply upset by this. frank also throws out his back by doing so and has to do the next week of shows mostly sitting down. (if you’re playing along at home, this is our first BINGO)

12. ray, completely unaware of why frank is going super hard during prison the night he smashes pansy, joins in on the fun by whipping his shirt off. this reveals his secret supposed horror movie themed chest piece.     - somehow, there are barely any pictures of it, and all the ones that do exist are grainy as fuck. subsequent drama about whether its okay to want better pictures of it, because clearly if ray wanted us to see it, we would have known about it already. 

13. jeffrey star attends an mcr show, and is kicked out for trying to get backstage. there are MANY photographs about him being escorted off the premises.     - people dont understand why jeffrey star was at an mcr show. this brings TWMHC back into public consciousness. 

14. with several smaller news outlets doing pieces about JS getting kicked out of an mcr show, and one doing a piece about TWMHC (which is basically just a plagarized LJ primer), Eliza Cuts see’s her chance and tries to professionally publish The Black Pajama Party.     - she is immediately cancelled for this, gets her fit tea spon’s revoked, and people bring up the fake baby discourse again. 

15. the fake baby discourse dies down because Ray announces that he had another child.      - this leaves us all wondering how many children ray actually has. 

16. gerard comes on stage one night with what seems to be a new hair color. people debate about whether he actually dyed it, until somebody leaks a picture of him backstage and his hair is clearly a plum color. it lasts two weeks, no other photos are ever seen of it, and then he shaves his head.     - fans try to cancel people for being ageist when they say they don’t like the shaved head. 

17. people stop caring about gerard’s hair when he tweets for the first time in five years. it’s a link to a webpage that is just an embedded youtube video. its a new mcr song. It Is Not Good. it has Nothing to do with the weird southern gothic moodboard from months ago.     - some of us start referring to this new song as sing 2, other people are mad at people for wanting new music and then criticizing the music we do get.  (this is our second and third BINGO) 

18. gerard responds to a #SING2 tweet, saying that he considers “all of mcr’s other songs completely inferior to Sing.” he never tweets again.     - there is a trending topic on twitter for the next two days that is #RESPECTGERARD. (fourth BINGO)

 19. the MCR twitter posts another cryptic link. its a release date. it’s tomorrow. its a new album. its actually good. everybody is surprised.     - discourse about how if you didn’t like the first single, or were mean to gerard when he returned to twitter, you shouldnt even be listening to the new album because you clearly don’t care about the band.  (fifth and sixth BINGO) 

20. tour is about halfway done. gerard makes an instagram post that is a picture of a lighter, a pen, and a lyric sheet on a table in the tour bus. the caption is a mile long and he waxes lyrical about dreams he’s had, and fake memories, and about how you shouldn’t raise things from the dead - they never come back the same. it is very obviously about how he hates being in mcr again.     - people get SO mad at gerard. like SO mad. frank subtweets gerard about it. the next night on stage is weird and tense.  (seventh BINGO) 

21. Somebody fills in for Mikey one night on stage. People are confused, but figure he’s just sick. There continues to be a stand-in. People keep tweeting the members about it. Finally, mikey posts an IG story saying he’s left the tour to be with his family.     - people are kind of annoyed, discourse about how you cant expect all the members to be at the reunion tour even though that was what was advertised and sold to you. 

22. bob dies. somebody uncovers the obit while doing some googling. frank posts a RIP 🙏 post for him.     - people get mad at frank for making an RIP post for a racist. a mild amount of discourse about whether or not it’s okay to make fun of bob now that he’s dead (it is.) (eighth BINGO) 

23. tour ends. frank publishes a blog post on the website saying they have broken up again, and this is the true end of MCR. all the members start passive aggressively blaming one another whenever possible. its ugly. one of them leaks their 2013 breakup texts. its even UGLIER.     - we all are very very sad, and then go back to passing around pictures of the permanent committee of special boys and ignoring what happened.  (ninth and tenth and final bingos) 

[fific7]

That Swept-Back Hair

Billy Russo x Reader

@omgrachwrites 500 Follower Celebration

AU Prompt: Friends with Benefits

Summary: How will Billy Russo react when his FWB finds another lover? Bearing in mind that he’s a complete hypocrite.

Warnings: Swearing, jealousy, fluff with mentions of sex.

A/N: Loosely based on S1 Billy, it’s non-canon & set in my imaginary Punisher universe.

(My GIF)

»»———————————————　⚜　———————-————————-««

Your phone was jumping like a jack-in-the-box on your bedside table, the blue light of the screen illuminating the wall behind it every few seconds.

You rolled over with a groan, taking a moment before picking it up and looking at it. Of course it was Billy Russo, who else would it be at 1 AM on a Saturday morning?

The guy next to you in the bed also rolled over, covering his mouth as he yawned, eyes half-open.

“Everything OK, Y/N?” he asked.

“Yeah, Raf, just a needy friend.... gonna call them back, so do you mind staying hush-hush for the next few minutes?”

He yawned massively again, speaking through it, “Ahhhhrrrrr...yeah... no problem...”

You hit the ‘Favourites’ star next to Billy’s name in your contacts, hearing it start ringing.

It went to voicemail so you hung up, slid the phone onto the table and threw your head back down onto your pillow. Fucking Russo. Blows up your phone with missed calls & “Pick up!!” texts then doesn’t answer when you call back.

It rang two seconds later, just as Raf had turned towards you, opening his mouth to no doubt ask you about your ‘needy friend’. You rolled your eyes and grabbed it, but the screen went dark just as you did so.

You hit redial, it rang out, went to voicemail. “Fuck!” you ground out between your teeth.

Your head had touched your pillow again for about 5 minutes, when there was a staccato series of knocks on your apartment door.

You shot up in bed, quivering - ah hell, it couldn’t be, could it? Really?

Raf had dozed back off in the meantime & didn’t even stir when the knocks rang out sharply in the quiet apartment. Not much of a guard dog, you thought, quickly throwing on your discarded PJs.

You padded barefoot over to the front door, confirming via the peephole that Billy Russo was indeed outside in the hallway, leaning on your doorframe so he could place one eye right to it. You spotted an eyebrow wiggle as you made eye contact. Oh holy hell!

You straightened your shoulders, took the chain off and unlocked the door, swinging it open.

“Billy!” you said quietly, with a small smile, “What brings you here?” You hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him for about three weeks. Not that that was anything new.

He moved gracefully past you like the panther he was, even though you’d been trying to subtly block him from coming in. He was dressed in one of his sharp suits, so you guessed he’d been at one of the never-ending stream of events he attended.

Your mouth drew into a line. Whoever he’d gone there with must have bucked the trend and bailed on him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have turned up at your place when, in his mind, the night was still young.

He turned towards you, placing both hands on your hips as he did so, pulling you up against his muscled chest.

“Now, Y/N, why do you think I’m here, holding my best girl in my arms?” the New York accented voice purred in your ear.

He leant in and kissed you hungrily, deepening the kiss immediately to a passionate one.

You pulled away, escaping his grasp. His eyes widened in surprise, a small frown making its way onto his brow. A few locks of his dark hair had fallen forward onto his brow and he swept them back up with his fingers, a reflexive gesture for him.

“I tried to call you back,” you mumbled, “I’ve... uh... got a friend staying with me at the moment.”

He shot his trademark smirk at you. “Hey, that’s OK. We can be quiet for once, yeah?” Grinning now.

In true romcom fashion, Raf picked that moment to come wandering into the lounge, clad only in his boxers, both hands ruffling through his short hair.

Billy’s mouth dropped open. He made a quick recovery, though. Gestured with a thumb.

“So... this your ‘friend’?”

He looked Raf up and down. He was a 6 feet 3 firefighter with the FDNY, and to put it mildly, he was ripped.

He topped Billy by a couple of inches, and by a few pounds. Billy scowled at him.

Raf eyed up Billy too, turning to you and asking, “This your ‘needy friend’ you were talkin’ ‘bout, Y/N?”

Oh crap.

Billy’s scowl turned to a furious glare, aimed right at you. “Needy?!! Ah, fuck this, Y/N! I think we all know who’s needy around here.”

Your mouth rounded into an offended O, but before you could reply, Billy was out the door and it slammed loudly behind him.

Great - now all your neighbours were gonna be mad at you too.

»»———————————————-　⚜　-———-———————————-««

You had then spent an uncomfortable half hour over a coffee with Raf, explaining the dynamics of your non-relationship with Billy.

“Now,” he’d said, brow furrowed, “let me get this straight. He’s part of your friend group, you see him every so often at a bar or at one of their places - but never his. He sees tons of other women but turns up here for booty calls whenever his busy schedule allows?”

He shook his head. “He’s using you, Y/N. What a selfish prick.”

You bristled, “Look, we go back quite a ways. Since he was in the Marines. I knew Frank first as we were neighbours when we were kids, and I eventually met Billy through him. He’s Frankie’s best friend, they’re Marine brothers.”

“And how long have you been ‘friends with benefits’?”

You muttered your response. “Sorry, what was that you said?” he asked.

“Three years,” you repeated reluctantly.

“Damn.” he said. “And what am I, exactly? Filler for whenever fuckboy isn’t calling?”

“No! Raf, you’re a really nice guy, and I love spending time with you.”

He stood up, heading to the bedroom. “Look, I’m gonna go. I need a few days to try and get my head round your fucked-up relationship with the suit-wearing Marine.”

He’d left shortly afterwards, saying he’d call. You weren’t sure that he would.

You met up with Karen for lunch later that day. You’d been co-workers first off, then had become good friends. She was currently dating Frank, your childhood friend.

You were so glad that he was back out socialising, in a small way, after losing his wife and kids in a brutal gang clash just over a year before. They and several others had been what the papers described, rather callously, as “collateral damage” while minding their own business in the public park the gun fight took place in.

Frank had understandably closed himself off to a large extent as he grieved and after a decent interval, you’d tried your best to draw him back out in a gentle way. You’d decided to indulge in a bit of Matchmaking Lite, and had invited Karen along to a night out with the rest of your friends. You knew Frank would be there and as you’d hoped, they hit it off right away.

You spilled what had happened the night before to her, grateful for a shoulder to cry on. She looked and sounded sympathetic, but you knew she wasn’t a big fan of your arrangement with Billy. She again voiced her astonishment that you still had it going on with him.

“Karen, without making you vomit by sharing too many details, Billy is just the absolute best in bed. He’s got the stamina of an ox. Several oxes, in fact.” You just knew your eyes had a faraway look in them.

Her mouth pursed in a ‘moux’ of distaste. “But still, Y/N, he’s just so damn selfish about it! It’s all on his terms.”

“You know he’s got commitment issues.”

She choked on her espresso martini. “Ya don’t say!!”

“It’s complicated.”

“Look, honey, I’m gonna be straight with you. It is anything but complicated. He spends 90% of his time at Anvil, 9.9% with other gals, and guess who gets the remaining measly 0.1%, the crumbs from his table?” She pointed her finger straight at you. “Coconut for the lady over there!”

You sat in silence for several minutes, turning over in your mind what Raf, and now Karen, had said to you. Eventually you nodded slowly. “You know what, Kar, you’re totally right. I just let the great sex blind me to all the rest of his fucking bullshit.”

Time to cut Billy loose.

Not that you ever had him tied down in the first place. If you were being brutally honest.

And you weren’t sure whether he’d even bother showing up at your place ever again.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

The next day being Sunday meant that some serious ‘Me Time’ was in order.

Sitting on the sofa, you stared off into space, thinking about the two men in your life. You huffed to yourself; you hadn’t heard from either of them so far, and that was probably for the best. You could do without being stuck in the middle of some kind of testosterone-fuelled conflict between the two of them.

Then you laughed out loud at yourself. Who were you kidding? You’d probably never see either of them again! You stood up, stretching out your shoulder and neck muscles. Time for a bit of self-pampering.

You had a long relaxing bath, gave yourself a leisurely mani-pedi, ordered in some pizza, and began to go through some layouts for work the next day.

You were a digital content editor at the newspaper both you & Karen worked for. It was okay as jobs went, but it didn’t set your world on fire. However, what did excite you was that the newspaper’s parent publishing house was about to launch a travel magazine, and you’d applied for a transfer.

What really made butterflies pop up into your stomach, though, was the fact that the magazine’s content editors would also be contributing instead of just collating. You’d already had an interview with the Editor in Chief, and should be hearing back within the next few days.

If someone else got that position you’d applied for, you’d just have to shove them out of your third floor office window at the very first opportunity.

While you were thinking of potentially becoming a murderer, there was a familiar pattern of raps at your door. Your heart sank straight through your boots.

You knew it was Billy before you opened the door. It sounded ridiculous but he had a certain way of knocking. Peremptory, demanding, with military precision.

He stood outside your door, tensed up and rigid, with a carefully blank look on his face.

“You alone?” he barked, by way of greeting.

You crossed your arms over your chest, glaring at him. “Why, hello Billy. How are you? I’m fine, Y/N, how are you? Yeah, I’m great.”

He glared right back. “I asked if you were alone.”

“That’s highly unlikely, Billy, seeing as how I’m so needy!”

He huffed and marched inside straight to the sofa, sitting down and leaning his arms on his spread-apart thighs. He clasped his hands together, letting them dangle loosely between his knees.

“You said I was needy first.” Sulky face.

“Hey, are we back in school or something?”

He looked up at you, dark eyes staring into yours intensely. “Why d’you get with another guy, Y/N?”

Straight to the point, then. OK, you were going to return the favour.

“What, I’m not allowed to have a life? D’you think I’m going to just sit around, waiting to gratefully receive 5 minutes of your attention every few weeks? Like some kind of fucktoy, to be picked up and dropped at will? Seriously?”

He clenched his fingers until the joints went white. “I thought you were happy with the way things are between us!!?... our... our arrangement. You’re important to me. And you know I care about you!” Not meeting your eyes at this last comment.

“Huh!!!” You leant against your kitchen island, you weren’t going to get into Billy’s orbit. Too risky.

“So important that you spend all your time at work, while bedding half of Manhattan? Leaving me with the crumbs from your table, as someone put it recently.”

He shot up from the sofa, fury in his eyes. “Who fuckin’ said that?!”

You shrugged, “It’s not important. What is important is that our arrangement, as you call it, is over. Since you put it in such business-like terms, think of it as a contract which has been terminated.”

Billy stalked across the room until he was an inch away from you, eyes boring into yours. “No.”

You laughed in disbelief, eyebrows arching. “You think that just cos you say ‘No’ it’s not gonna happen? Because no-one ever says no to Billy Russo, is that it?”

He grabbed you, lips finding yours in a ferocious kiss. One hand crept up the nape of your neck, his fingers running through your hair, while the other hand pulled your hips to his. He had an impressive erection. You gasped as you felt the pressure of it against you, but pushed him away, escaping to the other side of the kitchen island.

“Just go, Billy. Please.”

He stared at you, wide-eyed, those dark pools of his looking suspiciously glossy. Was he...? No way.

Billy turned on his heel and slammed out of your apartment. Again.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Billy knocked his beer bottle off the table with his elbow, as he leant forward to drunkenly wave a finger in his friend’s face. Luckily, it fell onto the grassy verge below, rather than the decked patio they were sitting on in Frank’s back garden.

Frank grabbed his finger. “Russo!!! Chill out, man.”

“She tol’ me... t’go, Frankie, I was kissin’ her an’ she jus’ said Go!” slurred Billy. Frank squeezed his eyes shut at the whiny tone then looked back at him.

“Bill! We all warned you she wouldn’t put up with your bullshit forever. You should’ve known this was comin’ bud.”

“Bu’ I... I... love her,” he blurted, then stared at Frank, eyes wide, part horrified, part terrified.

“Got a strange way of showin’ it, Bill. Picking other women over her, until you decide it’s time to hook up. Surprised she’s stood for it so long!”

Billy swayed slightly in his garden chair, just staring back at him, nodding repetitively like a bobble head every so often.

“I gotta get her back, Frankie.”

“Whooo,” Frank huffed out a big breath, “well, ya always did like to choose the impossible missions, Russo.”

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

You were beginning to understand what having a stalker was like.

When you left work the following day, the first person you spotted on the sidewalk outside your office building was Billy Russo.

You hesitated, shocked, then nodded and said quietly, “Hi Billy,” before continuing your short walk to the subway.

He fell into step alongside you. “M’gonna show you just how much I care about you,” you heard, then he was gone. Just gone, into the crowd of commuters around you.

That was just the beginning. Every morning, one single rose of the palest pearly pink would be delivered to your office, laying in a swirl of black chiffon within a silver gift box.

Texts would drop into your phone at unexpected hours. “Please forgive me. Let me back into your life. I love you, Y/N.”

The first time you saw those words, you nearly dropped your phone. What the....?

Gourmet meals and bottles of rosé prosecco would be delivered to your door, precisely 30 minutes after you’d get home. Was he watching you or something? A little shiver ran up your spine. He was still a sniper, after all.

You would catch glimpses of Billy when you left the office, and outside your apartment. Without a shadow of a doubt, he meant you to see him, he would never be so visible on a real surveillance job. But he didn’t ever approach you.

Then you got your dream job. You, Karen and a bunch of your colleagues went to your regular bar after work for a quick celebration. There was a toast proposed to your new job at one point, and one of your male colleagues grabbed you in a friendly bear hug after they’d all shouted “Cheers!”

You were looking past his arm as he hugged you, and found yourself staring into Billy Russo’s dark eyes. Casually dressed, he was leaning on a high table near the door, a beer in front of him.

Billy lazily pushed back from his table, strode over to you, swiped you out of the guy’s arms, wrapped his own arms round you and planted a kiss on your temple, with a nonchalant, “Hi, sweetheart.”

Karen, who had heard all about your last encounter with Billy, looked thunderstruck. You’d be getting interrogated later, that was for sure.

He, meanwhile, landed another kiss right next to your lips and said, “See you later at home,” giving you a quick squeeze before walking off.

Your female colleagues meanwhile were swooning over Billy, one of them commenting that she wasn’t surprised you’d kept so damn quiet about your hot boyfriend. You gave Karen a meaningful look and just smiled back at them all, neither confirming nor denying anything.

However the feeling of Billy’s body against yours, the delicious smell of him, his lips on your skin, had set your heart racing at a dangerous speed. You really did try to push those thoughts aside.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

Flopping down onto your sofa when you got home, you laid your head back on it and thought about that evening. As expected, Karen had questioned you ruthlessly as you left the bar together, like the perceptive investigative reporter she was.

Talking as you walked to the subway, you’d given her every detail of all the deliveries, glimpses of him and texts you’d received in the last few days. Karen had stopped walking, looking at you in surprise. “Y/N, why didn’t you tell me about all of this before now? Hell, Frank told me he had some crazy plan to win you back, but I never really thought...” her voice trailed off.

“Is it working?” she asked next. “Mmmm, yes and no, to be honest,” you said. “Don’t let it!” she said firmly, “This is what he should have been doing all along, instead of treating you like a total afterthought.”

You nodded, “Can’t argue with ya on that,” you agreed. “Is he going to turn up at your place, d’you think?” she asked. “Wouldn’t be surprised,” you laughed, “I think that was Billy giving me a heads-up.”

So as you’d been 90% expecting, the familiar knock at the door came about 15 minutes after you’d got back. You got up and after checking the peephole, sighed and opened it. “Hi, Billy.”

This was like déjà vu. Billy brushed past you and sat himself down on the sofa, in the same pose as the last time. Head down, hair falling forward and hiding his eyes from you. This time, you bit the bullet and sat at the opposite end, leaning against the armrest so you were facing him.

“Well, Billy.... leaving aside the stalkerish overtones, I guess I should thank you for the roses, gourmet meals and prosecco.”

He swung his head towards you, eyes wide. “They were just to get your attention. Frankie told me it’s what I shoulda been doin’ anyway, all along.”

You nodded, “Yeah, he’s not wrong.”

Billy heaved out a big sigh, head dropping. “I know I’ve been a complete shit to you, Y/N. Took you for granted.” He met your eyes again, “Truth is, I was fallin’ in love with you, and I really didn’t know how to handle it. I thought it was... just sex to you, so I... I was a coward and tried to ignore it, and acted like I didn’t give a shit about you. I just couldn’t have you kick me to the curb if I told you how I felt.”

You were genuinely shocked - Billy had never talked about his feelings before. You’d accepted this in the past, telling yourself it was due to his upbringing in the system.

“So you meant what you said in your daily texts, then?”

He nodded, still looking straight at you, “Yeah...I meant it, I do love you, Y/N.” Then he quickly looked down again.

Before you could stop yourself, you’d leant along the sofa and your fingers were pushing that silky hair off his forehead. He looked up at you, taking hold of your wrist and kissing your pulse point softly. You stood up, saying “C’mere, you,” and took hold of his hand, pulling him up along with you.

He put his arms round you, burying his face into your hair and just holding you. “I’ve missed you,” he mumbled. You laughed, “What?! Even though you hadn’t seen me for weeks before the night you landed on my doorstep?!”

“I know, I know, you don’t need to remind me I’ve been a complete prick. I’ll be honest, I think it took me seein’ you with that guy, and him actin’ like you were his, to give me that kick up the ass I needed.” The dark eyes looked down at you, and he sniffed, “He still around?” You shook your head.

“Nah. I think he thought I was completely insane for still being with you.”

Billy laughed, “Maybe he’s right....” he looked at you, serious again. “You willin’ to give me another chance, Y/N? I promise you I’ll do it right this time. The whole dating thing, asking you to be my girlfriend after three dates, all that stuff... everything.”

“Everything? Like, what if I say no sex to start with? And no running off to other women to scratch that itch? You’ll swear to all that? Really?!”

“I swear to you, on my Ka-Bar.”

“Wow,” you said, knowing that the knife was never out of Billy’s possession. It was an integral part of him. Maybe he was serious after all.

»»————————————-———-　⚜　———————————-————-««

A small kiss on your cheek woke you the next morning. Those eyes, those dark liquid pools, stared into yours, while a thumb ran over your cheek. “Mornin’, sweetheart,” smiling down at you. Reaching up, you ran your fingers into his hair, moving it off his forehead. “Morning, sweetheart,” you echoed, smiling back.

You and Billy had shared a bed but nothing else, except hugs and hand-holding. You were in your PJ’s - well, camisole top with matching shorts - and all Billy had on were his boxer briefs. You couldn’t deny you’d had thoughts of just leaping on him during the night... let’s face it, he was one hot dude. And he knew how to ‘look after’ a woman in bed, as he himself put it.

But no, you were determined he was gonna have to work for it, just like he promised he would. So you’d had to show some self-discipline, well, a lot of it, actually. He’d passed the first test - he’d actually stayed all night. Usually he was gone before the morning light stole through the curtains.

Now, he kissed your bare shoulder and leapt out of bed, like he was back in the Marines. He stood still for a moment, sideways next to the bed, having a leisurely full body stretch. Billy knew full well you’d be totally enjoying the view. A little tease from him to remind you what you were missing.

The sunlight, which stole through a small gap between your curtains in the otherwise dim room, picked out the sculpted muscles on his back & torso. Then he turned slightly more, ensuring you wouldn’t miss seeing the hard-on he was currently sporting. You shook your head, with a slight smile on your lips. The cocky big bastard.

“Where you off to, Billy?” you asked, thinking to yourself, if he’s headed to Anvil, he can fucking shove his second cha......

“I’m gonna make my beautiful almost-girlfriend a cup of good Italian coffee.”

You smiled at his departing back as he disappeared out of the bedroom. “Oh, Billy?”

His voice drifted back through from the kitchen, “Yeah, darlin’?”

“Can I please get some toast with that, too?”

“Sure, sweetheart.”

You stretched luxuriously, nestling your head into your pillows.

Looked like you were going to find out what having a panther on a leash was like.

[dwellordream]

A Six of Crows Review: Joost and Inej I

This marks the beginning of my review of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Before I go any further, I want to provide context for my experience/knowledge of the book and its fandom. Six of Crows was published in 2015 when I was 16. I picked it up in a bookstore and read the first few chapters idly while shopping, before putting it back down.

At the time, my dislike of what I’d read was probably primarily fueled by the realization that it was by the same author as Shadow and Bone, which I had tried to read a few years before and disliked, and because at the time I was aging out of the YA genre in general and had very little patience for many of its familiar tropes.

In recent years, Six of Crows and its companion and predecessor series, the Grisha Trilogy, have become one of the most popular YA series online. The avid fan response and promotion of it on social media no doubt led to the Netflix series being greenlit and it is obviously trending at present due to the success of the series. With all that in mind, I’ve decided to try Six of Crows again and see for myself what all the hype is about.

Some more caveats: I am 22 years old. I am aware Six of Crows is YA literature intended for a middle and high school audience. I will not be holding it to the standards I would hold an adult grade fantasy book, in terms of prose, themes, or content. I am aware that I am not necessarily the target audience for the book and these reviews are in no way intended to shame or disparage anyone who enjoys the book.

Criticism is a healthy part of any fandom and does not necessarily constitute hate. I will likely critique elements of the book in my write up. That does not mean I have a personal vendetta against the author, publishers, or the TV show. Please do not take this as a personal attack if you’ve enjoyed the book. This is just intended to promote discussion and to gather my own thoughts.

If you follow me, I am tagging this as ‘in review’ so you know what to block if you don’t want to see my posts on your dash. I will be going through 1-2 chapters per weekend. This weekend I will be looking at the prologue, aka Joost, and the first Inej chapter.

Jumping into things, here is Joost:

The prologue is our introduction to Ketterdam, the setting of Six of Crows. It’s been a very long time since I read Shadow and Bone and so all I really know is that Ketterdam is a city in an island known as Kerch, based off the map. The major countries or kingdoms of the mainland to the east appear to be Fjerda, Ravka, and Shu Han, though it is unclear how they differ from one another at this point.

Ketterdam through Joost’s eyes is a sinister and dreary place, a city under a grimy night sky and full of dangers. Joost works as a hired guard for a very wealthy man named Hoede, who keeps grishas, powerful magic users, as indentured servants. Joost is infatuated with one of them, Anya, a healer, though he knows she is not likely to return his affections and furthermore cannot wed without the permission of her owner. We also learn that grishas are at risk for being kidnapped and sold by slavers due to their value. However, the indentured servant system of Ketterdam thus far doesn’t seem to be much better than slavery, given how little freedom the grisha have.

Overall, the prologue is supposed to give us a sense for the setting of Ketterdam and interest us in the main hook of the novel, which seems to be a mysterious substance that grisha can ingest to heighten their powers for the benefit of their masters, though it has the risks of making them uncontrollable. How well is this done?

Through Joost’s perspective we can glean several things; Ketterdam is a dirty city with rampant income inequality, full of crime and corruption. Magic is an established system within Ketterdam, but the magic users do not seem to be at the type of the hierarchy despite their powers, which suggests they are a minority to the extent of which they can still be controlled by the elite class of non magic users, if they have enough money and power.

It is also very obvious through the references in the prologue that Ketterdam is heavily based off the Netherlands during the Golden Age, which was Amsterdam’s (Ketterdam… Amsterdam… not subtle) economic and cultural boom during the 17th century, aka the 1600s. Notably the world’s first stock exchange began in Amsterdam in 1602, and it was a major port and trading hub for the Dutch East and Dutch West India Companies.

It is not clear if Ketterdam is also intended to be a 1600s-esque society, timeline wise, but we know that rifles are common place and there is a thriving merchant class who rule as opposed to old aristocracy, which seems to indicate a Renaissance style setting, as well as the urban environment in general. (That said, from the advertisements for the Netflix show, they seem to have updated it to a more Victorian-era 1800s society, in terms of fashion and general aesthetics).

Overall, the prologue does its job. It gives us a vague idea of what Ketterdam is like, how the society is structured, and who holds the power. It also ends on a suspenseful cliffhanger, leaving Joost’s fate unclear. Where it falls flat is that I think a little more time could have been spent fleshing out Joost as a narrator, even if this is his only showing in the book.

His internal monologue comes across as a bit dry and mechanical, as if the author is aware he is just a means to an end to start the book off with a bang, and he quickly turns into a walking camera (just there to report events to the reader, with no internal input from him), for the second half of the prologue, as we switch to just watching Anya and Hoede through his eyes. That said, it’s not a major problem, as Joost is clearly not intended to be a main character, and his narration still effectively conveys what is happening and sets the dark tone of the novel.

What I would have liked to see from the prologue is perhaps the POV of Anya herself, or the small child she is being forced to experiment on, as that might have been a more compelling and immerse introduction to Ketterdam and its dangers rather than the fairly bland and neutral Joost, who doesn’t really feel like a character so much as a bland stand-in for the reader. If we were put in the shoes of Anya, suddenly called upon by her power hungry employer to participate in this unethical test, or in the shoes of the small boy caught up in the middle of this, it might have been both more thrilling to read and given a more gritty sense of what it’s like to be on the lowest rungs of Ketterdam’s society, at the mercy of the most powerful.

Moving onto Inej, we run into some similar problems. After Inej’s first chapter, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about her, other than that she was an acrobat as a child, that she is part of the street gang known as the Dregs, and that she intensely values loyalty. This isn’t a problem, per say, but while that’s all good to know, it doesn’t give me any sense of Inej’s actual personality, which doesn’t exactly bode well. Like Joost, she comes across more as a walking camera and occasional tourist guide as opposed to a human character with her own worries, hopes, and fears.

I think this may become a recurring problem with Bardugo’s writing - ie all tell, no show. Inej is good at telling things. She tells us where we are as we follow her to the location of a stand-off between rival gangs, she tells us that Kaz, their leader ‘doesn’t need a reason’, though she never exactly explains what that means other than that he is widely feared, she tells us that she is very fond of her knives.

But in terms of writing, we shouldn’t have to be force fed all this information via her internal monologue, which, again, entirely cuts out once the action picks up, just like Joost’s. While I don’t need her thoughts on every threat or gunshot, it would be nice to feel as if she hadn’t just vanished from the story completely as soon as the dialogue starts.

We also meet Kaz and Jesper, though I couldn’t tell you much about them utter than that Inej clearly admires, even venerates Kaz as an accomplished intimidator and chess master, and that Jesper is clearly the joker of the group.

It also feels incredibly weird that this parley between gangs in happening in front of the city’s stock exchange. Inej tells us this is because the Exchange is one of the few remaining neutral territories, but it’s also heavily guarded, which means every time a gang wants to parley, they have to pay out the cash to bribe all the guards to very pointedly ignore a meeting between rambunctious and trigger happy street gangsters on their literal doorstep.

I understand why Bardugo chose this location, wanting to contrast the violence of the gang members with the economic injustice that the Exchange and its merchant rulers represents, but it just seems a bit silly. They couldn’t meet at the docks? In an alley way? This is like picturing the American Mafia hosting a public meeting at the New York Stock Exchange with a bunch of cops twiddling their thumbs nearby.

The foreshadowing that Bollinger is the traitor (‘I’m not going to bet on my own death’) also seems very heavy handed and a little much, but I’ll let it slide.

It’s also not really clear while Inej is present at this meeting in the first place. Kaz commands her to keep watch from above, but he has also put a contingency plan in place that doesn’t even involve her, having bought out some of Geels’ men from under him. Why put Inej looking down from above if you’re not involving her in this plan? Her only role seems to be to watch, and she doesn’t even have a gun she could play sniper with. It just seems like a hamfisted way of getting Inej out of the danger zone so the author can have her as a passive spectator to the violence that follows.

This is my main problem with this chapter. It’s supposed to introduce us to Inej, but really, it’s introducing us to Kaz. Which is fine, but as he also has a POV in this book, it seems a bit lame that her own chapter is completely overtaken by showing off A. his smarts and B. how dangerous he is, despite being dismissed as a young ‘cripple’ by the likes of Geels.

Geels is also… not a greatly done villain. I get that he’s supposed to be small fry and is just a precursor to much more threatening opponents, but his every line of dialogue feels designed to show off how cool and Machiavellian Kaz is in comparison. He doesn’t seem like an actual hardened criminal who has underestimated his opponent, but a somewhat cheesy cartoon thug who unironically says things like “How are you going to wriggle your way out of this one?” with his full chest. The effect is comical, and not in a good way.

This chapter also shows off Kaz’s sadistic side in full display, which is probably one of the only interesting things about it, though it would be nice if we got any input at all from Inej on this… instead she completely vanishes from her own narration, to the point where she might as well not be present at all. Kaz has no qualms about tracking down his enemies’ weakness, such as lovers and family, and threatening them.

But the open horror and shock Geels reacts with seems incongruent, as if Kaz were the first up and coming gangster to actually consider threatening someone’s family or girlfriend. That seems pretty par for the course for violent criminals trying to claim territory and unnerve their rivals, yet Inej and Geels himself react as if no one had ever thought of sinking to the level of ‘do what I want or I’ll kill your loved ones’ until Kaz invented it. It just feels a bit silly and on the nose.

Really, my overarching issue with this chapter is that it’s not about Inej at all, it’s just an introduction to the Kaz Brekker fan club. I don’t automatically hate Kaz as a character, but his introduction is heavyhanded and comes at the cost of any establishing character moments for Inej. The most we get out of her is her brief pangs of sympathy for Bollinger despite his treachery, and her brief reference to her childhood. Maybe future Inej chapters will totally change this, but right now, it’s not a great sign of what’s to come.

I can think of about a hundred things Inej could have done or said this chapter to develop or establish her personality at all, but all we got was her briefly holding a knife to someone, and her briefly saying a prayer for Bollinger. I think it would have worked much better had this plan to catch Geels with his pants down been Inej’s invention or at least worked out between her and Kaz, rather than her just there to play lookout and admire how cool Kaz is.

Or at the very least, we could have seen the scene referenced where she searches the crime scene of the assassination, instead of that getting two lines and an entire chapter being devoted to what boils down to a pissing contest over which gangs gets rights to a certain neighborhood.

Next week, we will look at Kaz I.

[paths-of-my-childhood-candid]

TAYLOR SWIFT: ‘I’ve always found romance in life’s small moments’

Photographs by Miller Mobley // Interview by Melody Chiu // People Magazine, Dec 16th 2019 issue

Shattering records with her euphoric new album Lover, the superstar is happier and more fearless than ever: ‘I’m always looking for a new challenge.’

It’s hard to believe Taylor Swift is turning 30. A decade ago she became the youngest person to take home the Album of the Year Grammy. Now the superstar, who celebrates her milestone birthday on Dec. 13, is breaking records - and her silence - like never before. Ahead of releasing her seventh studio album, Lover, in August, Swift took on her former record label Big Machine and its new owner Scooter Braun over the rights to her previous recordings. With the dawn of a new decade and an upcoming tour, Swift - who is happily three years into her relationship with actor Joe Alwyn - is as excited about her future as she is protective of her past. “This is the first time I’ve been able to put out music that I feel is connecting with people yet look back on everything I’ve made and feel a quiet sense of pride,” she says. “I’m proud of the things I’ve withstood, and I’ve been able to carve out a life for myself.”

You’ve had a lot of big years, but this one feels a little different. What does 2019 mean to you? This year feels more special to me than any year before it. A lot of people will tell you that when they had their breakthrough year, they weren’t able to enjoy it because they were hustling or stressed. 2009 was a breakthrough year for me in country, then 2014 was a big breakthrough year in pop. Fifteen years into doing this, being able to look around and acknowledge that it’s special, I’m really stoked this moment can happen when I’m 29. That’s one of the benefits of starting when you’re 12!

Lover comes not even two years after your prior album Reputation. Were you feeling creatively supercharged? I had this strange feeling of “I could write anything I want now.” There was so much theatricality in the darkness of Reputation. It was secretly a love story, but it was also filled with angst, rebellion and this vengeful taking back of your life. Lover ended up being the album [where I was no longer] answering to something. In the past I’ve definitely used my criticism as a jumping-off point for creativity. With Reputation I’d said everything I needed to say. I’d been tried in every possible way people could throw things at me, and I felt like now I just get to create.

You’ve been writing love songs since you were a teenager. What would 13-year-old Taylor say about Lover? This is the most I’ve ever leaned into who I really am. For this album I went through my old diaries as a kid. Looking back, I’ve always found romance in life’s small moments - tiny details that are beautiful about the human experience. Lover in a lot of ways is that.

You’re known for magnifying those little moments into a hit song, but do you feel more protective of yourself now? In this job people are constantly skeptical and evaluating whether you deserve to be there. There are tests every day, but I try to be susceptible to my feelings on it. I try to be resilient, but I don’t ever want to become closed off in a way that I can’t access sadness, loneliness, anxiety and despair. I personally feel like the best thing I have to offer is the music I write.

Your Change.org petition in support of the Equality Act (which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity) has nearly 600,000 signatures, and your “You Need to Calm Down” music video, featuring many LGBTQ+ stars, has more than 164 million views. Is it gratifying to see these numbers after breaking your political silence? When you advocate for something, it has to be completely disconnected from what people say about you advocating for it. It should be removed from hard numbers. That being said, when numbers do come in that are promising and petitions are signed in the hundreds of thousands, it’s a good feeling. It reinforces your feeling that there is good in the world.

Has speaking out, whether about politics or owning the rights to all your songs before Lover, made you feel stronger at the end of the day? It makes me feel like my fans are able to know me more. What I believe in and what people know I believe in are aligned. That’s a great sense of relief. When Lover came out, it was this sense of being so thankful that after so long of being denied the rights to music that I made, I finally felt like I was in a place where I had aligned myself with generous people. The label that I’m at now, there’s not a single person in that sphere that wants to deny me of what I created. It’s nice to know I can say what I believe in and disconnect from if people don’t like that. And I can sleep really well at night.

How do you feel about your 30s? Really happy! There are certain parts of my brain that I don’t visit as often, like stressing out about my body, stressing out about being on trend, stressing out about people thinking I’m cool, stressing out about people thinking really anything about me. You have to toss out things that don’t serve you.

What’s the last great day off you had? Oh, yesterday was amazing. My friend Cazzie [David] came over, and we swam. My friends and their kids were staying with me, so I was playing with a 3- and a 5-year-old. Then I picked a paint color for my living room wall, which is really gonna warm up the whole vibe. My parents and my brother came over, and I cooked this whole dinner. Cooking, reading and seeing friends are things that make me feel like my life was never anything but normal, so I spend a lot of time doing those things. I just want to make sure I’m living my life in a way that makes me feel happy and fulfilled.

THE MOST INSPIRING WOMAN TO ME THIS YEAR: Whenever I feel stressy about things, I’ll just read some of Jameela Jamil’s quotes about body image and health.

WHAT I ’M LOOKING FORWARD TO MOST IN 2020: I’m really excited about customizing [my upcoming tour] Lover Fest. I’ve never really performed on that kind of stage since opening up for Tim McGraw and George Strait in 2007.

THE 2019 BOOK I DEVOURED: Demi Moore’s autobiography. I couldn’t put it down. She was punished ruthlessly for being the highest-paid actress, and I feel like finally she’s getting the last laugh.

A NEW THING I LEARNED THIS YEAR: I’m working my way through the Ottolenghi Simple cookbook. I recently made the chicken marbella.

The PEOPLE behind People

Deputy west coast news editor Melody Chiu first interviewed Taylor Swift before the release of 1989: “Sitting down with her five years later, Taylor was as generous as ever, and her unshakable confidence is inspiring.”

Dan Wakeford, People Magazine Editor in Chief: “Although she’s been a singer for more than 15 years, 2019 was arguably the year Taylor Swift found her voice. She stood up to protect her creative rights, spoke out for what she believed in and continued to produce music that showed wisdom and storytelling beyond her years - her album Lover became 2019’s bestselling record in just one week. Truly epic.”

Check out parts of the interview previously published online:

Inside Taylor Swift's Life-Changing Year: 'I'm Proud of the Things I've Withstood' - article

Taylor Swift Says She's Finally Aligned Herself with a 'Generous' Label Amid Feud with Big Machine - article

Taylor Swift Is Over 'Stressing Out' About Her Body as She Turns 30 - article

Taylor Swift Says Demi Moore Got Last Laugh After She Was 'Punished' for Being Highest-Paid Actress - article

[leftwriteb]

Industry Trend: Battle Royale Can't Battle It Out

It was with the explosive popularity of the likes of Fortnite, PUBG and The Culling that the battle royale genre was catapulted to the forefront of videogames. Whether its the boggling numbers of players that were playing such titles, the desperate scrambles by developers and publishers to cash in on the trend or the sheer volume of indistinguishable titles that began to surface, battle royale games have to battle amongst themselves and, ultimately, that is a fight that’s doomed to fail.

The genre itself isn’t new, of course. Going back a number of years, the growing success of the genre can be seen within mods for ARMA 2 and Minecraft, experiences that allowed players to duke it out amongst themselves before the genre had taken off as it has now. What really brought such games to the forefront of player, developer and publisher conscience was the marriage of intense multiplayer action and the spectacle of personalities and streaming, with Twitch growing in popularity just as rapidly as the genre and associated games were themselves.

While the focus seemed to shift, the idea was the same. DayZ came and went. The Culling came and went. The Culling 2 came and went even quicker. PUBG had a larger foothold, especially so as it made the jump to Xbox One. It was a situation that began to grow and showed no sign of slowing down. What came next though was unprecedented. Fortnite, a free to play experience, became a behemoth. Over the course of several months, the game exploded in popularity. Streamers like” Ninja” began pulling in ginormous numbers of viewers while they played and special in game events, including a crossover event with Avengers: Infinity War, kept things fresh and changing. It became integral to kid culture and the in-game purchases became a must have. It’s worth noting that the aforementioned was something that drew publishers from miles around like vultures too.

Other popular series then began introducing their own take on the genre, with Call of Duty, Battlefield and Red Dead Redemption 2 each promising their own unique spin on a gameplay style people were becoming perhaps too familiar with. Over the course of just a few years, battle royale games have become a staple in the videogames industry across the board and seem to show no signs of slowing down, especially so as Respawn Entertainment watches their new title, Apex Legends, drawing in a playerbase from scratch way quicker than anybody likely thought possible. Only 3 days in, 10 million players had given the game a whirl so another large free-to-play game enters the fray.

But it’s important to remember that what goes up must come down. And just like a player skydiving to the map below, the popularity of battle royale will surely come down. The industry obsession with trying to stake a claim in the royale riches is an unsustainable one.

Imagine, if you will, that each gamer that’s interested in battle royale games is represented by a small counter. With the genre having been in the public eye for some time now, it’s safe to say at this point that those who are at all interested in the genre are already within this huge stack of counters. Sure, there’s a small handful of new counters added to the stack here and there, but the amount is so few that we already have a ginormous stack of counters that doesn’t seem to really change in volume. Now imagine that these counters have to be distributed out to each title that wants their attention.

So, we begin dishing out these counters. A chunk of them goes to PUBG. Another chunk of counters goes to Fortnite. Another stack to Apex Legends and another stack to Call of Duty’s Blackout mode. This distribution goes on and on until we have dished out the counters. It’s after this that you begin to see the issue: there’s only so many counters to hand out and it’s rare that these counters move from their original pile to another. The genre has been around long enough that it’s not really drawing in new players because those who are excited by the prospect of battle royale are already involved. There’s only so many players to go around when there’s so many various playerbases.

As new games release and as time goes on, these counters begin to move away and shift at a rate that isn’t replenished. More and more battle royale games surface without there being enough players to sustain them. We’ve already seen small rumblings from games like Realm Royale, The Darwin Project and H1Z1 as they try to maintain themselves in such a crowded market. There simply isn’t enough to go around. This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, with “games as a service” already having been hit by the exact same issue. A little before battle royale was a publishers favourite phrase, the likes of Ubisoft and Activision were desperate to get us hooked on “games as a service”; experiences that never really let us go and change over time to try and keep us constantly playing and, more often than not, always reaching into our wallet too. Just like battle royale, these games each carved out their own pool of dedicated players: Destiny fans, The Division fans, Overwatch fans, Sea of Thieves fans, Fallout 76 fans. Really, battle royale games are no different as evident by Fortnite using an ever changing landscape and challenges to keep players engaged. Each one tried to become your main gaming priority. The problem was that if you played one, you very much tended to stick to just the one and there was little overlap.

With The Division 2 and Anthem on the way, the issue is only going to get worse. Developers and publishers want more and more of our time (and, ultimately, money) but we only have so much to give. The shared problem with “games as a service” and battle royale games is that their approach and content is always shifting and in order to stay relevant and this means you have to truly pay attention. If you’re doing that and you’re attempting to stay within or ahead of the meta, you haven’t got the time to learn the details of multiple massive games at a time.

As more and more titles surface, this issue gets worse and worse and the many piles of counters under each banner begin to thin out. As they do so, this array of titles begin to become unsustainable and then disappear.

There are two avenues that you can go down to get aboard the bandwagon: either get your game out fast and get ahead of the competition or take your time and hope that your game speaks for itself upon launch. We’ve seen how well the former pans out already.

Boss Key Productions, the studio behind the now deceased battle royale game Radical Heights, jumped aboard the battle royale hypetrain following the rather disastrous launch of their previous title, Lawbreakers. The aforementioned shooter failed to find an audience within such a saturated market so they aimed to turn things around by, unfortunately, jumping into yet another saturated market. The studio, co-founded by Cliff Bleszinski, did at least attempt to offer a new twist on the genre but the game was dubbed by the studio itself as “extreme early access” and wound up being too broken and buggy to get a solid foothold. It was only a month before it was deemed a failure and the last ditch attempt by the studio to stay afloat failed.

The same thing happened with the launch of The Culling 2, a game that shut down after an even smaller window. A sequel to the first The Culling game, The Culling 2 fell far short of the generally positive reception of the first game and was quickly deemed a disaster. The royale game that needed 50 players per match managed to dwindle to a concurrent player count of single digits within 48 hours of release. Fans of the original believed that the developers had jumped into a sequel far too soon and was chasing money. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off.

At the other end of the spectrum however is the idea that you can release something later on so long as it is polished and has something fresh to offer. Perhaps the weirdest way of battling things out with other players is to do so using your skills with Tetriminoes, an experience offered for free with Tetris 99 on the Switch. While the surprise announcement and release of the game seems hasty, it offers a fresh take on a popular game that appeals to so many.

Meanwhile, established series are eager to be part of the conversation, with Call of Duty becoming home to its own Blackout Mode, a PUBG-esque experience that was developed instead of an explosive campaign like every CoD game before it. The beta for the mode drew many players in and, once again, a new spin on something so many people are familiar with seemed to catch peoples attention. These established series provide solid foundations for newer styles, ideally meaning these experiences are more polished from the get go.

Other series are weighing in too. Red Dead Redemption may well have an online mode that is still growing and developing but an element of that experience is their Most Wanted mode, a survival of the fittest. With the critical and commercial success of the game, players already looked at the game favourably so an online mode that is actively in beta didn’t seem to phase as many as you would think. It’s not the only game that is adding in royale elements after the launch though, as Battlefield V is slated to be getting a battle royale experience of its own later this year.

It’s an understandable move by EA: battle royale is where the players are and is also where the money is so why not chase that with a series that’s already made a name for itself. The issue is that many Battlefield players consider the game to be a little half-baked. The game itself sits at a user rating on Metacritic of around 3… and that’s if you round up too. The prospect that another large chunk of the game is not only unfinished but not even available until months after release is telling of just how desperately this trend will be chased. It’s almost undeniable that the game was release way before it should have been but the risk was taken in an attempt to cash in on winter sales numbers and the shifting focus of gamers at large. EA has their sights fixed on royale but it’s even worse than you think.

Why? Because not only are they competing with larger adversaries but they will soon be actively competing against themselves. Under the publishing arm of EA, Respawn Entertainment has just launched their own battle yoyale experience as we’ve discussed; Apex Legends, a shooter that takes elements of their previous Titanfall series and layers them with a lick of battle royale and hero-shooter paint. While the new title is doing well for itself so far, no doubt partially because it is also free to download, when Battlefield finally launches its own royale mode, there will be two similar experiences competing against each other that have both surfaced from the very same publishing branch. That’s a bizarre scenario in itself, especially when there is so much other competition in the field as it is.

It’s a little ironic really as it was over saturation and competition that led EA to kill off Respawn’s last series, Titanfall. Having launched Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 within a week of each other, and positioned Titanfall only a week before the release of 2016’s Call of Duty entry. Rather than delivering a 1-2-punch to CoD, it just meant that Titanfall had to go up against two other better established series of similar genre and caused it to ultimately fail. Now Respawn is choosing to once again get involved in a very busy area of the games industry. It’s doing well for itself so far but that may not last long and it may well find itself struggling once again down the line.

The carpet will be pulled out from under royale eventually. It’s only a matter of time before we see these games begin to wane. Rest assured though that something else will take the limelight and and some other craze will pop up.

Ultimately, battle royale is just the latest genre to become the favourite. We’ve seen first-person shooters flood the industry. We’ve seen unnecessary multiplayer modes tacked on to singleplayer experiences be all the rage once upon a time too. We have seen lord knows how many open-world third-person action games surface that offer very vast worlds with little in them (something I’ve touched upon before) and now we see everyone jump aboard a new ship. Eventually, that ship is going to sink. Battle royale games have begun battling it out but I’m not so sure there’ll be any winners in the end.

What do you think of the battle royale craze as it continues to grow? Are you enjoying any of the big hitters in the field or would you be glad to see the back of them? Let us know below.

[kristinsimmons]

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli State of Digital Health Survey

By MATTHEW HOLT & ELIZABETH BROWN

Last year was a remarkable time for digital health. Obviously it was pretty unusual and tragic for the world in general as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc. We mourn those lost, and we praise our front line health workers and scientists. But for digital health companies, in almost no time 2020 changed from fear of a market collapse to what became a massive funding boom.

But no-one has reported from the ground what this means for digital health companies, of which there are perhaps 10-15,000 worldwide with maybe 6-8,000 based in the United States. Despite the headlines, most are not pulling down $200m funding rounds or SPACing out. So working with professional services firm Wipfli, we at Catalyst @ Health 2.0 decided to find out what digital health companies experienced in this most extraordinary year. 

Between Thanksgiving 2020 and mid-March 2021, we surveyed more than 300 members of the digital health ecosystem, focusing on leaders from more than 180 private (and a few public) digital health companies. We asked them about their market, their experience during COVID-19, and what they thought of the environment. We also asked them about the mechanics of running their businesses. The results are pretty interesting.

The Key Message: COVID-19 was very good for digital health companies–on average. Most are very optimistic but, despite the massive increase in funding since the brief (but real) post-lockdown crash, most digital health companies remain small and struggling for funding, revenue, and customers.

We also heard from investors, and a bigger group we called “users” (mostly payers, providers, pharma, non-healthcare tech companies, e-patients & consultants). While these “users” also saw a big trend towards the use of (and, to a lesser extent, paying for) digital health tools and services, they were not as gung-ho as were digital health companies or investors, who were even more optimistic.

The summary deck containing the key findings is below and there is more analysis and commentary below the jump.

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli Survey on the State of Digital Health Results Presentation from health2dev

The Demographics: Most digital health companies are small startups. Given the ease of starting a company and the difficulty in selling to larger incumbents or getting a large number of consumers as users, that is not a surprise. In our sample, 49% of digital health companies had fewer than 20 employees, and 20% had fewer than 5. While we asked several objective questions about size, revenue & funding, we also asked companies to self-select as to their “scale”, in a way that matches our classification of startups. The five stages are:

It is only when companies are “Actively Scaling” that they start to really grow their employee base, with more than 50% of companies in this stage having more than 100 employees. Even so, a substantial portion (30%) of “Mature” companies still have between 50-99 employees

Customers & Products: Most digital health companies are targeting more than one type of customer. 60% were targeting providers with 57% targeting payers. Substantial minorities (33% & 34%) were selling to consumers and employers, respectively. And, of course, there are several commonalities–of the companies who said they were targeting employers, 75% also targeted payers. When looking at the products and service offerings companies are providing, almost all (86%) were selling software, with over half (55%) selling services–in fact more than half of those selling software were also selling services.

Revenue: We also asked explicitly about revenue–which, not surprisingly, irked some respondents! As you would expect in 2019, a majority of companies had either no revenue (33%) or less than $500K (21%) in revenue. But they had high expectations, with only 25% expecting to be below $500K in revenue by 2021 (this year!). In fact, while only 10% of companies had revenue over $30m in 2019, 16% expected to be at that level in 2021.

As you might expect the biggest changes were expected by those who described themselves as “Just Beginning to Scale” or “Actively Scaling”. 75% of the the “Just Beginning” group were at $2m or below in revenue in 2019 (in fact most were below $500K), whereas 65% expect to be above $2m in 2021. Only 14% of the “Actively Scaling” group were above $30m in 2019 but a full 48% think they’ll be there in 2021.

COVID-19’s Impact on Revenue: We tried to understand the impact of COVID-19 by asking about how companies’ actual revenue in 2020 compared to plan or expectation. 41% said that they were above expectation, with 29% saying they were slightly above (15-50% greater) and 12% saying they were significantly higher (50+%) than plan. Only 5% (50+%) were significantly below plan. Given how optimistic the startup forecasts I see tend to be, I think this shows that COVID-19 did boost revenue dramatically. Again, it was the companies who were “Just Beginning to Scale” or “Actively Scaling” who saw the most unexpected upside.

COVID-19’s Impact on Product Usage & Personnel Hiring: Revenue is all very nice, but what about actual usage? As you might expect, 65% of companies saw usage of their products or service offerings increase more than expected, with 15% saying it increased dramatically (50%+ above plan). Those with products in the market already, either “Just Beginning to Scale,” “Actively Scaling” or “Mature Offering”, saw the biggest uptake, with 29%, 37% & 27% respectively, saying that usage increased dramatically. This translated somewhat into hiring plans, with 29% of companies hiring more than planned, and, again, that deviation being concentrated in those “Just Beginning to Scale (31%),” “Actively Scaling (37%)” or “Mature Offering (36%)”.

Most companies (66%) added new products and services during COVID-19, as any casual observer could see. In fact, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 built an entire version of our SourceDB database showing all the new COVID-19 products we tracked. But, it is a reasonable conclusion that companies with products in the market mostly did better than companies just coming to market and starting their sales cycles. 

Regulation & Data Security:  Not unrelated to the fact that our sponsors at Wipfli provide business process, regulatory advice and data security certification, we asked a long series of questions about those issues and other business processes. Perhaps the most interesting result was that knowledge about applicable regulations was significantly lower in “Early Stage” companies, with 61% of them either “just getting educated” or having a “fair to medium understanding”. “Mature” companies had either in-house staff (45%) or a “strong level of understanding”. However, while 70% of digital health companies reported being asked about data security by (potential) clients, only 25% had been certified by an outside body like HITRUST–suggesting that more needs to be done.

Dealing with the “New Normal”:  When asked about the actual mechanics of running their businesses during COVID-19, digital health companies were very positive. 45% said that the transition to “Work from home” was smooth sailing, and 24% believe productivity went up, versus only 12% who felt that it diminished.

More importantly, digital health companies are very optimistic about the impact of COVID-19 on their business. 47% said it would be net positive and 40% believed it would dramatically improve their prospects. Not one company said that COVID-19 would overall be a long-term problem for their business. The contrast here to many other sectors of the economy could not be starker. This is despite the fact that more companies saw sales cycles increase (44%) rather than decrease (25%). 

Funding & the Investment Climate: In a time when there are several $100m fundings announced seemingly daily, the first thing worth remembering about early stage companies in general and digital health in particular is that the venture capital spoils are not divided evenly. More than 25% of our sample had raised under $500K and 53% less than $5m. While the mean investor funding amount amongst the survey’s digital health companies was over $40m, the median was less than $4m. Many earlier stage companies felt that the typical VC did not have time or interest in something new or small.

Nonetheless, the mood is overall very optimistic, with 62% saying the investment climate has improved compared with before COVID-19. However, the bigger and later stage the company, the more likely they are to think the climate has improved–those $100m rounds are in general going to companies already scaling very fast! And for what it is worth, ALL the investors we asked thought that the investment climate for digital health companies has improved, and almost all thought their valuations had gone up. But, surprisingly, none of those investors said that the time they needed to make a decision had gone down–presumably they were all operating at lightning speed already? (We are not sure every company desperately wanting a VC to answer their email would agree!)

Some Final Thoughts: There is no question that on basically any measure, digital health companies are in much better shape and much more optimistic than they were pre-COVID-19. Most companies believe that the business and investment climate is much better than it would otherwise have been, and that their revenue and their products’ usage is substantially higher than they expected pre-COVID-19. But, there are clearly going to be headwinds; probably the biggest for most is that sales cycles have actually increased. And for the early stage companies, the huge funding rounds (and the even bigger VC fund raises that are going with them) mean that it can be harder for them to get the relatively small amounts they need to prove themselves before they are ready to scale.

Matthew Holt is the Founder & Publisher of THCB and Co-Chairman at Catalyst @ Health 2.0. Elizabeth brown is a Program Manager at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli State of Digital Health Survey published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[dipulb3]

'There's never been a time like this': Wall Street is piling into trading cards as prices soar

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/theres-never-been-a-time-like-this-wall-street-is-piling-into-trading-cards-as-prices-soar/

'There's never been a time like this': Wall Street is piling into trading cards as prices soar

In early February, a Michael Jordan rookie basketball card in pristine condition sold for a record $738,000 at an auction run by Goldin’s company. The kicker? The exact same item went for nearly $215,000 just weeks before.

“There’s never been a time like this in the history of the business,” Goldin told Appradab Business. “I would bet that for every person who wanted a Michael Jordan rookie card in 2019, there’s 100 [now].”

The shock sale is part of a much bigger trend in sports collectibles that’s grabbed the attention of sophisticated investors as well as small traders, transforming card collecting from a fusty hobby into a major investment market. But the timing and scale of the price surge has also sparked worries that it may be fueled by the same speculative forces that recently sent bitcoin and meme stocks like GameStop through the roof.

“This is now part of our culture,” Goldin said. “I wouldn’t go anywhere near the word bubble.”

The pandemic push

The trading card renaissance has its roots in the pandemic. Stuck at home without live sports games, people began raiding their attics and basements and digging up old cards. They also sat down to watch “The Last Dance,” the documentary series about Jordan, the legendary former NBA star, that aired on ESPN.

Suddenly, trading cards were everywhere, boosted by celebrity endorsers ranging from actor Mark Wahlberg, whose kids launched a collecting business, to DJ Steve Aoki and Resy co-founder Gary Vaynerchuk. Videos of fans opening packs of cards on YouTube and TikTok started racking up tens of thousands of views.

“This is a market that’s growing in demand, but doesn’t have more supply,” Vaynerchuk, a longtime advocate of card investing, wrote on his website last March. “That’s a recipe for opportunity.”

Prices for top-quality cards featuring all-time greats jumped dramatically. Those featuring newer talent rose, too, as enthusiasts tried to scout the next big stars.

“Instead of betting on a game, people look at this, and they can bet on a career,” Goldin said.

The spike in prices has caught the attention of a wider class of investment professionals, flush with cash following unprecedented stimulus measures from governments and central banks. Rock-bottom interest rates have also made it harder to find lucrative investments, bolstering interest in creative alternatives.

“Funds are being created. They’re getting investors involved and pooling five, 10, 15 million dollars,” said Jesse Craig, director of business development at PWCC Marketplace, a top seller of premium cards.

Josh Luber, the co-founder of sneaker resale startup StockX, left the company last year to form Six Forks Kids Club, an alternative asset management company focused on cards. The moment, he said, was simply too big to pass up.

“It’s hard to find someone [in] my generation whose first business wasn’t buying baseball cards when they were 10,” Luber, who is 42, told Appradab Business. “We’re all of the age where we have a little bit more money, but we’re also in positions of decision-making for investment funds.”

The arrival of institutional money has quickly transformed the market. Goldin said for the first time in his career, he’s fielding calls from hedge funds interested in gaining exposure.

Takeover interest has also emerged, given the limited number of prominent companies in the sector. Last month, angel investor Nat Turner and Steve Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund titan and owner of the New York Mets, announced they were buying authentication service Collectors Universe in a $853 million deal, after sweetening a bid first made in November.

Not just Wall Street

It’s not just big money getting into the game as the sector gets a financial makeover.

Fractional trading has also reshaped the trading card business, allowing everyday buyers to purchase a small stake in a LeBron James or Patrick Mahomes card that would have otherwise been too costly, in the same way people can now buy a piece of expensive stocks like Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN).

“We realized the potential fractional ownership could have to break down a massive barrier to entry,” said Ezra Levine, the CEO of Collectable, which buys sports cards and converts them into tradable assets registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Collectable distributes individual shares of cards on its platform through initial public offerings. The shares can then be bought and sold as if they were stock in Microsoft (MSFT) or AMC Entertainment (AMC).

The firm has completed roughly 40 IPOs since last fall, and boasts of impressive returns. A 1986 Jordan card that went public at $10 per share in October is now trading at $60 per share, while stock in an autographed James card from 2003 has jumped 50% since late December.

Not everyone is going this route. Other hobbyists are gathering on social media as they rip open new packs of cards, hoping they’ll contain younger talent that can later be sold for a huge profit on eBay. Some are making even bigger bets.

“I spent $9,000 on this,” one TikTok user said in a post this week, holding up a James rookie card. “Call me crazy, but I think this is going to hit 20K. Let’s go.”

Is it a bubble?

After Craig brokered the sale of a rare Mickey Mantle card to entrepreneur and actor Rob Gough in January for $5.2 million — labeled the biggest sale for any trading card in history — questions about a price bubble seemed valid.

Those in the business say there could be a pullback in prices for some extremely hot items, like the Jordan rookies, but they don’t think valuations are spinning out of control.

“I think trading cards are one of the most undervalued asset classes out there,” Luber said.

He added that while the 1986 Jordan card appreciated faster than he might have expected, he doesn’t think the value is out of line with where demand is headed.

Everyone in the industry thinks it’s “a $1 million card,” Luber said. “But we all thought it was a year away instead of a month away.”

Scott Keeney, who set up a fund to invest in trading cards and companies like Collectable with venture capitalists Courtney and Carter Reum, is similarly bullish. He thinks that one to two years from now, the prices that Jordan and Mantle cards are commanding will be far higher than they are now.

“We look at all these other people coming in as more validation,” Keeney said. He declined to share how much his fund had raised, beyond stating it was at least seven figures.

There are risks, of course. As with investing in rare art or wine, the potential for fraud looms. The Washington Post has reported that the FBI is looking into cards that were allegedly altered to improve their condition before they were authenticated by Collectors Universe and auctioned on platforms like PWCC.

The industry has also seen a crash in prices before, after overzealous producers flooded the market in the 1980s and 1990s. As collectors discovered just how many were in the system, cards from the era plunged in value.

Goldin acknowledges that prices will inevitably fluctuate. But he believes supply will remain in check, particularly on the upper end of the market.

“The difference between cards and stock [is] nobody loves a stock,” he said. “Some people who buy these cards, to get them to sell it is like getting them to take off an arm.”

[gethealthy18-blog]

305: A Day in the Life: Wellness Mama Health Routines

New Post has been published on https://healingawerness.com/news/305-a-day-in-the-life-wellness-mama-health-routines/

305: A Day in the Life: Wellness Mama Health Routines

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This episode is sponsored by Fabletics, my go-to source for all types of athletic wear. Fabletics creates clothing that’s made to inspire physical activity in any type of setting. Moreover, Fabletics always aims to create fashionable, on-trend workout clothing at an exceptional price point. Their mantra is ‘Live Your Passion- every day.’ And Fabletics is your ‘one stop shop’ for affordable athletic wear. They have yoga, running, gym gear, sports bras, shoes, accessories and more. In fact, I am wearing leggings and a jacket from them right now as I record this. Here’s how it works… After taking a super quick, 60 second style quiz, you’ll receive a personalized showroom of pieces specifically catered towards your own unique style. This takes the guesswork out of what styles are best suitable for you and with just a few clicks, Fabletics is doing all the homework for you. Right now, you also get 2 leggings for only $24 ($99 value) as a VIP by going to fabletics.com/wellnessmama. I personally love (and am currently wearing) the high waisted powerhold leggings and they have some really cute new patterns with cut outs and designs that I am loving. That price is less than half of just a sports bra and some other brands, and just as good of quality. Also, here is a pro tip – make sure you enter your email address at the end of the quiz, as you’ll receive exclusive monthly discounts and the inside scoop about new collections that haven’t been released yet. You will always get free shipping on all orders $49 or more! There is international shipping available. Best part is that there is NO commitment to purchase monthly. All designs are done in-house so you can’t find these pieces anywhere else and you’re going to get a much cheaper price that most stores and a 45-day workout guarantee – Sweat it out for 45 days and if it doesn’t perform, return it for a full refund! Again, check it all out and grab your leggings at fabletics.com/wellnessmama

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Welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I am Katie from wellnessmama.com. And today it’s just me and I’m answering a common question that I’ve gotten online, which is of all the health stuff that I’ve tried over the years, which things do I still do regularly? And it’s a great question. Because with over 1,300 posts on wellnessmama.com, I have tried a lot of stuff over the years, and my views on some of it have really changed. In the last two years, specifically, I have been ruthlessly simplifying my life. And I feel like I have finally found a rhythm of things that are the most effective for me. Now, one thing to note before I jump in is that health is so personalized, and there’s so many aspects of it that are individual. So I’m sharing what’s working for me, these won’t necessarily be the same things for all of us. But after 13 years of trying things, and writing about them, and tweaking, these are the things that are finally very much regularly part of my routine.

I do a lot of other things as well, but these are the ones that are my non-negotiable things I consider most effective. And, of course, also, before we jump in, I just wanna say I always recommend doing your own research and working with a doctor, especially if you have any specific health condition or concern. I personally use SteadyMD and their functional medicine doctors, and I have access to them 24/7 via my phone and app, and I highly recommend that. But I definitely recommend working with a doctor who understands your goals if you have any specific condition whatsoever. Also, before we jump in, I have a small favor to ask. If you have two minutes, I would be so grateful if you would just spend time in whatever app that you listen to podcasts in, whether it be iTunes or Spotify, to leave a rating or review. Please leave me your honest feedback. It helps other people to find this podcast and it helps me to improve hopefully over time. And I always love hearing from all of you and I read every single rating and review. So please and thank you in advance if you do.

So as far as my philosophy on health at this point, I have narrowed it down, like I said, and it’s about simplifying. And for me, it’s about finding the minimum effective dose and doing those things regularly with a goal of metabolic flexibility. And basically taking this minimum effective dose or MED approach to health and wellness, it helps avoid giving up simply because we don’t have enough time or because of being overwhelmed, which has definitely happened to me in the past. So I have some example of that, the statistics say that nutrition accounts for about 80% of a person’s physique and that in most cases 20% of effort creates 80% of results in fitness. Mark Sisson has talked about this on “Mark’s Daily Apple,” Tim Ferriss has talked about this in his podcast and on his blog, he’s also known as the Pareto principle, which I hope I’m saying correctly, I’ve only seen it written. But like, for instance, Tim Ferriss explains, there are two important minimum effective doses or MEDs when it comes to health and fitness. So for instance, to remove stored fat, you want to do the least amount necessary to trigger a fat loss cascade of hormones, and to add muscle, you would wanna do the least amount of things necessary to trigger local and systemic growth mechanisms. So depends on what the goal is. So figuring out the goal and then working backwards to figure out that 80/20, minimum effective dose approach.

To put another way, as an example, water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, that is the MED needed to boil water. Raising the temperature more is not going to make the water more boiled. So it’s simply a waste of energy. Boiling water at 220 degrees is not going to make it any more boiled than 212 degrees. So, again, this is a very individual thing, but that’s been kind of the foundation of this process in my own health over the last couple of years, is figuring out what are for me, those goals and then what are the 80/20 minimum effective dose things, the tangible things that get me to those goals without getting stressed or overwhelmed. And that’ll be another podcast in and of itself is about overwhelm, and mom stress, and mom guilt. But in this one, I’m just focusing on the health stuff.

So in other words, my goal is I wanna be able to eat a wide variety of different things and my body be able to handle it. I want to be able to do different types of activities and exercise, and my body be able to adapt to that. So, in general, I don’t do anything every single day, except for try to get great sleep. I think that’s a non-negotiable. Try to get outside every day and try to move every day even if it’s just walking or playing with my kids. Beyond that, I don’t drink caffeine every single day. I don’t even eat every single day, but there are a lot of things I do regularly that have really made a difference in my health. And just to get vulnerable for a minute, I’ll share much more of the whole story soon, but in the last six months, I have lost I think close to 50 pounds at this point, and the interesting part is it has not been largely because of diet or fitness tweaks at all. I have been doing many of these things I’m gonna talk about today for a decade. I had food dialed in, I had exercise dialed in, I had sleep dialed in, and the part that I ignored was the emotional side thinking that I could just power through it, and that I didn’t need to feel my emotions and I could just be strong. And I would deal with those later. And it turns out that was very much a key for me. And it’s a whole, probably podcast, probably a whole book on its own, about working through past traumas, and working through all those filters, and I will share a lot of that in its own podcast. But I wanted to just put that caveat here. So these things were all part of that process and that transformation for me, but I think it would be remiss if I didn’t say that I think the emotional and mental side is at least as big of a part at that as anything else.

So with that said, these are the physical health things that I do on the regular to be as healthy as possible and that work for me. Again, do your own research, do your own trial and error, work with your doctor, but maybe these will give you a starting point. So the first thing is, I have drastically simplified my diet over the last couple of years. There is so much information out there. I’ve tried pretty much all of it. I have tried pretty much all of the different systems, and diets, and programs, and protocols, and a lot of them have many, many good points. But I reached a point where I knew I was gonna have to simplify. And I’ve said before, that if you tried, you could find evidence for pretty much anything in the world, being both the best thing in the world for you and the worst thing in the world for you. And that goes for everything from broccoli, to beans, to any supplement. I could probably write a paper on either side, either of those. And the problem is if you’re in the research constantly, you get to a point where you’re almost afraid to eat anything because you know the potential downsides to everything. So I knew I had to simplify. I pretty much took the people I respect the most and try to figure out the common factors among their things, line that up with my gene report through Nutrition Genome, which I will link in the show notes, and then figure out what were gonna be the most nutrient dense foods that I actually love with the goal of nourishing the body versus depriving the body and that was a huge mental shift.

I think a lot of us especially if there’s ever a goal of weight loss, we start to get in this really unhealthy dynamic with food where it’s about punishment or avoiding certain foods or food being bad. And that was definitely not something I wanted to pass on to my children. So I wanted to shift my own focus toward having food be nourishing and good. And focusing on the nutrients versus the deprivation and then finding the ways that I could best nourish my body. And that was a huge paradigm shift. Instead of like, what am I allowed to eat? It was, what can I eat to give my body the best nutrition? So that said, I settled on truly my kind of own approach, and I think that’s the key for all of us. It’s our own thing. Where I feel the best and it wouldn’t qualify as Keto, it wouldn’t qualify as Paleo, it is my own variation, even though it shares some of the similarities for some of those things. I will say I don’t feel good at all on Keto, and this seems to be a thing some women feel, mainly the high fat aspect. That’s partially because of some of my own genes, but I have found I feel much better when I avoid saturated fats and so I don’t eat much saturated fat and would definitely not qualify macrowise as Keto. But I do eat a ton of green veggies, protein, healthy fats, and I would say probably I would qualify as low carb-ish most days.

But, again, I don’t do anything every day. So if you want some specifics in general, what my diet looks like is lots of vegetables. And the ones that I make sure to try to get often are things like leafy greens, pretty much any leafy greens, things like onions and garlic, I love leeks and fennel, and I’ll like pretty much chop those two up and just saute them and make that the base of a meal. Avocado, I eat regularly, often okra which I love by itself, etc. Lots of fermented veggies, like sauerkraut. I eat a wide variety of herbs and I’ll make lots of pesto’s with cilantro, or with parsley, or with mint. And then as far as proteins, I don’t actually eat protein every single day. Like I said, some days I don’t even eat at all, but I do try to get clean proteins often, especially because I’m working out quite a bit right now. And that’s things like really clean meats and seafood, lots of sardines. I eat a lot of sardines because they are inexpensive and they’re a great source of calcium and protein, and a lot of micronutrients. Mussels, which Dr. Gundry calls a nature’s multivitamin, and they’re delicious. Things like baruka nuts and macadamias for healthy fats, and then lots of olive oil, which, of course, is a staple in the Mediterranean diet. Dr. Gundry thinks it’s one of the best things we can do for our health is to get enough olive oil and monounsaturated fats, and I’ve noticed I do feel better, my skin is much better when I do that.

As far as drinks, lots of water and then coffee, tea, herbal teas, and mushroom drinks. So anything from Four Sigmatic is a regular part of my life. I use their mushroom coffee regularly. I drink their reishi at night for better sleep, and then I’ll mix in their other stuff during the day as needed. And I find like just having that source of something warm to drink especially in the winter is really comforting as a great way to get in extra nutrients. Another thing I do is I’ll sometimes eat beans now which is a big change for me because I used to avoid them because of the lectins. And one thing Dr. Gundry said in my podcast with him is that if beans are pressure cooked in, for instance, an Instapot that that neutralizes the lectins. It does not neutralize gluten, but it does neutralize lectins in which case beans are a source of protein and carbs. So I will sometimes eat beans or lentils if they are pressure cooked. He also gave the tip that the brand Eden uses BPA-free lining and they use pressure cooking in their preparation and I believe they also sprout their beans. So if you need a convenience food that is relatively safe, that would be an example there.

Another thing is I make sprouts at home which those are really easy, inexpensive way to grow veggies in your own kitchen and they have a lot of potential payoff. So nutrient-wise, to me, this is very much an 80/20 thing. It’s an easy, like I said, easy inexpensive thing to add into a routine, and broccoli sprouts, specifically, I wanna talk about them and geek out for a second. They are especially beneficial because they are a source of sulforaphane, which is a potent cancer fighting and antibacterial compound that’s found in cruciferous vegetables and sprouts. If you haven’t, go listen to pretty much everything by Rhonda Patrick, but she has just several videos about sulforaphane and why it’s so beneficial. But to summarize, sulforaphane is created, we’re gonna get really geeky for one second, then I’ll get back to normal I promise. Sulforaphane is created when there’s an enzyme called myrosinase that transforms the glucosinolate glucoraphanin into sulforaphane. And myrosinase and glucoraphanin are found in different parts of the plant. So this change happens when the plant is damaged, for instance, by chewing, by blending, chopping, etc. And so these two compounds mix and react. Like young brocoli sprouts in a certain age window are particularly good sources of glucoraphanin. More specifically, sulforaphane is part of a group of plant-based disease fighting phytochemicals called, I hope I don’t butcher this, isothiocynates. And in the body, sulforaphane stimulates the production of an important enzymes that neutralize free radicals, you probably heard that word, because inflammation and free radicals get the blame for many types of cancer, so it’s a big deal. In fact, the first time anyone suggested to me eating broccoli sprouts, it was Dr. Christiansen who was my original thyroid doctor years and years ago, probably seven years ago now, as an easy way to help protect because I had at that point, nodules on my thyroid, and to protect them from growing or potentially becoming cancerous. So broccoli sprouts are an easy thing to add in to your diet because the isothiocyanate seems to block certain cancer-activating enzymes in the body. It’s kind of like a double protection. And that’s why sulforaphane, there are studies that show that it might help protect against various types of cancer specifically, I’m remembering the studies things like colon, prostate, breast, lung, and I think some other types of cancer. It may reduce the risk of neurodegenerative disease, ocular disease, heart problems, anything that has a tie to free radicals and inflammation, which is a lot of stuff and also support the brain and digestive system. So I grow broccoli sprouts regularly in our kitchen and I add them to salads. But an easy tip I have found is because the chemical reaction happens when you blend or when those two compounds mix, I will put broccoli sprouts in the blender and gently blend them into smoothie. And then just drink a cup of broccoli sprouts which is an easy way to get it in with less chewing since I also eat a lot of salad, I get tired of doing vegetables.

Another easy tip, no matter what type of diet you are on, that I would recommend is to pre-plan your meal plan and then stick to it. And for a family this can be, you know, pre-planning for weeks at a time in something like Real Plans, which I highly recommend, it’s an app, or even if it’s just jotting down the day before what you’re going to eat the next day, and looking at it as a big picture of how you’re going to get all those nutrients in versus trying to figure it out on the fly. And I found just the act of writing it down and knowing the plan ahead of time makes it way easier to stick to it for one, and it’s just one less thing to think about in the moment during the day. And if I have time, I’ll also sometimes pre-make the food for the family or for myself so that it’s there. But just you writing it down even just jotting it down in a post-it note and stick it on the fridge.

For me, also, getting enough protein was key. And I think this is a very individualized thing as well. Again, because of my own personal genes, I tend to have a higher protein need, I think, and I found I actually put on muscle relatively easily if I’m getting enough protein, but I had to play around with what that ratio was and how much and found that I do better when I eat bigger meal. I’ll talk more about this later in the podcast. But when I eat a bigger meal earlier in the day with more protein, I tend to sleep better and also have better energy levels. So, again, focusing on the good versus the bad in diet, just getting enough protein is one of the things I prioritize. It seems to make a big difference. Another simple not rule, but just guideline that I keep in mind most of the time, again, not every day, is to separate carbs and fat most of the time. And that’s just an easy rule that actually crosses a lot of different dietary approaches, and an easy one to remember. So if you don’t want a lot of rules, and you don’t wanna get caught up in the specifics, just try that one, not eating carbs and fat together. If you think about it. Those two things don’t occur naturally in anything in nature, in the same plant. It’s a very rare thing.

But also, if you just separate those two, you actually meet most of the guidelines of many different types of diets and approaches including, so Keto would just be eating no carbs, pretty much all the times. You’re always separating carbs and fat. Many bodybuilders follow this kind of approach, I think Bright Line might have some of that involved, Trim Healthy Mama, I think, has some of that involved. There’s a lot of approaches that use that in some form. But just doing that alone actually can make a really big difference, it did for me. And it’s an easy thing to remember that like, because think of it like most fried foods are carbs and fats together, most sweets are carbs and fats together. If you just do that, if you separate them, that’ll get you a lot of the way there. And another note just quickly, that’s one of my issues with Keto because I think there’s a lot of potential there, are definitely use cases for Keto, especially with things like seizures. We know there are studies on that.

The problem is for those of us who would just maybe use Keto recreationally or to try to lose weight, in theory, if you follow Keto completely and you’re 100% compliant, because you’ve separated carbs and fat, it can do that. The problem is most people are not 100% compliant, and if you’re eating a lot of fat and then you also eat a lot of sugar, at least from what I can tell from my blood results that will mess up…or even a little bit of sugar. So you’re eating a lot of fat, you eat some carbs, it can really mess with your triglyceride, your cholesterol, all kinds of levels. Mine did not look good when I was trying to be Keto, and I didn’t feel good. Again, it’s very personal, but that’s just one of my concerns with it. All that said, so, I know there was a lot of information. Sometimes I don’t follow any rules. And I will have a day or a meal of eating foods that I would not normally eat, including I do eat gluten once in a while. And this is normally for social reasons or at special events. Or if there’s a food I wouldn’t normally be able to try, or it was cooked by someone I love. Even if I wouldn’t normally eat it, I will make an exception. So if I’m traveling if I’m in another country, if someone that I love has cooked home prepared meal, I won’t not eat it unless it’s an allergy. And I have found that I can even tolerate things like gluten just fine once in a while and that won’t derail me at all. I think, again, this is very individual and that has been a change for me.

But I feel like there’s a balance here. Because if we avoid everything entirely, then over time our body can get actually less able to handle it. So because my goal is to be adaptable and metabolically flexible, I want to be able to handle things sometimes. And I know that this has rollover effects into other aspects of health that I’m still learning how to navigate. For instance, previous podcast guest, Aaron Alexander has, I forget which one it is, like a Google Home, or Siri, or something in his home, and I was surprised by that. And his explanation was that, we can’t avoid EMFs, and WiFi, and Bluetooth entirely in today’s world. It’s definitely not possible and I would agree with that. And so his thought was we actually need to develop kind of a low level of tolerance to it. So that we’re not like living in a Faraday cage and then we get wrecked when we are in normal society where there’s WiFi or there’s Bluetooth, which I can definitely see his point and that makes sense.

I’m still trying to figure out how that integrates into other aspects of life. But I do seem to notice this in diet, that eating small amounts of things, not regularly and with good gut health, that’s another key I’ll talk about later, making sure my gut health was strong first, it seems to make me more adaptable, not less. I think there’s also a mental health benefit to not being so rigid, unless there’s of course an allergy or a health reason that we can ever, you know, have a day off. So, again, very personal, but that’s what is currently working for me.

And lastly, when it comes to diet, just as a quick note is that I’m currently not drinking any alcohol. I don’t think this will be a lifelong change for me by any means, but it’s a right now changed for me just…partially, I mentioned all the inner work that I’m trying to do. I didn’t want alcohol to be a filter, or an escape, or thing that numbed that. But also just as I go through all these like physical transformations, I felt like it was good to give my body a break from alcohol. So, again, nothing against alcohol. I’m not saying I don’t think people should drink alcohol, I’m just saying I’m taking a break from that.

Okay, so that was diet. Maybe it wasn’t quite as quick or simple as I expected. Another very much regular part of my health routine is sauna use. And this is something I’ve done for years and got even more into after visiting Finland last year. And this is something else, again, if you’re not already following Rhonda Patrick, I would highly recommend following Rhonda Patrick, and reading, and listening to all of her research on sauna use. She’s got the best most comprehensive overview of it I have ever seen or read. But to give you an idea of some of the reasons that I consider sauna to be such an important aspect of health and I know that it’s not something that everybody can do, it’s something that I prioritize and our family prioritized. And here’s why. So sauna use, it’s known as an exercise mimetic, which means it’s similar to exercise in that it raises heart rate, body temperature, and cardiac output. This is the reason it has so many of the same benefits as exercise. It does not, of course, replace exercise, but it can actually be a really good thing to use. So I prefer things like high intensity exercise, which I will talk about later on in podcast, which doesn’t have the same cardio benefits necessarily. And so I do that plus sauna. So statistics show that sauna use is good for cardiovascular health. It can reduce blood pressure, for instance, in studies, and raise heart rate variability, which is something I’m really interested in these days. And it’s one of the metrics I like to track because it’s not a negative metric. It’s a positive metric, and improving, and raising your heart rate variability is linked to reduce risk of all cause mortality and basically longevity. So it’s a cool thing to pay attention to, to see what we can do to affect. For me, sauna use is one of those things as is breathing, as is sleep. I’ll go into some more of those things later. And sauna is beneficial in other ways as well. Of course, it induces sweat, which exercise also does. And lots of good things happen when we sweat. A lot of people who have been on this podcast say that sweating is something we should all do daily because it’s a natural detox mechanism of the body. We don’t need to do any crazy detoxes. The body is really good at that on its own, if we just support it, and sweating is one of the great ways to do that.

So to get a little bit more specific, sauna use reduces the risk of a lot of stuff that will kill you. That’s the short version. If you want more specifics, basically, you get a 40% reduced risk of all cause mortality for people who use saunas 4 to 7 times per week. And I’ll get into the specifics of what counts as sauna use, but in the scientific world, in the world of statistics, 40% reduced risk of all cause mortality is drastic, and it’s one of the reasons that saunas are, like I said, very much a daily part of my life. I also sometimes use cold, but not as often as heat. And I think that there are very different and beneficial effects to using them separate and together. So, for me personally, sauna use is almost every day, cold is a couple times a week. And sometimes that cold will be interspersed with sauna use, sometimes it will be on its own. And I usually do not do cold after certain types of hard workouts because it can actually blunt the effects of those types of workout. Whereas studies show using sauna after workout can actually increase the effects. So we’ll talk about that more in a minute as well. So here’s what some of the studies say. Sitting in a sauna for 30 minutes increases heat shock proteins by as much as 50%. And I’m going to quote Rhonda Patrick on this for a minute because like I said, she’s super smart and the best out there on this topic. But the most important thing she explains that heat shock proteins do is they help maintain the structure of cellular proteins. And here’s why that is important, when a proteins three dimensional structure is altered, it tends to sit around for longer than it’s supposed to, instead of being degraded. So this causes it to start forming something called protein aggregates with other proteins. Protein aggregation has been shown to play a causal role in things like neurodegenerative disease, something we don’t want. Heat shock proteins also slow muscular atrophy, which is a wasting way of muscle. So you want these guys in your body, sauna is an easy way to do it. There’s some genetic factors at play. Some people naturally have more heat shock proteins, and they actually live longer. But for those of us who don’t have those fun genes, sitting in a sauna is one way to, like I said, increase your heat shock proteins by as much as 50%. Some other fun statistics.

Men who use sauna 4 to 7 times a week had a 63% lower sudden cardiac death compared to those who use a sauna only once a week or not at all. In the same way, there does seem to be a dose dependent thing. So men who use the sauna 2 to 3 times a week had 23% lower coronary heart disease related deaths compared to men who didn’t use it at all or used it once a week. And the studies were done in men, but a lot of scientists think it’s very much the same for women. So with men same thing, that number jumps to 43% reduce risk when they use the sauna 4 to 7 times a week. So dose-dependent effect. Same with those who use the sauna 2 to 3 times a week had a 27% lower cardiovascular related mortality. When someone uses it 4 to 7 times a week, that number jumped to 50% reduced risk. Using the sauna 4 to 7 times a week also resulted in 61% reduced risk of stroke. So the magic number seems to be four to seven times a week, which is why I say I do this almost daily. I think that’s one of the easiest best things we can do for our health, especially because it’s quiet in the sauna, and you just sit there. It doesn’t require anything really hard. And if you look at the studies, it seems to show that you wanna be at about 170 plus degrees for at least 20 minutes. In my house, I have two types of saunas. I have an infrared sauna and also a Finnish barrel sauna outside and I use them both. My infrared sauna inside can get that hot, not quite as hot, usually about 160. But my head is out, which lets me stay quite a bit longer. So I can stay up to an hour in that one or if I’m in the Finnish outside, it will be 180 degrees-ish, and I’ll stay for about half an hour. And like I said, I aim for at least 4 times a week for that 30 minutes plus in every day if possible. If possible, I also tried to do sauna post exercise, because using the cold, they find, right after exercise it’s great for not being in pain if you do a really hard workout, but it can blunt some of those muscle building effects of exercise whereas sauna use seems to improve them. So try to stick to saunas after working out when possible.

Another easy thing that I have added as part of my regular routine that seems to make a big difference for me, is time restricted eating, or TRE, and there’s a lot of studies about this as well. This is similar to intermittent fasting. There are some differences. And again, I don’t do it every day and I try to mix it up to have metabolic flexibility. But in most cases, I eat within a 4 to 10 hour window each day. Usually it’s around 6 to 8 hours. Sometimes, I will drink black coffee or herbal tea during that window, sometimes I won’t. And my biggest meal is my first one of the day and this is with good reason. So a lot of studies show that your insulin response, and your fat response, and all of your digestive responses tend to be better earlier in the day. So in my case, lunch is almost always my biggest meal of the day. It’ll include a lot of greens, some protein, the most I’m going to eat in the day, and then good fats from avocados and olive oil. If I am going to eat the rest of the day, I will eat one to two smaller meals later in the day. Sometimes one of those is a smoothie, sometimes more often, it’s just a huge salad. Again, mix it up every day. And for time-restricted eating, I use an app called Zero, Z-E-R-O, which just lets me track how long I’ve been fasting. So right now as I record this, for instance, it is 11:00 in the morning my time, and I have been fasting for about 20 hours. But that’s just today, and it’s different every day. And the reason I started using time-restricted eating. So there’s a lot of evidence and studies that show that caloric restriction increases longevity. But there’s two ways to accomplish this. So we can eat less, or we can eat less often, which also accomplishes the same as eating less. There’s some studies to back up this. There’s a lot of researchers to talk about this including Dr. Sachin Panda. One study is the Salks study, which if I’m remembering researchers fed two sets of mice the same high fat, high sugar diet. So, again, they combined fats and carbs, something I don’t do, but the diet was trying to replicate the standard American diet that a lot of people eat. And one group of mice had 24 hour access to food, and the other group could only eat during an eight-hour window at night. So mice are nocturnal, so that would be like us being able to eat during the day.

And after 100 days, the group who had access to the high fat diet all day and all night gained weight, and they developed issues that you would see with the standard American diet, including high cholesterol, high glucose, liver damage, diminished motor control, etc. The group who only had access to food for the eight hour period during the time when they should have been eating, they weighed 28% less than the first group, which if you wanna look at statistics, that’s the difference between our obesity rate and not having an obesity rate. And despite eating the same amount of calories from the same amount of food, the time-restricted eating group did not develop the same health issues. So that, to me, is a huge, huge key and one of the reasons I really started doing this. So basically what that means is, they didn’t eat less, they didn’t eat different, they weren’t eating a different diet, they ate the same amount of calories. So same amount of food, but in a shorter window, the same kind of food, but in a shorter window, and the time-restricted eating group did not develop the same health issues. And I know a lot of people are averse to the idea of fasting or time-restricted eating, but I think it’s important to realize that we all do this every day anyway, because nobody’s eating while they’re asleep. So we all practice time-restricted eating, time-restricted feeding, depending on what you wanna call it. It just depends on how long of a window we’re doing that in.

A study that was conducted in University of California, I believe in San Diego, found similar things. So they had over 2,000 overweight women, divided them into groups, one group fasted for 12 hours at night, the other group fasted for less time. So, again, they both fasted because nobody eats when they’re asleep. The group that fasted for 12 hours or more had better blood sugar levels than those who fasted for shorter periods. We know that blood sugar levels are tied to a lot of aspects of health. I mentioned Dr. Sachin Panda. He has a great YouTube video where he explains that liver genes are more sensitive to the act of eating than to light and I’m gonna talk about light later on. But these are both ways that we can regulate our circadian biology.

One study that I believe he was involved in, found that mice who are fed during the day had liver genes turn on and off at the time when the mice were fed at night were different. So like basically in other words, eating during the day is important for keeping the liver processing food during the day. Fasting at night for humans is important for keeping the liver in repair mode at night. So because of this, the study found that eating during the day can protect against mild age-related fatty liver for humans, and that eating at night can make it worse. So in other words, some of the benefits of time-restricted eating they found in these studies are: things like increasing mitochondrial volume, especially in the liver and brown fat, improving ketone body production, speeding repair processes in body leading to better aerobic endurance improvement, and increasing lean muscle. So some easy things, to me, this is again an 80/20 minimum effective dose.

That said, I also do practice other forms of fasting and I don’t think these are for everyone, this is not something I would have done before I fixed my gut health, before I fixed my thyroid, if I had any sleep issues, if I was pregnant, this is something that is much more recent to me in the last few years, and I found really beneficial, but I’m not recommending. I think this is something you definitely need to work with a doctor on. But personally, I do longer fasts, several times a year, up to five days. And I do start the year with an even more extended water fast. And the reason I did this is I was finding studies that show that this type of fasting can create autophagy in the body, it can lower age-induced inflammation in the body, reduce oxidative damage, it can lower NF-kB activation and it can boost the immune system. And one of the ways it does this is something called autophagy. And research shows that autophagy is a key part of the body’s ability to detoxify and regenerate itself. So things like fasting and high intensity exercise both stimulate autophagy in the body and can lead to positive results for that reason.

Even intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating like we talked about can have the same benefit, but there seems to be a bigger result from longer term fasting, especially anything north of three days. Studies have found that authophagy can lead to a decreased risk of cancer, heart disease, and I believe also Alzheimer’s. And other studies found that autophagy can or is correlated to longevity and reduce risk of all cause mortality. Which, again, two things that I’m hoping for I wanna see my great-grandkids one day. Other studies show that fasting produces pro-inflammatory cytokines…or I’m sorry, fasting reduces pro-inflammatory cytokines and inflammation in the body. And there was a study, I believe it was the Yale School of Medicine that found that a compound called beta-hydroxybutyrate inhibits something called NLRP3. And I know that sounds really geeky, but NLRP3 is a set of proteins called the inflammasome, which drives the inflammatory response in several disorders, including things like autoimmune disease, which was important for me with Hashimoto’s, as well as Type 2 diabetes which runs in my family, Alzheimer’s, heart disease which also runs in my family, and other types of inflammatory disorders. And I think inflammation is a huge key and we know that fasting can reduce inflammation.

The researchers found that beta-hydroxybutyrate is produced by most effectively fasting, also by high intensity exercise, by caloric restriction, low-carb diet, there’s a lot of ways to do it. Fasting seems to be the biggest bang for the buck, most quickly if we’re talking about water fasting. It’s also important to note here that there are things called fasting mimicking diets. Dr. Valter Longo, who has been a guest on this podcast is pioneering that research, you can listen to that episode with him. So if you don’t want to do full out fasting, that’s another way to get a lot of the same. And he would argue that all of the same and potentially more benefits. A 2014 study found that water fasting for only 3 days could regenerate the immune system. And the reason that seems to work is these researchers found that fasting, water fasting specifically, flips a regenerative switch and prompts stem cells to regenerate new white blood cells. So basically, it tells your stem cells, it’s okay to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system. And that’s what Dr. Valter Longo found in his study and you can read all about that also in his book, “The Longevity Diet.” So, again, not recommending it, not getting medical advice, I’m just saying that I, about once a quarter, water fast for 5 days and I start the year, every year with a 10-day water fast, which is as much for the mental and emotional benefits as it is for the physical. I don’t think that that’s right for everybody. But it’s been an important thing for me.

So another thing that is part of my minimum effective dose 80/20 type approach, is when it comes to exercise. And this was a tough one for me because for a lot of years I had this idea that I didn’t like exercise and it was the thing I had to do, and just like with the food, I had to switch my mindset here. And so in general, I tried to do high intensity exercise and just a lot of regular movement. It took me a lot of years to figure out this piece and I’m still not where I would like to be on a fitness level, but I’m making really steady progress right now, which is exciting. And part of the way I’m doing this is through high intensity interval training called HIIT training. And I’m using a device called CAR.O.L, which I believe it stands for cardiovascular optimization, something rather. It’s basically an exercise bike that uses AI to teach your body how to do high intensity interval training the most effective way. And the cool part is it beats cardio in studies, it beats like long term moderate exercise, which is great for me because I can get in a great workout in under nine minutes, which is much better to fit in my day than going for an hour-long run.

Like I said, I’ll combine that with sauna use to get some of the other cardiovascular benefits and just sweat because high intensity interval training, I actually won’t sweat it’s such a short, intense, fast workout. In fact, I’ve seen studies that the health benefits of high intensity exercise beat much longer moderate exercise. it is tough to do correctly to get enough intensity and that’s the reason I do CAR.O.L, because I found if I was just sprinting, it was easy to not push myself that hard and it was hard to know if I was pushing myself enough. So using CAR.O.L, it’s constantly adapting just beyond my ability and pushing me and it’s very motivating that way.

One study using high intensity found, for instance, that those types of sprints increased metabolism over 24 hours, 12 hour period as much as 30 minutes of running. And I’d much rather do sprints for under 9 minutes than run for 30. Studies also show that this type of exercise can reduce body fat, and especially visceral fat, which is the fat around our organs, and one that is tied to some pretty bad health problems. You don’t want a lot of fat around your organs. It also has been shown in studies to improve VO2 max and heart rate variability in my test which I mentioned is something I’m paying attention to and trying to improve. It also, I’ve seen over time, it reduce your resting heart rate and a lot of people see a reduction in blood pressure if they have high blood pressure. There’s other studies showing that it increases mitochondrial biogenesis, which is another great important aspect of health.

So CAR.O.L’s kind of the core of what I’m doing right now, but I also do weight training, like deadlifts, and squats, and like I mentioned, lots of regular slow movement, like walking, stretching, different types of classes that are just slow, comfortable, fun movement. So I do CAR.O.L for the high intensity, and then I go to the gym because I want to, not because I have to, and I’m not working out for weight loss. That’s another important shift that I made mentally, I do it for the health benefits, and I think that has been part of the key to sticking with it for me. But also, it’s important because from my own past experience, and I’ve heard this from others as well, exercising, specifically for weight loss can backfire. Because when you start exercising, you actually get more hungry. So a lot of people will go on a strict diet, do caloric restriction and then add in a bunch of exercise which is great, but you’re signaling your body that you need more calories. So you’re going to be fighting your body the entire time.

I have a friend who years ago lost a lot of weight and she didn’t exercise at all until she had lost the weight because she found it made her more hungry and it made it harder. Again, I think there’s so many benefits to exercise, but I think you wanna look at the 80/20. The effects of weight loss, for me at least, have very much been from food, and emotions, and sleep. Much more than exercise and I’m using the exercise for the health and cardiovascular benefits, but not for the weight loss.

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So another important aspect and this is one of the few things that I would say I think is universal applies to all of us, and I think most experts and people who have been on this podcast would completely agree with me, and that is sleep.

We know that sleep is important for essentially every aspect of health, we know that if you don’t get enough sleep, you have blood sugar levels like a diabetic, it messes with your hormones, you’re more likely to get all kinds of diseases, problems, have cancer, etc. Sleep is a big deal. I think everybody needs to optimize sleep and I think it’s something Americans especially, are pretty bad at. For me, this means…I found a few factors that really improved it. And I measure it my sleep with an Oura Ring. I’ll talk more about the Oura Ring later, but I’m able to see in real time, essentially, what’s improving my sleep and what’s not. The things that really make a difference, things like light. So I think manipulating light is one of the best things we can do for our sleep. For me, this has several key components. First, getting morning sunlight every day, which means getting outside even if it’s cloudy, as soon as possible after waking up and getting light. Outside, even on a cloudy day, outside light is so much brighter, and so much more spectrum than indoor light. And so there’s really no comparison. You can use, and I’ll talk about it again soon, but 10,000 Lux light, you’re still not gonna get the same benefits of a cloudy day even if it’s cloudy outside. So getting morning sunlight daily, even if it just means going outside, if it’s warm enough being barefoot on the ground drinking your morning tea or coffee outside, or just spending time with family outside.

If I’m gonna use red light, that’s essentially fine. Anytime of day, I like to do it in the afternoon or the evening, and then avoiding blue light after dark. And there’s logic behind that as well. So in nature, the only time you’re going to encounter blue light is during the brightest part of the day. But in modern world, we encounter artificial blue light in many sources from our screens, from certain types of light bulbs, pretty much everywhere that we are almost always in contact with blue light. The body has built in systems like I mentioned that help regulate circadian rhythm. And these rely on outside inputs, including food and light to signal times that the body should be awake versus the time it should be asleep. So there’s, from what I remember, there are about 30,000 cells in the eye that can sense blue light, and these cells signal the brain to turn off melatonin production. You probably know melatonin is important for sleep, and when you suppress melatonin, it might make it difficult to sleep or it can affect sleep quality, and blue light does that. We know dozen studies.

So, blue light wavelengths would, like I said, only be seen in nature during the brightest part of the day and found in sunlight. These wavelengths are not present in things like fire and natural light sources that would have been used at night for most of history. Have you ever sat around a campfire at night, it’s kind of that people will describe natural light sources like fire as being soothing and promoting sleep, a lot of people say they sleep really well when they’re camping, largely because of the lack of blue light. In fact, if I’m remembering there’s a study that showed that people who camped for seven days with no artificial lights, so just fire, candles, etc., were able to totally reset their circadian rhythm in a week which is really drastic, because lights are that important. So at the end of the day, it’s all about the timing. Blue light during the day can be very beneficial. It can help send the correct signals to the brain for melatonin production later in the day, it can promote alertness.

In fact, some people notice more of an effect from light than coffee. It is important for signaling the body to maintain healthy weight and adrenal function. And Dr. Alan Christianson, who I mentioned before, wrote “The Adrenal Reset Diet,” and he’s also a huge proponent of morning light. Those are all vital during the day. And you can use things like blue light and carbohydrate intake to help balance your cortisol and other hormones. It’s a good thing. Blue light is not objectively a bad thing. It’s all about the timing. The problem occurs when we are routinely exposed to blue light in the evening after the sun has set, especially when this happens all the time because, like I said, this signals a reduction in melatonin, which is necessary for sleep.

Harvard medical study has an effect on this or a study on this. It showed that there’s a connection between a blue light and potential diabetes and obesity. The researchers put 10 people on a schedule that gradually shifted the timing of their circadian rhythm and their blood sugar levels increased throwing them into pre-diabetic status. Like I mentioned, if we don’t get enough sleep if you’re pre-diabetic, and it messed with their leptin which is a hormone that helps you feel full after a meal. And apparently even dim light could interfere with a person’s circadian rhythm and melatonin secretion. The study, I believe, showed that a mere 8 Lux of light, which is most table lamps, or even a nightlight, has an effect. So this is something I feel like is really a big thing we can address and the way I dress it in my house is we try to stay off of screens after dark and we have light bulbs that do not have blue light in them that we turn on after dark.

Another thing for me that makes a big difference in sleep is not drinking caffeine after about 11:00 a.m. So I mentioned that it’s about 11:00 a.m. now when I’m recording this, and I will not drink coffee for the rest of the day. I think I’m more sensitive than a lot of people, so my husband can drink caffeine right before bed and be fine. I can’t. If I drink it afternoon especially I will have trouble falling asleep. So I limit caffeine and I only drink it in the morning before 11:00 a.m., and I don’t drink it every day. I also found that, like I mentioned a minute ago with light being such an important factor for sleep, that minimizing and limiting light in the bedroom makes a huge difference. So I have blackout curtains in my room and cover all lights in my room. So that is completely dark in the room, and there’s a lot of studies showing that that can help sleep as well. It’s also been an important factor for my kids. So they have blackout curtains in their room as well and it’s great. They don’t wake up quite as early with the sun coming in their window when they have the blackout curtains.

Temperature is another really important factor when it comes to sleep hygiene and sleep quality. And there’s a lot of studies on this. Some of them disagree a little about what the exact temperatures are, but most seem to settle on the idea that we should be sleeping somewhere between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit, and that if the temperature goes above 75 or below 54 degrees, it can interfere with sleep. So the reason this matters is that our body temperatures naturally peak and decline over a 24 hour period with the highest temperature numbers occurring in the late afternoon, and the lowest ones around 5:00 a.m. So there’s a rhythm to this, just like with food, with hormones, with light. Sleep usually begins when our body temperature drops. So a colder room signals the body to fall asleep faster. Whereas sleeping in a room warmer than 70 degrees can stop your body from releasing melatonin, which we just talked about, and it’s also a very important anti-aging hormone. You want melatonin at night.

In the winter months, I love to sleep with the windows open if possible to hit that temperature. But rather than in the summer running the air conditioner to get that which can use a lot of energy, I have found that using a chillipad is more effective or now there’s one called an OOLER. And basically what this is, this is a very thin pad that goes underneath your sheet on the bed, and it lets you temperature control your bed. And there’s no EMF, it’s just water that runs through the tubes. There’s a low EMF device that causes the water to run through the tubes and its placed several feet from the bed. So I’ve measured it, there’s no measurable EMF effect of that in the bed. It does not interfere with my sleep at all. And it lets me set the temperature of my bed anywhere between 55 and 110 degrees.

I typically sleep at about 62 degrees which, because my bed stays a little bit warmer, I think it stays in that 60 to 67 degree range all night and I see a measurable difference on my Oura Ring, in my sleep scores when I optimize temperature at night. And all these things we’re talking about, I will link to my post about them in the show notes so that you can read more about them. But like I said, I don’t mess around with sleep. I think improving sleep is the single best thing that we can do for other aspects of our health, and it’s one of those things that if you don’t get it right, you can do a lot of the other things and you’re not gonna see the maximum benefit that you could from a healthy diet or from exercise if you don’t have your hormones in the right place with good sleep.

If I need it, say if I’m traveling, I will sometimes take CBD to sleep better at night. I use a brand called Ojai, which I will link in the show notes. It’s a water soluble full spectrum, and I notice its effects within 30 seconds, unlike oils which take a lot longer, and my kids will also take that if they have trouble sleeping. Another thing that makes a huge like measurable difference in my Oura Ring and also in my blood levels when I test is food signaling. So I mentioned that food is another way that we can signal circadian biology. And so I make it a point not to, again, most days, not every day, but most days not to eat after about 5:30 or 6:00 p.m. And to give more time for digestion before I go to sleep, because it lets my body not need to digest while I’m sleeping. So the body can prioritize other things that can happen best like liver repair during sleep. This is called also circadian gut rest. Basically, the idea is just don’t eat when it’s dark outside. That’s all you have to remember if it’s dark, don’t eat. If you want more information on this you can follow FastingMD Dr. Amy Shah on Instagram, and she talks a lot about this, why circadian gut rest is so important. But I would say for me, I have definitely noticed a difference when I do not eat after about 5:30 or 6:00 p.m.

I know this was supposed to be a short podcast, it’s apparently not gonna be. I’ll try to go quickly through the rest of it. Other things I do regularly. I do take supplements regularly. But I don’t take supplements every day either. I don’t take supplements on the weekend, or sometimes when traveling, because again, I want metabolic flexibility. I don’t want the body to ever adjust to getting any nutrient externally or not from food, and I don’t want it to ever like take those nutrients for granted. So things I take almost every day or relatively regularly would be probiotics. I take a spore-based one from Just Thrive. That’ll also be linked in the show notes. We have a discount you guys can use on that one. But it’s a spore-based probiotic, which means it survives through the small intestine and it’s heat stable, temperature stable. So think about it if you have a probiotic that needs to be refrigerated, it’s not gonna make it to the acidity and the heat of your stomach.

This is only probiotic I’ve ever taken that I can see, like I can feel a difference from because it’s heat stable up to 400 degrees. I can put it into food when I cook so my kids if they can’t swallow pills, I can put it into something I bake or cook, or in smoothies. And we’ve noticed a huge difference from that probiotic. I also take vitamin K27 which there’re studies showing that can reduce inflammation, has cardiovascular benefits. Because I’m now in remission, but I had Hashimoto’s, inflammation was a thing I was trying to counteract. So I would take that regularly. And then other things I take based on need, but not everyday, things like vitamin D in the winter based on blood test levels, always test first because that is a fat soluble vitamin. I sometimes take a selenium, zinc, pantothenic acid and here’s what I’ll mention just a little bit of detail on it. There was a podcast episode with Dr. Chris Masterjohn, where he talks about pantothenic acid and its effects on skin health, specifically, and acne. And I’ve noticed during weight loss and as my hormones change, that I was breaking out a little bit. And his reason was a reason teenagers, for instance, break out more is because I think he said was unmetabolized extra cholesterol in the body and things like testosterone can increase that. So teenage boys obviously have a influx of that.

But he said that in his research, that even relatively big doses of pantothenic acid can help reduce that. And I noticed when I take pantothenic acid, it does help with breakouts.

I also sometimes take HCL with high protein meals just because that’s one thing I have not fully optimized yet, and sometimes need an extra little boost. So I’m eating a lot of protein. I do sometimes take fish oil, this is I know controversial one, and I alternate. I don’t take it all the time. There are some sources that say it oxidizes and goes rancid and it can be harmful to the body, there are other sources that say it’s really important and vital. I don’t think we have a definitive answer on this and there’s probably very much a personalized aspect to this, but I don’t take fermented cod liver oil anymore. I just take regular fish oil from really high quality sources. I can link to the one I take in the show notes. I think I’m taking the one right now that Dr. Rhonda Patrick recommends. Again, I think we still don’t officially know, but there’s some really smart people with differing opinions on this one.

I take, like I said about Four Sigmatic, take mushrooms of some form pretty much daily, whether it’s Lion’s Mane, chaga, cordyceps, reishi….. I alternate, but I almost always consumed some type of mushrooms. I add prebiotics to my smoothies that’s also from Just Thrive. I’ll link that in the show notes. I’ll sometimes take aminos, there’s one from Kion. I’ll link in the show notes. I’ll take that pre or post workout. And then I sometimes drink green, or red, or gold drink from Organifi. I’ll link to those as well. These are just all mostly sources of extra nutrients. And then I take magnesium regularly. And I’ll link to my post about this in the show notes as well. Most people do really well taking this at night, I seem to be one of the weird cases where I need to take it in the morning. It’ll keep me up at night. But I do see a big difference when I take magnesium versus when I don’t.

And then occasionally, if I’m in a podcast day like today, I will take something called CILTEP, C-I-L-T-E-P. I’ll link to that as well. It is a nootropic, and it helps me focus without the need for lots and lots of caffeine. Another thing that has had a huge impact on my health, and I think often gets overlooked is the mental emotional shifts, and things like gratitude and breathing. So I won’t go into this a lot because, like I said, I will do a whole podcast just on the emotional side at some point when I can sort it all out and feel brave enough to go that vulnerable. But I do think that having some form of this is really important and it’s gonna be different for everybody. For me, it’s things like focusing on gratitude, having a daily list of things that I’m grateful for. Having gratitude letters, and writing letters to friends and family members, and just thanking them and saying I’m grateful for them, might be doing little acts of kindness that don’t go noticed, but just help with that mental shift or keeping a gratitude journal of things that I’m grateful for.

On the breathing aspect, podcast guest, Gabby Reece talked about the importance of breathing in and out through the nose, and how that signals calm in the body and helps the body go into parasympathetic. So I will try to breathe in as slowly as possible through the nose, and then out as slowly as possible through the nose. At night, I’ll do four, seven, eight breathing, to help fall asleep. Just something to focus on to help me fall asleep, which is breathing in for a count of four, holding for a count of seven, and then breathing out for a count of eight. And that usually a few of those is all it takes for me to fall asleep. So there’s just some easy things to do. And then, like I said, I’ll go into it much more, but just letting go of a lot of the emotional baggage and trauma which is a very individual process. For me, some things that are helpful reminders are the Four Agreements from the book, “The Four Agreements” about not taking things personally and always doing your best. And then “The Untethered Soul,” was a good book about learning how to let things go.

Let’s see, other things that I do. I’ve always been a nerd when it comes to oral health, and I still very much prioritize that. So I do oil pulling regularly, and make sure that I’m eating in a way that supports oral health. I also I believe it will be out by the time you are listening to this. You can go to wellnesse.com, just wellness with an E on the end. I spent years developing a toothpaste that supports oral health naturally and that does not have fluoride, does not have glycerin. It does have things like neem, and green tea, and hydroxyapatite which are all really good for the teeth, and this is finally available after many, many, many years of work. I could not be more excited to share it with you, but I feel like oral health is a huge part of overall health. Because we know that oral health impacts the whole body, and that, for instance, people who are immunocompromised or have a heart condition, often have to take antibiotics during dental work because there’s such a connection between the health of our mouth and the health of the body. So I feel like prioritizing oral health not just helps our teeth look great, but it’s also actually really important for overall health.

And then some other random things I do just related to health, not that maybe necessarily impact my health, but that helped me maintain it are things like tracking. So I’ve mentioned the Oura Ring a couple of times, I will link to that in the show notes. I don’t remember it off the top of my head, but I know I have a discount code I can share with you guys. But it tracks heart rate, sleep, including all the sleep stages, deep sleep, REM, heart rate variability, body temperature, which has been really helpful for fertility tracking, movement, etc. So I wear my Oura Ring all the time. It’s also important to note that the Oura is the only fitness tracker I have found that can go into airplane mode. So there’s no Bluetooth or measurable EMFs when it’s in airplane mode, which you can keep it in airplane mode, except when you’re charging it, so you’re not constantly exposed to that.

I also personally, during this process, have run labs with my doctor every month or so, just to keep an eye on all new markers and make sure everything’s moving in the right direction. I typically run a comprehensive metabolic panel, a thyroid panel, and iron fairs and etc, because my iron tends to run high. So for me personally, again, it’s very personal. I found that getting blood every couple of months is really beneficial to my health to keep my iron levels in the right range because even if I don’t eat a lot of red meat, I still tend to have high iron levels. And I also think this is not just good for me, but hopefully I can help others and maybe even, you know save someone’s life who’s been in the accident. But I also think because I try to work so hard to keep my blood healthy, I’m glad I can hopefully give it to someone else who can use it a lot more than I can.

And then another random thing that seems hard to measure, but good mental difference is to do a digital detox every now and then, and just not be on the phone, not be on a computer, and just be with the real people in my life. So that was going to be a short episode, that got much longer because I love talking about the science. But I hope that all of that is helpful as a starting point. To reiterate what I said in the beginning, I do think that health and nutrition, all of this is extremely personalized. And I’m not trying to give any kind of prescriptive approach, certainly not trying to give medical advice. I’m happy to recommend doctors, I’ll link to my doctor in the show notes and other amazing doctors at StudyMD, who could give medical advice and who are qualified, I am not. So, again, don’t take any of this as medical advice. This is my personal experience and what’s working for me. I hope that maybe it will be a springboard to anybody listening to find those things in your own life. And I would love to hear from you, if you found those minimum effective dose things that you still do all the time in your health that have made a big difference. I would love to hear those from you.

But definitely don’t just follow what I do, use them as a starting point for your own research for your own health. And if you stuck with me this far, first of all, thank you. It’s an honor to have shared this time with you. And I hope that you will consider just taking a couple minutes to leave me some honest feedback on whatever app or device you used to listen to podcast, so that I can improve hopefully, maybe I talk too fast, probably did. Till then I get into science, I get really excited and I talk way too fast. But your feedback helps me improve and it also helps the algorithm helps other moms and other people find this podcast and listen as well.

So as always, thank you so much for sharing your time, which is one of your most valuable treasured assets with me today. I’m so grateful that we got to share this time together, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.

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

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/day-in-the-life/

[waqasblog2]

How Google’s New Layout Predicts the Future of SEO

When you think about SEO and what’s changed over the last 5 years, what comes to your mind?

Chances are, it’s something related to how it’s harder to get rankings on Google.

But why has it gotten harder to get more organic traffic?

Well, if you ask most SEOs, they’ll say it’s because Google has created a much more complex algorithm.

They look at factors like page speed, brand queries, and hundreds of other factors that it may have not been placing much emphasis on in the past.

But that’s only half the story.

The reason SEO has gotten harder is only partially related to Google’s algorithm changes.

Here’s what most SEOs aren’t talking about that you need to pay attention to because this will show you the future of SEO.

Google’s ever-changing layout

When you perform a Google search, what do you see?

Some organic listings and some paid results, right?

And that’s what Google has shown for years. Much hasn’t changed from its core concept.

But over the years, they have continually made small layout tweaks which have added up to big changes.

Let’s look at Google’s layout changes over the past few years… lucky for us, Orbit Media performed random Google searches in 2013, 2014, and 2015 and compared them to Google’s current layout for us.

The big differences from 2013 versus 2019 are:

The first organic listing is drastically pushed down

The ads used to be clearly identified through design elements, but now they blend in more.

Now let’s look at 2014 versus 2019:

And 2015 versus 2019:

The big trend is that the organic search results have been drastically pushed down below the fold. Roughly by 3.3X.

That’s a huge difference!

A listing these days may have a map, elements from their knowledge graph, more videos and images, and whatever else Google feels their users may want.

Another big trend is that there are now featured snippets. Although these featured snippets can drive traffic to your site, they also provide the searcher with the answer they are looking for without having to click through to your site.

Just perform a search for the largest tree in the world…

Sure, I could click through over to livescience.com to get the answer, but why? Google gives it to me right then and there.

With organic listings being pushed down, and Google answering a portion of people’s questions without them even needing to click through, this means organic listings will get fewer clicks over time.

And it’s not stopping there

Let me ask you a question…

How many organic listings are on the first page?

10, right?

Well, that’s what we are used to, but when’s the last time you actually counted?

Google’s dumped 5.5% of organic first page listings. Yes, the first page does have 10 listings a lot of the time, but not as often now.

Here’s a graph that’ll show you the change:

18%!! That’s the percentage of first page listings with less than 10 organic results.

What’s crazy is it used to be 2%. That’s a huge jump.

So, what else is Google testing with their layout?

This is a small test that they are doing with their layout, in which some results may not have any listings.

But Google did report that was a glitch. The page was not supposed to contain any organic listings, but at the same time, it was supposed to contain no paid listings either.

And over time you should continually expect Google to run more layout experiments and make more permanent changes.

Now before we get into the future of SEO, let’s get one thing straight.

Google is a publicly traded company. Sure, their goal is to create an amazing product, but they have to make money at the same time.

You can’t blame them for making changes that increase their ad revenues.

Yes, you may claim that this is creating a terrible experience for users, but is it really? If it was, people would switch to Bing or any of the other alternative search engines out there.

I still use Google every day. Yes, it may be harder to get clicks organically, but as a user, they’ve created an amazing experience.

The future of SEO

Google doesn’t just make changes to their layout blindly. They run experiments, they survey users, they try to figure out what searchers want and provide it.

Based on the layout changes they have made over the years, you can make a few assumptions:

– people want the answers to their problems as quickly as possible. You’ll see more versions and variations of rich snippets integrated within future layouts as this provides searches with their answers faster.

People are trained to ignore ads – no matter how much Google pushes the first organic listing below the fold, people are trained to ignore ads. No matter how much Google blends them in, most people tend to click on organic listings.

In other words, SEO isn’t dead and it is still an amazing channel. Just look at my traffic stats over the last 31 days:

Now of those 4,362,165 million monthly visits, guess how many come from search engines like Google?

A whopping 2,343,362 million visits.

In other words, SEO makes up 53.71% of my traffic. That’s a ton of traffic.

And even with Google’s continual changes, you would expect my traffic to be lower, but it isn’t… it’s gone up.

A year ago, I was generating 1,088,251 visits a month from Google. It’s now gone up to 2,343,362 even though Google’s algorithm has continually gotten harder and organic results are continually being pushed further below the fold.

But still, you shouldn’t only rely on SEO

I love Google and even though there is a future for SEO, you shouldn’t rely on it. No matter how good you are at SEO, it doesn’t guarantee success.

Let’s look at a company that you are familiar with… Airbnb.

Did you know that Airbnb didn’t come up with the concept of renting out your house or rooms in your house?

Can you guess who it was?

It was VRBO and they came up with that model 13 years before Airbnb did.

But here’s what’s interesting… who do you think wins when it comes to SEO?

Shockingly, it’s VRBO.

VRBO crushes Airbnb when it comes to Google rankings and they have for a very long time. Here are just a few examples of keywords VRBO ranks for that Airbnb doesn’t:

hilton head rentals

ocean city maryland rentals

cape cod rentals

cabin rentals

vacation homes

vacation rentals

vacation home rentals

Airbnb does rank for organic keywords as well, but most of them are brand related.

They crushed their competition without relying on SEO and they were 13 years late when it came to entering the market.

So how did Airbnb win? Well, the main way was they built a better product.

But in addition to that, you focused on an omnichannel approach. From SEO to PPC to advertising on TV screens in airplanes, they tried all of the major channels out there.

Yes, you need to do SEO, but you can’t rely on it as your only source of traffic or income. Diversify, not because of Google, but because you can’t control consumer behavior.

People may not prefer to use search engines in the future, they may want something else, which means you will have to adapt.

Plus you can no longer build a big business through one channel.

Yes, Facebook did grow through referrals. Quora did grow through SEO. Dropbox grew through social media… but those circumstances don’t exist anymore. What worked for these old companies won’t work for you.

You have to leverage all channels to do well in today’s market.

Conclusion

Google may be making changes that you don’t like as a marketer or business owner, but that doesn’t mean SEO is dead.

You can see it from my own traffic stats. You can still grow your traffic, even with Google’s ever-changing algorithm.

Don’t worry about the future because you won’t be able to always predict it or even prevent the inevitable.

The only real solution is to take an omnichannel approach so that you aren’t relying on any one channel.

What do you think about Google’s current layout?

The post How Google’s New Layout Predicts the Future of SEO appeared first on Neil Patel.

This content was originally published here.

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/12-tips-for-success-in-achieving-your-fitness-and-health-goals-for-2019/

12 Tips for Success in Achieving Your Fitness and Health Goals for 2019

The new year is just around the corner and the best way to follow through with your health and fitness goals is by planning ahead. 

Many people are guilty of setting New Years goals only to give up a month later. Often times, this is due to the lack of a proven nutrition and workout regimen. 

Achieving your health and fitness goals can be simple, fun, and easy when approached correctly. In this article, you’ll discover 12 powerful tips that will help you achieve your health and fitness goals.

#1: Determine Your Why

What is your reason for wanting to achieve these specific health and fitness goals you set for yourself?

Your “why” is the core reason that energizes you to keep pushing forward to hit your goals.

There are two key factors for determining your why:

#1: Internal motivation – This is identified by asking yourself, “why do I want this?” and “what are the consequences of me not achieving these goals?”

#2: External motivation – This type of motivation is associated with being able to fit into those slimmer jeans or having a leaner physique.

Figuring out your why and constantly reminding yourself of it will motivate you to pursue your goals when things get difficult.

#2: Simplicity is Key

With all of the diet trends and fitness crazes we are exposed to on a regular basis, it can be overwhelming and seemingly impossible to stick to just one diet and fitness regimen.

Just over the past decade, information on health and fitness has grown tremendously. Try not to fall into the hype and jump from one trend to the next!

It’s important to stick to just one diet plan and one workout regimen.

Constantly changing your diet or fitness program will only delay your efforts in achieving your health and fitness goals.

#3: Set Realistic and Specific Goals

When you’re setting health and fitness goals, make sure you are crystal clear with what it is that you want to achieve. You also don’t want to make it so audacious that it feels seemingly impossible to reach. This will only discourage you in the long run.

An example of a bad goal is “I want to lose a lot of weight”.

A better, more specific goal would be, “I want to lose 15 pounds by the end of April by sticking to my nutrition plan and exercising three times a week”.

Writing down your goals and looking at them regularly also helps you stay committed and motivated to stick to them. The more specific your goals are, the easier it becomes to take the proper actions toward achieving them.

#4: Pace Yourself

When focusing on your goals, be mindful about your approach. While the added pressure of “New Years goals” can make you want to go all out as soon as 2019 hits, it can be a recipe for burnout.

Although enthusiasm is a great trait to have, it’s important to be thoughtful with how you plan to reach your goals. Overdoing it the first two weeks of the new year may leave you injured and discouraged.

Instead, try to start off slow, especially if you haven’t exercised regularly in the past. While our bodies need to be challenged, consistency is more important than anything else.

Exercising for just 15-20 minutes everyday is much more effective than performing an intense workout once a week. This will help you gain momentum and get the ball rolling.

#5: Stick to a Workout and Nutrition Plan

Instead of walking into the gym and choosing to use whatever machine is currently available, following a proven workout plan can give you much better results.

If you are unsure of what exercise regimen to follow, AFPA encourages following a simple set of principles such as:

Move daily (at least 15 minutes)

Incorporate weight exercises at least twice a week

Perform cardio workouts at least once a week

Perform high-intensity interval training once a week

When it comes to your nutrition, try not to follow any extreme diet plans.

A great place to start is by cutting out processed carbohydrates and sugar. After a month without junk food and sugar, you can proceed to follow a diet plan that suits your interests.

#6: Don’t Skip Two Days in a Row

Reaching any goal comes down to adopting daily habits and taking each day one step at a time. As you first start exercising, each day will come with a bit of resistance towards reaching your goal. After all, no one feels like going to the gym after a long day at work!

But, when you take action on your goals everyday, you slowly create more momentum until eventually exercise turns into a habit. Studies have shown it takes approximately 66 days for the average person to adopt a good habit.

Performing daily exercise – no matter how small – will instill the habit of exercising into your routine, making it a breeze to achieve your fitness goals!

#7: Track Your Food Intake and Workout Performance

As the saying goes, “what gets measured, gets managed”. When it comes to losing weight, good results comes down to a simple science.

If you’re eating less calories than your body needs to maintain its current weight, you’ll drop fat. This is also known as eating in a calorie deficit.

But the only way to truly know if you’re in a calorie deficit is by tracking your food intake. Luckily, there are several calorie tracking apps that can simplify the entire process.

#8: Get a Health Coach

The fastest and most guaranteed way to reach your health and fitness goals is by hiring a coach.

If you’re setting out on a journey you’ve never been on before, we suggest working with a health coach or personal trainer to help you conquer any obstacles and guide you with a tried-and-tested course of action.

Coaches have a tremendous amount of knowledge and can help you get results faster than any other approach. Not only will they hold you accountable when times get tough, but they also have all the answers to questions that you’re bound to come across during your journey.

#9: Find a Supportive Community

With the rise in social media use, you can find a niche-specific community no matter how esoteric your goals may be.

When you have a group of people who share the same goals, desires, and problems as you, it gives you the extra discipline you need to stay committed when times get tough.

Having a supportive peer group will hold you accountable, keep you motivated, and help you blast through your health and fitness goals than if you were to go at it alone. It can be as simple as joining Facebook Groups of people with the same goals and interests as you.

Here’s how: If you’re into plant-based diets, type in “plant-based diets” into the search bar, click the groups tab and you’ll be presented with hundreds of communities who love plant-based diets.

#10: Get Deep, Quality Sleep

Between work, family time, and working on your goals, sleep can sometimes fall to the wayside. It’s crucial to sleep at least seven to eight hours of sleep to prevent your body and mind from burning out.

If your goal is to lose weight, sleep should be a top priority. Research has shown that people who get a full night’s sleep lose more fat and feel less hungry throughout the day.

#11: Use Rewards Intelligently

A great strategy for motivating yourself to chase your health and fitness goals is by using effective rewards. But be careful not to let these rewards get in the way. For example, try not to use junk food as a reward for going to a yoga session. Sure it may motivate you to exercise, but it may be hurting you in the long run.

Instead, have a cheat meal or food every once in a while only because you want it, not because you earned it. You can also use non-food related rewards as well. If you love to watch Netflix, restrict yourself from watching TV until after you’ve exercised for the day.

#12: Prioritize Your Goals

It’s extremely important to make yourself a priority. Once you’ve set the goal (and wrote it down), you shouldn’t let anything that isn’t an emergency get in the way.

Don’t use your family or friends as an excuse for eating unhealthy or skipping a gym session. Let your loved ones know about your goals so they understand that you need some time to yourself so you can exercise regularly.

Tip: Many high-achievers will chase their goals first thing in the morning. If you find yourself letting life get in the way of your goals, try to wake up an extra hour early and do your workout as soon as you wake up.

Chase Your Goals in 2019

Success with your goals doesn’t have to be a stressful, seemingly impossible life decision. In fact, achieving your health and fitness goals can be simple and even fun when approached correctly.

If you’re a complete beginner to exercise and dieting, working with a health coach or a personal trainer can be a fantastic time and money investment. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll reach your goals just by working with someone who’s done it before.

Taking one day at a time, staying consistent, and following a proper diet and workout plan will almost guarantee that you reach your goals in no time! 

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[kristinsimmons]

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli State of Digital Health Survey

By MATTHEW HOLT & ELIZABETH BROWN

Last year was a remarkable time for digital health. Obviously it was pretty unusual and tragic for the world in general as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc. We mourn those lost, and we praise our front line health workers and scientists. But for digital health companies, in almost no time 2020 changed from fear of a market collapse to what became a massive funding boom.

But no-one has reported from the ground what this means for digital health companies, of which there are perhaps 10-15,000 worldwide with maybe 6-8,000 based in the United States. Despite the headlines, most are not pulling down $200m funding rounds or SPACing out. So working with professional services firm Wipfli, we at Catalyst @ Health 2.0 decided to find out what digital health companies experienced in this most extraordinary year. 

Between Thanksgiving 2020 and mid-March 2021, we surveyed more than 300 members of the digital health ecosystem, focusing on leaders from more than 180 private (and a few public) digital health companies. We asked them about their market, their experience during COVID-19, and what they thought of the environment. We also asked them about the mechanics of running their businesses. The results are pretty interesting.

The Key Message: COVID-19 was very good for digital health companies–on average. Most are very optimistic but, despite the massive increase in funding since the brief (but real) post-lockdown crash, most digital health companies remain small and struggling for funding, revenue, and customers.

We also heard from investors, and a bigger group we called “users” (mostly payers, providers, pharma, non-healthcare tech companies, e-patients & consultants). While these “users” also saw a big trend towards the use of (and, to a lesser extent, paying for) digital health tools and services, they were not as gung-ho as were digital health companies or investors, who were even more optimistic.

The summary deck containing the key findings is below and there is more analysis and commentary below the jump.

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli Survey on the State of Digital Health Results Presentation from health2dev

The Demographics: Most digital health companies are small startups. Given the ease of starting a company and the difficulty in selling to larger incumbents or getting a large number of consumers as users, that is not a surprise. In our sample, 49% of digital health companies had fewer than 20 employees, and 20% had fewer than 5. While we asked several objective questions about size, revenue & funding, we also asked companies to self-select as to their “scale”, in a way that matches our classification of startups. The five stages are:

It is only when companies are “Actively Scaling” that they start to really grow their employee base, with more than 50% of companies in this stage having more than 100 employees. Even so, a substantial portion (30%) of “Mature” companies still have between 50-99 employees

Customers & Products: Most digital health companies are targeting more than one type of customer. 60% were targeting providers with 57% targeting payers. Substantial minorities (33% & 34%) were selling to consumers and employers, respectively. And, of course, there are several commonalities–of the companies who said they were targeting employers, 75% also targeted payers. When looking at the products and service offerings companies are providing, almost all (86%) were selling software, with over half (55%) selling services–in fact more than half of those selling software were also selling services.

Revenue: We also asked explicitly about revenue–which, not surprisingly, irked some respondents! As you would expect in 2019, a majority of companies had either no revenue (33%) or less than $500K (21%) in revenue. But they had high expectations, with only 25% expecting to be below $500K in revenue by 2021 (this year!). In fact, while only 10% of companies had revenue over $30m in 2019, 16% expected to be at that level in 2021.

As you might expect the biggest changes were expected by those who described themselves as “Just Beginning to Scale” or “Actively Scaling”. 75% of the the “Just Beginning” group were at $2m or below in revenue in 2019 (in fact most were below $500K), whereas 65% expect to be above $2m in 2021. Only 14% of the “Actively Scaling” group were above $30m in 2019 but a full 48% think they’ll be there in 2021.

COVID-19’s Impact on Revenue: We tried to understand the impact of COVID-19 by asking about how companies’ actual revenue in 2020 compared to plan or expectation. 41% said that they were above expectation, with 29% saying they were slightly above (15-50% greater) and 12% saying they were significantly higher (50+%) than plan. Only 5% (50+%) were significantly below plan. Given how optimistic the startup forecasts I see tend to be, I think this shows that COVID-19 did boost revenue dramatically. Again, it was the companies who were “Just Beginning to Scale” or “Actively Scaling” who saw the most unexpected upside.

COVID-19’s Impact on Product Usage & Personnel Hiring: Revenue is all very nice, but what about actual usage? As you might expect, 65% of companies saw usage of their products or service offerings increase more than expected, with 15% saying it increased dramatically (50%+ above plan). Those with products in the market already, either “Just Beginning to Scale,” “Actively Scaling” or “Mature Offering”, saw the biggest uptake, with 29%, 37% & 27% respectively, saying that usage increased dramatically. This translated somewhat into hiring plans, with 29% of companies hiring more than planned, and, again, that deviation being concentrated in those “Just Beginning to Scale (31%),” “Actively Scaling (37%)” or “Mature Offering (36%)”.

Most companies (66%) added new products and services during COVID-19, as any casual observer could see. In fact, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 built an entire version of our SourceDB database showing all the new COVID-19 products we tracked. But, it is a reasonable conclusion that companies with products in the market mostly did better than companies just coming to market and starting their sales cycles. 

Regulation & Data Security:  Not unrelated to the fact that our sponsors at Wipfli provide business process, regulatory advice and data security certification, we asked a long series of questions about those issues and other business processes. Perhaps the most interesting result was that knowledge about applicable regulations was significantly lower in “Early Stage” companies, with 61% of them either “just getting educated” or having a “fair to medium understanding”. “Mature” companies had either in-house staff (45%) or a “strong level of understanding”. However, while 70% of digital health companies reported being asked about data security by (potential) clients, only 25% had been certified by an outside body like HITRUST–suggesting that more needs to be done.

Dealing with the “New Normal”:  When asked about the actual mechanics of running their businesses during COVID-19, digital health companies were very positive. 45% said that the transition to “Work from home” was smooth sailing, and 24% believe productivity went up, versus only 12% who felt that it diminished.

More importantly, digital health companies are very optimistic about the impact of COVID-19 on their business. 47% said it would be net positive and 40% believed it would dramatically improve their prospects. Not one company said that COVID-19 would overall be a long-term problem for their business. The contrast here to many other sectors of the economy could not be starker. This is despite the fact that more companies saw sales cycles increase (44%) rather than decrease (25%). 

Funding & the Investment Climate: In a time when there are several $100m fundings announced seemingly daily, the first thing worth remembering about early stage companies in general and digital health in particular is that the venture capital spoils are not divided evenly. More than 25% of our sample had raised under $500K and 53% less than $5m. While the mean investor funding amount amongst the survey’s digital health companies was over $40m, the median was less than $4m. Many earlier stage companies felt that the typical VC did not have time or interest in something new or small.

Nonetheless, the mood is overall very optimistic, with 62% saying the investment climate has improved compared with before COVID-19. However, the bigger and later stage the company, the more likely they are to think the climate has improved–those $100m rounds are in general going to companies already scaling very fast! And for what it is worth, ALL the investors we asked thought that the investment climate for digital health companies has improved, and almost all thought their valuations had gone up. But, surprisingly, none of those investors said that the time they needed to make a decision had gone down–presumably they were all operating at lightning speed already? (We are not sure every company desperately wanting a VC to answer their email would agree!)

Some Final Thoughts: There is no question that on basically any measure, digital health companies are in much better shape and much more optimistic than they were pre-COVID-19. Most companies believe that the business and investment climate is much better than it would otherwise have been, and that their revenue and their products’ usage is substantially higher than they expected pre-COVID-19. But, there are clearly going to be headwinds; probably the biggest for most is that sales cycles have actually increased. And for the early stage companies, the huge funding rounds (and the even bigger VC fund raises that are going with them) mean that it can be harder for them to get the relatively small amounts they need to prove themselves before they are ready to scale.

Matthew Holt is the Founder & Publisher of THCB and Co-Chairman at Catalyst @ Health 2.0. Elizabeth brown is a Program Manager at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli State of Digital Health Survey published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[vidovicart]

Living Lagom in Sweden: An Interview With Lola Akerstrom

Back in 2006, during my first trip around the world, I met a Swedish girl. We traveled together for a bit and the following year I went to visit her in Sweden. Though that relationship didn’t last, my love for Sweden did and, in subsequent years, I learned Swedish and even tried to move to Sweden. I love everything Swedish. And so does my friend Lola. Lola and I met back in 2008 when travel blogging was in its infancy. Unlike me, she’s had success in making a life in Sweden, where she now lives with her husband and son. She’s one of the favorite people in the industry and I love the imagery in her writing and the beauty in her photography.

In her new book, Lagom, she discusses life in Sweden and Swedish culture. Today, I jealously interview her about life there.

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone a bit about yourself. Lola: I’m a Nigerian-born, US-educated, Sweden-based writer and photographer focusing mostly on exploring culture through food, tradition, and lifestyles. My photography is represented by National Geographic Creative, and I was recently awarded the prestigious 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award from the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).

I actually took a nontraditional path to this new life, as I worked as a web programmer and GIS system architect for 12+ years before the full career shift into the travel media industry.

I’ve always been fascinated by the nuances of culture: what makes us different and what our similarities are. And so this curiosity and acknowledgement really underpins pretty much all my work as a travel writer and photographer.

How did you end up in Sweden? I met my husband in 2006 while living in the US. After logging thousands upon thousands of air miles, as well as temporary stints in Stockholm, I officially moved over in 2009. It really was an intercultural, interracial, and intercontinental union in many ways. We now have two kids, so Sweden will be home for a while for many reasons, the prime one being that it’s pretty darn perfect for families.

How do you find life in Sweden? Good? Bad? Life in Sweden is what you make of it, and that’s why I also wrote this book — as a handy cultural guide that can help you integrate and deeply understand Swedish culture and its nuances. Having lived in both Nigeria and the US for extended periods of time, I appreciate living here with a young family. Overall, the quality of life is fantastic in terms of stress levels. There is enough time to dedicate to the family, as well as generous benefits, which we all contribute to through our taxes.

What’s your least favorite part about living in Sweden? I often say Sweden is the most open society run by the most private people, and I explain why in the book. Sweden does have its dark sides, and I always say the main difference is this: I can be like Oprah Winfrey if I want to as a black woman in the US, despite all the racial tensions. In Sweden, while you’ll be left in a small corner to live your happy life, trying to be a CEO or magnate like Oprah is a gargantuan task. There are people who still don’t get called for job interviews because of the names on their résumés. So overall, while I love living here, no society is perfect, and Sweden has a lot of integration issues it needs to work out.

Why did you write this book? So, the Swedish word lagom has recently emerged as the lifestyle trend of 2017 and of course, publishers are jumping on it with different lifestyle books — from recipes to interior decor.

But I needed to put a book out there that was beyond cinnamon bun recipes, because lagom is not a word that is warmly embraced or even liked by many Swedes themselves for various reasons, including the fact the ethos has over time morphed to denote average, boring, and middle-of-the-road. I detail all this in the book, as well as explain why lagom itself is inherently a good ideal as opposed to jante, which is the negative parasitic ethos that attaches itself to lagom and brings the negativity. But it is the key to understanding the Swedish mindset.

I have been living in Sweden for eight years, and writing about the country and its culture for even longer. I am also married to a Swede and have a unique vantage point of observing the culture both objectively and subjectively. So I explain lagom in a way that a foreigner fully gets it, as well as holding up a mirror to Swedes so they see how lagom is expressed in interactions with other people. It can be very difficult to write about something that’s very intrinsic to you in a way that others can fully understand without coming off as patronizing and condescending.

It really governs the Swedish psyche, and individual bubbles of lagom are definitely changing and morphing with each passing generation.

I needed to write a well-balanced cultural book that could still stand once the Scandi-trends wave washed over.

What does lagom mean and why is it important? On the surface, lagom is often described as “not too little, not too much, just right,” but it’s a lot more nuanced than that and lies closer to “optimal.” It is the key to unlocking the Swedish psyche and governs almost all aspects of life and culture in the country.

It also transforms its meaning in different contexts — from “less is more” in terms of décor and “moderation” in terms of food to “harmony and balance” in terms of society and “mindfulness” in terms of well-being.

If one were to boil down the true essence of lagom to its very core, it means striving for the ultimate balance in life that, when applied to all aspects of one’s existence, can help guide you toward operating at your most natural, effortless state.

The state and measurement of lagom mean different things to different folks. My satisfaction may vary from yours, but we can both be satisfied. Lagom represents the ultimate sweet spot or golden mean in your own life, and more importantly, it encourages you to fully operate within that sweet spot that’s just right for you.

For travelers to Sweden, how can they detect lagom at work or play? Many people often describe Swedes (in Sweden, not outside of Sweden) as reserved, inaccessible, and maybe even cold and flippant, but it’s often just lagom’s mindfulness at play. Locals will give you your space and ensure you’re not inconvenienced by their presence. So, Swedes naturally keep their distance from a place of mindfulness, not because they don’t want to be around you. (Outside of Sweden, they are quick to ditch lagom in social settings.)

At work, lagom is always looking for the best solution, so there’s a lot of planning, lots of meetings, lots of consensus, lots of teamwork, you get the gist… to make sure they arrive at the optimal, lagom solution to all problems.

For example: Many foreigners working or doing business in Sweden often lament the amount of time Swedes put into upfront planning and preparation. Agendas are triple-checked, and several meetings are called to plan every single item on said agendas. Plans can take months to put in place before moving to the next step of implementing each item on those plans.

For a culture that prides itself on efficiency, it could seem these inherent acts of zealous planning are counterproductive, and they can be seen as wasting time and resources. However, because lagom craves balance by trimming excess around its edges, it requires adequate planning. “Adequate” is measured by whatever it takes to prune irrelevance, regardless of how long it takes.

To be efficient means to perform and function in the most optimal manner possible with the least waste of time, resources, and energy. This very definition of efficiency mirrors the core of lagom.

So lagom says it is perfectly OK to spend as much time as needed to prepare ourselves and strongly develop our plans, because that’s the only way we can guarantee efficiency.

For travelers who would like to date a Swede, how can understanding lagom help them? Swedes don’t naturally divulge information or overshare, so sometimes it can be hard to even gauge or assess what’s going on in a relationship. And it’s not a culture that overly gesticulates with hands or uses flattering words, so knowing if a Swede is interested in you can be denoted by their unusually prolonged eye contact.

So, when out on a date, always have follow-up questions to keep the conversation going and to avoid your date awkwardly ending at “yes or no” answers. Because they will do so, in an effort not to overshare without being asked.

For someone going on a date expecting to be lavishly wined and dined, Swedes are generally conditioned to split their bills, to always repay favors, and to not be duty-bound to anyone, especially financially, by keeping that scale balanced. So this can come as a nasty surprise at the end of the night if you haven’t discussed it before the waiter brings out the menu.

And if you’re in relationship with a Swede and have issues or questions, just ask straight out because Swedes are very direct. And be prepared for those direct answers!

Why are people so fascinated with Sweden? I think a lot of the fascination comes from the quality of life and just how progressive the society is. Another more superficial angle has to do with physicality — from people and landscapes to interior décor and architecture. I mean, the city of Stockholm itself is absolutely stunning, and it spreads across 14 islands, which you can view from some nice vantage points in town. Sweden consistently ranks in the top 10 happiest countries, so there are clearly things Sweden is getting right.

What’s the one thing you want people to take away from your book? Lagom is a mindset that fundamentally battles stress. Having too much or too little causes stress, so lagom tries to find its balance between both with the optimal solution by reducing excess. Not perfection, but the best solution.

Think of it as a scale that always needs to be balanced. Too much or too little tips the scale sharply to one side or the other, so lagom balances itself (“just right”) by trimming excess and getting rid of all sources of stress within our control — from material things to relationships that drain us.

Lola A. Åkerström is an award-winning writer, speaker, and photographer with National Geographic Creative. She regularly contributes to high profile publications such as AFAR, the BBC, The Guardian, Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, and National Geographic Traveler. Lola is also the editor of Slow Travel Stockholm, an online magazine dedicated to exploring Sweden’s capital city in depth. She lives in Stockholm and blogs at Geotraveler’s Niche. You can pick up a copy of her book on Amazon. (It’s really interesting and I highly recommend it!)

The post Living Lagom in Sweden: An Interview With Lola Akerstrom appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

[tonxstark]

Macho game, on the internet ??

This is actually the 145th original of Xianren JUMP 1 My childhood is a story lingering with toilet literature. You can find traces of my creation in every wall of the school toilet. The protagonist is normally the foreign language teacher I hate the most. He continually taught me some tough English, and I always suspected he tried too hard. When I grew up, I read Mr. Chuan's Twitter to confirm this. Isn't the English of the President of america the same? Top of the limit of the English world reaches this level. Needless to say, I realized later on that the value of learning English lies in finding him grammatical errors. In lots of years of literary creation, I did not encounter any difficulties. The only trouble is that I don't possess time and energy to play games. During the past, when I just knew more easily, I could still have a hardcore stand-alone for 3 hours prior to going to bed. Later, We double-opened Pinterest, and I could only take the time to purchase two pesticides and chicken, and I would occasionally sigh easily viewed my accounts with full pores and skin and inscriptions. Before I started to tinker with station B this past year, I had to cut all the game time. Except on weekends, I could only play idle mobile video games, and the reason is really boring-for a apparently high-producing sow, in fact, there is absolutely no one that can let me play with paper while smashing the liver. People, there is no delay in the game. Yes, I'm discussing swords and expeditions. 2 The sword and the expedition are burning, and the fire is really a little unusual. A new public beta mobile sport has been on the very best 3 of the IOS best-seller listing for just two consecutive months, eating poultry and pesticides makes the chrysanthemum tremble. I am afraid that if I'm not careful, I will give out an intoxicating fragrance. Lots of people were caught away guard by the fire of sword and expedition. Right now when Tencent and NetEase dominate the mobile game market, only the crazy cooking strength of the two-dimensional component to the document man's wife can barely support one or two explosions and struggle against it, or it is a re-enactment of the terminal game IP mobile game a decade ago. Stable gold absorption. Making money is so boring. The complete Chinese mobile online game market has been without interesting waves for too much time. Five or six years ago, the era when thousands of cellular game groups of thousands of heroes in troubled occasions were effective, all publishers had been looking for products and teams. Nobody would have believed that Lilith, who utilized to create her debut with the legendary dark equine of Dota, would usher in her 2nd spring after a few years of dormancy. Lots of people cannot understand the sword and the fire of expedition. The overall game screen looks unremarkable, revealing a staleness in the popular flat UI. Placing apart the idle gameplay, Sword and Expedition seems to be at best two or three generations behind the current trend of aged card game primary. The character development is a serious pit visible to the naked eye, revealing an aura of cheating and running, and the players who've been washed again and again by the domestic Krypton gold mobile game have always been developed to run away with their noses while watching VIP system. Knee-jerk reflex. But Sword and Expedition continues to be on fire. 3 Why did the sword and the expedition fire? Many people can tell the answer making use of their eyes closed: because the announcement is normally ready to spend money. The advertisement of Sword and Expedition has been spread since November, and following the public beta in January, it has spread over the sky, land, and air without dead ends. Many people see the spokesperson Luo Zhixiang more often than their very own mother. Binance Right down to Douyin Kuaishou, around top KOL, Bao Yuan is really a master performer, all APPs get turns to open the screen, and also the legendary account of GQ Labs is also a lover of Sword and Expedition. In the last second, I worked on Weibo, and in the next second, he repeatedly jumped across Kuaishou Douyin at Station B. You can also see his primary video clips and ghost music on the website where you find out about sow postpartum treatment. This kind of non-lifeless corner private sale has produced mobile game advertisements from the era of silly dicks once talked about by people to the era of coin throwing. It's not that I've in no way seen mobile sport ads brainwashing the screen, but it is the first time that I've gotten this battle. "Sword and Expedition" was suggested by the homepage of various channels It really is conservatively estimated that the marketing cost of Sword and Expedition inside the initial month is a lot more than 300 million yuan. It has caught up with the yearly turnover of many game companies. Banknote capability is definitely the core competitiveness. After the events at the beginning of the year, everyone's living conditions are specific. The entire online entertainment sector has experienced a spurt of growth, and video games are usually no exception. What the marketplace blowout brings is a mixture of seafood and dragons. Everyone wants to catch a wave. Then why just sword and expedition can perform it. The answer is easy. During the past, no enterprise dared to spend so much cash on advertising. You imagine that throwing money is just throwing coins, and the influencing causes of it are actually very complicated. The technical content of throwing money is quite high, and the difference between the actuary and the Kaizi is 10,000 in the market. Everyone inside the mobile sport industry opens their mouths. DAU ARPU ROI CPI, one by one, is better than anyone else. At first glance, it is a sport item, but behind this is a total data analysis system. Just how much a consumer will probably be worth, and how much money can be paid back are known. It's another issue if the amount of money goes out and not collected. If it were not for 100% confidence in the product, no company may have this type of large budget. The quantity will be more expensive as it sells. Sword and Expedition has already been continuously and intensively screened for just two months. It is really rich. Actually, the reverse also shows that Lilith really has confidence in her own products. Otherwise, no sum of money will make sense. 4 Delivery and product quality participate in the relationship among 0 and 1. Don't think about it. The merchandise can stand, that is, there is 1 ahead. And the placement is the 0 behind. If there is zero 1, how many 0s is a 0, without the real value. When there is zero 0, there is only 1 1, that would be very lonely. Swords and Expeditions isn't just the saturation announcement, the merchandise itself actually has a deep doorway, and the art style of cup painting is a big plus point. Before the national service went live, the overall game had been operating overseas for a year, also it had the highest income from domestic cellular games overseas. Community content and user portraits accumulated overseas also provide precise model guidelines for domestic publicity strategies. The accumulation of overseas operations in advance isn't only this content of the game version, but has actually fully verified the payment style of the complete game and the player's recognition of the gameplay. This is a base for Lilith's daring to saturate domestic investment decision. The gameplay appears to be outdated, but in fact the growth team, because the original team of Dota Legends, based on the six years of experience accumulated in this former national mobile game, it brings a very powerful detailed experience and a very strategic strategy. Solid, is one of the expert shot. After merging and putting the gameplay, a chemical reaction occurs even more. Now there certainly are a lot of people like me who prefer to play video games but don't have fun with games. There are a lot of tales on the Internet, that may satisfy these people's pursuit of entertainment and offer in-depth strategic expertise. , Became the G point that Sword and Expedition precisely hit. 5 Prior to the upgrade of popular cellular phone configurations and the popularization of 4G, probably the most profound feeling of every player from the age of barbaric growth of online flash games should be the immaturity of the entire market. There are, or even a few, excellent functions. With regards to absolute number, the domestic manufacturing does not also lag behind the top studios in European countries, America, Japan and South Korea. However in those yrs, many small companions who only found games in their eyes were puzzled, exactly why most of the excellent games are usually basically rare inside the domestic market, whether they are usually imported or first products, whatever the player's evaluation of good or poor, and also some game popularity God, the collective retention of paying gamers is helpless. Internal personnel can't control it, the censorship mechanism is not set up, the piracy of personal servers is certainly prevalent, and also the in-game studio has caused the game ecology to collapse. All kinds of incredible issues have existed. In short, the market is immature, the producers are immature, the gamers are immature, and any facet of immaturity or small twists and turns could make a magical work which may be sold for ten years to end because of the cask principle. During the avalanche, every snowflake is usually bravely breaking in to the world. It had been not until slowly that everything gradually matured, and the more cruel information came. It had been not that the mobile game was born with the golden key to the finish game. Many online game manufacturers that are too past due to transform or have no strength to consume the remaining market surplus are falling at a fork in their destiny, which is regarded as a crime of nonwar. Many people remain clamoring that the cellular terminal is really a challenge and counterattack to the PC terminal. The target fact is that the decline of the complete PC terminal shows an irreversible decline across the entire development curve. The player pioneers took an iron pot from the sky and hit it on the top of the Duanyou group. The type that can not be deducted. Looking deeper by means of the glass at the rear of games and technologies, this is even determined by the state of life of everyone throughout the age. The economic foundation determines the superstructure. The development of the Internet has more and more eliminated enough time and space barriers to information dissemination, and normally it has blurred the sense of boundaries between function and life. Day and night are no longer the "spiritual globe" and "material assurance" of the Chu River and Han realms, so it must be a faster pace of life, more fragmented period, and a minority of people in modern society who can control their own destiny, let alone work and rest. Time, in any case, the moon established every day and the rise of the very next day won't be suspended. So for almost all people who have simply no ability to change the guidelines, they do not have the right to state NO with their lifestyles, and at most try to modification their positions when they are knocked down, so as not to make themselves less painful. Unless you have period, then choose the placement course that doesn't take a lot of time. Get up and click, take a go through the pit, check out the results before going to bed, and think about how long the liver can last when time is definitely empty. There will be more difficult progress waiting. Your luck. And the symbolic meaning of the achievement after reaching the difficult degree is higher than the practical meaning of attribute worth or core experience. Easily create a flow of expertise. 6 Liver strength revolves, krypton revolves, while providing emotional satisfaction and entertainment worth for the majority of gamers, how to balance the game connection with deep celebration and white prostitution may be the most comprehensive quality check of the current F2P cell phone game. The really hard place is really difficult, and the soft place should make everyone feel soft and comfortable. This is what many new video game manufacturers must practice, and it is also the place where Lilith Games has continually done well. If the market may be the only criterion for quality inspection, then the sword and expedition that returns from overseas to export to domestic product sales can be reported to be the pacesetter of the complete market. Talking about last. The self-cultivation of a fantastic online game must have an art style that may impress most people initially. Whether it's pretty or punk technology fiction, the initial step is to make the eyeballs ready to read. Especially manufacturers that concentrate on the worldwide marketplace, in a way, need to spend more believed, his battlefield isn't just a nation and region. Cut the cash of domestic gamers to visit the outside world, or get the recognition and recharge of worldwide players before returning to the homeland. That is Lilith's different answer in comparison to many big producers. Which decision is more complex? Everyone provides their own answers. Then there is a group of gameplay construction, strategic depth, long-term operation, etc. from front to back to match the primary product points. The configuration can be broad, and nothing can be bad, nonetheless it doesn't have to be precise. Pursuing the best in everything often means nothing. In the end, the sport is actually a commodity. Since it is a commodity, it's important to pursue price performance and respect ROI. Passing ZZ is definitely correct, unless you are usually aiming at individuals who like to visit the road and shout slogans, like small pets, Islam, vegetarians, gays, dark feminists, that's really horrible. People and video games are also a process of choosing each other. It isn't always for the screen to be indifferent to the severe, nor is it necessarily the two extremes of prostitutes or giants. If online games must have a self-cultivation book, so should gamers. Actual punk players choose only the ones that are the most suitable for them. Individual preferences, economic conditions, and living conditions. To put it bluntly, every game that everyone chooses is tantamount to a confrontation with lifestyle. 7 The mutual choice between video game producers and players is essentially a number of cyclical games, continuously optimized commercial mutual battles. Keeping up with the smart enough manufacturers associated with the changing times, he actually needs to know very well what most gamers want in this particular era and exactly what probably the most cost-effective choices they can make. Then just give them something, don't actually spill too much, just right. I don't think there is anything bad with this particular. Many things ought to be broken aside and shattered. In reality, true villains are continually cuter than hypocrites. Similar to the emergence of tens of vast amounts of subsidies, it really pierced the underpants of the e-commerce industry that have been slightly raised. The rise of mobile games like Sword and Expedition is only the necessity for such a huge specific attribute on the market. In case you are rational good enough to obtain out of your viewpoint of the few games before you, check out the top-sharing games in the marketplace that take turns dominating the search positions, and then get yourself a deeper understanding of who is spending money on which heart requirements. You may even have got a glimpse The pulse of the days. When hard-primary stand-alone machines are released, behind them are a large number of players that are keen on video games and waiting to be fed. When all sorts of online games are popular, there are always a large numbers of those who have a solid demand for another kind of life and more than enough free time. When it comes to casual and idle games that can win this type of large market, it is very clear that behind the moments are the huge demands of the times. The overall game at the top of the marketplace is similar to flowing water, in fact it is individual beings after all. Probably the most advanced products are games that understand people, adjust to them, and actively make changes to meet the needs of the changing times. Click to learn the original text experience The hottest placed mobile game right now **** Fairy Jump Long press the BlockchainLink about the still left to follow! You will feel a soul that frees yourself And every write-up includes a surprise ----------------------- Thank you for reading through. Below is really a link button for the lucky draw. The lottery will undoubtedly be drawn at 19:00 on March 31st, totaling 6,666 yuan, and 2020 reddish colored envelopes. Many thanks for the support. Thank you for reading, viewing and forwarding at all times. Click on me to take part in the lucky draw! Click me to participate in the fortunate draw! Click to learn the initial text and become a macho

[gethealthy18-blog]

298: Getting Back to Happy With Marc and Angel Chernoff

New Post has been published on https://healingawerness.com/news/298-getting-back-to-happy-with-marc-and-angel-chernoff/

298: Getting Back to Happy With Marc and Angel Chernoff

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Today’s podcast is sponsored by one of my favorite companies… Four Sigmatic. I love all of their delicious coffees, teas and elixirs and they are such a part of my daily routine that I can’t even remember the last time a day went by when I didn’t consume at least one of their products. With both caffeine free and naturally caffeinated options like coffee and matcha combined with superfood mushrooms like chaga, cordyceps and reishi. Their drinks are functional and delicious and I notice a difference when I don’t drink them. My normal routine is to drink coffee with Lions Mane in the morning, cordyceps or chaga while I work during the day and reishi to wind down at night. My kids also love the reishi cocoa and it helps them sleep better. Check out all of their products and save 15% on any order with the code wellnessmama at foursigmatic.com/wellnessmama

Katie: Hello and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I’m here today with Marc and Angel Chernoff who are “The New York Times” bestselling authors of the book, “Getting Back to Happy” and the creators of Marc and Angel Hack Life which was recognized by Forbes as one of the most popular personal development blogs. They also authored “1000 Little Things That Happy Successful People Do Differently.” Through their writing, coaching, and event, they have helped thousands of people over the last decade with proven strategies for getting unstuck in order to find lasting happiness and success.

And they especially work with people who are going through tough phases and transitions of life including relationship changes, the loss of a loved one, job changes, or just depression or having trouble working through some of those phases of life. So I hope that you will enjoy this episode as much as I do.

Marc and Angel, welcome. Thank you guys so much for being here. And I don’t feel I can start with an intro like that without jumping into the questions by asking to hear your story. I know firsthand that you have a pretty amazing one. So let’s start off with some background. What is your story and how did you become what you are today?

Marc: So our story actually started when we were in our late 20s. At this point in our lives, we had no investment in personal development, self-improvement, looking into the mindset tools that were necessary to live a healthy life. And half the reason that was is simply because up until that point, we had had pretty good lives, right? We didn’t have anything major happen to us that was tragic. You know, people had passed, certainly, but they were grandparents. And then we ran into this very difficult season in our lives. It started when Angel’s older brother, Todd, died by suicide.

Just a few short weeks after that event, we lost our mutual best friend, Josh, to a heart attack at the age of 27. It was driven by an asthma attack and up to that point, he had never had a difficult asthma attack, never had it like a big asthma attack. It was always just small things and so we didn’t even realize that was a challenge for him. And this was a downturn in the economy. So, you know, we’re talking, this is the ’07-’08 timeframe. Both of us lost our jobs. We were struggling financially, we were struggling emotionally, we didn’t know how to cope with the loss that we were dealing with, the grief that surrounded it.

It slowly spiraled into mild to moderate depression for both of us and we started arguing as a couple. We were a newly married couple, married a few years at that point, and started basically lashing out at each other rather than having the loving and supportive conversations that we needed to have. We were leveraging alcohol and distractions like binge watching television to escape and bypass everything that we were dealing with, the emotions that were unsettling. And so luckily enough, we were both willing to see therapists. Through that therapy, we were basically urged to do some self-study as well. And so we started reading both Eastern philosophy and Christian philosophy.

So the Byron Katie’s and the Wayne Dyer’s of the world as an example. And we started really dialing into the tools that were necessary. We realized that we were at this point in our lives where the things that we were doing on a daily basis were not serving us. And so we started listening to the therapists, we started listening to what we were reading, and we started practicing. We actually started our website as a public accountability channel to hold ourselves accountable to what we were learning. And the communication opened up from there and it’s a big black box between then and now, but we basically dedicated ourselves to overcoming this and to sharing the struggle that we were going through to get to a better place.

Every single step, everything that we did was difficult and we put it out there very vulnerably and honestly and said like, “This is what we’re going through and here’s what we’re doing,” on our blog, marcandangel.com. Like, here’s what we’re doing to step through this. And we weren’t really writing for anyone but ourselves, but it was a tool that helped us move forward. So you fast-forward many years and that journey ultimately led us to write books about our story and the tools that we had leveraged to step through it and we moved into coaching and here we are today, which truly is a blessing to be here.

Katie: I feel like that’s such a great illustration though, because maybe that’s one of the misconceptions in today’s world, I think. In my own life as well, I know that some of my greatest life transitions and greatest accomplishments have come from some of the hardest times and I think so often like you guys in the beginning, it’s easy to try to escape those or should try to get away. So what was the mindset or what shifted? Like was there a pivotal time or lightning bolt moment or something that really made you guys make that shift from like we’re just gonna binge watch Netflix and drink to let’s change our lives?

Angel: I think we were just at a point where it was like, you know, is it always gonna be like this? Like, is it always gonna be where I’m just feeling sad and I can’t get out of bed. We got to a point where it’s like, “Okay, we have to change.” Like we have to make the change. We have to start doing things differently if we want to feel differently. And so I think it was just we got to a point where we had to take control over how we were feeling and how we were reacting.

Marc: Yeah. It wasn’t a one big, catastrophic moment. I think sometimes that’s a misconception in our lives. We get into that depressed state or we fail because of one catastrophic moment. And oftentimes, it’s all the little things that we’re doing or not doing. And so we sort of caught ourselves, and with help, of course. Again, I mean we weren’t doing it by ourselves but we caught ourselves and we realized like the things that we are doing on a daily basis, yes, there are these big things that happened to us, but all the little things that we’ve done since those moments have not been serving us. In fact, they’ve been taking us further away from where we wanna be.

And it was just sitting down long enough to realize that and realize that if we, you know, we can’t change the big things that happen but we can change all these little things we’re doing on a daily basis and if we do so, maybe there’s hope, right? And that was the journey we started on, like the daily ritual of like let’s make these small shifts. And they’re hard. I mean it’s easy to say like, “Yeah, I’m gonna make this change,” but to actually be consistent about it daily, especially when you’re struggling emotionally, when you’re dealing with depression, even the small shifts are very hard.

Angel: Yeah, I mean I think when you’re in a season of pain and struggle, I think it’s really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But down the road, you’re able to look back and see how much growth came from that and how…if you’re living an easy, comfortable life, you’re not able to see the opportunities and the growth possible but it really does take those seasons and those periods of struggle to help you grow and to help you see opportunities.

Katie: So how long of a process was that for you guys? Once you started that transition, was it, I’m guessing not an overnight success. How long did it take before you really started seeing the tangible changes in your own life?

Marc: It’s been years. So you’re talking about the early 2007 timeframe where we started struggling and that period of time lasted a couple of years of like truly struggling, truly dealing with depression, truly being at odds with each other as a married couple living under one roof. And again, speaking to each other in a way that was very defensive as opposed to supportive. So we started doing the coaching at the end of 2012. So you’re talking about a five-year timeframe where we started stepping more into ourselves and realizing that us continuing to share our story. And the coaching initially was completely free.

We were basically running like an online support group where we were saying, “Hey, rather than this blog just being about us, let’s share your story as well. Because people were just…they were writing us and saying, “Hey, like what you’re sharing here, I know you’re still stepping through this but it’s really helping me. And let me tell you about something that’s going on in my life. What do you think of this?” So it was really like five years later that we started writing about others more consistently and what they were going through and kind of wrapping our experiences around their experiences. So yeah, I mean I would say that it was probably roughly five years of a transition between being at rock bottom to being at a place where we felt we could serve others with what we have learned from going through it.

Katie: Wow, yeah, that makes sense, that it would take a while for those things to really like take hold in your own life and then now that you are able to pass those on to other people. You touched on something I think that’s really key to not just this but to whether it be nutrition changes, any change in life, which is that consistency and sticking with it, especially when you don’t want to. And I deal with that more from the side of nutrition and sticking with dietary changes in my background. It sounds like you guys deal with that with people now in coaching. So I’m curious if you have any strategies or practical ways that people can learn to be more consistent because I find, even in my own life, that is perhaps the biggest struggle. We all often have an idea of what we should be doing but that daily consistency is often the biggest battle.

Angel: I completely agree. I mean making it a ritual to where it’s a part of your life and not just something, hey, I’m gonna hold on to for a week or a couple of weeks or do this diet. But yeah, making it a ritual and making it a part of who you are and what you do. And I think one of the keys that’s really helped us is making the activity so small initially that it’s silly not to do. So like, for example, if you wanted to run every day and running a mile is tough, well, maybe just run around the block. It doesn’t have to be…

Marc: Or even walk.

Angel: Yeah, or even walk. It doesn’t have to be this big goal that we have to do initially, but start small. And start so small that it seems silly, that this is what you’re doing but you wanna stay consistent with it. So do it for a month and then add on to it and then do it, so then it’s just part of who you are, just like brushing your teeth, right? You brush your teeth in the morning when you wake up. You don’t have to think about that, you just do it. So breaking down these habits and these rituals so you can do them consistently and it seems silly that you wanna do it.

Marc: Yeah. And another… I mean, again, that’s great advice that we so often, we hear and we don’t do it. I mean, like Angel said, it can be something small, like if you’re waking up earlier in the morning and 10 minutes earlier is too much, do 2 minutes earlier. And do that consistently for a few weeks before you shift it. I mean, it sounds silly, like what’s two minutes gonna do, but two minutes is gonna get you to four minutes and four minutes is gonna get you to six minutes. I mean it’s just that philosophy. It’s something that we intellectually understand but emotionally in the morning when that alarm goes off, we don’t wanna wake up, even so, right?

So we’ve gotta ease ourselves into any change that we’re gonna make. I mean that philosophy is obviously universally applicable in our lives, whether you’re dealing with nutrition, whether you’re dealing with sleep, whether you’re dealing with habits that are gonna help you think better and ultimately live better.

Angel: Yeah. And I think it’s important to know, especially with personal growth, is like you’re never at a point where you’re above this or like you don’t have to work on yourself and you don’t have to practice techniques and mindset tricks. I mean, I think we’re constantly growing and we’re a working progress. So I don’t think it ever gets to a point where you’re like, “Oh, I got this. I’ve mastered this.” It’s always challenging. It’s always hard, but it’s sticking with it and doing the work.

Marc: Right. I mean, we’re multifaceted human beings. I mean, we could have the health thing really down but the relationship thing is falling apart. And even though the same kind of rituals and consistency that you would apply to like your own personal health would be very applicable to nurturing another human being in another relationship and yet somehow, that goes over our head. So yeah, we’re never above it and we have to address it in little chunks. I think another way to address it in little chunks, too, is something as simple as kind of you don’t break the chain calendar where you have like a visual wall calendar where you can see the whole year in one shot or at least a full month in one shot, but a whole year is what we have here.

And we tend to just check off our rituals. So if like one of my rituals is like every day, I’m like, “Marc, have I spent one hour of uninterrupted time with your son?” I mean, that’s something that no matter what’s going on, and a lot of days, it’s more than that but I wanna make sure that the very least is that. And so I have a wall calendar, I literally every day write a check through it when I’ve completed that. I make sure that that’s done in my life. And again, many times, it’s more time than that but I think visually, I’ll run into that busy day where I feel like I’ve got business things, I’ve got client things, I’ve got all these things and I’ll look at that calendar and I’m like, “You know what, I have gone three months without breaking that chain. I’m not gonna start today.” So it’s just a visual reminder of like I’m gonna continue my ritual. And I think that can be applied to any ritual that we want to address in our lives.

Katie: That makes sense. And I love that of starting so small that even seems silly. I feel like that’s kind of the antidote to maybe like New Year’s syndrome where we all make these huge, lofty goals and then we’re trying to like run a marathon, and eat super clean, and do all these things all at once and then it lasts for five days and then you just can’t sustain that because you’re trying to completely overhaul your entire life in one week whereas like small changes probably actually have you yearning to add more on in like I can run a little bit more, I can wake up a little bit earlier because you’re not trying to make such a drastic change all at once.

And I love that you brought up relationships because I think, at least from my audience, from hearing about it and from friends, this seems to be a really big topic right now. I think a lot of people’s relationships are in kind of tough transitioning times right now. And I know that you said at the beginning that you guys had a rough patch in your marriage early on as well. So I’m curious, from your own experience and then now from working with all these thousands of people, if you have some strategies that couples can use, and that we could even potentially use with our children, but especially couples, to make relationship stronger.

Angel: Yeah. I mean, communication is key. We’ve all heard that time and time again but I think where I was falling short was I was keeping my feelings inside or expecting him to know how I was feeling and not explaining how I was feeling, what I was going through, and how I was interpreting things like, “Hey, when you do this or say this, I feel this way.” The same thing is true, you know, we have a five-year-old son named Matt and it’s like explaining to him rather than just saying, “Hey, don’t do that,” but communicating like, hey, this is why you can’t do that or you can’t eat that because we have to do this first or, you know, I’m trying to help keep your mind and your body healthy and this is how I can help.

And so I think communication is huge. And so it’s just evaluating how you’re communicating and how…are you assuming they know what you’re thinking, you know, where are you falling short on that spectrum in terms of communication in relationships?

Marc: Yeah. And not taking things personally especially when there’s stress and there’s grief and there’s loss and you’re dealing with big things, but even the small things. I mean, we all see things, like Angel just said, differently. We can all go through a similar experience and interpret it differently and have different understandings of it and even be able to cope with it in different ways. And so a lot of times, especially in family dynamics, it’s tough when you have somebody in your life who is naysaying the thing that you’re trying to accomplish and kind of talking down to you about your dreams or about…even about a tough situation. They make it sound like it’s no big deal.

You’ve gotta keep things in perspective, which is tough to do. And so, for instance, if you’re trying to…if you got some lofty goal that you’re going after and you have, let’s say, your mom or dad or sister or brother naysaying this goal of yours like that’s not worth it, it’s too risky, you can’t do it, there’s two questions you have to ask yourself. One is, “Has this person walked the path before me? Do they really understand what I’m doing?” If the answer is yes, then maybe it’s worth opening your ears and listening.

But oftentimes, the answer is no. Oftentimes, the answer is they’re just naysaying you because they’re scared for you. They’re fearful that you’re gonna hurt yourself. They’re fearful that you’re gonna fail. They themselves wouldn’t do the thing that you’re doing. They can’t put themselves in that situation. So you’ve gotta give yourself that perspective and realize that oftentimes, the reason they’re naysaying you is because they don’t believe in themselves. They don’t understand it the way you understand it. And so that’s an important thing.

And then you really have to ask yourself how important it is to you, like do you need everyone’s validation? And that’s tough because we’re social creatures, but there’s a lot of things that we do in our lives where again, we take things personally. We lean on others for the answers and a lot of times, we need to lean more on ourselves for those answers. We don’t need to be arguing with a spouse, we don’t need to be arguing with mom or dad or whoever. We need to look a little bit more to ourselves for the support that we need to take the next step. So it’s definitely a combination of both, and I agree with Angel that the communication once you’re ready to engage is important. You’ve gotta be patient, you’ve gotta be open, but you can’t be hanging on every word and taking everything so personally.

Katie: Do you guys have any rituals specifically related to your own marriage and to your relationship there?

Marc: We have tons of rituals.

Angel: I mean, one main one that just comes to mind is we definitely try not to go to bed angry. We talk whatever we need to get off our chest before we go to bed so that when we go to bed, when we wake up in the morning, we don’t have that resentment boiling in us. So we definitely try to communicate any unresolved issues before we go to bed.

Marc: Yeah, yeah. And we make the time to do that. So Angel and I have this ritual of taking a long walk on the beach and it’s only once every two weeks, but that’s enough. It’s like an hour and a half walk and it’s time that is not business. It’s not even personal. It’s time that’s just sort of there if there’s anything to say, and there to just enjoy each other’s company if there’s not. And so it’s a great time once every two weeks, like clockwork, to give us the opportunity to get anything that’s been unresolved, anything that…like any ideas. And it can be positive or negative, right?

Any ideas that we’ve had, like just extra stuff. And I think a lot of couples, and we were just like that, we didn’t have that extra time. We’d try to do date night and we’d force that or we’d be doing business. Angel and I are unique in that we do a lot of business and work together, client work together. But we didn’t have that kind of just time that was there for whatever, just kind of like space that was allowed to be whatever it was where new ideas and interesting conversations could arise. And I think that’s where a lot of communication, that’s where we resolve a lot through that ritual.

Angel: Yeah. I think it’s important to create that space where you can be in each other’s presence. It doesn’t have to be date night or something, but it’s also not talking about the kids or talking about work or shuffling things around and hashing out who’s responsible for what but just providing that space where you can be with each other to have the conversation about whatever needs to happen. I mean we’re very fortunate that after we drop our son off at school in the morning, we go to the gym and we work out together. So it’s like while we’re working out, if things come up, we’ll talk about them. That’s just time where we’re not forced to talk about anything, we don’t have a to-do list. We’re working out but we’re there together, so if things come up, we can talk about it right then and there.

Marc: Yeah, you’re right. That’s very similar to the walk. The workouts in the gym, we’re not always right next to each other but you’re right, same kind of situation for sure. So it’s a long way of saying create space for each other. Create space with each other without an agenda where great ideas and important conversations can surface.

Katie: I love that, like creating those small times makes probably such a huge difference. You guys have a New York Times bestseller, “Getting Back to Happy,” your first book, and that’s what you guys are kind of known for. I know I’ve seen you in the media for that many, many times and I hear from a lot of people who are working through anxiety and depression right now and it seems like either it’s on the rise or I’m hearing from a lot more people who have it. And so I’m curious for people who are in that phase, I know you’ve touched on it a little bit, but what are some of the specific things that people can do if they are there, whether it be lifestyle adjustments or mental shifts, to start those baby steps of moving out of that?

Marc: Yeah. We have touched on a little bit. I tell you one thing without a doubt, you know, the mind and the body are intrinsically connected and just getting your body moving if you’re not, getting yourself out of the house, but generally getting some level of exercise every single day is so vitally important when you’re in that phase. When the anxiety is high, when the depression is kind of bringing that dark cloud over your head, when you don’t see a way out and you just kind of feel like you’re on that treadmill, changing your environment is so important. I would highly recommend if you’re exercising, like the walk is a great way of doing it.

In fact, the first ritual we ever started was a walk down a boardwalk in San Diego in a neighborhood called Pacific Beach. That’s where we were living at the time when this season really hit heavy for us. And the first ritual, and it was through therapy that we came up with this idea is, we said, we need to break our cycle and that was literally the routine of our day. And so we made a pact to start leaving the house together. And again, we were not on speaking terms at this point. So we were very much at odds with each other, but we were living under the same roof and so that was the positive. And we decided we’ll leave every single day at noon for a walk down the boardwalk. It’ll be about a 35-minute walk down and back.

And when we get to the end, we’ll sit on this little grassy space and just share space with each other. Like that’s it. We don’t have to force conversation. We’ll just be in each other’s presence. And so we did that. And it was about a month of doing that. Now we’re getting exercise, we’re breaking up the routine, we’re out of the house, we’re not next to the alcohol, not next to the distractions that were unhealthy and we’re doing this thing where like we’re out there. And naturally, what did that do, is it gave us the space to have the conversations we needed to have. Not immediately, but about a month down the road is where the conversations came from.

And ultimately, a lot of the books that we read that we started writing about on marcandangel.com were done on that little green space at the end, which is a little green space off of Sail Bay in San Diego. So it’s a little bit of our story but that’s something like just breaking your cycle, getting outside, like combining the exercise with changing your environment when you’re in the thick of things can be so powerful.

Angel: And I mean change is extremely difficult as we all know, whether it’s a lifestyle change, a relationship change. When you are changing what your normal is, it can be extremely difficult. And so I think it’s important to accept what is, like to have that clarity of like controlling what you can control but also accepting the circumstances that you can’t control and just being present and letting go of being able to control things and manipulate things and just saying, “Okay, what is it that I can control? What can I not control?” And providing that space to be present and to accept where you are in this moment.

Katie: I think that’s huge. And that’s something I’ve recently in the last couple of years really gotten into reading a lot of stoicism back from Marcus Aurelius meditations all the way to some of the modern ones. And I think that’s, for me, been one of the most pivotal shifts in my own life is letting go of the things we can’t control because I’m self-admitted, very type A and probably a little bit OCD. And for a lot of years, I would try to control all the variables in my life and make sure everyone was happy and juggle everything. And making that shift into realizing what are the things we can actually control and the main one I read, in high school, I read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” and I love so much his idea that even when everything else is taken away, we still have control over our own attitude and how we respond to situations.

And I think that’s actually, for me, at least the perfect place to start because that’s the one thing we are always perfectly in control over and can have ripple effects into the rest of our lives and our relationships if we learn to master our own attitude and our own response to things. So I’m curious, have you guys read any stoicism as part of your journey or has that been part of something you’ve come across?

Marc: No. “Man’s Search for Meaning” is a book I read many years ago and loved it. It’s definitely on the top of my list. Yeah. I think a lot of the principles of Eastern philosophy which Angel and I resonate with deeply, I mean we’re Christians, you know, our son goes to a Catholic school and yet we resonate deeply with Eastern philosophy as well. And I think it’s great to leverage all of that for your benefit and for the benefit of those around you. But I think a lot of that ties into stoicism, ties into this idea of letting go, of being very present, realizing that you can only control the battles of today. It’s when you are obsessing over the battles of yesterday and tomorrow that life gets overly complicated, and in some cases, impossible to deal with.

And so, dialing that back and bringing yourself back to this idea that life isn’t easy, right? I mean it can be a very difficult thing and we must accept that and embrace that in the present. That is the only way we’re gonna be able to take the next step, holding on to the idea that it should be different, holding on the idea that we need something other than what we have, is not gonna put us in a position to step forward.

Angel: And I’m very much like you, you know, type A personality. I like control. I like to control. I like to control everything. I like to plan things, I like to have an itinerary, and I like to, you know, even as far as relationships go and people, I think they should act a certain way or I should tell them when they should do things differently. And so that’s been a struggle for me too. Just to give you an example, a couple of years ago, we were recording the audio version of our book, “Getting Back to Happy” and we’re in the studio and there’s a director and a producer. So there’s someone listening in telling you when you need to articulate a word differently or change your tone. And I thought it was my job to tell Marc when I thought he needed to read something again or if he could have done it better and yeah, we had someone that was hired to tell us…

Marc: From Penguin.

Angel: …from Penguin, to tell us when we should reread it or change it or do this. In my head, I thought, “Oh, I need to tell Marc he should read that over. He could do that better.” And it’s like I really had to tell myself, it is not my job. And in that specific situation, it really wasn’t my job. There was a whole another person that was being paid to tell Marc when he should do it differently or if it was fine. And so that was eye-opening for me to realize that I think it’s my job to point things out to other people or if I think they should be doing it my way. And so it was a real eye-opener and that mantra, I keep in my head, like it is not my job. It is not my job to tell other people this or to point this out. It is not my…

Marc: Or to hold on to control, right? Because…

Angel: Yeah. I just need to control myself and worry about myself and worry about my abilities and not be so quick to point it out in other people or to think they should do things differently because I don’t have control over them and it’s not my job. It is not my job to worry about others and what they’re doing.

Marc: And that’s made you more supportive, which is interesting. The interesting part of that is by letting go of the need to control a situation, or the need to be right. In turn, you become more compassionate and you become in more service of this other person. So it doesn’t mean you’re no longer helping the people around you or not making great suggestions but you’re doing so in a way that doesn’t seem like an attack. It’s just fascinating, like it’s those little shifts that we make that make all the difference in the world.

Angel: But again, it’s constant learning. Like this just happened recently where I was like, it is not my job. Like repeat that to myself, it is not my job.

Katie: I love that. I’m right there with you. That’s a good one for me to keep in mind as well. You mentioned your son and you’ve mentioned a couple of times. And so I’d love to kind of go down the road a little bit of how can we foster these healthy mindsets in our kids from a young age because I think, for me, my story, it was a health journey where I got really sick with autoimmune disease and then researched my way out of it and eventually got better but as a mom, it’s very important to me to give my kids a really solid health foundation so that hopefully, they never have to face the things I faced.

Even though I’m so glad that I did have those challenges and I overcame them and they’ve been a huge part of my own journey, I don’t want my kids to have to go through that unless they really should have something in their life that happens that causes it like I did. So I’m curious, from the work that you guys do and now with your own son, how do you put things in place to give him a really healthy mindset from an early age?

Marc: I think presence is everything. I think Angel would agree with that. I mentioned that hour literally being on my wall calendar. It’s like a ritual that’s non-negotiable. And like oftentimes, it’s at least three hours a day. Angel and I spend a lot of time with him. We read with him, we do a lot of healthy things, but more importantly, we try to set the example. So it’s like when we talk about health, we wanna be out there on the playground with him. I think that’s a noticeable…something noticeable that we do differently. So we live in a little neighborhood in Jupiter, Florida. It’s a suburban neighborhood. Angel and I are often the only parents out on that playground actively playing with our children.

And I’m not saying anything bad about anyone else, but I’m saying it’s noticeable. We’re out there throwing the ball, running around, playing tag, we’re there, we’re in it. And it’s a small example of how we see our role as parents. You have to be there and you have to be in it, not just in your business but you have to be in the things that they’re interested in too. Because when you’re there and you’re a parent and yet you’re there to play and you’re there to engage, if you’re there for the fun times, when it gets more serious and the topics get more serious, they’re gonna notice, hey, they’ve sort of been here with me, listening to me, explaining things to me during all these other times that were great, it’s time for me to listen to my parents too.

You can’t only show up when it’s instruction time, I guess is what I’m trying to say. You’ve gotta be more present, you’ve gotta be more engaged, you’ve gotta be a parent and a friend. You’ve gotta have that relationship with your child. And that’s something that Angel and I practice daily and relentlessly and it’s a blessing.

Angel: Yeah. And I mean mental and emotional, helping him in that way, that’s tough because as a child, they’re learning how to react to their emotions, how to control their emotions. And so I think it’s good for Matt to see us have a disagreement and then we talk about it. Like we all get frustrated. Sometimes we get frustrated with each other and it’s okay to get frustrated and this is how to work through it and here’s how to talk about it. One thing I’m constantly repeating to him, and if he was here right now, he would tell you too, but whenever I see him getting frustrated and getting angry, I’m like, “Okay, repeat after me. Peace begins with me.” And we repeat that. And he gets frustrated and he’s like, “I’m not saying that. I don’t need to say it.” Because I tell it to him so often but I’m like, “When you get frustrated, it’s hard to control your emotions.”

Take a deep breath, say, peace begins with me, and let’s talk about it and see what you’re going through. And so we acknowledge that when you get mad and you get angry and you get frustrated, that all of these emotions are going on inside. So I don’t wanna ignore those and I tell him, we’re right there with you. We try to lead by example and say, “Hey, sometimes we get frustrated and this is how we feel and this is what we need to do and it’s okay to have a disagreement but you just need to talk it out and explain the situation.” So I think, yeah, when it comes to emotional and mental health with your children, I think it’s important to lead by example and to not think that everything is happy-go-lucky all the time, but that you have bad days too and it’s okay and to talk about it and not make it a secret.

Marc: I think we do a good job at that as well as like is being honest and open about the things that aren’t working for us, whether it’s something he’s doing or something that has nothing to do with him. If he asks, “Hey, like, what’s wrong?” Rather than just brush it off, we often explain. And again, he’s only five. So he’s young, but we bring it as much as we can to his level and we try to be honest and have those conversations. And through that honesty and that presence, he definitely takes lessons away and he understands things because we’ll hear it come back at us, which is always the greatest thing.

Angel: Yeah. When you hear your own words coming back at you through their mouth, it’s always…it makes me smile.

Marc: Yeah. We have a family motto that you were made to do hard things, just remind our kids, you know, push through in challenges. And they’ve heard me say that for a really long time and I’ve had it come back on me a couple of times. We were traveling a couple of years ago and we were at a Blue Hole in New Mexico and there was about I think like a 25-30 foot jump into the water and the water was like 50 degrees so it was cold anyway. And the kids all did it and I was like, “Good job, guys.” They were like, “Your turn, mom.” And I was like, “No, no, I’m good.” They were like, “Mom, you were made to do hard things.” And they would not let me not jump and I loved it but I was also a little terrified.

But I resonate so much with what you guys said. I think leading by example is one of the most powerful things, most powerful gifts we can give to our children truly. And especially, like you mentioned, let them see us fail at things, let them see that we don’t have perfect days so that they don’t have an expectation that that’s what they’re supposed to be when they grow up. And I realized that was a tough lesson for me a few years ago because one of my own childhood wounds that I struggled from and had to work through was the feeling of not being good enough. And I had really driven parents who held me to a really high standard and I’m grateful for that but I internalized very young that I wasn’t good enough at a lot of things or if I didn’t do things perfectly, that it wasn’t good enough.

And so because of that, my whole life, I was hesitant to do anything that I wasn’t already good at which is paradoxical, of course. And I started seeing that pattern in my kids and realized this is definitely not something I can talk them out of, but I need to be an example of overcoming that. And so the last few years, I’ve done things like take a voice lesson which was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done, or learn to do handstands, things that I was naturally very not good at at the beginning, so that they could see me fail and work through that. And I think being the example of that is so much more powerful than just saying that to them, whether it’s in any aspect of life, whether you’re teaching good nutrition habits, whether you’re teaching good mindset, habits, or activity, anything. I know that old clichés but it’s so true. They see what we do so much more than what we say.

Angel: I love that. Absolutely.

Marc: Yeah, no question. And doing the hard things, that’s a motto of ours as well. I mean, yeah, it’s such a misconception, like we want things to be easy and yet, you know, in fact, one of my favorite books, “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck starts with a line and it’s on one line. It just says, “Life is not easy.” That’s it. That’s the first line of the whole book. And I love that because the expectation we have oftentimes as parents, as human beings, as children at every walk in life is that this is gonna be easy. I should come out of this smiling. And that’s not the case. We have to do the hard things to be happy, the things nobody else can do for us, the things that make us question just how much harder and longer we can push forward.

Because at the end of the day, those are the things that ultimately define us. They’re the things that make the difference between existing and being in the space that we’re in and struggling and ultimately living and stepping forward. It’s the difference between empty promises to ourselves and a life that’s filled with more happiness and more possibility and more success. So the hard things, I mean you gotta do the hard things to be happy in life and it is such a lesson that we often forget and we overlook. And as children especially, I think we miss it entirely. So I love that that’s a motto in your family. That’s fantastic.

Angel: Yeah. The growth comes from the discomfort. A silly example was just this past weekend, we were in Connecticut staying close to the coast. We were like three houses down from the beach and we were on vacation celebrating Marc’s birthday and I wanted to go see the sunrise. And the first two mornings, I’m like, “Oh, no. This bed is so comfortable. I’m just gonna sleep in. And then on the last morning, I was like, “No, I’m gonna see the sunrise.” So I set the alarm. I got up, but did I wanna get up? No. I was enjoying the comfort of my bed but I knew I wanted to see the sunrise but I had to force myself. I had to do the discomfort and get out there and do it.

And oh my gosh, it was magnificent. Seeing the sunrise right there, it felt as though it was a show just for me and I loved it and it just made the rest of my day so wonderful. But it’s like that mantra of doing the hard things, doing the things that are uncomfortable, they can apply to the big things and to the little things. What are the things that you’re pushing off that you don’t wanna do but that’s what’s gonna give you the most reward.

Katie: I love that.

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Katie: And from what I know of you guys, people often find you guys and come to you when they are going through big life transitions, like some of the ones we’ve talked about, when they have lost a loved one, or maybe you’re going through a relationship change or end of a relationship, or a job change, or any of those major stressors that we all face at different times in our life. So I’m curious for someone who is just finding you guys or any new listeners who aren’t familiar with you yet, where do you have them start? Where is a good springboard into the world of what you teach?

Marc: It depends on what the person is coming to us with. You’re definitely right, Katie, in saying that people come to us when they’re struggling, when they feel stuck. So the question is, is what is holding them up? Some of our clients, it’s relationship problems with family members. Some of them, it’s deep loss with the loss of a loved one. Sometimes, it’s just like the quarter life or midlife crisis, like I’m just at a point where I feel like I’m on that hamster wheel and I’m feeling terrible about it. So we definitely have to evaluate where they are. I don’t know if there’s a universal answer but I think we’ve discussed some of them already and it is making small shifts in a positive direction.

So it’s figuring out what are the current rituals. One thing we’ve mentioned, rituals and habits, but one of the things we take a quick look at is, what is it that you wanna change in your life? That’s a typical question you want. What isn’t working? What’s the thing in your life right now that you believe is not working? And what are the rituals that are leading to that situation? What are you doing? And yes, I understand that the loss of a loved one, major tragedy just happened in an instant, but once they happen, you know, yes, there’s an incredible amount of pain and suffering that comes from that, but a year later, two years later, if you’re feeling the same pain, it is not because that thing is happening again and again.

It is because you are doing things, you’re holding on to things, you are behaving in a way that is perpetuating it. And it’s a harsh thing to say. We’ve been there ourselves. And that’s a big example but the point is, is that the things we do daily once one of those big events happen, it’s those little things we do daily that either service it or take us further back. And so we say, you know, like what is this thing that you wanna change? How are you feeling? What is wrong? And what are the rituals that are supporting this feeling, this terrible feeling in you? And then, what does your ideal situation look like right now and what are the rituals that can get you from where you are to where you wanna be?

And so that’s kind of like a little framework, like a couple of questions of like what is it that you wanna change, what are the rituals that are supporting this problem that you’re in, what does the ideal situation look like and what are the rituals that can help you get from point A to point B? Of course, applying that to different people’s life situations takes you in completely different directions but it is a small framework I think that’s universally applicable.

Angel: Yeah. And then in addition to asking them what their rituals are that are supporting this change or keeping them stuck, is also having them question the thoughts that are surrounding this change and this lifestyle and this period in their life. So often, we are resisting what is and so if some of the thoughts going through our mind is it shouldn’t be like this, this is not how I planned it and it’s working…

Marc: And Katie mentioned one earlier, I’m not good enough.

Angel: Yeah, I’m not good enough.

Marc: I’m not good enough to take whatever this next step is.

Angel: But it’s like questioning the thoughts that are surrounded because so often, I mean 99% of the time, the majority of what we see first begins in our head. It’s how we’re thinking about it. So we have our clients question their thoughts, like asking the questions, is this all that is true? What you’re thinking about this situation that I’m not good enough or it shouldn’t be like this, it shouldn’t be this way, questioning that, is that all that is true, and then digging further into that, when I think this thought, how does that make me feel? And then…

Marc: Like who am I with that thought in my head going into any situation? How do I hold myself with a thought of I’m not good enough? Or how do I hold myself no matter what’s happening in front of me, if I feel like my life shouldn’t be this way? What does that do to my demeanor and my attitude? Who am I with that thought in my head?

Angel: And then even the question, you know, if I could never think this thought again, if I could completely remove this thought from my mind, what else would I see? If I could remove the thought that I’m not good enough, what else would you see if you can never think that thought again? Or if I could remove the thought, it shouldn’t be this way and I could never think that again, what else would you see? And so we definitely have people question their own thoughts because so often, we get this tunnel vision and we’re just seeing… I mean we’ve all been in those situations where there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. This is how it’s gonna be, it’s never gonna change. I can’t get out of this. And so we get stuck in that mentality, not realizing that there’s a bigger picture and there’s other perspectives that we’re overlooking because we’re so caught into that tunnel on that dark side.

And then also, what is the opposite of the thought and can you think of any examples that then support that thought? Like if you go back to your example, I’m not good enough, the opposite would be, I am good enough. I deserve to be here. And what are some examples that support that? And one that we always talk about is you’re a mother to your children. You are good enough because you are the only one that could be a mother to your children. Nobody else could fill your shoes and do a better job. And so it’s definitely having you question the thoughts that are going through your own mind because what we think we see, we ultimately become. So we need to challenge those thoughts.

Katie: That is so important. And I love that, asking better questions, because that’s something I’ve read in several books and heard about from therapists over the years is if you ask terrible questions, your brain will give you terrible answers. And if the questions you’re asking are like, “Oh, why can’t I lose weight or why can’t I do this or why is this so bad,” your brain is gonna find ways to explain to you why those things are and reinforce them. Whereas, I love your question, what is your ideal scenario? What is your ideal in the situation? Because then the brain starts working on that. Our brain is designed to answer questions and to connect dots and to find patterns.

So if you give it good, positive things to focus on, it’s amazing at that. That’s what we’re wired for. But so often, I think you’re right, we get stuck in those terrible questions and then we perpetuate that cycle. And I’ve also heard it explained almost like a filter of sorts. I know that’s an overused word with social media but like a mental filter where I know for me, at least, if I was in that place still where I didn’t feel like I was good enough, I would see examples that prove that everywhere I looked or like I would feel like someone was judging me or that I wasn’t performing well enough in someone’s facial expression, which truly like that might not have been… You know, they could have been having a bad day or could have had absolutely nothing to do with me, which is often the case. But when we’re in that mindset or we’re in that filter, we see examples that reinforce that everywhere even if they don’t exist. So I love that, like asking the opposite of the question and starting to make those shifts towards more positive questions. That’s beautiful.

Angel: Yeah. I mean one thought that I caught myself that I was constantly thinking and not even realizing it is that, you know, my sister is the most selfish person in the entire world. I was having all of this tension against my sister and I realized I was going into every situation with that thought at the forefront of my mind. And like you said, if that’s what you’re thinking, you’re gonna find it. You’re gonna point it out. So I was like, “There it is. Yep, there it is. Oh, I knew it. Gosh, she drives me nuts. Look at this. She’s always talking about herself. She’s always doing this.” But because I had that thought in my mind, I was able to point it out immediately in the entire time I was with her.

And so realizing that I was having that thought was eye-opening. It was like a slap in the face. And once I was able to recognize that and then say, “Okay, if I can never think this thought again, if I could remove that thought, what else do I see when I see my sister?” And all of a sudden, I saw a completely different person. She’s not the person of always being selfish. She is so much more than that. But I was just going into every single interaction with her with that thought. So that’s all I was seeing even though she has all these lovely characteristics that I love and care about. I mean she’s a part of me, she makes me laugh. And so it’s definitely challenging those thoughts and realizing if you’re constantly seeing something and it may first be beginning in your mind.

Marc: You were defining her entire character by one quality that she has, that she’s sometimes selfish. Sometimes we all are, right?

Angel: Yeah. And it’s not to say she’s not selfish but that’s not all that she is.

Marc: Well, it’s giving it a perspective you need, like having that perspective even with your sister. It doesn’t mean that your sister doesn’t sometimes do selfish things. It means, “Hey, you know what, let me give myself the perspective that I need to realize she does more than just the selfish things and that I can treat her like a whole human being that she is who has positives and negatives like we all do,” which ultimately increased your ability to communicate with her and improved your relationship. I think that’s what this…self-questioning is so important in the sense that as human beings, that’s what we have.

Katie, I mean you said it too. It’s like we sort of have this tunnel vision and we focus on the thing that drives us nuts and we look for evidence. We’re just narrowly focused on that one thing and we miss everything in the periphery. So when we start like questioning our thoughts, when we start saying like, is this the whole truth about this situation, how do I feel with this thought in my head? I mean who would I be without this thought? If this wasn’t my primary focus, what else would I see about this situation? What’s the opposite of this and can I find any truth in that? By doing that, we broaden our focus.

We get out of that tunnel vision and we start looking at everything in the periphery and we have all the data now and it takes time to get used to doing that. You have to do this as a ritual, like constantly kind of capturing your thoughts, maybe even writing them down and then going back later when you’re feeling calm and collected and saying, taking a look at these thoughts, like let’s take a look at what’s really going on in our head and heart during some of these high anxiety moments. We do this consistently and over time.

A few weeks, a few months down the road, you start having a better understanding of how you’re thinking, about how you’re reacting to these situations instead of more mindfully responding to them. And you get a better handle on yourself and that allows you to have better relationships, it allows you to feel better because you’re thinking better. You’re living better. But it doesn’t happen instantaneously. Like doing this once, saying, “Okay, I’m just gonna focus on my sister for a second,” doing this once, you can have a couple of ahas, but if you can really get into the habit of saying, okay, when I feel anxiety, if I have a thought, if I can catch myself and feel like oh my God, the anxiety is high, I’m feeling that way, that tension again, and just take 60 seconds to write down the thought, like do a raw brain dump, like what is in my mind at this moment, just get it down on a piece of paper in a safe place, then don’t self-evaluate in that moment.

Of course, the anxiety is high, the emotion is high, you can’t self-evaluate then. But tomorrow, next Sunday, when you have some time to dedicate to yourself, when you have some downtime and you’re feeling calm and collected, go back and look at some of those thoughts that you wrote down throughout the week during those high tension moments and put a more collective mindset on it. And that’s where you can kind of pick one of those thoughts out, read it to yourself, maybe chuckle, it probably won’t be rational. Oftentimes, when we’re high emotion and stressed, it’s not rational.

Tell yourself, “That’s totally okay.” But read it and apply some of these questions. Give yourself the logic, give yourself the perspective when your mind is calm and collected. And you do that again and again and that ultimately arms you to deal with it more in real time but it takes time to get there. And when you’ve seen it again and again and again, you’ll see the patterns and you’ll be able to better address those situations going forward. But it is a ritual like anything else. The more you practice it, the better you’ll get and it can be a blessing over time.

Katie: Yeah, I love it. It keeps going back to rituals and those small daily changes. And as we’re getting toward the end of our time, there’s a couple of questions I love to ask. The first being besides your own, and for those who aren’t familiar, you guys wrote “Getting Back to Happy” and “1000 Little Things.” Both of those are linked in the show notes but they’re available anywhere books are sold. But other than your own books, is there a book or a number of books that have really had a dramatic impact on your life? And if so, what are they and why?

Angel: I think, for me, one of the main ones that jumps out is “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel. That book was just extremely eye-opening to personal development and self-improvement and controlling the things that we can control and being present. It’s very simple but straightforward and I think it should be required reading. It’s a great…

Marc: It’s a great intro. It’s kind of a good quick inspiration intro to personal development. It was one of those first ones right at the beginning that we had picked up and both read. That’s a great one. We talked a lot about presence. I think “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle is a fantastic read. It’s not the most exciting read, but it kind of brings a lot of spiritual teachings down to how it relates to the present moment and how our true power to control our lives happens from one moment to the next. I think that also should be required reading. I think it’s universally applicable to any walk of life.

Katie: I love that. And where can people find you to learn more and stay in touch?

Angel: Yeah. They can find us on our blog, marcandangel.com and that’s Marc with a C. Also, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, just search Marc and Angel and you’ll find us.

Katie: Awesome. I love it. Thank you, guys, so much for being here, for being vulnerable, and for sharing today. This was such a fun episode.

Angel: Yeah. Thank you.

Marc: Thank you, Katie. We’re truly blessed to be here. Thank you.

Katie: And thanks to all of you for listening and for sharing your most valuable asset, your time, with all of us today. We’re so grateful that you did and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

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Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/marc-angel-chernoff/