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noxloved-archive · 6 years

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Can you sort your muses from weakest to strongest?

so, for simplicity’s sake, i’m going to go with ‘how well would this muse do in a fight’ as my metric here (because if we went for emotional strength, well, we’d be here for a long time.

under the cut because i have a fuckton of muses. oops. (the real reason i decided to wait…i forgot how to do readmores on mobile lmao). as in the ask, this is going from weakest to strongest. also will be assuming main verses for them all (since phila, for example, would be much stronger prior to the fall, but i don’t want to put her twice).

frankie - frankie has zero combat experience, and due to their disabilities, melee fighting is a no-go. they do pick up archery while in askr, because they don’t feel comfortable being out in the thick of things with absolutely no means to protect themselves, but because they’re still learning (and the chronic illnesses don’t make it easy) and because their disabilities often wear them out, they wouldn’t last that long in a fight.

ethlyn - ethlyn is primarily a healer. she can use a sword, and while she’s not bad she lacks the strength to do a whole lot of damage–it’s enough to hold off an enemy until help arrives (or until she can escape), but she’s not exactly anyone’s first choice for front-line fighting.

elise - elise can use tomes, but she’s still learning, and her siblings are understandably reluctant to have her in the thick of things, since she’s thirteen. with that said, she has a natural talent for magic, so she can deal some devastating blows.

flora - flora states herself that she’s not particularly adept at the combat arts, and she’s not. with practice and time, she could become strong enough to hold her own, but her primary role in the army is support…especially in birthright when she has to recover from all those self-inflicted burns. she’s also similar to yoshiko in that if she turned completely towards magic, she’d actually be a better fighter, but she’s forbidden from doing so under king garon’s stipulations (not that those mean much in birthright or revelations, but there’s a learning curve).

miriel - strong in magic, but not the most agile of fighters. she’s actually a little on the clumsy side, and she doesn’t care much for fighting. she does it because she needs to in order to be a shepherd.

yoshiko - if she used offensive magic, she’d actually be a force to be reckoned with. but she doesn’t, having gone for the yumi instead (as a deliberate limit to her fighting strength). that said, she is fairly decent at hand to hand combat. what she lacks in physical strength she makes up for with knowledge of the body and how to turn an opponent’s strength against them.

rosalind - rosalind, unlike frankie or yoshiko, is actually a pretty good archer, and she also keeps a dagger or two on her person just in case someone gets close. she’s also got a lot of dirty tricks and other strategies up her sleeve, so she’s far from defenseless.

maribelle - maribelle, like elise and ethlyn and flora, is also more of a healer than a fighter, but she’s got her fair share of experience and while she’s far from bloodthirsty, she doesn’t hesitate during a fight and she’s not averse to doing what she thinks needs to be done. also, her confidence helps.

faye - faye is still in training, so she’s not the strongest of pegasus knights, but she’s got determination in spades and a good lance arm thanks to having grown up laboring in the fields. by the end of echoes, she probably ranks somewhere around the same as caeda.

florina - florina isn’t the strongest, physically, nor is she the most experienced, but thanks to a strong bond with huey she can easily hold her own. if nothing else, huey can act as a weapon. (just kidding…sort of)

aileen - aileen, in theory, makes for a pretty formidable opponent, as she has high resistance and can wallop an enemy with dark or anima magic. however, her ptsd can hinder her in battle to the point where she needs to withdraw, and she’s not physically very strong.

phila - sure, she’s disabled, but phila still has a lot of military training under her belt, and if you give her a mount she’s still a formidable foe. it takes her time to build back her strength after being bedridden with near-fatal wounds for months, but she’s not gonna let that stop her. that said, she’d have a hard time fighting without a mount…unlike her pre-fall self.

lianna - she’s never been as inclined towards the martial arts as rowan, and it shows. but she’s not bad by any means, either.

chihiro - despite their relative lack of experience, they manage to survive garon’s suicide missions, so i’d say that counts for something. plus, they learn pretty quickly how to fight out of necessity.

myrrh - while myrrh is very strong in her draconic form, she’s more or less defenseless in human form (unless you want to count the fact that she can fly). in other words, in humanoid form she’s good at escaping fights, but not so good at actually fighting. but that also means she doesn’t get hurt too often unless she really needs to hide her identity as a dragon.

idunn - i’m ranking her above myrrh in dragon form largely because she was more or less formed into a weapon and because she’s a mage dragon, meaning that spells don’t do anything to her. however, in human form she’s likewise defenseless (well, except for her absurdly high magical resistance–she may as well retain the properties of a mage dragon as human). she’s the final boss for a reason.

nah - unlike myrrh and idunn, nah can fight in her human form. she’s not exceptional at it, but necessity dictated that she learn to do it. even though idunn is by far stronger than her in draconic form, nah’s greater sense of free will and the fact that she can defend herself in human form place her higher on the list.

panne - panne also suffers from the significantly weaker in human form thing, but like nah, she knows her way around a fight in her human form. she’s actually better at it than nah is, though, hence her being the “strongest” of my transforming muses.

nyx - nyx has had centuries to hone her craft, and it shows. her biggest drawback is that her body is a little more on the fragile side, and her chronic pain means that she doesn’t have the best stamina on the battlefield. she’s good at hitting hard and fast, and then pulling back out for the longer haul.

katarina - katarina’s biggest downfall as a fighter is that she’s too kind, honestly. it’s relatively easy to tug at her heartstrings and therefore cause her not to fight at full capacity. with that said, she’s a highly trained assassin, a decent tactician, and a competent mage. if she’s going at you with full force, you’re likely in for some trouble.

eliwood - he’s well-trained and has excellent fighting technique, but he’s not the strongest of fighters (in part because he doesn’t care for it all). putting him on a horse helps a fair amount, though, as does giving him durandal.

caeda - caeda lacks the formal training of, say, the whitewings, but as she fights alongside marth and his army, she grows to be a formidable fighter in her own right. though she’s not trained in strategy, she’s good at thinking on her feet, too.

cynthia - cynthia is a seasoned fighter out of necessity. you can tell she’s significantly self-taught, but she sure as hell is effective. if she gets caught up in her heroics, however, she sometimes leaves herself wide open. she can also be reckless during a fight.

lyn - she’s well-trained, fast, and highly determined. in other words, she’ll probably kick your ass. with that said, she can be a little hot-tempered, which can get her into trouble, and while she’s physically strong, she can still be overpowered by an enemy.

anelie - like lyn, anelie can be overpowered by an enemy, but anelie fights dirty thanks to her training as an assassin on top of her skills and speed. it’s the dirty fighting that puts her just barely above lyn.

palla - she’s an elite whitewing, meaning she has formal military training and a boatload of skill. she had to, because the whitewings had to prove themselves useful in an army consisting mostly of wyvern riders. her mount is also fiercely protective of her.

sonya - i’m just saying, there’s a reason she made a name for herself in grieth’s army. she has no qualms about killing those who stand in her way, and she’s a formidable mage to boot. like anelie, she’s also more than willing to fight dirty.

hanan - hanan isn’t as good at fighting as ruya, but she’s still a strong fighter on her own, and her strategic knowledge gives her an extra edge. unfortunately in a real battle, having to find alternate means of communication puts her at a slight disadvantage. with that said, hanan is nigh-indestructible thanks to grima.

chrom - he’s physically quite strong and has an unpredictable (albeit flashy) fighting style. he’s also constantly honing his craft, and he’s able to practice with a wide variety of others due to the shepherds’ eclectic fighting force. however, he’s largely self-taught, which does leave some holes in his technique, and his flashier moves can leave him open to attack.

sigurd - his mount may as well be a weapon itself, and he’s a highly skilled knight used to fighting against tough opponents.

camilla - her wyvern is a force to be reckoned with, and she’s got brute strength and raw magical power in spades. between her own innate fighting prowess and her ruthlessness on the field, she’s one of the strongest fighters in my muse list.

aversa - tbh, aversa and camilla are about equal in strength, though aversa is slightly stronger in magic and slightly weaker in melee combat than camilla. aversa also has a little more tactical know-how.

xander - xander is canonically one of the strongest fighters in fates, and he’s helped in no small amount by the fact that he has a divine weapon. he’s also fully capable of being ruthless when he wants to be, and his war horse is nothing to scoff at either. he’s also very strong tactically.

zeke - he’s pretty close to xander in strength, but i figure the fact that he somehow manages to survive an unplanned voyage across the sea while on the verge of death counts for something.

ruya - before you accuse me of favoritism, I HAVE AN ACTUAL REASON. ruya might not be the best melee fighter, but she’s got strong magic and a fuckton of skill, meaning that her skills tend to trigger often, not to mention her strategic advantage. moreover, like hanan (actually i wrote this hc for her first), grima drastically boosts her defenses, meaning that she’s really fucking hard to kill.

#THE ANALYSIS/RANKING ALONE WAS 1.8K WORDS HOLY FUCK #god i hope i didn't forget someone....#holytoem #I DON'T BLAME ANYONE IF THEY DON'T WANT TO READ THIS #♬┊ɴᴏx ᴛᴀʟᴋꜱ ( ooc. )

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lauramalchowblog · 5 years

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When Does Fasting Cross the Line?

A little while back, Mark posted an article about 14 scenarios in which intermittent fasting (IF) might be just the ticket. We got some requests for a follow-up about times when IF might not be advised.

Mark has already written about cautions for women and athletes specifically. I’ll link those at the bottom. More generally, it’s important that anyone considering IF make sure that they are in a good place physically and mentally to handle the additional stress of IF.

As Mark said:

If you haven’t satisfied the usual IF “pre-reqs,” like being fat-adapted, getting good and sufficient sleep, minimizing or mitigating stress, and exercising well (not too much and not too little), you should not fast. These pre-reqs are absolutely crucial and non-negotiable, in my opinion—especially the fat-adaptation. In fact, I suspect that if an IF study was performed on sugar-burning women versus fat-adapted women, you’d see that the fat-burning beasts would perform better and suffer fewer (if any) maladaptations.

Fasting is generally healthy when done properly. The same goes for exercise and carb restriction. These behaviors help many people; but they can also be unhealthy for certain people or when used too much or in the wrong circumstances.

Today I’d like to wade into potentially controversial waters and talk about when fasting potentially crosses the line into disordered eating territory.

Before You Get Defensive…

If you find yourself feeling defensive already because you enjoy fasting and think that I’m going to suggest that you have a problem, please hold off commenting until the end.

To be clear: I do not think that fasting is inherently disordered. However, its popularity has skyrocketed so rapidly, and its proponents are so enthusiastic, that the potential downsides have been overshadowed. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. I have seen plenty of people in mental health and disordered eating circles voice concerns. The ancestral community tends to be very rah-rah about fasting.

The goal for today is to shine a light on this issue so that we don’t go into fasting with a blind spot.

Eating Disorders vs. Disordered Eating

The prevalence of full-blown eating disorders (ED) is fairly low according to NEDA, the National Eating Disorders Association. Experts believe biological and/or psychological predispositions make certain individuals vulnerable. These predispositions probably interact with environmental factors to trigger ED.

That said, many more people engage in disordered eating behaviors. The behaviors and their effects are not problematic enough to qualify for diagnosis with ED, but they still negatively affect physical and/or mental health and quality of life. Depending on their severity, they might be considered suboptimal to truly unhealthy.

Before going any further, let me be clear: I’m not in any way trying to diagnose readers with ED or disordered eating. That is way beyond my pay grade. Nor should you self-diagnose. If you want to learn more or get help, the best place to start is with NEDA’s Help & Support center. They have an online screening tool and a helpline there.

As I said, I don’t think fasting is inherently bad. However, NEDA lists fasting among the behaviors that can be indicative of ED. Of course, professionals in the ED and mental health worlds are looking at fasting through the lens of restricting and exercising tight control over food intake. We in the ancestral health space tend to look at it through the lens of optimizing health.

Neither perspective is more correct. It’s all about context:

why you’re fasting,

how fasting makes you feel physically and mentally,

whether it takes over your life,

if you are using it in a way that is actually undermining your health,

whether you are taking it “too far” (admittedly a nebulous metric)

As with so many things, deciding if you’ve crossed the line is highly personal. This applies to much more than food. When does worry become anxiety? When does fear become a phobia?

One criteria might be whether fasting causes you distress. Another is whether it interferes with your quality of life, social relationships, and work. This is called the criteria of clinical significance in the DSM-V, the diagnostic tool used by mental health professionals.

It’s often apparent, though not always easy to accept, when a behavior is no longer serving us. Unfortunately, though, it’s not always that simple. When it comes to fasting, it can cross over into problematic territory and still feel good.

Wouldn’t I Know If My Fasting Regime Was Too Much?

Maybe, maybe not. Restricting calories and fasting can lead to elevated mood, increased energy and motivation, and even feelings of euphoria. (Fasting that doesn’t result in a caloric deficit might be less prone to this.)

There are physiological reasons why this might be the case. First, scientists hypothesize that this is an adaptive response. If you were truly starving, this increased energy, drive, and focus would help you redouble your efforts to find food.

There is also some evidence that food restriction affects serotonin and dopamine pathways and can, for some individuals, reduce anxiety. Researchers believe that this is one way anorexic behaviors are reinforced in the brain. Again, fasting and anorexia nervosa are NOT the same animal, but they can share common features. The “high” associated with anorexia nervosa sounds not unlike the profound energy and cognitive benefits that some people report with fasting.

All this is to say, food restriction can feel good. For some people—or more accurately, for some brains—the withholding of food becomes inherently rewarding. In that case, you wouldn’t necessarily recognize when enough is enough.

How Do You Know If You’ve Crossed the Line?

I’m not going to be able to provide a definitive answer here. That said, these seem like potential red flags:

Fasting makes you feel euphoric. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmful by any means. Still, take a step back and evaluate whether you are always making healthy choices.

Your fasting regimen causes distress or significantly interferes with your life.

You feel like you have to fast or something bad will happen.

When you eat after a fast, you feel out of control with your food intake or binge.

You’re ignoring symptoms that might be related to too much fasting: adrenal or thyroid issues, fatigue, hair loss, weakness or inability to perform usual workouts, sleep disturbances, too much weight loss, etc.

Again, I am in no way diagnosing anyone here. If you think that perhaps your behavior has crossed into unhealthy territory, you should seek the counsel of someone trained in these issues.

The Bottom Line

Fasting, though it confers certain health benefits, is not good for every person. Experts recommend that individuals at risk for developing ED or with a history of ED refrain from fasting, including intermittent fasting, altogether. Even if you don’t think you’re at risk, it still might not be in your best interest.

Because fasting is so popular right now, some people think they have to fast for optimal health. They worry that they are missing out on tremendous health benefits if they can’t or don’t want to fast. The main reasons people fast are autophagy, glycemic control, and fat loss. You can achieve all of those goals through means other than fasting.

Remember, too, that you need not rigidly adhere to the same eating window every single day. It is fine to fast stochastically, to borrow from Paleo OG Art De Vany. You might also consider doing one longer fast a few times per year instead of daily intermittent fasting.

In any case, if fasting is wrong for you, it’s wrong for you, period. It doesn’t really matter if your neighbor loves it or the lady in the next cubicle lost 60 pounds with IF. If it negatively impacts your physical and/or mental well-being, it’s not worth it.

And in case this isn’t perfectly clear: Enjoying fasting DOES NOT MEAN that you are doing anything wrong. On the contrary, I hope you are enjoying fasting if it’s a tool you’re using regularly. Feeling great is the goal. If it’s not negatively affecting your physical health, psychological well-being, or social relationships, it’s not problematic. Likewise, if you are consuming enough calories when you do eat, and you’re able to be flexible with your fasting schedule when the situation calls for it, you likely don’t have to worry.

This issue can be hard to talk about because so many people feel passionately about defending their way of eating. Those who question whether fasting is always healthy, or who point out that a desire to eat healthfully can sometimes slip into orthorexia, are accused of “fit shaming.”

However, not talking about it isn’t the answer. Our goal should be to bring these issues into the light and try to better understand them. Then we can make informed decisions about which behaviors best serve us now and in the future.

Related Posts from MDA

Intermittent Fasting for Women: What We Know Now

Dear Mark: More on Women and Fasting

Intermittent Fasting For Athletes: Benefits and Concerns

12 Intermittent Fasting Tips for Athletes

Fasting versus Carb Restriction: Which Works Better for What Scenarios

References

Kaye, WH, Fudge, JL, Paulus, M. New insights into symptoms and neurocircuit function of anorexia nervosa. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009;10: 573–584.

Kaye WH, Wierenga CE, Bailer UF, Simmons AN, Bischoff-Grethe A. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels: the neurobiology of anorexia nervosa. Trends Neurosci. 2013 Feb;36(2):110-20.

The post When Does Fasting Cross the Line? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

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a-travels · 5 years

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taken: 27 may, 2018 Somewhere in Iceland

Power to truth. Also *mlem*

If it wasn’t clear, this is the same day as the last post and definitive proof that the horses were indeed not alone. Though this horse is by itself too and this could just be in two separate pastures. You’ll just have to believe me, I guess.

Look at the horse. Man, it’s a cute horse. There’s no pretention or facade about the horse. The horse is a horse. If you could see these Icelandic horses, you’d marvel at how small they are. They’re basically like Lil Sebastian from Parks and Recreation⸺not ponies, but small horses. This is an adult horse that looks undergrown but is in fact not.

For those few that somehow have stuck this long with this thing, get ready for what we call in the industry, a stretch.

I mention the horse being a horse because I am sometimes baffled by how we as humans are. “Human” humans seem to be a rarer breed than “horsey” horses nowadays. Have I lost you? Let me explain.

One of the key differentiators of our species (apart from opposable thumbs) from so many other species out there, is our use of complex language. Animals speak, just as we do, but there’s a beauty in how simplistic it is. In the immortal words of Jeff Winger from the TV show Community: “You know who has real conversations? Ants. They talk by vomiting chemicals in each other's mouths. They get right down to brass tacks”. Animals communicate purely in utilitarian fashions, as far as I’m aware (if someone knows enough zoology or animal linguistics to inform me otherwise, I’d love to hear it). “There’s food here!” “Watch out for the predator!” “Come drink water!”, there’s little room for subtlety or sarcasm. Humans, I guess in our dominance as the apex predator of this planet, have developed enough of a sense of comfort that we have had the ability to develop this “complex language”. We can be subtle, indirect, sarcastic, facetious and more, and our message is still somehow generally conveyed to out audience or conversers. There’s no need for utilitarian dialogue in our society. We don’t want to hear if we look fat in an outfit or ugly in a hat, we want ourselves to feel better about ourselves and our place in this world. 

Somehow, in the pursuit of that feeling, the feeling of satisfaction, some people take the route of least resistance and start to lie with gleeful abandon. It’s like in Avengers: Infinity War when the Collector asks Thanos, “Why would I lie to you?” and Thanos replies, “I imagine it’s like breathing for you.” Seriously, it’s appalling the level to which people will lie, cheat, manipulate, and con just to get ahead. Now, before anyone (any of those three readers) who calls me out for high-horsing (no pun intended) on this matter, I openly admit I’ve told my fair share of lies. But, to the best of my knowledge, I have not done it ever in a work or academic setting to better my standing. Beyond lying in professional settings, disingenuousness is perhaps my least favorite quality in a person. Any of my friends (I hope) would know that above all else in a person, I value genuineness above all else, in whatever form that may be. I think I have a pretty good read on people, but other people are not blind to that kind of stuff either. That “bullshit meter” is something I think every one of us develops over time just interacting with other people. Isn’t that kind of nuts, how ants just barf their feelings to one another while we need to develop an implicit metric to decipher other people simply being honest or not? 

I don’t say all this because I’ve recently been wronged or lied to by someone. I think I have distilled and retained a social circle which at this point is open enough to be above-board and not have to lie to each other and me. It’s more of a trend I’ve seen in amongst others from my university and high school, who are so affectionately called “the snakes”, as well as on social media. I’m not going to necessarily dig into those real-life “snakes” right now because it’s beyond my understanding or energy to engage with those kinds of people right now. I manage to skirt my way around them enough that they don’t overly affect my life right now. Maybe I’ll touch on them in a future post.

Just recently, a friend of mine was talking about how bored and isolated they are where they work. I suggested they meet up with someone (classmate of ours from high school) in the same city as them and the immediate reaction was of rebuke, simply due to that someone’s social media presence seeming put on and artificial. On that level, I get it. Social media is perhaps the means to the end of fulfilling our social satisfaction and external validation “needs”. But who really dictates that need, and where does that need stem from in the first place? I can’t hope to understand everyone’s internal struggles and or insecurities, but I know personally, it’s something I struggle with myself, finding satisfaction in myself and my work. It takes an effort in having to myself “I am enough”. I’ve never thought to look to social media for that validation I sometimes seek myself, but I get that people do. But I think in that quest, sometimes people come across as though they’re showing off, virtue signaling to others on how to act, even if they don’t intend to. In an effort to seem “human”, flawed, and trying to be a better person, they invariably look like a “snake” and often unrelatable to the trained eye.  

Before I sound hypocritical, I get that social media is at its core about a romanticized version of your life, and I am just as guilty in portraying my life in that manner. It is the modern-day photo album, that doesn’t necessarily always dig into the bad times or the fears or insecurities. It’s just the new way to remember the good times when you’re older and click back onto Facebook or Instagram. You won’t remember how you missed your flight or got caught in a rainstorm at the beach, but you will remember snorkeling and that dope meal you got the first night in and those pictures you have. It’s seldom a diary of some sort (or maybe it is for some people). It provides a fleeting comfort of how we think our lives should be⸺perfect, happy, never sad, always with friends, helping out others. But life is rarely like that. it’s messy, sweaty, tear-filled, occasionally solitary, bored, tired, worn, bruised, and battered. There’s nothing wrong with sharing that pristine side of yourself online, but in my experience, it will never solve that growing underside of things if left alone. It is uncomfortable to face those demons, to grapple with the pressures of daily life. But it never gets better just festering and growing. I found all that stuff for me really boil over and affect my life adversely within the past few years and ignoring it, in hindsight, didn’t help me.

I don’t and probably may not ever truly understand everyone’s challenges in life, but I know that trying to mask it online or mask it in person doesn’t really help. It may be a band-aid to a larger wound that may grow septic if not treated. Like I said, I’m not saying to post pictures or videos of you crying or talking about everything online unless that’s your thing (which by all means, you do you), but being human is to embrace the messiness and imperfection of life. Talk to a friend, talk to a professional, journal, blog, write in a diary, punch it out in a martial arts class, workout, whatever fuzzes your peach, it’s better to face it than hide from it. Molt that snakeskin and horse around. Be honest. 

Well, this got a bit long once again. Social media etiquette and my presence there is something I’ve been thinking about since I joined facebook in high school. I don’t expect anyone to necessarily share my views on this stuff, but I would hope there’s some resonance on the idea of honesty and being genuine to one another. Also, the process of crystallizing my thoughts into actual written words isn’t super easy since I’m a pretty crummy writer so getting these cogent and short is a challenge in itself. Maybe I’ll start including a tl;dr on these things.

tl;dr - begone sneks

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shenzhenblog · 6 years

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A Prelude To Innovation: Figure Out How The World Is Changing And How To Be More Relevant As It Evolves

There are many places in this world I hope to one day experience. On that list was Sofia, Bulgaria. I use the past tense as I’m so happy to report that I had the opportunity to visit this beautiful city (and country) for the DigitalK conference. What a great event!

I presented on topic that I refer to as “A Prelude to Innovation.” It’s meant to spotlight the important actions and events serving as the introduction to innovation itself. Shortly after my talk, I had the opportunity to meet Vassilena Valchanova to answer a few of her questions. Our conversation led to an incredibly thoughtful article that I wanted to share with you here.

Even though the context of the article focuses on customer experience and marketing, you can substitute those monikers for innovation, transformation, or any role or industry.

It’s very honest and candid advice. I hope it helps you.

Figure Out How The World is Changing and How To Be More Relevant as It Evolves

by Vassilena Valchanova

I am often amazed by how approachable big keynote speakers can be. It took about 15 minutes for Brian Solis to reply to my twitter-invitation for an interview at DigitalK. 4 hours later, we were sitting in the rooftop bar of his hotel. We talked about consumer experience, storytelling, and the skills marketers need to develop.

The context of the marketing world today

I’ve been following Brian Solis ever since, in university, I stumbled uponPutting the Public Back Into Public Relations. Turns out this was in 2009 – a whole eon in the digital world! So I started by asking what has remained the same in marketing since then – for better or worse. We started off with the worse.

The digital world has evolved. There are many new channels, devices, and platforms. “Marketing is good at scaling to these new possibilities, but is not good at adapting culturally to these new channels,” Brian explained. “[Marketers] are still creating messages, using brand guidelines, preparing statements approved by legal teams and execs. We’re not humanizing any of this to be relevant to human beings.”

Why does this happen, though? Because marketers only think about market share, target audiences, and stats in reports. We lack the customer understanding needed in the digital age where the distribution of power has shifted in favor of users. “Marketers don’t know customers, don’t think like customers. Although they all our customers. But when they go to work they become marketers and they forget almost how to be human.”

The reason for that is “the fallacy of busy” marketers fall into. “They have a campaign to plan. They have metrics they have for you. They have meetings. And so they find excuses not to branch into new directions because they’re so busy on all these other fronts.”

The solution, according to Brian, is having the discipline to discern between urgent and important, the strength to say no. “The thing that I always recommend is asking what would happen if you really didn’t send that e-mail newsletter. What would happen if you didn’t create that app? What if you took time to figure out what’s the next smart move? You have this thing I call “the fallacy of busy” where you get so consumed by everything you have to do that you don’t allow yourself time to invent or time to learn or time to experiment.”

Don’t get so consumed by everything you have to do that you don’t allow yourself time to invent or time to learn or time to experiment.

From awareness to understanding the full customer journey

Brian Solis is not the type of person who’d just pose a hard problem, so we moved into talking about solutions. There’s a lot happening that’s putting marketers in the corner. But they can learn and adapt.

The transition is visible in the startup world where “constraint forces creativity”. The availability of large budgets or lots of time are a luxury here, so marketing needs to scale very fast and drive users. The goal is speed of execution and driving tangible business results.

“Whatever you call it – agile marketing, growth hacking – it’s designing marketing for intent,” says Brian. “That way marketers start to become a much more strategic asset in any organization. They are focusing on business level deliverables that executives can appreciate.” Then marketing can expand its relevance and its worth by looking beyond the top of the funnel – focusing on the entire customer journey.

The key to doing this is for marketers to understand their customers well. “There’s a movement called micro-moments now. Micro-moments reveal how people go through the customer journey starting with [a smartphone]. I think 90% of customers start the journey on the mobile phone.”

The concept of micro-moments is not new. It started way back in 2015 with a report by Google and shortly after the focus moved to mobile. The next step in micro-moments is for them to increase in number and importance, as consumers expect more from brands.

Micro-moments give marketers a new level of understanding customer needs and how to serve them better. “It’s very insightful because then you can start to experiment with very specific strategies for marketing that are different than what you might do normally. And so that starts to put marketing on a path towards customer experience. Then you find that you’re getting new expertise and you’re also becoming a resource to other parts of the organization that you weren’t partners with before.”

Focusing on customer experience gets marketing from a simple awareness engine to an integrated part of the full business funnel.

Consumer experience as the way forward

Ever since publishing X: The Experience When Business Meets Design, Brian Solis has been the herald of this elusive concept – customer experience. I was curious to learn what made him venture into this direction of research.

“It’s a very personal endeavor. I started writing because, as a human being, everything that we do on [our smartphones] – every app, every network – tells us we’re the most important person in the world. And it becomes the standard. When you go to traditional marketing it is nothing like that. And that’s the problem. And so I was trying to get to the core of what that was.”

Going on the hunt for good customer experience design, Solis found that it’s not a marketing tactic, rather a full business philosophy. And marketers are still pretty inefficient at creating interactive experiences. To illustrate that, Brian talked about Disney Land:

“From the rides to the placement of trash cans to how the buildings are designed – everything was designed for a very specific experience. And they’re all not just designed as one thing, they are designed as a complete, what I call, experience map. Everything is designed to the tiniest details.

But when you try to shop on Disney online, it’s an outmoded experience. It’s very very traditional. What’s the difference? What’s the disconnect between the people who work at the park and the people who work on the online property? Why aren’t they bringing that same thinking to this?”

The reason would be digital marketers think only about conversions rather than what customers value, want, or need. They haven’t unlearned the old marketing rules.

Learning to unlearn

During his keynote at DigitalK Brian Solis touched upon learning versus unlearning. As digital specialists, we need to not only learn new things. We need to unlearn the old comfortable solutions we know. To break the rules and be innovative, you need to unlearn the tactics you automatically default to.

Brian practices what he preaches, as he’s unlearning things on a regular basis. When writing X, he designed a completely new reading experience. Recently he collaborated with LinkedIn on a storytelling ebook, and heworked with a storyboard artist to teach him the art and science of telling a story. He has done his fair share of unlearning and admits it’s not an easy thing to do.

“Unlearning is hard because it goes against every convention that makes you who you are today. We’re human beings and we all have experiences and skills and things that we’ve learned throughout our whole life. And if there were somebody to tell you, “All of that is part of the problem,” that’s hard to hear. Very hard to process. Because it is that experience and that expertise that has made us successful in where we are today.”

I almost felt like our conversation was following a steady wave pattern. We were swinging between the bad news of how the world changes, making us inept to deal with it, and the good news that there is still something we can do about it. So I was almost holding my breath to hear about the flip side of unlearning. It didn’t take long:

“The question I had to ask was why do I have to do a book the way that every book is done? If I had to invent the book what would it be? Once you start asking these questions you start getting different answers. Once you start getting different answers and you start experimenting you get better at unlearning and you get better at having ideas you never would have had before.”

Unlearning breaks the usual process of iteration that we often mistake for innovation. Unlearning makes us go to places we’ve never been to before and although it’s extremely hard, the return on effort is astronomically high.

Unlearning is hard because it goes against every convention that makes you who you are today.

The motivation of Brian Solis

All the things Solis talked about were inspiring, but also extremely difficult to apply. He’s not the type of speaker who’ll give you hollow inspiration and no clear next steps. He won’t focus on tiny easy iterations that will make you feel better for achieving something.

So I had to ask what was the motivation giving Brian the energy to continue researching, writing, and advocating for the hard way out.

“I’m done with the bull…, I’m done with the hype. The world is changing and the only solution is to figure out how the world is changing and how to be more relevant as the world changes. No amount of cheerleading, no amount of motivation is going to solve that problem. The only way to solve that problem is to understand how to reverse engineer how people are changing, what’s important to them, how they make decisions. And then build the bridge between today and them. What I know, what I don’t know, and them. What I need to learn, what I need to unlearn, and them. That’s your purpose, that’s your inspiration, that’s your motivation. The only way to do that is through hard work. And I understand that hard work is not a sexy message to send out. It’s not a best selling message. But it is the solution. It is the answer and that’s why I determined that that’s going to be my role in life.”

The world is changing and the only solution is to figure out how to be more relevant as it evolves.

I drank the rest of my cappuccino and left the rooftop bar feeling like I was at the base camp of a high mountaintop. The clouds cover the peak and you’re not fully sure what the end goal looks like. But you know the road to it will be hard.

It feels like challenges arise all the time and the life of a digital change agent is to always focus on the next one. But consistency in taking on the hard challenge is what distinguishes the no-BS marketer from the pat-on-the-back snake oil salesman. There’s no easy way forward, so get to know your customers, start unlearning, and drive meaningful change.

This article was originally published at briansolis.com

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Brian Solis

Brian Solis is principal analyst and futurist at Altimeter, the digital analyst group at Prophet, Brian is world renowned keynote speaker and 7x best-selling author. His latest book, X: Where Business Meets Design, explores the future of brand and customer engagement through experience design.

A Prelude To Innovation: Figure Out How The World Is Changing And How To Be More Relevant As It Evolves was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

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msaxena · 8 years

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Hold On!

Yes, if I were to status my state of mind these past few months, this would be it. “Hold On!”

Oh so many thoughts, ideas and words...words...words! Well, okay lets take it one at a time, for when I think about it now, thoughts are worth sharing albeit some rather not, due to the content. Now then you may ask, what’s the purpose of sharing some and not the others? Thoughts are thoughts after all and by subduing them, it certainly can’t be the correct approach, right? For starters I feel thoughts, which merit a discussion on a deeper level are often not thoroughly processed within the ‘self’ first, tend to be misconstrued. No fault of the audience or a bystander, just a lack of focus of the intended idea. As I write this, I take note of the very irony I have just described. Having internalized quite a bit, more than I may admit through life, I find today to be the day I share what’s on my mind, well, rather what’s ‘in’ my mind. Now, writing is not my forte, however as I share more frequently from now on, I’m rooting for progress!

Standing in solidarity on a day where our leaders, rather ‘elected’ leaders, I must re-iterate, have a notion that the ‘self’ comes before the ‘selfless’. I personally can’t fathom this notion as a citizen of this world. Knowing our place in this world is and always will be of paramount significance, as only then can the ‘self’ begin to understand how actions have equal and opposite reactions (must throw in some elementary physics for you). All countries have their issues, none are easily remedied nor will they be unless the ‘people’ want it. No no, I’m not speaking of just electing officials to represent our views, that is just ONE approach and one that we as a people tend to rely on. Remember, they volunteeringly provide a service for us, the people...not the other way around! This past year has been a prime example (....). Relying on a single political party is just absurd (apologies to all the liberals, conservatives, libertarians, green peace etc). Until there is division, one can’t really know the true meaning of unity. Simple enough right? Compassion of the basic human rights have no party lines, yet we are made to feel that there are boundaries. Each party ridicules one another over the ‘moral’ compass. The fact is, in my opinion, till a discussion has not occurred over issues which we rarely speak of at the magnitude which they rightfully merit, the issues will always be issues. Poverty, education, social ecology and the love for the one planet we have are issues (not to negate other pressing issues), until throughly discussed, will always haunt us. These issues I speak of are the very foundation of our existence, out of which we branch out. It is easy to blame a leader for not passing a bill, not supporting an organization and what not. Going back to the laissez-faire attitude, “I can’t do much”, “my vote won’t matter”, or on the flip side, “I voted...did my part!” Until the self-realization that we are stronger together and not stronger by electing a cabinet to watch for our interests while we continue our daily lives, the change we so passionately and even angrily speak of, will cease to take place. Thus creating further animosity and divide. One party, one leader cannot satisfy the needs of everyone, it is an epic fallacy! That is the system we live in and are surrounded by such notions. Be the change, live compassionately, a simple act of our kindness may not be measured in conventional ways or the ROI (for you metric oriented people) maybe not be immediate or even in the years to follow, rather it is a seed sown, in a desperately needed time. Germinate these acts with further love and compassion for others, and the offspring will more than often surprise you!

I may never know what happened to that disheveled homeless lady near the home-depot on a rainy day, however I knew from her re-assuring smile in response to me providing her with a simple cup of hot coffee, that she was just in need of a basic human right: to have a warm drink on a cold day. Compassion needs no pre-judgement. A smile can break down walls of anger even in the toughest times. It is our fundamental human nature...to be loved!

I digress...

Protests and marches are quite amazing at sending ‘visual’ and ‘auditory’ messages, however I find we must go deeper than that even. Well, considering I haven’t taken part in a protest at the level I should or could, who am I to talk about this practice? Well, I know I want to, I know I’m aggravated, I know I want my voice to be heard, I know peaceful protests can be a fine line of juggling anger and passion!

So that’s it...I go back to my initial point, I must process these thoughts within my‘self’ so my actions and words aren’t misconstrued. Breaking and vandalizing our own cities is not an idea I will ever entertain, regardless of the cause! It’s simply a byproduct of un-processed anger and in turn it only puts the cause that much further behind. It is not easy, I know! So instead of channeling anger out on the streets, do a simple exercise, write. Write down your thoughts, ideas, visions, heck even doodle (my level of expertise in realm of Art). Nothing I am saying is revolutionary or new here, simply a self-realization to act on these very simple yet effective mediums to sort my‘self’. Only then can I be an effective member of a revolution.

Like I said before, this was a long time coming and due to my insecurities in sharing my thoughts in a proficient well written format, I always backed down from tapping away at the keyboard keys. I leave you all with a tune which I feel, eloquently paraphrases the point I was ‘trying’ to make. Till next time...

Keep the passion alive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDamNQUlLDs

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