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catherdrashepard · 3 years

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Red Rising/Persona

I’m a huge fan of the Persona series and pretty much anything Atlus has done. I am ALSO a huge fan of Red Rising (blame that on @hyena-frog) So, the natural conclusion is that I should determine which Persona the main RR POV characters would have. As well as a couple extras. Pictures will be included with credit to the artist when applicable. Please let me know if I forget to credit someone. (https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Persona_5_Royal_Personas) Here is the website I’m using. Spoilers for the first three books and probably a little of Iron Gold. Also a spoiler for the Faith Confidante in Persona 5: Royal. Avoid the Lysander paragraph if you want none of that. Disclaimer: I have not finished Dark Age yet so some of my thoughts might be lacking complete information.

Darrow: The main characters of the Persona series always start with a Persona from the Fool arcana. It doesn’t necessarily stay that way depending on the players personal preference. That being said, Darrow does fit the Fool arcana very well. It’s considered to be the beginning arcana or one without a number. It represents innocence, divine inspiration, madness, freedom, spontaneity, inexperience, chaos and creativity. These traits I think describe Darrow pretty accurately, especially in the first two books. Considering the story revolves around his journey, it makes sense to label him as a character of beginnings. Persona-wise, I think the one that fits Red Rising and Golden Son Darrow would be Satanael. This Persona is basically the equivalent to Lucifer, the angel who led a rebellion against God. But also that isn’t all that Darrow is. I also think the Death arcana is fitting for him, from Morning Star and beyond. Death is an arcana roughly in the middle of the tarot deck and it’s one that represents metamorphosis and change. Literal interpretation aside, Darrow experiences a change in himself after his capture at the end of Golden Son and his rescue in Morning Star. Not to mention, his entire purpose for becoming a Gold in the first place was to provoke a change in the current system of government. For his Death Persona, I would give him Thanatos. Because he’s my favourite, but also he’s considered the harbinger of death. Perfect for the Reaper. I don’t think Darrow completely loses Satanael in favour of Thanatos; I could definitely see him using both depending on the circumstance.

Virginia/Mustang: By Persona standards, because Mustang is Darrow’s main love interest, she would be the Lovers arcana. However, and this was incredibly difficult because she could really fit more acana, I think she could be both the Judgement and the Empress arcana. The Judgement arcana, I feel, fits her Sovereign persona (ha). It’s associated with a deep understanding of life, a balance of light and darkness, and characters who are well-aware, and intelligent. Not that this doesn’t fit her in her private life as well, but it seems more prevalent in her dealings as the Sovereign. The second arcana is the Empress. This one is more associated with mothers and women of authority. As we saw in the first trilogy, she went to great lengths to protect her family, i.e., working for Octavia, being with Cassius, the whole incident in Lykos. Choosing her Persona is tricky, mostly because Personas can shift arcana depending which game they are pulled from. I think the one to go with is Astarte. This is more of a feeling rather than definitive “proof”. She is identified as the goddess of war, hunting, love, sex, horses and possibly the morning star; her symbols are thought to be the lion, panther, and an eight pointed star. This is also the ultimate Persona of Haru in Persona 5, who awakens her initial Persona in defiance of her father and his corruption, which also feels apt. That being said, Astarte is from the Empress arcana and I could not find a Judgement arcana Persona that I felt fit her well enough.

Credit for the picture of Astarte to: Machia McMadlass on Amino

Sevro: Sevro was very easy to choose a Persona for. One in particular stood out to me. I think Sevro could fit both the Fool arcana and the Devil arcana. I think the aspects of the Fool that Sevro embodies are the madness, freedom, spontaneity, and creativity. The Devil arcana represents the urge to do selfish, impulsive, violent things. However, it also can represent a healthy bond and commitment. Sevro is a wild card from the beginning, killing Priam in the first book being a prime example. Both he and Darrow were very unexpected successes in the Institute. This is something that also describes the protagonists in the Persona games as well. They all just kind of show up out of nowhere and completely shift the paradigm, especially in Personas 3&5. As for the Devil arcana, Sevro reminds me of the Devil confidante in Persona 5. Their goals are not the same, but both characters are very focused on what they want and make every effort to push through despite any obstacles in the way. As for the Persona, the one I chose was sort of picked for superficial reasons; Bugbear. Its name comes from the Celtic word bugs which means evil spirit or goblin. It’s also considered to be something of a boogeyman, a creature that lurked in the woods to scare children. Also, it’s essentially a stuffed bear filled with skulls, which seems to fit Sevro’s weird tastes.

Victra: With Victra, one arcana stuck out in my mind immediately, the Chariot. This arcana represents victory, conquest, self-assertion, self-confidence, control, war, and command. When first introduced to Victra, she does seem very sure of herself and what she wants. She strikes me as a shoot first and ask questions later type, which is something she has in common with the video game characters who share this arcana. Like Sevro, she could also fit the Devil arcana, especially during certain events in Dark Age that she pursues very single-mindedly. Although, I would say Victra is more Devil leaning than Sevro. As for the Persona, I think Pazuzu would fit her style pretty well. What really struck me as fitting Victra was the description of Pazuzu as an evil spirit that drives away other evil spirits, and protects humans from plagues and misfortunes. Also, despite trying to stick with the arcana placements of Persona 5 Royal, I think it’s worth noting that Pazuzu was summoned by a character in Devil Survivor who seeks revenge for death of a loved one.

Cassius: While perusing the arcana descriptions, the one for the Lovers immediately reminded me of Cassius. The Lovers is usually reserved for the “canon” love interest in the games, barring player preferences. However, Dassius jokes aside, what really made me think Cassius is that this arcana symbolises two paths a life could lead to and, standing at a crossroad and needing to make a decision. I think this describes Cassius’ personal journey throughout the books to a T, especially in the climax of Morning Star where he makes the decision to join Darrow in taking out Aja and Octavia. The other arcana that Cassius would be is the Star. This arcana is said to represent hope, self-confidence, faith, altruism, luck, generosity, peace and joy. I feel like self-confidence, faith, and altruism fit pre-end of Morning Star Cassius very well. He was considered the pinnacle of Golds and I think, at least until he learned what was actually going on, that’s all he wanted to be. The game characters with this arcana are teachers or mentors to the protagonist. Characters that are very good at what they do and offer some form of training. A sort of outlier to this is Teddie, from Persona 4. While he does have more experience than the main character dealing with the enemy (both Cassius and Teddie are part of the group the protagonist fights against), Teddie doesn’t take a combative role until later in the game. This is only possible because Rise, who replaces him as support, makes him question his identity or the “real” him. This is very similar to what happens to Cassius in the first three books. Darrow becomes what Cassius thought himself to be and it causes Cassius to question who he really is. Although, unlike Teddie, I think Cassius chose to heavily lean into being the perfect Gold specimen until the end of Morning Star, where he makes a choice to be the “real” Cassius. As for the Persona, I could easily see him with Sraosha, who represents the highest virtue of humanity, obedience to and submission to Divine Law. I think his motivations for using this Persona would change, however. I imagine at first, he would use it to keep the Society functioning how it always does. But, after Morning Star, I bet it would shift to be more about protecting his own ideals and the submission aspect would relate to Cassius’ personal morals and sense of justice.

Lysander: I really wanted to avoid using the arcana that are not present in a standard deck, and added for a specific game. However, one of the arcana that stood out to me for Lysander is the Faith arcana. This arcana symbolises, in the positive, belief in others and in oneself. Negatively, it represents blind faith misplaced in something that does not deserve trust. From what I understand of Lysander’s story, his personal journey seems to mirror that of the game character who shares his arcana. It is revealed later that she is a fake, and her memories were overwritten by another character. I have not finished Dark Age as of writing this but, I am under the strong impression that Lysander has been brainwashed and that some of his memories have been replaced or erased entirely. And while he does have some misgivings about the Society, I believe he is blind to how fucked up it really is. But it also holds potential for Lysander to overcome this indoctrination. I had a bit of trouble with what the second arcana would be but, I think the Moon fits Lysander pretty well. You could say he’s a….Moonie. But in all seriousness, the description that struck me as Lysander-esque was "They often tend to have trouble accepting themselves for who they are and, because of that fear, try to correspond to an ideal person. And like the arcana, there is a hidden depth as to why they act in their behaviours." Lysander was definitely sheltered and isolated, by both Octavia and Cassius (he tried his best). And perhaps by Atalantia to some degree. He is a fed a narrative and doesn’t really get a chance to analyse his own perceptions and why they may be incorrect. The characters of the Moon arcana in the game often struggle internally with themselves which, to be honest, is a trait most of the POV characters have. But what I think Lysander lacks in that case, is self-awareness. As for the Persona, I ended up going with Cendrillon. This Persona is based on Cinderella, which is a little different from some of the other ones. As much as I like to make fun of Lysander for his poor choices, it’s hard not to see him as a victim. I don’t necessarily think he’s a hero or that he’s entitled to the kind of happy ending Cinderella gets. However, I do feel that, like the fairy tale princess, some of his circumstances were as a result of situations that were out of his control. Also, a line really stuck with me from the initial awakening for the Persona that really made me think Lysander; “Well, if those really are the shoes you've chosen... Then we'll dance to the end.”

Ephraim: Ephraim suffers a lot throughout the books, and I feel like that reflects heavily on what arcana he is. I think the first one that fits him well is the Tower arcana, which is associated with a fall from grace. His story reminds me a lot of the Tower social link character in Persona 3. Both Ephraim and the game character lose their family and turn to substance abuse to numb the pain. People of the Tower arcana seems to suffer a lot of internal pain which they fail to cope with healthily and thus turn to less savoury means until and outside force steps in to help steer them in a better direction. The other arcana I believe fits him well is the Hanged Man. What makes me think Ehpraim is that the appearance of the Hanged Man can be seen as advice to take the time to reflect over one's upcoming actions, which is something I think he needs to learn how to do. They can also be self-sacrificial and are often notable for being stuck between two different stages of life. Also, much like the Tower arcana characters, their journey seems to revolve around some kind of loss that they are failing to cope with. As for the Persona….this was a bit tricky. I have a few I like but one comes with a bit reluctance because of how it plays into the plot of Persona 4 and how it would reflect on Ephraim’s character. But, my gut is telling me that Magatsu-Izanagi is the way to go. What is making me think of Ephraim when I see it is the symbolism behind this Persona. It represents emptiness, impulsiveness, poor judgement, obsession and frivolity. There are also some similarities between Ephraim and the character who wields this Persona in Persona 4. They both exhibit little tact and seem to be playing some sort of game with the other characters. However, Adachi (Persona 4 character) seems to do this because he’s a psychopath whereas I think Ephraim is this way as a terrible coping mechanism. In Persona 4, the arcana where this Persona fits in is meant to be the reversed Fool. And while I’m trying to stick with the Persona 5 Royal placements (which for Magatsu-Izanagi is the Tower arcana), I think the implication here is that Ephraim has a lot of potential to be something so great if he can just reverse the path he is going down.

Lyria: I love Lyria. I think she’s a wonderful and interesting character. I love that she highlights the ramifications of undoing a toxic form of government. She gets so much development that it was easy to see what arcana she fit into. The first one I thought of was the Hermit. It represents wisdom, introspection, solitude, retreat and philosophical searches. In the beginning, she has very strong opinions about Darrow and the rest of the Rising. Which is entirely understandable considering her entire way of life was stripped from her without a way to cope with the changes. But, unlike Lysander, she’s willing to re-examine herself and her perceptions as she is presented with new information. She also tends to try and keep under the radar if she can, which is another trait of the Hermit. What’s interesting to me is that other characters of the Hermit arcana are victims of circumstances out of their control, but they see their own victimization as a result of a flaw in their character. The other arcana is very tricky for me, as there are parts of Lyria’s character that I don’t know yet. After much discussion and deliberation with my resident expert, the second arcana for Lyria is the Priestess. This arcana is a symbol of hidden knowledge or other untapped power, wisdom, female mystery and patience. The characters of this arcana also take more time to open up to the protagonist than others. Which also fits Lyria as she needed time and introspection to really understand Darrow and Mustang. As for the Persona, I’m actually going to cheat a little with my choice. I try to keep the arcana placements from Persona 5 Royal but for Lyria, I’m choosing Hariti whose arcana is Priestess in Persona 4 and Persona Q. Hariti is a protector of children and childbirth after going through a significant change in perspective which, from what I understand and have been told, is also something that Lyria does.

#persona #red rising #my thoughts

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buryyourfavouritestrope · 3 years

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Your Dad’s not that bad -Nobuchika Ginoza

Author Note: I will not lie, I’m straight up one of those people who don’t proof read. At least I won’t proof read until a few hours or days later and I want to resurface the memories of writing this. Also, man, how painful was the end of Psycho-pass season 1, they really want to make you feel some emotions

She listened closely as she heard the sound of the door slide open and shut. She could practically feel the tension flooding the small apartment before she could see the source. She’d been nursing her wounds as her guest trudged through the doorway.

“What a pleasant surprise” she smiled standing from her seat she watched him shrug out of his jacket, he threw it over the chair before approaching her. This had become a common occurrence; their days off rarely fell on correlating days so in the times where their battling schedules brushed by each other he would seek her out. He would watch cautiously as he made his way to her apartment before checking the coast was clear and slipping in. “You know your dad was scheduled to finish when you did today, normally you wait a while in times like this but you're here dead on the end of your shift.”

If she expected a witty retort, she had no hope of gaining it. Her frivolous teasing did little to lull the tension in his shoulders as he placed his hands on her waist. He just wanted to hold her, the day had been long and bothersome and right now all he wanted to do was lie with her and ramble about stupid things.

“Your wounds are healing nicely, I hope next time you won’t take unnecessary risks again,” he whispered as he looked over the wound on her neck, she inhaled deeply. She had only jumped in the way to avoid him from being injured. It was a dumb move, he had her there, but she felt something for him. Whatever had begun to transpire between the two of them had stirred an attachment within her and though she was unsure whether he felt the same she wouldn’t have done anything differently.

“Please, I already got the third degree from both Tsunemori and Masaoka. Don’t think I couldn’t see you boiling over wanting to scold me too, Mr Strict Investigator.” She chided. Ginoza frowned. His glasses shifting on his nose ever so slightly as he watched her. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, I’m sorry, but I thought better me than you”

“Please don’t,” Ginoza paused. He was a man of professionalism, but she had rapidly become his weak point. He couldn’t remember what drove him towards her, just that he was glad it had. They’d be in trouble if anyone caught wind of what was going on between them. “I can’t risk losing you,” he added. He felt her pull him towards the sofa. They collapsed against it, their bodies melding into the fabric as they covered themselves in silence. Her fingers pulled at the knot in his tie, loosening it as he sighed. The tension seemed to fall from him in that second.

“Want to tell me what is bothering you?” Her words caressed him as he peered at her. Ginoza took the time to memorise her features, every dimple, every crevice and every flicker of emotion that gazed back at him. He did this often, a strange sort of stress relief.

“Masaoka, he coddles inspector Tsunemori too much, I understand he’s looking after her hue but he- he overstepped the mark. We were going after Kogami at that point he was MIA and Tsunemori refused to believe he could have set everything up to run away. He’s an enforcer, but Masaoka threw me against the equipment and told me I was being too harsh. She’s too innocent, the sooner she wises up to the role of the enforcers and Inspectors the more she’ll start to understand the line we need to tread as inspectors.” He rambled. She felt her eyes drifting to his hands, one had remained firm against her waist, whilst the other flew through the air in an erratic motion. “And he should know better than to entertain her thoughts”

“Your dad’s not so bad, Nobuchika. He means well” She commented softly, he sighed. He’d have been angry by her words, but he couldn’t find it in himself to argue. His father was everything he had wished he hadn’t been; he’d ruined his childhood when the Sybil system came into effect.

“My father is a latent criminal.” He remarked. There remained many things left unsaid between Nobuchika and Masaoka, many things that he wished he could say. He wished he could still see the same man who had nursed him when he was sick, who had filled a young Ginoza with pride as he waved goodbye on his way to keeping people safe and more importantly he wished he hadn’t been made an enforcer.

“So am I, or did you forget about the time I tried to kill Kougami” she laughed, everything about this entanglement they found themselves in was doomed. An Inspector and an Enforcer couldn’t enter a relationship. He couldn’t proudly present her to people outside. He couldn’t take her on fancy dates or wake up beside her in the comfort of his own home. Sooner rather than later this would end, someone would report his actions and he’d be suspended, fired or demoted. She would be thrown into a prison somewhere and all they’d have is the fond memories of gentle caresses and soft-spoken promises.

“That’s different,” he lied, there was no difference between herself and his father, they were both labelled as hunting dogs and confined to the building. Nobuchika placed a hand on her cheek, a smile dancing across his lips. “You bring me more joy than Masaoka.”

“Well, that’s a given, I’m naturally a source of joy in everyone. I wish things were different Gino, I wish we’d have met before I was slung in here. Back when I was an idiot inspector” she yawned, she slept better in his arms.

“I don’t, I doubt I’d have had the courage to speak to you” Nobuchika confessed. “I probably wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on my job”

“You can’t as it is, I took a blade to the neck that proves it” she returned, he chuckled. He felt guilty for it. He’d apologised until he was black and blue. Almost daily he checked on her as she recovered. Ginoza released another sigh as he held her tighter.

#ginoza nobuchika #psycho pass ginoza #ginoza nobuchika imagine #psycho pass imagine #another man who needs a hug and a capri sun #like one other person needs a hug more than this man but he definitely needs one

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ardenttheories · 4 years

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Your takes on gender can be applied these ways also: 1. Their species could be transphobic solely because they might view gender as unnecessary (which isn’t true, due to so many trolls being trans with no problem, so that’s out the window,) or 2. The Condesce herself or her generation created gender roles on Alternia; it would also make sense with The Signless preaching beliefs of freedom and possibly even expression, if we were to go that route. While it doesn’t fix all, it’s better than nothin

Continuing on with Signless and the Condesce, it would have actually made more sense for Sign to be a Fuchsia if society is based on blood caste, for more than one reason (I mean the political implications of a thief of BLOOD being a tyrannical emperor and what you could do with that are pretty fucking apparent but hey who gives a shit amiright) and while life can be just as politically aligned as blood, the inherent structure of blood and the way it’s broken and set up makes Sign a better fit

The bulge-nook standard is all just a bunch of useless bullshit, but it wasn’t in the past apparently; I think it’s mentioned somewhere in the comic that they’re actually close to extinction because the mother grub method is unsustainable and was created BY the Condesce? And that they actually could procreate together but they’re slowly losing the ability? Therefore you could also say that those who are still able to reproduce via encounters could be labeled differently, but that’s still shit

Continuing once again off of the whole mother grub thing (Sorry I’m spamming your inbox I just really like your think thoughts,) the only reason I could see a troll harboring certain ‘gender’ traits (boobs for example) would be for advantages in different climates, besides possible ovaries which, if trolls are more bug than human-like, don’t even make sense anyway. It’s all just a bunch of crud BUT the argument for being trans lies solely in what could remain, OR societal reconstruction I guess

I suppose HIC could have been the generation to assign gender roles to her society, but my only issue would be this: why? I pointed this out in another anon, but there’s no actual divide into “trolls who are superior for being x gender” and “trolls who are inferior for being x gender”. She’s the empress, so you’d think she’d have a preference for women - but her closest and most valued are both men. And even then, she kills indisciminately between genders. Her only preference I’ve ever seen gender-wise is that she always views women as heiresses (or, people who are possible to take her throne), and even that doesn’t entirely make sense; it can easily be explained away as Hussie trying to build a matriarchy where one just didn’t need to exist, to parallel Alternia and Earth.

To HIC, hemospectrum trumps gender. A male and female rustblood could be standing side by side, both accused of a crime, and neither would be considered more or less guilty on a gendered basis: they’d both be culled for being rust. Likewise, two violetbloods could kill a purpleblood, and the male wouldn’t be more likely to get caught than the female, or viseversa. They’d both get away scot free because they’re highbloods, and higher than the purple they killed - or, they’d both be revenge-slaughtered by other purplebloods.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that, although our canonical legislacerator is female (Redglare), the actual judge (His Honorable Tyranny) is male. So, again, we have a male in power. Yet there’s no explicit bias towards or against men.

It’s this foundational issue for trying to put a gendered system - as we understand it - on a system that just doesn’t work for it. I do very firmly believe that the trolls would have a gender system, yes; but I think it would revolve around something entirely different. More like how bee genders work; if they’re all “female”, then how do you differentiate the “gender” of bees? By focusing on what actually differentiates them societally: their roles in the hive. Queen, worker, drone - these are the bee genders. How you could implement that to Alternians, I’m not totally sure; I’d have to think on that a little more.

The Signless works well as a mutantblood for the martyr status Hussie was going for; he’s a very clear allegory for Jesus as-is, and having him be a fuchsia wouldn’t have really worked in that sense (because he would have been born into an inherent place of power, without the requirement to go through the martyr journey - and he could have much more easily set about a better, more equal structure had he been an heir than he could have being a mutant).

It’s a good way to impose on readers just how violent troll society is against those who don’t fit into the spectrum, since the hemospectrum is a class structure that was instilled by both HIC and Doc Scratch (which doesn’t exist as strictly on Beforus, except that the upper classes look after the lower). It also just allows for the equal “one troll of each caste” motif Hussie wanted to go with. So, again, this is an unfortunate instance of Hussie choosing design over lore.

That said, being a fuchsiablood - or even a mutated fuchsia, if we still want to go down the mutant route - would have been endlessly interesting. It could have completely different to see a not-so-shoddily hidden allegory. How The Signless would have attempted to go against HIC, his abilities as a Blood Player, the potentialities of him still raising a rebellion and attempting to change the entire structure of Alternia to something more Beforean - it’s definitely juicy food for thought, if nothing else.

I couldn’t find anything on the Mother Grub method being instilled by HIC, or the fact that it was unsustainable - at least, not on Alternia. Everything I’ve seen relating to Alternia and Mother Grubs very much seems to state that these are the natural ways of the world, something that wasn’t meddled with (which goes along with a theory I had with a few anons some time ago, under the “#homestuck biology” tag, wherein the Mother Grub, trolls, and Drones are actually all founded from the same ancient species, but the trolls just so happened to be the ones to evolve into intelligent life).

(Edited note: I did find something mentioning that the threat of global extinction allowed for the implementation of the caste system to begin with - as in, the hemospectrum didn’t exist until that specific point in time. It doesn’t mention anything about the Mother Grubs before or after this event, or what caused the near-extinction of the troll race. I would assume Doc Scratch, in order to force the Hemospectrum to exist in the first place, since he takes full credit for its conception. In either case, it isn’t an inability to breed that almost killed off the entire Alternian race - otherwise, even post-Hemospectrum, they would have still died out.)

Anything regarding unsustainability might be instead referring to HIC’s attempts to reintroduce the troll population to the Alpha kids’ Earth; she tries to bring lusii into the world and tries to repopulate Earth using genetic material via the Mother Grub (including for humans), but ultimately fails to do so (partly because her attempts to do so were thwarted by a clone of her lusus, partly because, I assume, human DNA isn’t compatible with the Mother Grubs).

So, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like trolls ever had the ability to mate with each other and reproduce in a more mammalian way. Which I still despise as a concept, if I’m completely honest; the trolls are clearly meant to be based on insects, are surrounded by insect-like evolutionary divergences, and breed in a very insect-like way. The idea that they ever, at any point, had a more mammalian lineage just makes no sense. That’s like saying that we descended from ancient bees instead of ancient apes.

It’s, again, one of those instances were you can tell Hussie tried to make something unique and interesting, but then didn’t fully think it through and returned to what he knew most - which is a very much more human experience.

I think the best explanation for the “gender” differences - beyond “Hussie needed a way to show male and female characters because he didn’t think to include different genders in a society that clearly needed it - probably is the climate concept. It’d be more interesting, for one, and still allow for the potential that trolls don’t have - or show - inherent sexual dimorphism. Especially because, like you said, those are very mammalian traits? Insect-based species don’t have an evolutionary need for those things.

#ardenttheories #homestuck biology #long post//#Anonymous

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jacksgreysays · 4 years

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Determined Clairvoyant, Misguided Knight brainstorm, (2020-05-29)

A/N: So I had a weird sleepless brainstorming/outlining binge last night, passed out and woke up to this chunk of nonsense...

I’ve been reading a lot of DCMK (Detective Conan and Magic Kaito) fic but also I am always a little bit thinking of DoS so my brain went:

Hey, Shisui and Shikako have very similar personalities to Kaito and Shinichi...

But Shisui is the detective and Shikako the thief.

And on the one hand, I was considering just translating it into the in Friendship Is A (Mutual) Con 'verse, such that Shisui is Interpol/FBI and ends up helping the crew because what they do is morally right even if it's not legal...

But it just wouldn’t be the same!

Also, for those who don’t know anything about DCMK, I’m not really using the Detective Conan premise (in which a famous teenage detective gets shrunken into a 6 year old and has to keep his identity secret while finding/dismantling the criminal organization that did this to him. In their defense(?) they were trying to kill him but used an “experimental poison.” They’re not going out of their way to randomly turn teenagers into kids... although there is another teenager that got turned into a kid by that same poison)

But it is interconnected to the Magic Kaito ‘verse (in which a teenager discovers that his dad didn’t die in an accident but was murdered by a mysterious criminal organization (possibly the same one as in Detective Conan? we’re not sure) because he used to be Phantom Thief KID who was searching for a magical jewel called Pandora that supposedly grants immortality because said mysterious criminal organization wants it for nefarious means. Also the teen and his dad are stage magicians and make their heists very flashy and fun)

Anyway, personality wise I was really feeling the Shikako = paranoid/logical Shinichi vs Shisui = flamboyant genius Kaito contrasting with their arguable respective roles as Shikako = chaotic neutral regular rule breaker and Shisui = lawful good believer of systems if not authority.

I was considering whether or not I wanted to transplant the characters into the DCMK setting, but seeing how that’s just (arguably) modern day Japan I was a little... the adapting would be more work than its worth when really all I wanted was thief!Shikako and detective!Shisui and I also, as previously mentioned, didn’t want to just insert Shisui into the Fia(M)C ‘verse.

So then I remembered this ficlet in which Danzo successfully became Hokage but a mysterious figure (ie Shikako) is working against him and I was like. Okay, but reluctant detective!Shisui having to try to capture insurrectionist thief!Shikako is hilarious. And I know Shisui isn’t actually KMP in canon, but Danzo is Hokage which means the situation is bleak and I kinda explain everything below anyway, so...

Enjoy?

shisui is one of the oldest uchiha in the village because everyone older than him was executed by danzo for their (supposed?) attempted coup

doesn't particularly want to be a detective, but he's the only one left

sharp-eyed shisui? it is both mocking his singular eye but also he does end up being pretty good at investigation

Itachi is clan head and also one of danzo’s busiest anbu (because danzo is creepy and weird) and he’s being run so ragged that shisui stepped up to do it since he vaguely remembers the KMP’s protocols and also, with one eye short, his combat effectiveness isn’t as reliable

He hates not being able to be back up for itachi, but until he figures out the depth perception thing, he’d be a liability

Itachi is the only one with both eyes (again, because danzo is creepy and weird)

every time one of his younger cousins activate their sharingan, they are forced to undergo surgery because danzo harvests one eye from each of them

sasuke is the next upcoming kid

hikaku/sai was the most recent

Shikako is working reverse chronologically to restore eyeballs because they’re not exactly labeled but she knows the newest eye goes to the most recent activator.

This is how she gets hikaku/sai’s immediate loyalty (he has both eyes, but still hides one under his eyepatch/headband because if you can’t passive aggressively use danzo’s tricks against him then what’s the point? )

((also, it’s a real good dramatic reveal of how shikako gets shisui to trust her because he’s like “you’re stealing my family’s eyeballs and turning my little cousin into your spy” and then hikaku/sai just flips up his eyepatch and blinks both eyes at shisui and he just. “well, that was literally the only argument i had”))

Oh, the age of graduation is lower in canon because danzo doesn’t believe in coddling kids and also “back in my day” nonsense, so sasuke is maybe around 8?

kakashi is, like, a weird sticking point. he's the only non-danzo adult that has a sharingan and, hey, he's also only got just the one, but shisui also remembers the elders being a little weird about him so :shrugs:

I should figure out what to do with him, tbh

i mean, i know Shikako helps Naruto escape/evade ANBU capture because Danzo was going to turn him into a “proper jinchuuriki weapon” so maybe she throws him at Kakashi and is like “BABY SITTING DUTY FOR YOU, SAD STRING BEAN”

and there’s also Tenzo/Yamato to consider here

at first the thefts are random but escalating: old mission reports, the sandaime's novelty(?) crystal ball, the hokage's hat, the sword of the thunder god, etc, etc

then it becomes directed: sharingan eyes

Shadow Thief Shikako is here to make things real difficult for danzo

while shisui is trying really hard not to get smitten (even though she’s stealing his family’s eyeballs! but he guesses better than in danzo’s possession? he’s very conflicted emotionally and very stressed and also a teenager), shikako is recruiting allies for her coup

She needs to make a deal with the devil… Kabuto? For the medical expertise in how to re-implant all the sharingan she’s stealing?

He does spy on behalf of who he thinks is the strongest, and shikako is v strong by this point

Although, the whole concept of “you were the first person i ever wanted to murder” “you flatter me” is kind of funny

What is going on with orochimaru in this timeline?

For that matter, what’s going on with the other sannin?

hyuuga have weird feelings about the whole one eye stolen thing, branch family in particular because on the one hand: DOJUTSU/BLOODLINE THEFT is literally their big nono. But they do like being the strongest clan in the village now.

Is neji’s dad still alive? When did danzo become hokage? Is it before or after Hinata’s near kidnapping?

Ibiki, anko, aoba -- gotta figure out what’s going on there

Does aoba not have the crow summons since shisui is still alive?

Is aoba a surprise half uchiha?

Unsure how bleak i want things to be for the Nara clan. They definitely don’t like things, but i’m not sure if they’re also largely killed off, just shikaku, or just yoshino…… unless Shikamaru has been taken as Danzo’s apprentice/ROOT?

Something also has to have happened to the akimichi and yamanaka tho, in order to justify/reflect it

Team 10 is essentially being held hostage. Shikako has to “steal” them from Danzo in order to get the ANY clans’ cooperation

they’re allowed to visit their family once a week in order to get clan training, but it’s on different days from each other so the other two are still within ROOT’s grasp and the one who is visiting their family knows not to step out of line

Shikamaru has been trying really hard to help him and his teammates escape, but he’s only eight years old. I’m but a boy. I’m just a boy

There is a war.

I’ve decided this.

It’s the only way to make sense of why danzo is still in charge without him having killed a ludicrous number of people (more than he’s already killed, that is)

There is a war and that’s where the majority of the loudest dissenters are sent (inuzuka, aburame, gai, etc) and because they are always out on the front lines they don’t know how bad it actually is at home

Mist rebellion peeps?

Zabuza and Haku are still alive at this time, i guess

Terumi Mei--is there even a mist rebellion at this time or are they too busy with the war, too?

… Gelel/Sand?

look, magical gems are the crux of Magic Kaito and I know I’ve replaced them with Sharingan eyes, but still. If there’s a magical gem I feel like I’m obligated to at least mention it

also, Shinichi in Detective Conan ends up with, like, the most ludicrous allies over the course of the series. He is a--as far as anyone else knows--a 6 year old Japanese boy with connections to the American FBI. That’s nuts! So Shikako having allies with Mist or Sand isn’t too far outside feasibility in comparison

A/N: So... in theory I would like to come back to this and actually write it--because as far as sleepless brainstorming sessions go, this one is fairly coherent--but just in case I don’t, I figure people would enjoy this mess of an outline anyway. And it’s nice to have notes for later.

Title is, unsurprisingly, my attempt to make the letters DCMK apply to Shikako and Shisui. On the one hand, I know the quote is “and angry Aburame, a focused Inuzuka, and a motivated Nara” but I kiiiinda misremembered wrong and thought it was “determined,” fell in love with Shisui as the “misguided knight” and then only after went back to check and realized that it should’ve been “motivated”

Ah well

#jacksgreyson #fanfiction #brainstorm #outline #incomplete #dreaming of sunshine #detective conan #magic kaito #shikako nara's guide to delinquency and military insurrection #determined clairvoyant misguided knight #shikako nara #shisui uchiha

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karderseals1990 · 4 years

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Bacterial Vaginosis Leczenie Zatok Super Genius Useful Tips

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favoriselovealina · 4 years

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21 Signs You’re a Highly Sensitive Person

https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/highly-sensitive-person-signs/

(Written by Jenne Granneman)

A highly sensitive person (HSP) experiences the world differently than others. Due to a biological difference that they’re born with, highly sensitive people are more aware of subtleties and process information deeply. This means they tend to be creative, insightful, and empathetic, but it also means they’re more prone than others to stress and overwhelm.

Although being highly sensitive is completely normal — meaning, it’s not a disease or a disorder — it’s often misunderstood, because only 15 to 20 percent of the population are HSPs.

Are you a highly sensitive person? If you relate to most of these signs, there’s a good chance you’re an HSP.

Signs You’re a Highly Sensitive Person

1. You absolutely abhor violence and cruelty of any kind.

Everyone hates violence and cruelty, but for highly sensitive people, seeing or hearing about it can be extremely unsettling. You might be an HSP if you can’t watch very scary, gory, or violent movies without getting upset or even feeling physically ill. Similarly, you may not be able to stomach a news story about animal cruelty or similar brutal acts.

2. You’re frequently emotionally exhausted from absorbing other people’s feelings.

Although highly sensitive people are not necessarily empaths, HSPs tend to “absorb” other people’s emotions, almost like an empath would. It’s not unusual for an HSP to walk into a room and immediately sense the moods of the people in it. That’s because highly sensitive people are very aware of subtleties — including facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice — that others may miss. Pair this with the sensitive person’s naturally high levels of empathy, and it’s no wonder HSPs feel emotions that are not their own. As a result, highly sensitive people tend to suffer from frequent emotional exhaustion.

3. Time pressure really rattles you.

In school, timed quizzes or speed tests made you extremely anxious — perhaps to the point of not being able to perform as well as you normally would. As an adult, when you have too many things on your to-do list and not enough time to finish them, you feel very stressed. HSPs are more sensitive to stimulation, and time pressure is no exception.

4. You withdraw often.

Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, you need plenty of downtime, preferably alone. You often find yourself withdrawing to a quiet, darkened room at the end of a long day — in order to lower your stimulation level, soothe your senses, and recharge.

5. You’re jumpy.

When someone sneaks up on you, you jump like a frightened cat. Many HSPs have a high “startle reflex” because even in non-threatening situations, their nervous systems are dialed up.

6. You think deeply.

The cornerstone of being an HSP is you process information deeply. This means you do plenty of reflecting on your experiences — more so than other people. Unfortunately, this also means you’re more prone to negative overthinking. Sometimes you obsessively play events over and over in your mind or spiral into anxious thoughts.

7. You’re a seeker.

HSPs seek answers to the big questions in life. They ask why things are the way they are and what their role in all of it is. If you’re a highly sensitive person, you may have always wondered why other people aren’t as captivated by the mysteries of human nature and the universe as you are.

8. Sudden, loud noises startle you.

For example, a loud motorcycle suddenly roaring by your window may really shake you.

9. Your clothing matters.

You’ve always been sensitive to what you wear. Scratchy fabric or restrictive clothing — like pants with a tight waistband or pantyhose — really irritate you. Of course, non-HSPs might dislike these things too, but an HSP will carefully select their wardrobe to completely avoid them. And if an HSP inadvertently wears one of these things out, the discomfort may detract from their entire experience.

10. Your pain tolerance is less.

Many HSPs are more sensitive to pain of all kinds — headaches, body aches, injuries, etc. — than non-HSPs.

11. Your inner world is alive and present.

Again, due to your deep processing, you have a rich inner world. As a child, you may have had several imaginary friends, enjoyed fantasy-based play, and were prone to daydreaming. As an adult, you may have vividly realistic dreams.

12. Change is extremely upsetting.

HSPs take comfort in their routines, because the familiar is far less stimulating than something brand new. For this reason, change — both positive and negative — can really throw off HSPs. For example, when dating someone new or getting a job promotion, HSPs may feel as equally stressed as they do overjoyed. Generally, HSPs need more time than others to adjust to change.

13. Sometimes your environment is your enemy.

Similarly, moving to a new home or traveling (even if it’s just a “fun” vacation!) can be quite difficult for you, because your senses are bombarded with so much new stimuli.

14. You’re misunderstood.

High sensitivity is often mislabeled. You may have been called “shy” or “anxious,” and perhaps it was implied that something was wrong with you. Similarly, many HSPs are labeled as introverts, because introverts and HSPs share many characteristics, such as needing lots of downtime. However, 30 percent of HSPs are actually extroverts.

15. You get hangry easily.

HSPs tend to be sensitive to changes in blood sugar levels, so they may get quite “hangry” (hungry + angry) if they haven’t eaten in a while.

16. Who needs stimulants…

…when your nervous system is already ratcheted up to the highest level? Some HSPs are sensitive to caffeine and need very little of it to feel its buzz. Similarly, some HSPs are also sensitive to alcohol’s effects.

Like what you’re reading? Get our newsletter just for HSPs. One email, every Friday. Subscribe here.

17. Conflict is your poison.

When there’s tension or disagreement in your close relationships, you feel it deeply. Many HSPs even report feeling physically ill during conflict. As a result, some highly sensitive people become conflict-avoidant, doing or saying almost anything to keep the other person happy. It’s because conflict hurts so much.

18. Criticism is a dagger.

Words really matter to HSPs. Positive words can make them soar, but harsh words will send them crashing to the ground. Criticism can feel like a dagger, and negativity is toxic to the highly sensitive person’s finely-tuned system.

19. You’re conscientious.

At work and in school, you try hard not to make mistakes. Of course, this doesn’t mean you’re perfect — nobody is! — but you’re always giving things your best effort.

20. You’re deeply moved by beauty.

Fine meals, rich scents, beautiful artwork, or stirring melodies have a deep impact on you. You may find that music or certain sounds put you in a near trance-like state, or the way the wind catches the leaves in the autumn sunlight leaves you awestruck. You don’t understand how other people aren’t as moved by beauty as you are.

21. You’re perceptive.

Because you notice things that others miss, you’re seen as perceptive and insightful. Even as a child, you may have been wise beyond your years. The world relies on highly sensitive people like you to make it a more compassionate, understanding place to be.

- https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/highly-sensitive-person-signs/

#hsp

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fy-girls-generation · 7 years

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[INTERVIEW TRANSLATION] SNSD in W Korea (August 2017)

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trans by SonexStella

#snsd #yoona #yuri #sunny #hyoyeon #sooyoung #seohyun #tiffany #taeyeon #interview #W Korea August 2017

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smileyanie · 7 years

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[INTERVIEW TRANSLATION] SNSD in W Korea August 2017 Issue

“A Decade to Remember”,credit sonexstella

It was a distinct generation. Girls’ Generation’s past 10 years that shook the world, changed standards and wrote history, and the future.

YOONA

Drama <The King In Love> will air soon. It was pre-filmed so even though the shoot has ended, you meet often with your co-stars. The attendance rate is very so good we say to each other that it feels like we are in university. The writers incorporated my personality when creating the character, and when we went on location, they didn’t give specific direction but said to go and play as we were. You’ll be able to see a comfortable appearance.

Of the members, you have been acting most steadily. There must have been preconceived notions as an idol turns actress, when did you experience this and how did you overcome it? A month or two before Soshi’s debut, I debuted in a drama first. As expected, I must have been lacking a lot but most people looked at me favorably for trying hard. While filming, the album came out and the title of Girls’ Generation became attached, and assessments after that felt a bit more harsh. Since I showed myself on stage more often, they recognized that image first so my acting self might have been viewed awkwardly. Acting is still difficult. Not because I’m an idol but because there are so many people these days who are good. Rather than to take off an label, but I have greed to want to become even better at acting. There are many exceptional idols turned actors now so I think there are less preconceived notions than before.

Director Kim Sunghoon who directed your first movie <Confidential Assignment> said ‘Smart actors have innate sensibilities, like how a water flows’. As an actress, what do you think an actor’s strengths are? Talking about an actor’s strengths sounds too grandiose, but I like emotional appeal. I’m impacted by the weather a lot, and I tend to think that the mood and atmosphere is important. Of course, what an actor feels and expressing those feelings is a different issue. Sometimes aspects that I thought I could do well doesn’t come across as well on screen. I’m not sure if it’s emotion, but one of the individual aspects that I like about myself is voice. A lot of people who predict my voice will be bright are surprised because my voice is low-to-medium tone when they hear it, but I like this tone a lot. Of other actors, I like those who have low tones and recently, actor Kim Jiwon is like that.

How does it feel to celebrate SNSD’s 10th anniversary? It feels like it has been about 7 years but it makes me wonder when time passed by so quickly like this. Other sunbaenims who celebrated their 10 year anniversary since debut looked cool and accomplished, but to me, the thing that I feel the most is that time has passed by quickly. I do feel proud too.

In the last 10 years, what kind of change has happened to the members? As we built up our experience, everyone’s skills expanded and we grew. Aspects that made us nervous or were awkward have become comfortable. Personality-wise, the person who changed the most is maknae Seohyun. She was introverted but now she’s a bit more lively and has a personality that allows her to approach others first. That’s a result of both her own efforts, and the influence of the members. Tiffany unnie’s Korean skills have improved a lot so for most interviews, she chooses appropriate words and does well.

SUNNY

How does it feel to celebrate SNSD’s 10th anniversary?

My personality is one that tires easily of things, so there aren’t a lot of things that I’ve done continuously, so the only thing I’ve been doing for more than 10 years is work. As you go through life, there are times when it feels futile. Whenever that happens, the fact that I’ve been in SNSD for 10 years becomes a support system. If I was alone for 10 years, I could have been lonely but the fact that I have people to share experiences with. Members, fans, family, staff who we’ve worked together with for a long time. The times that have passed are proof of my existence. Even though it has been 10 years, the fact that we can show something new again is also lucky.

Recently at your birthday fan meeting, we were surprised by you personally picking and wrapping presents for fans by hand.

On my birthday, I invited and prepared for 515 people, but after I gave the presents, it felt too small compared what I’d been receiving all these years, so I felt sorry. I immensely felt how fans must have prepared each and every time. I was able to walk in their shoes.

In the last 10 years, what kind of change has happened to the members? As expected, they are friends who distinguished themselves from the beginning, but when we debuted, we were young and it was our first time, so if back then we were passive girls, now we’ve become dominant and we have stability coming from our experience. Everyone knows what they are good at, and we still work hard toward that. Nowadays, when any members goes somewhere and does something, I don’t feel anxious at all.

When was the most difficult time while you were promoting?

Even during times when it was physically and mentally difficult, there were trivial enjoyments within them, and as time passes, I feel like they were helpful. Each individual had puberty-like personal slumps, and we experienced the team’s difficulties together. Every time, what ultimately helped was each other. There is comfort in the relationships with those who went through and go through the same experiences together.

There are a lot of idol and trainee hoobaes now. What would you like to say to them?

If there’s something they want to do that is age appropriate and can be responsible for, I would want them to attempt it all. If they do that, they’ll be able to know what they’re really good at, and what they’ve really wanted to do. Not through fantasy, but through reality, you will be able to figure out your own chemistry with specific type of work. You need to embrace both successes and failures, so you can’t take it too lightly. Another practical advice is that in this day and age, everything remains behind as a record (laughs).

TIFFANY

How was today’s shoot?

The person most enthusiastic about this W cover was probably me. I wanted to leave behind a project that commemmorates SNSD’s 10th anniversary and is also meaningful fashion-wise. I’ve had editorial shoots alone from time to time but it has been a while since we had one with all eight of us, so leaving behind a pretty record together is fun and makes me happy. When we’re together, a very impressive picture comes out.

Your personality doesn’t hide your affection toward other members.

As a trainee, my preparation period was short. There are members who trained for 7 years and I did it for about 3 years. Our members are my role models, and we continuously confirmed that we were the best. I always imagine and dream of the members’ maximum (potential).

Others have said that maintaining sufficient distance between one another is the secret to good relationships, but your approach is different.

The start itself was different for me. I had already left my home and family to come here when I was in the 3rd year of middle school. I think I loved the members from the beginning (laughs). For 10 years, I was always the hopeless romantic. Whatever I look at, I thought of them, and they know everything about me so I don’t need to explain anything, so they are a family-like existence. So even in public, I want to do well by them, without any shame.

What was SNSD mean to you?

SNSD is a space where I can learn only good things. It’s an honour and fate that may or may not come around once in a lifetime. Even if I was born again, I love this space so much that I would want to be a member of SNSD. While preparing for this comeback, I re-watched the first videos from our debut. 10th anniversary is a significant milestone, for relationships, for friendships and as a team. They are my colleagues but what’s impressive is that when we don’t have a song we’re promoting, we restlessly did something, whether it’s acting or variety. We all have a lot of content.

As you said, since you are a romanticist, you must be deeply moved by the 10th anniversary of debut.

Similar to how when you think of the 90s, you think of Britney Spears or the movie <Clueless>, when you think back to 2007, I hope we come to mind naturally. And I hope the W cover that we shot today becomes a part of that larger picture. As time passes, there are people who doubt the word ‘girl’, but we continue to exist and we’re not going anywhere (laughs)? There are a lot of things that we can individually do and when we want to come together, we come together. Separately and together, that is Girls’ Generation.

YURI

At a previous interview, you’ve said ‘there is a lot of expectation with the SNSD name, so it’s burdensome’. Is that still the case? To you, what kind of a name is the title of Soshi?

With the name of Girls’ Generation, I felt that we’ve always received a lot of love and anticipation. So I am both thankful and careful. Because I thought that we cannot be troublesome here. I enjoy it a lot and I’m happy but conversely, it is burdensome and worrisome. Going forward, whatever I attempt, the SNSD name will give me a lot of strength and at the same time, it will be a weight on my shoulders.

How does it feel to celebrate SNSD’s 10th anniversary?

Daily life of one year after another have collected to become 10 years. As it’s our comeback in 2 years, we’re preparing diligently, but similar to greeting a birthday calmly, it wasn’t extraordinarily special. I’m thankful for each moment, but the reason why we don’t attach a lot of meaning is because we’ve never once thought about this as the end.

When you compare to when you debuted, what has changed?

For me personally, I didn’t start Soshi with ambitious dreams. I met friends who like doing what I really like doing, which was singing and dancing. It was as if we were going on field trips and I really enjoyed it. There were many fierce moments, but since I enjoyed what I was doing, I think I was able to come to this point right now.

For 10 years, how have you been able to maintain a good relationship as a team?

It’s still hard and we are careful. From certain aspects, even more so than 10 years ago. For me personally, as much as I feel preciousness toward the members and to the SNSD group, I try to maintain distance. In a group lifestyle of several people, in a situation where you can be compared even if you don’t want to be, that was the method to maintaining an easy-going relationship for a long time. Now they’re like family, we’re past the point of being troubled by one another, and we’re at an era where we view one another in a cute way.

What kind of sentiments did you feel while watching other girl groups who promoted around the same time officially disband one by one?

I was able to understand their choices and decisions and thought that we should respect it. The one and only thing that doesn’t change in this world is the truth that everything changes. I was thankful that they worked diligently and that they leave behind good songs.

Of your activities to date, what was your favourite song or performance?

I feel most alive and happiest when I do something that gives me a sense of accomplishment. Separate from the public reaction, stages that gave me a sense of accomplishment are the most exciting for me. For example, ‘Catch Me If You Can’, which was a challenge that had a difficult choreography and it was not easy from a physical stamina aspect, is special in my heart. I personally like ‘Kissing You’, and it feels like a song we won’t be able to do again. It reminds me of the time when we were promoting that song and our vibe and energy of that time comes to mind, so to me, it’s a song that is pure and monumental.

Your debut song ‘Into the New World’ was sung widely in public squares last year and it became the ‘morning dew’ of the young generation. Have you seen the video of Ewha Women’s University students singing it at a candlelight rally?

I saw the video several times, and I even cried because my heart was overcome with emotion. It was a moment that I felt a huge sense of pride as a singer. It was a message that I wanted to deliver through my work, and the inspiration that we wanted to deliver through music and performance was being realized, so it was unlike anything else. At the time when we debuted, I didn’t fully understand the lyrics so I might have been imitating it with bright eyes. But as time passes and I listen to the song, the lyrics touch me even more.

SOOYOUNG

Late last year, when we met you for the K-Pop World Special that we did with US W, you said that you feel restless now that you’re in your late 20s. How is it these days?

Up to the first half of this year, I was still on the restless side. When there was still a bit of time less until we seriously started preparing the album, I was asked to be in a weekend drama that would air starting in September, and I decided to do it even without looking at the script. I had rested enough so I wanted to focus on work again. I also filmed a web drama called <A Person You Could Know>. While working on this piece, I had a lot of thoughts. That I could work in a good mood if it’s something I really want to do, regardless of viewership ratings, guarantee, airtime and broadcasting station? Work itself was fun, when you work with good people and share the process.

What kind of sentiments do you get when we say ‘SNSD’s 10th anniversary’?

First of all, I think ‘Has it already been 10 years?’. It’s a bit burdensome because it might feel like we’ve gotten old. But SNSD was my life itself, so I don’t think it has been that long. Recently, we watched the stages we did when we were young together with members and our appearance of pretending to be cute was hopeless (laughs). The young members who tried so hard to look pretty looked pitiful at times but we also looked really pretty so I wanted to pat each person on the head.

While working on the album, what aspect did you concern yourselves with the most?

Since it’s our 10th anniversary, the anticipation and gaze on what side we’ll show will be big, but truthfully, we tried not to be conscious of that anticipation. I had a lot of concerns prior to picking the music, but as soon as I heard the music, it felt like ‘Yes, this is Girls’ Generation’. Outcome-wise, I think it will be exactly the appearance that the public wants for us, as we have reached our 10th anniversary.

In precarious moments for the team, what kind of role or position did Sooyoung take? And in times when you were able to overcome difficulties well, what was the main reason behind it?

Sometimes I was quiet and sometimes I took action and resolved it. Whatever happens, we’ve all experienced the same situations, so whenever issues arise, we tend to think ‘I was like this too’, rather than ‘Why are you like this?’. Even if we don’t talk, we understand one another. Out of the blue, if someone just says ‘Ah!’, we are able to know what emotion caused that reaction. The most important things when it comes to group lifestyle are sacrifice and patience, aren’t they? If there’s a time when I make a sacrifice, when I’m doing something according to my own will, there is a member behind me who is making a sacrifice.

From your debut to now, in what area do you feel like you’ve grown in?

As I said, I’ve learned to be patient. For example, out of us, someone starts getting ready at 6 am and needs to wait until the remaining members finish their preparations. In a situation where everyone finishes work in the early morning, someone can only go home after other members have been dropped off by car. One could say that these are reasonable experiences for group activities, but to us who have lived like this for 10 year, there are many aspects that didn’t seem so reasonable. Of course, not just amongst us, but I tend to be patient when dealing with other people and puzzling situations.

What is one thing you gained and one thing you lost with SNSD?

I’ve gained experience and memories, but if there’s something I’ve lost, it’s time. To refer to memories and time differently seems contradictory, but truly, I’ve gained memories, but I’ve lost time. But as there’s so much more that I’ve gained, I have no regrets.

HYOYEON

Recently, you released a solo song called ‘Wannabe’. It’s not easy for cuteness and coolness to co-exist, but we could see both of these aspects in you.

When I did my first solo activities with a song called ‘Mystery’, I wanted to appear pretty. Looking back, I think it meant that I lost my own colour. This time, I wanted to bring a cool performance to life. Recently, I keep reaching for Janet Jackson and Madonna’s videos. After seeing Janet Jackson dance in a group and do popping and locking, my interest in choreography like that came to life again.

What is Hyoyeon’s favourite compliment that she likes to hear most?

I tend to be thirsty for compliments, so I like all kinds of compliments (laughs). Honestly, I liked hearing I was pretty, or that I got prettier. Now, I like hearing that I have charms. It means I have my own colours.

In the days when you wanted to look pretty, what kind of efforts did you put in?

I diligently monitored myself. I especially monitored the members to find their good aspects and tried to accept what I should accept.

Normally when someone monitors, they only look at themselves. To monitor your members more instead of yourself, this is not a common statement (laughs).

At that time, I didn’t know how to tell the difference between myself reflected in the practice room mirror and myself reflected on screen. It felt like whenever I saw myself reflected on screen, I wasn’t able to express myself properly. Was I lacking in effort? Do I not know how to express myself? I had many thoughts, but just because you work hard doesn’t mean you’re pretty. The reason why I monitored the members is because I knew there was a reason why our members often heard that they were pretty. When the public has a unified voice, it feel like their words are right.

Hearing you tell stories like that, it must mean that now a different mind has already taken place. If Hyoyeon is this honest, at that time, you must not have hidden your heart to the members?

When we did ‘Tell Me Your Wish’, Yuri’s tanned skin that showed under the shorts and all of her style looked pretty to my eyes. So I’ve told Yuri, ‘This song is meant for you’. When I said that, Yuri was embarrassed to hear it.

TAEYEON

What came to mind the most while working on this album?

First of all, it felt difficult to express a point within a short part. It may be because I’ve had solo activities. Until recently, I did this and that alone and carried an entire song.

Aren’t you a veteran when it comes to showing your charms in a short part divided among many?

I don’t think I have a unique tone. So express a short part with impact is still not easy. While recording, I worried a lot about how to match the flow of the members.

Of the members, you were the first to start your solo activities. Your first solo song ‘I’ was good, and every time you released a song, the reaction was hot. What did you gain through your solo activities?

I learned that I need to be more detailed. Since everyone is looking just at me. When I’m with SNSD, even if we don’t set it ahead of time, there is a role and charm that each person is naturally responsible for, but I needed to show all of that alone.

If you’d had any desire for leadership musically, it must have be settled a bit by now.

I actually let go of leadership, and tend to match and comply to the best of my ability. When I’m solo, I can express myself best when I’m comfortable. Within the team, I can’t be the only comfortable person, so I try to match as much as possible. But as a basis, rather than giving big opinions, when various experts in their field provide help, listening to their thoughts well is comfortable for me and I like it. This time, it was good to listen to what they thought of SNSD’s 10th anniversary.

What kind of opinions did you share about SNSD’s 10th anniversary with the staff who participated in the album?

Rather than giving strength, we wanted to head toward a mood where we’re celebrating and enjoying the long time that we’ve spent with fans, and to commemorate the special day.

You’ve said that it’s difficult to express your inner heart so you don’t write songs. As your time as an artist lengthens, it’s typical to have desire to show yourself more, but you’re unexpected.

I thought about why I’m like that. Especially when it comes to lyrics, the reason why I think that way must be because I’ve developed a self defensive side due to being concerned about people’s misunderstandings. With the same words, many people have their own interpretations. Even if I imagined something and wrote a story, someone can argue that it really happened to me. To be honest, that situation makes me a bit afraid.

Then how will Taeyeon show her artist-like appearance?

Mmm, I think that for everything, there is a time. Truthfully, if I say something like this, it might be interpreted as ‘Taeyeon Will Never Write Songs’ so I’m careful again. I’m only saying that right now, the timing is not right for me to proactively write lyrics, but going forward, who knows if there will be a day when something will happen or I’ll be inspired to write a lot.

SEOHYUN

You’re starring in the MBC weekend drama <Thief, Mr. Thief> with Ji Hyunwoo and Kim Jihoon. It’s a long series with 50 episodes, how is it working out?

It’s more fun than I thought it would be. When we first started, I thought 50 episodes were long but it makes me think I can’t believe we’re already up to this point. I always did two or three things simultaneously, so I’m trained to handle the schedule. I don’t have time to exercise so I’m trying to take vitamins and eat well. Choreography practice will become exercise soon, I suppose?

But in the drama, you’re set up as the ‘model of a regular woman’ and ‘not particularly pretty and doesn’t possess special talents’. What is this nonsense, when you’re SNSD Seohyun?

Haha. If you saw the drama at least once, those words won’t sound that strange? I like that I’m similar to my character. Honestly, there have been times where it was frustrating because preconceived notions of me continues to exist. As I act, I think I can shatter some of those biases a bit, so it eases my heart.

Are you referring to the preconceived notion that you’re like a ‘good and nice girl’?

There are a lot of people who predicted ahead of time that I will be like a textbook, and that I would be no fun. But if I say hello first with a brave tone and in a down-to-earth way, it’s not a big deal, but people are really surprised by it. ‘Twenty three?’ ‘No, I’m twenty seven’ and they’re surprised again by my age.

When you say Seohyun, the righteous lifestyle image does take up prominent space. There was a time when we thought, ‘A friend who’s strait-laced is doing entertainment activities’.

The reason why I thought having a righteous lifestyle was important was because I felt like if I didn’t live like that, my life would flow in the wrong direction with slight provocation. Each and every day was so busy. As I was living and not being able to remember what I did yesterday, I felt like ‘Wow, if I do this wrong, I will be whisked away by time’. Leaving my home at a young age to live as a trainee was a choice that I made. It felt like if I lived healthily out of my own will, 10 years later, my life would remain whole.

You realized that early on, so now that 10 years have passed, you’ve grown up so well. How does it feel to reflect back on times when you were strict on yourself? Since you lived in a strait-laced way, aren’t you able to let yourself loose a bit now if you wanted?

Of course, I do think that I should’ve been a bit easier on myself. I always set rules for myself like ‘I will go home before this time’ and ‘I won’t meet with that person’. But I still think living like that was good, so I don’t have regrets.

While promoting domestically, SNSD had a cute female dongsaeng image whereas in Japan, SNSD carved out an alpha girl-like image. Due to the slightly different strategy in the two countries, is there a perspective you changed about the team or about yourself?

Rather than changing perspective, after we were accepted in Japan, it felt like acknowledgement that we don’t just have one side of ourselves, so we had more confidence. When we promote in Japan, we weren’t trying to artificially show the appearance of confident and mature women. We started in Japan around the time of ‘Tell Me Your Wish’, so in a more matured state, we were able to show a side of ourselves that we could do best in at that time.

PS: One thing I like the most is the title “A Decade To Remember”, so iconic. Love reading their interview and see how much our soshi girls grow and mature thru time.

“HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY TO GIRLS GENERATION AKA SNSD, LET’S STAY A LONG TIME TOGETHER”

#girls generation #snsd #yoona #im yoon ah #yuri #seohyun #sooyoung #sunny #hyoyeon #tiffany #taeyeon #w magazine #w korea #a decade to remember #august 2017 #sonexstella

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raystart · 7 years

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Big Spaceship: The Indie Agency That Grew Up With the Internet

From its humble beginnings in Brooklyn’s Dumbo in 2000, when that part of New York City was a desolate, off-the-grid stomping ground of artists and artisans, to the 115-person agency that has been the focus of two Harvard Business Review case studies and was knighted digital partner by JetBlue in June, Big Spaceship is still doing what it does best: paving new paths for how creative agencies define themselves, what they do, and how they work.

Calling itself a “modern partner to ambitious brands,” the agency has dropped the word digital from its list of attributes in a move aimed at putting the limiting and, in its opinion, now obsolete definition of digital agency behind it. (If the whole world is digitized, the thinking goes, why would you call yourself digital anymore?)

Big Spaceship, whose name seems more relevant than ever, is focused on what it can do for brands – and how culture and behavior affect their ability to do this – rather than which vertical they inhabit. In this vein, they divide their services into the three unique offerings: systems, stories, and communities. Big Spaceship is clearly doing something right. In addition to landing JetBlue, the 17-year-old company recently became Hasbro Games’ agency of record (note: not just “digital” agency of record), redesigned the Boston Ballet’s digital identity, created an app for BMW drivers that connects them with company engineers, and made a three-part film series in White Sands National Monument to showcase the photographic prowess of Samsung’s new phone.

99U Contributing Editor Dave Benton sat down with founder and CEO Michael Lebowitz, the man most responsible for Big Spaceship’s flight patterns, to find out how the agency manages to win clients David vs. Goliath–style from competitors many times its size, why the company’s culture is such a fundamental driver of its success, and how the company’s ethos plays out in everyday working life.

How have you seen Dumbo change over the course of 17 years?

In the first four or five months, we were in a 100-square-foot bedroom in my partner’s apartment in Brooklyn. Very soon after that we found our first office space and it was wildly cheap. Early on there were tumbleweeds blowing by! Our first building was pretty rough and tumble, and now there are extremely fancy and expensive condos nearby. There was a period of time where there weren’t even any services in the area and we had to walk up into Brooklyn Heights to get anything to eat. There was a great artistic community here – furniture makers and artisans and the like – and there was a vibrance to it even though it was quiet.

Eventually we got an actual market, which was a big step, and now that it has turned into a digital agency hub; part of me loves it and part of me regrets ever saying anything about Dumbo. It’s always a double-edged sword. Dumbo is such a neighborhood unto itself; you experience it the same way you would with the gentrification of a residential neighborhood. We’ve maintained a certain internal culture and are just as we used to be. The main difference is that our friends and clients are happy to spend time with us here.

How did you come to design?

It goes far back, in a strange way, to the Macintosh 512 I had when I was a young kid. I got one early on at my house, and there was no turning back from there. It was black and white and had a tiny screen, but it was incredible. We then got an early modem and had CompuServe, and I figured out how to do file downloads for the software to create my own bulletin board. I was probably 12 years old, and people would sign on and we would chat and trade files, so I guess I was into the internet before the internet, in a weird way. This was around 1984 or 1985. Design-wise, I was using Mac Paint and would create covers for my schoolwork, but I was never a good designer. I might have actually been the world’s worst designer.

My first real commercial work wasn’t until 1996. I had a friend who worked at a record label, and he introduced me to an internship out of a small web design company in Massachusetts. I swallowed my pride and moved back in with my mom in order to take it. Three of the guys who owned and worked at the studio lived in the house, and I would turn up in the morning all enthusiastic, and they’d wander down in their bathrobes with cigarettes and coffee! Their niche was music, so I worked on the Aerosmith website and a few other things, and that’s where I really began to cut my teeth and taught myself Flash. After a while of doing that, I moved back to New York and got my first full-time gig out of the print division at the back of the Village Voice.

It was incredibly quaint to get a digital job at a printed newspaper. It was the Wild West in web design at that time. There were barely any books, and when I started out you would see something online and just try to reverse engineer it. There was this great sharing community, but there really weren’t any classes or curriculum. You could be a designer just by having enough jobs and Photoshop to do it.

Thanks to the Harvard Business Review’s write-up on Big Spaceship, you’ve had a lasting effect on how digital agencies have structured their teams. How is your structure special, and how does it help your team?

There was a moment in 2007 when we were still seated in the office by discipline. I heard somebody say, “That’s not us; that’s the producers.” It horrified me! I felt like we were a band of misfits that all worked together, so the very next day I reseated everyone by the project they were working on so everyone sat cross-functionally, oriented toward the goal of the work rather than the skill sets that they aligned with. We never looked back.

At that time, all of our projects were of a very similar size and shape. We had fixed teams with a fixed number of people of different disciplines and they had names and numbers – that’s what Harvard wrote the case study about, and whether that structure would allow us to grow and scale. We can scale it, but when you are dealing with many different accounts and sizes of projects, as digital matured more and became the center of things, that’s when things got more interesting. We needed to make our organization more elastic and make sure we could slide people where we needed. But keeping the cross-functional accountability for great work always stayed the same.

The downside of cross-functional teams is that you don’t have all the designers sitting together and learning from each other. It is important that you develop every channel for communication that you can. We have Slack channels for each discipline. We focus on creating the connectivity that you don’t have from sitting together. We became much more efficient with this structure, and the team system was driven to make it like there were several small agencies within a small agency. One of the most important parts of this is that problems within teams surface far more quickly, so they can be resolved sooner. It keeps everything more transparent.

What does it take to create a great organization for the future?

The one thing you have real control over is values. It’s about your day-to-day job satisfaction. Our core values are to “take care of each other,” “collaborate inside and out,” “speak up – no silent disagreement,” and “produce amazing work.” It sounds pretty simple, although it took a lot of tweaking over time to get it down to that. I’ve recently been thinking of adding one around inclusivity and the value of diversity of perspective. One of the reasons we say “speak up” is that I have a lot of experience in what we do, but I don’t have the perspective of someone who has a 23-year-old’s interface with the culture right now, and neither of those is more valuable than the other.

An intern’s view is as valuable as mine, just in a completely different way. And I’m talking about the broadest sense of diversity, where it’s about bringing your whole self to work. I don’t want someone to just be a role; I want them to be a person. How can we embrace that as fully as possible and bring in every new facet we can bring in?

How are you adapting your agency to the post–“digital agency” world?

We should be thinking about people, and that people are at the center of it. Everything is being transformed by the biggest economic revolution of our lifetime, and it needs more nuance. Digital was enough of a differentiator for a while, as it could still be seen as separate from other things, but now it can’t. It could be used to optimize a company’s supply chain or for a social post. So digital is no longer a useful word. I understand that people are calling themselves digital agencies because that’s what clients are searching for, but I prefer to put our philosophy first and call ourselves a “modern partner,” as we were born into the digital world and understand it. The term digital agency means different things to everyone. We are in a position to be fortunate enough to say we are “a modern partner to ambitious brands.” We want to say something about our ambition because we are now in a position where we believe we can deliver on it.

How do you stay on top of what’s happening in the world around us, and when do you pull this knowledge in for your clients?

We hire curious people with a broad range of skill sets at the company now, and we always give people a voice. We tend to hire people who are good at connecting dots that might not otherwise be connected. My superpower is connecting the real superheroes. I also try hard not to dive too deeply into the industry trade publications, as I don’t think you find inspiration there. We will look at other agencies’ work to admire it, but I think it’s dangerous to get your inspiration from an echo chamber. If it’s being talked about in a publication, it’s probably a bit late anyway. Look at what the kids are doing: That’s being aware but not overcommitting. VR is an example; I tell my clients to be aware but the time is not right to go there yet.

How do you maintain perspective when you’ve done the same thing for so long?

Having lived in Dumbo for 17 years, I don’t think about it as one job. We have a slide we show on our agency credentials presentation plotting us in internet history. It’s essentially a timeline of logos. I love being able to say we are only a year younger than Wi-Fi being standardized, and only a year older than iTunes, the iPod, and Wikipedia. So it’s not one company when you predate so many things and have seen them all happen. We saw the iPod emerge and thought that would change everything. Then we saw the iPhone emerge and that did change everything. It’s a pretty soft transition, as you can’t watch yourself grow. It doesn’t feel the same: It feels like we are one set of values and ethos but we’ve been a dozen companies over that time.

You are one of the last original digital companies that has not been purchased. Why maintain independence?

I have been portrayed in the press as rabidly independent, and that’s not really true. I do get overtures almost weekly, but the problem historically was that I would have these conversations and think that they just didn’t get me and would try to assimilate our agency into their culture. If someone came to me and said they really got us and would want to structure us in a way that doesn’t change us but made us better, I’d be open to that. So I’m just incredibly picky. When I see something that’s amazing, that will be the next chapter. I love this place, and I have an obligation to all these people, as they came in for something really specific. You don’t do something that is going to change it negatively lightly. I consider myself personally responsible for the culture of the place. I need to make sure we are doing everything we can to tend the cultural garden.

#startups #text #startup #advice #busieness #howto #news #tech #love

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dietpillswatchdog · 7 years

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10 Ways To Speed Up Your Weight Loss

Let’s start with some simple maths: if you want to lose just one pound, that’s 3,500 calories you’ve got to cut out from your diet.

And in this era of seriously surplus calories in pretty much everything we eat, you could drop a pound a month just by losing 100 calories a day, and you wouldn’t notice a thing.

Most people want to lose weight faster than that though, and if you’re one of those people you’re in luck: here are ten weight-loss accelerators to help you safely reach your ideal weight as fast as possible.

They don’t include anything bad for you like skipping meals, living on nothing but juice, cutting fats completely and gimmick diets, and they certainly don’t include anything really harmful, like overdosing on laxatives, or anything downright dangerous, like surgery.

And there’s nothing here about dropping too many calories a day, because that would just put your body into starvation mode. That’s where your physical and mental energy start going downhill fast, and rather than burning off fat cells your body would start nourishing itself with your muscle tissue.

So with all that in mind, let’s begin.

Weight-loss accelerator #1: Exercise

You may have believed certain TV “authorities” before, when they claimed you could lose weight by taking a certain supplement and still stay sprawled practically motionless on your couch.

But if you’d kept your eye on the news you might just have seen stories about those “authorities” receiving a slap on the wrist (or a nine-million-dollar lawsuit) for promoting a miracle supplement that wasn’t as miraculous as they’d made it out to be.

So you need to keep those muscle cells and grow some more, because they’re the ones that burn up more calories than fat cells.

Cardio burns the most calories, while weight training develops the most muscle mass.

One study says successful weight loss needs a sensible diet and about an hour of moderate exercise each day.

That might not be possible, time-wise, or it may just be too much of a shock to a previously sedentary system. So to start with, parking further away from the office and taking the stairs instead of the elevator is a nice gentle way of getting used to physical activity, before joining your local gym.

Before we get on to the food and drink side of things, let’s take a look at something too many people don’t realize has an important role to play in speedy but safe weight loss.

Weight-loss accelerator #2: Sleep

Some people don’t manage to get six to eight hours of sleep each and every night. But they might go to bed a little earlier when they realize that lack of sleep has been linked to diabetes and obesity.

And it’s not just because of those late-night refrigerator raids: there’s a chemical in the body called leptin, and when leptin levels are high, appetite levels are low. And when leptin levels are low, that’s when those hunger pangs can kick in.

So leptin affects food choices in general, and also snack sizes, as in the bigger the better.

And guess what lowers leptin levels? You got it: lack of sleep.

Lots of sleep can keep that appetite curbed. Now let’s look at what happens right after eight hours in dreamland.

Weight-loss accelerator #3: Breakfast

Skipping breakfast isn’t a great idea. Yes, there’s all sorts of other stuff that needs to get done in the morning, but surely you can find a way to take ten minutes to set yourself up for the day.

It’s not like you’ve got to prepare a weekend-style brunch for yourself on a Monday morning, but if nothing more, a bowl of cereal or oatmeal will give your body enough fuel to see you through to lunchtime.

If you’re more into protein than carbs, you might agree with the school of thought which tells us we should have “ten before ten”. That’s ten grams of protein before ten every morning. Ten grams of protein are conveniently packed into just two eggs, any style you like, and no matter how you cook them it’ll take a lot less than ten minutes.

Now let’s move on to something that might take a lot longer than ten minutes to prepare, but well worth the wait.

Weight-loss accelerator #4: Real unprocessed food

Obviously you’ll need to cut down on processed food because of all its empty calories, but another reason is that it takes your body a certain number of calories just to digest whatever you’ve eaten. That should be 10% of what you’ve consumed.

When it comes to processed food, things are a little different. When you’ve eaten processed food, your body uses up 5% of the calories you’ve just consumed.

So that means not only are you getting empty calories (for example, added sugar), you’re leaving existing calories unused and leaving them to pile up around the waistline.

And so many processed foods contain much more sugar than your body really needs at any time. The manufacturers disguise the fact on labels by using fancy terminology like corn sugar, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose, glucose syrup, honey, invert sugar, isoglucose, levulose, maltose, molasses, sucrose, and probably more we haven’t come across yet.

The American Heart Association recommends men consume less than 36 grams (that’s just over a single ounce) of sugar a day, while women should have 24 grams, which is just under an ounce.

That’s 9 teaspoons of sugar each day for men, and 6 for women.

Weight-loss accelerator #5: Speeding up your metabolism

Even when you think you’re doing nothing, your body’s still using up calories. And the faster your metabolism, the more calories you’re going to use up while you think you’re doing nothing.

And how to speed up your metabolism?

Foods containing Omega-3 fatty acids: they balance blood sugar, reduce inflammation and help to regulate the body’s metabolism.

Strength training: it’s said that the average woman in her thirties who does 30-40 minutes strength training twice a week for four months will speed up her metabolism enough to burn off an extra 100 calories a day – whether she’s training on that day or not.

Small meals – and often: instead of sending your blood sugar levels skyrocketing with three big meals a day, six smaller meals a day prevent the kind of spikes in insulin levels that have a lot to do with promoting weight gain.

Safe produce: pesticide-laden fruits, vegetables and grains interfere with your thyroid, and can slow down your metabolism. If you can’t go organic, at least give non-organic foods a good wash before cooking or eating them.

OK so we’ve been looking briefly at what to eat, it’s now time to move on to…

Weight-loss accelerator #6: How to eat

Smaller portions! Need we say more?

Once you’ve got that smaller portion in front of you, eat it slowly for a couple of reasons: first, it takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to register that it’s full. So if you eat fast throughout those twenty minutes, you’ve overfilled your stomach, which can lead to all sorts of problems more than just some extra weight.

The second reason is that the slower you eat, the more you tend to chew, and that’s a good thing: chewing releases enzymes into your saliva. That’s a sort of pre-digestion process before your stomach gets to work. A glass of water just before mealtimes stretches the stomach, fooling your system into thinking you won’t need so much food when it’s time to sit down to eat.

We all need protein, but if we get too much of it at once it’s going to raise our insulin levels, which eventually ends up as excess fat around our waist. So it’s best to spread protein intake throughout the day, as in half of it during your main three daily meals, and the other half in three small seriously-protein snacks in between.

Speaking of snacks…

Weight-loss accelerator #7: Snacks

We’re not saying snacking is wrong, but you do need to make a change or two when you start off on your weight-loss journey. If you’ve got a whole heap of temptation in the form of sugary, processed and fatty snacks in your kitchen, best to find them a new home. Someone will love them, that’s for sure. Just make sure that someone isn’t you.

Now it’s time to replace those pre-packaged snacks with well-washed fruits and vegetables in a bowl on the counter, ready to be picked up and nibbled on whenever the urge strikes. Instant foods like raw vegetables and fruits contain plenty of fiber and water which keep hunger pangs at bay while keeping your body hydrated.

Weight-loss accelerator #8: Hydration

If you’re following a diet that cuts down on salt and starches, you’re going to reduce fluids and fluid retention, meaning a dramatic loss of weight right at the beginning of your diet. But that would only be losing water, not fat cells.

And because your body’s made up of so much water, if you lose too much of it you run the risk of dehydration, which can affect you physically, mentally and emotionally. It can even, if severe enough, cause your internal organs to start shutting down and even be fatal.

So keep drinking – but leave those sports and energy drinks alone: they can be crammed full of more sugar than soft drinks, and contain more caffeine than your average cup of coffee. That might work for athletes who’ll take a single workout to burn off all that sugar and caffeine and anything else written into the small print on the can, but not for everybody else.

If you’re bored with plain water, there’s always a bit of flavoring in green tea (no milk and sugar, though), plus antioxidants, nutrients and metabolism boosters.

Weight-loss accelerator #9: Accountability

SMART is an acronym describing business goals. You can apply it to losing weight, since in this case it would stand for: Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic and Time-Based.

And thanks to fitness trackers and regular checking of the bathroom scales, your weightloss journey is definitely “Measurable”.

But let’s look at “Agreed Upon”. Who’s doing the agreeing here? You and friends? Family? Social network? Fellow dieters? Anybody? If you can hold yourself accountable to someone for specific, measurable, realistic and time-based weight-loss results, then you’ve got a much better chance of dieting success than if you keep them a deep, dark secret from everybody.

Weight-loss accelerator #10: Cheat meals

It may feel wrong to enjoy a calorie-laden meal once every now and then but there are a couple of good reasons, especially if that meal involves revisiting your favourite fast-food joint.

Good reason number one is that any cravings you may have for that particular kind of meal get dealt with without a bad case of dieter’s guilt.

And good reason number two is that after not having eaten like that for a while, you’ll definitely notice the difference in the way you feel after your scheduled cheat meal.

And finally

It’s said that the key to weight-loss is never to feel like you’re dieting. If you feel like you’re going out of your way to deprive yourself of the foods you’ve enjoyed up to now, then if not slowing your weight-loss process right down you’re definitely reducing your chances of success.

But if you do find yourself slipping back into bad eating habits, don’t give in to the temptation to beat yourself up: remember, you’re not the only one who’s strayed from the straight and narrow path.

It may feel like the end of the world, but it’s only a hiccup and it’s your choice when to get back onto that path again. And the sooner you do, the faster you’ll reach your ideal weight.

Good luck!

The post 10 Ways To Speed Up Your Weight Loss appeared first on Diet Pills Watchdog.

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thehighseasrpg-blog · 7 years

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↪ Name: Jassar Atia ↪ Age: 26 ↪ Gender: Male ↪ Role: Civilian / Military / Pirate ↪ Class: High / Middle / Low ↪ Occupation: Bard ↪ FC: Jade Hassouné

“ I don’t mind never speaking of it again, as long as we could do it again. “

TRIGGERS: Homophobia

The Dutch and water had a complex relationship: they revered it and feared it. As a trading nation it was their main way of making money, but they took care never to forget the fickle nature of the ocean. Where England or France may hang somebody for a crime, the Dutch would publically drown them. Other countries would beat prisoners for laziness, the Dutch would lock them in a room that was slowly filling with water, leaving them with the choice to pump the water out or drown. So yes, the Dutch had a healthy fear of the water. Jassar’s father was a coffee trader hailing from the Ottoman Empire, so Jassar grew up with a comprehensive understanding of the ocean’s nature. His mother was the daughter of a tavern owner in Amsterdam, making him a hybrid of conflicting cultures. The Dutch were stanch Calvinists and the Ottomans were Muslim, leaving Jassar stuck with two names–Jassar and Jesper depending who he was talking to–and two religions that demanded everything.

Due to the forbidden nature of his parents’ romance, Jassar primarily lived with his father, learning early on how to work the Exchange. The Exchange was the frenzied stock trading that took place as boats were unloaded; it was the place that made or broke traders. The skill to working the Exchange was a combination of reading people and knowing the markets. The localized nature of the Dutch Republic meant that restrictions were relatively minimal, so a free-market prevailed. That meant that value of coffee bonds could widely fluctuate in a minute, so finding ways to artificially make a demand were a necessity. That’s where Jassar excelled. Saying that this particular batch had something special about it, or spreading the rumor that the plantations were closing would create a demand which lead to prices rising when it came time to sell.

His childhood consisted almost solely of learning how to play with people; bluffing his way to the top, persuading others to think something, or outright lying to win because common practice. When his mother could, she’d come over and teach him the lute among other instruments. It seemed he had a talent for music, and so he’d play at taverns and the such, keeping an ear to the ground for his father between performances. As he grew older rich burghers would play for private performances. It wasn’t much money, but the goal wasn’t money, the goal was information. The rich always knew things before the poor, it was a fact of life, and a bit of wine in their system tended to loosen lips. He then would report the information back to his father and record it in a small journal. At the age of twelve, his father had made poor dealings, accumulated debt, and pissed off the wrong people, so it came as no surprise when he body was found floating in a canal. His father’s cause of death was said to be drowning, leaving Jassar almost laughing. It would figure that water would be what finally did the old man in. That night, he snuck into his mother’s house, begging her to allow him to move in, but she immediately said no. Not being virginal in a Calvinist society was one thing, but having a bastard son with a foreigner added another layer of sin. He slunk away, taking what little money was left, and wandered around the city, taking odd jobs. Eventually he was able to get an apprenticeship to a court bard, but didn’t stay with him very long. Instead he bounced around different bards until he was able to pass his guild examinations at sixteen.

After earning the title as “master bard,” the nobility started to hire him, allowing him access to the upper crest of society. The former trader’s son quickly found a new calling. Information was a prized commodity, and being a bard allowed him to be invisible at parties. Where he used to trade coffee, he now traded gossip to powerful people all under the guise of being a musician. He was still dirt poor, but now he got to play high class. The fact that he was charming and foreign didn’t hurt, and getting others to tell him secrets wasn’t a problem; after all, the frivolous nobility loved nothing more than slandering enemies, and to them Jassar was just another low class hire that would never be able to do anything with the information. Plus, the only people who liked shitting on the nobility more than other nobles were servants. The invisible hands of dukes and marquis alike always a dirt to say, and for a few coins had little reservation about telling Jassar. The longer he was around, the more “friends” he developed, giving him a fairly expansive net to catch information with. Eventually, by twenty, he earned the patronage of a Duke, which gave him access to the courts of King George and Louis XV. His years with no steady figure in his life made him distrustful of everyone, which was a trait perfect for court, but his years training as a entertainer had him easily charming his way through the nobility. By twenty-five, he had nicely established himself as a source of reliable information for the criminal and rich alike.

↪ Positive Traits: Perceptive, Creative, Witty ↪ Negative Traits: Selfish, Flippant, Arrogant

↪ Jassar will be the first to call himself stupid, oftentimes labeling himself as a simple idiot musician. While appearance wise he may be vain, in most cases he has no problem with self-deprecating comments. It often disarms people. The rich thought they had inherently better breeding, and trying to prove otherwise always seemed like so much work, so Jassar would let them underestimate him. Being looked down on was fine by him because it made people so much less likely to be on guard.

↪ Perhaps unlike many of his contemporaries, Jassar wasn’t ashamed about being a homosexual. He wasn’t open about it, but he wasn’t ashamed. Being from the Ottoman Empire already left him labeled as exotic and different, practicing Islam in secret left him discriminated against, so liking men didn’t feel like it mattered so much. Besides, to him plenty of nobles fucked men and nobody cared. Louis XIV’s brother wore dresses to court and openly had male lovers, so it just seemed like too much work to care about what people said. Just because he doesn’t care though, doesn’t mean others don’t, and Jassar’s been beat up and almost killed on a few occasions for his romantics encounters.

↪ Growing up alone has left Jassar not really caring about other people and definitely not trusting them. Stealing? If the person is dumb enough to be stolen from that’s on them. Lying? Whatever works to get the job done. He’ll do things that can be callous or uncaring just for a joke. His disregard for others doesn’t mean that he’s some brooding figure though. In fact he’s quite the opposite. Normally you’ll see him grinning in the corner of the room, his eyes razor sharp as he observes the scene.

↪ To the average observer, it seems like Jassar takes nothing seriously–he’s all cutting smiles and laughs–and the only emotion he really shows is frustration at others’ incompetence, but in reality he cares very deeply about his position. He refuses to just be another cast off orphan, that dies of some pathetic disease in squalor. If it’s his destiny to die, he plans to go out loudly, and with pizzazz.

↪ Jassar has two names, Jesper and Jassar, depending on the situation. If he needed to be foreign and alluring, or was around friends, Jassar it was. On the other hand, Jesper was useful when he needed to blend into a population. Jassar strongly prefered his original name, Jassar, but understands the use of having an alternative name.

↪ While decent at physical confrontation, Jassar will always try to avoid it for the mere fact that he tends to be smaller and weaker than actual fighters. His words will always work better than a sword for him.

↪ Jassar is also fluent in a variety of languages due to his travelling and background.

Jassar is played by Aya

#*all #male #low #civil #*ayachara

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robertsmorgan · 7 years

Text

Psychology of Eating Podcast: Episode #193 – Discovering the Deeper Meaning of His Mysterious Pain

Patrick has been experiencing a mysterious pain for some time without any medical explanation. He has done the tests and seen the doctors and receives a good bill of health each time. So why the pain? Marc David, Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, and Patrick dig for the hidden lessons of the mystery pain. Patrick reveals what triggers the discomfort and is sure it is triggered by particular stressors, especially since the pain really started during his very painful divorce. Marc and Patrick dive into a really important conversation about the divine masculine, what it means to be a “good” man in today’s world, and where he is being called to step more into his role as a leader in life.

Below is a transcript of this podcast episode:

Marc: Welcome, everybody. I’m Marc David. And here we are in the Psychology of Eating podcast. I’m with Patrick today. Welcome, Patrick.

Patrick: Thank you. Thank you, Marc.

Marc: Yeah. So Patrick and I have been just kind of schmoozing for about five minutes before we get going. For those of you out there who are new to the Psychology of Eating podcast, here’s how it works. Patrick and I have never met officially before but just for five minutes before we started chitchatting. And the idea is we’re going to have a session together. We’re going to see what Patrick wants to work on. And we’re going to try to push the fast forward button and help you get as much accomplished in one session as is humanly possible. So that’s the idea and I appreciate you doing this, Patrick.

So why don’t you just share with me, with viewers and listeners, what’s the key thing you would love to work on and get some forward movement with?

Patrick: Okay. For about four, five years, I’ve had sort of a pain in my groin area, kind of a phantom pain. I went to doctors to have them kind of check it out and they ran labs and did x–rays and things like that. Didn’t find anything. They saw a pretty healthy guy. And I feel like it has some root in my divorce and during that time period or something like that, because at the time I was going through a lot and drinking heavily and things like that. I don’t know, and so it was a pretty traumatic time of my life.

So I don’t know, I think it has to do with that sort of emotionally on some level. Yeah, I guess I’ve tried a lot of different approaches. I am a dietitian, so I’ve tried a lot of different diets and strategies to detoxes and things like that and nothing seems to do really much to it. It’s always sort of an underlying pain. It’s not really a hard pain to live with but it’s always there and I feel it. So yeah, that sort of…

Marc: How long ago did it start?

Patrick: I’ve been trying to think about that but I think it’s been about five years ago, yeah. Yeah.

Marc: And you think it’s related to past relationship, past divorce. Just help me, how did you kind of come up with that idea? What made you conclude that or think that?

Patrick: Well, I guess when I was going through that, I was drinking pretty heavily. But at the same time, I would try to compensate for drinking heavily and I would drink a lot of water at the same time. And then I think I was putting a lot of pressure on my bladder or my kidneys and that whole system during that time, I guess. I just remember there being a time when I could feel that like it was like a lot of pain in that area when I was waking up and I had to urinate for a long time and it wasn’t really helping, I don’t think. I just have a memory of it for some reason. And that’s where I got that, I guess.

Marc: Great. And on a scale from one to 10, 10 being like the worst possible pain in human history, zero being pain free, where is the range that the pain generally hangs out in?

Patrick: Yeah. It’s usually like a one or two. It kind of kicks up a little bit more when I’m stressed to maybe to three, four or something like that but it’s never really anything too, too bad. It’s mostly on the left side but then sometimes I’ll feel it on both sides, I mean like as far as that general area.

Marc: So, it kicks up when you’re stressed.

Patrick: Yeah.

Marc: Any other times that you notice that it increases?

Patrick: I’ve noticed it, well, if I’ve ever been in session with a therapist talking about those things, I feel it more in that area. I definitely do. And that’s another reason why I kind of felt like it definitely had to do with that. But I didn’t know for sure but yeah. Those other times that I’m talking about that past relationship or things that pertain to that, my current relationship, and I have a daughter out of that relationship. If there are issues with my daughter, maybe I’m starting to kind of feel that too.

Marc: I just want to say before we move forward, in general, phantom pain—I’m going to call it phantom because that’s what the medical profession will often label it. We, the collective we, we have this interesting challenge because just because science or medical science can’t measure something.

So my assumption is you’ve had all kinds of good testing and there’s nothing wrong with you. Is that correct, according to what the medical profession’s telling you?

Patrick: Right.

Marc: Yeah. So the challenge is there’s nothing wrong with you but there’s something wrong. There’s something happening. You are noticing something. So, first of all, I just want to say good for you for just trusting yourself, really.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: But you’ve got to trust yourself. You have to honor your body. You have to honor your own body wisdom. And you’re raising your hand and going, “Okay, I’ve done everything I can so far, in terms of testing, to help myself with this. The medical profession tells me, ‘According to our test nothing is wrong.’ But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing wrong.” This happens all the time. People are sick. They’re tired. They’re chronically fatigued. They have digestive issues. And they get all kinds of tests and there’s nothing wrong. But there’s something wrong.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: So here we are stepping a little bit outside of the usual paradigm now to try to figure out. And I think you’re wisely saying, “Hey, this could be a psychosomatic symptom.” And psychosomatic is really a very sweet term for, it’s influenced by mind and emotions and feelings. And that’s real. Our mind, our emotions, our feelings are real.

So I just wanted to kind of let you know my belief in that. And I just hope that, in this whole process, you honor yourself and not feel guilty because you think there’s something wrong with you and other people think there’s nothing wrong with you.

Patrick: Okay. All right. Thank you.

Marc: You see where I’m going with that?

Patrick: Yes, I understand what you’re saying.

Marc: Yeah. So like this is a place where you have to empower yourself to go, “Thank you everybody for your opinions. I know something’s happening in this body over here.”

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So that, to me, is first and foremost. Do you notice times when like, wow, I got like no pain. It’s been on a zero for days or weeks. Or when are the best times for no pain or pain free, if such a thing exists for you?

Patrick: I mean I think that it’s the kind of pain where if I’m not paying attention to my body, I don’t feel it kind of thing. So yeah, if I’m having a great time and enjoying the company of others or… yeah, in general, just feeling happy about things, I mean I don’t really notice it that much and it’s not there. But I can’t think of a specific time where it’s like not there or something. I think, usually, when I check into my body, if I do like sort of a body scan, it’s always sort of kind of there, yeah.

Marc: So in terms of professional help that you’ve been getting in terms of like therapy or therapist, what does that person or that community of people think? Like have you gotten any, for you, useful insights, oh, they think it’s oomph.

Patrick: I think in a lot of ways, I don’t know if it’s specifically related to this but through therapy, I really have—and going through training as well—really felt like it’s more to do with me. A lot of it is that I was sort of checked out of my body for a good amount of time, especially when I was first getting into nutrition and kind of feeling like I was toxic and going on all kinds of different detoxes and trying to fix myself as it were.

And I think that’s been a big part of it recently that I’ve been really starting to just really embody in general. I’ve been kind of a space cadet, more of a vata kind of personality my whole life in general, I think.

Marc: How old are you now, Patrick?

Patrick: I’m going to be 39 pretty soon.

Marc: Alright.

Patrick: Around the corner.

Marc: And you said you have a daughter from your first marriage.

Patrick: Yeah. I do.

Marc: And are you in contact with your ex?

Patrick: Not really. Well, like I said, I take care of my daughter full time, basically. I mean I talk to her mother occasionally, very occasionally, if I have to, if I need something that pertains to my daughter. But usually no. No, we don’t talk at all.

Marc: And was she your first significant relationship, would you say?

Patrick: Yes.

Marc: How long were you together?

Patrick: We were together for about, I think, this one was about six years altogether.

Marc: Total, marriage plus…

Patrick: Total. Marriage plus before that, yeah.

Marc: And here’s a weird question. If you were her, you were her, and I was saying to her, you, right now, “Hey, Patrick has this pain. Why do you think it’s there?” What do you think she would say?

Patrick: I guess I would say, “You’re holding on to how I hurt you or I…I don’t know. You’re angry, you’re really angry about how our relationship came out. I mean you’re holding on to that and you want to tell me something.” There’s a lot of anger that comes out of it whenever, in general, I think about that relationship. I guess that’s what I would say that she would say. That’s a tough question.

Marc: Sure. It is a very tough question. Yeah, I definitely acknowledge that. Have you ever gotten angry at her while you were with her, afterwards? Was than an emotion you had an easy time expressing?

Patrick: No. Well, of course, I’ve been in arguments with her for sure afterwards, definitely. But usually over custody or things like around that like our splitting up things. But not in the area of our relationship or anything like that. I mean I did write a letter to her that I didn’t send. And that was really helpful. And then there was a lot of anger that came out in that letter for sure, towards her for sure, yeah.

Marc: Are your parents still alive?

Patrick: My parents are still alive.

Marc: Are you close with them?

Patrick: We’re pretty close. They live here in town and we get to see each other and they’re good grandparents and stuff. I mean I think we’re… go ahead.

Marc: Yeah. Yeah, go.

Patrick: I was just going to say that, in general, my family culture is we’re not really very…we don’t get in touch with our feelings very much. That was not something that we did. Growing up, we were very like…yeah, like my dad was not like the type of person that I could share how I was feeling in general. It was more like we always pretended to be happy and sort of humorous. We’re very humorous kind of family kind of thing.

Marc: So how did your mom get along with your ex?

Patrick: Not well. I mean my parents, in general, didn’t. But yeah my mom—well, I mean my mom is a pretty passive, very nice person in general and my ex kind of allowed—I mean she kind of took advantage of a lot of people. She was sort of a manipulative person in general. So, yeah, they didn’t get along in general, I guess would answer that question. Yeah.

Marc: So if I asked your mom why she would think you would have such a pain, what might she say?

Patrick: I guess I really do feel bad about that situation with my parents. I alienated them a lot, actually. Maybe she would say that she understands, that she knew that I was trying to make the relationship work on some level, and that I’m holding too much again. I guess that’s what I keep feeling like I’m holding a lot of emotions down. I’m repressing a lot of emotions. That’s I guess what she would say.

Marc: Yeah. Just so you know, I’m asking these questions, I’m trying to ask you questions that, to me, help me gather as much information as possible in a short amount of time. And oftentimes, the people closest to us have some interesting insights. I’m not going to say they’re always accurate. I’m not going to say they’re accurate at all. They could absolutely hit the bull’s eye or not. But I just find—I’m always curious about what the people closest to us are seeing.

How about your dad? What would your dad say if I ask him the question, “Hey why did your son, Patrick, have this phantom pain? What do you think?”

Patrick: I don’t know if he would say anything. It’s hard to think of my dad actually having an idea about that, in general. But he would probably think that it was something biological, that I needed to get more testing done on or something. I guess he’s more of a traditional guy.

Marc: Yeah, yeah. And are you married now? Are you in a relationship now?

Patrick: I’m married now, yeah.

Marc: And what does your wife think of all this? Like what’s her take on it?

Patrick: She’s definitely like agitator. She’s a therapist herself. And she’s pushed me to do a lot of personal work in general. And I would say that she probably—I mean, she, in general, was pushing me to stick up for myself a lot in that relationship when we first met. And that was when I was still kind of dealing with a lot of those issues around my daughter and that relationship. And I think she would just say that it has to do with me not sticking up for myself in general and telling her how I feel and how she manipulates people and things like that. I think that’s what she would say.

Marc: Interesting. How does that land for you when she says that?

Patrick: I think she’s right on, in general. I mean she’s the type of person that tells it like it is usually. And even though it’s hard to hear, she’s usually right, my wife, as far as those things go. I mean I think, in general, through the training as well, I found that I do need to step into my masculine in a lot of ways. I’m kind of like a more passive person that I kind of let things kind of slide a lot of ways, so I don’t know.

Marc: What gets you the most pissed off in life, in general, like in any given month? A thing that would piss you off the most is?

Patrick: That might really piss me off…I’m just drawing a blank right now. But it’s usually my kids, in general. It’s usually that they don’t—it really pisses me off when I cook something and I put a lot of effort into it. I try to make it really healthy and all that stuff and they’re sort of like they don’t want it. And they’re not really being very honest about it. They’re trying to like be nice to me and everything. And that’s pretty upsetting. That pisses me off. That’s hard to be regulated when that happens, yeah.

Marc: Yeah. What pisses you off most or one of the things that pisses you off most in your marriage these days? Like when do you get mad at your wife?

Patrick: I guess it is that, when she’s pushing me to change. And if she sees an area where I’m not stepping up and then I’m feeling like I’m fine, I’m doing fine. I don’t need to change. I don’t have anything pressing. Or I feel like I’m working on my stuff at my own pace and she likes to kind of push me a little further along. I usually get pretty defensive at first and we might argue or something. And then later on like kind of see where she was going and I start to change. At first, it’s usually a lot of anger and sort of that’s my first defense in that area.

Marc: So, Patrick, I’ve got some thoughts here. I can keep asking questions and gathering more information. But I personally think we’re in the right neighborhood here…

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: …just in terms of just some of the things you’ve been sharing and some of my thoughts. So I would just like to kind of put together what’s going on in my mind right now.

Patrick: Sure.

Marc: And see if that’s interesting for you or can move you forward in some way in general. And forgive me for saying things that you might already know. But I think, in general, it’s so helpful when we are respecting our symptoms, plain and simple. When we’re listening to them, when we’re paying attention to them, because this symptom has your attention. If I had a pain in the head, that’s going to get my attention. If I had heart palpitations, that’s going to get my attention. If I have stomach issues, that’s going to get my attention. If I have a pain in my groin or in my nuts, that’s going to get my attention.

Patrick: Yeah.

Marc: So life has a way of getting our attention. And oftentimes that happens through the body. So here it is, it’s happening in a part of you, in a part of us men that, for goodness sakes, represents our manhood. It’s like what more represents our manhood than our groin area, than our reproductive area. That’s where the action is.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: So, to me, what I’m interested in, at the end of the day, so far, you’ve done your due diligence. Hey, I’m looking at my diet. Hey, I’ve gotten all these tests. Hey, I’ve really looked at biologically, metabolically, chemically, what could be going on. And if you’ve been able to check things off, then, to me, what’s left is that there’s some inner work to do, which even if the inner work doesn’t take away the pain, at least you ended up doing some good inner work.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: And probability-wise, there is a darn good chance that the inner work that we do can help unwind a symptom like this. Because in my experience—and it’s not just me, I’m speaking on behalf of the entire field of psychosomatic disorders and psychology and challenges. We manifest symptoms in the body that have an emotional and personal component. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a good thing. It’s just life is letting us know here’s a place to work.

I personally believe, based on what you shared about your parents, based on what you’ve said about yourself, based on some of the feedback you’ve gotten from your present wife, that it probably does have a lot to do with your relationship to the masculine, your relationship to being you as a man, whatever that means for you.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: And what that means for you is an interesting exploration.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: Because, ultimately, it’s your exploration. You could take my feedback. You could take your wife’s feedback. You could take anybody’s feedback. But ultimately, you’re the general manager of this situation. And you have to start to put things together such that, even though you’re collecting data and you’re getting help, this is your process.

So, to me, this is all about—yeah, it’s about emotions. It’s about anger. It’s about you saying how you really feel. It’s about you taking the next step and the next step and the next step to stepping into your kinghood, your manhood, again, whatever that means for you. What I want to suggest to you—you said you were 39 now?

Patrick: Yeah, about to be.

Marc: About to be 39, okay so you’re right in the zone. You’re right in the close-to-40 zone where I will say from experience that for men and women, there’s a certain voice that starts to come out at around 40. Who is it? Henry James, a famous writer said, “A writer finds his or her voice at 40.” Humans find a different part of our voice at 40.

So, to me, you’re sprouting your voice. When I say your voice, I mean you. I mean how you really see it, how you really feel regardless of anybody’s opinion. You’ve probably been a good boy. So if in your family anger’s not good, joking around is good, niceness is good, then you get rewarded from being good.

Patrick: Yeah.

Marc: You don’t get rewarded for being bad. Bad could mean angry, mean, could mean being a jerk. It could mean saying things that piss people off. Or it could mean raising your hand when somebody’s acting out of line and demonstrating bad behavior and nonsense behavior, and you go, “Hey, not acceptable,” however you do that. I think the challenge is you haven’t had a lot of experience being messy with your emotions. Meaning, it’s not always clean and simple to be angry.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: It doesn’t always come out perfectly logical. It’s not always clean and simple to express you’re upset. It doesn’t always come out really nice and easy. So I’m kind of guessing that you are very much on the right track right now which is I am claiming my manhood and I am defining what manhood means for me. So what I’m wondering for you right now is like when I even say that, when I say that I think you’re defining what manhood means for you, like what manhood might mean for you. Like what does it mean for you?

Patrick: Well, when you mentioned voice, for sure, I feel like I’ve kind of been in the shadows a lot in my professional career for sure. I definitely want to step up and make myself heard, my opinion, my knowledge with my colleagues and within that area for sure. I think just being more present as a father. I think I have been very emotionally absent. I’ve always provided. I’ve always like been a good boy as far as like I go to work and pay the bills and clean the yard and stuff like that. But I think being just more present as a father for my kids, I think that’s kind of—that would definitely be something I would say manhood or stepping into that kingdom, that king role.

But I think, too, is something that’s kind of been calling me lately is like I don’t feel like I have a lot of guy friends in general. I don’t have like—I mean I have some old friends but when I’ve gotten in touch with them, they don’t really seem to be at the same place I am at or it sounds almost like I need someone that I can really be a guy with but at the same time have a good friend kind of that masculine role, even a mentor on some level.

Yeah, I guess, I don’t know if that was more what you’re looking for. But I’m trying to answer what you’re looking for. But that’s what I’m thinking what manhood would be for me.

Marc: Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think it really hits the target in so many ways. It’s for you starting to see, in a very linear way, okay, what does manhood mean for me and what action does that then requires that I take to step into my man-ness more and more. To step into being a good man in this world.

And when I say good man, I don’t mean nice man. I mean good man. I mean effective man. Because oftentimes what happens to men at this day and age, we’re trained to be so freaking soft and we’re trained to be politically correct and we’re trained to be nice and we’re trained to be good guys. And a good man gets pissed off at injustice. A good man gets pissed off at lies. A good man gets pissed off at stupidity when it’s hurting people. A good man raises his hand when he sees a wrong being committed. A good man isn’t afraid to piss someone off in the name of helping them step into a better place in themselves and correct their mistakes and to grow out of their unconsciousness. So being a good present father, yeah, it might mean being there for your kids and playing with them. And it might mean raising your hand and getting pissed off when they’re not appreciating something that you’re doing and you go, “Hey, listen, here’s why I’m mad right now.”

Patrick: Yeah.

Marc: “I just did this, this and this and this but you’re not appreciating it. So you could be cooking your own food or you could not even be eating. Because I’m the guy that paid for this, cooked it, and put it on the table. So here’s what I would like you to do, children. Here’s what would make me feel good about this right now.” So it’s okay for you to set boundaries. So I would really love for you to start keeping some kind of running journal.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So you could see the specifics about stepping into my manhood needs. It means finding more men friends or a man friend that supports me where I’m going. How do you do that? You keep your eyes open. Maybe you’ll find a coach. Maybe you’ll find a mentor. It’s fine to have a paid friend.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: Oftentimes, that’s what the therapist is, that’s what a counselor is, that’s what a coach is. No problem with that.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: We don’t always have time to make new friends, find new friends, find the right friends. So if you can afford it and if it’s worth it for you, I love the idea. Especially if your therapist is a woman, I would want to see you have more men in that role. Because your wife is already being a therapist. She’s already playing that role.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: I would love to decommission your wife a little bit more from her therapist role with you. Yeah, let her be a wife to you. It’s her prerogative to raise her hand and say, “Honey, you got to do this better.” So I would be very attentive to what she has to say. But at the same time, understand that she’s not your therapist.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: You follow me?

Patrick: Yeah.

Marc: Because if you let her have that role, she will gladly take it because she’s probably good at it. But what’s going to happen is it’s going to depolarize both of you more. Because you’re going to feel like you have to listen, like that’s your therapist and it’s not your wife.

Patrick: I see. Yeah.

Marc: You follow what I’m saying? It could be a bit depolarizing sometimes. So I want to see you being able to do a lot of your work outside of your wife being a therapist for you. You follow me? And I want you to bring more of your manhood into the relationship more and more without her telling you how to do it.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: Am I making sense?

Patrick: Yeah. Yeah.

Marc: So what would that mean to you? If you were bringing more of your manhood into your current relationship, what might that look like?

Patrick: I guess, in general, not always looking for permission to do just about anything. I think that’s something that happens. But I feel like I am stepping out of that a lot more now. Doing that more for sure. Yeah, I guess that’s what I would think. I mean I guess sexually too kind of making that more…I guess me being more director, I don’t know, not forceful or anything. But being more masculine in that way too, I guess, that would be something.

Marc: Do you think she would like that?

Patrick: I do. I do think she would like that. Yeah.

Marc: Yeah. Think of it as dancing. The man leads.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: It doesn’t mean a woman can’t lead. But traditionally, man leads. So it’s nice to be able to have that skill in relationship where you’re at least doing that equal. Otherwise, it’s going to feel a little bit depolarized. It’s fine. Somebody’s got to lead in the dance. If you’re dancing as a couple, somebody’s got to lead.

And there’s got to be times when you are feeling your leadership. There’s got to be times when she’s feeling your leadership. By her trying to help you, my guess is that’s what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to help you step into your leader role in life. I’m not just talking about physically, intimately in relationship but just in everything.

This is about you being the captain of your own ship. And I see you doing that. I see you claiming that. You’re figuring it out as you go along, which is very honorable. It’s not easy to do because, again, we are often raised in a world and in a culture that is masculinizing women and de-masculinizing men. It’s over-masculinizing a lot of women. It’s over-feminizing a lot of our men. That’s my observation.

Patrick: Right. Okay.

Marc: I’m just in support of us having both polarities in our pocket. Yeah, be able to be in your feminine, but be able to be in your masculine as well. Super important. So part of that is I think also beginning to trust yourself more. Plain and simple just trusting yourself and understanding that you’re not trying to fix you right now. There’s a piece of you I think that’s trying to fix something in you. Feels a little broken. It feels to me like you’re coming to the table with some guilt like just feels like there’s guilt in the system here.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: I’m just saying my felt sense over here, oftentimes, guilt is packaged with anger on the other side. Sometimes they’re two sides of a coin where I feel guilty because this, this, and this. I didn’t show up this way. I should’ve done this. I shouldn’t have done that. I wish I was more this. I wish I was more that. But on the other side of guilt is often, but I’m angry at this, but I’m angry at that. And the two don’t always communicate with one another.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So what I’m asking you to notice sometimes is where you slip into guilt. I’m not good enough. I’m not who I should be. I got to fix this.

Instead the subtle shift is, I’m a guy and I’m on my journey and I’m learning how to do this better and better. As opposed to, I’m broken and I screwed up. It doesn’t mean you’re not looking to make things better. It doesn’t mean that you don’t want to correct mistakes that you might have made in the past and the present. But what it means is you kind of just, I don’t know, let yourself off the hook a little bit more.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: How does that land for you when I say that, like what happens for you?

Patrick: I would say it’s pretty on target for sure. I am pretty self-attacking especially when things start to go wrong. I’m definitely a perfectionist on a lot of levels, especially since you’re training that I’ve truly tried to work on that and be more self-compassionate and catch myself as I—my first inclination is to say, “You stupid idiot,” or whatever I usually say or blurt out or get angry at myself with. It’s usually more of self-attack. Whenever I get angry, it’s usually more self-attack than anything.

Marc: Yeah. And that will, for a man, de-masculinate us. It will de-masculinate us. Think of it this way, if you and I were hanging out and we’re sitting at a restaurant and I pay the bill and I wrote the wrong amount on the check. And I thought to myself, “Oh my God, I’m an idiot,” and I started hitting myself in front of you. That would look embarrassing to you. You would think, “What’s this guy doing?” That’s a completely ineffective strategy to deal with a mistake he just made. He’s beating himself up for making a mistake. It kind of looks and sounds silly, because it is.

It is not a king’s response. It is not a man’s response. It is more of a wounded boy’s response. It’s a wounded animal’s response. When we’re coming from wound, we will tend to regulate our system by self-attacking. Makes no sense. But that’s a wound, it’s a misperception of how reality works. Reality doesn’t work by you making a mistake, me making a mistake, and then banging our head against the wall as a way to correct the mistake. It doesn’t look so good.

Patrick: It makes sense.

Marc: Yeah. So, to me, you’re learning how to regulate your own kingdom better. This is the beginning of your kingdom, it’s the body. Body is the first kingdom. So your body doesn’t have to be perfect for you to be a king. You could be a wounded king, that’s fine. You could be a wounded warrior, that’s fine. You got a wound right now, that’s fine. It doesn’t mean you’re not a man. It doesn’t mean you’re not on your king program. It just means you got a wound and you’re tending to it.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So there’s a shift there that wants to happen. You’re not this wounded boy trying to fix yourself, you’re a wounded man tending to your wounds.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So you already are a man. You’re getting it a little bit.

Patrick: Yes.

Marc: You already are a man.

Patrick: I’m already a man, okay.

Marc: You’re already a man. There are things in our heads that has us believed otherwise. So what you’re doing right now, to my mind, from my standpoint of my own journey as a man watching other men, really being observant about the different life stages. You are a king in training right now. You’re a late prince. You’re a king in training.

King in training means we ascend the throne. You ascend the throne. The throne isn’t given to you. Here Marc. Here Patrick. Here Bob. Here Joe. Here’s your throne. Here’s all your power. Here’s your kingdom. Here’s all these people following your orders. Here’s all these things working perfect.

No. We have to make that happen. Okay, so it’s not given to us. There’s no pill. There’s no button to push. We ascend the throne and the way we do that is by doing what you’re doing, which is what’s right in front of you. By handling the challenge that’s in front of you, that’s the next step to ascend the throne.

So you’re dealing with a phantom pain that’s just raising its hand and going, “Yo, dude, something’s up here.” To me, again, you’ve wisely assessed, this has to do with me being a man. So now you’re defining what that is. You’re exploring what that is. And you’re looking to gather support because that’s what a smart man does. He gathers support in heading where he wants to head. No lone cowboys here.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: It’s all about you amassing support. This is you amassing support. Reaching out and going “Hey, yeah, I’d love a session. I’d like to do this.” That’s more support.

Patrick: Yeah.

Marc: That’s being a smart king. When good kings are in trouble, they band together.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: When good kings are in trouble, they talk to one another. “Hey, what do you think? What should I do? What’s your opinion? Do you have anybody you could recommend?,” all that kind of thing.

Patrick: Right. Okay.

Marc: So good kings, good men talk to one another. They support one another. I want to say one other piece here that I want you to think about for now. And that is that there’s a place where, in order to step into—and I’m speaking as a man now, same applies to women. In order to step into our manhood—or for women, in order for us to step into our womanhood—we have to step out of our parents’ house. The longer I’m in my parents’ house, so to speak, the more I’m their child.

The moment I step out of my parents’ house, I am less their child because they’re not telling me what to do, when to go to sleep, when to wake up, what to eat, when to brush my teeth, you forgot to brush your teeth. So as soon as we leave the parents’ house, we are starting to individuate. What happens is, is a lot of us walking around in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, we still live in our parents’ house. Emotionally energetic. I’m still trying to please my mother, please my father, please my parents and being a good boy. So a part of us is living there.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: It’s your rules now. It’s your rules about how life is, how your kingdom goes. Yes, you’re in negotiation with your queen, with your wife, but you’re the king.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So I want you to start to notice the places where you fall into being a son in the world.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: Because there’s a part of you walking around being a son, being a boy. And that’s fine because there’s always going to be a boy in you and you’re always going to be your parents’ son whether they’re alive or not.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: So you’re a son. You’re also a husband. You’re also a father. So you have a lot of archetypes in you. But I want you to notice that you want to live more in your manhood. Part of that’s noticing where you’re living in your boyhood more.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: Which means you have to look at your wife more and more as a woman, as your wife, and not your mother. Which is why I mentioned that thing about, yes, I want you to take her advice for sure. But I don’t want her to be your therapist. I don’t want to have her in that role. It’s different having your woman give you feedback than playing the role of your therapist. It’s going to force her to be a mother, which is going to force you to be a son, which is going to make you both unhappy in the long term.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: Are you with me here?

Patrick: I see what you’re saying, yes.

Marc: Yeah. So how are you doing? What are you thinking? What’s going on for you?

Patrick: No, a lot of what you’re saying, I mean, it’s all resonating with me. I definitely, on a lot of levels, are still there. I mean I thank God that my wife was there for me in so many ways. But I think in a lot of ways she was kind of a mother to me and especially as we’re getting to know each other early on in our relationship.

And yeah, it really is more about stepping into that manhood role for me. I guess I knew that before our talk. But now, this is really reinforcing that because of the way you put it for sure. And also what you said about the lone ranger kind of thing, that hit me pretty hard too. Because I have been kind of going at a lot of things alone and not reaching out for help, gathering the good kings as it were. I’m kind of isolating myself and feeling like I had to do this all by myself kind of thing. So that definitely resonates.

Marc: Yeah. For us men, in the heterosexual universe, women can truly inspire and help men to be better men. At the end of the day, men understand men a little bit differently. And perhaps a little bit better because we’re the same creature. So there’s certain things that women cannot help you with in terms of stepping into your manhood…

Patrick: Right.

Marc: …that only men could help you with because men are men and women are women. You and I as men can help women step more into their womanhood. But there are certain distinctions that only a woman can help a woman with because they’re the same creature and they talk a similar language. So I’m just kind of affirming what we’ve been saying here. And part of it is I want you to see, I want you to think about this a little bit, to have your wife a little less involved in this process of you and this phantom pain. I would love to see you be having half as much conversation with her, if not a quarter as much.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So to take this off of her plate as something that she has to help you manage or help you take on, I want her to be in a minor advisory role on this.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: I want you to be digging this ditch without her. She can maybe say, “Oh nice looking ditch,” or, “Wow there’s a little bit of dirt over here,” or whatever. But not have her have to get in there and play the role of your guy friend, of your guy mentor. Because what’s going to happen is she’s going to either try to be a guy for you or she’s going to have to be a mother for you or a therapist for you. And it’s not going to allow you to step into that place.

And she’ll do it from a place of love and you’ll do it from a place of love. But what I’m suggesting is, it’s not the right configuration for you to get where you want to go. I want you to be digging a little deeper inside yourself and experience what it’s like to not have a woman to have to rescue you in certain places.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: So take it off of the table that any woman can help you ultimately get to where you want to go. Because for a man, you’re going to help you ultimately get where you want to go. Will you take all kinds of input from men, women, children, animals, God, whoever? Absolutely. You’re happy to take everyone’s input.

But at the end of the day, you got to be driving this car. You have to have the felt sense that there’s not someone else driving the vehicle here. You see where I’m going? That this is yours. You’re owning it. You’re not leaning on her and relying on her to help you fix this. She loves you. She supports you. That’s different from her having to carry you on this. Can you see the distinction I’m playing with here?

Patrick: Yeah, definitely. And she has carried me in a lot of ways. So I know it’s time to carry myself in a way.

Marc: Yeah, absolutely. It’s time for you to be a man with her, which doesn’t mean you’re not still having issues to grapple with. It doesn’t mean you’re not communicating with her. It means you’re being a little bit more circumspect before you share and noticing what you bring to the relationship. I want you to be hesitant because, previously, you’re not hesitant enough. So I want you to be hesitant. I want you to be circumspect, thoughtful about what you share.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: And see is this something I really need to bring into the conversation with her. Is this going to put her in a mommy role? Is this going to put her in fixing-you role? Because if it does, I don’t want her there. She, ultimately, I don’t think wants to be there. Because what she wants is for you to be in your manhood.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: But in order for you to get there, there are certain steps you need to be a little more independent. You got to let some of the old help fall away…

Patrick: Right.

Marc: …which is having the woman, our mother figure, need to fix this. Because as long as she’s functioning like a mother for you, you’re going to stay a son.

Patrick: Yeah. Okay.

Marc: You follow me?

Patrick: Yes.

Marc: Okay, I got one more question for you.

Patrick: Okay.

Marc: If you are meant to be an improvement of your father, if each generation is meant to be an improvement on the generation before, what are some ways that you can be an improvement in your father, you could advance that lineage? What are some of the ways you could be a better man?

Patrick: I would say I guess expressing my anger in a better, in a more integrative way I guess, or a way that helps me, yeah, express the feelings I need to come up and come out of me. I think that just being more emotionally present, not afraid to speak up about how things are bothering me or how things are making me feel. Let’s see, not really sure…

Marc: You mentioned feelings, you mentioned anger, you mentioned being more present.

Patrick: Yeah. I think that’s the big one, being more present. I see my father always sort of escaping. He always sort of like escapes into the TV or a book or something. I just want to be not afraid to face whatever comes up for myself or for my kids or for…and not always numb it with something.

Marc: Yeah.

Patrick: I guess that’s a big one for sure.

Marc: Good for you. That’s a lot right there. That’s a lot. It’s kind of learning to wrestle. It’s learning to grapple with what’s in front of you. Wrestling and grappling is unpredictable. It’s messy. It’s sweaty. People get hurt. And it’s okay. Because we always got to be exchanging and wrestling with life and you haven’t had that kind of role model. So now you’re trying to teach yourself that. And now you’re trying to learn that on the fly. So what I want to say is, really, good for you. And this, Patrick, is hard work.

It is hard work to masculinize ourselves when we didn’t have the kind of upbringing that allowed us to have a healthy balance of masculine and feminine. It is hard to do that. It’s hard for a super masculine man, who has been taught to ignore his feminine, to embrace his feminine. It’s hard to a super feminine man, who has been taught to ignore his masculine, to embrace his masculine. So this is difficult work. If it was easier, we would have done it.

So I think you understand this so it’s not about getting rid of this pain that you have. Sure, we’d like it to go away. Sure, we would love for it to go away. But it only goes away as you graduate. So its raising its hand and saying I’m here for a reason because it’s getting your attention so you can end up having a conversation like this.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: To help you move forward. So in my universe, you are taking every right step and it gets more challenging. But that’s the beautiful challenges for you to rise up to that. So you are ready to go into the grappling and you’re ready to embrace what life is giving you. You’re ready to jump into the fray. You’re ready to get messy. You’re ready to be in a fight. You’re ready to get angry. You’re ready to be loving. All of it. Like my guess is you’re ready to be loving. You’re ready to be sweet. You’re ready to be nice. But you’re not always ready to go, “No, that sucks.”

Patrick: Yeah. I tend to avoid confrontation in general. I don’t like it.

Marc: Yeah. So that’s what you’re slowly changing. So that’s what I see happening. That’s the key to the kingdom to meet here in terms of unwinding your symptom. So I would personally look at not worrying about your symptom, not worrying about the pain in your nuts, so much as you are responding to it by making changes in your life, as an experiment, to see what happens. Because the changes that you’re making make sense. You’re resonating with them. They feel right to you. We’re growing unfolding human beings. And one of the hardest things for a man to do in this world is to step into his manhood. It’s shocking. It’s absolutely shocking.

We live on a planet right now where men are largely disempowered. Yeah, there are men in power who are empowered. But a lot of times the men in power they didn’t earn it. They didn’t get there by good means and good ways. But they’re enjoying wealth and power but actually don’t really have true power. But either way, so many men are left trying to figure out how do I not feel like a slave? How do I not feel disempowered? How do I show up as a man given my life, given my world, given everything? So that’s something we contend with, we grapple with, we ask those questions. That’s a question I ask every day.

Patrick: Right.

Marc: And it never stops. It’s not like, oh, you wake up one morning and you’re there. It’s like, no, you wake up one morning and you’re doing better and you wake up the next morning and you do a little better. And you wake up the next morning and you take two steps back and you wake up the next morning and you take two steps—you know what I’m saying, it’s a little bit of a fluff.

Patrick: Sure.

Marc: So my friend I’m really happy for you. I think you’re doing great. I hope you give yourself a little love for how hard you’re working here. And I think there’s some good little nuggets that came out of our time together.

Patrick: Definitely. Thank you very much, Marc. I appreciate it.

Marc: Patrick, I appreciate it also and good luck. And I would listen back to this session and maybe even take some notes for yourself after we get off the line and just see what you wanted to incorporate for yourself. And I really appreciate you being willing to just kind of share you and your process. A lot of people are going to be listening and I think this is a super important topic. So I really appreciate you being generous about what you’re going through and so super honest. So, thank you.

Patrick: Well, thank you for offering this as an opportunity. It was really hard to step up and do it. But I’m so glad I did it.

Marc: Stepping into your manhood.

Patrick: Definitely.

Marc: Good for you. Patrick, thank you so much.

Patrick: Thanks, Marc.

Marc: And thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Once again, I am Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. On behalf of the Psychology of Eating podcast, lots more to come my friends. You take care. Bye-bye.

Patrick: Bye.

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💪25 REAL SCIENTIFIC WAYS To BE HEALTHY & FIT This Year 👉 Health & Fitness Tips You NEED To Know 👍 has been published on Find and Select Business Reviews

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💪25 REAL SCIENTIFIC WAYS To BE HEALTHY & FIT This Year 👉 Health & Fitness Tips You NEED To Know 👍

So, you want to be healthy?? This video will show you how to be healthyand fit.

So lets start.

number 1.

Drink more water.

Adult humans should drink 2-3 liters(or roughlyeight, 8 oz glasses) of water per day, whilst children should drink 1-2 liters ( or roughlyfive, 8 oz glasses).

That is in addition to things like tea andcoffee.

Water keeps bodies at the correct temperature,and removes toxins that are the inevitable result of metabolism and industrial life.

You'll be healthier automatically.

• Water also clears your skin, helps yourkidneys, helps to control your appetite, and keeps you energized.

If being healthier, more wakeful, and havingbetter skin isn't motivation, what is? • It also keeps you from drinking unhealthybeverages like soda and juice, which are high in calories.

The body barely registers the intake of theseunhealthy drinks, and yet you still feel thirsty hundreds of calories later.

If you need the taste, splash some lemon,lime, or 100% juice into your water.

However, be sure that you eat plenty of calcium-richfoods, such as broccoli, to support healthy bones as you grow older.

number 2.

Eat breakfast.

A light, healthy breakfast is sufficient enoughto reap the benefits of eating early.

If it's comprised of lean protein and wholegrains, then it will keep you from gorging at lunch.

Research shows that breakfast-skippers actuallyeat more! So, to curb your appetite, don't skip thefirst meal of the day.

• Instead of two chocolate doughnuts anda coffee that's more cream than anything else, opt for eggs, fruit, and for a beverage, skimmedmilk, fresh orange juice, or tea.

The healthier your breakfast is, the moreenergized you'll feel throughout the day and the more you won't need to eat later in theday.

number 3.

Eat well throughout the day.

If half of your plate is vegetables and fruit,you're on the right track.

Add in lean protein, low-fat dairy, and wholegrains.

Once a steady eating pattern has been established,your body will feel more comfortable.

There may be a period of time when your bodyis wondering where the sugary foods went, but once you're over the hump, you'll feelbetter than ever.

• Remember that not all fats are bad foryou.

Good fats can be found in oily fish like salmonand tuna, avocados, nuts, and olive oil.

These are essential to a well-balanced diet.

number 4.

Eat at the right times.

A good time for a healthy, easy-to-digestevening meal, is between 6 pm and 8 pm; it's best to avoid late night snacks because theyfill you with unnecessary calories and can disrupt your sleep.

If you do need that midnight snack, stickto unsalted nuts, seeds, fruits, and veggies.

• Snacking isn't bad for you, if you doit right.

In fact, eating "constantly" can keep youfrom feeling deprived, and going for that third piece of cheesecake, when the cart rollsaround.

Just make sure it's all in moderation.

number 5.

Consider going meatless.

In case you haven't noticed, meat hasn't playedmuch of a role in what we've talked about so far.

Being vegetarian is a good way to reduce yourcalorie intake and get loads of vitamins and minerals, but that being said, it can be donewrong.

While it's not the best idea to go fully vegetarian,most people do eat far too much meat.

A good idea is to change the amount and typesof meat you eat: swap pork chops for lean chicken; steak for tuna.

• A high-fiber diet is easily had withoutmeat.

Fiber has been shown to lower your cholesterol,control your blood-sugar levels, improve your bowel health, and make you less likely toovereat.

The recommended fiber intake is 30g a dayfor men and 21g for women; after the age of 50, this jumps up to 38g for men and 25g forwomen.

Some good sources of fiber include fruitsand vegetables (with the skin), whole grains, and legumes.

number 6.

Read the labels.

Processed foods get a bad rap, and often forgood reason.

However, you've got to choose your battles.

That frozen bag of broccoli isn't nearly asbad as that boxed mac and cheese.

In short, avoid processed foods when you can,— but if you can't, read the labels and watch for added bad stuff: salt, sugar, andfat.

• Food that stays on the shelves often hasadded sodium, words that end in -ose, and Trans and saturated fats in the ingredientlist.

If you see these on the label (especiallyif they're in high amounts), avoid them.

You can find a healthier alternative elsewhere.

It's not worth it.

• Just because it says it has no trans-fatdoesn't actually mean it has no trans-fat.

Negligible amounts can be legally ignored,— so if you see hydrogenated vegetable oil on the list, you've found one of the maskedculprits.

number 7.

Get in shape.

In addition to helping you lose weight andgain confidence, exercising has a host of other benefits for your body and mind.

Having good cardiovascular health has beenlinked to a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s, just to name one.

So hit the pool, the pavement, or the parkas often as you can.

• Exercising boosts your immune system too;even a change as minor as walking briskly for 20-30 minutes a day, five days a weekcan improve your immune system by increasing both your antibody ,and T-killer cell response.

• Exercising is also one of the absolutebest ways to sleep better at night, —which can help you lose weight by keeping you fromovereating.

number 8.

Maintain a healthy weight.

Our physical frames vary in size and weight.

An individual with a large frame can carrya little more weight while a person with a light frame will be able to carry less.

• Being underweight isn't a good thing either! Do not use any form of crash diets.

There is no magic bullet for weight loss,—andeven if there were, starving your body of vital nutrients wouldn’t be it.

A slow change in your eating habits is muchsafer and the long-term benefits for your physical health are greater.

• Just remember that, only serious athletesare able to burn off enough calories to be able to enjoy massive indulgences,—and evenso, they tend not to because it’s hard on the body.

Even if you do consume more calories thanare recommended for you, be sure that they are nutritious; your heart, brain, muscles,bones, organs, and blood can’t run forever on empty calories.

number 9.

Cross train.

Just because you can run 5 miles (or 8 km)without stopping doesn't mean you're healthy, same goes for lifting weights the size ofa small car.

If you only do one activity, you're only usingone set of muscles.

You'll be shocked when you go swimming ordo core workouts that you can't keep up! • What's the answer? Cross training.

Not only does doing several different activitieswork all your muscles (which can help prevent injury), it also keeps you from getting bored.

That's the ultimate exercise killer! So include aerobic and strength training workoutsto your routine.

Your muscles will be glad you did.

number 10.

Exercise wisely.

It should go without saying that there arebad ways to work out.

Every time you get moving you put yourselfat risk for injury, so make sure you're doing it right! • First things first, stay hydrated.

You should always be sipping water duringyour workouts.

Getting dehydrated can lead to dizziness orheadaches during your sweat session (or lack thereof).

• Take breaks! It isn't being lazy, it's being healthy.

You can't go-go-go forever.

After 30 minutes or so of exercise, grab yourwater bottle and lighten up.

Your body needs a second to catch up.

You'll be able to go further in the long run.

number 11.

Take the little opportunities.

Being physically active isn't about poundingthe pavement, or joining a gym, it's a lifestyle that can be had 24/7.

If you can add extra 10 steps to your dayhere and there, they add up.

• Don't have any ideas? Park a bit farther away from work, the mallentrance, or the grocery store.

Ride a bike to work or school.

Take the stairs.

Walk the dog every day.

Take lunch to the park.

Bike to work or the local coffee shop.

Little opportunities are everywhere.

number 12.

Think positively.

It's amazing how much power our minds haveover everything in our lives.

A simple positive twist on a situation canturn an obstacle into an opportunity.

Not only will you have more gusto for life,your immune system can fight off colds and heart disease better! Harvard wouldn't lie.

• To start this difficult step, focus ongratitude.

When you start thinking about the bad thingswirling around you, stop.

Cut it out.

Think of two things you're grateful for.

Eventually, your mind will notice the patternand stop the negativity before you have to consciously do it.

number 13.

Be satisfied.

This doesn't mean "be content with your life"(well, it does, but give it a second)—it sort of means "satisfy yourself".

If you're on a diet, allow yourself a (small)bit of what you're craving.

If watching the Golden Girls for three hourson a Friday night sounds like heaven, do it.

Whatever the small things are that make youhappy, do them.

• Your happiness is invaluable.

If you're not happy, you're not fully healthy.

It's when we've got our heads on straightthat we can attack everything else.

If work, family, friends, a relationship,and money are wearing you down, the choice between that hot pocket and that whole wheatbagel doesn't really matter! number 14.

Think small.

When we concentrate on unattainable goals,we get daunted, frustrated, and lazy.

After all, why try to achieve something thatwill never happen? A healthy mindset has to be in the here andnow.

It should have concern for the future, sure,but it shouldn't be preoccupied with what hasn't happened yet or won't.

• Being emotionally healthy, (and happy)is easier to attain when you focus on the steps of your journey as opposed to the destination.

If you want to make it on Broadway, focuson getting your next audition.

Then focus on becoming equity, then focuson moving, etc.

Now will always come before the future, focuson them in order! number 15.

Manage stress.

This one is huge.

When stress takes over our lives, everythingelse falls apart.

Our homes get cluttered, our minds get cluttered,and our relationships get strained.

Take yourself aside for five minutes, andthink about your stress levels, how are you managing it? What could you do to be more calm and relaxed? • A very healthy way of managing stressis doing yoga.

If that doesn't sound appealing, how aboutmeditating? No? Then simply make sure to take ten minutesout of your day to just power down.

Sit with yourself and just breathe.

Make a point to get centered every day.

number 16.

Choose your friends wisely.

We all know those people that seem to drainus, but yet we're friends with them anyway because they have a nice TV or because, well,we get bored.

Unfortunately, for our emotional health, they'vegot to go.

They do us no good and we know it , we justignore it to maintain consistency, and avoid awkward situations.

Do your mental health a favor and tear offthat Band-Aid.

In the long-run, you'll be happier.

number 17.

Be productive.

One of the best feelings to easily come byis that, feeling of "I got so much done today!" For that moment, you feel virtually unstoppable.

Your mom saying, "If you put your mind toit, you can do it" is no longer a lie! Now imagine riding that high constantly.

• Start by creating a to do list.

A calendar or planner is a good idea, too.

And remember: think small.

Attack a few small things to get you going.

You'll get on a roll before you even realizeit.

number 18.

Take a break.

This is similar to the "Be Satisfied" step;you need to do what's right for you sometimes, regardless of what the world seems to be demanding.

Without feeling guilty, take that proverbialKit Kat Bar.

Spend a night in.

Take a morning off.

You'll be twice as energized when you getback to it.

• This goes for exercise too.

If you do the same thing over and over, yourmuscles get used to it, you get bored, and you end up plateauing.

So instead of pounding the pavement on Wednesday,go hit the pool.

You're not being lazy, you're being logical.

number 19.

Find emotional balance.

Even if you master every other aspect of health,it won’t feel complete if you’re suffering from inner turmoil.

Everyone needs a pick-me-up sometimes, andthere are many small things that you can do to feel better about yourself.

If the problem extends deeper, you may needto learn to cope with emotional pain or even depression.

• Once you have worked on yourself, youshould work on your approach to interpersonal relationships.

Learn how to recognize, a manipulative orcontrolling relationship and, if necessary, deal with emotional abuse so that you canhave a healthy relationship.

number 20.

Stop engaging in risky behavior.

Taking unnecessary risks is hard on the bodyand mind.

It can also have devastating long-term consequences.

Serious or established patterns of risk-takingcan also be indicative of deeper psychological problems, in which case you should talk toa healthcare professional, who specializes in a relevant field.

Start by setting your sights on one of thefollowing achievements:  Have Safer Sex Stop Binge Drinking  Quit Drinking without Alcoholics Anonymous Quit Smoking  Beat Drug Addiction• These things are doable.

While they are definitely daunting, they'redoable.

Often if one of these is accomplished, otherthings seem much easier and will fall into place.

number 21.

Exercise several times a week.

We've stressed the "get fit" part already,but now we want to make it a little less ignorable.

Your daily or weekly routine needs to includeexercise.

It will increase your metabolic rate, controlyour weight, and you'll feel fresh the whole week.

Triple win! • Here's something concrete for you: aimfor 150 minutes of aerobic activity every week (or 75 minutes of vigorous activity)and strength training twice a week.

Even mowing the lawn counts! number 22.

Get a good night's rest.

When you sleep, your body produces cells thatfight infection, inflammation, and stress, which means that getting too little sleepor poor-quality sleep, not only makes you more prone to getting sick, but also increasesthe time you need to recover from illness.

If you're not sleeping for you, sleep foryour health! • On top of that, a study conducted by TheAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition demonstrated that, men who slept for 4 hours consumed 500more calories than, they did after sleeping for 8 hours.

If you're looking for an easy diet, here itis! number 23.

Learn how to cook.

Cooking your own meals is a wonderful experienceas you can try out different recipes while saving money at the same time.

What's more, you get to control every littlething that goes into your body.

That's really the only way to turn your dietaround! • When you cook, avoid using fatty oilsand extra add-ons.

Stick to olive oil instead of vegetable oil,butter, or margarine and keep the extra salt and cheese to a minimum.

If it doesn't taste good without it, try cookingit differently! number 24.

Maintain your personal hygiene.

Wash your hands often, especially after visitingthe bathroom at home or using the restrooms in a public place.

Germs can spread like wildfire and bring usdown in the blink of an eye.

And as if it wasn't already clear, takinga shower is a good idea too.

• When it comes to your mouth, floss andbrush your teeth and tongue after eating; food particles are often the cause of badbreath and gum disease.

Visit your dentist regularly for cleaningsand to catch any problems before they become serious.

number 25.

Bolster your immune system.

Maintaining healthy habits and a high levelof energy is difficult for anyone, who constantly battles fatigue, colds, infections, or anyother effects of a weakened immune system.

• If you can help it, try to get all yournecessary vitamins and minerals from your diet.

Supplements should only be used as a secondarymeasure.

And of course, talk to your doctor beforeyou undergo any significant changes.

 Here is some Bonus Tips for you:number 1.

Educate yourself.

Every day is an opportunity to gain a littlemore knowledge.

number 2.

Don't get stressed.

Stay calm and encourage yourself to do thingsyou have never done before.

number 3.

When you feel your body asking for a rest,listen to it.

The body is a remarkable organism, which iswell equipped to repair itself provided we take care of it.

number 4.

Try snacking on celery, it actually burnsmore calories than it gains.

number 5.

Increase your intake of antioxidants to fightthe free radicals, that have been linked to cancer, heart disease, atherosclerosis, amongother diseases.

number 6.

Be grateful.

Stop and acknowledge things you are gratefulfor at the beginning of your day and at bedtime.

This will do wonders for your emotional health.

 Please be carefull:Incorporate a new routine slowly.

You don't want to send a shock to your system.

If you're undergoing a new exercise and eatingregimen, consult your doctor.

Always exercise caution when it comes to yourhealth!.

Source: Youtube

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