Author: signordal

Benefits of Jealousy: 7 Steps to Turn Your Envy into Motivation

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You’re reading Benefits of Jealousy: 7 Steps to Turn Your Envy into Motivation, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

We all are humans and we are formed by our feelings and emotions. Our emotional state and behavior show our true nature. The way we act and interact with other people shows who we are. We live through both positive and negative emotions. We will surely feel the whole variety of them. Nevertheless, it does not mean that we will definitely feel all of them all time long. It is better to avoid negativism, which can ruin our life. Jealousy and envy are amongst the most conventional and unpleasant emotions that have many negative aspects.

Many people consider these two human emotions as interchangeable feelings. This is a negative emotional response to the action of some people or some events. Nevertheless, their classification is different. It is true that they have a lot in common. Nevertheless, there are differences as well. Envy is the emotion of coveting somebody else possesses. It focuses on the local negativism in the regard of a definite person.

In the meanwhile, jealousy is referred to the fear of losing something. It concentrates on the rivalry itself. Jealousy is solely a negative emotion. However, envy may be reviewed in a positive way because it may bring some dividends to people who envy. They may make them better.

The reasons for envy are various. Some people may think that the success of the others in unfair. The others think that a person may stand in their way and would allow developing properly. Some of the studies registered that our brain reacts to the emotion of envy as if it was a physical pain. As you can see, this matter is serious. However, we can use it for our purposes as well.

Right now, we will learn some intriguing and helpful facts about how to turn envy into your friend and enjoy some profit for self-improvement. How can we turn envy or even jealousy to our advantage?

First of all, you should identify the reasons for your jealousy or envy. Afterward, build a strategy of making use out of it. Here are some useful things that you can learn from the success of the people you envy.

  • Learn some lessons. Each successful story has a lot to teach. Think about the helpful things that you can remember to use for your own purposes.
  • Reconsider your mistakes. You should ask yourself about the things that left you behind. Probably, you had the same capabilities as your rival but you have somehow missed the opportunity. Analyze the way to the success of your rival.
  • Set the right standards. Another thing to make allowances for is to have the reasonable and realistic standards. Probably, yours were too low and they affected your progress in a negative way. On the other hand, you might have had too high expectations, which were not possible to reach.
  • Recognize the success of your rivals. One of the most controversial but essential things is the recognition of the achievements of other people. You should find strength and admit their success. In such way, you will be able to think calmly. You will clearly realize the way they achieved those heights.
  • Start admiring the others. You should be able to turn your envy into admiration. Instead of hating other people for their prosperity, praise their achievements and learn useful tips.
  • Mimic your rivals. As your rivals have reached great success, their methods were correct. Try to repeat their way to success step by step each day.
  • Define the point of no return. It is obvious that your rivals slipped up at a definite point. You should identify where you started falling behind and never repeat those mistakes again.

These conclusions are vital and can serve your purpose. You should always keep in mind that you can have the same things too. Evaluate your perspectives and the achievements of your rivals. Try to compare them and start working on yourself.

Don’t forget your strong sides and use them for the maximum success. Quite soon, you will celebrate the great achievements of your own and will impress everybody making them envious.

—

Petra Mainer is a blogger who is currently writing for GradeScout. She studies Information Management, and now she is eager to become a regular contributor for different entertainment and digital blogs. You can follow her on Twitter @PetraMainer.

You’ve read Benefits of Jealousy: 7 Steps to Turn Your Envy into Motivation, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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From Hookup Culture to Viagra Nation

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You wouldn’t expect a conservative sociologist and a liberal-leaning cultural journalist to agree on much — especially when it comes to sex.

But Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin, and David Friend, a Vanity Fair editor, share the premise that American sexual attitudes and behavior have undergone a sea change in recent decades. And Friend, while he might reject Regnerus’s vocabulary, likely wouldn’t dispute his diagnosis — that nonmarital sex has become easier to access and more acceptable. But Friend is more aggrieved by a different development: the tabloidization and coarsening of the culture.

”Mine is not an elegy for a lost era,” Regnerus insists. Yet Cheap Sex does read at times like a jeremiad — a provocative, if sometimes stodgy and infuriating, lament that the willingness of young women in their twenties and thirties to “hook up” with men, absent any emotional commitment, makes monogamy and marriage ever more elusive.

“Cheap sex,” for Regnerus, is sex for which men, nature’s pursuers, don’t have to court or commit. “Sex is cheap,” he writes, “if women expect little in return for it and if men do not have to supply much time, attention, resources, recognition or fidelity in order to experience it.” Pop culture shibboleths aside, men aren’t afraid of commitment, he maintains — they just don’t find it necessary anymore. “In the domain of sex and relationships men will act as nobly as women collectively demand,” he writes — a statement he concedes women will find “aggravating.”

The widespread availability of “cheap sex,” Regnerus argues, is good for men but also bad for them, since it may well blunt their ambitions and the need to achieve as a prerequisite for impressing and bedding women. (So evolutionary psychology would suggest. But any hard proof that contemporary men’s much-discussed educational and employment struggles are linked to easier sex — as opposed, say, to de-industrialization — is elusive.)

But “the unintended consequences of cheap sex” are even worse for women, Regnerus writes. Biologically destined to be “sexual gatekeepers,” they are failing at their appointed task, undercutting their own romantic and reproductive interests. At its most basic, Regnerus’s argument is the sociological equivalent of that old saw, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

To Regnerus, the original sin that facilitated sexual permissiveness was the introduction of reliable birth control — that is, the Pill, which ushered in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, ’70s, and beyond. (Fear of AIDS may have slowed those cultural currents, but it didn’t dam them.) That much at least is widely accepted, as is the notion that the aforesaid revolution had a darker side, particularly for women.

Regnerus also implicates pornography, a once hidden vice (or sexual aid, depending on your perspective) that has gone mainstream and altered attitudes toward what is sexually possible and desirable. (It may even have led some men to retreat from the vexatious mating market, advantaging those who remain.) Regnerus describes a third factor, online dating, as “a remarkably efficient cheap sex delivery system” that commodifies people and “works against relationship development.”

Drawing on survey data, 100 personal interviews, and a 1992 book by the British social theorist Anthony Giddens, The Transformations of Intimacy, Regnerus focuses primarily on “young adults under 40.” That makes sense from an evolutionary psychology standpoint — those are, for women, the fertile years. But it means skipping over questions about the sexual dynamics of relationships between older women and men, which may challenge essentialist notions about the pursuers and the pursued.

Regnerus notes that “the pathway to marriage is lengthening, and the journey there increasingly circuitous” — a state of affairs he bemoans, since he sees monogamous marriage as a nearly unalloyed good. Proponents of less restrictive partnerships — or of solo living — will no doubt dispute Regnerus’s ideological presumptions.

 

Friend’s attitude in The Naughty Nineties is tougher to pigeonhole. At the center of this sprightly, sprawling, and heavily anecdotal cultural history leers Bill Clinton, a symbol and a catalyst (and perhaps even a victim) of evolving sexual mores. Friend’s subtitle, The Triumph of the American Libido, isn’t devoid of a frisson of ambivalence, which the book’s treatment of Clinton exemplifies. While quoting both Clinton friends and foes, he seems to doubt whether the president’s sexual peccadilloes should have become political fodder, let alone grounds for impeachment. But he also sympathizes with the women caught in the fallout from that infamous libido run amok.

The Naughty Nineties documents rampant pornography, the diminution of sexual privacy, and the spread of cosmetic surgery, among other trends. Friend is comfortable with the expansion of gay rights (his brother, who is gay, had a commitment ceremony in 1994). And he celebrates the serendipitous development and marketing history of Viagra in two chapters, “The Hardener’s Tale” and “Homo Erectus.”

Ranging widely through the decade, Friend covers such familiar touchstones as Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues, the exploits of the celebrity madam Heidi Fleiss, and the rise of gentlemen’s clubs, Brazilian waxes, and sexual addiction. The book bursts with detail-rich footnotes.

But its greatest contribution is Friend’s “morning after” interviews with a series of pivotal cultural figures, including Fleiss (who winds up in Death Valley caring for twenty macaws), Anita Hill (proud to have become a role model), Monica Lewinsky (a newly minted expert on cyberbullying), Paula Jones (who whines about her inability to get a book published), and Lorena Bobbitt.

One of the book’s truly bizarre revelations is that Bobbitt’s ex-husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, whose penis she so notoriously amputated, has since pursued her with lovelorn texts. Whatever the truth of their earlier quarrels — she claimed rape, he denied it — he had become the seemingly unlikeliest of sexual harassers.

Friend’s larger argument is that the transformations he chronicles “laid the groundwork for our current age,” with its “voyeurism and virulence,” “thirst for scandal,” and Internet-fueled “breakdown of private barriers.” Like many commentators, Friend seems understandably uncertain about where (laudable) sexual freedom and pleasure end, and ugly exploitation begins.

Exhibit A for the coarsening of our culture might be Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood boasts about capitalizing on his celebrity to grope women — and especially their failure, after an initial round of revulsion, to ensure his electoral defeat. Friend is on shakier ground when he declares that “the candidacy of Donald Trump would not have been possible, or viable, had it not been for the rhetorical and stylistic precedents set by the slick and ever-parsing Bill Clinton.” Bill Clinton likely mattered less than America’s exaltation of business success and the economic pain of the ravaged Rust Belt. Still, to the extent Friend is right, that eponymous libidinal triumph is looking increasingly like a Pyrrhic victory.

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The Hardening of Consciousness

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Manzotti: In declaring consciousness the “hard problem,” something extraordinary, and separating it from the rest of the physical world, Chalmers and others cast the debate in an anti-Copernican frame, preserving the notion that human consciousness exists in a special and, it is always implied, superior realm. The collective hubris that derives from this is all too evident and damaging.

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Brexit’s Irish Question

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The Irish Question rises yet again, looming on the road to Brexit like the Sphinx on the road to Thebes. It threatens to devour those who cannot solve its great riddle: How do you impose an EU frontier across a small island without utterly unsettling the complex compromises that have ended a thirty-year conflict? The “people” part of the preliminary Brexit negotiations concerns the mutual recognition of the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and vice versa. The “money” part concerns Britain’s outstanding obligations to the EU budget and the calculation of the final divorce bill. Both are awkward and politically divisive issues, but it should be perfectly possible to reach a settlement.

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Apartment with Spectacular Views Over the City of Seville in Spain

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This project is located in the city of Seville, in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, in Spain. It is fortunate enough to be in a key point of the city: next to the bullring of La Maestranza and the river Guadalquivir. It is a modern, elegant, and functional space, and it has wonderful views over this charming city, which is full of history and corners that drive us to fall..

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It’s been 16 years since the tragic events of September 11,…

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It’s been 16 years since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, but the images of that day remain clear. Two planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York and a third into the Pentagon in Virginia. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives. Because of the actions of 40 passengers and crew aboard the fourth plane, Flight 93, the U.S. Capitol was saved. In New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania and across the country, people will gather today to remember the depth of our loss and the strength of our resolve. By visiting these places and hearing their stories, those who were taken will never be forgotten. Photo from Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania by Tami Heilemann, Interior.

Spectacular Boat House designed by Cibinel Architecture in Canada

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Located in Lake of the Woods, Canada, one of the most dramatic, mysterious, and surprising lakes in the world, this wonderful boat house covers an area of 2,500 square feet and was designed in 2016 by the architectural firm Cibinel Architecture. It is located on the coast of the lake, and set on the edge of a thickly forested northern slope. The residents needed to create a place where they..

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Warm Apartment With Exposed Brick Walls Designed by Arhitektura AB Objekt

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This warm 100 square meter apartment is located in the historic center of Mladinska ulica, in Maribor, the second largest city in Slovenia, located in the northeast of the country, on the banks of the river Drava and near the Austrian border. Its style reveals the architectural beauty of cities built at the end of the 19th century. In this remodeling, the architects were able to show that in many..

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7 Cross-Border Dropshipping Tips Winners Use

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Thinking of scaling or taking your dropshipping business overseas? Today is the best time to do that!

E-commerce’s global consumer base continues to expand exponentially and with this type of demand, supply must also rise.

BigCommerce reports that 96% of Americans shop online with 8% of millennials shopping daily. Studies show that more firms, including B2B companies, are now considering dropshipping. In 2011 alone, a Forrester report showed that dropshipping accounted for 34% of products sold on Amazon. That equates to $14.2 billion.

Increased consumer confidence, internet accessibility, multi/omnichannel options, technology, competition and innovation are some major drivers of this upbeat trend.

The Big Question

Is dropshipping for you?

Wisdom says if it is too good to be true, then it probably is. However, just like any business, dropshipping requires time and effort.

Dropshipping is an e-commerce order fulfillment model where a facilitator (dropshipper) receives orders from buyers (shoppers), passes it on to manufacturers or suppliers and delivers those orders direct to customers (D2C).

In other words, you order from a wholesaler or manufacturer only when your customers order from you. There’s no need for you to stock inventory. All you ever have to worry about is marketing and sales as your entire supply chain and logistics are handled for you.

Unfortunately, dropshipping isn’t for everyone. It could be for you if you love to work remotely and independently and if you hate:

  • Warehousing
  • Managing CRM/WMS/OMS
  • Buying and stocking inventory
  • Packaging
  • Printing labels
  • Shipping
  • Handling returns
  • Paper work

If you are looking for some inspiration, here are some of the top-rated dropshipping companies today:

  • Oberlo
  • SaleHoo
  • Worldwide Brands
  • Wholesale2B
  • Inventory Source
  • Vista Wholesale
  • Dropshipping Design
  • Doba
  • Drop Ship Access
  • Sunrise Wholesale
  • Megagoods
  • Dropship Direct

You could start a self-hosted dropshipping store. However, for someone who’s just starting out, you’ll be better off with platforms or companies that already have solutions that seamlessly integrate dropshipping with e-commerce like Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce etc. You can skip this tip if you have the men and means to build one from scratch.

Cross-Border Dropshipping

Cross-border dropshipping is basically you (dropshipper) dropshipping orders to customers beyond your borders. Take a look at the following model to understand the concept better.

Local vs Global Dropshipping

The following highlights some key differences between local and global dropshipping:

1 No customs duties, taxes, levies Custom duties, taxes, levies
2 Known regulated products Different from country to country
3 Single currency Multi-currency considerations
4 Monolingual Multilingual considerations
5 Single time zone Different time zones
6 Cheaper More expensive
7 Limited reach Unlimited opportunities

7 Tips For Better Cross-Border Dropshipping

Now that you know the differences, here are 7 tips to help you nail cross-border dropshipping:

Investigate Your Target Market

You need not become or hire a Sherlock Holmes. Simply look into existing research before you make the leap. Worth over $672 billion, China is the largest e-commerce market. However, issues like distance, customs procedures, government regulation and payment processing are major pain points for non-Chinese businesses.

Do your due diligence and risk assessment before commencing.

Know Your Target Customers

BigCommerce, in a recent report, similarly revealed that 43% of US shoppers shop while in bed. If this group form part or the core of your consumer base, you need to adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.

You need consumer behavior insight when dropshipping abroad.

Some key questions to ask include:

  • What are their age, gender, income level, location?
  • What hours do they shop online most?
  • Who are they?
  • What is their time zone?
  • Which social media or search engine do they frequently use?
  • What products sell more?
  • What device is mostly used?

Answers to these questions will help you streamline your dropshipping services for more efficiency.

Know International Trade Regulations

It is easy to cross the line with cross-border dropshipping if you are ignorant of relevant international trade laws. This is why you need to familiarize yourself with the current business laws before you actually start with your project.

Take, for example, Kenya.

Recently, Kenya banned the production, selling and use of plastic bags, targeting manufacturers and sellers first. This information can help you decide whether to expand into Kenya, considering your product packaging practice.

Follow the Leaders

Follow industry leaders in cross-border dropshipping and not leads. Most e-commerce marketers spend their ad-earned currency chasing and hoping to convert and keep leads. Instead of being like them, you should study dropshippers like Irwin Dominguez who went from zero to over $1 million in one year.

irwin dominguez dropshipping
Via zacjohnson

That’s the kind of guy you should follow and leads will follow you back soon. Follow their strategies on blogs, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and any other places where they hang out.

Optimize Your Dropshipping Website

It is critical to get your dropshipping website right. It is your major opportunity to attract, convince and convert leads.

Retail Dive reports that more than 65% of shoppers browse online before buying offline.

As they interact with your website, online shoppers form opinions about your business. They assess your site’s loading speed, landing pages, ease of navigation, design, UX, forms, product photography/description, and checkout to payment.

If you are unsure how to create one, you can hire freelancers to design one for you on a budget that won’t break the bank.

See Also: A Practical Guide to Hiring and Managing Freelancers

Offer Multilingual, Multi-Currency Support

Language is a core component of social identity and culture. Offering your services in languages local to your international audience is a great way to connect with them.

Currency conversion calculations is another pain point for many cross-border shoppers. E-commerce stores that support multi-currency payments take that stress off of shoppers. It allows them to pay in their local currency while you receive payments in your own currency.

Consider Marketplaces

dropshipping marketplace

Brand recognition and awareness take time to build. It is okay to sign up to popular marketplaces like Amazon or eBay when you are just starting out. They are platforms that support hundreds of thousands of stores. You can gain experience and share valuable insights from forums and community support such platforms provide.

See Also: The 5 Internet Marketing Trends That Will Dominate in 2017

As you cut your teeth and become more successful, you can start considering other options. If you’re on Shopify, apps like Oberlo can make dropshipping simpler by automating everything from product importation to order fulfillment.

What winning tips have you used in your dropshipping business?

 

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6 Simple Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt

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You’re reading 6 Simple Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

6 Simple Ways to Overcome Self-Doubt

You’ll never be good enough. You can’t do it. Stop wasting your time.

That’s the voice inside your head trying to prevent you from success.

Think you’re alone? Think again.

We often assume that successful, confident people never have any doubts. We believe their decisions come easy and are never accompanied by regrets; however, that belief couldn’t be further from the truth.

Self-doubt is a natural human response to all the challenges life throws at us – acting as a mechanism to prevent us from facing failure. This may be useful in a life or death situation, but not so much when you are pondering talking to your boss about that promotion or unsure if you should sign up for the 5k road race.

In these situations, we often find our thoughts of uncertainty overstaying their welcome.

Erin Hanson provides the best advice anyone can give on second guessing themselves, “What if I fall? Oh, but my darling. What if you fly?”

Let that sink in for a moment.

Here are six ways to overcome self-doubt:

1.You’re not alone

Believing that you’re the only one with doubts is a sure fire way to set yourself up for failure. It’s important to understand that you’re not alone and that everyone goes through phases of uncertainty. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Overthinking will only make matters worse and you’ll end up creating problems that aren’t even there.

2. Become present

Self-doubt is often an unwanted consequence due to overthinking. Focusing on the present rather than the future or the past can provide your mind with much needed clarity, allowing you to refocus and push forward.

A simple mindfulness exercise such as sitting down while practicing deep breathing or a few minutes of guided meditation can help cure your indecision. With a fresh perspective you’ll be able to regain your focus and tackle whatever doubts you had before.

3. Set actionable goals

Still in a rut? Small accomplishments are one of the simplest tactics to get yourself out of a funk. Your goals don’t need to be the size of Goliath, requiring the perfect shot to defeat.

By breaking your goals into smaller, more actionable chunks it’ll ease the overwhelming stress of figuring out where to start. The sense of achievement you’ll experience from crossing each step off your list will lead to a boost of morale and keep you striving towards the finish line.

4. Surround yourself with optimism

Surrounding yourself with positive influences is a great way to keep you moving in the right direction. Keep those that provide you encouragement close to you and seek their advice when things go wrong.

Having the support of family and friends can help keep you motivated when you’re unsure of the next step to take. And don’t forget to distance yourself from those that don’t believe in you or provide any sense of negativity.

5. Believe in yourself

The underlying cause of self-doubt is from not believing in yourself. This is the perfect opportunity to relish in past success. Use prior accomplishments as leverage to dismiss your current fears. You’ve been here before. You’ve doubted yourself in the past and you’re still here — this time is no different. Believe in who you are, in what you’re going to achieve, and don’t be afraid to take a chance.

6. Prove others wrong

Haters are going to hate. Doubters are going to doubt. Sometimes people fill your mind with fears because they’re too afraid to follow their own dreams, or they failed once, or because they’re flat out jealous. Frankly, their reasons are meaningless. Don’t allow the limited beliefs of someone else impact you in anyway. Use their doubts as fuel along your journey.

Self-doubt gives us an easy out – allowing us to avoid our fears and protect ourselves from being hurt by failure. However, bowing down to indecision is what we should be fearing. There is nothing wrong with trying or failing. Great things happen outside of your comfort zone. Sometimes you need to take risks, block out the doubts, and just take a shot.

After overcoming a medical trauma, Gary has been inspiring others to overcome their challenges. For more inspiration and to learn more about his story, visit laughatadversity.com

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