Build your own freelance marketplace with a fully customizable #FiverrCloneScript . Designed to support the fast-growing #GigEconomy , this solution comes with an intuitive interface, #SecurePaymentIntegration , and powerful features that benefit both #Freelancers and #Clients .
From service listings, project management, and in-app communication to ratings, reviews, and dispute resolution, this platform has everything you need to create a smooth and professional #FreelanceMarketplace .
Whether you’re looking to launch a niche talent hub or a large-scale gig platform, the #FiverrClone makes it possible to scale quickly while ensuring a seamless user experience.
https://oyelabs.com/fiverr...

Develop Secure & Unique with Our Trust Wallet Clone Script For Multi-Currency

Koinkart.org introduces the upgraded Trust Wallet Clone Script, designed with advanced security features to protect digital assets and build user confidence. This powerful solution ensures private key ownership, multi-factor authentication, and real-time protection for every transaction.

We list out the features offered for our clients:

End-to-end encryption for safe transfers

Biometric authentication support

User-controlled private keys

Multi-layered security protocols

📲 Get Demo or Quote Now!
🌐 Website: https://www.koinkart.org/b...
📞 WhatsApp: +91 93842 63771

How do cyber operations from groups in Iran and Vietnam compare in tactics and targets?
While both Iranian and Vietnamese cyber groups engage in state-sponsored cyber operations, their primary motivations, geopolitical contexts, and consequently, their tactics and targets, differ significantly.

Iranian Cyber Groups (e.g., APT33/Elfin, APT34/OilRig, APT35/Charming Kitten, MuddyWater)
Main Motives:
Iran's cyber activities are strongly driven by its geopolitical aspirations, regional rivalries (especially with Saudi Arabia and Israel), and desire to counter international sanctions. Their motivations include:

Espionage: Gathering intelligence on political, military, and economic developments, particularly in the Middle East, U.S., Europe, and Israel.

Disruption and Retaliation: Disrupting critical infrastructure, especially against perceived adversaries (e.g., in response to sanctions or political actions). They are willing to engage in destructive attacks.

Influence Operations: Spreading propaganda, manipulating public opinion, and sowing discord in rival nations.

Intellectual Property Theft (Secondary): While they do engage in this, it's often more opportunistic or tied to specific military/dual-use technologies rather than broad economic development.

Internal Control: Surveillance and repression of dissidents, both domestically and abroad.

Tactics:
Iranian groups often leverage a blend of technical sophistication and social engineering.

Aggressive Spear-Phishing & Social Engineering: Highly sophisticated and persistent phishing campaigns are a hallmark. They often impersonate legitimate entities (journalists, academics, government officials, recruiters) to build trust and trick targets into revealing credentials or downloading malware. They're known for using compromised accounts for further phishing.

Exploitation of Known Vulnerabilities: They are quick to exploit newly disclosed vulnerabilities (N-days) in widely used software and internet-facing systems (VPNs, firewalls, Exchange servers) to gain initial access.

Living Off The Land (LotL) & OSINT: They frequently use legitimate system tools (PowerShell, RDP, Mimikatz) and open-source intelligence (OSINT) to evade detection and understand victim networks.

Web Shells & Backdoors: Deployment of web shells for persistent access and custom backdoors.

Destructive Malware/Wipers: Iranian groups have a history of deploying destructive malware (e.g., Shamoon, ZeroCleare) to wipe data and disable systems, particularly against targets in the energy and industrial sectors.

Hybrid Operations: Increasingly, they combine hacking and data theft with information operations, leaking stolen data online, and using social media for amplification and harassment.

Ransomware (Collaborative/Opportunistic): While not their primary goal like North Korea, some Iranian groups have been observed collaborating with cybercriminal ransomware affiliates or directly deploying ransomware for financial gain or disruption.

Targets:
Middle East Region: Heavily focused on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (especially Saudi Arabia, UAE), Israel, and other regional rivals.

Government & Military: Foreign ministries, defense contractors, intelligence agencies, and government officials, particularly those involved in nuclear policy, sanctions, or regional security.

Energy Sector (Oil & Gas): A long-standing target for both espionage and potential disruption, reflecting Iran's strategic interests.

Critical Infrastructure (OT/ICS): Increasing focus on industrial control systems and operational technology, potentially for pre-positioning or disruptive attacks.

Telecommunications & Financial Services: For intelligence gathering and network access.

Journalists, Academics, Dissidents, Human Rights Activists: Both within Iran and among the diaspora, for surveillance and repression.

Vietnamese Cyber Groups (e.g., APT32/OceanLotus, APT30/Naikon)
Main Motives:
Vietnamese cyber operations are strongly linked to national economic development, protecting sovereignty claims (especially in the South China Sea), and maintaining political stability.

Economic Espionage: Stealing intellectual property, trade secrets, and competitive intelligence to support Vietnamese industries and accelerate economic growth. This is a very significant motivation.

Political Espionage: Gathering intelligence on foreign governments, political organizations, and diplomats relevant to Vietnam's geopolitical interests, particularly concerning regional rivals and partners.

Surveillance and Monitoring: Tracking and monitoring political dissidents, journalists, NGOs, and foreign entities perceived as a threat to the ruling party or national stability.

South China Sea Disputes: Gaining intelligence on rival claimants and international actors involved in the South China Sea disputes.

Tactics:
Vietnamese groups often demonstrate high levels of sophistication and persistence, with a focus on long-term access and stealth.

Sophisticated Spear-Phishing: Highly customized and contextualized spear-phishing emails, often impersonating trusted contacts or organizations, are a primary initial access vector.

Watering Hole Attacks: Compromising websites frequented by specific targets and implanting malware to infect visitors.

Custom Malware and Backdoors: Development and use of sophisticated custom malware (Remote Access Trojans, info-stealers) designed for covert data exfiltration and persistent access.

Exploitation of Zero-Day and N-Day Vulnerabilities: While less frequent than Iranian groups' aggressive N-day exploitation, they are capable of exploiting zero-days.

Supply Chain Attacks: There have been instances where Vietnamese groups have targeted software or hardware vendors to compromise their clients downstream.

Leveraging Cloud Services: Using legitimate cloud services for command and control (C2) or data exfiltration to blend in with normal network traffic.

Evasion Techniques: Employing various techniques to avoid detection by security software, including code obfuscation and anti-analysis checks.

Targets:
Southeast Asian Governments: Particularly those involved in the South China Sea disputes, for political intelligence.

Foreign Businesses & Multinational Corporations: Across various sectors (e.g., automotive, media, hospitality, manufacturing, technology, healthcare, e-commerce) for economic espionage and IP theft.

Political Dissidents & Human Rights Activists: Both domestic and international, for surveillance and control.

Journalists and NGOs: Especially those reporting on Vietnam or human rights issues.

Critical Infrastructure (Limited Public Reporting): While less publicly highlighted than Iranian or Chinese groups, there have been some reports of Vietnamese groups targeting critical infrastructure, but often for intelligence gathering rather than overt disruption.

Comparison Summary:
Feature- Iranian Cyber Groups----
Primary Motive- Geopolitical influence, regional rivalries, countering sanctions, disruption, espionage, retaliation.
Willingness for Disruption- High – known for destructive attacks/wipers.
Key Regions of Focus- Middle East (GCC, Israel), U.S., Europe.
Tactics Emphasis- Aggressive spear-phishing, N-day exploitation, LotL, web shells, destructive malware, information operations.
Financial Crime- Opportunistic ransomware or collaboration with criminals.

Vietnamese Cyber Groups-
Primary Motive-
Economic development (IP theft), political espionage (Sovereignty, South China Sea), internal control.
Willingness for Disruption-
Lower – focus on stealth, long-term access, and data exfiltration, less on overt disruption.
Key Regions of Focus-
Southeast Asia (ASEAN), U.S. (related to economic/political ties).
Tactics Emphasis-
Sophisticated spear-phishing, custom malware, watering holes, supply chain (less common), long-term stealth, cloud usage.
Financial Crime-Less prominent, but some engagement in cybercrime for revenue.

Export to Sheets-
In essence, Iranian groups are more overt and willing to engage in destructive actions driven by immediate geopolitical tensions, while Vietnamese groups are generally more focused on stealthy, long-term espionage and IP theft to support national development and strategic interests in their region.

Maximize Profits Using Our Advanced Binance Clone Script
koinkart.org is the ideal choice for building a safe and reliable exchange with our advanced Binance Clone Script. We deliver affordable pricing to our clients while ensuring top-tier security. making global trading seamless. Offer more payment choices and also trader-friendly.

We list out the features offered for our clients:

Multi-layer security protocols

Encrypted transactions & anti-fraud tools

KYC/AML verification system

Hot & cold wallet integration

Real-time risk monitoring

📲 Get Demo or Quote Now!
🌐 Website: https://www.koinkart.org/b...
📞 WhatsApp: +91 93842 63771

How to Implement AI‑Powered Product Recommendations in an Amazon clone app

What if your app could predict what users want, before they even type in a search? That’s the power of AI recommendations. Do you want to know how to implement AI-powered product recommendations in your Amazon clone? Here are some steps. Let's dive in.
What is AI-Powered Recommendation?
An artificially intelligent system that makes real-time product recommendations to consumers based on their interests, behaviour, and previous purchases is known as an AI-powered recommendation system in e-commerce. AI customises the shopping experience to boost sales, engagement, and customer satisfaction rather than displaying the same product list to every user.
Types of recommendation strategies:
1. Collaborative Filtering
Collaborative Filtering is a recommendation strategy that recommends products based on user activity and preferences rather than product information in an Amazon-like app.

User-based collaborative filtering detects folks who share similar interests. If a user likes a product, it will be recommended to another person who shares their interests.

Item-based collaborative filtering: This type of filtering shows recommendations based on similarities. For example, it recommends a phone case to the people who purchased New phones.

2. Content-based Filtering:
Content-based filtering recommends products based on the traits or features that the customer has previously purchased. For example, if you frequently buy or see bags, the algorithm would suggest alternatives or products with comparable characteristics such as brand, style, price range, or material.
3. Hybrid Filtering:
Hybrid filtering blends collaborative filtering, which proposes products based on the preferences of other users, with content-based filtering, which recommends items similar to those a user has previously liked. This strategy takes advantage of both methods' strengths while correcting their faults, yielding more accurate and personalised recommendations.
4. Trending and popular items:
In an Amazon clone website, Trending or Popular Items recommendations highlight things that are currently best-sellers, most viewed, or highly rated throughout the platform or within a category. Helping consumers find popular, in-demand items while increasing interaction and revenue.
5. Personalized rankings:
Personalized rankings reorder the search results or other lists of items based on users' preferences and behaviour. Instead of showing the same products to every user, it improves the user experience and increases the platform engagement.
Implementing AI-powered recommendations in an Amazon clone app:
Implement AI-powered suggestions in your Amazon clone. You should concentrate on collecting data, selecting the best AI solution, and optimising recommendations.
1. Data Collection and analysis:
Collect vast data: Gather the users' purchase history, product preferences, browsing habits, and product interactions such as clicks, add to cart, and reviews. Collecting these diverse data points provides a detailed picture of each customer's interests and habits.

2. Choosing the Right AI Solution:
Utilise data points: Analyse individual consumer preferences, detect bigger trends across users, and create dynamic customer profiles that evolve as new data is received.

Ensure data privacy: When developing AI-powered product suggestions, you must protect the privacy and security of user data. Encryption, secure servers, and access controls can all help to protect user data from unauthorised access. This is especially important when dealing with sensitive information such as purchasing history, behaviour, or personal details.

Consider Your Needs: Before deciding on an AI recommendation, you should first understand your business goals, budget, and technical resources.

Investigate diverse AI models: There are several recommendation models, each with a unique function. There are three types of filtering: collaborative, content-based, and hybrid.

Look for user-friendly options: If you're not ready to start from scratch with an Amazon clone website, look for choices that are easy to use. Many e-commerce platforms have built-in AI recommendation algorithms or third-party applications.
3. Implementing and optimizing recommendations:

Integrate cross-platform: Ensure that your recommendations are consistent and personalised across all platforms, including the website, email marketing, mobile app, and even customer support chat. This will improve the user experience and maintain personalisation seamlessly.

Use various formats: Use several recommendation styles, such as pop-ups and inline sections, to keep shoppers' attention at different phases of their purchasing journey.

A/B testing and optimisation: Continuously monitor the performance of the recommendations and make improvements depending on data and user input.
Focus on user experience: Make sure that recommendations are not only appropriate but also easy to navigate, quick to load, and visually integrated on mobile sites.

Prioritise Explainability: Be open about how recommendations are made, and give users control over their preferences.

Begin small, then scale: Start with a pilot or test group to validate performance and get feedback. Use this feedback to develop and expand your recommendation system throughout the platform.
Benefits of AI-powered recommendations:

1. Improved conversion performance:
The AI algorithm examines clients' browsing histories and purchasing habits to help them get what they want without using their hands. This will boost your Amazon clone conversion rate.

2. Enhanced user experience:
This AI-powered customised suggestion saves users time and effort by guiding them to the proper products. The end outcome is customer satisfaction and a good purchasing experience.

3. Increased average order value:
AI-powered suggestions in your Amazon clone app encourage customers to buy complementary, upsell, and cross-sell items, which raises the overall order value.

4. Insights based on data:
Artificial intelligence (AI) recommendation systems gather and analyse consumer data to learn about preferences and purchasing habits. Businesses can use this to enhance their marketing, select better products to sell, and more effectively manage their inventory.

5. Improved customer retention:
When users consistently receive relevant product recommendations, they are more likely to return to the platform. This strengthens brand presence and generates recurring sales.

6. Enhanced marketing strategies:
AI-powered recommendations customize marketing strategies based on each customer’s individual preferences and behaviors. This personalized approach results in more relevant and engaging marketing campaigns that resonate better with customers, ultimately increasing their interest and likelihood to respond positively.

7. Reduced cart abandonment:
AI-powered recommendations lower cart abandonment by using personalized recommendations, timely reminders, and providing discounts or free shipping. These strategies help users complete their purchases and increase the overall sales rates in your Amazon clone website.

8. Real-time discovery:
This enables AI to make real-time product recommendations to users based on their interests, assisting consumers in finding things they may not have previously found. It is most helpful in vast product catalogues where customers may find manual searching daunting. AI speeds up, simplifies, and enhances the pleasure of shopping by providing timely and pertinent recommendations.

Summing up:
I hope this blog helps you understand the importance of Artificial Intelligence in product recommendations for your Amazon clone app.
It covers the implementation of AI-powered recommendation systems, different types of recommendation strategies, and their benefits.

Now is the perfect time to launch AI-powered recommendations in your Amazon clone app.
https://www.trioangle.com/...

#EcommercePlatform #TechForBusiness #AmazonCloneScript #USAeCommerce #EcommerceLondon #MiddleEastEcommerce #SAOnlineStore # OnlineMarketplace
#MultiVendorMarketplace #DigitalRetailUSA #UAEStartupScene #MarketplaceTrends

How Britain’s biggest companies are preparing for a Third World War. (Part 2) Continue reading...

In the case of a major British supermarket, how might executives plan for, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan?

The first question is how involved the UK expects to be, says Crump. But if Britain, as might be expected, sides with the US at least in diplomatic terms, “we’re not buying anything from China”.

That immediately has implications for a company’s supply chains – are there any parts of the supply chain that would be crippled without Chinese products?

But as the recent cyber attack on Marks & Spencer has demonstrated, attacks on critical digital infrastructure are also a major risk to supermarkets in the event of a war with China or Russia.

“If you look at a retailer, the vulnerability is not necessarily whether or not they can transport stuff to the shop, even in a war zone,” says Crump. “The problem becomes when you can’t operate your systems.

“If you can’t take money at the point of sale, or if you have no idea where your stock is because your computer system has been taken down, you’ve got major problems and you can’t operate your business.”

Workforce gaps
In a scenario where Britain becomes involved in a war itself, Crump says employers may also suddenly find themselves with gaps in their workforces.

He believes things would need to get “very bad indeed” for the Government to impose conscription, which applied to men aged 18-41 during the Second World War.

But he points out that the calling up of British armed forces reservists would be very likely, along with the potential mobilisation of what is known as the “strategic reserve” – those among the country’s 1.8 million veterans who are still fit to serve.

There are around 32,000 volunteer reservists and an undisclosed number of regular reserves, former regular members of the armed forces who are still liable to be called up.

“There’s a big pool of people we don’t tap at the moment who are already trained,” explains Crump.

“But there would be consequences if the entire reserve was called forward, which would have to happen if we entered a reasonably sized conflict. It would certainly cause disruptions.

“The medical services are hugely integrated with the NHS, for example, and we saw the effects of them being called forward with Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Food supplies
The sort of supermarket chaos that erupted during the Covid-19 pandemic would also return with a vengeance if a significant conflict broke out.

During that crisis, grocers had to limit how many packs of loo rolls and cans of chopped tomatoes shoppers were allowed to take home, among other items, because of supply chain problems.

“If we’re in a conflict, that sort of supply chain activity would increase,” notes Crump.

“So you don’t necessarily have rationing imposed, but there might be issues with food production, delivery, payment and getting things to the right place.

“In a world where we don’t have our own independent supply chains, we’re reliant on a lot of very interconnected moving parts that have been enabled by this period of peace.

“We’ve never been in a conflict during a time where we’ve had ‘just in time’ systems.”

Spanish blackouts: A dry run
Crump brings up the recent blackouts in Spain and Portugal. British grocers initially thought their food supplies would be completely unaffected because truck loads of tomatoes had already made their way out of the country when the problem struck.

But the vehicles were electronically locked, to prevent illegal migrants attempting to clamber inside when they cross the English Channel and could only be unlocked from Spain – where the power cuts had taken down computer systems and telecoms.

“People in Spain couldn’t get online, so we had locked trucks full of tomatoes sitting here that we couldn’t open because of technology,” Crump says.

“No one had ever thought, ‘But what happens if all of Spain goes off the grid?’ And I’m sure the answer would have been, ‘That’ll never happen’ anyway.”

This tendency towards “normalcy bias” is what Crump tries to steer his clients away from.

While it isn’t inevitable that war will break out, or that there will be another pandemic, humans tend to assume that things will revert to whatever the status quo has been in their lifetimes, he says. This can mean we fail to take the threat of unlikely scenarios seriously enough, or use outdated ways of thinking to solve new problems.

“We’ve had this long period of peace and prosperity. And, of course, business leaders have grown up in that. Military leaders have grown up in it. Politicians have grown up in it. And so it’s very hard when that starts to change.

“People have grown up in a world of rules. And I think people are still trying to find ways in which the game is still being played by those old rules.”

Unsurprisingly, given his line of work, Crump believes businesses must get more comfortable contemplating the unthinkable.

“Go back a decade and most executives did not want to have a crisis because a crisis is bad for your career, so they didn’t want to do a test exercise – because you might fail,” Crump adds.

“But the whole point is that you can fail in an exercise, because it’s not real life.”

At least, not yet.

How Britain’s biggest companies are preparing for a Third World War. (Part 1)

The year is 2027 and a major global conflict has erupted. Perhaps China has launched an attempted invasion of Taiwan, or Russian forces have crossed into the territory of an eastern European Nato country.

Whatever the case, Justin Crump’s job is to advise big companies on how to respond. And with tensions rising, a growing number of chief executives have got him on speed dial.

The former Army tank commander, who now runs intelligence and security consultancy Sibylline, says his clients range from a top British supermarket chain to Silicon Valley technology giants.

They are all drawing up plans to keep running during wartime, and Crump is surprisingly blunt about their reasoning: a global conflict may be just two years away.

“We’re in a world which is more dangerous, more volatile than anything we’ve seen since the Second World War,” he explains. There are lots of crises that can happen, that are ready to go.

“Chief executives want to test against the war scenario, because they think it’s credible. They want to make sure their business can get through that environment.”

The year of worst case scenarios
He rattles off a series of smouldering international issues – any one of which could ignite the global tinderbox – from Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to China’s threats to Taiwan, to Vladimir Putin’s designs on a Russian sphere of influence in Ukraine and beyond, as well as Donald Trump’s disdain for the post-1940s “rules-based international order”. Against this backdrop, planning for war is not alarmist but sensible, Crump contends.

With all these issues building, 2027 is viewed as the moment of maximum danger.

“The worst case scenario is that all these crises all overlap in 2027,” he explains.

“You’ve got the US midterms, which will have taken place just at the start of that year, and whatever happens there will be lots of upset people. It’s also the time when a lot of the economic disruption that’s happening now will have really washed through the system, so we’ll be feeling the effects of that. And it’s also too early for the change in defence posture to have really meant anything in Europe.”

Putin and Xi Jinping, the president of China, are acutely aware of all this, he says, and may conclude that they should act before the US and Europe are more fully rearmed in 2030. “In their minds now, the clock is ticking,” he adds.

He also points to major British and Nato military exercises scheduled to take place in 2027, with American forces working to a 2027 readiness target as well.

“There’s a reason they’re doing it that year – because they think we have to be ready by then,” Crump says. “So why shouldn’t businesses also work off the same thinking and plan for the same thing?”

He is not alone in arguing that society needs to start expecting the unexpected.

In 2020, the Government established the National Preparedness Commission to ensure the UK was “significantly better prepared” for the likes of floods, power outages, cyber attacks or wars.

It has urged households to keep at least three days’ worth of food and water stockpiled, along with other essential items such as a wind-up torch, portable power bank, a portable radio, spare batteries, hand sanitiser and a first aid kit.

“In recent years a series of high-impact events have demonstrated how easily our established way of life can be disrupted by major events,” the commission’s website says – pointing to the coronavirus pandemic, recent African coups, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and turmoil in the Middle East.

Britain is also secretly preparing for a direct military attack by Russia amid fears that it is not ready for war. Officials have been asked to update 20-year-old contingency plans that would put the country on a war footing after threats of attack by the Kremlin.

All of this has led major businesses to conclude that perma crisis is the new normal, Crump says.

In the case of Ukraine, Western sanctions on Russia forced companies to choose between continuing to operate heavily-constrained operations in Russia, selling up, or walking away entirely.

Crump recalls speaking to several clients including a major energy company in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

He and his colleagues urged the business to evacuate their staff, at a point when it was still received wisdom that Putin wouldn’t dare follow through with his threats.

“I had almighty arguments with some people in the run-up, because I was very firmly of the view, based on our data and insights, that the Russians were not only invading, but they were going for the whole country. But other people in our sector were saying, ‘No, it’s all a bluff’.

“Their team came to me afterwards and said: ‘After that call, we were convinced, and we got our people out’. They got a lot of grief for that at the time, from people who were saying it was all nonsense.

“But then on the day of the invasion, they told me they got so many calls actually saying ‘thank you for getting us out’.”

Yet even in Ukraine, much of which remains an active war zone, life must go on – along with business.

“I’ve been to plenty of war zones,” says Crump. “And people are still getting on with their lives, there’s still stuff in supermarkets, and things are being made in factories – but that certainly all gets a lot more difficult.”

Turns Out, Trump’s Qatar Private Jet Wasn’t Even a Gift.
There’s no such thing as a free plane.

Donald Trump’s administration specifically sought out the luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar’s government to replace Air Force One, despite the president’s insistence that the plane was a gift.

A senior White House official said Trump tasked Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East (and shady crypto partner), with tracking down a replacement for Air Force One, after Trump learned that Boeing would not have new jets ready for another two years. Witkoff ended up leading initial conversations with the Qatari government.

Boeing provided the Pentagon with a list of other clients who might be able to help with America’s search for a new plane. One of those sources said that Qatar was included on that list of clients and that the U.S. reached out about purchasing the luxury plane from the Qatari Defense Ministry, which indicated it was willing to sell.

Shipments of seven rare earths placed on an export control have ground to halt, three sources said, raising the risk of shortages overseas as Chinese exporters begin the long, uncertain wait for government licenses.

Shipments stopped on April 4, the sources familiar with the matter said, when Beijing restricted the export of seven rare earths and related material used across the defense, energy and automotive industries as part of its retaliation against U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff hikes on Chinese goods

Exporters must now apply to the Ministry of Commerce for licenses, a relatively opaque process that can range from six or seven weeks to several months. Reuters reported last month there had been no antimony exports to European Union countries since China put the metal on a control list
"When asked by my clients when their cargoes will be able to leave China, we give them an estimated time of 60 days but it may actually take longer than that," said a China rare earth tr

For China and US Inc, Trump's trade war feels much worse this time.
Orders have evaporated for Richard Chen, who manufactures Christmas decorations in southern China for U.S. retailers, including Walmart and Costco, facing crippling U.S. tariffs.

"The orders are half of what they were last year," said Chen, who is based in the manufacturing hub of Dongguan.
He is now in survival mode.
"There’s no more scope to cut prices. But to get orders we sometimes have to take a price cut ... we have no choice," Chen said, declining to elaborate on cuts he had agreed to.

"We’re losing money."
On February 4, U.S. President Donald Trump applied a new 10% tariff to the $400 billion worth of Chinese goods exported annually to the United States, with an additional 10% tariff announced on March 4 and further reciprocal tariffs expected on April 2.
Chinese suppliers and their American clients are now coming to grips with the grim reality that this trade war will hit harder than in Trump's firs

Tesla is in uncharted territory now that it appears to have shed its aura of invincibility. Punters find themselves in the dark about the stock's outlook, with Morgan Stanley telling clients the price could just as easily triple to $800 in the coming months as it could drop to $200.

Late last month, Simon Hale landed in hot water with his compliance department at Wellington Altus Private Wealth. Due to the sharp rally in Tesla, his holdings of the EV giant had become too valuable relative to the portfolio managed.

“That’s no problem any more,” Hale glumly told fellow investors during an online discussion last week. The stock, beaten down over the past fortnight, had just plunged a further 15% in one session, solving his quandary without the portfolio manager ever having to lift a finger.

CEO Elon Musk’s attempt to replicate Argentine president Javier Milei by cutting government spending with a chainsaw has sparked a wave of outcry across the United States.

London is in the grips of a gold shortage as traders line up for weeks to get bars out of the Bank of England and ship them to the U.S. amid fears that the new Trump administration will levy tariffs on imports.
Gold inventories in New York are on a path to levels last seen at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with stockpiles in the city hitting $82 billion.

In addition to safeguarding the U.K.’s gold reserves, the Bank of England acts as a holder of commercial gold owned by banks and for other countries and central banks. The gold bars are kept in nine underground vaults at the bank, located in the City of London
Both the Financial Times and Reuters reported that waiting times had soared for clients to retrieve this gold, and the data would suggest it’s on a fast track to New York.
Much of gold trading is frictionless and involves the owner of a bar of gold changing hands on the holder’s systems.
Fears around Trump’s rhetoric have accordingly sparked an influx of gold to the

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, President-elect Trump said he would carry out mass deportations once in office.
Some migrants are voluntarily choosing to leave the country ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Immigration attorney Rolando Vasquez told NewsNation some of his clients who entered under the Biden administration are now choosing to return home, fearing deportation under the incoming administration.

It’s not just Trump’s deportation plans that have influenced these decisions.
Vazquez says Mexico is now open to accepting non-Mexican deportees. This move would affect Cuban and Venezuelan migrants the most since those countries typically do not accept deportation flights from the U.S. but may take them from Mexico.
“This is causing many migrants to leave on their own, knowing that they’re either going to be deported to their home country or be deported to Mexico,” Vazquez said. “The overwhelming majority of them do not want to be in Mexico.”

Lawyers for two former Georgia election workers who are owed $148 million in damages after suing Rudy Giuliani for defamation said Tuesday that evidence proves their clients are entitled to three World Series rings that the former New York City mayor says he gave to his son.

The lawyers filed papers in Manhattan federal court asking a judge to find that their clients should be given the rings marking New York Yankees' victories in 1996, 1999 and 2000.

They noted that Giuliani listed the rings among his assets at a bankruptcy proceeding in 2023 and said his son had provided no evidence beyond his testimony to support his claim to the rings.

A trial over the custody of the rings and Giuliani’s Palm Beach, Florida, condominium are scheduled for Jan. 16 before a judge who on Monday found Giuliani in contempt for his responses to orders to turn over evidence pertaining to his assets.

China's semiconductor index leapt close to a three-year high on Monday on bets a U.S. order halting Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers could accelerate Beijing's self-reliance efforts.

TSMC will suspend shipments of certain sophisticated chips to some Chinese clients after receiving a letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce imposing export restrictions.
Analysts said that while the move might lead to some short-term pain for Chinese firms involved in designing chips for artificial intelligence accelerators and graphics processing units, it could benefit the domestic chipmaking sector as companies would have few alternatives.

The CSI Semiconductor Index jumped more than 6%

"In the medium and long term it will force the reorganization of the supply chain, increase the demand for domestic advanced process production capacity, and promote technological breakthroughs in upstream semiconductor equipment and materials,"

Indonesia's immigration officers on the tourist island of Bali have arrested a Chinese suspect sought by Beijing for helping run over $14 billion investment scam to clients in China, officials said Thursday.

The 39-year-old man, identified only by his initial, LQ, was arrested on Oct. 1, when an immigration auto-gate in Bali’s Ngurah Rai international airport denied him departure for Singapore.

The biometric data in the computer registry at the airport identified him as a suspect wanted by Beijing, which led to his arrest, according to Silmy Karim, the immigration chief at Indonesia’s law and human rights ministry.

The suspect first arrived in Bali from Singapore with a Turkish passport as Joe Lin on Sept. 26, just a day before Interpol released a so-called Red Notice for him, a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to detain or arrest a suspect wanted by a specific country.

Indonesian authorities brought the suspect, wearing a detainee’s orange shirt and a facemas

Russia is expected to be cut off from another bank at the end of the month.

A source told Bloomberg that OCBC in Singapore planned to stop processing Russian transactions.

The bank would be following lenders in China, which have largely pulled back from Russia.

Another bank appears to be turning its back on Russia as lenders grow worried about doing business with Moscow under the threat of Western sanctions.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., the second-largest lender in Singapore, told its clients it would no longer process any transactions related to Russia as of the start of November.
The new restrictions aren't expected to significantly affect the bank, given that OCBC hasn't opened new accounts for Russian clients in two years.
All Chinese banks had stopped processing payments from Russia out of fear of being targeted.

Russia, meanwhile, has nearly depleted its yuan reserves, and businesses were locked out of billions earlier this year amid payment issues abroad

Putin ready to resume Russian gas deliveries to Europe
Moscow is prepared to continue gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine after the current transit agreement expires at the end of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Vladivostok on Thursday.

"We and the Gazprom company want to meet our obligations with respect to our clients, with whom there are long-term contracts," Putin told a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in the city on Russia's Pacific coast.

He noted that Russia was not in a position to compel Ukraine to extend the transit agreement and that European countries, who could exert pressure on Kiev, were showing little interest.

In addition, he said that Poland had shut down the Yamal pipeline carrying gas through Belarus to Poland and Germany and that Germany had not connected up to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
In fact, it was Russia that shut down deliveries through the Yamal pipeline in May 2022 ..

Ketamine Is the Shortcut We All Deserve.
The implication that shortcuts are bad assumes it replaces hard work.

A criticism leveled against using psychedelics for therapeutic work, efforts towards enlightenment, spiritual connection, and meditative practices is that it is a shortcut. The implication is that shortcuts are bad, that we deserve good things only if we spend decades of herculean effort to achieve them.

Not All Lives Are Created Equal
Some people get to live early adult lives with regulated emotional systems, solid self-esteem, and a belief in the general goodness of the world and its ability to meet their basic needs. They get that from good enough parents who love them sufficiently and reliably and from a stable home situation that is free from significant trauma. That is really fabulous and what we all hope to provide for our own children.

Most of us, however, enter adult life with internal and external barriers to a fully functioning self, and with some dark shadows we maneuver to pull off daily life. We may be happy and successful but still have to work with parts of ourselves that are injured and damaged, self-sabotaging; we may be plagued with doubts and mistrust and all the other ways life can feel complicated and difficult.

As a clinician, the things I hope to help clients minimize over time is the stuff they do to relieve their suffering that ultimately hurts them or keeps them in the same stuck place. Most of us do a fair amount of stuff like that, and while not our best move, it may alleviate enough suffering that we should give ourselves a break while we do our work to create new options.

A Shortcut Doesn't Mean a Temporary Band-Aid
Using ketamine within an assisted psychotherapy experience is not a band-aid to alleviate a moment of suffering. It is an activity that has the potential of offering a life-altering experience.

The experiences vary widely in type and in intensity, but they frequently give people access to new perspectives, narratives, truths, and clarities about themselves, their lives, their relationships, and their world. Such experiences are often accompanied by feelings of connectedness, goodness, and well-being. For many, their psychedelic experiences are peak life experiences that become core memories directing future actions.

Ketamine doesn’t solve anything. No one takes it and become a new person who has magically resolved their life issues. If it did that, it wouldn’t have to happen within a therapy context. People would just be better.

It provides an experience, that the client then needs to use to continue to do the work of self/life/relationship improvement. But what it can offer is a moment of revelation and epiphany, an embodied somatic experience of goodness. This offers a client inspiration and a vision for the path their self-work can take.

Well-Meditated Shortcuts Are Smart Maneuvers
Framing inspiration as an indulgent shortcut is a cynical, cruel, and primitive view of what it takes to self-actualize. For any who has been on a journey towards self-enlightenment and healing, working to craft a sustainable joy-filed life, shortcuts are a welcome opportunity.

4 Things That Masquerade as Anxiety.
Many things masquerade as anxiety.
Here's what to do about them.

KEY POINTS-
OCD is often misdiagnosed as generalized anxiety, leading to less effective interventions.
PTSD can ignite anxiety symptoms associated with hypervigilance.
A variety of physical health conditions can cause symptoms of anxiety.

Anxiety is likely the most common difficulty reported by clients I meet. Whether it is anxiety due to life circumstances or a health condition, the on-edge, in-your-face experience can be highly upsetting, and understandably creates a strong desire to escape. Yet, many anxiety disorders are only one of many causes of anxiety, and finding the right diagnosis can be key to creating a plan to tackle it. What follows are four common conditions that often show up with anxiety but are not anxiety disorders.

1. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has a way of creating intense anxiety around a specific theme, such as fear of acting immorally or of illness. When someone is in the midst of an OCD spiral, it is difficult to focus on much else, and many participate in rituals such as asking questions or looking up information repeatedly as ways to seek reassurance. These and other rituals create the "compulsion" part of OCD. Still, it is possible to have OCD without having any compulsions at all.

A lack of knowledge on OCD is not just common among the general public, but clinical populations as well. A study that provided primary care physicians with one of eight vignettes describing a patient with OCD found that physicians were slightly more than 50% likely to misdiagnose the vignette, leading to inappropriate and potentially harmful treatment recommendations (Glazier et al., 2015). Due to a lack of awareness of the rainbow of ways that OCD can appear, many with OCD are misdiagnosed with several conditions, including generalized anxiety disorder.

Still, OCD is treatable. A variety of psychotherapies have shown efficacious for OCD like exposure ritual prevention therapy, acceptance commitment therapy, and, most recently, inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy. With the appropriate treatment, a person living with OCD can learn to understand their obsessions and the painful uncertainty created. Medication and alternative treatments, such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, are sometimes also used in the treatment of OCD.

KEY POINTS
OCD is often misdiagnosed as generalized anxiety, leading to less effective interventions.
PTSD can ignite anxiety symptoms associated with hypervigilance.
A variety of physical health conditions can cause symptoms of anxiety.
Anxiety is likely the most common difficulty reported by clients I meet. Whether it is anxiety due to life circumstances or a health condition, the on-edge, in-your-face experience can be highly upsetting, and understandably creates a strong desire to escape. Yet, many anxiety disorders are only one of many causes of anxiety, and finding the right diagnosis can be key to creating a plan to tackle it. What follows are four common conditions that often show up with anxiety but are not anxiety disorders.

1. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has a way of creating intense anxiety around a specific theme, such as fear of acting immorally or of illness. When someone is in the midst of an OCD spiral, it is difficult to focus on much else, and many participate in rituals such as asking questions or looking up information repeatedly as ways to seek reassurance. These and other rituals create the "compulsion" part of OCD. Still, it is possible to have OCD without having any compulsions at all.

A lack of knowledge on OCD is not just common among the general public, but clinical populations as well. A study that provided primary care physicians with one of eight vignettes describing a patient with OCD found that physicians were slightly more than 50% likely to misdiagnose the vignette, leading to inappropriate and potentially harmful treatment recommendations (Glazier et al., 2015). Due to a lack of awareness of the rainbow of ways that OCD can appear, many with OCD are misdiagnosed with several conditions, including generalized anxiety disorder.

Still, OCD is treatable. A variety of psychotherapies have shown efficacious for OCD like exposure ritual prevention therapy, acceptance commitment therapy, and, most recently, inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy. With the appropriate treatment, a person living with OCD can learn to understand their obsessions and the painful uncertainty created. Medication and alternative treatments, such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, are sometimes also used in the treatment of OCD.

article continues after advertisement

2. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Among the most severe cases of anxiety I have encountered, PTSD has been a common diagnosis. In PTSD, there is sometimes an ever-present sense of being in danger, which facilitates hypervigilance, making it difficult to relax. While the anxiety is often easily identified, the trauma generating the anxiety might not be so easily recognized.

While PTSD is often characterized in the eyes of the public and many clinicians by flashbacks and nightmares, this is only a small dimension of how PTSD symptoms can show up. For many, re-experiencing symptoms of PTSD does not involve explicit memories as much as implicit bodily and emotional sensations such as fear. Avoidance symptoms that can make it difficult to talk about the traumatic experience can also delay diagnosis.

Through psychotherapy, many heal from PTSD. Select trauma-focused approaches such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) give way for a person to process their experiences. Yet, interventions such as these are quite different from more traditional person-centered therapy.

3. Physical Health Problems
Particularly when anxiety has had a sudden arrival, ruling out physical causes is essential. A host of physical health challenges ranging from thyroid challenges to heart disease can sometimes be associated with anxiety-like symptoms. Seeing a physical health provider will be necessary to access treatment for these conditions.

4. Bipolar Disorder

When anxiety is cyclical and associated with other symptoms such as very high energy, uncharacteristic impulsivity, lack of need for sleep, or grandiosity, ruling out symptoms of bipolar mania/hypomania may be necessary. This is especially true if there is a family history of bipolar disorder. Anxiety is common in bipolar disorder. In addition, research suggests that 45% of people with bipolar disorder may also have an anxiety disorder (Pavlova et al., 2015).

Psychotherapy, along with psychiatric interventions, can be key in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Psychotherapy focusing on sleep and routine stabilization, such as interpersonal social rhythm therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), is commonly used. In addition, many with bipolar disorder utilize medication to assist.

In Closing
While anxiety disorders are common, several difficulties other than anxiety disorders can present with anxiety. Ruling out these additional conditions is central to obtaining the most successful interventions. Unfortunately, misdiagnosis of generalized anxiety or missing challenges that tend to tag along is common and can delay effective treatment causing more distress and lost experiences. Anxiety, whether caused by an anxiety disorder or another condition, can be a dreadful experience, yet recovery is possible.

STRESS-
The Art of Inner Tension.
Creative solutions to stress.

KEY POINTS-
The traditional approach to stress management leaves many feeling like failures.
Psychologists have routinely linked creativity and stress.
The art of inner tension is to take ownership of stress and its management.

“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” — Duke Ellington

Psychologists have routinely linked creativity and stress and the list of people whose lives were filled with challenges includes Vincent Van Gogh, Issac Newton, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Beethoven. While the debate over whether these geniuses created because of their inner tension or in spite of it continues, what is certain is that the rest of us can turn things around by bringing creativity into how we manage stress. By becoming artists whose muse is none other than life’s frustrations, worries, and anxieties we can create masterpieces of peace-filled lives or simply doodles of not overreacting to life’s difficulties.

I think of stress as the felt tension arising from a misalignment between our expectations and experiences. Eckhard Tolle put it more simply: “Stress is having this but wanting that.”

It's often a hard sell to suggest to people that they are the creators of their inner tension but with just a few examples, most will have the “aha” moment of realization that it's their interpretations of the happenings in their lives that bring it to life. When the self-blame factor is removed by demonstrating that, in most cases, this response was reflexive and habitual, taking ownership allows for new creative methods for coping with what some refer to as “the silent killer.”

The traditional approach to stress management that encourages getting quality sleep, healthy eating, exercise and relaxation leaves most of the clients I work with feeling like they are failing in their efforts to feel better. They point out that it is the very stress they are experiencing that makes the items on that list feel more like a Bucket List than a prescription for a more relaxed life.

I’ve learned that encouraging an artistic view of how one both experiences and expresses the stressors in one’s life taps into a deeply innate desire for imaginative endeavors—to stand back and proudly state, “Look what I’ve done.”

Thoreau wrote, “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” In this sense, everyone is engaged in an artistic undertaking, although the “quality” of that expressionism is colored by troublesome thoughts and emotions. Stress is a picture that paints itself in the absence of our conscious presence. It’s no wonder many clients look quizzically at me and ask, who did this?

In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron states, “Creativity requires activity… and most of us hate to do something when we can obsess about something else instead.” This idea of obsessing-over-doing came to me as I was heading to a stress-management training. I was pondering why intelligent adults would continue to wallow in their worries rather than do something about them. It occurred to me, and I later shared my epiphany with the group I was leading, that it’s because many people think that “stressing out” is managing their stress.

To direct clients back toward “doing” mode, I offer these tips for unleashing the artist within:

Add some color. Too often, when stressed, the world appears only as black and white. One is either up or down, happy or sad. The pictures these clients paint of their current situations are dark and heavy. Using the therapeutic tool of challenging irrational beliefs, clients can draw from the Crayola box of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to challenge the notion that life is simply dull shades of grey.

Switch media. Many people I work with are only able to list four or five coping skills, with at least two of them no longer working. I counter this by handing them the “Pleasant Events List," created by Marsha Linehan, which includes 225 activities one can engage in to emotionally regulate, and asking them to pick at least three to broaden their palette.

Ignore the critics. People are often discouraged from new endeavors by the opinions of others, some of whom use criticism as their own coping skill. Artists from across the creative spectrum have faced criticism of their works. Georgia O’Keefe wrote, “I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”

Be a surrealist. Surrealism seeks to challenge reality and there is no better stress-busting technique than to take conventional thinking head-on. Liberating oneself from old ideas gives way to what the psychologist Kelly McGonical refers to as “the upside of stress.”

Reframe it. Many people box themselves in by assuming that they are limited in their abilities to cope with the strains of modern life. They have firm boundaries regarding what is acceptable and anything outside of those limits leads to stress.

Many people adopt a paint-by-numbers approach which boxes them in and stifles creativity. Reframing, in the artistic sense, is to work outside the lines of these limitations—to experience true freedom. Psychological reframing is simply seeing things in a new way—turning a negative on its head to find its opposite of positivity.

The beauty of the art of inner tension is that one does not need to be Mozart, Picasso, or Hemingway to benefit from redirecting their reactive energy toward a creative process.

App link: FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

COGNITION-
Want to Transform Your Life? Reclaim Floodlight Thinking.
Reconnect regularly with your deeper values in the age of distraction.

KEY POINTS-
Seeing a phone or laptop reduces our learning and that of the people around us.
Through floodlight thinking, we can see the entire picture.
When we don't acknowledge the people around us, they feel more disconnected from society.

At a recent two-day conference I taught to more than 50 leaders in Amsterdam, we began with participants reading the Ground Rules. They expressed surprise at the fourth and most controversial rule of our collective engagement:

Your phone, laptop, tablet or other digital device must be switched off during the sessions. A phone ringing during a session will be considered disruptive and we will ask you to put it away if you are using it during a session. There will be time during breaks for you to answer messages. All digital devices must be turned off as they are disruptive to the learning of others. Please bring a paper and pen to take notes.

A Controversial Rule
I reassured participants, as I always do in all of my leadership programs and courses, that if they need to use their phone at any time, they can—outside of the classroom.

“No judgment,” I shared. “I know that there is more to your life than this program. You may have a sick child, or an elderly parent, or a struggling coworker who needs to reach you. If you need to use your phone, just step outside, do what you need to do, and return.”

Based on more than 10 years of research I reviewed for my book Screened In: The Art of Living Free in the Digital Age, I cite studies that the mere presence of a phone or laptop in a learning environment obstructs genuine learning for three primary reasons.

First, as a Stanford University study discovered, seeing a phone or laptop causes stress as it’s a reminder of everything you still need to do outside of the room. Second, it reduces your learning by damaging your cognitive capacity—even if it’s turned off.

Finally, using your phone, tablet, or laptop also decreases the learning—even if it’s just used for taking notes—of the people around you. Hence, allowing screens into a learning environment should not just be an individual decision, as most of us assume, but a collective decision—as screens affect everyone present.

You’ve Got to Be Kidding
After the usual incredulous glances around the room, the participants grudgingly settled in. Over the next two days, we engaged in screen-free discussions about leadership, how to manage anxiety and loneliness in oneself and one’s team members, work-life balance, the role of gender in leadership, and everything in between.

After the conference, I received many messages from participants thanking me and the other professors. They especially emphasized the fourth ground rule. It was the “first step to rehab,” shared one leader.

“What a gift the past two days were,” another expressed. “A break from the everyday madness (and our devices!) with inspiring sessions and encounters.”

“It was wonderful and a great gift to myself,” proclaimed another leader. “At least you know how to reach me. But beware since these two days I will not be so much on my phone as before.”

From Flashlight to Floodlight
These three reasons aside, there is another that, as an educator grappling with these issues every day, I must add. An idea I derived from Alan Watts’ interpretation of Zen Buddhism, I consider there to be two types of thinking.

The first is what I call “flashlight thinking.” If you turn off all the lights in a room and shine a flashlight on the wall, you will see a small disk of light. This disk is your next email, text, meeting, or phone call.

The other type of thinking I call “floodlight thinking.” If you again turn off the lights and this time place a floodlight on the floor, it will illuminate the entire wall. It is through this type of thinking that we are able to see the entire picture, our holistic vision of whatever issue we are grappling with.

Our screens constantly pull us out of floodlight thinking and into flashlight thinking. Yet it is floodlight thinking where our transformational potential lies. It enables us to access our deepest creativity and to view the same issue we’ve been looking at for months, perhaps even years, from a new angle. We may even make a breakthrough.

I consider my role as a leadership educator to be to facilitate a collective search for truth in relation to whatever topic I am teaching: leadership, work-life balance, emotion management, interpersonal communication. As we can see from the research, the mere presence of a phone or laptop in the room renders floodlight thinking elusive, not only for its owner but also for others in their vicinity.

Just Presence
For educators and facilitators in our current age of distraction, just as important as having knowledge to share may be the ability to be fully present with their students, clients, or participants. Creating such an environment is virtually impossible (pun intended) unless it’s screen-free.

The reason is that we educators are not the only ones tasked with providing presence in the collective search for truth that is a high-quality learning encounter: so is each and every student. Why?

A brilliant study asked participants to pass people on the street while refusing to make eye contact or acknowledge them so they feel what is referred to in Germany as wie Luft behandeln, which means “to be looked at as though air.” The result? The people they passed expressed a few minutes later that they felt more disconnected from society.

Each time we have the opportunity to bring people together for a shared learning experience, it is incumbent on us as educators to create a nonjudgmental, accepting environment conducive to everyone being fully present and comfortable with the prospect of sharing their professional and life challenges, dreams, and experiences.

If we are going to ask people to leave their phones at the door in the third millennium in order to learn, we can offer no less.

App link: FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

FORGIVENESS-
Why to Forgive Someone Who Wronged You.
Forgiveness is important for your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Forgiveness is a concept deeply rooted in various cultural, religious, and psychological frameworks. While its importance is universally acknowledged, the act of forgiving someone who has wronged us remains one of the most challenging aspects of the human experience. As an expert in Integrative Psychology and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), I understand the profound impact that forgiveness can have on our mental and emotional well-being. This post delves into why forgiving those who have wronged us is essential and offers practical steps to facilitate the process.

The Psychological Underpinnings of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is often misunderstood as a passive act of condoning harmful behavior. However, it is actually a proactive process that involves letting go of negative emotions, such as anger, resentment, and the desire to get back at someone to make things “even.” According to Robert Enright, a pioneer in the study of forgiveness, it is a deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment towards an offender, regardless of whether they deserve it.

From a psychological perspective, forgiveness is crucial for emotional healing. Unforgiveness can lead to chronic stress, which is linked to a host of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, weakened immune function, and mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. The act of forgiving can alleviate these stressors, leading to improved physical and mental health.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

The Mind-Body Connection
The mind-body connection is a fundamental principle in Integrative Psychology. Emotions and thoughts significantly influence our physical health, and unresolved anger and bitterness can manifest as physical ailments. Studies have shown that holding onto grudges can increase blood pressure, heart rate, and overall stress levels, contributing to long-term health issues.

In contrast, forgiveness has been associated with numerous health benefits. Research indicates that individuals who forgive experience lower levels of stress hormones, reduced pain perception, and improved sleep quality. The act of forgiving can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation and healing. By forgiving, we not only liberate our minds but also pave the way for a healthier body.

Forgiveness and Emotional Freedom
Forgiveness is the path to emotional freedom. Holding onto anger, resentment, and emotional baggage binds us to the past, trapping us in a cycle of negative emotions. This emotional baggage can cloud our judgment, impair our relationships, and hinder personal growth. By forgiving, we release these burdens, allowing ourselves to move forward with a sense of peace and clarity.

In NLP, the concept of reframing is often used to shift perspective. Instead of viewing forgiveness as an act of weakness or submission, it can be reframed as an empowering choice. Forgiving someone does not mean forgetting or excusing their behavior or action; it means choosing to let go of the negative impact and control their actions have on your emotional well-being.

The Role of Forgiveness in Personal Growth
Forgiveness is not just about healing past wounds; it is also a catalyst for personal growth. It requires self-reflection, empathy, and emotional maturity. By understanding the motivations and circumstances that led to the wrong, we cultivate a deeper sense of compassion for ourselves and others. This process fosters resilience, as we learn to navigate life's challenges with grace and equanimity.

Moreover, forgiveness can enhance our relationships. It promotes open communication, trust, and understanding. By forgiving, we model healthy emotional behavior, encouraging others to do the same. This creates a positive ripple effect, contributing to a more empathetic and connected life for you and those around you.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

Practical Steps to Forgive
Forgiveness is a journey that requires time, effort, and patience. Here are some practical steps to facilitate the process:

1. Acknowledge the Pain. The first step toward forgiveness is acknowledging the hurt and pain caused by the wrong. Allow yourself to feel the emotions fully without judgment.

2. Understand the Impact. Reflect on how holding onto resentment affects your life. Consider the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual toll it takes on you.

3. Empathize With the Offender. Try to understand the offender's perspective. This does not mean condoning or accepting their behavior but instead recognizing that their actions might stem from their own pain and struggles.

4. Express Your Feelings. Communicate your feelings to the offender, if possible. This can be done through a letter, a conversation, or even a symbolic act, such as writing down your feelings and then burning the paper. This can also be done with the ancient Hawaiian forgiveness process, Ho’oponopono.

5. Commit to Forgiveness. Make a conscious decision to forgive. This is an internal process that does not require the offender's acknowledgment or apology.

6. Release Resentment. Let go of negative emotions associated with the wrong. Techniques such as meditation, mindfulness, and Mental and Emotional Release (MER) will help you be free of the emotional baggage.

7. Seek Support. Forgiveness can be a difficult journey. Seeking support from friends, family, or a professional can provide the necessary encouragement and guidance.

The Transformative Power of Forgiveness
Forgiveness can transform our lives in profound ways. It frees us from the shackles of the past, allowing us to live more fully in the present. It fosters emotional resilience, enabling us to navigate future challenges with greater ease and with the lessons of our past. By choosing to forgive, we reclaim our power and take control of our emotional well-being.

In my work with clients and seminar attendees, I have witnessed the transformative effects of forgiveness and Ho’oponopono. One powerful example is a woman who attended one of my NLP seminars. She had been carrying the burden of resentment towards her father for years. Through Ho’oponopono, she began to understand the impact this resentment had on her life. She chose to forgive her father—not for his sake, but for her own. This decision led to a profound and instantaneous shift in her emotional state, improving her relationships, including her relationship with her father, her health, and her overall outlook on life.

Forgiveness in the Context of Ho'oponopono
Ho'oponopono, an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness, offers a unique perspective on forgiveness. It involves taking responsibility for one's own actions and emotions and seeking to make things right. Though there are many different versions, in my seminars we guide participants through a meditation that includes guided visualization. My father, Tad James, learned this from Morrnah Simeona, who helped spread Ho’oponopono around the world.

The process includes saying the words, “I forgive you, please forgive me too.” In the Hawaiian language, you could not say I’m sorry, you could only say please forgive me. The core idea behind Ho’oponopono is getting an energetic exchange of forgiveness and healing between you and the offender. This does not condone what happened; it’s getting forgiveness for anything you may or may not be aware of that you did in the situation to cause the conflict. Ho'oponopono teaches us that forgiveness is not just an interpersonal act but a deeply personal one that begins within ourselves.

Conclusion
Forgiveness is a powerful and transformative act that has far-reaching benefits for our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It is a gift we give to ourselves, freeing us from the burdens of the past and allowing us to live more fully in the present in a calm, centered, and balanced way.

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." Embracing forgiveness requires courage, strength, and a deep commitment to our well-being. It is an ongoing journey of healing and self-discovery that ultimately leads to greater peace, happiness, and fulfillment.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

SELF-HELP-
How to Use a Mantra.
Mantras can help train your mind.

KEY POINTS-
Many religious traditions use mantra-like phrases to center the mind.
Mantras appear to be especially beneficial in their impact on our breathing.
Mantra meditation has been shown to be beneficial for stress, hypertension, anxiety and immunity.
You can use it anywhere you go and no one has to know.

The word mantra in Sanskrit translates to “manas” (mind) and “tra” (tool). Mantras are literally tools to train your mind. Mantras are short phrases that are repeated either silently or out loud. I find that mantras are especially useful for my clients who have active minds. If you dabble in mindfulness, you likely have been told to focus on your breath. But for those of us with busy minds, or those who get anxious when focusing on breathing (especially if you get panic attacks), you may find a mantra is an alternative tool to help ground you in the here and now.

I Have Arrived, I Am Home
There’s a large wood sign that frames the lotus pond at the Plum Village Buddhist Monastery that says “I Have Arrived, I Am Home.” I remember standing by this sign at age 19 and repeating the words to myself. They were like medicine. “I have arrived, I am home.”

My thay (the Vietnamese word for ‘teacher” that is pronounced “tai”) taught this simple mantra — I have arrived, I am home — as a reminder that no matter where we are, or how painful life is, we can come back home to the present moment and ourselves. We repeated these lines in meditation, while walking, and even while singing together.

Breathing in, I have arrived

Breathing out, I am home

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

The Science of Mantra
Mantra meditation has been shown to be beneficial for stress, hypertension, anxiety and immunity (Tseng, 2022). And like other forms of meditation (e.g., breath focus, loving kindness, and open awareness), mantra meditation suppresses the Default Mode Network (DMN) of the brain. This network, which is the constellation of brain regions that run bilaterally down the midline of your parietal, prefrontal, and temporal cortices of your brain, is active when your mind is unfocused and wandering to the past or future. In the 2001 Inaugural Article of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers called this network of the brain the “default” mode. It’s default because when your brain is not actively engaged, its rest state is to be wandering about, to everything but the present moment.

Your mind is a lot like a puppy on a walk. It wants to wander backward, sideways, or way ahead of you—anywhere but right here. One of the first commands you teach a puppy is to “heel.” You may repeat the command “heel’ with a gentle tug on the leash to train your dog to stay at your heel. Like training a puppy, repeating a mantra trains your mind to stay with you, not in front of you.

Mantras also appear to be especially beneficial in their impact on your breathing. According to James Nester, author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, when repeated slowly, many mantras engage what’s called “resonant breathing.” They slow your breath down to an "ideal count” of about 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out. For example, Nester shares about a 2001 study on subjects participating in Christian prayer cycles, that found the pattern of breathing was 5.5 breaths per minute. When subjects in the study breathed in this slow pattern, the blood flow in their brain increased and the functions of their heart, blood circulation, and nervous systems became synchronized for maximum efficiency.

Mantra Across Cultures
Many religious traditions use mantra-like phrases to center the mind; for example, the Hail Mary prayer in Catholicism or Sat Nam in Yogic tradition. But you don’t have to have religious roots to try a mantra. Simple words like Breathing in, I calm my body or Just this moment can be powerful mind-body tools.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

These days, I am using the simple mantra as I walk: Yes, Yes, Thank you, Thank you. As I plant each foot, I use one word. Stepping I say yes to this moment, stepping again I say yes to the earth, stepping again I say thank you to this moment, and again, thank you to this earth. A simple “heel” practice like this is really healing.

As someone who has used mantras and chanting in various forms and languages over the years, I can attest that a mantra can be a very useful tool — whether spoken outwardly or inwardly — to slow my mind and body down and return to the present moment. The beauty of a mantra is that you can use it wherever you go and no one has to know. Before I get online for an interview, I will practice I have arrived, I am home, or when I’m anxious while taking off on an airplane I’ll repeat the mantra I first learned in my yoga teacher training: ham sa. Lately, I’ve also been exploring the simple mantra In this moment, I am enough, that my friend Ofosu Jones-Quartey, a Buddhist hip-hop artist, introduced to me. Are you interested in starting a mantra practice? Here’s how you can design your own.

Develop Your Own Practice
1. Choose a word or phrase. What words settle you, soothe you, make you feel at home? Create a list of possible phrases or words and say them out loud. Which feel best in your body?
2. Slow it down. Ideally, repeating your mantra would take about 5 counts for your inbreath and 5 counts for your outbreath. If you choose a single word you can repeat it slowly so that it lasts for a count of five.
3. Include a humming or a sighing sound. Choose words that make that sound, and allow for a slight sigh at the end of your breath to have maximum soothing effects.
4. Practice your mantra. Choose a cue or location where you will repeat your mantra. It can be the first thing when you wake up in the morning, driving to work, or when walking. If you like, you can use a timer or count them with beads, using a tool like a mala, which is a string of 108 beads and means “garland” in Sanskrit.
5. Go slowly. The point isn’t to get through it, but to train your mind to stay with it.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

DEPRESSION-
Why It's Important to Engage with Your Depression.
A Personal Perspective: Depression could actually be the first step of your journey to wholeness.

I've worked with a lot of clients who had depression. But long before I went to graduate school, I had to deal with my own depression. Up close and personal.

It was in my early twenties, shortly after graduating from college, that a close acquaintance committed suicide. My own path forward was uncertain, and I struggled with the demons of a traumatic family history that included alcoholism, rage, and verbal and physical abuse.

Depression was kept at bay, I suppose, by focusing on achievements, school, and grades. And by heavily self-medicating with marijuana.

But when the crutches of college and academic accomplishments were gone, my acquaintance's untimely suicide set in motion my own rapid decline.

The depressive symptoms were crushing. I lost focus. Constant thoughts of death left me fearful, frozen, and unable to make even simple decisions. A dark heaviness descended on me, making it almost impossible to move my body or think. All I wanted to do was sleep and have the depression disappear.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

Fortunately, my mother, who was a loving influence in my life, found me the right help. That help, as it turned out, was not a clinical psychologist or mental health counselor, but a seasoned psychiatrist who was patient and kind. And yes, he prescribed medications that gave me some temporary relief.

More importantly, he became a wise mentor who guided me to find my way. We did this without focusing on my trauma or using therapy tools that focus on thinking styles. We simply talked about life, about love, about pain.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, this was an initiation. Each session felt akin to entering a sacred sweat lodge (minus the smoke) where the soul was set free, where it discovered its connection to all and its deeper purpose. For the first time, without the fetters of angry abuse, my spirit began to grow and flourish. The depression symptoms slowly receded into the background.

Around the same time, I started to have vivid visionary experiences, some out of body and some hallucinatory in nature. These were not frightening; instead, they assured me that the daily reality in which I had been living was not the whole story. There was more. Much more.

Looking back, I clearly see how my depression was actually an initiation into the mystery and meaning of life. If my doctor had simply removed the symptoms, I might have felt better in the short term, but would have missed the bigger picture. And maybe the depression would have returned.

Talking with Your Depression
Earlier this year, I invited James Hollis, an internationally known Jungian expert and author, to join me for an interview on Pathways Radio and Podcasts to speak about depression as an initiation. Hollis spoke about the importance of engaging with one's depression. By doing this, you actually change your relationship to it. Depression can shift from "something that is making me miserable and getting in the way of my life" to a means of looking more deeply, to asking questions such as "Why now?" and "What does this ask of me?"

According to Hollis, this kind of deeper engagement is not easy. We may be skeptical and fearful of what we may learn. Also, the process of reflection is one that demands time and effort. If you have meditated, you know that simply observing one's thoughts requires a sense of openness and detachment that takes time to cultivate.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

Questions for Engaging and Shifting Depression
The main point that Hollis makes is that a depression could be an opportunity to see why you are in conflict with your deeper desires. Depression may be like that flashing warning sign on the highway telling you to pay greater attention to your life direction and needs. This is also a way of recognizing that suffering is, to some extent, a part of everyone's path.

To that end, you can delve more deeply by asking:

1. Is depression sending the message that I need to examine what is missing or out of balance in my life?

2. What in my life am I avoiding that I am being asked to look at more closely?

3. Am I neglecting the work of bringing my passion into the world?
4. Have I denied my life's true meaning and purpose from being nurtured and fulfilled?

As you inquire, you may find that depression is not an enemy, but a guide from within your depths who is calling out for your help.

Now, I'm not saying that cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as other modes of therapy and the latest medications, don't have a place. They can and do help. By all means, work on the symptoms and use traditional means of dealing with depression. Just don't neglect the bigger picture of what depression may be telling you.

Depression may be whispering in your psyche, urging you to embrace a journey that leads you into the heart of the life's meaning and mystery.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

SELF-HELP-
Choose Between Chains of Resentment and Halos of Value.
If we don’t choose, resentment wins by default.

KEY POINTS-
Resentment can become the bedrock of ego-defense, due to its temporary increase of energy and confidence.
Resentment substitutes temporary feelings of power (from a small dose of adrenaline) for feelings of value.
It makes us feel entitled to appreciation and respect but not really worthy of them.
Raising self-value renders resentment an unnecessary ego-defense.

Many of my clients are stuck in justifiable resentment over past injuries, abuse, or unfair treatment. The negativity they inadvertently exude causes problems in all their relationships. No matter how much I validate their hurt, they feel betrayed when I try to get them to overcome the resentment that keeps them stuck in their pain.

Unlike most forms of anger, which are triggered by specific incidents, thoughts, or memories, chronic resentment is a generalized ego defense. No one resents just one thing. Most resentful people drag a long chain of resentment through life. Past injuries, abuse, or maltreatment may have initially forged the chain, but dozens of links have been added to it since. Some of the links on the chain of resentment are forged by profound betrayal. Most are not. (A general guideline for the chronically resentful is: Nothing is too petty to resent.) It doesn’t seem that way to them because picking up a chain by one link carries the weight of the entire chain. That’s why resentful people tend to overreact to relatively minor incidents.

Removing the initial links of the chain (resolving whatever offenses started it) will do little to affect the multitude of links added and strengthened over the years in the service of ego-defense. Because ego-defense seems more important than learning, truth, and reason, resentment greatly distorts thinking — through oversimplification, confirmation bias, inability to grasp other perspectives, and impaired reality-testing. Distorted thinking makes the ego more fragile and more in need of defense. Resentment is thus self-perpetuating. Over time, it becomes a worldview or way of life.

It’s easy for resentment to become the bedrock of ego-defense, due to its low-grade adrenaline, which temporarily increases energy and confidence. We feel animated by the perception that we’re right, which feels better than the self-doubt and low energy that occurs when we feel vulnerable. The problem with the adrenaline effect is that it borrows energy from the future. After a bout of resentment, a crash into some form of depressed mood is inevitable. Worse, adrenaline enhances memory and is, in general, recalled more easily. When you resent your partner, you’ll remember every perceived offense since you started living together. Instead of experiencing negative feelings as temporary states, it seems like you’re reacting to continual unfair or unreliable behavior that will not change.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

Characteristics of chronic resentment are:

External regulation of emotions — other people seem to control your emotional states
Vulnerable emotions are blamed, denied, or avoided
Narrow and rigid emotional range, with resentment giving way only to depressed mood
Victim identity — identification with mistreatment and perceived damage
Substance abuse (to alter dysphoric mood)
Characteristics of chronic resentment in relationships:

High emotional reactivity — a negative feeling in one triggers chaos or shut down in the other
Power struggles — strive to "win" or “be right” rather than reconcile and connect
Walking on eggshells
Criticism, stonewalling, defensiveness, contempt
How Do You Want to Feel?
You have every right to feel resentful, but hardly anyone really wants to feel that way and experience all the unpleasantness that goes with it.

When we reflect on how we feel, we bring into implicit memory past instances that evoked similar feelings, creating an illusion that it’s always been that way and, by implication, always will be that way. There’s a natural impulse to interpret, explain, and justify the feelings, all of which amplify and magnify them.

When we focus on how we want to feel, the brain loads into implicit memory past instances that evoked similar feelings. The impulse to interpret, explain, and justify produces more benign results. The prefrontal cortex focuses on how to achieve the desired state, rather than justify the undesirable one. While you have an absolute right to your resentment, you have a more compelling right to live a value-filled life free of resentment.

Crowding Out Resentment
We can think of resentment as a habit of substituting temporary feelings of power (from a small dose of adrenaline) for feelings of value, that is, feeling worthy of appreciation and respect, as opposed to feeling entitled to these things. We need to do what will make us feel more valuable when we feel vulnerable. When we feel valuable, we’re more likely to act in our long-term best interest. We’re likely to appreciate life and connections to others. To concentrate on value in the world, try these tips:

Recognize the basic humanity of others (most people would help a desperate child)
Appreciate your love for the significant people in your life
Engage in some sort of spiritual expression that feels right for you
Appreciate natural and creative beauty
Perform small compassionate acts (for example, listening, offering emotional support, helping someone struggling).
Practicing a repertoire of valuing behaviors to crowd out resentment is a tall order, with a substantial reward.

App link: Absolutely FREE for download... https://www.amazon.com/dp/...

ALCOHOLISM-
How We Get Hooked: Understand Alcohol Misuse.
Uncover how perceived benefits shape our relationship with alcohol.

KEY POINTS-
Explore how early alcohol experiences shape our perceptions of alcohol.
Dive into how social learning reinforces drinking behaviors.
Replace judgment with understanding, using a drinking diary to cultivate healthier alcohol consumption.

“I don’t know why I keep drinking.” I threw myself onto my therapist’s bright yellow couch on a hot summer day.

“I am sure you had a reason,” my therapist replied.

I remembered looking up at her with disbelief. It was not the response I imagined I would get.

This pivotal moment was the beginning of my journey to understanding the deeper reasons behind alcohol consumption, a journey I now navigate with my clients. Six years have passed since then, and having become a therapist myself, the exchange above has also become one that takes place often between me and my clients.

Every Behavior Serves a Purpose: Perceived Benefits
People who come to me to work on their alcohol consumption often feel perplexed by their own behaviors. They see all the good reasons to drink less, yet for some reason, they just can’t seem to figure out how.

“Is there something wrong with me?” many of them end up asking. My answer to that question is a definitive “No.”

No. There is nothing wrong with you. You drink for a reason.

Here is the thing: behind each of our behaviors, there is a motive. Our behaviors serve purposes. They are driven by perceived benefits. We take a shot before walking up onto the stage for a boost of confidence; we pour a glass of wine before initiating intimacy to soften the moods; and we reach for that fourth beer because we believe the more we drink, the more fun we will get. Behind each sip we take, there is always something that we hope to get. Recognizing these patterns has led me to explore the initial allure of alcohol and the perceived benefits that often go unnoticed.

The Power of Perception: The Initial Perceived Benefits
As we scratch our heads wondering why someone can’t stop drinking despite all the negative consequences, we often fail to acknowledge the perceived benefits. You see, if drinking was really just “all bad,” very few of us would ever get hooked. The tricky thing about alcohol is that it often starts with benefits—perceived benefits, at least.

Imagine a young man at his first college party, feeling awkward and out of place—until he has his first drink. Suddenly, the edges soften, the room seems friendlier, and he feels like he belongs. Or a teenage girl who is going through her first breakup. As the cold beer pours down her throat, the sadness in her chest slowly dissipates. (That girl was me.)

Our early encounters with alcohol often set the tone for our relationship with it, creating powerful perceptions. According to the expectancy theory, we make choices based on the expected outcome of our actions. After the initial encounters, the young man learned to pop open a beer every time he felt unease at a party, and the teenage girl learned to pour herself a glass whenever sadness arose in her chest.

These early perceptions often overshadow the delayed negative consequences. The immediate perceived benefits reinforce the behavior, making it easy to overlook the hangover the next day, the occasional throw-up by the sidewalk, or the long-term impact on one’s health and well-being. As these early experiences shape our perceptions, they lay the groundwork for new associations that reinforce our drinking habits over time.

Reinforcement and New Associations: How Alcohol's Appeal Grows
As we continue navigating through life, the perceived benefits we have around alcohol slowly multiply. Perhaps you were originally drawn to alcohol by the alleviation of discomfort in social situations. Over time, as you continue to drink during parties and gatherings, your brain starts to associate drinking with having a good time.

Moreover, our observations about others around us continue to add layers of perceived benefits to our understanding of alcohol. According to social learning theory, we learn by observing and imitating others. When we watch a housewife on TV pour herself a glass of “mommy’s juice” by the end of the day, we learn to associate alcohol with relaxation and stress relief. When we see our friend pair a Cabernet Sauvignon with a hearty steak, we learn to see wine as a part of fine dining. The observations create more and more perceived benefits we associate with the liquid in the bottle.

These perceived benefits keep us reaching for a drink even when the negative effects start to pile up. Grappling with dissatisfaction with attempts to cut down, many people become trapped in a sense of self-blame.

Replace Self-Blame With Understanding
Understanding the "why" behind our drinking can make a crucial difference, as shame and guilt often hinder our ability to understand and make changes. When we get caught up in painful questions like “What’s wrong with me,” we become distracted from constructive questions such as “How can I create changes?” Insights and awareness are often the first steps to change.

You had reasons to drink. Understanding those reasons gives room for you to learn how to drink less.

Inside my 7-Day Toolkit, you can find my favorite tool, the 3-minute drinking diary, to help you uncover the hidden perceived benefits of drinking

ANHEDONIA-
Anxious, Depressed, Stressed?
How challenges experiencing satisfying pleasure sabotages well-being.

KEY POINTS-
Anhedonia is the diminished ability to experience satisfying pleasures.
It is common among various mental health issues.
Addressing anhedonia is key to improving mental health and sexual well-being.
Prescribing healthy pleasures can help restore a sense of fulfillment and joy.

In my practice, I treat various conditions, including anxiety, depression, stress disorders, relationship challenges, and sexual dysfunctions. Despite their differences, these issues share a common thread: the diminished ability to experience satisfying pleasures, formally known as anhedonia. Anhedonia is both a symptom of mental health challenges and a contributor to them. It's a complex phenomenon often overlooked when discussing mental health and sexual well-being. In this post, we'll delve into anhedonia, its manifestations, and its intersection with mental health and sexual well-being.

A Bit of Personal Background
Readers of my book are familiar with my history of anxiety and panic attacks. In my next book, tentatively titled Why It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood, I'll share more about my childhood trauma, largely resulting from my mother's untreated mental illness, which affected her emotional regulation.

In the past six months, I've experienced significant losses, including both of my parents and a favorite uncle. After my dad's death, I addressed the neuroscience of grief in a post titled Why Good Grief Matters. And within 90 days, my mom also passed away. On the flip side, I experienced the birth of two new grandchildren, bringing both joy and challenge. When I tally these stressors on the Life Change Index scale, I score so high that, on average, the likelihood of experiencing some form of illness in the near future is estimated to be between 50% and 80%. Fortunately, four decades of work in psychology have equipped me with numerous effective coping tools (see previous posts on neuroscience hacks to foster happiness and tools for dealing with stress). Through this work, I've learned that addressing challenges to the ability to feel satisfying pleasures is key to restoring well-being.

What Is Anhedonia?
Anhedonia is the diminished ability to experience pleasure or joy from activities that were once enjoyable or rewarding. It's not merely a transient feeling of boredom or dissatisfaction but a persistent state that can permeate various aspects of life. Those experiencing anhedonia may find themselves disinterested in hobbies, social interactions, sex, or even basic self-care activities that used to bring them happiness.

Understanding anhedonia requires exploring its underlying mechanisms. Neuroscientific research suggests that anhedonia is closely linked to brain reward circuitry dysregulation. The reward system, primarily governed by neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, plays a crucial role in modulating our responses to pleasurable stimuli. When this system is compromised, as is often the case in conditions like depression or schizophrenia, anhedonia can manifest as a core symptom.

Healthy Pleasures Versus "Faux Rewards"
As explained in my book, the overuse of smartphones is derailing our attention and hijacking the "SEEKING system" (another name for reward circuitry). This imbalance in our “core” emotional systems contributes to the current anxiety epidemic. What we experience on our devices are“ faux rewards” that do not fulfill our brain-driven needs for the real thing and do more harm than good.

Healthy pleasures are pleasures that feel good and are good for us. These are the activities and pursuits that contribute to overall well-being, such as true social connection (rather than the “faux” social interactions on social media). What I tell clients is to think about social media interactions as empty calories. Just like how eating a whole bag of potato chips might feel good at the moment, it won’t contribute to our well-being. It will make us feel bloated and miserable after the short-term pleasure of consumption. The same is true for time spent scrolling the internet.

Anhedonia and Mental Health
The impact of anhedonia on mental health cannot be overstated. It often co-occurs with mood disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. It's considered one of the hallmark symptoms of depression, contributing significantly to the profound sense of emptiness and despair that individuals experience. Therapeutic interventions and medication management aim to restore balance to the brain's reward circuitry. However, individuals with anhedonia may struggle to engage in these treatments due to a diminished capacity for pleasure and motivation, posing a significant challenge for clinicians striving to help their clients regain a sense of fulfillment and purpose in life.

Anhedonia and Sex
Anhedonia doesn't exist in isolation; it has far-reaching implications for sexual well-being as well. Human sexuality is inherently linked to pleasure and reward, both physiologically and psychologically. When anhedonia takes hold, it can dampen libido, impair sexual arousal and responsiveness, and diminish the overall satisfaction derived from sexual experiences.

For individuals struggling with anhedonia, the prospect of intimacy and sexual connection may feel like an insurmountable obstacle. They may find themselves disconnected from their bodies and desires, unable to derive pleasure from physical touch or sexual stimuli. This can strain romantic relationships and lead to feelings of inadequacy, guilt, or shame for both partners. Moreover, anhedonia can exacerbate existing sexual dysfunctions or disorders, creating a vicious cycle wherein sexual difficulties contribute to feelings of frustration and despair, perpetuating the sense of anhedonia and further eroding sexual well-being.

A Novel Approach to Reversing Anhedonia: Prescribe Healthy Pleasures as Medicine
How do we reverse the soul-crushing toll of anhedonia? What I find most effective is teaching clients that the ability to experience healthy pleasures can be cultivated and pursued as the active ingredient in restoring well-being. By prescribing the pursuit of healthy pleasures, I help clients prioritize finding their way back to small pleasure practices. By harnessing attention on doing so, they begin to activate their "SEEKING systems," priming the pleasure pump.

Conclusion
Pleasure is not a luxury but a necessity for the proper functioning of the brain/mind.

SELF-HELP-
Three Ways to Get Stuck and What to Do About It.
Getting stuck in feelings and ego traps us in low self-value.

KEY POINTS-
We get stuck in our ego when it causes us to violate our values or act against our best interests.
We get stuck in feelings when they construct reality rather than respond to it.
We get stuck in low self-value when we ignore or violate humane values.

There are many ways to feel stuck in life. To name just a few, we can get stuck in ego, feelings, the past, low self-value, resentment, or therapy. This post will address the first three.

Stuck in Ego
We get stuck in our ego when it makes us violate our values or otherwise act against our long-term best interests. Philosophers and novelists call this pride or, in extreme cases, hubris. When ego is more important than humane values, it feels inauthentic. To paraphrase the poet T. S. Eliot, we prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet. The ego becomes fragile, in need of continual defense.

As in war, truth is the first casualty of ego defense. Covert forms of ego defense are blame, denial, and avoidance. Overt forms include anger, resentment, alcohol, drugs, workaholism, and compulsive behavior. In love relationships, ego-driven partners appear self-righteous, entitled, and apt to punish disagreement.

It’s hard to overcome or even recognize the reflex of ego-defense because it’s activated at any whisper of vulnerability. Merely acknowledging vulnerability automatically activates defenses.

If you’re stuck in ego, you’re overemphasizing how others perceive you. Identify your deepest, most humane values and uphold them in your behavior, regardless of what others think. If you do that, you’ll escape the mire of an ego in need of continual defense.

Stuck in Feelings
Bad self-help books, articles, and internet blogs proclaim that your feelings are reality: “If you feel it, it’s real.”

Feelings are always real, but the assumptions, perceptions, and judgments that underlie them are often inaccurate. For example, a client was resentful because his wife ignored him while talking on her phone. In fact, she called her girlfriend while he was texting several team members about a problem that came up at work. His feelings in response to her behavior were real, but his assumptions and judgments about it were wrong.

Feelings are valuable signals about a possible reality, but they lack the reality-testing of the prefrontal cortex. That's why the same events and circumstances can seem so different when you feel different. That is when your perceptions, assumptions, or judgments change.

Negative feelings function like smoke alarms, calibrated to give false positives. We don’t want smoke alarms that only go off when the house is in flames. We want the earliest possible warning, which is not necessarily probable. That means the smoke alarm can go off when someone is cooking or smoking cigarettes. When the alarm sounds, you don’t scream, “We’re all going to die.” You check to see if there is a fire and, if there is, you decide how to put it out. Always check out your feelings, but don’t confuse them with reality. A smoke alarm is not a fire.

Advice guaranteed to get you stuck in feelings seems to pervade the internet and some therapist’s offices:

“Feel your feelings, that’s what they’re for.”

Well, that’s not what they’re for. Feelings evolve to get our attention, so we’ll act on the motivation of emotions—what they prepare us to do. Emotional motivations fall into three broad categories:

Approach (get more, seek to understand, experience more interest, enjoyment, compassion)
Avoid (ignore, divert attention, reject)
Attack (minimize a perceived ego threat by devaluing, warning, threatening, or intimidating).
Focus on the motivations of your emotions—what they’re telling you to do—and act on them if what they’re telling you to do is in your long-term best interest.

For example, anger and resentment tell you to attack, that is, devalue, warn, threaten, intimidate, or harm, overtly or in your head. It’s hard to imagine that attacking a loved one is in your best interest. Anger and resentment are protective emotions activated by blaming someone for your momentary vulnerability (guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, sadness, grief, physical pain). Anger and resentment are mere flames; vulnerability and blame are the fuel. Follow the motivation of your vulnerable emotions without blame.

Fear tells you to make yourself safe.

Anxiety tells you to be careful, make contingency plans.

Guilt tells you to make up for violating your values.

Shame tells you to try harder or try something different. In love relationships, it tells you to be compassionate, kind, supportive, protective, loving.

Physical pain tells you to seek medical help.

Sadness tells you to value something or someone.

Grief tells you to mourn and then love again.

Following the motivation of vulnerable emotions, as opposed to speculating about their origins or getting lost in what they feel like, frees us to create more value and meaning in life.

Stuck in Low Self-Value
Self-value is often confused with self-esteem. The latter is how you regard and feel about yourself, especially in comparison to others. Self-value is more behavioral, how you treat yourself and behave in accordance with your values and best interests.

Internet blogs sometimes conflate self-value and self-esteem with confidence. They can go together, but they often conflict. I’ve had many clients who were confident in their skills and abilities yet hated themselves or violated their values and acted contrary to their best interests.

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister describes a form of dark self-esteem that leads to violence. In less extreme versions, it’s based on downward comparison. When we need to look down on others to feel okay, we’re condemned to look up. No matter which criterion we use to feel superior—intelligence, looks, money, achievement, socks—we’ll find a lot of people with a lot more of it. Downward comparison masks low self-value if not inferiority.

Self-value is based on equality. We’re not superior to anyone or inferior to anyone. An endless enhancement of self-value is regarding everyone with dignity and respect.

If you feel stuck in low self-value, use the following checklist every morning.

I will:
Eat well
Exercise
Avoid Drugs
Drink moderately, if at all
Learn
Create value
Appreciate
Protect and nurture family
Connect with friends
Take time for enjoyment.
I’ll respect myself by:

Respecting others
Staying true to my deepest values
Proving to myself that I’m worthy of love by feeling compassion and kindness
Practicing loving thoughts and behavior.

BURNOUT-
Sustainable Therapy: How to Avoid Burnout at Work.
A conversation with a psychologist and sustainability coach about burnout.

KEY POINTS-
Sustainable practices help therapists maintain balance without self-compromise.
Early recognition of burnout signs is key for career longevity.
A healthy financial mindset is an important but overlooked aspect of therapist sustainability.
Simple reflections on what energises or drains therapists can lead to significant improvements in well-being.

As a therapist, the idea of a sustainable career seems elusive, as burnout is often the norm.

In fact, disbelief is the most common response Rebecca Black, a clinical psychologist and sustainability coach, receives when she tells therapists it is possible to be a therapist and work in a way that is sustainable and fulfilling.

The concept of sustainability has become more prominent in the last few years, particularly for therapists and health professionals, because the pandemic brought burnout to the forefront.

Rebecca is living proof that sustainable practice is possible, having cured her chronic illnesses and revitalised her professional life.

And now, through coaching and group programs, Rebecca helps other therapists create balanced, sustainable, and enriching careers as therapists.

As a therapist who is a little sceptical about the possibility of a burnout-free career, I sat down with Rebecca and asked her all about sustainability and how to implement sustainable practices as a therapist.

The article below is based on the interview and Rebecca’s answers.

Sustainability in Therapy
Sustainability encompasses several aspects, including the ability to maintain activities over time, while causing minimal or no harm in the process. Rebecca defines sustainability when applied to therapists as an ability "to maintain their workload and their lifestyle at a stable level over time without compromising themselves.”

Corkroo Android Web View app link on Amazon app store..... https://rb.gy/4cpidu

Challenges That Therapists Face
Rebecca explains that therapists face unique challenges when working sustainably. One challenge involves individual factors, and the other involves the environmental or systemic factors at play. Using a schema therapy framework, she highlights, "We all have patterns or schemas, and therapists typically have a trifecta of unrelenting standards, self-sacrifice, and approval-seeking," This trifecta can severely affect a therapist's ability to maintain balance, leading to emotional and physical exhaustion, and straining both personal and professional relationships.

Environmentally, there is an intergenerational passing down of practices that normalise burnout in the mental health profession, which further complicates this issue, making burnout a systemic problem.

Signs of Burnout
Burnout among therapists can manifest in various symptoms, including feeling fatigued or feeling wired but tired, struggling to slow down and relax, emotional exhaustion or compassion fatigue, irritability, general stress and overwhelm regarding daily tasks, dreading going to work, a lack of excitement and passion, and even physical ailments such as headaches and IBS-like symptoms. "If you're getting home and you're so exhausted," Rebecca says, "it’s indicating that you're definitely not in a sustainable place."

If our nervous system is in a continually heightened state, it can take no fewer than several days for it to return to being regulated. Rebecca observes that clients often don't realise how dysregulated their nervous system has been until they return from a long holiday. “And so there's this awareness of what their body's meant to feel like and it feels nothing close to that in their normal day-to-day life.” As a result, therapists often have an epiphany that something needs to change.

Emphasising Awareness for Sustainability
Self-awareness and understanding one's own needs, and then responding to those needs, are the foundational elements for therapists aiming for sustainability. Rebecca explains the importance of starting with simple reflections. It’s about tuning into ourselves and asking, "What do I enjoy? What lights me up?" as well as learning, "What drains me? What do I dread?"

She highlights how integrating small changes towards the former and away from the latter, such as walking and adjusting client schedules, has made significant improvements in her and her clients' well-being. These manageable steps demonstrate that achieving sustainability doesn't require overwhelming transformations, but rather thoughtful, deliberate changes.

Corkroo Android Web View app link on Amazon app store..... https://rb.gy/4cpidu

Nourishing the Nervous System
Rebecca also notes that as therapists, we often don’t spend time taking care of our nervous systems in the way that we truly need. She stated that “because of the schema therapists hold, and the high demands that are placed upon us, we’re often focused on prioritising tasks and achievement as well as meeting other people’s needs, and so our own needs and nervous system care are placed at the bottom of the list or often forgotten about.”

Without a regulated nervous system, we can’t reach sustainability. Making simple changes in this space, such as focusing on one’s own breathing more regularly, using mindfulness or meditation to become present, or making space for soothing and compassionate imagery, are all aspects Rebecca helps therapists reconnect with.

Enhancing Time Management and Financial Health
Rebecca highlights the significance of effective time management in achieving sustainability. She suggests a practical approach: a "time audit" to evaluate and optimise daily schedules. For example, "If you know that walking helps you feel better and you want to incorporate that into your life but feel you don't have the time, we can discuss where you are spending your time and what we can adjust," she explains. This method enables individuals to identify time sinks and reallocate those moments towards more fulfilling activities. As Rebecca states, “It might seem small, but it all adds up.”

Financial security is another important element for therapist sustainability, yet the stigma surrounding therapists earning money often overshadows it. "If your bank account is suffering, your sustainability will suffer too." This connection between financial health and professional sustainability highlights the need for therapists to create a healthy relationship with money so that their relationship with money supports rather than detracts from their well-being.

Corkroo Android Web View app link on Amazon app store..... https://rb.gy/4cpidu

Broader Implications
Looking toward the future, there's hope for systemic changes that promote sustainability from the onset of a therapist's career.

Rebecca’s vision for mandated free therapy in academic settings could greatly benefit future mental health professionals, so they can address patterns such as unrelenting standards, self-sacrifice, and approval-seeking before beginning their clinical roles: "It’s about how we can practice as therapists in a way that works for us...that’s my dream," she says, aiming for a profession that values therapist well-being as much as client care.