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2 Personality Traits That Predict Your Lifespan

People with this personality trait tend to have better health habits and more stable jobs and marriages.

People who are conscientious and careful live the longest lives, research finds.

Conscientious people tend to be self-disciplined and they aim for achievement.

Two aspects of conscientiousness have the strongest link to a long life:

A preference for order,
and an orientation towards achievement.

Careful people are also less likely to smoke or drink and experience lower levels of stress.

In more bad news for people trying to enjoy their lives, happiness seems to have little connection with a long life.

The reason is that cheerful, laid-back people tend to be more careless about their health.

Persistent and conscientious people, though, get that check-up.

The conclusions come from an analysis of 20 different studies which included over 8,900 people in many countries.

Being more conscientious was consistently linked to living a longer life.

It is probably because conscientious people tend to have better health habits and more stable jobs and marriages.

Conscientiousness is one of the five major aspects of personality, along with agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience and neuroticism.

Professor Howard S. Friedman, the study’s co-author, said:

“The major finding is that this conscientiousness aspect of personality is indeed reliably predictive of mortality risk across studies.

This seems to be as important as most commonly assessed medical risk factors, few of which are psychological.”

If you are not that conscientious, there is still hope, said Dr Margaret L. Kern, study co-author:

“There is some evidence that people can become more conscientious, especially as they enter stable jobs or good marriages.

We think our findings can challenge people to think about their lives and what may result from the actions they do.

Even though conscientiousness cannot be changed in the short term, improvements can emerge over the long run as individuals enter responsible relationships, careers and associations.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality (Kern & Friedman, 2008).

Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book “Making Habits, Breaking Habits” (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks. View all posts by Jeremy Dean

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7 Essentials to Reputation Management for Celebrities

Reputation management helps improve a public figure’s brand, gain better control over what information circulates about the figure in question, and repair damage caused by negative news pieces. It’s also an important consideration for every public personality with a fanbase, regardless of size.

Without reputation management, for example, just one insensitive or outdated comment on a dormant social media account can cause loads of backlash and reverse years of work—even if you think everyone forgot about it. The truth is, you never know when an armchair muckraker who has nothing better to do will stir up a media scandal against you.

And since you don’t want to be the next person posting an apology video, it’s important to know the ins and outs of celebrity reputation management so you can be prepared to prevent and manage any backlash.

1. Own Your Social Accounts

The first step to managing your reputation is to have an official communication channel to connect with your fanbase—because emails and press releases simply won’t cut it.

If you happen to land in a PR crisis for any reason, social media channels serve as the first line of defense to address any issues and make a statement before things blow out of proportion.

Meanwhile, having verified social accounts also helps keep impostors and impersonators at bay. These people often set up fake celebrity accounts to scam fans, mostly for monetary gain. If you don’t identify these accounts and address this issue quickly enough, you’ll have to deal with the backlash.

Keanu Reeves, for example, does not have any social media accounts, and this can often land his fans in hot water (or even debt) for believing in scammers who appear credible.

10 Profitable Solopreneur Business Ideas Anyone Can Start

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Pour Energy into Energy – Leadership Freak

Pour Energy into Energy

Every organization has hot spots. Work is easy. People feel joyful. Stuff gets done.

Pockets of energy are the future.

Every organization has black holes. Everything’s hard. People are negative. Getting stuff done is like flogging dead donkeys.

Focus on energy:

Pour energy into energy.

Leaders can’t ignore black holes, just don’t feed them. Focus your time and resources on success.

Develop, marginalize, or remove:

It’s hard to develop a black hole. It sucks everything in and gives nothing back. If you can’t develop, marginalize, or reassign poor performers, send them to other organizations.

What area of your organization makes you feel like you’re pushing a rope? Protect yourself and others from that area.

Spend time with people who are chomping at the bit.

Black hole responses:

The success of others brings black holes to life.

Black holes love to point out what’s wrong with success.

Black holes say, “Why are we spending so much time on that project and neglecting this one?”

Don’t get sucked in by pseudo-concern. They weren’t doing much. But, when vitality erupts, they want to kill it.

Black holes want you to pull back.

You can’t move forward while pulling back.

When fire flames up pour gas on it.

Follow success. Don’t listen to voices that encourage you to pull back by suggesting you aren’t doing enough for black holes.

Follow the fire.

Both:

Don’t neglect problem areas. One powerful way to energize people is to fix nagging issues. Bad is stronger than good. When you remove bad you do lots of good.

Do both; fuel fires and resolve energy drains.

How can you focus on success instead of failure?

How can you pour energy into energy today?

Still curious:

3 Ways to Energize People during Conversations

How to Energize Colleagues (hbr.org)

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This Early Sign Of Dementia Doubles The Risk

Losing this sense is the strongest early sign of dementia.

Older people who cannot identify smells like lemons, paint-thinner and roses are at double the risk of developing dementia, research finds.

Problems with other senses, such as vision, hearing and touch, can also be indicative of dementia.

However, difficulty with smell is the biggest sensory sign of dementia.

Other early signs of dementia include changes in sense of humour, increased apathy, memory problems and being unaware of those memory problems, being unable to understand sarcasm and insomnia.

Dr Willa Brenowitz, the study’s first author, said:

“Sensory impairments could be due to underlying neurodegeneration or the same disease processes as those affecting cognition, such as stroke.

Alternatively, sensory impairments, particularly hearing and vision, may accelerate cognitive decline, either directly impacting cognition or indirectly by increasing social isolation, poor mobility and adverse mental health.”

The study included almost 1,800 people in their 70s who were tracked for up to 10 years.

Around one-in-five developed dementia during that time.

The results showed that people with poor senses were at twice the risk of developing the disease.

While previous research has focused on smell, this study added together the effects of all the senses.

Dr Brenowitz said:

“The olfactory bulb, which is critical for smell, is affected fairly early on in the course of the disease.

It’s thought that smell may be a preclinical indicator of dementia, while hearing and vision may have more of a role in promoting dementia.”

People’s whose sense of smell declined by 10 percent were at a 19 percent greater risk of dementia, the study found.

Declines in hearing touch and vision were linked to a 1-to-3 percent level of increased risk.

Dr Kristine Yaffe, study co-author, said:

“We found that with deteriorating multisensory functioning, the risk of cognitive decline increased in a dose-response manner.

Even mild or moderate sensory impairments across multiple domains were associated with an increased risk of dementia, indicating that people with poor multisensory function are a high-risk population that could be targeted prior to dementia onset for intervention.”

The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia (Brenowitz et al., 2020).

Author: Jeremy Dean

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Should You White Label Reputation Management? It Depends

White label reputation management involves offering reputation management services under the name of another agency. An example would be a digital marketing agency that doesn’t specialize in reputation management entering a white label agreement with a specialist reputation management agency to deliver services on its behalf.

In some cases, certain online reputation management software can be white labeled, too. Under the white label agreement, you can pass the software off as your own, providing your clients with this highly sought-after service without having to develop it yourself.

When You Should Partner with a Reputation Management Agency to White Label Their Services

There are a few situations when it makes sense to form a partnership with a reputation management agency.

One is when you’re looking to contract out the labor-intensive services of reputation management but don’t have the time or expertise to offer comprehensive services of your own. Given that reputation management is fairly productized, where the service package is the same across clients, it’s often feasible to add these services by partnering with a professional agency.

Under this partnership, you could provide your clients with high-level reputation management services without having to add a ton to your plate, as long as the services are standardized.

If you try to offer these types of reputation management services in-house, you may need to increase your staffing to accommodate the extra manpower needed to provide this service—which can be incredibly risky. This is especially true if a key client leaves your agency unexpectedly.

However, by partnering with a reputation management agency, you greatly reduce the risk on your end.

Another huge benefit of white labeling is that it allows you to provide reputation management services while focusing on the client relationship and not risking the extra overhead. So when your goal is to…

Feeling Down After Loss? The Daily ‘Uplifts’ That Are An Emotional Lifesaver (M)

Discover the power of daily ‘uplifts’ – small actions that significantly improve mood and well-being.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

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Beyond the Wilderness: 4 Strategies When Life is Uphill

Positive thinking is a crushing burden when you believe it prevents adversity, resistance, and uncertainty. Everyone navigates the wilderness.

Moses spent 40 years in the desert. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. In the 1930s, Winston Churchill was marginalized because he warned England about Hitler.

The wilderness is an inner experience, not a place.

You’re in the wilderness when:

You’re in the wilderness when you can’t find the crest of the hill. Our home is surrounded by hills. You sigh when you make it to the top of steep hills. Your feet feel lighter.

In barren lands your knees shake, and you moan more than you sing. The future feels dark when you can’t find the shade.

4 strategies when life is uphill:

#1. Small acts of defiance.

Nelson Mandela asserted his power by walking a little slower than his guards wanted. Our need for dramatic results defeats us when hurricanes persist.

#2. Slow down – don’t sit down.

There’s a three-mile loop from our house that feels all uphill. I remember one windy day when it felt like the gods opposed me with headwinds. It felt like a battle. When possible, keep going.

#3. Change course.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a fool about it.” Attributed to W.C. Fields

Life changes when it must. Don’t throw in the towel. Adjust the sails. Adapt.

#4. Clarify values.

Disconnecting from values is barrenness of your own making. Know what’s important and bind it to your heart.

It’s hard to stand when you lose touch with something to stand for.

Warning: The deadliest wilderness is self-imposed by self-accusation. Write the words of your inner critic on a piece of paper and throw it away.

Which suggestion listed above seems most relevant to you today?

What suggestions to you have for navigating the wilderness?

Still curious:

Master Your Inner Critic

Tom Rath on Getting the Most From Adversity

10 proven ways on how to overcome adversity in life (tonyrobbins.com)

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Who Should Use Reputation Management (+Getting Started)

Reputation management involves monitoring and influencing your reputation with the goal of both protecting and enhancing it. Given that negative press can spread quickly through news, social media, and other digital outlets, this practice has arguably never been more important than it is today.

What Reputation Management Includes

Here are some of the core activities that fit under the reputation management umbrella.

Monitoring and making Google search results more favorable

49% of all shoppers use Google as a launching point for finding a new product. So a large percentage of people who find you will do so through Google.

If the first information someone reads about you is negative, it instantly creates a poor first impression. An example would be coming across a slew of negative reviews or news articles about controversies and unethical behavior. When this happens at scale, it can be toxic to your reputation.

But if what they encounter is flattering, such as positive reviews and news articles singing your praises, it’s going to help your reputation.

This means a key part of your reputation management strategy should focus on 1) monitoring Google search results and 2) doing everything within your power to make them more favorable.

You can start doing this by:

Owning the domain name and social media profiles for your personal name and/or business name
Creating high-quality content on your website and social media platforms that shows your knowledge and expertise
Posting positive content that reflects how you want your brand to be perceived
Publishing press releases that highlight accomplishments and awards
Guest blogging on other reputable sites

While it’s impossible to completely control what appears on Google, you’ll stand a better chance of controlling the narrative around your brand by being proactive. Simply posting quality content across your websites…

How Standardizing Your Sales Process Boosts Overall Conversion

Let’s face it—it does no good to build a funnel and spend zero time optimizing for conversion. That’s a no-brainer, right?

But, how many of you are working closely with your head of sales to ensure that the opportunities you help generate actually convert into paying clients? Ultimately, if you want to be seen as a successful marketer, you’re going to have to show that marketing is driving sales.

Now, the challenge is that in today’s commoditized world, sales teams often struggle to stand out from the crowd. As a result, closed won rates plummet, and organizations find it challenging to demonstrate to prospects how their total value proposition is the clear winner against all of the other competitors.

To make matters worse, many organizations rely on “super hero” sales people or even the founder to close deals. This approach is not sustainable or scalable. You can’t build a successful sales team if you’re constantly relying on a select few individuals to bring in all of the business.

The solution to this problem is a sales process that follows a standardized approach while also creating clear differentiation with prospects at the same time. By implementing a systematic sales process, you can scale your sales efforts beyond just the founders and “super heroes.” This will lead to higher closed won rates and higher gross profit margins, as you’ll be able to win at premium prices.

The benefits of a systematic sales process are clear. You’ll be able to scale the process beyond founders and “super heroes,” achieve higher closed won rates, and enjoy higher gross profit margins as you’re now able to win at premium prices.

When I implemented a systematic sales process in my former agency, I was able to consistently have 60-70% closed won rates, even when I had zero involvement in deals. This is the power of a well-designed sales process. In fact, I standardized this process and called it the Systematic Sales Process™.

So, what does a Systematic Sales Process™ look like? Here are the five stages:

Stage 1: Evaluation

In this stage, you’ll have a 30-45 minute call with your prospect. The goal of this call is to point your prospect in the right direction—it’s not to “make a sale.” The reason we want to take this approach is that many prospects are likely not a good fit for your firm, so let’s not assume that every first call is an “opportunity.” That’s why we call this call the “Evaluation”—you want to evaluate whether or not you can help your prospect, whether or not they align with your requirements, and whether or not they are ready to move forward. We call this “two-way qualification.”

It’s not uncommon to reach the middle-to-end of the call and determine that your prospect, in fact, needs someone or something else other than you!

IMPORTANT: You should…

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