Archive for the ‘What can Dr. Doug do for you?’ Category

The End of Average: How to Succeed in a World that Values Sameness by Todd Rose explains how reliance on the abilities of the average person has limited the success of our culture in many ways. We need to replace equal access with equal fit so that every individual can fit in and become their best as they live a life of excellence as they define it. All teachers, administrators, parents, and older students should read this. Get your copy today.

Introduction: The Look-Alike Competition

• After World War II, the US military was concerned that there were too many aircraft accidents being chalked up to pilot error. This led to a study that showed that the one-size-fits-all cockpits designed in 1926 fit no one. In other words, they found that there was no such thing as the average pilot. When the government demanded cockpits fit individuals, the military was surprised to learn that it was easy and not expensive to create environments adjustable for individual pilots.
• While other research supports the idea that no one is average, our schools still compare performance to the average student. Averages have their place, but should not be used when making a decision about an individual. The author’s own story that took him from dropping out of high school to the faculty at Harvard supports the idea that human potential is nowhere near as limited as the system we have put in place assumes.

Part I: The Age of Average – 1. The Invention of the Average

• In the early 1800s, Adolphe Quetelet (Kettle-lay) applied the methods of astronomy to the study of people. When measuring things like the speed of planets, the best way to get an accurate number was to take the average of observations by many astronomers. He felt that the average person was the true human being while the individual was synonymous with error. While this makes no sense today, many scientists bought it and worked it into their science.
• Francis Galton gave us the idea of ranking. He also gave us correlations. As a result, a person’s rank on narrow metrics of achievement are used to judge their talent. Averages and ranks are now used by educators and employers. Averagarian is a term Todd invented to describe anyone who uses averages to understand individuals.

2. How Our World Became Standardized

• Fredrick Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) was responsible for standardizing industrial procedures in most factories. The idea was that a manager would determine the most efficient way for the average worker to do a job exactly as told, without innovating or deviating from the plan. These ideas were adopted worldwide by leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, as well as in countries in Asia like China and Japan. Taylorism is still widely in use today.
• Edward Thorndyke embraced Taylor’s ideas for education, which gave us factory schools that aimed to produce standardize students to fill positions in factories. Education’s managers were responsible for standardizing the curriculum and making sure that teachers followed it. He also added the idea of sorting students, which gave us tracking, where top students were placed in one track and lower students were placed in lower tracks. Standardized tests are still commonly used for this purpose. SAT and ACT scores result in ranking students heading to colleges, which are also ranked.

The Five Best Tools To Wake Up A Creative Kid In You starts with suggestions for parents and teachers who want to foster creativity in their students, their children, or themselves. It then offers five excellent tools that can support the creative process. Be sure to have five people each check out one tool and report back. Thanks Veronica

Introduction

• Creativity isn’t a science or a formula. It is one of those things you can’t just buy and use. Developing creativity in yourself is a lifespan job. You need to take frequent small steps to surpass your average results. It takes much patience to overcome obstacles, such as lack of time or strength, someone’s critique, or your own doubts in an. You must realize that creativity is something you are born with, and if you do not use it, you may lose a part of yourself. Fostering creativity, however, in someone else is even more difficult. Thus, if you are an educator or a parent and want your students to use their imagination to provide outstanding solutions, you can’t just assign them a task and expect creativity to flourish. Imagine that creativity is under a heap of gravel and to get it out pulling isn’t enough. Piece by piece you need to uncover it and bring to surface.

Stay Passionate About Your Project

• Outside the box thinking and imagination without borders are two essential constituents of creativity. I noticed that usually adults try to place children into a certain framework of standard behavior and rules. Of course, it’s a normal phenomenon since society trys to prevent chaos and self-destructive acts resulting from extraordinary behavior and thinking. However, making an obedient citizen of a child can stifle creativity and the desire to produce something unique.
• When I hear about “suppressed creativity”, I recollect one example of a family I knew once. The mother had an unaccomplished ambition of becoming a singer. She projected this dream on her daughter who didn’t like being in the spotlight at all. She escaped from her family and their cage of restrictions via her creative drawings. Fortunately, the girl had enough willpower to stand her ground and resign from a signing career. Yet not every person endowed with unique creative mindset can resist their family and school that just do not see it in you. That’s why fostering creativity is so important for every person, teacher, and parent.

Guidelines to Help Foster Creativity in Yourself, Your Students or Children

• For those who are teachers:
  Use music or ambient sound in the background to help students concentrate and improve performance.
  Engage students in brainstorming ideas, which will help them use different approaches to find solutions.
  Separate providing students with new information from creative tasks. Do not mingle both educational processes so as to avoid misunderstanding and confusion.
  Motivate your students with counterfactual tasks that will allow them to view a problem from multiple perspectives and think outside the box.
• For those who are parents:
  Provide space and resources to encourage creative expression.
  Don’t evaluate your children’s creative ideas, point out mistakes, or underline fails.
  Give your kid more freedom to research something new. Let your child try some extraordinary hobbies or even those activities you consider useless.
  Allow your kid to disagree but ask to explain why.
  Don’t reward your child for expressing his creativity. Your kid should strive doing that for free.
• For those who want to be more creative:
  Don’t critique yourself every time you make something new. Just keep on doing that and enjoy this amazing process of discovering your new potential.
  Protect this creative kid in you to stay passionate and interested in your own thinking process.
  Be patient. It can be easier to tolerate someone’s mistakes than your own.
  Be brave and curious about yet unexplored areas of your imagination.
  Go for a long walk to relax and unleash your mind.
  Let yourself be messy at least once in a while. It will help you to relax, forget about your surroundings and your duties.

Raise Your Creativity Kid Via Hot-Shot Tools

• Tips may not be enough. You may need some extra tools to express and encourage yourself to develop something worthy. Here are five of the best tools that can wake up a creative kid in everyone.
• BrainPlots
  It’s not necessarily to have a group of 6 people to brainstorm new ideas. With the help of Brain Plots you’ll be able to find some unexpected solutions as you work and study. When you tab your ideas in this app, you get suggestions which you can either decline or accept. Then you’ll get a full picture in the form of a TED presentation.
• Glogster
  This interactive service allows you to work with images, videos, graphics, audio and text in one place. It helps you create a multimedia poster using many creative skills along with critical thinking. Also, this platform develops creative hunger to see the final result of your work. Glogster is a good educational app to complete assignments and projects in a new way.
• Studentshare
  This service has the largest database (1 000 000+) of essay and research papers uploaded by real students who received at least an A- grade. Using StudentShare you’ll be able to find an effective formula for how to write your next essay with inspiration and no procrastination of your deadline. Plus, you can figure out what resources and references are the most appropriate for your writing task.
• Storybird
  It is a creative room where writers and readers gather to share their ideas and attitudes on a new story, poetry etc. This educational app certainly promotes thoughtful writing and critical analysis.
• Mindtools
  This service is targeted at boosting your creativity via special understanding, brainstorming and idea-generating tools. Once you choose the Toolkit category, you’ll see even more features such as Decision Making, Leaderships Skills, Problem Solving etc. Thus, you’ll be able to master the 28 skills and discover new opportunities for your creative world. The main goal of this service is to provide assistance in all stages of the creative process.

Make Your Creativity Progress Long-Term

• If you are seeking a formula to make your creative ability progress, start by planning and outlining what exactly you expect from a certain process. Write down one reason you need to continue creating something after a break even if it’s only to get rid of boredom. Do not restrict yourself with a fixed timeframe since it can make you feel suffocated with a forced creativity. Creative ideas usually come while you process ideas, so what you need is to start creating something that brings you joy and pleasure. Your progress will turn long-term when finished works incite you to the next creative project.

Veronica Hunt

• Veronica is a true edtech expert and a professional blogger with five years work experience. She tries to provide students with up-to-date info on how to improve their study habits. Veronica lives in Delaware, USA..

The Gut-Brain Connection: Dietary Shifts That Move the Needle on Adolescent Anxiety by Sara William

Adolescence is a challenging time for both the young person and the parent. The struggles of growing and changing of the self and the stresses of academic and social life are causing young people to be more anxious than they have ever been. When this stress can no longer be managed, parents have to find other solutions rather than just talk therapy and medication. Surprisingly, new research is showing a great deal of promise in a place most people would never expect to look: food.

The understanding of the gut-brain connection has changed the landscape for a lot of avenues in the mental health and wellness space. The gastrointestinal tract is much more than a simple digestive tube. In fact, it acts as an independent nervous system and communicates directly with the brain. When families make science-informed and purposeful dietary changes, they can have a wonderful and positive impact on their teen’s resilience, clarity, and anxiety.

A Kid’s Gut Can Help You Understand How Their Brain Works

Before you can understand why your teen’s diet is directly related to how they feel, we need to identify the expressway that connects the gut to the brain. The Gut-Brain Axis is a bi-directional communication network comprising the vagus nerve, immune system signaling, hormonal pathways, and microbial metabolites.

Collectively known as the gut microbiome, countless organisms reside in our gut. They break down food in a way that assists our body. Comparatively, microorganisms manufacture our body’s neurotransmitters and even produce GABA, dopamine, and serotonin. It’s a fact that the gut produces around 90% of our body’s serotonin, the neurotransmitter that is responsible for our mood and happiness.

When a teenager’s diet consists of ultra-processed foods, refined sugars, and poor-quality fats, the balance shifts and the microbiome progresses unfavorably. This shift results in an increase of harmful bacteria with a significant decrease of healthy bacteria and leaky gut syndrome. This inflammation results outside of the digestive system as well. Inflammatory molecules cross the blood-brain barrier and cause neuroinflammation which can impair concentration and result in increased anxiety and irritability.

Teenagers may attain a balance at an emotional level by replacing their ultra-processed foods with healthy, nutrient-dense foods. They nourish their body and in turn, their bacterial ecosystem. This also results in an extended variety of microbiomes which produce short chain fatty acids like butyrate, which strengthens the gut lining and calms the nervous system and reduces inflammation.

Expanding the Lens: The Brain-Gut Connection in Neurodiversity and Anxiety

While anxiety attacking the neurotypical adolescent is a cause for concern and an epidemic, it is a much larger concern for neurodivergent youth. Attempting to understand the brain-gut connection and autism shows the importance of understanding the correlating factors as to why there is an exceedingly high number of autistic teenagers that suffer from extreme anxiety and sensory distress, and behavioral dysregulation.

There is a clear connection between neurodivergent behaviors and gut issues. Many autistic people report having severe, chronic issues with the gut that make daily life more difficult. Because autistic people and other neurodivergent people often have severe sensory issues, it can be difficult, if not impossible, for them to articulate the gut issues that they are having, and they often manifest in anxiety, meltdowns, and/or withdrawal.

There are also differences in gut microbiomes of neurodivergent people. There are certain strains of gut bacteria that affect the production of neurotransmitters, which can regulate anxiety, stress, and behavior. Changing the diet to remove gut irritants and to include foods that are healing to the gut can lead to a lot of different health benefits.
Relaxing gut irritants can lead to beneficial changes in mental health as well. Dietary changes help clear the type of mental noise that causes anxiety to enable better social engagement in the autistic teenager.

Healing dietary suggestions for an anxious adolescent

Your goal shouldn’t be to make radical changes to your autistic teenager’s diet to any of these suggestions. Instead, make small changes in their diet that help stabilize their blood sugar, reduce inflammation, and help heal their gut.

Eat More Fiber and Prebiotic Foods

To feed good bacteria that live in our gut, eat more fiber and prebiotic foods. Prebiotic foods are plant-based with more fiber. Foods like garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, oats, and bananas that are not too ripe, produce good microbes that produce calming neurotransmitters. Eating a variety of different colors of fruits and vegetables will include a variety of different microbes.

Add Fermented Foods and Probiotics

Fermented foods can also help microbiomes. Yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, and kombucha are all great options that should be eaten regularly. If fermented foods are too tangy and not appealing, there are other options like probiotic supplaments.

Eliminate Processed Foods and Sugars

Eating too many refined carbohydrates and sugars can create blood sugar spikes and crashes that can increase feelings of anxiety because of the jittery and sometimes rapid heart symptoms. Trans fats and additives will also cause imbalances in the gut and promote inflammation. It is best to reduce or eliminate all sugary snacks and sodas and replace them with whole foods. This provides energy and helps improve concentration.

Focus on Healthy Fats for Brain Structure

Dietary fats are crucial since the human brain is made of about 60% fats. Omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory, and omega-3 sources include wild-caught salmon and sardines, walnuts, flaxseeds, and chia seeds. Omega-3 fatty acids also assist in the effective signaling of brain cells, and their membranes are fluid. Omega-3 fatty acid intake has the potential to lessen adolescent depression and anxiety.

Integrative Care and Professional Guidance

Dietary alteration is an essential component of healing; however, every adolescent is biochemically unique, so what benefits one may not benefit another. The collaboration of clinical specialists will ensure that adequate nutritional modifications are applicable to your adolescent’s specific needs, genetics, and lifestyle.

Models of integrative care are especially beneficial in this situation, such as mind align psychiatry. Medication and symptom alleviation are the main focus of traditional psychiatry. An integrative approach, however, recognizes the relationships between mental health and metabolic and gastrointestinal health and nutrition.

Practitioners of mind-aligned psychiatry partner with families to complete extensive diagnostic work. This may involve analyses of comprehensive stool tests, food sensitivity tests, assessments of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and tests of inflammation. From an evidence-based approach, clinicians are able to establish dietary recommendations, supplementation, and work in concordance with nutrition and psychotherapy.

Address root physiological drivers of anxiety instead of simply treating surface symptoms. This multidisciplinary approach empowers adolescents to achieve sustainable wellness. Parents no longer have to make isolated and confusing dietary framework choices, knowing that experts will validate and ensure progress with every step taken.

Conclusion

Although adolescent anxiety is a complex challenge, families are not powerless. By acknowledging and understanding the significance of the gut-brain connection, parents are freed from traditional symptom suppression and are now able to focus and support from within. This can either be from the daily emotional struggle of a neurotypical teen due to stress from high school or addressing the gaps and needs from the gut-brain connection and autism spectrum. Dietary changes are designed with a purpose to provide a safe and empowering healing process.

In order to have a more comprehensive and individualized care designed for your teen’s unique biochemistry, incorporating more innovative techniques like Mind Align Psychiatry and Integrative Psychiatry will be needed. Every healthy and gut-supporting meal, every new and improved habit, and every new professional will slowly, one by one, build and support a more resilient and calm mind.

Sara William

Sara is a contributing writer specializing in health, home improvement, food, personal finance, and lifestyle. She lives in Illinois. You can email her at infoguestposters@gmail.com.

The Highest Paying Freelance Jobs To Focus on For Maximizing Work From Home Earning by Danielle Ward introduces some of the most common and well paid freelance jobs currently available. If you haven’t found a full-time job yet or can only work part-time, some of these jobs might be for you or someone you know.

Introduction

• Freelancing is the ‘in’ thing, quite officially. The largest corporations out there are hiring freelance IT developers, website designers, copywriters, and app developers for short term and long term projects. Of course, freelancers also continue to thrive by taking up paid projects from the most recognized global job exchange marketplaces with equal success. The point is, freelancing is no more just an additional little drip of dollars, but a gushing brook of decent income, which is comparable to, and sometimes even exceeds that of people with similar skills employed in corporations. All this notwithstanding, here we focus on telling you more about the highest paid freelance jobs, and the skills that are highly in demand.

Marketing

• Do you have experience in marketing? Didn’t land a job after that marketing diploma? Have you acquired some experience in digital marketing? This is the time to hop on the freelance bandwagon, because marketing gigs can pay you anything between $40 and $50 per hour. Freelance engagements in marketing range from anything like brand management efforts, product promotion strategies, and real sales, to niche digital marketing efforts such as social media brand management, email marketing, etc. Even reputed employers are engaging freelancers to provide impetus to their marketing efforts. Some reselling options are there as well where you don’t need to invest something and based on your marketing skills you can start making money for each sales/sign ups.

Voice Over

• Did you realize how the advertising winds have been blowing in the direction of video content from the past couple of years? Yes, most advertisers now prefer creating short but catchy videos. If you have a great voice, and have some experience or idea about voice over and dubbing, you can offer your services, and earn up to $70 per hour. People respond well to videos, which has created a large market space for voice over artists and dubbing artists, which means there’s a lot of money to be made for candidates with the right skills.

Recruiting

• Freelancers are finding great short term opportunities of being a part of HR operations at growing organizations. They can offer services such as drafting of job descriptions, managing recruitment drives, handling documentation aspects of hiring, and even conducting preliminary interviews to shortlist candidates. Better paying opportunities in HR freelancing can go up to $50 per hour, whereas the ones more restricted to documentation can pay up to $30 per hour. The one downside, however, is that freelancers need to aggressively hunt for newer projects to keep the income stream strong. Another downside is that you probably won’t get access the health care from your freelance employers.

Programming

• This is the umbrella mini-market for all kinds of web development, software development, and app development assignments. Programmers who work with conventional technologies such as Java can make up to $40 per hour by developing programs for projects. However, people with knowledge and experience of lesser known and more contemporary programming languages can make almost double the amount every hour. The key to success as a freelance programmer is to give quality work, and let the positive feedback bring in more clients.

Graphics Designing & Animation

• Though this is among the oldest vistas of earning via freelancing, skilled graphics designers are in high demand. Experienced Photoshop artists with impressive portfolios can earn up to $40 per hour. Within graphics designing, there’s a niche called ‘info-graphics’ design, which pays as much as $80 per hour. Info-graphics are content heavy designs, with lots of stats and facts organized in the form of a vertically extended graphic. If you have animation skills (2D or 3D) there are many companies in need ot animated content who aren’t big enough to hire full-time animators.

Search Engine Optimization

• Because of the frequent updates brought on by Google, search engine optimization continues to be a lucrative field for freelancers, especially those with updated knowledge and skills to get good rankings for client websites. The great part about freelance SEO experts is that they land projects that pay up to $40 per hour, and the number of hours they can bill to the client are on the higher side. That’s because freelance SEO engagements extend over a few weeks. Freelance SEO experts can get repeat business from their clients, and can hence earn significant incomes.

Copywriters

• The number of blogs and websites on the web has had an exponential surge in the past decade. In parallel, search engines have aligned themselves to treat websites with great content with good SEO ranking. These factors have enabled copywriters to sustain their incomes from freelance assignments. Mid-level copywriters can make up to $30 per hour, whereas experiences writers can make up to $55-60 per hour. Like SEO, freelance copywriting comes with the advantage of repeat business from clients, which makes it a lucrative freelancing option.

Final Words

• So those are some of the most sustainable, highly paying, and in demand freelance skills. If you’re looking to expand the scope of your freelance work, or looking to join millions of people who are already freelancing, you might want to invest effort towards honing skills relevant to these engagements.

Danielle Ward

• Danielle is a Blogger by profession and loves sharing my thoughts over wealth and wellness blogs so that people can live a healthy life with a handsome income. She is based out in the UK but planning to move to Malta soon.

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