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The Best Advice Show

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Oct 26, 2020 • 3min

Streamlining with Jon Jordan

Jon Jordan is the style editor for WDIV, Local4 in Detroit and the style editor for Style Wise Jon. Check out his fashion and style tips here -https://www.youtube.com/c/StyleWisewithJonJordan/aboutTRANSCRIPT:JON: People have a vision or a notion that being well dressed means you have to spend a lot of money and you have a lot of time figuring things out and there's nothing worse...well, I suppose there are worse things but starting your morning in a closet that's disorganized and your confused about what to wear and you don't like your choices and you can't see anything, that's not a good way to start your day out. ZAK: But have no fear, fashion guru, Jon Jordan says there's a cure for this. The uniform. JON: You can wear basically the same thing every single day and the uniform is a look that streamlines your wardrobe efforts because it is basically a variation of the same thing and the references that I have for this are some really high-end people in the fashion world like the designer Tom Ford. He basically wears a black blazer and a crisp white shirt and a great pair of jeans and loafers everyday and he doesn't vary from that.ZAK: For people who are fashion challenged or people who just don't feel confident in putting together an outfit. How do they decide what their uniform can and should be. JON: I think you rely an expert and that might be somebody in a store or a trusted friend because there are basic rules that will help them out like, things should fit well, things should flatter, things should actually feel comfortable. I'm Jon Jordan. I am the style editor for WDIV, Local4 in Detroit and also the style editor for Style Wise Jon on Youtube for Graham Media. ZAK: My uniform lately has been hiking socks, sweatpants and a t-shirt with baby spit-up on it. I call the look COVID Casual. But seriously I love this idea of streamlining and embracing minimalism. Thank you, Jon Jordan. I've linked to some of his Youtube videos in our show notes. I want to hear your advice. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. This is The Best Advice Show, talk to you tomorrow. Bye. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 23, 2020 • 3min

Loving Legendarily with Teri Turner

Teri Turner is the founder of the popular blog No Crumbs Left.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I have a perfect guest for Food Friday...Teri Turner.TERI: I am the founder of No Crumbs Left which is a...you can find it on Instagram, Facebook, it's a blog, it's a cookbook, Pintrest, for tips, tricks, ideas that take food from ordinary to extraordinary. ZAK: Teri's advice is about food is about food but it's also about love which to her, and to me, and probably to you, are one in the same.TERI: Have your house be the one where the kids come to. You have beautiful food and it's sitting on the stove because you get to know who your kids are, see who their friends are and it is such a gift and it will bring your family together. And if you cook with your kids nobody can ever take that away from your kids. We are so bonded by food and our love for food that it's a wonderful thing. ZAK: Do you think it was because you were making such good food that you were the magnet house?TERI: I think it's like, you know, if you could love your kids in a way that is legendary. I came from real love. Such deep, over-arching, amazing love. Celebrate your kids and them be who they are. And that's just what we knew and my parents loved us not in a spoil us kind of way but just we really knew that we were loved and so for me, I was able to give that same kind of love to my kids. And part of that for me, what that looks like for me personally is creating beautiful food that we enjoyed together. But my feeling is if you didn't come from that kind of love and many people don't, you can create that in your own life. You don't have to say, 'Oh, she had that so she can do it.' No, be that life. Be the love you want to give. ZAK: You're making me cry, Teri. TERI: Oh, I love that. Thank you. We always on our podcast, we cry, on the No Crumbs Left Table Talk podcast we cry every-time. ZAK: Obviously before you invite all the neighbored kids in for a big pot of chili and your famous, homemade cornbread, you know probably weight for the pandemic to end. But this advice in your back pocket until then. Imagine the meals that you're gonna make for your kids or your friends or your neighbors. That's what I've been doing. I can't wait to start hosting dinner parties again. Big sigh. You can hear Teri's podcast, as she mentioned, it's called No Crumbs Left Table Talks. You should follow her on Instagram. No Crumbs Left. Her stuff is beautiful. She's so loving. And this is a good time to thank my parents for cultivating the kind of house that my friend's wanted to be at. Also to my mother-in-law and father-in-law for doing the same. And to all you out there who have homes with open doors. Thank you so much. This is The Best Advice Show. What a year it's been. I hope this show has helped you through it. If it has consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. As always, I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline. 844-935-BEST. I'm running low on Food Friday episodes. Give me your food tips and tricks and hacks. I want to hear 'em. I'll talk to ya next week. Bye. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 22, 2020 • 6min

Finding Catharsis with Megan Stielstra

Megan Stielstra (@meganstielstra) is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way To Save Your Life, winner of the 2017 Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Review of Books. She is a 2020 Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas.An Axe for the Frozen Sea - https://believermag.com/logger/an-axe-for-the-frozen-sea/TRANSCRIPT:MEGAN: For the first 6-months of the lockdown, my son and I quarantined at my mother's house in rural Michigan which in some senses was really lovely because her home is in the middle of the woods and on the other side of the woods from her house is the Amtrak going from Ann Arbor to Chicago every single day at 6 o'clock.There were things that I was experiencing myself that I wasn't expressing cause I didn't want to worry my kid. I didn't want to worry my mom. I didn't understand what was happening in the world.I was trying to keep my kids safe. My mom is immune compromised so I was there to help her out as well too. So I was trying to keep her safe. So all these things are happening inside my head and heart and what the hell do I do with it? One of my favorite writers, Lidia Yuknavitch, talks about how our bodies can't possibly carry everything that we've been given to carry, so we have to get it out of our bodies so we can see it.So everyday at 5:50 my kid and I would go outside and we would walk, like down the road from my mom's house and then we would stand by the tracks and we would wait. You feel it first in your feet like you feel the train coming up through your shoes and up through your legs and then you can hear it and then you can see it and as it gets closer and closer it gets louder and louder and you can feel it more throughout your own body and as soon as the front of the train would cross right in-front of us we would start screaming. And for him it's just letting out the energy and for him it's letting out everything that I can't say, and I can't talk about and I can't express how scared I am and I don't know where to put out all of that fear so it's just a release through the body and sometimes we would throw rocks and sometimes we would like break sticks and just like this physical release of everything that we'd been carrying all day and I could feel the brambles in my back unwind and everything...and you try to do this stuff in yoga class or in running but it never works, right? But just kind of that primal screaming my face off for the 2-minutes it took for the train to pass, which sounds like such a short period of time, like 2-minutes but really it is a long time to scream without stopping. Like even if we just sit-here for 10-seconds.....................................like that's a long time of dead air space and that's a long time to open your mouth and just be truthful.ZAK: mmmm. What's a good way for each of us to find our own form of release, you think?MEGAN: Whatever you're doing right now, can you stop and roll your shoulders? Can you remember to breathe? I don't mean that in any yoga, magical, just let yourself breathe, I mean it just straight up, are you actually breathing? I mean that with edge and knives and whiskey but are you actually breathing because I haven't been. It's a thing that I have been forgetting to do. So just even this awareness that we live in a body and how are we getting whatever emotional response we're having to the world out of it. Can you break something? Cause if you don't put it out of ourselves in these possible bonkers but also maybe healthy ways, it's gonna come out of us in ways that aren't healthy. So maybe that means booze or drugs or sex or cruelty or violence. Domestic violence numbers are up right now...just trying to think of what people are doing to care for ourselves.ZAK: I'm gonna go scream.MEGAN: Please do. I hope everybody does.ZAK: Yes. Go scream listeners. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 21, 2020 • 3min

Culture Shifting with Céline Williams

Céline Williams is a culture engineer, business strategist, speaker and founder of reVisionary.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Whether you are a boss or hope to one day be a boss, I think today's advice from an executive coach is essential.I feel like most people I talk to are pretty disappointed with the culture at their work. If you have any thoughts about why you think that is...that it's so widespread that people are dissatisfied with the way their workplaces run.CELINE: I think it's because most leaders and most organizations are really attached to an old paradigm of how things work. Partly because for some organizations, that's how it worked for them 15 or 20 years ago and we have lots of large organizations and small organizations that are attached to an idea that was effective 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 50 years ago and that's not the case anymore. ZAK: So say there's a boss listening to you right now...what's something they might try tomorrow when they go into work to start shifting things?CELINE: Well first and foremost, ask your people what their experience of the culture is and actually listen. I, I often talk about culture iceberg which is that the leaders are at the top of the culture iceberg and they are where 5% of the reality of what is happening in their organization. And middle-management is lets say aware of 30% of it and then you get down to the front-line workers and they're aware of 100% of it. So what often happens is we run on assumptions. We are human beings who like assuming things and who like to create categories in our brains cause that keeps us safe, so we assume that our experience of the culture is the same as someone else's and leaders are especially bad at it because often leaders see the positive things more than the negative and so the first and easiest thing a leader can do is go in and ask their people, ask their direct reports, ask the people underneath those people...but talk to people about what their experience of the culture is and make it safe for them to say, this sucks and here's why. Make it so that there's no fear for them to actually tell you the truth of what they're seeing and that, when you have that information and that data you can actually do something with it. Otherwise you're trying to make changes on assumptions.And we all know what happens when you assume. CELINE: My name is Céline Williams. I'm the founder of reVisionary and I'm an executive coach and a culture strategist.ZAK: Are you happy at your work place? I want to know why. What's working there that the rest of us can learn from. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 20, 2020 • 4min

Creating Ease with Shane Bernardo

Shane Bernardo is a food justice organizer and the founder of Food as Healing -https://www.foodashealing.com/To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:SHANE: My name is Shane Bernardo. I'm a lifelong resident of the city of Detroit also known as occupied Anishinaabe territory. I'm also a food justice organizer and the founder of Food as Healing.My advice is to do everything with ease. Now this might seem like a really tall order but what's more important than to focus our energy on checking in with ourselves and our needs around kindness and compassion. We often think of these things as virtues that we extend toward others but how many times have we forgotten to extend those things to ourselves?So, what this looks like in practice is whenever you feel a sense of nervous energy, anxiety, frustration or regret...ask yourself this question. 'In this moment what do I need in order to bring more ease into my life?' And hopefully what that helps you do is helps you refrain from having life just happen to you. It helps you maintain your sense of self, personhood, humanity and dignity and these are things that anyone should be afforded. A lot of frustration comes from feeling like we don't have control over our own well-being and that's such a terribly unhealthy place to be in. This point is even more critical considering that we're in a global pandemic and that the need for racial justice and racial healing in this country has been unmatched like no other time in this country's existence and it also recognizes how the capitalists profit from maintaining the psychic toll that all these things have on us and especially those of us that are on the margins that sequester this impact that it has.So I'd like to invite you to maintain this practice as a form of resistance, as an act of resistance and ask yourself on a daily basis, at least one time, ask yourself what do I need to create more ease in my life. Try it on. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 19, 2020 • 3min

Embracing Discomfort with Wendy S. Walters

Wendy S. Walters is a writer and the Director of the Nonfiction Concentration and Associate Professor of Writing, Nonfiction in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: WENDY: Well, I think I'm used to being uncomfortable so I am very enthusiastic about other people being uncomfortable because it kind of makes you pay attention in a slightly different way than you would with others and, you know, I say this to my son all the time you know you have that moment of discomfort, uh, but generally you survive it. Like, usually 9.9 times out 10 you survive your discomfort. So, I think that the discomfort is a real gift in terms teaching you how to get past something that is completely internal. Other people may not recognize that you're uncomfortable but you feel it and you know when you stop being uncomfortable and the more resilience you can develop in terms of that discomfort, the more engaged I think you can be with other people who aren't like yourself.Many Americans...they associate being uncomfortable with being in danger. On the base level being uncomfortable is not having access to choosing the options that you would normally choose. And for many people that is experienced as catastrophe. That is experienced as damage and I think that is really, it's an overstatement and it in some ways reflects how much we become accustomed to being catered to.ZAK: So is this advice...make yourself uncomfortable?WENDY: Let's see, is it make yourself uncomfortable or is it if you find yourself in the space of being uncomfortable, embrace it as a moment for opportunity and reflection on who you are and what you value.ZAK: Wendy S. Walters is a writer and professor of writing at Columbia University. I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. If you're finding this show valuable I hope you'll share it with your friends and family and maybe even write a review on Apple Podcasts if that's where you listen. That's gonna help this show sustain itself. Thank you in advance. I'll talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 16, 2020 • 2min

Popping with Ben Friedman

Ben Friedman pops corn and makes films in LA.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPTZAK: It's Food Friday and today's advice, yes, it's related to food and food prep but I think you can also read it as a metaphor. The advice comes from filmmaker, Ben Friedman.BEN: I love making popcorn and I know that other people would like stove-top popcorn too cause it's the absolute best. And I think that one place where people get stuck is they try and get every kernel popped and what ends up happening is that opens them up to the risk of burning a couple of kernels and that will just ruin the whole batch. And so my feeling is always that it is better to leave a couple kernels un-popped and to get a great batch of popcorn every time than to try and get every single kernel and risk losing the whole bowl. Kind of like that 80/20 rule but more like 98/2. That's it.ZAK: So is this really advice about not being a perfectionist? That's how I hear it. Regardless, I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline like Ben did at 844-935-BEST. This has been yet another week of The Best Advice Show. I love making this show. If you love listening to it, please consider sharing it with your friends and family. Thanks! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 15, 2020 • 3min

Weighing Options with Greg Fox

Greg Fox (@gdfx) is a composer, drummer, teacher and coach. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:ZAK: You might be a freelancer or an artist or just someone trying to figure out what to do next. I think today's advice is gonna be especially helpful if you check any of those boxes. It's gonna help you narrow your focus and figure out what's really important.GREG: My name's Greg Fox. I'm a human being. And I play music. I run a music studio. I teach drumming and I also am a certified professional coach.ZAK: One of Greg's early teachers taught him what he calls the 2 of 3 rule. It's a really simple filter for trying to figure out whether a project is worth taking on, or not.GREG: The idea is that you need a strong 2 out of the following 3 things for the project to be worthwhile. And those 3 things are good hang, meaning you enjoy the company of the people you do the project with. Good product, meaning you enjoy the work that you're making, right? Uh, you like whatever it is you're working on and sharing with other people when it's finished. And 3, good pay, right, the money solid, right? So 2 out of those 3 should be strong for the project to be worth doing and I'd add as an asterisk to the entire thing that if you are involved in a project and you find yourself constantly or regularly questioning whether or not you should do the project...you also probably just should do it. ZAK:And once you started using this, like, filter to apply to your work and creative life, did you find yourself saying no more frequently? GREG: Yeah, definitely. And I also left some projects that I had been doing. Whenever anything comes in now I do think of it in those 3 terms and you know, a lot of times people will say yes to doing something and then wish they hadn't, right? And, uh, it's a good way of avoiding that. It's been very, very effective for me. It's been awhile since I've found myself in a situation where I regretted saying yes, you know?ZAK: And if you're not wondering about whether or not you should be doing a project. Like if it's pretty obvious that you should, then you don't really need to apply this advice.GREG: If you're not wondering, man, I don't know. This band that I love so much and everybody in it is so great and we actually make some dough now and then...nobody's asking themselves whether or not that should do that project. It's like when you start to find yourself asking those questions, this is a good way to evaluate, like, maybe to clarify it for yourself.ZAK: Super clarifying, Greg. Thank you so much. If you have some advice to offer I would love to hear it. Gimme a call on the Best Advice Show hotline, that's 844-935-BEST. 844-935-BEST. ZAK: Also, you should follow Greg Fox on Instagram. He's an amazing drummer. You can see him drum there. I put a link to his website and Instagram in our show notes. Alright, I'll talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 14, 2020 • 3min

Noticing with Susannah Goodman

Susannah Goodman (detroit_fertile_earth) is an artist and potter and community organizer in Detroit.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:SUSANNAH: Yeah, so this piece of advice is really simply stated that the more you look, the more you'll find and it's just related to the way you can walk through the world. I firmly believe that, um, wonder and awe is a muscle that you have to exercise and the more you use it the more it becomes accessible to you. So I use it when I'm feeling stressed. Before pandemic times if I was like on my way into a meeting or something and I was worried about what was gonna happen, sometimes I would just sit in my car and look at, I don't know, grass on the berm on the side of the parking lot and just watch the way the wind blows across it or how fertile just little bits of sod are in all the places in our urban landscape. If you just sit and observe the more patience you have with yourself in the process, the more it will become available to you for appreciation cause I think when I'm the most stressed is when I'm like not observing the world around me.ZAK: When you're in your head?SUSANNAH: Yeah.ZAK: Huh. Yeah. Well we're outside right now in our friend's backyard. Normally I imagine this would be like an internal monologue of you, uh, you know, noticing but can you do it externally and help me understand how you would do it?SUSANNAH: I think the best thing about being outside for me recently has been just watching the way trees move across the sky when the wind is blowing cause it's this great reminder that we're sitting at the bottom of this giant air ocean and looking up from the ocean floor at these massive, amazing bits of tree seaweed or something, hahaha. I'm Susannah. I'm an artist and potter and community organizer in Detroit.ZAK: I want to hear about the ways you deal with your stress and anxiety. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. And if you can think of somethine that might benefit from Susannah's advice consider sending them this episode. You can do that by going to Best Advice dot show. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow
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Oct 13, 2020 • 2min

Investing with Doron Levin

Doron Levin is the Editor-in-Chief of Better Investing Magazine. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: When anyone starts talking about investing, I get so bored. But I know it's pretty important to pay attention, at least to some basic principles when it comes to this stuff. And so, I talked to longtime financial journalist, Doron Levin. He says for young people especially, their greatest asset might be time.DORON: When you've just gotten your first job, it's very, very important to start investing and it's very, very important to realize that money invested over time can generate tremendous sums. So you have the compounded annual growth rate...let's say an average of 7% which is what you get in the stock market, generally speaking. Over time that can generate massive amounts of money. So if you start when you're in your 20's, by the time you're 50 you can have money that will pay for your kids' college, that will buy you a house on the lake, that will allow you to retire, that will allow to change jobs or allow you to do a lot of things and give you a lot of freedom but you have to start early and recognize that time is an asset. ZAK: Even if you're making, like, 30-thousand dollars a year?DORON: Even if you're making $30,000 and all you can put aside is $1,000, you should definitely do that. And then if you get a job at a place that has a 401k, which is a retirement account taht allows that money to compound, tax-free, then you should do that as well. There are lots of stories of janitors, teachers, fireman, people like that who retire with tremendous, tremendous pension accounts or tremendous savings accounts simply because they over time always invested and never spent that money and allowed it to accumulate and allow it to generate even more and more interest and the amounts become exponential.ZAK: Doron Levin is the editor-in-chief of Better Investing Magazine. If you have some pragmatic life-advice that we should hear, give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

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