Guest Post by Bash Sarmiento, author, educator, marketing specialist. ​

Because of the nature of a focus group, participants may be able to volunteer information or opinions that your team may not have considered or may have dismissed during previous research or internal discussions. Focus groups can be helpful for a business to gain insights into how consumers view the value of a certain project, for a nonprofit to understand how a community engages and would like to engage, and for a governmental agency, how it constituency is impacted by policies and how to mend such things as lack of confidence in government. ​

To decide whether a focus group is the way to go for your research, you first need to know what topic you will be covering. Is this the type of topic that would benefit from a focus group or maybe just a quick online survey? Focus groups can be time consuming, so it;s important to plan and understand the need for your time and effort in holding a focus groupA good tip is make sure not to keep the topics too broad so as to be able to carefully address the topics within the given amount of time, Narrowing down the topics will keep the discussion more focused! ​

You will be getting valuable qualitative information, but what will be the motivator for the participants to join your focus group? An incentive does not have to be monetary or even a large amount. Some examples can be free food and drinks or gift vouchers. The incentive mainly depends on your community, customers or constituents and your research budget. In general, the economic value of an incentive should be between one and four times one hour of minimum wages.. Too little and people will not be interested, and too much and you can skew your data with participants who want to please and will hold back on anything negative to say, in a sort of bargain for their incentive. ​

Begin by having everyone sign their attendance and consent forms since the discussion will be recorded, notes taken and used for research purposes. You can find consent forms online. The moderator can break the ice by introducing themselves first, then asking participants to do so as well, This gives the moderator an idea of who each person is and how to manage them, you can ask them to share their first name or nickname. If they are comfortable enough, they can share their occupation and interests. You can include something fun, like their super power or favorite dessert. ​

Read another post by Bash.

G​uest post by Elizabeth Mackenzie, CEO of Global PR Associates

According to a Bankrate survey, 55 percent of Americans in the workforce said they would likely look for a new job in the next 12 months. Professionals and other members of the country's workforce are looking for new challenges, higher-level responsibilities, and better salaries.

Studying and pursuing a new career represents much more than just a job decision for the coming years. A new career and job are the basis of your economic success and the level of well-being in your life. For that reason, you should think carefully about being important to the economy and achieving your long-term goals.

​Let's analyze these and other factors below.

Guest Post by Bash Sarmiento, author, educator, marketing specialist. 

While online methods of data collection may seem more convenient, they do have limits. For example, they tend to attract younger and tech-savvy users, which may lead to skewed results. With traditional surveys, this isn’t a problem. People of all ages and backgrounds tend to participate in these types of data gathering efforts. As such, they remain relevant. ​

While traditional surveys aren't always the best way to collect data, there are still good reasons to use them for looking into the customer experience and population wellbeing. They offer several advantages over alternative methods and can even be used to provide you with actionable insight. In the long-run, traditional surveys can still play a vital role in the success of your business and marketing efforts; policy and governing efforts; and nonprofit and activist efforts to make the world a better place. ​

Guest post by Elizabeth Mackenzie, CEO of Global PR Associates

It's simple to describe the characteristics of a high-performing team, but putting one together isn't always straightforward. There are a few crucial aspects to focus on while developing a high-performing team. This article lists five tips to help you effectively build a high-performing team. ​

​My daughter, who graduated from high school, had just enrolled in the sociology department at Columbia University. I asked her why did she choose sociology when she might be doing medicine or law which would earn her enough money. She told me, against all odds, that she wanted to be happy and not run after money.
 
I was very surprised especially since in America the system trains at the top of the education people who can solve economic problems, not necessarily those who can formulate them in a way that integrates the whole social dimension as the economy. implied. Indeed, from Adam Smith, to Ricardo, or Malthus as well as Charles Marx, the economy had always had a social dimension, but from the 19th century, the economy was financialized and claims to become a hard science at the same way of physics. Economic success is measured by the billions in profit a company has made even if it has laid off millions of workers for it.
 
During my fellowship at the university of Notre Dame, in Indiana, I witnessed a latent war between pure economists and economists who believed that the economy should be used for the development of peoples. The brightest Harvard students end up on Wall Street and don't do philosophy or literature. The consequence is that students are trained to enter this system to become employable. All horizons are reduced to economic accumulation. We develop the ability to build algorithms that make it easier to distribute and collect money. Success is thus measured by the amount of money accumulated. In one of my classes at Utah Vally University, I asked my students what they wanted to do with their lives. All without exception would like to make 6 figures of annual income, that is, to earn millions of dollars. So history lessons are deserted, except perhaps for the history of finance. Philosophy classes are barely audible, and anthropology, for which I spent ten years at Columbia University, is structured on very weak philosophical foundations. Indeed, between 2002 and 2008, as none of the professors in the anthropology department had a solid philosophical base, the department became excessively politicized.

​The goal of education in America is to train young people who will integrate the system, not challenge it. Indeed, to be able to question a politico-economic system that leaves behind thousands of poor people, we must be able to read and learn to argue. In America today, Goethe, Spinoza or Aristotle would live on food stamps because they would be unemployed. The system produces people who may be able to count, but who are fundamentally illiterate. It would be prudent for the world not to imitate America which only works for a handful of the haves and the rest work for them.
 
The world is not built by finance. Poetry, philosophy, literature have all helped to produce the world we live in. The economy as Oikia, the management of the household was part of the literature. In fact, in African villages out of 7 days of the week, there was one or two market days. The accumulation activities, which was also accompanied by people’s interactions in the market, took only two days.
 
In this hyper financial culture of America, how can we introduce an ethics such as Paul Ricoeur?  I had the good fortune to meet Ricoeur in the 1990s in Paris. According to Ricoeur, ethics is the search for the good life with and for others in just institutions

Let us briefly consider this Ricoeurian definition step by step:

1. The search for the good life. What is the good life? The basic minimum for a good life can be summed up in three things: a) eat well and dress well, b) seek treatment when you are sick and finally c) be able to send your offspring to good schools.
 
In the American context that I described above, eating well has become a path of ordeal for many families. I often have fun telling my African students that in America poor people are very fat because they eat bad food that costs less like Macdonalds and other “ne-fast food”.
 
b) To be properly treated, you must have medical insurance. Almost 40 million Americans do not have health insurance. They wait until they are very sick to go to the emergency room where they may be treated without paying. Obama had decided to become President of the United States , among other things,  to give the medical insurance to the millions of Americans, mostly black, who did not have it. In this world we have built where exchange value has become autonomous to the point of eliminating all traces of human relationships in the commodity, health has become the place of enrichment for insurance companies.
 
Finally, c) send your children to good schools. The parents of my students at Mary Mount Manhattan College in New York were spending a fortune to educate their children at the university level. In short, higher education in America has become a business. The best universities belong to a former football league called today Ivy League which includes all the best American universities including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Stanford or UPenn, etc. In these private universities the academic fees go up to $ 70,000 per year and have to be multiplied by 4 years. Students finish their university studies with large debts towards banks. Banks have indeed found natural customers who repay once they have finished their studies. So young American couples start their lives miserably because they have to reimburse the costs of their studies.
 
In fact, everything that is vital has become a source of profit for American capitalism. Food, health or education, which form the backbone of the good life, have become places of profit in the United States of America. In the great America, profit has thus become the unsurpassable horizon of human action.

2)The second element of ethics of Ricoeur is that this good life must be lived with others. The ego, without the others, is a Robinson Crusoe, it does not exist. Merleau-Ponty expressed it very well in his Praise of Philosophy, I quote: "Either it is with others that we are going to the truth, or we are not going to the truth. "

If we proclaim that a firm like General Motors has made several billions in profits and that its CEO has earned a bonus of several million dollars, and at the same time we announce that the firm has gotten rid of 3000 employees, that's success. This is an example of a successful American business.
 
Ricoeur does not stop with the fact that ethical living is the search for the good life with others, but also for others. Attention to others is elevated to the rank of ethical primacy. The weak and the less able wait for the strong and the smartest to come to their aid. Emmanuel Levis talks to us about the face of the other which imposes itself on me like as a law. A life for others therefore has an undeniable ethical value and is constitutive of our primordial self (our selfhood, as Ricœur would say).
 
3) Finally and very briefly, as I would take a whole MDW to dissect the rest of the elements of the ethical definition of Paul Ricoeur,  the last phase of the Ricoeurian ethics is that the good life with and for others must be lived in just institutions. It is our duty to work to build just institutions, a governable country for the good of all.

Your weight is very personal in more ways that you might think. Perhaps the most important is your perfect weight. There is no formula for the best weight for any body, no matter what charts, BMI counts or anything else says. The way to determine the perfect weight for you is your experience. 

Each person is individual and their body is uniquely designed to do what they are best at doing. Some people are built for power, some for speed, some for endurance and some for survival in starvation times. Some people are designed to be slow and methodical, some are deigned to be quick and efficient. 

When it comes to what you should eat, millions of years of evolution can’t be wrong. For the most part, if it tastes good, it is good for you. There are three caveats: (1) To the extent that today’s diet has changed from our evolutionary diet, you  should carefully consider if a similar food would be available in large quantities in your natural evolutionary diet. (2) Human beings generally thrive on variety and moderation and (3) People gain weight at they age - this is part of the natural changes as we age.  

The same is true for exercise. Pay attention to the kind of physical activity that feels good to you. The best guide for what foods to eat and how much is your instincts. As adults, many of us lose our instincts for what to eat. 

Our advice when it comes to your weight and food is to ditch diets, focus on getting in touch with your innate instincts about what tastes good and feels good, and eat what tastes good and do the exercise that feels good. If you want to discuss diet and exercise further to discover what works best for your body and your needs and desires, you can meet with your doctor. 

When you were a child, your weight was expected to change with each year of your growth. There is a misunderstanding that upon maturity, you should stay the same weight for the rest of you life, and if you do not, you have eaten too much or not exercised enough.  The truth is your age and weight are connected throughout your life. You can look at the people in your family over time and see this. Young people are generally the thinest in a family, and the older people get, the larger they are. On average, a person can expect to gain one pound a year after they have reach physical maturity - about 25 years old for most people. This is just an average though. Some people will gain much less, and some will gain much more. If you feel like you should lose weight, we recommend you set realistic goals, and, most importantly, focus on your health over how much you weigh. A balanced diet, good exercise for you, getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night and good self care are good steps. We also recommend talking to your doctor about the best weight for you given your body type, life style and health circumstances

Your body treats carbs and fat differently. Carbs are the body’s primary source of fuel. When your body is relying on its primary source of fuel, most of the time, your body is purring along. You feel good. When your body switches over to rely on its secondary source of fuel, you tend to get angry and hungry, or “hangry.” Most of the time, hangry is when your body is craving carbs because it does not want to burn its fat. Our bodies are programmed to want to hold on to our fat just in case we face a starvation time.

The brain in particular is used to burning carbs. Carbs - more specifically sugar - is what the brain prefers to burn for fuel. You brain does not function as smoothly when it does not have the carbs (and sugar) that it wants. This makes for a bad mood and sluggish thinking - not a good combination.
One way to counteract the hangry without taking in more carbs is acquaint your body with the idea of burning fat through intermittent fasting and a diet with a good amount of fat. When you intermittently fast, you tell your body to burn that fat. When you eat fat, you assure your body that it is not going to starve. Every body is unique, so we advise you talk with your doctor about whether intermittent fasting is good for you, and about your eating patterns to find out how much fat is the right amount for you.

Self care is not selfish or indulgence. This is especially true if you are a caretaker, work in a caring profession, or identify as a caring person. Think of self care as the fuel that allows you to care. Self care empowers you - no matter who you are - in all you do.  Self care includes taking care of your body and your mind. It includes giving yourself enough time to rest.  Self care is taking care of your sleep problems and giving yourself enough time to get at leas 8 hours of sleep a night. It includes doing something physical on a regular basis that you love to do, whether that is stretching, going for walks or spending time in the great outdoors even when your life feels so busy you hardly have time to breathe. It includes eating foods that are good for you, and taking your vitamins - including vitamin D in these dark days! Self care includes recognizing that your feelings matter and taking them into account in your daily life. These are just some aspects of self care. Take stock of your self care. If you think that maybe some of the things you do to care for yourself may be harmful in the long term or are leaving you in a cycle of hurt, we encourage you to talk to your doctor and see if you can find ways to care of yourself so that you are flourishing physically and mentally.

As the year slowly comes to an end, you will most likely hear the phrase “have a happy holiday” over a million times. Whether that be from a grocery store cashier or your coworkers, have a happy holiday is something you’ll be hearing a lot.
 
For most people, this isn’t a big deal, but if you’re someone who typically experiences the holiday blues, this can be a bit of a trigger. To help you associate the holidays with joy and beat the blues, keep reading for some tips.

​Bringing joy to other people may help bring some happiness to you. It’s nothing better than knowing that you’re making someone’s day or seeing someone smile after something that you’ve done for them.
 
As it is the holiday season, consider going to a senior living community and visiting an older adult who may not have loved ones to spend the holidays with or participate in one of the many toy drives that occur this time of year. Giving back and connecting with your local community not only can lift someone else's spirits but help lift yours.

​There are no requirements that say that you have to spend the holidays with a certain group of people. Meaning, if your family isn’t the best for your mental well-being and happiness, you do not have to be around them during this time. This goes for any group of people that may cause you mental distress.
 
Instead, make sure you’re around people who make you happy and don’t drain your energy. This can be a significant other, your partner's family, or even a group of co-workers. As long as they’re good for your peace of mind, it doesn’t matter who they are.

​If you find yourself struggling, you do not have to struggle alone. There are always people willing to listen and help you through your feelings. You can try online support groups if you want to discuss your feelings with multiple people or you can try a more  private session online with a psychiatrist - see For Hims or For Hers - or visit your doctor or a local therapist. 
 
Whatever you decide, make sure you’re open and honest. It’ll help when trying to pinpoint the origin of your holiday blues and the best way to go about changing your situation.

​Sometimes your sadness may be more than just the holiday blues. You might actually be experiencing a condition like seasonal affective disorder (SAD). If you started having feelings of loneliness, hopelessness, and sadness around the time the weather began to get colder, it’s a high chance that you are.
 
To help combat these symptoms and bring some happiness back into your life, try getting yourself a light therapy lamp. These lamps replicate sunlight and can help boost your mood. Or you can keep a journal and write down some things that make you happy during the winter. It may be something as simple as you love the shape of the snowflakes or the way the snow looks on the trees.
 
Your mental health and happiness matter year-round, so don’t think that these tips are only for the holidays. Utilize them any time that you’re feeling down. You never know how much it might help.