Author Dan Buettner and his team have been working for over a decade on identifying places of longevity worldwide. They found places with a high concentration of individuals over 100 years old and clusters of people who had grown old without health problems like heart disease, obesity, cancer, or diabetes.

Blue Zones

This island is eight miles off the coast of Turkey in the Aegean Sea. It has some of the lowest rates of middle-age mortality and dementia worldwide. Research suggests their increased longevity is linked to their traditional Mediterranean diet.

Ikaria, Greece

Okinawa is home to the world’s longest-lived women.  Their diet includes staples like Okinawan sweet potatoes, soybeans, mugwort, turmeric, and goya (bitter melon).

Okinawa, Japan

The mountainous highlands of this Italian island has the world’s highest concentration of centenarian men. They eat a low-protein diet associated with lower diabetes, cancer, and death rates for people under age 65.

Ogliastra Region, Sardinia

This community has the highest concentration of Seventh-day Adventists in the United States. The residents live ten healthy years more than the average American. Their diet includes grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

Loma Linda, California

In this region of Central America, residents have the world’s lowest rate of middle-age mortality and the second-highest concentration of male centenarians. They have strong faith communities, deep social networks, and regular, low-intensity physical activity.

Nicola Peninsula, Costa Rica

These cultures have uncovered the secrets of longevity.

health

Health

travel

Travel

longevity

Longevity

5 "Blue Zones" Where the World's Healthiest People Live

A conversion path is a process by which an anonymous website visitor becomes a known lead. It sounds simple enough, but creating an effective conversion path requires a clear understanding of your target audience and their needs.

A Conversion Path

<ul><li>Landing page: A landing page is a specific page on your website designed to collect a visitor’s contact information in exchange for a resource.</li><li>Call-to-action: A call-to-action is a section on a webpage or advertisement that persuades the visitor to act or do something. </li><li>Thank you page: The thank you page shows your visitors that you appreciate them for taking the desired action. </li><li>End point: This may be in the form of a content offer, which is any material or resource given to a visitor in exchange for their contact information, completing the conversion path.</li></ul>

The Four Common Attributes Of a Conversion Path

You need to attract your target audience with context-appropriate content. The content that will most appeal to your personas when they’re first visiting your website and converting a lead will generally be high-level and educational in nature. In order to be an effective tool in your conversion path toolkit, make sure you have remarkable content tailored to your buyer personas and where they are in the buyer’s journey.

Creating An Effective Conversion Path: Context-appropriate content

Landing pages are specialized website pages whose sole purpose is to collect visitors’ contact information in exchange for something of value to them. Landing pages contain forms that potential leads must fill out and submit before getting access to your remarkable content offer.Great landing pages focus on both who your personas are and where they are in the buyer’s journey.

Create Landing Pages That Speak To Your Personas

Calls-to-action or CTAs, are buttons you can embed throughout your website that advertise your content offers. When a visitor clicks on one of these calls-to-action, they’ll be taken to your landing page. In effect, every call-to-action you have on your website is the beginning of a conversion path.Ensure that CTAs are click-worthy by using actionable language and colours that help them stand out from the rest of your website.

Use Attention-Grabbing Calls-To-Action

Thank you pages are specialized website pages from which your now-leads can download the offer promised by your call-to-action and landing page. They’re also an opportunity to move people further along in the buyer’s journey, by including things like additional calls-to-action that complement the offer you've just provided your lead.

Close The Deal With Optimized Thank You Pages

Nearly half the world’s population uses a mobile device to access the internet. By the end of 2019, 3.8 billion people were mobile internet users, an increase of 250 million users from the previous year. Follow these steps to create a mobile conversion path that sets visitors up for success: <ul><li>Start with a responsive design</li><li>Nix cluttered landing pages</li><li>Keep CTAs to a minimum</li></ul>

Improving The Mobile Conversion Path Experience

Inbound marketing requires you to create remarkable content they'll want to trade their contact information for. From there, those leads turn into opportunities, who turn into customers and even promoters.Conversions are a big deal. So how can you optimize yours? By creating conversion paths optimized to most effectively convert your ideal visitors into leads.

Learn what conversion paths are, how they work, and how to design a good one.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

How Do Conversion Paths Work? A Step-by-Step Guide

Sometimes great ideas come when we aren't looking for them, but they can slip away just as fast. Just make a note to follow up later, as required, to discuss it with other team members or relevant experts.It's no fun to see a competitor implement a good idea that slipped your mind.

Record new ideas immediately or you will lose many

Communication is body language and listening, as well as the words you use. You need to be the model for the right mindset, rather than a perennial critic, or someone who takes all the credit for the insights and successes of others. Always give credit where credit is due.

Openly ask for new ideas from your team and others

Creative ideas are most often generated in the context of a specific problem, rather than occurring at random. So it's important to tackle every problem from every relevant perspective. In business, this means taking a customer view, vendor view, as well as your internal process view.

Redefine every problem from multiple perspectives

Very often, a problem gets solved in one environment, but years go by before the implications are recognized in other disciplines. For example, winemakers long ago learned to personalize their brand for added value, while other products still suffer as a commodity.

Look for problem connections to other disciplines

<ul><li>A key habit to develop is one of asking multiple questions that push the limits of your thinking, rather than taking the first idea that comes to mind and running with it. </li><li>Another is consistently trying new things, and overcoming your fear of failure. </li><li>Finally, be sure to reward yourself and celebrate all your successes.</li></ul>

Develop habits that increase creativity

Stop being so immediately critical of your and other peoples' ideas. Collect a range of ideas first, before trying to evaluate any of them. All ideas have some positive and some not-so-positive elements. The key is to build on the positive elements to make the idea stronger.

Separate imaginative thinking from judgmental thinking

Save the concerns until last, and then strive to address your concerns with a creative question. This way, your mind will immediately begin to look for ways to overcome the concerns, instead of killing the entire idea. You never want to discourage team members from sharing ideas with you.

 Evaluate ideas for pluses, potential, and concerns (PPC)

To get new ideas, you have to stretch beyond the first seemingly obvious solution to a question or issue. The more ways you can find to accomplish your goal, the greater your chances of doing it with creativity and innovation. Be sure to look for solutions from others, as well as yourself.

To solve a problem, set a target of at least 40 ideas

Don't give up quickly if your creative skills seem awkward or contrived at first. This is a normal human reaction the first few times any person plays the piano or throws a baseball. In fact, we are all inherently creative in different and valuable ways. Encourage team practice as well.

Accept that creativity, like any skill, requires practice

Every new problem is just a sign of a gap from where you are to where you need to be. That is a good thing in business since it leads to the creativity that is necessary for continued and future success. Also, by keeping you positive, it reduces the burden of stress that usually accompanies problems.

Strive to see new problems as new opportunities

career

Career

teamwork

Teamwork

business

Business

creativity

Creativity

10 Ways to Foster More Creative Solutions and Breakthrough Discoveries

Movies have significant earning power because they're sold so effectively.
Even though the movie industry earns billions of dollars a year, only a handful of Hollywood movies make a profit. Hollywood relies on its few runaway hits to make up for the rest of the films that fail to break even, making the job of the movie marketer even more important.

The art of movie marketing

Every major Hollywood studio and movie distribution company relies on their internal promotions department to design an advertising campaign across different media platforms. <ul><li>One tactic to make a film stand out is to go big. The marketing campaign for an expensive blockbuster movie often cost as much as half of the total production budget.</li><li>Opening weekend sales give a direct indication of how big the profit will be. Therefore, the marketing team needs to ensure strong opening weekend sales.</li></ul>

Movie marketing basics

The trailer is often the first chance to promote a movie and can start up to a year before releasing a major studio movie. Then the movie studio will unveil an official Web site for the film, where visitors can view several versions of the trailer, watch behind-the-scenes interviews, download cell-phone ringtones and desktop wallpaper, and play games.

Early movie marketing strategies

<ul><li>Closer to the release date, movie marketers try to get favourable coverage in newspapers, magazines and TV shows.</li><li>At the main movie publicity - or press junket - journalists, entertainment reporters and movie critics are flown to a unique location for interviews with the stars and creators.</li><li>A few weeks before the movie opens, a publicity blitz is rolled out. The public is bombarded with so many images and promotions that the movie can't go unnoticed.</li><li>A final strategy is a publicity stunt, where someone does something spectacular to draw attention to the movie.</li></ul>

Closer to the release date

<ul><li>Every movie is a unique product with its own potential. Just because one film was a hit doesn't mean the next one will be.</li><li>Movie marketers try to deal with this risk by heavily promoting expensive films, which significantly increases the expenses.</li><li>Movies are also marketed to the widest audience. The lack of focus means millions of dollars are lost on the wrong audience.</li><li>Moviegoers are quick to recognize a publicity blitz and are becoming less susceptible to advertising campaigns.</li></ul>

Problems with movie marketing

Are you curious about how movie marketing works? Check out HowStuffWorks to learn about how movie marketing works.

movies

Movies & Shows

How Movie Marketing Works

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

“Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

Children are happy because they don’t have a file in their minds called ‘All the Things That Could Go Wrong.’

“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.”

“One must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy.”

“Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot.”

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”

20 inspiration quotes on happiness to spread smiles and joy in your life.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Happiness Quotes That Can Bring You Joy in Life

"Change is the only constant in life."

Change happens all around us, all of the time. Sometimes quickly, but often slowly, we change.
When something is changing in our lives there as three possibilities as to why:
<ol>
<li>Things are getting better</li>
<li>Things are going downhill; or</li>
<li>The change is neutral.</li>
</ol>

Asking ourselves about change

We are changing, and we are either becoming more like the people we want to be or less. It is helpful to stop and evaluate and see which direction we are heading.
We know that not all change is good but if we are moving towards the direction to the person we want to become then that means we're doing something right for us.

The truth of you and me

<ol>
<li>You can always change. You're the only person who gets to decide who you become.</li>
<li>Change your habits, not your goals.</li>
<li>Take comfort in the idea that we live in a society where we love seeing people changing for the better.</li>
<li>It's never too late to change. As long as you're living, you have the chance to change, and although we can't change the past, we sure can redeem it.</li>
<li>People are remembered for who they were not for their accomplishments.</li>
</ol>

Discontentment with the self: changing the course

We ask a lot of questions of ourselves and each other: But one of the most self-reflective, and most helpful questions we could ever ask ourselves focuses less on what we are doing, and more on who we are becoming.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

Do You Like the Person You Are Becoming?

<ul><li>Thinking of your time as money</li><li>Scheduling your energy</li><li>Networking</li><li>Getting started early</li><li>Planning everything in advance</li><li>Setting short goals</li><li>Meditating and winding down</li><li>Active Listening</li><li>Eliminating ANTS(automatic negative thoughts)</li></ul>

9 Skills That Will Immediately Improve Your Life

Without learning to manage your time, you let urgent tasks and other people control how you spend your life.

“Remember, people do business with people they know, like, and trust.” - Susan Solovic

These essential skills are never taught in school, but they will pay dividends for your entire life. "Anyone who stops learning is old whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays strong." - Henry Ford We often focus only on learning skills that are directly pertinent to our jobs during the busy workweek.

productivity

Productivity

habits

Habits

timemanagement

Time Management

Learning These 9 Tough Skills Will Immediately Improve Your Entire Life

Austrian astronomer Joseph Johann Von Littrow proposed early in the 19th century that people should send a message to alien civilizations to let them know we are here.
He proposed to dig trenches configured in large geometric patterns in the Sahara Desert, fill them with kerosene and light them. His idea never came to fruition, but we haven't stopped our attempts to contact extraterrestrial life.

Contacting alien civilizations

In 1962, the Soviet scientists directed a radio transmitter at Venus and saluted the planet in Morse code. The message was a test run for a new planetary radar to map objects in the solar system.
In 1974, a group of scientists transmitted a radio message toward Messier 13, a cluster of stars about 25,000 light-years away. The image was sent in binary code and depicted a human stick figure, a double-helix DNA structure, a carbon atom model, and a diagram of a telescope.

Signals sent in the past

Spacecraft containing artefacts have also been launched from Earth, hoping intelligent life-forms will eventually find them.
Voyagers 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 and carried a Golden Record containing music, ambient sounds from Earth and 116 images of our planet and solar system.

Spacecraft carrying artefacts

The likelihood that any of the attempts to make contact with aliens will reach their intended targets are low.
It contains too many assumptions, such as that if aliens exist, they hear and see the same way we do. Then they have to listen for radio signals and understand enough maths and science to interpret our messages.

The likelihood of success

In the early 19th century, astronomer Joseph Johann Von Littrow proposed we light the Sahara desert on fire to send a message to alien civilizations. We've come a long way since that idea — but we haven't stopped trying to contact life in space.

sciencefiction

Science Fiction

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

What messages have we sent to aliens?

Most of us when asked ‘so what do you do?’ at a typical party conversation end up describing our job profile and the work that we do, as it makes up our main identity, and sometimes the only identity we have.
Our career takes up most of our time and energy, but only defining oneself professionally is limiting and even diminishing our self-identity.

When We Identify With Our Job

<ol>
<li>It limits you to a single identity.</li>
<li>It gives an incomplete and shallow picture of you to others.</li>
<li>It doesn’t leave room for connections and serendipity.</li>
<li>It leads to burnout as we keep running the same treadmill of work and start to think we are only something because of it.</li>
</ol>

Dangers Of Identifying Yourself With Your Job

Next time you are meeting a stranger or a party attendee, describe yourself with something less career-oriented, like how you spend your free time, what is it that you are really proud of, or what you do during your weekends.
This can lead to authentic and stimulating conversations, and remind you that you aren’t just your job.

How To Describe Yourself Outside Of Work

Instead of defining yourself by your day job, consider the benefits of giving details about your hobbies, goals, and dreams instead. 

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

What Do You Do? Why Your Identity Should Be More Than Your Day Job

We have to go after what we want, but sometimes life differs from our expectations. The environment, the circumstances, and other people may all have incompatibilities that do not coincide with our dreams.Sometimes it takes time for all the variables to line up and to work in your favor. Timing is everything; and only when you are patient, humble and dedicated, can success be attained.

Timing Is Everything

Only say what is important, do not try to explain to others how much you know or how much you have accomplished. Show them through your actions and work towards not been affected by their opinion.A happy person who has something that you lack will never show it off. Humility builds character; it allows one to grow and prosper without stressing about what others think.

Live And Flourish

We must not forget to reflect on how we truly feel, to assess what we are aiming for and if we are capable of reaching what’s best for us.Look towards others for guidance, but don’t forget we experience life differently and comparing yourself to others leads to a less satisfying life. It takes strength to be set on your goals, but it takes even more strength to accept that plans change and that your well-being is more important than the plan you made a few years ago.

Understand Yourself Through Discipline

Negativity, hate and hurtful critiques need not be shared or carried forward in our lives. Speaking against abusive behaviors is necessary, but actively looking to gossip and antagonize others fosters discrimination and division.Thus, we must keep a good company and not say all we think.

Don't Participate In Negativity

Your judgment concerning a challenge or difficulty will determine the outcome of that incident on your mental, emotional and physical state.Difficulties test our values and create, or solidify our morals. Treat everything as something you can learn from, and you will educate yourself on the art of living a balanced, undisturbed life.

Difficulties Breed Wisdom 

Stoic philosophers, such as Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, have written about the inner tranquility, calm and freedom one can achieve when they embrace stoicism. By altering one's mindset and learning that perception and self-discipline are the key to achieving happiness, an individual can attain a peaceful life.

5 "Blue Zones" Where the World's Healthiest People Live

How Do Conversion Paths Work? A Step-by-Step Guide

10 Ways to Foster More Creative Solutions and Breakthrough Discoveries

How Movie Marketing Works

Happiness Quotes That Can Bring You Joy in Life

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