Uber Just Surrendered To Its Biggest Rival In China

(Reuters) – After a bruising two-year battle, ride-hailing firm Uber is selling its China operations to bigger local rival Didi Chuxing in a deal that will give Uber a one-fifth stake in Didi.

The merged entity is worth around $35 billion – combining Didi’s most recent $28 billion valuation and Uber China’s $7 billion worth – said a source familiar with the matter who did not want to be named before the deal was made public.

Didi confirmed the agreement on its official microblog, but gave no valuation. In a posting on Uber’s website, CEO Travis Kalanick said San Francisco-based Uber Technologies would have a one-fifth stake in Didi, making it the Chinese firm’s biggest shareholder. Kalanick will join Didi’s board, with Didi Chuxing chief Cheng Wei joining the Uber board.

Uber will continue to operate independently, the Didi posting said. “Cooperating with Uber will give the entire mobile travel industry a healthier order and a period of a higher level of development,” it said.

China has been a challenging market for Uber, which has spent billions of dollars in a price war with Didi.

Both firms spent heavily to attract riders with discounts and both also raised billions in recent fundraisings. Uber is profitable in the United States, Canada and about 100 other cities.

In an internal message to staff viewed by Reuters, Kalanick wrote: “Sustainably serving China’s cities, and the riders and drivers who live in them, is only possible with profitability. This merger paves the way for our team and Didi’s to partner on an enormous mission, and it frees up substantial resources for bold initiatives focused on the future of cities – from self-driving technology to the future of food and logistics.”

He said Uber was operating in more than 60 cities in China and “doing more than 150 million trips a month.” Didi, however, claims 87 percent of the Chinese market for private vehicle ride-hailing.

Richard Ji, Hong Kong-based co-founder of All-Stars Investment Ltd, which manages about $900 million and owns Didi stock, said the deal makes “huge sense”.

“Uber faces an uphill task in China especially since Didi is multiple times larger by transaction value and city coverage,” he said.

“This will lead to favorable outcomes for both companies. The biggest benefit is cost savings, they no longer have to give out subsidies to drivers and passengers. It will give pricing power as the new entity will become the dominant player. That means profitability will come sooner than later.”

Under the deal, Didi will also invest $1 billion in Uber, which operates globally outside China, the source said, adding to a series of deals and joint ventures Didi has struck in recent years.

 

INTERNATIONAL AMBITION

Analysts said Didi’s acquisition signals its readiness to step beyond its home market.

“This clearly shows Didi’s global ambitions and its desire to work together with Uber to tap Chinese travelers, who are going out in big numbers. There’s a possibility the two could work together in other markets,” All-Stars Investment’s Ji said.

Didi said in its posting it will look to expand its international business and enter markets like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Europe and Russia.

Didi – itself created last year from a merger of two firms backed respectively by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and social network firm Tencent – has invested $100 million in Lyft, Uber’s main rival in the United States.

It has also formed an alliance with Lyft, India’s ride service Ola and Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing startup Grab in an effort to compete with Uber’s global dominance.

The Didi deal is the latest sign that global Internet and technology companies are struggling to break into China’s cut-throat market, where local entrepreneurs have built formidable businesses, partly helped by a supportive government.

All of China’s technology heavyweights will be stakeholders in Didi, as Uber shareholder Baidu will gain a stake. Apple Inc recently made a rare $1 billion investment in Didi.

China last week issued guidelines that establish a long-awaited framework for the booming ride-hailing industry and remove uncertainty for firms such as Didi and Uber.

It was unclear whether the deal would need to be cleared by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), the anti-trust regulator.

“Given Didi’s reported high market share, any increment would attract MOFCOM’s attention. But for the parties to seek pre-closing approval, each has to meet the minimum sales threshold. That’s where it’s unclear whether an anti-trust filing would be required,” said Marc Waha, partner at Norton Rose Fulbright.

 

(Reporting by Heather Somerville in SAN FRANCISCO, Denny Thomas in HONG KONG, Rama Venkat Raman in BENGALURU, Jake Spring and Beijing monitoring team in Beijing, and Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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There Is No Away (Pluckfastic!)

Hold up a small blue marble at arm’s length: that’s what we look like from one million miles away. We are all part of the same small, gorgeous and blue planet. We are unique in the universe (as far as we know), and teeming with water-based life.

All we know from centuries past and future has and will happen on this spinning orb we call home. Every decision, good or bad, has real, lasting consequences for our world. This blue marble is our one and only — as they say, “there is no Planet B.”

In the past century, however, our material lives have reflected a vastly different philosophy. Since our economy began using petroleum as fuel and as materials like plastic a mere hundred years ago, the way we move and live has unleashed a cascade of unintended chemical consequences on the earth. 

Climate change, ocean acidification and oil spills are all real threats to our environment, but the plague I wish to discuss is Plastic Pollution.

Kids growing up 30 years ago were part of a very different consumer landscape: drinking water came from water fountains, milk came in glass bottles, and ubiquitous plastic shopping bags didn’t exist. It was rare to encounter plastic trash in the wild, but when it was we removed it and restored the beach, trail or park to its relatively natural, clean state.

In a few quick decades that’s all changed. Plastic production has grown exponentially and it now pervades our lives. It’s nearly everywhere, and it’s unavoidable. 

If something’s not made of disposable plastic now, just wait for a moment and it will be. Bags, bottles, cameras, cars, clothes, combs, computers, flip flops, forks, glasses, lunch boxes, mugs, plates, pipes, straws, telephones, toothbrushes, toys, umbrellas… the list is endlessly expansive.

From fashion to electronics to vehicles, we have created an economy based on our ability to discard objects that may or may not still be useful. Even our word choices reflect our lack of consideration for how actions impact the planet. “Throw it away” is what we think we are doing when we discard an unneeded object.

“No one ever thought about, what does ‘away’ really mean?” my friend Dr. Marcus Eriksen said. “You are living in a world with 7+ billion people now. There is no room for ‘away.'”

Walking a beach on a remote, uninhabited island in Indonesia, I found colorful remnants of many of these items, discarded by former owners far, far away. The ubiquity of plastic has become the new normal, part of the ecosystem, with ramifications that boggle the mind

During the past century, plastic production soared from close to nothing in 1912 to more than 1.5 million metric tons in 1950 and nearly 300 million metric tons in 2012. Our planet’s system has failed to manage this material — since the 1970s at least 0.1% of this plastic has ended up in our waterways and oceans annually. Estimates suggest that hundreds of millions of tons of plastics circulate in the North Pacific marine system alone, and this problem is growing in all ocean basins.  

Once at sea, plastic breaks down into smaller pieces, but it still doesn’t really go “away.” Some sinks to the ocean floor, some washes up on beaches and some is eaten by fish and makes its way back to land in our seafood. A plastic bottle can take hundreds of years to degrade, whereas a long-lasting coconut fiber degrades in 20 years, an orange peel in six months and brown paper in just a few weeks.

As plastic persists in the environment it breaks into ever-smaller fragments called micro-plastic. Consumer products like facial scrubs and toothpaste can also contain tiny plastic beads that make their way to our waterways. About 10 percent of the plastic is visible, while the rest is buried under the sand.

On one seemingly clean beach, Marc Ward from the Sea Turtles Forever Blue Wave Team filtered more than half a pound of plastic from one square meter of water at Crescent Beach, Oregon in the summer of 2012, including 739 styrene flakes and 861 industrial pellets. Micro-plastic is found in the Great Lakes, many rivers and every ocean around the world. 

In Brazil we discovered more than 3,500 pieces of plastic of all sizes inside one young green sea turtle — a new (sad) record. By my estimates every sea turtle on the planet will eat some plastic during its life. At the one extreme an animal can choke, suffocate, and die. If it gets off easy and survives the plastic it will have decreased energy, slower growth, and lower reproductive rates. Ultimately, this means fewer baby turtles.

The ocean is not “full” of plastic — it’s far too vast. But plastic has now invaded ecosystems, animals and ourselves in ways its inventors and makers never imagined.

Cleaning up this mess is a challenge, but countries, municipalities, and communities around the world are taking action to stem the flow of plastics into our environment and find real, lasting solutions. We do have the answers and technologies to solve this, but we need more political and personal will to get there.

It’s clear to me that things will get much worse before they get better. But it’s also true that in the past decade the number of citizens, scientists, businesses, students, organizations, and governments working towards a fix has grown tremendously. Bold experiments with materials, communications, and policy are underway with the results being shared fast and far.

Along with our understanding that “there is no away” we’ll need to wrestle with the question “how much is enough?”

It’s time we apply that same innovation, creativity, passion, and drive to do good embodied by businesses like those listed below to evolve the way we live and love on our one blue marble

“Away” is right here. And enough is enough.

pluckfastic (adj)

1. alternative to plastic conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; fun and creative alternatives to the single use plastics that pollute our ocean and beaches (e.g. a pluckfastic bag, bottle, fork).

2. extraordinarily good quality, made to get the job done then biodegrade, in reference to an alternative to disposable, toxic plastic.

3. an exclamation in response to someone using a reusable or biodegradable alternative to disposable, single-use plastic; as in: “wow, that’s a pluckfastic refillable glass water bottle (or coffee mug or shopping bag or take-out container) with the pluckfastic.org sticker on it!” or “r u pluckfastic?”

Taking it to the Beach: 5 orgs doing their part to change our relationship with plastic (and then some)

5 Gyres

Sea Turtles Forever

Plastic Pollution Coalition

Save Our Shores

Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Take Five: 5 companies making it easier to say no, thanks.

ChicoBag ~ a small reusable bags you’ll always have handy.

Klean Kanteen ~ stay hydrated in style.

To-Go Wear ~ reusable utensils galore.

Glass Dharma ~ for gorgeous reusable glass straws.

My Plastic Free Life ~ for everything else you need to know!

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President Obama Having Copies Of FEMA Camp Keys Made For Hillary

More daily fake news at The Political Garbage Chute.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Reporters in the nation’s capital recently stumbled upon President Barack Hussein Obama (D-Kenya) at the Home Depot nearest the White House. Obama was found in the aisle where keys are made, and when asked by the media, he said that he was making copies of the keys Hillary Clinton would need as president to lock and unlock various gates, doors, and confiscated gun warehouses located in FEMA camps around the country.

“Make no mistake,” Obama said as he chose a fun, Disney-themed key blank for the Home Depot employee to use, “the next president will have to carry out Order 666, since it appears I will not be able to. And Lord Alinsky’s spirit has ordered me to make copies of these keys so that Hillary can do just that.”

Obama said that Order 666 was the “quadruple-hardcore-super-duper-classified” executive order that only he and the right-wing conspiracy theory industry knows about. It dictates that all “Alinsky Acolytes” report to the nearest FEMA camp in their town, where they will be issued nets to capture Americans to be brought back to the camps. There, the captured citizens will be stripped of all their guns and be forced to either get a gay marriage or perform an abortion.

“She won’t be able to open the doors to the camps without a key,” Obama said, “so Master Alinsky’s ghost figured since I’m a lame duck president and Congress is out campaigning right now, I might as well come down here and get some keys made.” Obama said he’d also be picking up some disinfectant wipes and a new set of sprinkler valves for the White House, since he was already going to Home Depot anyway.

President Obama also plans to show Mrs. Clinton the secret map to America’s underground communist railroad per George Soros’ request. Obama told reporters he “may or may not” have time to show her the combination to the safe in the White House where the “Marshal Law” orders are kept, but he does plan to show her where they keep the extra kitchen garbage bags. The pass code for the drone flight operation room will be given to Mrs. Clinton just before she’s sworn-in next January.

“Hillary Clinton is going to do a wonderful job as president,” Obama said, “and she will most certainly carry out the directives I was not able to. Comrade Clinton is someone I trust not only with the secret pans to shred the Constitution, I know she will do the right thing and immediately declare the presidency null and void and hand power right back to me, Emperor Obama.”

This is a developing story.

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Milestone Birthdays This Month For National Park Service & Me!

Happy Birthday month to me and the National Park Service!

This first day of August we both enter a month of symbolic birthdays. On August 21 I turn 65 and become Medicare eligible, though I still feel the youthful enthusiasm and zest I felt as a child, largely because of the experiences I’ve had in our stupendous national parks. On August 25 our National Park Service celebrates its 100th birthday and enters its second century as caretaker of our national treasures in a country that is vastly different by race, ethnicity, gender and age than in 1916, and sorely in need of the lessons from our parks to help unify us.

From the perspective of age 65, I can see the long arm of destiny in my life. As a little girl growing up in Jamaica in the 1950s, slipping away to sit by myself on the banks of the stream that ran through our village, how could I have known that I was being prepared for the role I would play in my life? Sitting quietly under cool shade trees, watching schools of tiny fish darting and turning in the water and shrimp backpedaling on their tailfins, I dreamed of someday becoming a tour guide and introducing people to stunningly beautiful and historic places.

I had no concept of America, and no idea there was such a thing as a National Park System in the world. Yet for the past 20 years my husband Frank and I have been at the forefront of a movement that has made America’s national parks household words in homes where they’d never been uttered before, and growing numbers of ethnically diverse Americans have been drawn to visit and stand up for our parks.

From the perspective of 21 years ardent involvement with the National Park System, I can see the long arc the Park Service has traveled from its inception by passionate conservationists in 1916 to where it is today. The first director of the Service, Stephen Mather was also instrumental in its creation. His passion for nature and for protecting treasured spaces for Americans into perpetuity mirrors mine and can be deduced from how he left no stone unturned to achieve those goals.

According to PBS, Mather “counted as one of the highlights of his life meeting the legendary John Muir on a hike in Sequoia National Park in 1912. When he visited Sequoia and Yosemite in the summer of 1914, Mather was disgusted by the poor condition of the parks.

“He wrote a letter of complaint to his college friend, Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane, who invited Mather to come to Washington and do something about it himself. Mather accepted the challenge. As assistant to Lane in charge of the parks, he began a crusade to mold a haphazard collection of national parks into a cohesive system and to create a federal agency solely devoted to them: the National Park Service.

“Mather took on staff, paying their salaries out of his own pocket, and began a public relations and political lobbying campaign to build awareness of the parks and increase their size and number. He raised funds from his wealthy friends to purchase new park lands and he often purchased land himself and donated it to the National Park Service for protection. He joined forces with the budding automotive industry to ‘democratize’ the parks by making them more accessible to a broader cross-section of Americans. He and his assistant, Horace Albright, professionalized the corps of superintendents and rangers in the parks. . .”

Today, the current office holder in Mather’s position is fronting a proposal that, for the first time in 100 years, would allow greater commercial/corporate presence in our national parks and require park staff to raise funds, completely foreign to their job description. As I discuss in this blog, the order has been criticized by the National Parks Conservation Association, the Coalition of Retirees and is the subject of multiple online petitions, but still today is shrouded in secrecy. It is scheduled to go into office in 2017 when the current director will have left office.

As the Service enters its much-heralded Centennial month, we remain far short of Mather’s goals of “democratizing” the system and making it accessible to a broader cross section of the public. Many millions of people still have not been reached with the message that there are such things as national parks, that they represent our collective legacy and history, that they belong to us and that we have the duty and privilege of protecting them for the future.

To help accomplish these goals Frank and I, along with legions of other people including members of the Diverse Environmental Leaders Speakers Bureau that we formed in 2014, are among the catalysts for a growing nature movement of racially diverse Americans. As members of the Next100 Coalition, we are striving to help shape a new vision for the Park Service’s Next 100 years by asking President Obama to issue a Presidential Memorandum with policies to ensure a more diverse system, workforce and stream of visitors.

Like Mather, this week we’re heading to Washington, DC to do what we can for the parks and their future, including helping inspire young leaders in the Historically Black Colleges & Universities Initiative (HBCUI) for public lands, accompanying them to meet with Members of Congress and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.

For mine and the Park Service’s birthdays, the greatest gift I could get is to see Mather’s vision for the Park Service being realized. I know it can happen because my nascent vision as a child desiring to be a tour guide introducing people to beautiful places has been filled beyond my wildest dreams, almost outside my own volition. The great mystic and philosopher Joseph Campbell said it best in The Power of Myth, “I don’t have to have faith. I have experience.”

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5 Ways To Forgive Fast

Forgiveness and in particular, forgiving yourself, is the thing that changes everything else!

Once you forgive yourself, you can find it in your heart to forgive others. And if you can forgive yourself and others, then your peace is restored. And feeling peace is feeling joy!

I have learned to tell the difference when I have peace in my gut (where I actually feel most things) and not. And I am working on recognising it, then finding out what fear lies behind the lack of peace and then letting it go or addressing it.

Peace in your gut is a great indicator of your level of joy – in everything. Without forgiving yourself and feeling compassion for yourself, that peace is hard to find – or feel!

So this is your mission – should you choose to accept it!

Give yourself 30 minutes every couple of days for a couple of weeks (if you need that long), and reflect on and write down all the situations in your life in which you need to forgive YOURSELF!

Remember, if you are one that was abused as a little child – IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.

Or if you feel you have been a ‘bad’ parent or grouchy – be gentle on yourself. Forgive yourself and make a promise that you will be more conscious of how you behave!

Just forgive yourself no matter what – not even for anything specific – no need to delve – just decide to forgive yourself – and make a decision to be mindful and conscious of how you are behaving in every moment – and you won’t need to forgive yourself!

If it’s the little child in you that needs forgiveness – hug them and let them know you love them and you forgive them no matter what.

When you forgive yourself for whatever you have done in the past or have had done to you, you can then work on forgiving others.

You don’t have to feel great love for them or speak to them – just decide to forgive them. Most of us will never understand why things happen in the grand scheme – but we can chose to do what we need to in order to learn our lessons – or not!

Our lesson is often self forgiveness! And always LOVE – self love first, then you can love others.

If you can’t think of a way to forgive yourself, try the ancient Hawaiian Ho’oponopono Prayer – used for centuries to heal.

Repeat with as much feeling as possible:

I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you
I love you.

You, the adult, can say this to you, the fearful, unsafe child trapped inside – or to you the adult who needs to be forgiven.

You can say it to anyone in person – or send the thoughts to them.

If you can really mean the words, it works faster! Start with saying them and grow into meaning them!

Above all – find a way to forgive yourself!

When you feel peace in your stomach (or heart) – you will know you have succeeded!

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Zooties,

Amanda Gore

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Ways Of Expressing One's Personality

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We are all the same, yet so different. It’s incredible that there are so many people on the Earth, and you can hardly find human beings who are alike, even twins look different if one takes a closer look at them. And no doubt that we are not only different in term of our physical looks, but also regarding our views on life, moral values, attitudes, and beliefs.

Every child in the process of development reaches a stage when it becomes a personality. It’s a long process through which a child can make a lot of mistakes, learn new things all the time, formulate his or her interests, hobbies, attitudes, perception of life, etc. Society as a whole and parents are guiding the child and influence his or her further personality development.

Through the process of child’s development to the stage when one reaches maturity, the attitudes and life views can undergo different changes. Often, to convey one’s individuality, teenagers and adults show their opinions and express their personality via different things.

Choosing a particular outfit is going to tell a lot about each person. We cannot read other people’s mind, – that’s why we formulate our first impressions by looking at them and what they are wearing. There are different clothes styles, like official one (if we want to emphasize our professionalism), casual (when we just want to feel comfortable without attracting too much attention), etc. One could also combine different clothes styles to emphasize his or her innovativeness and boldness. The choice of the clothes color is going to say something about a person as well. There is a danger, of course, to fall into a stereotypical thinking and make wrong conclusions, like perceiving an individual who is wearing black as someone strict, sad, serious, but we can try and pass those stereotypes. Besides, first impressions are not the last ones.

Choosing certain accessories can talk quite a bit about every person. Wearing earrings, necklaces, bracelets of an individual form serves as a great way of self-expression, especially for women. Men can choose some embroidered hats with their creative logo and image, customized purses, bags and watches to express their personality.

Getting a tattoo is one of the ways of revealing one’s identity as well. Depending on what picture, sign, words and in what part of the body one chooses to have a tattoo, it will show a person’s interests and views. For example, seeing a tattoo of a camera on a person’s hand will speak about his/her interest in photography and, probably, art in general.

Wearing a particular makeup (or not wearing it at all), choosing to have short or long hair, experimenting with the hair color can give us some clues about the person’s individuality. It’s about presenting yourself to other people and giving them hints of how you want to be viewed and perceived by others.

There might be different ways of expressing one’s personality, and the selection of this or that mode of expression depends on various factors like different life periods, cultural aspects and, minor, but not the last factor, is the mood and a desire to experiment in life and try something different. Life is not rectilinear; the personality is not rectilinear as well, we are in constant movement, are changing all the time and use different self-expression methods depending on those changes.

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Just Diagnosed With ADHD. She's 41.

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Relief was the first thing I felt. I finally had an answer! An explanation for why I’m like this. I’m told I’m not broken, but I sure do feel like I am. Worse than that? I feel like I’ve wasted decades of my life! Grieving endless opportunities lost to struggling to keep my nose above water in the deep end (aka Life) which is called the shallow end by everyone else. — TLEC client, 41

Perhaps you too are an adult recently diagnosed with ADHD. Feeling overwhelmed by a storm of emotion comes with the territory of living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It’s common for recently diagnosed adults to feel a number of emotions, often in cycles — surprise, relief, confusion, elation, disbelief, grief, shame, anger…

Stay with me here, there is hope.
Let’s just say you’ve taken that first step, and had the appointment with a licensed professional counselor with long-term ADHD expertise or a psychiatrist MD. You were probably asked for an incredibly detailed life history. You filled out assessment checklists, and you took home checklists for your friends and family to complete. You may have taken a visual and auditory attention assessment, a test my clients have described as both “nothing short of neurological torture” and “a series of boring, routine and monotonous tasks that becomes meaningless in 30 seconds, but you have to do it for 16 minutes.” (I take this test myself every six months or so, just to keep my compassion in good working order.)

After these assessments, you may have returned with a new label: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, perhaps with a subheading such as “primarily inattentive,” “hyperactive/impulsive” and the like. (Whichever it is, the Emotional Distress Syndrome is likely to be an equal-opportunity offender.) ADHD is a term that makes sense in the linear world, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Society uses all kinds of frames, roles and definitions. But in many ways, it’s also an unfortunate term, full of connotations of… deficit! And disorder! Just hearing yourself identified with this label can make you feel worse about yourself than you already do.

On one hand, you’re so emotionally relieved to have an explanation for the way your mind works. On the other hand, should you tell people? What if they don’t believe you or support you? The key, I think, is to find a functional way to talk about ADHD, and in order to do that, you need a functional way to think about it — to have the conversation with yourself before you begin it with your friends and family.

At this point, all reputable ADHD books tell you to go out and learn everything you can about “the condition.” There’s a reason for that: Simply understanding that your brain works differently helps most of us feel less crazy. I’d say spend as little time as possible in the deficit and disorder of it all and give yourself every chance to progress ahead to how do I support my brain? How do I figure out what works for me? The more you understand your ADHD brain, the better you’ll be able to calm the distress of learning you have it.

Coming Out of the ADHD Closet
At some point during this process, you may find yourself sharing information with someone who is less than receptive, who puts you on the wrong end of a weary glance. Sooner or later, you’ll get the all-too-common questions and comments:

“ADHD isn’t real.”
“Isn’t it something they came up with to medicate regular, rowdy kids?”
“Wasn’t it invented by the pharmaceutical industry?”
“You’re faking a diagnosis to try and score drugs.”
“You should just snap out of it.”
And the ever-popular “You should just try harder!”

It’s easier said than done, but try not to get lost in the knee-jerk reactions. For the most part, people aren’t trying to hurt you. You may be able to teach them something they don’t know — though maybe not now, when you’re still getting used to your diagnosis. Or if you just want a short answer to the ever-present question — Is ADHD real? — here’s one you can use:

Yes. ADHD is real. It’s not a virus. It’s a neurological and developmental condition, as genetically coded as hair color and height.

If you want a longer answer, and you’ll allow me a moment of indignation, try this:

How many other diagnoses are so chronically debated, in such an insidious way? We don’t debate diabetes — that’s a genetic issue, right? Well, ADHD is a genetic issue, too. I can’t change how short or tall you are, and I can’t change having been born with this.

Grief and Relief: the Roller Coaster
As you gain understanding of your diagnosis, the untethered loose ends of your life knit together into what looks like a unified whole. You begin to perceive explanations for behaviors and events in your past that didn’t make sense at the time. And then suddenly, just as you feel downright capable, you’re overwhelmed with a feeling of being pulled out to sea. It’s bad enough to suddenly be so aware of time lost that can never be regained, of bridges burned — but now this loss of emotional control? What the heck????

When I was a kid, we didn’t have ADD. We had “John doesn’t apply himself.” I was told to try harder. Stay on task. Listen closer. “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Well that sorta worked for a while. But when I found that I couldn’t do what I put my mind to, like save my dad or my marriage, my whole self image came apart, and I acted out in ways that were not consistent with the person I was raised to be. I became angry. I became a yeller. A cynic. — John, 53

Then, as suddenly as it came on, the feeling subsides, and you’re back on shore, safe and sound, thinking, Okay, I’ll regroup, learn about this ADHD, come up with some personalized strategies for managing it and… WHAM, another tidal wave on the horizon! Stay with it. Set a timer. It won’t last as long as you think it will.

I wasn’t aware I even had ADD. I wasn’t the typical hyper child. As an adult, I found myself not able to even work effectively. I lost a job because I just couldn’t focus and do the work that I had tried to motivate myself to do in a lot of different ways. I was ashamed, desperate, depressed, and frustrated. I didn’t know what to do about the problem. I didn’t know how to talk about it with other people. I felt a lot like my fellow soldiers as they returned from Afghanistan, but for completely different reasons. After being diagnosed with ADHD, I was immediately more calm. Knowing that I didn’t merely have an unassailable character flaw was immensely helpful. Knowing that there were biological reasons for the way I saw my life slip over the years was comforting. Finding out these crucial things allowed me to peer through the mists and see the problems generating the fog. Being able to focus on those problems and find ways to manage them has been incredibly empowering. — TLEC client, 37

Grief and relief come with the territory. If you’re feeling both, you’re not alone. Relax, and let’s talk about this. (You can always panic later.) Grief goes hand in hand with second-guessing, with a deep sense of wasted time and missed opportunities.

What if I had known this about myself ten years ago?
Would I have lost my first marriage?
Could I have followed through with my million-dollar idea?

And then comes relief. Because, really, it’s comforting to have an explanation for the weirdness that is, and has been, you. At the very least, this knowledge calms the limbic survival instinct of your brain, which as you now know, is probably a little more active than it should be. What to do with the grief and relief of it all?

After diagnosis comes treatment.

I’ll talk about that in my next installment.

In the meantime, put this on your refrigerator:

Me and My ADHD
ADHD is a brain-based difference.
It has nothing to do with levels of intelligence.

Structure works.
Routines and systems: create them, trust them, use them.

It’s not natural to plan, prioritize, or think ahead.
If it is not done very deliberately, it will not happen.

Without meaning, it won’t get done.
Your attention is selective; it has to deem something interesting to stay focused.

Take personal responsibility for your ADHD.
Although ADHD may explain certain behaviors, it is not an excuse for them.

Distractions are everywhere, all the time.
Learning to manage your ADHD is the only way to fight distractions.

Your brain craves stimulus.
Creating a dramatic situation by waiting until the last minute to meet a deadline is one way to give your brain the stimulation it craves, but maybe not the smartest way.

Engineer the environment.
Learn how to create a personalized, ADHD-friendly environment that works for you.

Break it down.
If something feels big, make it small by zeroing in on the very next action you could take that will move this task forward. Move from that next action to the next-next action. Make these “next actions” as small as they need to be to feel manageable.

Try a decathlon approach to fitness.
Reduce fitness monotony by identifying ten different physical activities to keep you motivated. With that many options to choose from, you’re unlikely to ever be too bored to exercise.

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5 Takeaways From The Democratic Convention

The 2016 Democratic convention concluded with Hillary Clinton’s paean to American exceptionalism. She contrasted “morning in America” with Donald Trump’s “the barbarians are at the gates.” In addition to the stark contrast in the vision of the two candidates, we learned five things at the conventions.

1. Hillary Clinton was able to unite Democrats. Republicans came to Cleveland promising to unite around Trump. That didn’t happen. Cruz, Kasich and the Bush family didn’t endorse Trump and he denounced them all.

The Democratic convention started on low note with the DNC email scandal followed by the resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. For a few hours on Monday it looked as if Democrats would battle on the convention floor. Then the Monday program started and comedian Sarah Silverman — previously a Bernie Sanders supporter — ad-libbed: “Can I just say, to the Bernie or bust people, you are being ridiculous.” Her mocking words punctured the Bernie or bust balloon. While a few Bernie supporters continued to be disruptive, the vast majority got behind Hillary Clinton. (A Washington Post poll indicated that 90 percent of Bernie backers would support Clinton.) By Thursday night, the Democratic Party was unified.

2. Clinton did a much better job organizing the Democratic convention than Trump did organizing the Republican convention. Each day of the Republican convention saw some epic screw up such as Melania Trump’s plagiarism or Ted Cruz failing to endorse Trump.

In contrast each day of the Democratic convention worked well. Speakers kept to the script and stayed within the allotted time. As a result, the TV ratings for each night of the Democratic convention exceeded those of the Republican convention.

The success of the Democratic convention is another indication that Hillary Clinton is a better manager than Donald Trump.

3. If Trump doesn’t get the attention he wants, he will do something crazy. After the Republican convention, I wrote, “The GOP convention may give Trump a modest ratings bounce but it won’t last because he can’t stop acting crazy.”

On Wednesday — evidently starved for attention — Trump asked Russia to hack Clinton’s emails. On Thursday, Trump said he felt like hitting convention speakers who disparaged him. (He followed this with a fundraising email begging recipients to not watch Hillary’s acceptance speech.)

Clinton denigrated Trump’s character in her acceptance speech: “Imagine [Donald Trump] in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

4. Hillary has the credentials for the job, Trump doesn’t. During the Republican convention, The New York Times reported that Trump’s son, Donald Junior had approached Ohio Governor John Kasich about being Trump’s running mate. Trump Junior reported that, if he accepted, Kasich would be “the most powerful vice president in history;” Trump Junior explained that Kasich would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. When queried what job “President” Trump would do, Trump Junior explained, “Making America great again.”

Wednesday night at the Democratic convention, billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg observed: “Trump says he wants to run the nation like he’s running his business? God help us.” Bloomberg went on to recommend voting for Hillary Clinton, “a sane, competent person.”

5. Democrats have become the Party of Reagan. The conventions witnessed an unexpected role reversal: Republicans became the Party of godless pessimism. Democrats became the Party of hope and optimism; the Party that believes, like Ronald Reagan, that “it’s morning in America.”

Unique to a modern Republican presidential speech, Trump never mentioned God. Instead he mentioned himself, over and over; notably “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”

At the Democratic convention, participants chanted, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, touted their religious background and their lifelong commitment to public service. Michelle Obama reminded us all America “is the greatest country on earth.” Barack Obama reintroduced the “audacity of hope.” And Hillary said Americans face a choice, “We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together.”

It was a stark contrast: Republican gloom and authoritarianism versus Democratic optimism and community spirit — “Let’s be stronger together.”

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6 Books That Paint Vivid Portraits Of Iconic Artists

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This Is How the World’s Poor Are Pioneering the Future of Energy

What if it took you four hours a day to cook all your meals because, in addition to cooking, you also had to search for firewood? What if you could only work and study during the day because you had no light at night? What if when you went to the emergency room after injuring yourself, you were turned away because there was no electricity?

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