By Julie Rath, on Fri Nov 1, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET I’ve been getting more and more requests from clients wanting outfits with interesting layered combinations. These types of looks are comprised of simple, classic pieces (things everyone should have in his closet), but when pulled together correctly, they become a whole greater than its parts. It’s clear that some thought was put into the look, but there’s no risk of looking like you tried too hard. If you’re the kind of person who wants to be noticed for your style but not right away (i.e., “who’s the sharp guy in the corner…?”), this style of dressing is perfect for you.
In order to have a wardrobe where you can do this you must first collect enough pieces that combine well. Below are 12 essentials to get you started mixing and matching:
1) Navy blazer – note: this must fit impeccably or the entire look is shot.
2) Grey sportcoat – see note above.
 3) Thin hoodie – I like this fleece wool one from Thinple because it’s polished despite being a hoodie.
4) Great-fitting jeans – dressy and dark or weathered and sporty are fair game but please nothing crazy on the back pockets.
5) Casual pants like chinos or corduroys.
 6) Patterned t-shirt – this Missoni shirt would look terrific peeking out beneath a solid navy henley, under a sportcoat.
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Julie Rath: How to Create Layered Outfits
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Oct 31, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET I’ve learned the statement at left the hard way. Through years of trying to “take on” the world, I have realized, we all fight a battle with ourselves. To solidify my claim that it was “me against the world” I had the lyrics to a song tattooed on my arm. As I have grown older and wiser, I realize this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is not the world that becomes the enemy but an enemy we know all too well…ourselves.
I believe in a very simple equation; “Thought plus decision equals behavior, change the thought, change the behavior.” This to me makes me a believer that if we just alter our thinking, we can alter our behavior. Thus we can accomplish anything we set out to do. It is not the physical gifts nor the outstanding acumen that separates people from one another, it is the sheer will to conquer one’s self on a quest of a goal or idea.
So many times I have seen clients succumb to their own negative thoughts in their head that they quit and never try again. They listen to that voice in their head that tells them its not possible or that it cant be done. It eats at them until the thoughts impose their will and cause them to stop chasing their dream or ideal. It truly becomes a mental game of chess between you and yourself. Deciding who to listen to will ultimate decide who the winner is. Here are a few tips to conquering self doubt and negative thoughts.
 1. Get rid of negative people- Regardless of who you are, you will always have negative people around you. Telling you, you can’t do something, bringing your down to their level. Do not let them. Rid them of your life, if at all possible or limit your contact. Never let someone tell you, you can’t do something.
2. Surround yourself with positive people who make you better- This may only be one person or it may be many but you need at least one. Someone who positively empowers you will only make your life better. This could be a parent, a sibling or a trainer (like JB).
3. Realize your thoughts create your reality- What you think is always true. If you think you are no good, you will be no good. Your actions will emulate your thoughts. Your thoughts become your reality. Flip the thoughts from negative to positive and works the same way.
4. Right a list of positive things about yourself and post it where you can see it- This is a technique that will work wonders and will remind you that for all your faults and all the bad experiences, the good will always outweigh the bad.
5. Stop making excuses- Stop using the past as deterrent for the future. What happened back there happened back there, its over. It doesn’t predict what happens tomorrow.
Me Against the World? Never, its you against you and you get to decide who wins.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Oct 30, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET It’s always astounding when two closely related things turn out to be complete opposites. Like siblings who have totally different body types, books with matching bindings but one is Jane Austen and the other is Judith Krantz, or the time my father took his first bite into an avocado slice, not knowing what it was but assuming it was some sort of cucumber.
This same-but-opposite premise has been the basis of numerous stories, from The Prince & The Pauper to Hannah Montana, but perhaps the best-known example was the classic Patty Duke Show, where the teen actress played identical cousins with vastly different backgrounds and tastes. (Yes, I know, there is no such thing as “identical cousins” and we all know it was Patty playing both roles, although if you’ve read her autobiography you know her real name was Anna, her managers manipulated her and she felt like a manufactured product, so she was playing an actress playing 2 different cousins, which is a meta-meta-façade.) (Sort of like the irony of Debbie Reynold’s role in Singin’ In The Rain, where her character was dubbing the Lena Lamont’s lines in the movie but the producers thought Reynolds sounded too cutesy so they had her lines dubbed by Jean Hagen, the actress playing Lena Lamont . . . but I digress . . . )
Anyway, The Patty Duke Show’s iconic theme song has come to symbolize any zany combination of opposites, or at least it has to those of us old enough to remember the show. (My husband is several years younger than I am, so when I mentioned the song to him, he thought I was referring to “Sisters, Sisters” from White Christmas.) (My husband also had to be informed that Paul McCartney, of whom he is a huge fan, actually played in a successful band before Wings . . . . ) So I thought it would be an appropriate way to sum up the vastly different-yet-similar viewpoints in Washington D. C. (Spoiler alert – I’m not referring to the Democrats vs. the Republicans . . .)
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Tue Oct 29, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET Wine regions rarely disappoint. The combination of the visual, well-tended vines climbing towards the sky, and the experiential, flavors of the wine and food, will excite the most dull among us. Almost universally wine regions are worth the trip, but being situated literally halfway around the world from most people, Argentina’s Mendoza region needed to offer something more than tours and tasting rooms. Mendoza has succeeded in creating a food and wine experience worth the trip.
Mendoza is one the world’s most improbable and unique wine regions. Naturally it is a barren, as precipitation is kept on the Chilean side by the highest part of the Andes range. It should be a productive agriculture region as little as it should be a wine destination. Therein lies why it is successful though, generations had to work to make it happen, never taking for granted natural gifts. The culture of hard work that led to the irrigation and cultivation of the land has since been put into creating an international tourist destination.
Fulfilling it’s duty as Argentina’s largest wine producer by volume, Trapiche offers the gold standard of large-winery tours similar to Mondavi in California. Informative and thorough, the tours walk visitors through the entire process, albeit closer to the process than you can get in many other places.
What makes Mendoza special? It is the overall experience of European indulgence meets Latin America. It has incomparable views of wineries nestled against the tallest mountain outside of the Himalayas. It offers the expected wine tasting, but also locally produces the unexpected: world-class gelato, chocolate, honey, olive oil, and much more. It blends a historic town center with thousands of acres of parks and modern amenities. It even has adventure sports including climbing of one of the Seven Summits. In short, it has everything.
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Erica & Matt Chua: Why Wine Taste in Mendoza
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Oct 28, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET My friend and Boston Globe innovation columnist, Scott Kirsner, has launched an interesting new on-line platform for corporate innovation executives. You will want to check out and subscribe to Innovation Leader where you will find lots of food for innovation thought and where this post originally appeared.
I used to think that if I just yakked long and loud enough, I could convince CEOs to embrace transformational innovation. It took me 25 years as a road warrior consultant, author, and accidental government bureaucrat to realize that proselytizing doesn’t work. If leaders don’t want to change, all the consulting jargon and fancy PowerPoints in the world won’t convince them to.
In those situations, no matter what lofty rhetoric the CEO uses in public or at company retreats about “creating an innovation culture” and encouraging everyone to think outside of the box, the best result you can hope for are incremental innovations to improve the performance of today’s business model. You never get transformational new business models — and you always get frustrated if you were hoping for bolder change. If you want transformational innovation, you have to find leaders who want transformational change and are receptive to organizing differently for tweaks than for transformation. After learning this lesson the hard way over many years, I no longer try to convince CEOs who don’t want to change, and instead try to find those CEO’s who do.
 Here’s my list of 10 questions you can ask a CEO to tell if they are really serious about transformational innovation:
1) Do you agree transformational innovation goes beyond breakthrough products to include business model innovation — entirely new ways to create, deliver and capture value?
2) Will your employees tell me that failure is a career-limiting move, or that the company celebrates experimentation?
3) How much time do you spend strengthening and protecting the current business model, versus designing the next one?
4) Do you have clear and discrete objectives for both incremental and transformational innovation? Do you organize differently for each?
5) Does your organization invest in R&D for new business models as it does for new products, services, and technologies?
6) Are you prepared to have your organization disrupt itself? How do you see that playing out?
7) Do internal ideas and projects that threaten to cannibalize the current business model get squashed — or nurtured?
8) Do you have a process for allocating resources for transformational innovation projects that lies outside of the control of business units?
9) Do executives with responsibility for exploring transformational business models report to you, or to another line executive responsible for today’s business?
10) Are you willing to create a sandbox to explore transformational business models? Would you carve out a part of your current business/market to serve as an ongoing real-world innovation lab?
A few words of advice about using these questions in the real world… Tread lightly, since no CEO likes to be put on the spot and drilled with a laundry list of questions. Pick a few of the ten to put into your own words to help you discern whether the company you work for, or are thinking about working for (or with), has a leader who shares your appetite for transformational innovation. Better to know what kind of environment you’re going into in advance than to learn painful lessons later.
By Mona Tailor, on Fri Oct 25, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET From the New England Journal of Medicine:
 “Shocked” wouldn’t be accurate, since we were accustomed to our uninsured patients’ receiving inadequate medical care. “Saddened” wasn’t right, either, only pecking at the edge of our response. And “disheartened” just smacked of victimhood. After hearing this story, we were neither shocked nor saddened nor disheartened. We were simply appalled.
We met Tommy Davis in our hospital’s clinic for indigent persons in March 2013 (the name and date have been changed to protect the patient’s privacy). He and his wife had been chronically uninsured despite working full-time jobs and were now facing disastrous consequences.
The week before this appointment, Mr. Davis had come to our emergency department with abdominal pain and obstipation. His examination, laboratory tests, and CT scan had cost him $10,000 (his entire life savings), and at evening’s end he’d been sent home with a diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer.
The year before, he’d had similar symptoms and visited a primary care physician, who had taken a cursory history, told Mr. Davis he’d need insurance to be adequately evaluated, and billed him $200 for the appointment. Since Mr. Davis was poor and ineligible for Kentucky Medicaid, however, he’d simply used enemas until he was unable to defecate. By the time of his emergency department evaluation, he had a fully obstructed colon and widespread disease and chose to forgo treatment.
Mr. Davis had had an inkling that something was awry, but he’d been unable to pay for an evaluation. As his wife sobbed next to him in our examination room, he recounted his months of weight loss, the unbearable pain of his bowel movements, and his gnawing suspicion that he had cancer. “If we’d found it sooner,” he contended, “it would have made a difference. But now I’m just a dead man walking.”
Click here for the full piece.
By Julie Rath, on Fri Oct 25, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET I’m not going to lie, the term POWER SUIT makes me cringe a bit. Yes, the right suit can help you look powerful, at least if it fits you perfectly, but just donning a suit does not by itself do the job. There are other pieces to the puzzle. So if you’re going into a situation where you want people to sit up and take notice when you walk in, read on for 4 easy tips on how to manage your appearance.
1) Straight lines and angles in patterns and clothing silhouettes signal authority. An easy way to apply the former is with ties: the tie above left is much stronger because of its angularity than the tie to the right with its curved lines. For silhouettes, you can see this everywhere from glasses, to suits, to sport jackets (if you wear glasses, my article on how to choose glasses frames is a must-read). For example, a squared-off jacket shoulder is more commanding than a soft shoulder.
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Julie Rath: What’s Your Power Suit?
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Oct 24, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET Through our 12 Steps we have come to find out how confusing fitness can be. Just the act of working out and changing our nutrition can be enough to scare people away. Compound that with going to find a gym and it can overwhelming. For the majority of my fitness career I have spent time training and working in commercial gyms. I know a thing of 12 about picking the right place. Here are 12 Steps to help you decide on the right place for you to work out.
1. Know what you are looking for Have your goal (s) and your why in mind when shopping for a gym. Do not join a CrossFit gym if your goal isn’t high intensity, advanced workouts. Your goal and why will help you make a decision.
2. Ask friends and family Ask the people closest to you about their experiences with gyms. This can give you a good gage on where to look at and where not too.
3. Look at the Internet and Social Media We live in an era where nothing is a secret and everyone markets like they are going out of business. Check websites of the gyms you are thinking about joining. The bigger gyms will let you join online which can be a plus not having to deal with sales people. Also, look for gyms that promote successes of their members. This shows they care about the people inside their walls.
4. Search reviews I have vast experience with negative reviews in the fitness industry in places I have worked. In fact you will be hard pressed to find any company that does not have more negative reviews than positive. However, look for the positive reviews from current and former members and take some of the negative with a grain of salt.
5. Location, location, location In most cases, not all, we would like a place that is convenient to get too. If its easy to get too we are more likely to go.
6. Find a gym you feel the most comfortable At first, any gym can seem intimidating. However, it’s important you feel welcomed and comfortable in your surroundings. If you are having a hard time deciding possibly get a guest pass and go workout a few times or try a class. This may help in aiding your decision.
7. Know your budget Know what you are willing to spend before you go. The sales team’s job is to sell memberships and some clubs will try to take advantage of someone who has never purchased a membership before. Stick to your budget.
 8. Know your commitment The gym industry has changed, allowing month-to-month contracts for easy access to people. However, if you chose to sign a contract know your commitment level. 80% of all gym memberships go unused after three months. Do not let this be you.
9. Ask the membership guys for success stories Ask them for proof behind their product. If they can’t show you one, run away.
10. Look at the trainers and front desk I know this better than most, the trainers and front desk staff are the gyms face. If they do not look happy, chances are you won’t be happy as a member.
11. Cleanliness If the gym isn’t clean and the weights are not racked, chances are it always looks this way.
12. Do not buy a membership because of the pool Unless you plan on being in the pool a lot, do not make a buying decision based upon the pool. It is the most unused thing in any gym.
There are more options now than ever before in regards to gym memberships. Choose wisely, read what you sign, and pick somewhere you’ll be comfortable and enjoy.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Oct 22, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
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“The only way you could meet my crazy was by doing something crazy yourself. Thank you. I love you. I knew it the minute I met you. I’m sorry it took so long for me to catch up. I just got stuck. Pat.”
We all bring our crazy to a relationship. Silver Linings does a beautiful job of writing a relationship where both participants are crazy but they take turns. They meet each other where they’re at. They end sentences with a preposition. They scream and throw dishes in public. They hug people whom they have a restraining order against or from. They end sentences with a preposition again. Did I mention that people call me crazy? They think I’m dreaming my life away, just like John Lennon wrote.
I struggle with how to let people into my life without letting them take over. How to embrace my crazy without getting caught up in it. How to recognize someone else’s crazy when they’re telling you it’s you. And when it’s also you. So complicated.
Spoiler alert- I’m going to talk about Silver Linings some more- I just loved it so much. It is rare for a romantic comedy (nay, romantic comedy/drama) to get it right without being trite. One of my favorite scenes was at the diner. Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) opens up about herself and seems to be having a moment with Pat. She offers to help her out and then he insults her by not wanting to be associated with her in the context of his ex-wife.
Rather than crying and running out of the restaurant (at first, at least), which I would have done, she balks. That’s the best word for her face. She looks at him, condescendingly, and says; “You actually think I’m crazier than you.” Not in the form of a question, but as a statement of disbelief. It’s great. I admire that. I wish that in the midst of a heating argument I could have the composure to do that. It was awesome. And then she smashes all the dishes off the table in one fell swoop and runs out of the restaurant, crying. I kind of wish I could do that too.
The beauty of it is that Pat realizes in that moment that he’s crossed a line and then he comes to the rescue on her crazy. They go back and forth on this as their relationship blooms. And that gives new meaning to the phrase the “dance of intimacy.”
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Nancy Slotnick: People Think I’m Crazy…
By Lisa Miller, on Mon Oct 21, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET Check out this important event for parents of daughters, coaches, teachers..anyone who influences growing girls:
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