Author: Alexander Büchler

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Quarter-life crisis: what is it and what can you do against it?

Quarter-life crisis: what is it and what can you do against it?

By now you’ve likely heard of the quarter-life crisis — a period of insecurity and doubt that many people in their mid-20s to early 30s go through surrounding their career, relationships, and finances. 

Before diving into the actions you can take to get over your quarter-life crisis, let’s first see which crisis we go through.

Much more crisis before the quarter-life crisis

Life Scientists say that people have a personal crisis every 5 years. If people think about their own first conflicts often comes the teenage rebellion as first in mind. The teens get the desire to separate from their parents, get in conflict and develop their own individuality. But crises start much earlier. First with 8-12 months when babies realize they will be physically separated from their parents. Secondly at 3-4 years old when children try out the borders of freedom and test their parents. They mostly have to adapt to their parent’s behavior. Then starting from 7-9 years old in school when children start to think and learn from society. Lastly, before even the quarter-life crisis, the crisis of teenage years and first broken hearts. These are all conscious life-changing moments that all of us need to go through.

Personal crises are a continuous pattern in our lives

As seen previously, people encounter a crisis every 5 years. But in your 20s, the type of crisis varies. Young people have too much energy to realize the problems but for many, it is the change of context. Change from university to the first job, worries about salary, apartment, etc. The teenage years are definitely over and the carefree times too. 

On the positive side, humans develop dispositions and their main habits in those life periods. These crises also form the brain patterns and main neurological channels that we currently have. This time could be seen as a white paper where the decisions you make color it. The majority of the established neuroscience literature says it is hard to change behavior, values,  and orientation systems at later age. Indeed, neuroplasticity is decreasing and you develop your main neurological channels and habits within this time. It is like a runway for your thoughts. But there are also a few scientists like Joe Dispenza that show the latest research opportunities and techniques to restructure the brain again. These groundbreaking results are new and hard to believe but the scientific measurements say: It is possible!. Now back to the main topic, the crisis.

What is a quarter-life crisis?

Different perspectives:

“Quarter-life crisis” are words being thrown around more and more regularly. The female comedian Taylor Tomlinson, who is halfway through her 20s talked about it in her Netflix special show. She described a quarter-life crisis as the time when you’re “too old to party, too young to settle down.” In reality, this remains still quite a new topic for the majority. It is not a real spreader in the media and is not well discussed and publicly. It is a quite new phenomenon.

From a more research perspective, psychologist Oliver Robinson explains that “it’s essentially any transitional episode that young adult experiences that typically lasts a year or so, during which time they are emotionally unstable. Anything from changing social groups to breaking up with a partner comes with an overriding sense of grief which has to be dealt with in order for that person to move on.” He adds that the crisis often serves as a crucial turning point in a person’s life. This change in direction often includes a career move.

The professional and personal aspects:

The impact of professional life represents a big trunk of this quarter-life crisis, as discussed later in this article. The amount of people going through this crisis also keeps on growing. Chances are good you may experience your own. In fact, 75% of 25-33-year-olds have experienced a quarter-life crisis, often related to feeling like they are at a crossroads in their career, family, or life situations. You also feel these emotions on a personal level. The crossroad of love relationships in particular impacts young people and gives them a feeling of uncertainty.

Who is at risk?

Age as a common denominator

More women than men in their 20s experience a crisis episode, at 49 percent and 39 percent respectively, Robinson found in a separate study. Triggers for men are more work-related. For women, it was more common to experience crises due to relationship and family matters. Still, it’s is individual but the age and its life phase, with its individual problems is the common denominator.

But should you panic?

Psychology instructor and career coach Rebecca Fraser-Thill tells Bloomberg that a quarter-life career crisis actually makes sense. “In early adulthood, we tend to gravitate toward careers modeled on the people closest to us: what adult family members do for a living or what our friends plan to do. Our 20s take us through a process of ‘individuation,’ where we gain a better sense of our own values and talents. That’s when the itch sets in.” Quarter-life crises also represent a difficult moment in life where decisions have to be made. It is not always a sign of negativity!

The decade between childhood and adulthood is confusing at best. Psychologists and experts say people today are suffering more than previous generations did. Life coach Ran Zilca writes: “For instance, the average age for the onset of depression has dropped from the late 40s or early 50s, where it was 30 years ago, to mid-20s, and it’s expected to drop further.” This can be explained by the faster pace at which young people enter a hectic environment. This hectic lifestyle cannot be dissociated from the omnipresent presence of social media platforms.

The impact of the professional Life:

As stated above, many quarter-life crises appear due to problems in professional life.  A Linkedin study has explored where these issues came from. The main observation shows that finding a job that they’re passionate about is the top concern.

While most people have experienced a quarter-life crisis, what exactly is causing this anxiety? Sixty-one percent say finding a job or career they’re passionate about is the number one cause. Another top reason is comparing themselves to their more successful friends. Nearly half (48%) say this has caused them anxiety, with women feeling this even more than men (51% vs. 41%).

People in this age range feel a lot of uncertainty and frustration around their careers, even more so than pressure around their relationships and personal life goals.

However, there are ways to overcome these challenges.

How to overcome a Quarter-Life Crisis

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” —Gail Sheehy

It is professional: How to make smart career moves during a quarter-life crisis

In order to move through and beyond a quarter-life crisis, you may need a little objective advice. In his book, The Quarter-Life Breakthrough: Invent Your Own Path, Find Meaningful Work, and Build a Life That Matters, Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky, says he felt trapped in his perfect job at the Peace Corps in Washington, DC. Promoted often, he traveled, he had health insurance and job security, and was making $70,000 at the age of 28. He was miserable.

It took him a year before he did anything about it, and in his book, he tells other young people that it’s okay to leave a job everyone else thinks is awesome and that it’s okay to not know exactly what you want and to invent your own path. His 10-step workbook is a valuable (free) guide to how you can turn your crisis into a breakthrough.

If it is personal: change environment and explore yourself

Not only do careers have an impact on crises that young people go through. In our personal lives, we are subject to a lot of stress that impacts us negatively such as tech. Clinical psychologist Lara Fielding says “technology as a constant source of reassurance may also be paradoxically contributing to reductions in a necessary amount of tolerance of uncertainty.” We’re a generation of instant gratification Googlers, searching online for immediate answers. The problem is that when you’re entering adulthood, with its new realities and uncertainties, there is no dependable source of absolute information. Consequently, our intolerance of uncertainty causes fear.

And if you’re at a complete loss as to what you want to do with your life and what you’re actually interested in, career change coach Alice Stapleton says to take action anyway. Explore everything. Take courses and go to conferences, read job profiles, interview people about their careers, think about why you read the books you read, why you watch the shows you watch and listen to the music you do to determine your interests. You may just find the spark necessary to change your life. 

All these actions and activities that you can do to overcome your quarter-life crisis evolve around the concept of self-reflection. Accepting yourself for who you are and living with the decisions you make. Self-reflection and its developments are one of the keys to go through life and its crisis. 

If you are curious about self-reflection and how to exercise it, read our next blog article here. 

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The importance of sharing your brand philosophy and vision to customers through social media

Share your brand philosophy
Share your brand philosophy

With social media, companies can reach much larger audiences than ever before. Social media has enabled companies to increase brand awareness, engage with customers, and cultivate new leads. With social media, the phenomenon of brands advertising a lifestyle and not the products has also gained even stronger traction.

Social media changed not only personal relationships but also the business-customer relationship

Often, we think that social media and the internet have changed the way we interact with one another. Think back to your life before social media. How did you even spend all your free time? Social media has changed our lives. On a personal level and it has had a major impact on how businesses approach marketing.

To understand how social media changed marketing, you first need to remember how things were before social media existed.

How has advertising changed?

Marketing Before Social Media

There was digital marketing before social media, but it was limited in both application and effectiveness. Email joined the ranks of outbound marketing tactics and the advent of search engines allowed for the first inbound marketing.

These days, it was still more common for businesses to rely on non-digital forms, like print, TV, or radio.

How Social Media Has Had an Impact on Marketing

When social media hit the internet, its purpose was still as its name implies. To build and maintain social connections between people. The purpose was to facilitate the relationship between people remotely. Platforms were for individuals to network; they were free from businesses and ads. Try to remember how your Facebook or Twitter feed looked more than 10 years ago — it’s unrecognizable from today.

Progressively, social media changed. From a place where you connected mostly with friends, it became more fake. Users could follow brands and individuals like celebrities and influencers. This led to some major changes in the way businesses approached marketing.

Marketing Is More Accessible Than Ever

One of the biggest obstacles to starting a new business used to be marketing. Without marketing, no one knows that your company exists. However, paying for traditional marketing is expensive and the results are often not measurable.

A key selling point of social media marketing is that it’s open to everyone. It’s easy to set up an account on any platform and there are no costs to getting started. In fact, many businesses can reach their audience by running only organic marketing campaigns. They never have to for ads at all. This gives small companies with limited budgets the chance to reach customers like never before. With it comes also greater insights about analytics as brands have the chance to visualize which ads work best.

But Social Media Marketing has become perverse

However, as social media marketing was first an eldorado for brands and companies, it quickly turned perverse. Nowadays, businesses continuously have to overpay the platforms to reach the users who follow them. The control of social media platforms on who will receive a certain post has made businesses dependent. This has to change! In regards to the budget that companies spend, and how brands interact with customers. 

Share your visions and brand philosophy

Why should you share your vision?

“Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn’t happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.” – Simon Mainwaring

When people become customers, they essentially become important partners of the company. Everyone within an organization is aware of and shares a common vision. Just as that, companies must also understand that sharing their vision with customers is equally vital. Customers may share a companies enthusiasm but there needs to be more. Indeed it will not be sustainable unless they are part of the long-term goals and vision of the company. The company’s vision must incite passion and excitement. Not just within the organization, but in the minds of customers too.

When everyone connected with your company shares a common vision, two benefits quickly appear. The attainment of goals is faster and the possibility of ambiguity is reduced dramatically. In any case, given that every company must focus on its customers, putting together a customer experience strategy without a shared vision would be counter-intuitive to success.

The vision of customers has changed

Sharing your vision with customers would mean that your company is completely aware of who its customers are. Secondly, how each customer’s ‘journey’ ties in with the company’s long-term goals. It is not wise or practical to underestimate the importance of a shared vision. It is possibly one of the strongest common factors that can create a bond in the mind of the customer. Sharing your vision with customers means that your company knows them. What they have set out to achieve, their pain points, challenges, and even achievements.

This understanding would make it easier to prepare a vision statement. For both customers and employees. When customers see the commonality between the company’s vision and their own expectations, they can trust the company.  After all, your business exists for the customers. Keeping them at the center of everything will make them love your company more than any other in the market.

Advantages

Clearly, social is essential to your marketing mix. What’s even more important is developing a current brand personality that you can leverage to share your brand values. You want to come off as organic while having your content look native. Like something your audience would naturally see in their feed.

Being active on social media with native, organic content helps. Crafting a story around your brand values that resonate with your audience is even better. Consumers are increasingly aware and interested in company social impact (which probably isn’t news to you). It’s one of the driving forces behind consumer purchases, especially in the millennial demographic.

For example, A 2017 Cone study revealed that 87 percent of people said they would purchase a product based on the brand’s values and their brand affinity. If you’re trying to get your audience to connect with you, then you should take sharing your brand values seriously. This virtue alone will help establish the type of audience-brand affinity you (and they) are looking for.

What comes next?

As currently, brands have been sharing their vision through videos or images, most of it was in 2D. Customers and especially the rising professional class who grew up with advanced technology now have other expectations. The demand for immersive content in all parts of marketing has been growing. There is no doubt that the demand is there. Now, it needs an answer. 

What are we doing at Soulside to solve this problem?

At Soulside, we are committed to solving this issue for both the interests of users and brands. By not influencing the relationship between users and companies, we allow the communication to stay healthy. We want to give everyone the entire control of what you will be seeing in the app.

Advertising has become more and more mixed with so-called native content to improve the user experience. With Soulside, you have the possibility of creating and sharing content through a 3D Space. Hence why companies will be able to truly share their values to users who won’t feel any difference from others’ posts. 

If you are curious about all these processes, feel free to get in touch with us at contact@soulside.app

Read our previous business article here.

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The Social Dilemma. How have current social media platforms used their users to make a profit and why does it have to change?

Social Media Dilemma
Social Media Dilemma

The social media platforms exploit their market dominance by selling data, knowing more about the users than they do themselves, and thus driving up prices for advertisers.

What is the current problem of social media?

We all heard about the negative influence of social media platforms. It is not only about our mental health, it is also about privacy. We all have heard that if you do not pay for the product it means that you are the product. Indeed, social media platforms started with a noble goal: reunite people and facilitate communication between them.

However, with no surprise, the development of such platforms has led to multinational companies focusing on profits. Hence using every aspect of their business to make more. One of them has been to use users’ personal data. This private data would be sold to companies and brands willing to advertise their products directly to interested customers. Even this relationship started as a kind of win-win as both sides were happy. On one side with the customers receiving adverts suited to their needs. On the other side with companies having the possibility to share their philosophy, vision, and products directly to customers.

Facebook requires advertising spend to reconnect its already acquired followers

Nowadays, this relationship has been shattered by the ferocious appetite of social media platforms. Indeed, their focus has been to control the flow of information that users and businesses can share. In that regard, both parties have been harmed. Brands, now have to pay for their own posts reaching the users following their page. This results in frustration from both users and companies who cannot interact freely.

What do we do to solve this issue?

Users and companies are now aware of the situation. This control by social media has led many users and brands to seek other solutions. They are looking for an app that will allow them to freely share their content. Without constantly having to pay to reach their audience. This, as well as data privacy issues, are problems that we at Soulside have vouched to solve. 

Users have also turned pessimistic about social media. They try to keep away from platforms and mobiles to improve their mental health and control of their time. These users need a new reason to go online. Our latest research conducted by FHTW Würzburg showed that people still are attracted to the online world. They want to stay in contact and communicate with their friends and family. About 20% of Users had no deep creative communication on the web before. Social media becomes soulful.

Soulful means also a healthy relationship with your social network 

At Soulside, we believe that both sides have the right to a relationship where the platform does not interfere with. A user who enjoys a brand should have the possibility to see the content that this brand shares. Easily and without the fear of data being stolen. A company should, in an unlimited way, be able to share its posts with all the users who follow her.

Social media platforms have fully taken control of the marketing funnels. We at Soulside have provided a solution to the issues that so many have been facing. In an easy way, users can decide to follow the 3D spaces of a brand or company. They can see all of what has been posted quickly in an immersive 3D environment.

The brands become the real influencers

For brands, this is a unique opportunity to not only share new products or new services. Brands will be able to share their vision, their philosophy, and their goals as a company. Additionally, the company’s can start a real collaboration with individual users or user groups and create new unique products for their followership loves. 

This launches a new era of marketing and advertising for companies. These will have the guarantee to reach without further costs the people who want to follow you. And for you, the users, you can choose exactly what you want to see and from which brand. And when you decide to follow one brand, you get the chance to see new products and services in a 3D environment, giving you the opportunity to see what’s coming.

We democratize the social media for corporates and Users

We believe that this will allow the win-win relationship between users and companies to rise again and further progress on various levels.

If you want to learn more about Soulside feel free to reach out here.

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If you are curious about our first blog article on the benefits of creativity, have a look here.

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What does Soulside do to help you boost your creativity?

Creativity is everywhere and it can be trained! If you haven’t read our previous blog post, you might do so before explaining how Soulside can help you! The blog post is here.

There are a lot of ways to improve your creativity to get positive effects on your life. We selected some very interesting ones to unleash your creative super skills.

Creativity can become a habit:

Research, as well as experiences, have shown that creativity can be trained. “As strange as it sounds, creativity can become a habit,” says creativity researcher Jonathan Plucker, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Indiana University. “Making it one helps you become more productive.”

We can enhance it in various and multiple ways. First, you have to think of creativity as a muscle that you can exercise. The key is to encourage yourself and the people surrounding you to recognize that creativity is an acquired skill, and then provide ongoing opportunities to learn from creative experiences.

Firstly, research shows that when people try to think more creatively, they almost always can.

Those effects are both significant and repeatable. So one sure way to boost creative thinking is to Try. No, really! “Creativity isn’t made out of a magical fairy part of the brain,” the researcher Adam Green says. It’s essentially using all the same tools that go into doing everything else … but applying those tools in creativity-specific ways. However, this requires a lot of self-discipline so do not worry, there are other ways!

Secondly, pay attention to — and record — new ideas that come to you. 

As people age, the number of creative ideas doesn’t necessarily decrease, but they tend to capture fewer of them. When an idea comes to you, start making it a point to preserve it. Write it down on your phone, in a pocket-sized notebook you carry around, or sketch it on a napkin. “Capture now, evaluate later,” says Epstein. His research confirmed over and over that capturing your new ideas is the most valuable aspect of boosting creativity.

Lastly, You need to keep on challenging yourself and your creativity.

This might seem easy but the will to constantly challenge yourself in new and different activities is an amazing way to develop your creativity. Choosing to experience new activities and to prove to yourself that you can keep learning is extremely rewarding and will help you develop.

The fear of the blank page and how to overcome it:

We at Soulside have the goal of making you more creative and allowing you to express yourself in any way you desire, never seen before. In itself, you don’t urgently need an app, to make you more creative, everything starts in your head. But sometimes it can help to give you that nudge you need to release your inner creativity. We’ve all suffered from an impasse that’s prevented us from engaging our grey matter in the way we need to solve a design problem. With Soulside, we promise to help you solve the fear of the blank page. The hardest thing is starting and getting the idea that you like. 

Do you want to paint like David Hockney and create iPad art like him?

Soulside can help you to do so and to further innovation. With your 3D spaces, you have an extraordinary diversity of tools to help you achieve what you are imagining. We offer you different brushes and brush shapes with which you can paint the walls to immortalize yourself digitally forever. Or simply place your signature under a work that you are proud of. Use the text function and place your texts in 3D in your 3D collages. Add symbolic 3D objects from our library and express yourself visually and symbolically, with a graphical brilliance never seen before. You need to see it until you believe it.

To support you in your journey, we also provide beautiful 3D templates that help you in your first steps in the app.

Colour our templates and make them your own. Add your personal images to the 3D spaces and customise our templates to your taste by moving, adding or removing 3D objects. While colouring and drawing on the walls, finally relax and feel the benefits of using your creativity. We regularly add new colouring templates to stimulate you and let you reach new inspirations. 

The hardest step is always the first one: Start

We know this is a lot to take in. But as we always say at Soulside, simply begin. And don’t forget, you always have the possibility to publish your space in private mode. You can always take your time and save your progress and continue later when you have the right feeling again, until it is done. Leonardo Da Vinci took 3 years to finish his Mona Lisa or Michelangelo 4 years to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Creativity is there all the time. Some famous artists create thousands and hundreds of thousands of pieces in their life like Picasso or just a few for your private or job. You just need to enjoy practice. You need to begin, and then inspiration will come to you.

When you’re cranky, when all you can think about are all the things on your to-do list that need to get done, when you feel that you’re just not “in the mood” to create, when your inner critic tries to dissuade you from even trying, do it anyway.

The rewards will come much faster than you think.

Your progression curve will be completely unexpected. In the beginning, you will be amazed by how fast and easy you are learning to use the app intuitively. You need to see it to believe it but we can ensure that you will not be disappointed. Join us on Soulside, we are looking forward to seeing you develop your creativity there. 

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