Raf Adams's Blog, page 3
July 26, 2022
3 Steps To Find Inner Balance in Any Situation
There is internal balance and external balance.
When someone offends you, you become off-balanced.
When you lose an important client, you get off-balanced.
When an expected deadline is not met, you are off-balance.
So how can you live a life of balance? Don’t we all want balanced, sustainable happiness, success, love, and joy every single day?
On the journey of life, when you take action for the first time in any area of your life, it will always be an act of imbalance.
For example, when I learned public speaking, I was too shy to speak, and I was out of balance because I was too afraid. Then when I finally had the courage to speak publicly, I started projecting a speaking style that was not me, and I faked it because of deep internal fear. I projected power and confidence that was not authentic and so I was still off-balance.
To speak authentically, both internal and external balances have to meet. I had to learn to be calm, stay grounded, and speak in a style that was “me”, not like other speakers I admired. It had to be me. So this particular journey took years until I found my authentic voice.
It is only when your actions meet the authenticity within yourself, AND that the external feedback from others or changes do not affect your ego, that you are in balance.
It’s almost like being a real Monk, just be tranquil and don’t let the external world affect you.
Easier said than done.
You first have to accept any action you will take for the first time, or maybe second or third; you will be off-balance.
This is the key to acceptance.
Once you accept this, the pressure to perform, the anxiety to do things perfectly, and the fear of meeting expectations will all drop. Because your mind and ego know that it is ok for the first time you get it perfect. It takes the pressure off you.
The second thing is to prepare as best as you can and deliver according to the best of your abilities.
And thirdly, be ok with failure, be ok with feedback, accept, and move on to the next stage of growth.
This third stage creates the internal development that leads to the growth of your authentic self.
This journey is painful, but it is only painful for the mind. It is not painful for the heart. The mind’s pain is the pain of control. The heart’s happiness will be the happiness of growth.
The same principle applies in business. The first product you launch will not be your best product. If you keep developing your first product to make it as perfect as possible, you may never launch. Although the faster you launch your first product, and you are ok with failure and feedback, the faster and easier you can optimize your product for the best version it can be.
And so whatever you do in life, in your relationships or your business, or even when you start a new job, you must understand that you will always go off balance first.
The faster you can accept that, the easier it will be to be successful in life.
When you live life off balance in this way, then you will soon realize you are living in harmony.
Both your internal and external worlds are aligned authentically.
It’s a never-ending journey in life and leadership, but until what point?
The journey of life and leadership is the journey towards self-realization. To realize yourself, your mind, your emotions, your spirit, and your body all have to work in alignment and be in balance. No projection, no attachment, but still operating and getting things done in life and work.
Is it possible?
Yes
The question now to think about is, in which areas are you still feeling out of balance?
In which areas are you holding yourself back from moving forward out of fear or worry?
The faster you overcome those, the faster you will find balance & peace within.
Happy living.
Raf Adams
If today you feel a lack of mental, emotional, or spiritual balance, you can take this 2-minute questionnaire designed by Prof. Dr. Mike Thomson from CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) that will help you identify the Gap between your internal and external worlds. Take your free check-up here now.
#balance #enlightenment #internalexterna
”I am a practical philosopher and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and leadership to help leaders to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional and spiritual balance be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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July 19, 2022
The Real Solution for Depression
I saw the headline at CNN ‘’Michael Phelps: ‘I am extremely thankful that I did not take my life’’
The most successful Olympian Athlete ever!
You reach success, the whole world knows you, you are married to Miss California, and you have 3 children, shouldn’t it be the ‘’perfect life’’?
Michael is not the only one, Barcelona soccer star Iniesta thought about suicide in 2009 after winning the league cup, the title and… the Champions League.
Don’t we all want that success in our business, as an entrepreneur or a leader, to have a nice relationship, a family life and be wealthy and happy? Isn’t that what we are pursuing?
What is missing between our success and having a great life with joy and real happiness?
The real problem is ‘’the gap within oneself’’.Often not talked about in business, not talked about in school, not talked about with most parents, teachers, educators, our friends because they also don’t know and probably struggle with it themselves.
Sometimes even professionals don’t know because they are also lost on their life journey too….
No wonder we are all so lost.
We search for external achievement, success, living a good life, but we often lose ourselves in the process. We meditate, we work out, we eat healthily, we do our best but we still don’t feel happy… then we go for medication.
We may feel temporarily better but it does not completely heal us and in the end we decide ok ‘’let’s just cope with this’’ not knowing how to solve our situation.
The solution is not external, the solution is to bridge the gap within oneself. That’s what all of us are here for. But we have never been educated to do it since we were born.
So we grow up with unresolved emotional issues, a lack of purpose, a lack of direction, and some enter a depression because we have lost connection with our inner self.
It’s essential that we bridge this gap and find mental, emotional and spiritual balance in your life and career to be happy internally and successful externally.
We all have the right to it, and the solution is available for everyone right now.
There are other famous people, and regular people like our leaders, managers, employees, all people going through similar journeys of severe frustration but most people successfully hide it..
Isn’t it about time that we start educating ourselves about what it means to connect with our inner self? That we learn the benefits of healing emotionally? That we understand that we are on a journey of self-realisation. That our depression cannot be solved externally but it has to be solved internally?
So that we avoid the pain in our lives, so that we can nurture our gift and talent and live the life we desire.
Michael, a big part of your healing journey will be to heal unresolved emotions within your gap, they are a major solution for you to cure your depression.
How is your internal balance?
Raf Adams
#balance #depression #selfcare
If today you feel a lack of mental, emotional, or spiritual balance, you can take this 2-minute questionnaire designed by Prof. Dr. Mike Thomson from CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) that will help you identify the Gap between your internal and external worlds. Take your free check-up here now.
”I am an executive coach and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and leadership to help leaders bridge the gap between their internal and external self to achieve mental, emotional and spiritual balance. By doing so be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company and society. To buy a copy of The Suited Monk or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague click here . ”
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July 11, 2022
Authenticity – The Lost Art of a Happy and Successful Life
Growing up we look for external inspiration. Our father is Superman, our mother is the Goddess of warmth and care.
We admire.
In the early stages of life, we often depend on the approval and acceptance of others for a sense of who we are.
During school, our teachers inspire us through their knowledge, and then when we become adults, our first bosses impress us with their experience and know-how.
We are inspired by those around us and we aim to achieve as high as they have or even higher.
However, sometimes, those achievements make us lose ourselves in the process.
We are focused on external inspiration and wanting to be like others, wanting to have success, wanting to be approved, wanting to be like others and we start to make decisions that are not aligned with who we are in order to belong and to be accepted by everyone around us.
We lose our authenticity.
Because we lose authenticity, we create a gap within ourselves between who we try to be for others and who we really are on the inside. This gap within oneself creates a mental, emotional and spiritual imbalance.
And so suffering begins.
Typically around our midlife (40’s and 50’s), after going through our careers searching for external inspiration, we realise that only seeking external inspiration and approval actually creates this gap.
Even though you achieve success, you achieve your goals, there is still something missing inside of us but we can’t really identify what it is, but we know it is there.
Then, if you are one of the lucky ones, the internal journey starts.
The journey towards rediscovering internal inspiration and searching for that in others too.
Authenticity.
Authenticity is not inspirational at the beginning of our careers because we are pursuing the external world too much.
It’s only when life humbles us through mistakes or running up against walls or major problems that we realize what authenticity is and why it is so much more important than just external inspiration.
It took me 20 years to learn that lesson.
We look at children with awe, they are inspiring, they are alive… and somehow we lose that part. As we develop the mind we search for a sense of belonging in the external world through achievement.
It is only when we realize that achievement alone does not bring real happiness, that we search again for the part that we had lost.
Internal authenticity.
In business, we talk about values, in life we talk about our purpose and life path.
The person who is truly authentic, happy, and successful is able to align his life path and his personal values with his career development.
Your life path is first, your career path second.
How many people today do you think need to make that shift? How many have already made it? And how many are in transition now?
The biggest question is, where are you on your journey?
Warmly
Raf Adams
How Happy Are You? Take Your 2-Minute FREE Questionnaire Here Now And Discover Your Happiness Score
I am an executive coach, and life mentor and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and career to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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July 9, 2022
How To Succeed After Failing At Work
The question is never what you do or what you did, where you succeeded or failed in business or in life.
Whether you were a good father or mother to your children or not.
Whether you achieved your goals or not.
The question is always how’s your practice?
Practicing new tasks & activities is normal in life.
You try to ride a bicycle, you fall down, you try again, you succeed, it’s a practice.
You learn to speak publicly, you feel embarrassed, you are nervous, you may fail a few times, and then you succeed. It’s a practice.
Unfortunately, practicing is not allowed in business.
You are at the beginning of your sales career, you call many clients, and you may get a few responses, yet no matter how hard you work, you miss your targets. You get fired.
You launch a new product to the market, the product doesn’t sell, you may not get a second chance.
So how do you deal with the frustration, disappointment, and missed opportunities at work?
How do you deal with losing your job and, how do you deal with failure?
There is no real system for coping and dealing with this in the workplace.
It’s like we are left to deal with these challenges on our own and we don’t know how to manage these disappointments or where to find the right answers.
Your external world can always change, your job can change, your marriage partner can change, the country you live in can change… these are temporary things.
What always remains with you is who you are, your internal world, your emotions, your purpose in life, your values, your levels of happiness…
In order to bridge the gap between your external and internal world, is to align the practice of your internal world with your business environment.
With your internal world coming first and your career coming second.
Your values come first and your decision-making supports your values.
Most of us put our career, success & achievement first and our internal world, our values, and our purpose second…
And the result is a disconnect within oneself.
This disconnect creates a mental, emotional and spiritual imbalance.
To bridge this gap, you need to shift your focus.
You need to approach everything in life from the inside first.
Your values need to come first, your success second.
Your purpose in life needs to come first, your goals second.
In order to get to know your values and your purpose, and be able to deal with changes in the external world, is to practice from the inside.
If you take away your job, your relationships, your success, your home and all your possessions, the only question left is ´´how’s your practice´´?
The way to do this is to think about the quality of your decision-making.
Are you making decisions based on the external expectations of others?
Are you making decisions from your ego to gain something?
Or do they come from your heart?
The answer to that question will bring awareness about the changes you need to make.
The external world will always be outside your control.
Start to build your internal world, it’s the only way to be truly happy internally and become successful externally.
Warmly
Raf Adams
How Happy Are You? Take Your 2-Minute FREE Questionnaire Here Now And Discover Your Happiness Score
I am an executive coach, and life mentor and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and career to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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June 24, 2022
How To End Loneliness
Loneliness. Should we even talk about this? Who is even lonely? It sounds very depressing.
We have fun daily, meeting friends, doing our job, and spending the weekends going to sports events, doing our regular life.
However, in the UK, they have appointed Tracey Crouch as a minister of loneliness. At first, I was very surprised to see this. But then it made sense that it is a big problem. It´s a recognition that it does exist in your life and career.
These days we work hard every day, we make things happen, and we achieve. Then we go out with friends, spend time with the family, do our daily sports regime, finish up a few emails late evening, and then go to sleep.
It is the constant stimulation of the external world that keeps us moving forward. This constant stimulation pulls us away from our inner selves. Rarely do we have time to sit still and just take a moment. A moment for ourselves. A moment to reflect. A moment to just be.
Why? Because the external world is so much more stimulating and constantly asks for our attention.
So what would make you STOP and just take a moment for yourself? What would you feel?
If you really listen well, you might feel a little bit of sadness. Just a little bit.
Sadness for a small disconnect within the self.
Sadness for a decision you once made and regret.
Sadness for an argument you had with your wife or husband or maybe parents.
Sadness for letting someone down.
Sadness for not pursuing the dream job that you always wanted.
And we don´t want that sadness. So what do we do? We cover it up by focusing on the external. Meeting friends, enhancing our careers, and trying to forget what we FEEL.
The one who denies sadness is just occupied in the mind.
Aren’t we EMOTIONAL human beings instead of RATIONAL human beings?
Why would we stop feeling and trying to be someone we are not?
Because we want to be happy. And the external stimulation brings a certain level of happiness. But it is only temporary.
If your external world is not matching your internal self, there is a gap within. A gap that causes sadness, and that gap creates loneliness.
The larger the gap, the more lonely you feel, a bigger gap between your mind and your heart, between what you try to achieve in your life and what you really want within.
The only way loneliness or sadness can be resolved is by bridging the gap within yourself.
And the way to do this is to give yourself SPACE and TIME.
Space and time to first become aware of what you FEEL within. This is why holidays are so important. This is why relaxation time is equally important as working time.
Once you know what you FEEL, you can then transform feelings of sadness into happiness.
So the question is, when did you have your last relaxation time to listen to your inner self?
It is the first step in the journey of bridging the gap within and becoming happy internally and successful externally.
Warmly
Raf Adams
How Happy Are You? Take Your 2-Minute FREE Questionnaire Here Now And Discover Your Happiness Score
I am an executive coach, and life mentor and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and career to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
The post How To End Loneliness appeared first on .
June 13, 2022
How Giving Space Leads to Happiness
Giving space is one of the most important skills to master.
No, it’s not about giving space to others. It’s about giving space to yourself.
Space between the mind and the heart. Space for no thinking, no action, just being.
Many people are occupied with daily tasks, travels, meetings, calls, and emails to answer. There is no space. Everything is always ‘’ON’’.
How to manage stress better and find more inner balance? The way to achieve this is not by keeping the machine ON. It’s about giving space and switching OFF.
The space between the mind and heart is where creativity, inspiration, self-awareness, peace, insight, ideas, dreams and joy happen.
In our world today, we are in a movement of mindfulness. Mindfulness brings space between the heart and the mind. That’s why it is so powerful. Being mindful is not everything, but it is a door opener.
Mindfulness is one way.
Self-reflection is another way.
Working with a coach, mentor, advisor, or friend is another way.
The goal is to find and create so much space between your mind (your Suit) and your heart (your Monk), that you BECOME your heart. Then use your mind to get things done in meetings, with daily tasks, managing responsibilities, and at the end of the day after a long day of work, return back to the heart and rest.
Do you know anyone who has achieved this balance in business? What would that look like?
Shouldn’t we all live and lead this way? What are the consequences of not living this way?
Many unspoken answers that still need revealing.
The question is where do you still need to create space in your life to connect more with your heart?
Warmly
Raf Adams
How Happy Are You? Take Your 2-Minute FREE Questionnaire Here Now And Discover Your Happiness Score
I am an executive coach, and life mentor and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and career to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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May 24, 2022
An Unpaved Road Towards Happiness
Walking the journey of life is not easy.
If someone tells you otherwise he or she has not lived.
Life is easy when you walk a paved road. The direction is set. There is clarity about the direction to go.
This is the unconscious journey.
Just follow the herd.
And so we walk happily with everyone on this road.
However, sometimes there will be a brick that is not in place and you stumble upon it. Other people don´t seem to stumble but you just happen to stumble on it and suddenly your happiness fades and either your toe hurts, you become angry, or you feel stupid and you hope no one saw that you stumbled.
That brick on the paved way is like a sign. A sign to say: ´´hey change something´´.
Have you ever seen someone hitting the same brick over and over again, in their life and relationships? And they keep hitting the same bricks? And they don´t change?
Why? Because it´s easier to follow the herd.
Bricks are everywhere and they will keep coming until you change something.
A brick in the economy is inflation, and so we print money and inflation keeps rising.
A brick in relationships is attracting a similar narcissistic person over and over again.
A brick in personal life is being a people pleaser and attracting always people taking advantage of you.
These are the daily challenges, and bricks that need to be changed or laid out differently.
Real-life is an unpaved road.
An unpaved way.
When you change your mindset, you will look at the unpaved way in a different way.
Imagine the beginning of the paved way in front of you, the first 20 years of your life. And then after that, there are just bricks. There is no direction, just a pile of bricks.
The way to live life to the fullest is to take ONE brick and lay it out in a way that serves you. Then the next brick aligned with the first one. Then the third brick, then the fourth, and so on… NOT looking at how others lay their bricks.
Over time you will see that your paved way is like a playground. A playground that is very familiar to you and a playground that serves you. It doesn´t serve someone else, it serves YOU.
When you lay bricks, you can and you will never see where your paved road is going. But that is not important. What is important is the enjoyment of making your road.
The question is where do you see bricks in front of you that you could potentially stumble upon? What bricks have you already stumbled upon? Isn´t it time to repave the way?
Warmly,
Raf Adams
I am a life mentor and philosopher and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and leadership to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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May 18, 2022
The Journey Inwards and Outwards
Everything that goes inwards has to go outwards.
And everything that goes outwards has to go inwards.
When you eat food or drink water, it goes inwards, you digest, it serves you and it goes outwards.
When money comes into your business, it goes inwards, you use that money to reinvest, and pay salaries and it goes outwards.
Why is that even important to know?
Because when you block the flow of going outwards everything gets clogged.
If the food you digest doesn´t go out, what happens? You have a serious problem. If your business doesn´t pay salaries you will have a serious problem.
And so we let the food go out and we pay salaries if we own a business. It’s the natural flow.
But how about emotions?
Someone criticizes you, you have a painful divorce, you lose the money that you invested for your parents.
These are emotional challenges that go inward. Do these go outward again?
In most cases not.
So what happens? Your system gets clogged.
Your natural flow is broken. The emotions go inward, but the emotions don´t go outward.
Have you ever thought about this?
All unresolved life experiences you have had, traumas, stress, pressure, and pains that go inwards but not outwards build up negative emotions within your body. And this is one way how a gap is built within you. I talk about this extensively in my book The Suited Monk.
And so, declogging that system is crucial if you truly want to be happy (real happiness).
From my personal viewpoint coaching many people in corporate, and personal life, I see two main critical areas that most people have, they are:
Not being connected to their emotionsA lack of fulfilment and clarity about the direction and their true path in life and careerIf you resolve these two elements in your life, your happiness, your enjoyment, and your fulfilment will skyrocket.
Even your life´s purpose is a part that is inwards, it’s inside you. But what happens if it doesn’t go outwards? Your natural system is clogged. You will not be happy.
And that clogging is like drainage that is clogged (sorry for the visual metaphor but it’s true), and this is where the suffering and darkness happen.
Imagine what happens when you clean out drainage.
It smells, it’s dirty, it’s often black, it takes time and effort, it’s difficult to remove the clog, you may need to do hard work, you are sweating to get it unclogged…
BUT what happens afterwards, when the natural flow comes back?
It’s clean, it’s fresh, it smells good, it looks good, it feels good, it flows naturally!
And so the question is, where are you clogged in life? What are some of the parts that need to go outwards?
What blockages are inside you that are not being released?
Those blockages are the solutions to your happiness and fulfilment in life!
Warmly,
Raf Adams
I am a life mentor and philosopher and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and leadership to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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May 4, 2022
Balance and Imbalance
In order to be balanced, you first have to be unbalanced to then understand what balance is.
Happiness. You first have to be unhappy to know what happiness is.
Success. We first have to fail to then understand what real success means.
How come balance is so hard to find? Relationship issues, changes in your career, company politics, a difficult client frustrates us, stress seems to be there all the time…
In order for us to find balance, we first need to experience imbalance because then we know which gap to bridge to find balance.
Each lesson, each struggle, each change in your life is a sign to let you know ‘’hey, you have a gap here’’. It’s only when we bridge the gap that the imbalance goes away and then you are in balance.
Eckhart Tolle would say you are in ‘’the present moment’’.
When you miss a flight and instead of being frustrated you choose to be an observer and not attach your emotions to the changes you find balance.
When you miss a job opportunity and instead of feeling disappointed and you choose to be an observer you find balance.
The journey of life is the journey towards self-realization. Our life, relationship, and career experiences are just helping us to get there.
The question is, in which areas do you need more balance today?
Raf Adams
”I am a life mentor and philosopher and write thought pieces and provide perspective on life and leadership to help people to increase the quality of their decision making. By doing so, achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance, be more effective and make a positive difference for themselves, their teams, company, and society. If you want to fastrack your results right now, click here to get the Suited Monk book or provide it as a gift for a friend or colleague. Yes I want it!
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May 1, 2022
Philosophy Does Not Have a Place in Business, but Businesses are Build Around a Philosophy
Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu…. Great philosophers.
A nice to have and nice read in our free time, now let’s get back to work.
Philosophy is a dream, it does not have a place in business.
If we only knew that the journey of our life is the journey towards self-realization.
Our job, our marriage, our kids, and our life experiences are all part of that journey.
We,… we live life in reality. We pay the bills, we meet friends, and we try to improve our business.
So what is the purpose of a business?
A business is about seeing a pain point in the market and then developing a product or service that helps others overcome that pain or improve their lives. The business makes a profit and then we use that profit to re-invest to continue to grow and solve problems.
In a company, we call this a Mission, Vision, and Values, and then we use strategy to execute.
There is no philosophy in it (so we think), because this…., this is reality.
But at some point in our lives, some sooner than later, come to a point in life where we ask the big question. WHY? Why are we doing all this for?
The moment that WHY happens, your deeper quest for meaning and purpose opens up.
The first answer to WHY is to bring back purpose into your business, career, and your company vision. Why are you in business? And then works backward to achieve the vision you had through your strategy and goals.
The second answer to bring back in your life is ‘’why am I here’’? This is more on an individual level. Since we are never educated to understand the real journey of life towards self-realization taught through the teaching of Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu, and many others… some are lost and don’t even know we are on this journey.
So to build a sustainable and happy life, you need to go back to the core. Understand your personal philosophy of where and who you are, and why are you here for. When these answers slowly emerge bring that into your business…
And then one day…. when you get lost because of working hard, taking care of responsibilities, or you experience a crisis in life if you want to know why you are doing the things you do. Simply go back into your heart, the philosophy and driving force of why you do the things you do will always be there. So it´s important that you develop this part inside you.
The question now is have you connected with that part inside you?
Raf Adams
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