Hailey Gorski follows the "produce, protein, portion rule."
Hailey Gorski
A dietitian created a simple template that helps her build balanced but enjoyable meals.
Hailey Gorski anchors her meals in satiating protein and micronutrient-packed fiber.
She focuses on what she can add to her plate rather than what she can remove.
Hailey Gorski has a simple rule for making delicious meals that fit her nutrition goals: PPP, or produce, protein, portion.
The 28-year-old dietitian based in Los Angeles anchors her meals in protein, to help her feel full, and nutrient and fiber-packed produce, such as veggies and beans.
To portion her food, she takes a plate and fills about half with produce, about a quarter with protein, and high fibre carbs and maybe some healthy fats for the remainder, she said. PPP can be applied to any meal.
"That's kind of how I visualize my plate and then I reverse engineer my meals from that," Gorski told Business Insider.
She developed the simple template to help her clients who want to lose weight, because she noticed they would often fall into the trap of adopting an all-or-nothing mindset, which was tripping them up.
Clients thought "either I'm super healthy and I'm eating at home, or I'm dining out and eating fast food and junk food and more convenience foods, and I'm being 'unhealthy,'" Gorksi said.
"When you give people a template 'produce, protein portion,' it makes it a lot easier to find healthy options that align with your goals," she said.
Following this template helped Gorski lose 20 pounds in 2016, without cutting out her favorite foods.
"What's great about it is it helps you build the plate, but also helps you shift from the deprivation to the abundance mindset," Gorski said.
When it comes to weight loss, eating balanced, nutritious meals that don't feel restrictive is crucial to long-term success, she said.
PPP rule-approved meals Gorski eats on repeat:
High-fiber, high-protein pasta
Groski's go-to pasta dish.
Hailey Gorski
High fiber pasta (portion)
Ground beef in marinara sauce (protein)
Three different frozen vegetables added into the sauce (produce)
Low-lift wraps
High-fiber tortilla wrap (portion)
Turkey slices (protein)
Guacamole and arugula (produce)
Grain bowls
Groski likes to make salad or grain bowls with different themes such as Greek-style.
Career growth depends on building a network rather than relying solely on your manager's support.
Career coach Andrea Wasserman encourages forming cross-functional relationships to enhance visibility.
Office "influencers" shape outcomes without formal authority, making them key allies for career progress.
Many corporate professionals believe their career trajectory hinges on one person: their boss. They think: If my manager advocates for me, I'll get promoted. If not, I'm stuck.
That's a misconception because promotions rarely come from a single champion — they come from a web of relationships. These include people who shape the perception of others, pressure-test your thinking, influence decision-makers, and speak about you when you're not in the room.
If you want your career trajectory to soar this year, you should be refining your relationship strategy, starting with these five categories of people.
1. The cross-functional partner who depends on you
High performers often invest in building deep credibility within their own team and spend significant time thinking about how to impress senior leaders, but neglect peers in adjacent functional areas. This limits visibility.
I once worked with a retail marketing director who consistently exceeded her revenue targets. She assumed that would be enough for promotion, but when senior executives evaluated her readiness for a broader role, they asked, "How does she lead cross-functionally?" Her merchandising partner on another team described her as territorial and protective. This stalled her progression.
She rebuilt the relationship by scheduling monthly alignment meetings with merchandising and supply chain, asking about their margin pressures, and proactively adjusting campaign timing to reduce markdown risk. Within two quarters, her boss told her those partners started advocating for her "one company" mindset.
Cross-functional relationships create leverage because they expand who experiences your leadership. Your reputation can't grow within your silo.
2. The culture carrier
Every organization has culture carriers who are respected insiders without an HR title or the formal authority to lead culture, who set an example of acceptable norms and embody how decisions actually get made. They may not have the biggest titles, but they have credibility and context.
When a newly promoted vice president entered a financial services firm, I saw him struggle in executive meetings. His ideas were strong, but they didn't land. He later realized he was presenting a detailed analysis in a culture that valued decisive framing.
He built a relationship with a longtime chief of staff who was widely respected but rarely in the spotlight. She helped him understand the company's "operating language," which is how leaders structure arguments, how disagreement is expressed, and what signals executive readiness.
Within months, his presence shifted. He wasn't more competent than before, but he was better prepared to show up appropriately. It's critical to understand the unwritten rules so you can move inside them with greater ease.
3. The influencer without formal authority
There's often someone who shapes outcomes without owning the final vote. It may be a product manager, a program lead who briefs the executive team, or a person who controls the data that frames strategic decisions. These influencers control how far your work goes and what people think of it.
A senior operations leader once told me she was invisible in the prep work for big meetings, even though she felt she had valuable contributions to make. Instead of chasing her boss and pleading for airtime, she focused on the strategy lead, who oversaw the synthesis of updates and recommendations from various functional areas. She began sending structured summaries — three risks, three opportunities, and one recommendation — to that person ahead of key meetings. Within weeks, her language began appearing verbatim in board decks.
Rather than demanding visibility, she became indispensable to someone who already had a seat at the table. While it's tempting to chase senior leaders, don't overlook the people who shape what those leaders see.
4. The truth-teller
Feedback can be hard to get. Your boss may soften it, peers may avoid it, and direct reports may filter it, but without it, your growth will stall. You need one person who will tell you the hard truths before they cost you credibility.
A high-potential director once asked a peer she trusted, "What's one thing I do that might be hurting how I'm perceived?" The answer she got made her uncomfortable: "You over-explain when you're presenting, and it makes you sound defensive." In executive settings, brevity signals confidence, but her error never came up in a performance review.
She began practicing tighter framing. Within months, leaders described her as more decisive and executive. The issue wasn't competence — she was simply unaware of a change she needed to make.
5. The sponsor — but built through exposure, not "pick your brain" requests
Senior sponsorship doesn't start with a formal ask for mentorship or coffee dates. It happens through consistent exposure to your work and your thinking behind it.
One client assumed his boss's boss would naturally champion him, having heard through the grapevine about his analytical rigor. He delivered strong results but only showed the output, not the problem-solving process. I coached him to shift his approach and, instead of presenting only one conclusion, bring structured options: "Here are three paths, here's the tradeoff, and here's my recommendation."
The goal is to have someone who references your strategic ability in executive meetings, so you become known as "already operating at the next level."
Next steps
If you're new to your organization, introverted, or stretched thin, prioritizing several relationships may feel overwhelming. It doesn't have to be.
Start with two relationships this quarter. Replace one transactional update with a strategic conversation. Ask one person for candid feedback. Offer one cross-functional assist that wasn't required. In a hybrid work environment, it's ideal to schedule these conversations for in-person days, but it's better to make them happen remotely than not at all.
If you focus only on impressing your boss, you narrow your sphere of influence. By building these five relationships, you expand your reach. This road map will ensure that enough of the right people experience your capabilities.
One morning in January, Gracie Nielson was scrolling TikTok when she discovered something that made her skin crawl.
The fashion, lifestyle, and beauty influencer with over 600,000 followers noticed a comment on one of her videos that directed her to a clip of a woman wearing low-slung blue jeans and a yellow crop top. Her face didn't resemble Nielson's, but the exact same outfit was hanging in Nielson's closet, and even the woman's body struck a familiar pose. Nielson realized it was a shot-for-shot replica of a video she'd posted months prior, down to the backdrop — a corner of Nielson's home in California. Intrigue quickly devolved into unease.
"That's so crazy. This is my house. This is my body, just with somebody else's face," Nielson recalled thinking. "It's just a really uncomfortable feeling."
The other woman in question may not be a woman at all, but a digital echo: Sienna Rose, aka @siennarosely, describes herself as a neo-soul singer who has over 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Her TikTok page is filled with uncanny videos where the star smiles and vamps — but never talks — to the camera. Though she's been plagued by accusations that she's AI-generated, Rose has never performed live; AI detection tools used by the streaming service Deezer have flagged Rose's music as AI-generated. Emails I sent to the address listed in Rose's TikTok bio went unanswered.
It's Nielson's job to make videos, so she made another TikTok to share her reaction to the discovery. "I'm so scared, you guys," she said, comparing her video to Rose's since-deleted one. The TikTok quickly went viral, amassing over 2.4 million views to date — confirmation that Nielson's shock had reverberated far beyond her usual audience.
"I even had a friend text me that day, and she was like, 'I did not know Sienna Rose was AI,'" Nielson said. "She's like, 'I have listened to her music before, completely not knowing that this is not a real person.'"
Gracie Nielson made a TikTok comparing her content to an eerily similar video from Sienna Rose.
TikTok/@gracienielson
AI influencers are here, and if Nielson's case is any indication, you may not have even noticed. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated and accessible to the average person, employers, companies, and brands have begun investing in the technology to reduce labor costs. Number-crunchers aren't the only ones who are being replaced — creatives are feeling the heat, too. Now, there's AI music on the Billboard charts, AI used in Oscar-winning movies, and, of course, AI all over our social media feeds.
Just as influencers once stormed the internet — harnessing the then-new technology of social media to draw eyeballs, score paid sponsorships, and rake in advertising dollars previously reserved for traditional celebrities — digital avatars are now poised to flood the same market.
Ally Rooker, a part-time content creator with nearly 190,000 followers on TikTok, described having AI imitate real-life influencers to hawk products as nothing short of labor-busting.
"When I see influencers promoting generative AI video tools, I'm like, 'You don't understand the reason that you have a career,'" Rooker told Business Insider. "You don't understand how fragile what you're doing is, and how fragile your revenue is. Because you're promoting your replacement."
The background and movements of Sienna Rose's TikTok have a lot in common with this video from influencer @e111esuh.TikToks: @e111esuh and @siennarosely
The multibillion-dollar creator economy was built on aspirational influencers who can promise their followers that a better life — or at least clearer skin, or a life-changing haircut, or a dream vacation — is just a swipe away. So what happens when a new crop of competitors is aspiration, personified: influencers who don't suffer from hormonal acne, bed head, or debilitating jet lag? Friendly, almost-human faces who don't need to eat, sleep, or even get paid?
AI influencers are already making money from brand deals
In a social media landscape where real people already use beauty filters and Photoshop, brands are going all in on artificiality. A 2025 survey of about 1,000 senior marketers in the UK and US from the social and influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy found that roughly 79% said they are increasing investment in AI-generated creator content. Grand View Research estimates that the global virtual influencer market will reach $48.88 billion by 2030.
Real influencers fear that could translate into a lot of lost income.
"Why would Maybelline pay a real person if they can just pay an AI person that looks essentially the same?" Rooker said, using the popular beauty brand as an example. "The person scrolling Maybelline's Instagram doesn't need to know who it is in the video. They just have to think it's a real person."
Aitana Lopez
Courtesy of The Clueless.
Right now, "think" is the operative word. Disclosure requirements for AI influencers remain murky, and lawful uses of AI vary from state to state in the US. While many AI influencers are labeled as such in their bios — Aitana Lopez, a pink-haired fitness and fashion influencer calls herself a "digital soul," while Olivia Brand, a blonde Alex Cooper knock-off who generates inspirational podcast clips on TikTok, calls herself an "AI it-girl" — casual scrollers on their FYPs can easily remain oblivious to the fact that they've encountered AI at all.
Even if someone like Nielson could make the case for a right of publicity violation — alleging that a third party has taken her name, image, or likeness and used it for a commercial purpose without permission — lawsuits are expensive, and a worthwhile payoff isn't guaranteed.
Aitana Lopez may not have a real body but she does go to the gym.
Now, Aitana has three full-time partnerships, including one with a Spanish salon chain. She was recently used in a Black Friday campaign for Amazon. The Clueless creative director Andy García estimated that Aitana's assets — including her brand deals, paid posts, and bespoke "skincare" brand, Vellum, which is actually a software program to enhance the skin texture of AI avatars — generate about $75,000 to $100,000 a month. Other AI influencers also boast thriving careers: Lil Miquela, one of the original digital avatars, has partnered with Prada and Calvin Klein; Xania Monet landed a multimillion-dollar record deal; and Shudu, marketed as "the world's first digital supermodel," has starred in campaigns for Balmain and Hyundai.
García doesn't see her company's creation and other AI influencers as job-killers, but rather hurdles real humans have the tools to overcome.
"Right now, AI influencers are really not a threat to real influencers," she said. "It's like any opportunity, to which real influencers can adapt."
Many people still prefer to follow humans over robots
While brands may enjoy the control and cost efficiency digital avatars afford, when confronted directly with the question of AI, many consumers remain unconvinced.
Comment sections online are full of backlash against AI-generated ads and digital avatars, particularly those that seem designed to blend in with real people. Sienna Rose has inspired numerous sleuths to comb through her videos for copy-and-pasted details. (Suffice it to say that Nielson isn't the only creator whose backdrops and body movements appear to have been cloned on Rose's page.) Others have gone viral for protesting AI creep in daily life, from bots replacing customer service agents to stumbling across fake influencers on their feeds. When they're not being fooled by AI, many are irritated by it.
Cameron Mackintosh, a part-time content creator based in Nashville, said she was shocked and dismayed when she was briefly duped by an AI influencer on Instagram — and, even worse, when she noticed that people she knew in real life were following the account. Her video about the revelation blew up, amassing over 1.7 million views and hundreds of passionate comments.
"I would never want to read a story written by AI. I would never want to read a book written by AI. I wouldn't want to consume a painting that was created by a computer," Mackintosh told Business Insider.
Cameron Mackintosh said sharing her life online is "very vulnerable," which distinguishes her videos from AI-generated content.Tiktoks: @cambigmack and @sacredly.savage
As Business Insider reported in October, consumer backlash to AI accounts is causing some brands to retreat from the tech. In February, The New York Times compared the AI boom unfavorably to the "dot-com boom," citing a 2025 YouGov survey in which more than a third of respondents said they were "concerned that AI would end human life on earth."
Allison Fitzpatrick, an attorney in New York with experience in advertising and influencer marketing, told me that concerns about intellectual property and copyright infringement — not to mention the demand for real-human relatability that made influencers a force in the first place — have translated to a lack of interest in AI influencers among the brands that she works with.
"I think the human audience, the followers, are smart enough to know that between an influencer who is human and can actually taste the product or go on vacation and stay at the hotel or fly in the airline," she said. "You're going to take the human influencer's endorsement far more seriously than an AI influencer who's done none of what I've just described."
Influencers are ready to fight back
Influencers like Nielson aren't giving up hope yet. They say leaning into reality, not realism, will be key to staying in business.
"A lot of content creators, people like to follow them because they are relatable — people sharing skin issues or insecurities, for example," Nielson said. "That wouldn't really happen using an AI avatar because it's not human. It's not real."
Content creator Emily Higgins has posted about the proliferation of AI influencers like Olivia Brand.TikToks: @emilyissocial and @itsoliviabrand
Emily Higgins, a North Carolina-based content creator who also runs a social media consulting business, told me that as high-production-value content becomes the norm, she expects to see a renewed embrace of scripting hiccups, grainy footage, and other deliberate imperfections.
"If something's too highly produced or too perfect-seeming, then immediately, it can be dismissed as AI," Higgins said. "We're going to see people trying to create more flaws in their content. We'll see more human, emotional, raw kinds of elements."
Some brands are already leading the charge. Dove and Aerie have vowed not to use AI in their marketing materials, using slogans like "Real People Only" and "Keep Beauty Real." Aerie, which stopped retouching its models in 2014 — putting stretch marks, blemishes, and body diversity front and center — earned its most popular Instagram post in a year thanks to its anti-AI promise. Meanwhile, Heineken and Polaroid have explicitly mocked AI and Big Tech in recent ad campaigns.
Influencing is often dismissed as a low-effort profession, but at its core, it's an act of vulnerability. To broadcast your face and feelings to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of strangers requires nerve and resilience, neither of which AI can reproduce.
As a result, Mackintosh said she expects people to begin seeking out creators and brands that put visible effort into the creative process.
"There's this novelty about human creation, and I don't think that will ever go away," she said. "I always think it will be appreciated. I just think there will be less and less of it because, economically, it will be easier to fake."
"I really like infrastructure," said Adams, 20, a part-time travel content creator. "I would just spend time on Google Maps and see these huge new mega-projects in the Chinese countryside — huge towers and everything — and I sort of fell down that rabbit hole of looking at how China has developed."
At the time, Adams was 13. It wasn't until 2025 that he'd saved enough money from working at Walmart and finally got to see China for himself. He shared his opinions on how it stacks up against the West on TikTok.
"Western media will just tell you everything you see about China is propaganda because they don't want to admit how far we've fallen," Adams said in a video posted in October about his 10-day trip to Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shanghai.
Gen Zers aren't totally blinded by the clean streets and drone-delivered lunches they see on their phones. Ally, a 22-year-old from New York who studied abroad in Shanghai in 2025, said that though she enjoyed traveling on China's rail network and the ease of cashless payments, China's lack of First Amendment protections and its youth unemployment crisis can't be ignored.
Also, she added, "I'm not there to work 996 — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week," referring to a hustle-culture trend adopted by some youth in China. Other young people in China are broke, burned out, and have given up on productivity in a trend known as "lying flat."
Chongqing has gone TikTok-viral for its captivating city skyline.
Cheng Xin/Getty Images
Christian Nemeth, a 26-year-old content creator from Nevada who now lives in Chengdu, told Business Insider that life in China isn't without its hurdles.
"China may seem glitz and glam, but there is a side of getting used to it," Nemeth told Business Insider. Adjusting to the Chinese government's censorship, for example, was one of the biggest challenges.
"Sometimes it'll shock me what some of my friends know and what they know about it," he said, citing his Chinese friends' hazy knowledge of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center as an example.
Gen Zers in the US grew up with a version of capitalism that provided access to cheap goods from China, while seeing rising costs for American-made goods and stagnating infrastructure development at home. Those focused on China are less interested in it as the US's economic foil and more interested in its traditional medical practices, social media platforms, and what it can show the US about investing in technology and infrastructure to improve citizens' lives.
Nemeth said that despite China's censorship, he has little desire to return to the States. In his view, China bested the US in healthcare, convenience, and travel.
"I've been here eight months, and I don't look back. I'll probably stay here for as long as I can," he said.
Gen Zers are picking and choosing pieces of China's culture and economy to idealize as their views of Western capitalism change. According to the latest Harvard Youth Poll from fall 2025, 39% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they support capitalism, down from 45% in 2020.
Gen Z is also far less likely than their parents and grandparents to call China an enemy. Nineteen percent of those aged 18 to 29 hold this view, compared with 40% of those aged 50 to 64 and 47% of those aged 65 and older, a 2025 Pew Research study found.
Americans have held mostly unfavorable views of China since 1990, according to Gallup polling, and China has long been perceived as the US's main economic adversary. At the same time, its manufacturing power has been central to Americans' access to cheap goods, including clothing, toys, and electronics.
Meanwhile, high-tech sectors like software, social media, and electric vehicles now show that "Made in China" is no longer synonymous with low-quality and copycat goods, thanks to state investments in those industries.
"We don't have their electric cars here yet, but as soon as we do, people are probably going to view the Chinese auto industry differently," Mark Giordano, a professor and vice dean at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, told Business Insider. "TikTok is Chinese, and there are things that are globally competitive culturally," he added, citing appliances like refrigerators.
China's innovation doesn't stop with consumer products. The country's mega-engineering projects include the world's longest subway network, highest bridge, and most powerful dam. Young Americans like Adams are taking note. He said there's been talk of extending rail service to his hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, for 20 years, but it hasn't happened.
The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in Guizhou, China, is the world's highest bridge.
Ou Dongqu/Xinhua via Getty Images
"The Americans are embracing China Modern," said Ying Zhu, a visiting professor at the Pratt Institute and the author of "Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market." She said that "modern China" is "efficient in adopting advanced technology and less chaotic in policy implementation."
Tiffany Huang, a 23-year-old from Florida who has visited China throughout her life to see extended family in rural Fujian, said she was struck by how much the region changed in a period of five years. Pre-pandemic, she and her siblings used to "mourn" going to China because it was so undeveloped. Between 2019 and 2024, however, she was struck by how quickly high-rise apartment buildings and office towers sprang up.
"All of a sudden," she said, "you see these large, large skyscrapers starting to appear where there's typically just grass and just cows and farms."
Post-pandemic, she's also been captivated by the luxe experience — complete with food service — on a bullet train from Shanghai to Fuzhou. Ally, the New York Gen Zer who studied in China, also mentioned the sleek travel experience offered on China's intercity railway system, which she felt was more tech-forward than US trains.
"It's like Amtrak but better because of how nice the station looks in general — like two floors tall with lots of food options, and I've heard you can order delivery while you're on the train," she said.
Huang was also impressed by DiDi, China's version of Uber, for its $5 30-minute rides between cities, and the safety she felt walking home at night.
"This might be a controversial take, but since there's so much CCTV monitoring all around China, there is a very low crime rate," Huang said. "I just felt very safe, especially as a woman going out at night, when I'm out at 12 a.m. exploring the city or just taking a walk."
Huang, Nemeth, and Adams all cited the streamer Darren Watkins, Jr., known as Speed or IShowSpeed, as a primary influence on China's popularity boom with Gen Z. Watkins toured China for two weeks in April 2025 and livestreamed the trip to tens of millions of subscribers.
"Chat, this is Cyber City right here. Damn! This city is like, not even human," Watkins said in one video from the trip, while admiring the Chongqing skyline. "Chat, should I move to China?"
Chinese cultural practices are also having a moment, including elements of traditional medicine and clothing, in a trend known as Chinamaxxing. On TikTok, there's growing interest in what life is like in China, including a type of video in which users film themselves preparing Cantonese chicken or drinking hot water in the morning to aid in digestion and skincare. Captions read, "You met me at a very Chinese time in my life."
Creator Sherry Zhu, 23, told Business Insider that engagement with her videos skyrocketed after she started posting about Chinese culture. Her follower count ballooned and today is over 745,000 — a large portion of which she says are non-Asian Americans.
"There is sort of an interest in traditional Chinese medicine, traditional food," Zhu said. She says her first viral TikTok post was a set of photos she took wearing hanfu, a traditional Chinese dress. "In the comments, people were asking me, 'What is this style of dress called? Where did you take these photos?' I was like, well, if everyone's so curious about my culture, I'll just keep posting about my culture."
Creator Sherry Zhu (not pictured) said she gained a lot of TikTok engagement when she posted herself wearing traditional hanfu dress.
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
US consumer interest in traditional Chinese medicine, which has been slowly gaining steam for a few decades, reached a two-decade high in December 2025, according to Google Trends data.
Then there's the platform that's facilitated much of this idealization, China's fiercely defended export, TikTok. When Americans feared they'd lose access to the app ahead of an impending sale or ban, the Chinese alternative, RedNote, soared to the top of Apple's App Store. Some Americans joked about hand-delivering personal data to the Chinese government so the US couldn't say it was being stolen — a reaction that signaled American dedication to TikTok, willingness to trust a Chinese company, and lack of enthusiasm for the billionaires rumored to be buying TikTok at the time.
"People can oddly separate, or compartmentalize, 'OK, China's got this problem, but I want to use TikTok,'" Giordano said. He said they're not thinking about buying Chinese products as a political act; they just want the product with the best value.
While young Americans may not have a complete grasp of the complexities of China's economic system, Giordano said they are correct to deconstruct some of the US's messaging on Chinese communism. He said it's a "mistake" to assume that "because China is all state-controlled, their stuff will be crap forever and they can't possibly do anything but copy."
Despite state intervention in industry, he said, "there's a really vibrant creative class that is working hard to make good products that people want to buy."
"If that's the case, then the American Gen Z are looking in the wrong place, as their contemporaries in China are equally burnt out and disillusioned," she said.
"What China has now is a state capitalism, which the US increasingly resembles," she said, referencing President Donald Trump's recent moves to have the government buy stakes in companies. "Capitalism is capitalism, either the US state or the Chinese state."
As head of Disney's experiences division, D'Amaro charmed the executive search team, park guests, and employees who've met him.
Wall Street could prove harder to please.
Disney's stock has barely moved in the last decade, and shares have nearly been cut in half from their all-time high five years ago.
We spoke with four media analysts as D'Amaro takes the reins on Wednesday from longtime CEO Bob Iger. They said Disney should focus on developing new franchises, investing in video games, and figuring out what to do with AI and the company's declining TV networks.
One key: winning over a new generation that craves interaction.
"In this new world, you really need to take down those velvet ropes and let them onto the red carpet," said Jon Giegengack, the founder of Hub Entertainment Research.
On the hunt for new franchises
Early in the streaming wars, Hollywood giants went all-out to beat Netflix by spending billions on new shows and movies, in hopes of attracting and keeping subscribers.
Content itself might not be enough to move the needle for Disney now, said Brandon Katz, a content strategy director at Greenlight Analytics.
"The real question for Disney now isn't just, 'Is this piece of content a hit?'" Katz said. "It's: 'Can this piece of content live across parks, merchandise, games, and streaming?'"
"A primary area of focus should be building on the company's strong base of existing premium IP while introducing new franchises that can keep the flywheel spinning," MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman wrote after D'Amaro was named CEO.
That's a big challenge for D'Amaro and creative chief Dana Walden, though they don't have to start from scratch. Disney's next "Frozen" could come from a book or a video game.
"Disney has to start getting in on that, particularly as the superhero bubble waves and wobbles," Katz said of using video games as IP.
Games could help Disney level up with younger audiences
Video games are both a potential treasure trove for new franchises and a way for Disney to reach younger generations.
Young people who grew up with endless content at their fingertips crave interactivity, whether it's playing games with friends or joining digital communities.
To compete in this rapidly shifting landscape, Disney must move toward "participatory" media like video games, Hub Entertainment Research's Giegengack said. He added that letting fans play as The Mandalorian in Fortnite, instead of just watching him on Disney+, is a "complete no-brainer" for Disney.
Disney has an uneven history in video games, though D'Amaro seems to see their value, as his division made a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games. Fortnite players can explore a Disney-themed virtual world and wear "skins" of Disney characters like Captain Hook and Frozone.
Video games appear poised to become a larger part of Disney, as the games division is moving under Walden's oversight alongside the streaming and content teams.
AI is a double-edged sword
Disney has already made a polarizing bet on interactivity through a deal with OpenAI. Soon, fans could be able to create and scroll through AI-generated short-form vertical clips on Disney+.
Iger hoped this deal would cement the value of Disney's IP in the AI age and set guardrails around how its characters are used, all while boosting streaming engagement, which has stagnated in the US in recent years.
Giegengack said this deal also marked a major pivot for Disney, which has spent decades "protecting IP jealously." Given how viewer habits are shifting, this bet on short-form and AI-generated video may pay off.
"It's not without risk, but I think you have to explore ways to use your assets in new ways these days, particularly as it pertains to a social-driven young audience," Katz said of the deal.
Others are less enthused by Disney's move into AI. Alan Wolk, who cofounded media research firm TVREV, said Disney fans may play around with AI-generated videos, then get bored with them.
"I just don't think it's going to go any place," Wolk said.
Joe Bonner, who covers Disney for Argus Research, said the Mouse House will be "very cautious" with AI-generated video to avoid damaging its brand or upsetting Hollywood.
"You don't want your headline talent to walk away or get mad at you," Bonner said.
To sell, or not to sell, TV networks
D'Amaro must also decide whether Disney should get a tune-up or a transformational makeover.
Figuring out what to do with the TV networks is "the one thing Iger never really solved," Bonner said.
Bonner thinks Disney's long-lagging stock would rise if it ditched some of its cable networks, which he considers the weakest part of its business.
The impact of selling ESPN, which was recently valued at $30 billion, is less clear. Its must-see games are highly valuable in a fragmented media landscape, but the cost of live sports rights continues to soar.
The NFL recently started negotiating its next TV deal, and Bonner said it's "the must-have of must-have content." ESPN will almost certainly keep its spot, since the league owns a 10% stake in the network and sold it the NFL Network. It won't come cheap, though.
If D'Amaro decides to auction or spin off ESPN, it could turn heads inside Disney — though it could win him fans on Wall Street.
Media analyst Rich Greenfield of Lightshed Partners, who for years implored Disney to get out of the linear TV business, wants D'Amaro to finally divorce the company from its linear networks.
"We view linear TV as a distraction for D'Amaro and not where we, nor investors, want to see Disney allocating capital and resources," Greenfield wrote.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos wants AI to help Hollywood make "better" movies and TV shows.
Sarandos said AI won't move the needle by just making content faster and cheaper.
Netflix recently acquired Ben Affleck's AI editing company, InterPositive.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos doesn't think AI slop will rule the entertainment world.
"I don't think faster and cheaper matters if it's not better," Sarandos said of using AI in a new interview with POLITICO, which, like Business Insider, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network. "This is the most competitive time in the history of media. So you've got to be better every time out of the gate."
For instance, Netflix recently acquired InterPositive, an AI startup that develops tools for filmmakers, founded by actor Ben Affleck.
"My focus is that AI should be a creator tool," Sarandos told POLITICO. "The same way production tools have evolved over time, AI is just a rapid, important evolution of these tools."
Sarandos said that while AI can be useful for editing and production, good content "still requires writers and actors and lighting techs."
One category where Sarandos said AI hasn't been able to replace human talent is voice acting.
"The one thing that we find to be the most important part of dubbing is the performance. So good voice actors really matter," he said. "Yeah, it's a lot cheaper to use AI, but without the performance, which is very human, it actually runs down the quality of the production."
Still, he sees an opportunity in the voice category.
"I think what will happen is you'll be able to do things like pick up lines that you do months and months after the production," he said. "You'll be able to recreate some of those lines in the film without having to call everybody back and redo everything, which will help make a better film."
My dog is a very good dog. Strangers stop in their tracks to meet him. Coffee shops, wine stores, and doormen hand out treats when he visits. He smiles. My dog, with his wide, caramel, human-like eyes, hypoallergenic fur, and drawer of seasonal and themed bandanas would never cause a problem.
I'm sure that's what everyone with a dog thinks about their own best friend, but the unleashing of a pro-dog culture over the past decade has spiraled out of control. It seems dogs are everywhere. The number of households that own dogs has jumped from 35 million in 1991 to 60 million in 2024, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. To get around restrictions on planes, trains, and in stores, some owners are buying certificates and ID tags from websites that claim to let you "take your working dog anywhere without the hassle." For about $70 and with a few clicks, I was able to register my 22-pound cavapoo, Charlie, who has more anxiety than I do, as a service dog, then spent a few days over the past week toting him around New York.
Dolly Faibyshev for BI
Charlie is the kind of pampered pet that would have you roll your eyes and think, "that is obviously not a service dog" if you spotted him at the airline check-in counter. But an ID card and certificate arrived in the mail days later. Had I paid about $80 more, the company would have thrown in a red service dog vest, along with a collar and leash that identified him as a working dog. Other sites charge some $300 for a full suite of ID cards, service dog wear, and letters certifying the dog is needed for emotional support. To sign up, I didn't have to specify what disability Charlie would aid or provide any documentation that he had been trained. It was an instant solution to the pesky "no dogs allowed" signs on storefronts.
But these certificates are meaningless, experts tell me. There's no licensing process for service dogs, although there are reputable organizations and trainers that work with dogs for up to two years to make them ready to help people with disabilities, and an organization that accredits nonprofits that train dogs. There are also people who self-train their own service dogs. The Americans with Disabilities Act stipulates service dogs are those "individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities." Emotional support animals don't make the cut, and don't have the same rights to access public spaces as service dogs do. Retail workers, and transportation staff who encounter dogs in red vests can ask the handler only if they need the dog for a disability, and what tasks the dog has been trained to do. The ADA prohibits them from asking what disability a person has or requiring any medical information, identification cards, or training documentation for the dog.
"There's no federal registration, there's no database — none of this makes any legal difference," says Rebecca Wisch, associate editor of the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University. But the sparse wording of the ADA that regulates service dogs, and a flurry of social media posts about how to bring your dog anywhere, has created mass confusion around the rules. The registration sites may be "capitalizing on some of that confusion," Wisch says.
When any pet can be passed off as a service dog, it cheapens the work real service dogs are trained to do.
America has fully gone to the dogs. By one estimate, the market for pet clothing is projected to be worth nearly $10 billion by 2034, up from $6 billion in 2025. Dogs are their own influencer category, people pay hundreds a month for fresh dog food subscription services, and some clone dogs to reproduce identical ones in the future. With all this investment, people want and feel entitled to bring their dogs everywhere. Airlines and Amtrak require people to keep pets in carriers and charge additional fees. Some apartments ban all dogs or dogs of certain breeds or weights. Defining an animal as a service dog is the quickest way around those restrictions. Emotional support animals, which aren't trained for specific tasks but make their owner feel better when they're around, don't qualify as service dogs when it comes to public spaces.
Dolly Faibyshev for BI
Not one person asked me if Charlie was a service dog. I never needed to flash his "ID card." A Trader Joe's employee stopped me — to show me a photo of his own cavapoo. We rode the subway, and walked right into Business Insider's offices, where the security officer in the lobby offered to open a special door for me so that Charlie wouldn't have to cram into the revolving one. Having him at my feet certainly didn't help me or my coworker's productivity, but did make me more popular.
All of this was easy, and I can see how having a service dog badge at the ready would make it even easier to navigate public spaces with a dog. But experts tell me that fake service dogs have upended life for people with real disabilities and real service dogs. In a 2022 survey of 1,500 people who use assistance dogs around the globe conducted by Canine Companions, a nonprofit that trains service dogs, 93% of respondents said they have encountered poorly trained, out-of-control dogs in public. Nearly 80% said such a dog had interfered with their service dog. As more poorly behaved, fake service dogs act up in public, those with real, trained and necessary dogs may face more scrutiny when trying to come into shops and restaurants. "The ADA is very loosely structured language," says Cathy Zemaitis, the chief development and programs officer from NEADS, a nonprofit that trains service dogs. "There are tons of loopholes. And so when there's loopholes, people always take advantage."
Reddit abounds with complaints about fake service dogs. One person wrote of a coworker's dog that "runs all over the office, barks at every visitor that enters our building, begs and sniffs at our food when we're eating lunch." Another wrote about flying from Chicago to Miami and seeing "no less than 12 dogs" on their full flight, two of whom started a fight. "I would be pissed to be missing my international connection because two doofuses were allowed to bring their untrained dogs onto a flight." On TikTok, service dog owners post PSAs about registration sites and the fact that there are no official service dog registries.
Dolly Faibyshev for BI
I sent multiple emails and made calls to three different websites that claim to register service dogs, and none responded to questions I had about justifications for the registration services they offered. They have names like USA Service Dogs, United Service Dog, and National Service Animal Registry, which at first glance lead someone to believe they connect to an official database. The fine print of USA Service Dogs notes it's not: "USA Service Dogs is an organization providing service dog and emotional support animal registration services and products independent of any government organization," the bottom of its website says. "Registration not required by the ADA." NSAR also notes that "registration isn't a legal requirement, but it has been made very clear that nearly all embarrassing confrontations and hassles are eliminated when you register your animal and make sure it looks like a legitimate service or emotional support animal." United Service Dog's website says it can help you "save hundreds of dollars each year in 'pet fees,'" as service dogs can't be charged additional rent, deposits, or travel prices.
Landlords, airlines, hotels, and stores can't demand proof for a service dog. The Department of Transportation has a form for airlines that requires people to attest that their dog has been trained for a disability, is needed by the person with a disability, and is up-to-date on vaccines. Many airlines and hotels require emotional support animals to travel as pets and subject their owners to pet fees. In theory, an ID card could make it easier for people with real service dogs to avoid a hassle, but the misuse of registration and service dog vests by pet owners may be creating more problems than they would solve.
Most states have cracked down on service dog fraud. Minnesota, Arizona, and New York are among those that make it illegal to misrepresent a pet as a service dog, levying small fines on those who are caught. "I couldn't go into a store or an airport or even an office without seeing some disorderly four-legged creature dragging its owner around, wearing a vest that said 'service animal,'" Republican Arizona state Sen. John Kavanagh, who sponsored the Arizona bill, told NBC News in 2018. "I would see people in the supermarkets with animals in the shopping cart or walking around sniffing all the food."
Dolly Faibyshev for BI
Most states have cracked down on service dog fraud. Minnesota, Arizona, and New York are among those that make it illegal to misrepresent a pet as a dog, levying small fines on those who are caught. "I couldn't go into a store or an airport or even an office without seeing some disorderly four-legged creature dragging its owner around, wearing a vest that said 'service animal,'" Republican Arizona state Sen. John Kavanagh, who sponsored the Arizona bill, told NBC News in 2018. "I would see people in the supermarkets with animals in the shopping cart or walking around sniffing all the food."
The laws are mostly deterrents to bad dog-owner behavior, says Wisch. And particularly in New York City, they don't seem to be deterring many. The rules typically carry minor penalties, and not everyone working in hospitality or retail even knows what they can or cannot ask about service dogs. Workers who kick a dog out of a restaurant or store risks ejecting a real service dog, and discriminating against a person with disabilities.
There's no easy fix to the fake service dog problem. Some service dogs NEADS trained have been retired after having a bad interaction with fake service dogs in public spaces. Businesses are questioning how they're supposed to react to poorly trained dogs but still accommodate real service dogs. Creating an official training and licensing system for service dogs might undermine people who train their own dogs. Maintaining a database of all service dogs is likely a task too unwieldy for a government body to easily tackle. An official registration, Wisch says, "feels like that would nearly be an impossible task" to establish.
Charlie's first day of work was also his last. His best skill was finding the camera during a photoshoot for this story, but he lacks the right demeanor to spend his days in the office — he creates mass distraction by being too friendly. Like many dogs, Charlie is best off and happiest as a pet with no job.
Amanda Hooveris a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.
Gen Z and younger millennials are generally drinking less than older generations and, when they do drink, are doing so more intentionally, prioritizing quality, flavor, and social context over quantity. That change is pushing bars and alcohol brands to design products for daytime moments, and reshaping how the industry defines a "drinking occasion."
Across the beverage industry, brands are reorienting their new products toward earlier social occasions — brunches, festivals, dinner reservations before sunset — rather than late-night bar crawls.
Absolut's recent collaboration with Tabasco leaned heavily into brunch culture. The brand launched its spicy vodka with timed teasers around Bloody Mary Day and National Hot Sauce Day ahead of the Super Bowl — all daytime drinking touchpoints.
Caroline Begley, US VP of Marketing for Absolut, told Business Insider in February that younger consumers are "drinking differently" and being very intentional about what they want to drink, with the "occasion, the mood, the vibe" playing a central role.
"They are not just staying at home, they are going out, they're going to brunch, they're choosing different times of the day to drink," Begley
Malibu is targeting a similar window. The brand's newly launched Malibu Pink — a 21% ABV guava-forward spirit — is positioned around what its brand director, Saragh Kileen, described as the "pre, pre-getting ready" moment.
And while the younger generation is leading the way, it's not just Gen Z that prefers drinking by daylight. An Ipsos poll cited by Absolut found in 2025 a year-over-year increase in daytime drinking across generations, a trend marketers increasingly point to as evidence that alcohol consumption is shifting earlier rather than disappearing entirely.
The idea is to meet consumers earlier in their social rituals, before a night out or during daytime gatherings. The company is also investing in festival activations, including Stagecoach and Rolling Loud, reinforcing that many modern drinking occasions now unfold in daylight.
The rise of earlier drinking moments also shows up in where people are socializing. Malibu's team pointed to the growing popularity of early-dinner reservations, noting that 5 to 6 p.m. bookings are increasingly in demand. Meanwhile, brands report seeing drinking tied to book clubs, thrift outings, small dinner parties, and watch gatherings — occasions where alcohol plays a role but isn't the main event.
On The Rocks, a ready-to-drink cocktail brand, sees the same evolution. Its leadership said consumption is expanding beyond bars into smaller, more casual gatherings. Daniel May, senior brand director at On The Rocks, said consumers are looking for "high quality, crafted experiences" with the convenience of popping a can and pouring it over ice, rather than committing to a full night out.
Data from Unicorn Auctions, a wine-and-spirits platform, suggests this isn't about abstinence. The company says Gen Z is its fastest-growing customer segment and describes younger buyers as strategic rather than cheap. They're willing to spend on premium bottles or experiences but are focused on "drinking better" rather than drinking more, Unicorn's CEO and cofounder Phil Mikhaylov said.
As Mikhaylov put it, Gen Z doesn't buy expensive lifestyles — they buy expensive moments.
Business Insider has previously documented similar shifts in Gen Z's drinking behavior, including trends like "zebra striping," where drinkers alternate high-quality alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to avoid hangovers. That mindset aligns with what brands are seeing: moderation paired with intentional indulgence.
The result is what could be called the "daycap" economy — a world where cocktails are just as likely to anchor a brunch, a festival afternoon, or a 5 p.m. reservation as they are a midnight bar tab.
For Gen Z, drinking isn't disappearing. It's simply moving into the daylight.
At the same time, as capital expenditures explode and technical shifts disrupt the field, the company's concentration of power draws fresh pressure.
Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) aren't cheap. And as customers look to reduce reliance on them, some companies are emerging as rivals.
AI's focus is also evolving. While GPUs dominate training, inference—or running AI models and having them perform tasks—is continuous and cost-sensitive. A wave of startups is building inference chips that they're positioning as cheaper and more efficient than GPUs.
AI hardware chain companies are often both competitors and partners. Silicon giant Broadcom, for instance, designs chips that compete with Nvidia's and also furnishes the networking tech to connect its GPUs.
The result isn't head-to-head rivalry so much as a rapidly widening and increasingly tangled field, even as Nvidia remains miles ahead.
These are the biggest challengers to Nvidia's dominance.
1. Customers-turned-competitors
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images
Google has become one of the most formidable rivals, having worked on Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) for roughly a decade.
TPUs have been mostly confined to Google's cloud and internal workloads. In February, the search giant struck a deal to rent them to Meta. Google is also teaming up with cloud company Fluidstack to lease TPUs, another shift positioning it more squarely against Nvidia.
Amazon is also designing chips as lower-cost alternatives to Nvidia: Trainium for training and Inferentia for inference.
Microsoft and Meta are earlier in their processes. Meta said Wednesday it's pressing ahead with four new silicon generations over the next two years, and Microsoft recently announced an AI inference chip called Maia 200.
2. Chip startups are seizing the inference wave
Cerebras cofounder and CEO Andrew Feldman.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Village Global
Investors are pouring billions into chip startups that are seizing the inference wave.
Nvidia wants in, too, paying $20 billion to license technology and hire top talent from Groq, founded by a former TPU engineer and is often considered one of biggest inference challengers.
The field has produced several unicorns. While many predate ChatGPT, they're flourishing now as infrastructure spend booms and demand materializes.
Cerebras, founded in 2015 and valued at $23 billion, builds dinner plate-sized "wafer-scale" chips for training and inference, and struck a $10 billion deal with OpenAI in January.
SambaNova, which raised $350 million after acquisition talks with Intel fell through, builds AI hardware and software systems for business customers. (Intel told Business Insider it is planning a multiyear collaboration with SambaNova and invested in its Series E.)
And Tenstorrent, last valued at $2 billion, also offers a GPU alternative.
3. The China factor
Cambricon founder and CEO Chen Tianshi.
Jiang Qiming/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
China remains Nvidia's biggest geopolitical headache. The US has tightened export controls of AI chips, and US regulators have alleged some Chinese labs are training their models on restricted hardware anyway, Reuters reported.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly warned that blocking sales to China will only accelerate local progress.
Huawei stands at the center of these efforts. The nearly 40-year-old telecom giant is viewed as Nvidia's closest equivalent—building chips, servers, networking gear, and running its own cloud.
Chinese chip startups like Cambricon have also emerged as alternatives to Nvidia
Other competitors include Alibaba and Baidu — China's equivalents of Amazon and Google — which design chips for their respective cloud businesses.
4. The old guard
AMD CEO Lisa Su.
Kimberly White/Getty Images for Wired
Deep-pocketed chip incumbents like AMD, Intel, and Broadcom vie for a piece of Nvidia's AI dominance, while Nvidia pushes into their turf as well.
AMD, which builds GPU competitors and whose CEO Lisa Su is Huang's distant cousin, has secured deals with major cloud and business customers, including Meta.
Intel, meanwhile, has a strong footprint among large business customers, while Broadcom specializes in networking and custom chips — meaning it stands to benefit even if Nvidia continues to lead in GPUs.
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email atgweiss@businessinsider.comor Signal at @geoffweiss.25. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
I meditated with a Zen monk in Venice Beach. It chanced my ideas about mindfulness.
Kelsey Vlamis
I attended a meditation class with Toryo Ito, a Japanese Zen monk who works with top companies.
Turns out I had meditation all wrong, and that it can be a lot simpler than you'd think.
More companies are embracing mindfulness to boost their employees' well-being and performance.
It was a scene you'd expect at a Wednesday afternoon wellness class in Los Angeles. About 40 people with matching athleisure sets, iced matcha lattes, Salomon sneakers, and at least one Fendi baguette filed into a meditation studio tucked in an alley just off the Venice boardwalk.
Toryo Ito, a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk, was already seated at the front of the room. A sculptural, oblong skylight cut into the ceiling, casting a beam of sunlight onto the floor. He sat cross-legged, wearing a black robe, with a set of small tools laid out before him: an incense holder, a spray bottle, and various blocks and mallets made with metal or wood.
Ito is the vice abbot of Ryosokuin Temple in Kyoto, which dates back over 600 years. His modern approach to Zen has made him something of an ambassador for mindfulness in the corporate world, leading meditation workshops for companies like Meta and Salesforce.
Marc Benioff, Jack Dorsey, Alex Karp, and other business and tech leaders have embraced mindfulness practice. Meditation apps have raised hundreds of millions in funding, and companies are increasingly offering programs to employees to combat burnout and improve performance.
As a business reporter living in California, the wellness capital of the US, my prior experience with meditation mostly consisted of adding it to the list of habits I'd like to start each new year, and then proceeding to complete a handful of five-minute sessions sporadically, primarily as a means to squeeze in a little sun time before a full day at my desk. Maybe a class with a real-life Zen monk would be just the motivation I needed.
What I'd actually find was that my concept of meditation was way off and that it's a lot simpler — and more attainable — than I'd made it out to be.
Meditation does not mean thinking about nothing
The class was held at the Venice studio of Open, a mindfulness startup, and organized by Tatcha, a luxury skincare brand whose founder has her own corporate-to-mindfulness origin story. Vicky Tsai worked on Wall Street as a credit derivatives trader before quitting to start Tatcha. She met Ito in 2016 during a class at his temple in Japan. He became the company's first-ever "global well-being mentor" in 2021.
Toryo Ito sat still and at ease while most of us fiddled with our phones.
Kelsey Vlamis
Attendees — Tatcha fans who had signed up for the class through their socials — took photos of the room and spoke quietly to one another. Some set up cameras to record themselves. One attendee took an especially aesthetic flat-lay shot of her Tatcha-branded mat and towel alongside her purple shoulder bag, which matched perfectly.
I was immediately struck by the contrast between Ito and the rest of us.
Ito sat erect but calm, doing nothing. Sometimes he looked around the room and smiled. Other times, he looked ahead or softly closed his eyes. He didn't fidget. Meanwhile, the rest of us were on our phones, taking photos, scrolling, anything but simply sitting still.
After about 10 minutes, the room quieted, and all attention shifted to him.
He welcomed us and asked if anyone had been to Kyoto, seeming surprised when a good chunk of the room raised their hands. He said Zen emphasizes two concepts: mindfulness and expanding the boundary of the self in order to dissolve it.
Ambitious, I thought, but intriguing.
Ito said that while there's no perfect meditative state, we should focus on paying attention. The class was broken into three rounds of meditation, each lasting 10 minutes, give or take, during which we sat in silence with our eyes closed.
For the first session, he told us to pay attention to what we heard and smelled: the chime he rang to start the session, the birds chirping on the nature soundtrack playing in the studio, the air conditioner kicking on, the sound of a spray bottle, and the earthy smell that followed. He rang another chime at the end of the session, which felt like it flew by as I tried to focus on my senses.
For the second session, he told us to focus on the sensations in our bodies and had us lift one arm, hold it in place, then the other. Lastly, he asked us to meditate on a series of questions related to self-love: What color do you associate with self-love? "Light pink," I thought. What drink? "Sparkling water."
It was more involved than I expected. I thought the point of meditation was not to think about anything. What Ito taught me was that it's actually about noticing.
"Intentionally disrupt that autopilot," Ito told me after the class, adding that he prefers dynamic meditation, like walking, where you can feel the grass beneath your feet. He said he'd spent time earlier that day walking through Venice Beach.
The Open studio was a short walk away from the Venice boardwalk.
Walter Cicchetti/Getty Images
For people with high-stress jobs, Ito said meditation can be practiced in small moments throughout the day, for 10 minutes or even just one. He recommends lighting incense and actually paying attention to the smell. When you drink coffee, notice the taste.
Doing these little practices of just noticing things you previously missed can bring the benefits of mindfulness, which he said include stress management, increased creativity, and openness to new ways of thinking.
Small moments of noticing
When the class ended, the first thing I noticed was how different the attendees seemed.
There was a newfound stillness that had previously been missing, and very few immediately reached for their phones. We sat in silence, no one rushing to get up, as several people shared how they felt with the whole class. One busy mom said she felt "at peace."
I did not become a perfect meditator that day — although Ito would likely say there's no such thing — but what I learned was that I actually meditate, or practice mindfulness, more than I realized.
Each time I take a walk without headphones and notice the smell of jasmine. Or when I'm camping and zone out in front of the fire, doing nothing but observing the movement, warmth, and sound of the flames.
Which also might explain why, after each of these experiences, I feel some of the benefits that ancient wisdom and modern science have associated with meditation: lower stress, better sleep, and an overall sense of calm.
Since the class, I've been a bit more lenient with myself about what counts as meditation, which has helped me prioritize and appreciate these small moments of noticing.
The idea of noticing the taste of your coffee as a mindfulness practice might feel a bit silly. Then again, it's a bit silly that I'll weigh and grind my own beans, pull espresso in my expensive machine, and drink it in front of my computer, without even noticing once I've finished.
