top of page

Where Real Self-Leadership Lives

May 6
3 min read

Maria Akela is a transformative healer, connector, and catalyst who has formed a holistic treatment & coaching concept that helps guide and connect people to their own inner wisdom and assists in trauma release on both physical, mental & spiritual levels.

Executive Contributor Maria Akela

In a world overflowing with advice, guidance, and external perspectives, it can become easy to lose touch with our own inner authority without even realizing it. In this reflective piece, Maria Akela explores where true self-leadership begins, not in rejecting support, but in learning how to stay connected to your own clarity, discernment, and knowing while receiving it.


Woman in glasses with arms crossed stands in an office with brick wall, shelves, and desk. She's wearing a striped shirt, looking confident.

There’s a subtle line between being supported and slowly giving your authority away. Most people don’t notice when they cross it. We live in a time where guidance is everywhere. Advice, tools, frameworks, methods, and perspectives are constantly available, constantly accessible. And on the surface, it looks like growth. But underneath it, something else can quietly begin to happen.


Instead of asking, “What do I see?” “What do I feel?” “What do I choose?” We start asking, “What should I do?”


Again and again. Until the question becomes a habit, and the habit becomes a way of relating to ourselves.


Self leadership doesn’t disappear all at once


It fades in small, almost invisible ways, every time we override our own perception in favor of someone else’s certainty. Not because we’re incapable. But because we’ve been taught, subtly, that clarity lives outside of us.


But real self leadership doesn’t live in isolation either. It’s not about rejecting support. It’s not about doing everything alone, and it’s not about proving that you don’t need guidance.


Real self leadership lives in the space between. The moment where you take in what’s in front of you, a perspective, a tool, a reflection, and instead of handing your authority over, you meet yourself there. You think. You feel. You decide.


This is where things begin to shift


Because you can listen deeply and still choose for yourself. You can receive guidance without losing your ground. You can explore tools without becoming dependent on them. The question is not whether you use support. The question is how.


Does it make you feel smaller? More unsure? More reliant on something outside of you? Or Does it sharpen your thinking? Challenge your perspective? Bring you back to your own clarity?


Because the goal was never to become someone who needs constant direction. The goal is to become someone who can stand in their own knowing, even after hearing a hundred different perspectives.


Conclusion


Maybe that’s the deeper invitation, to stop searching for the “right” answer long enough to notice that you are already capable of recognizing truth when you see it. Not perfectly. Not always immediately. But steadily, when you’re willing to stay connected to yourself in the process.


Real self leadership lives here. Not in doing everything alone. Not in depending on everything outside of you. But in the quiet, steady ability to choose for yourself.


A gentle invitation


If this resonated, you’re invited to explore more of Maria Akela’s work on embodiment, awareness, and self leadership. Not as something to follow, but as a space to reflect, question, and return to your own knowing.


Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Maria Akela

Maria Akela, Intuitive Holistic Practitioner & Coach

Maria Akela, with over two decades of experience, is a transformative healer, connector, and catalyst who assists in both physical, mental & spiritual trauma release. Her mission is rooted in seeing past the illusion of expectations and instead going into the deeper wisdom of what you are really meant to do. With an international community and track record of transformative treatments, Maria Akela wants to inspire you to regain your own natural flow and listen to your own inner wisdom.

This article is published in collaboration with Brainz Magazine’s network of global experts, carefully selected to share real, valuable insights.

Article Image

How Chasing Rejection Could Change Your Life

What if the thing you’re most afraid of hearing could become the thing that changes your life? Do you ever hold yourself back from pursuing something you want to do because you’re scared? Maybe it is the fear...

Article Image

How to Use Medical Qi Gong for Healing

This article is the second in a series published by Brainz Magazine, describing how Medical Qi Gong can be used to heal oneself and others using detailed protocols developed over the last 4,000 years...

Article Image

Why I Don’t Want My Sound Bath Students to Sound Like Me

If everyone who trained with me went away and created exactly the same sound baths I do, I’m not sure I would consider that a success. That might sound strange coming from someone who teaches practitioners.

Article Image

Why Self-Regulation Needs Friction, Not Just Willpower

We have spent the last two decades engineering friction out of everyday life. One-click purchasing. Autoplay. Instant replies expected within minutes. Every app on your phone has been designed by...

Article Image

Why Are Women So Exhausted? The Hidden Mental Load of Being Everything to Everyone

You can have a full night’s sleep and still wake up exhausted. Not because you didn’t sleep. Because your brain never really clocked out. You’re thinking about the meeting at 10, the groceries you...

Article Image

Breast Cancer and the Nurturer’s Paradox and When Being Needed Becomes an Identity

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and much of the conversation quite rightly centres on screening, diagnosis, treatment and survival. I want to take the conversation somewhere less commonly...

How Chasing Rejection Could Change Your Life

How to Use Medical Qi Gong for Healing

Why I Don’t Want My Sound Bath Students to Sound Like Me

Why Self-Regulation Needs Friction, Not Just Willpower

Why Are Women So Exhausted? The Hidden Mental Load of Being Everything to Everyone

Breast Cancer and the Nurturer’s Paradox and When Being Needed Becomes an Identity

Acupuncture for Car Accident Injuries, an Important Non-Surgical Treatment

3 Lessons From My 60-Year-Old Client That Many Fitness Programmes Ignore

5 Essential Steps for Leadership Growth

bottom of page