Written by Adnan Ghaffar, AI-Driven Automation Expert Adnan Ghaffar is an AI-driven automation expert and the CEO of CodeAutomation.ai. With over a decade of experience, he specializes in business process automation and custom tech solutions across industries like fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce. All businesses, regardless of their size, face repetitive tasks. These activities may not seem like a huge issue, but over time, they begin to slow down progress. Teams waste hours entering data, processing invoices, creating reports, and performing various routine tasks that don't require much creativity. This is where RPA (Robotic Process Automation) development services come in. Rather than manually performing these tasks, robotic process automation allows businesses to automate repetitive actions. RPA involves software bots that perform tasks humans would do, but with increased speed, precision, and no need for breaks. The concept is simple, but the impact it has is monumental. What are RPA development services? RPA development services focus on designing, developing, and implementing automation systems for rule-based activities. These services are not just about developing bots; they include analyzing business operations, identifying processes that can be automated, and transforming them into efficient automated workflows. The process typically begins with evaluating the current methods of task execution. Automation developers identify areas where automation can save time and reduce errors. After determining these areas, they develop bots that can execute tasks based on defined rules. These bots can communicate with applications, mine data, process it, and even trigger actions across different systems. This makes business process automation highly efficient and reliable. Why businesses are adopting RPA solutions The growing demand for RPA solutions is driven by the need to enhance efficiency without increasing costs. Companies are looking to do more with fewer resources, and automation is the key to achieving this. Speed is one of the greatest advantages. RPA can complete tasks that would take hours of human effort in just a few minutes. This helps meet tight deadlines and boosts overall productivity. Another major benefit is accuracy. Humans are prone to errors, especially when performing routine tasks. RPA bots follow strict rules, minimizing errors and improving data quality. There are also cost savings. Automating routine tasks can help businesses reduce operational expenses and focus resources on more productive areas. How robotic process automation works In simple terms, robotic process automation replicates human behavior through digital systems. Bots can log into applications, copy and paste information, fill out forms, and even perform calculations. For example, an RPA bot in a finance department might scan invoices, cross-check them with records, and enter them into the accounting system. In customer service, bots can answer simple queries, manage customer data, and process orders. Since RPA bots are fully automated, governed by pre-set rules, they are best suited for tasks with well-defined structures. They don't require complex decision-making but excel in high-volume, repetitive work. Real-world use cases of business process automation RPA is applied across various industries to boost efficiency. In finance, it automates invoicing, payroll, and financial reporting. In healthcare, it helps manage patient data and schedule appointments. Human resources teams use RPA to assist with onboarding, managing employee records, and processing payroll. Customer support teams also benefit by automating responses to repetitive queries and handling tickets. RPA is even used in supply chain management, automating order processing, inventory updates, and shipment tracking. These use cases show the versatility of RPA when applied correctly. The importance of a structured development approach Automation requires careful planning and implementation. RPA development services are designed to ensure smooth deployment. The first step is process assessment. Not all tasks can be automated, so it’s crucial to identify the most suitable processes. The best candidates for automation are repetitive, rule-based, high-volume tasks. Next is bot development. Automation workflows are designed and tailored to specific tasks. These bots are rigorously tested to ensure they function correctly. The final step is deployment, where the bots are integrated into existing systems. Post-deployment monitoring is essential to identify areas for improvement. A well-executed design ensures that RPA solutions provide long-term value. Challenges and how they are managed Although RPA offers many benefits, businesses may face challenges during its implementation. Integration can be tricky, especially when dealing with outdated systems. Another challenge is change management. Employees may need time to adjust to new workflows and trust the automation. RPA development services help manage these challenges by offering proper planning, training, and support. They ensure automation is business-focused and integrates seamlessly with existing operations. Scalability is also a key consideration during development. Automation systems must be able to handle increasing workloads as the business grows without sacrificing performance. The future of RPA in business Robotic process automation is no longer a passing trend. It is becoming an essential part of business operations. As technology advances, RPA is evolving to handle more complex tasks. Many companies are integrating RPA with artificial intelligence to create smarter automation systems. This allows bots to perform tasks that require some degree of decision-making. The future of RPA involves developing systems that not only perform tasks but also learn and improve over time. Final thoughts While monotonous tasks may seem insignificant, their impact on productivity and efficiency can be substantial. By utilizing RPA development services, businesses can automate these processes and focus on what truly matters. Through robotic process automation, companies can achieve greater accuracy, reduce costs, and speed up operations. With the right RPA solutions, businesses can revolutionize their workflows and stay competitive in a fast-paced digital world. Automation is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity for companies that want to remain competitive and scale effectively. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Adnan Ghaffar Adnan Ghaffar, AI-Driven Automation Expert Adnan Ghaffar is a seasoned AI-driven automation expert and the CEO of CodeAutomation.ai, a company that specializes in custom tech solutions, AI automation, and business process automation. With over 10 years of experience, Adnan has worked with top-tier clients in fintech, healthcare, and e-commerce to streamline operations through advanced automation. Passionate about leveraging cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning, Adnan continuously seeks to innovate and optimize processes. When he’s not developing automation solutions, he’s exploring the latest in AI research and development, always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Written by Wai CS Wong, Legal English Consultant & Textbook Writer Steven Wong is a Legal English Consultant and Textbook Writer with 15 published books. He is currently working on his novel about HK post 1997. A loan agreement crosses a desk in Central. It runs to ninety pages. Every clause from “conditions precedent,” “representations and warranties,” to “events of default” is in English, though the borrower’s accountant reads Chinese more comfortably than either language of law. Nobody in the room finds this strange. This is how Hong Kong finance has worked for over a century, and the arrangement has made the city rich. It has also left cracks that are starting to show. A common law city in a Cantonese harbour Hong Kong runs on common law, and common law runs on precedent. Judgments from London, Singapore, and Hong Kong’s own courts stack up in English, decade after decade, until a term like “indemnify” or “best endeavours” carries a settled weight that no translation fully replicates. A lawyer drafting an International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) master agreement in Hong Kong isn’t starting from scratch. She’s borrowing two hundred years of argument, and the currency of that borrowing is English. This is the advantage in a sentence: Hong Kong sells legal predictability, and English is the language predictability comes packaged in. International banks list on the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) in English. Syndicated loans are papered in English. Arbitration at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) runs in English by default. A fund manager in Frankfurt doesn’t need to underwrite translation risk on top of market risk because he already trusts the words on the page, because they’re the same words his own lawyers use. That trust is not free. It has to be maintained, and that's where the difficulty starts. The advantage also has a talent dimension, easy to overlook because it operates quietly in the background. English-medium legal training lets Hong Kong draw on a global pool of common-law-qualified professionals: solicitors trained in London, barristers who cut their teeth in Sydney, and in-house counsel moving between Hong Kong and New York without needing to relearn an entire legal vocabulary. That mobility runs both ways. Hong Kong exports its own lawyers into the same international market, and the city’s reputation travels with them. None of this works in a jurisdiction where the governing legal language is a barrier rather than a bridge. The quiet cost of two languages Walk the arrangement forward to a smaller transaction. For example, a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) loan, a retail bond, a mortgage refinancing for a family business in Sha Tin. The Official Languages Ordinance requires bilingual legislation, and firms typically prepare Chinese-language terms alongside the English original. But equivalence between the two is a promise, not a fact. Common law concepts don’t always have a Chinese legal term with the same scope, and when the English and Chinese texts of an ordinance diverge even slightly, someone eventually has to litigate which version controls. Meanwhile, the retail investor holds two documents they can’t quite reconcile. They sign the one in their own language and hope it matches the one that actually governs the deal. This is not a hypothetical asymmetry. It is baked into the system every time a prospectus or terms sheet is issued bilingually, with English carrying the legal weight but with Chinese carrying the comprehension. Financial regulators know this. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) requires disclosure documents aimed at the retail public to carry Chinese translations, and banks train frontline staff to walk clients through terms verbally before signature. These are real safeguards. But a verbal walkthrough is not the same as reading the governing text yourself, understanding exactly what you agreed to, and knowing everyone in the room does. There is also a simple cost in money and time. Dual-language drafting, certified translation, and bilingual review before filing all require funding, and none of it scales down gracefully. A multinational bank absorbs the cost without noticing. A small trading company negotiating its first facility agreement feels every dollar. Three things keeping lawyers up at night Ask a Hong Kong solicitor what worries her about the next decade, and three answers come up more than any others. The first is proficiency. English standards among younger cohorts have been sliding for years, according to teachers and law faculty who watch the pipeline closely. A financial centre that runs on precise English drafting needs a steady supply of people who can write it precisely. That supply is not guaranteed. The second is the pull of the Mainland. As Greater Bay Area business and Stock Connect volumes grow, more deals are structured for mainland counterparties, mainland regulators, and mainland courts. Chinese-medium contracting edges into spaces English used to hold by default. This is not dramatic, and it is not sudden. It’s closer to a shoreline receding a few inches a year, noticeable only in the accumulation. The third is people. Since 2020, Hong Kong has watched a meaningful slice of its bilingual professional class leave for Britain, Canada, and Australia. Every departure takes years of trained judgment out of the local pool at precisely the moment Singapore is spending heavily to attract the same talent with the same pitch: English-language, common-law, internationally recognised. Hong Kong is no longer just competing for capital. It’s competing for the people who can write the sentence that makes capital feel safe. Underneath all three sits something harder to name but easy to feel: confidence in the courts. English-language contracts only mean what everyone assumes they mean if the judiciary interpreting them is trusted to be independent and consistent. Any doubt on that front doesn’t stay contained to politics. It travels straight into how much weight a New York fund gives a Hong Kong-governed agreement, and from there into pricing, deal volume, and where the next IPO gets listed. What shows up in the numbers None of this is abstract for long. It shows up in listing decisions, whether a company chooses Hong Kong or Singapore for its IPO. It shows up in arbitration seat selection, where clients increasingly have a genuine choice between HKIAC and the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), and pick based on more than habit. It also shows up in fund domicile decisions, where lawyers weigh legal certainty against cost and speed. For now, Hong Kong still holds the advantage that matters most: it is where Chinese and international capital can meet within a single, legible legal vocabulary. That vocabulary is English, wrapped in common law, backed by a judiciary that international parties have trusted for decades. This is not a small thing. It is the entire basis of the city’s financial identity. However, it is a maintained advantage, not an inherited one. English proficiency has to be taught, not assumed. Judicial predictability has to be protected, not advertised. Bilingual talent has to be trained faster than it leaves. Singapore understood this and built an entire strategy around offering the same legal legibility, with less uncertainty attached. Hong Kong doesn’t get to coast on a hundred years of precedent while a competitor a few time zones south spends every year sharpening the same pitch. The ninety-page loan agreement will still be drafted in English next year, and the year after that. The real question is whether the person reading it, whether in London, Singapore, or Shanghai, still trusts, without a second thought, that the words mean exactly what they say. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Wai CS Wong Wai CS Wong, Legal English Consultant & Textbook Writer Steven is bilingual and bicultural. Arrived in UK at aged 4, grew up working in his father's hospitality business, attended university in Scotland and also a second degree in HK. He has worked in several countries, including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong, China. Although retired, he continues to consult on Legal English and write Common Error textbooks for the HK, Taiwanese, and Middle Eastern markets.

Written by Anne Rigaud-Walker, Executive Coach & Transformation Strategist Anne Rigaud-Walker is an Executive Coach and Strategic Transformation Practitioner working with senior leaders and leadership teams. Her work focuses on uncovering the invisible patterns and blind spots that shape behaviour, leadership and performance. Some of the most intelligent, accomplished and self-aware leaders still find themselves repeating behaviours they have already analysed, discussed and tried to change. The issue is rarely a lack of insight. More often, the visible behaviour is being sustained by a deeper internal mechanism that has never truly been transformed. The paradox of self-awareness The leaders I work with are rarely people who have never reflected on themselves. On the contrary, many have already undergone executive coaching, personality assessments, 360-degree feedback, leadership programmes, therapy or years of personal development. They are often highly articulate about their own psychology and can describe their recurring patterns with striking precision: they know they become controlling when the team moves too slowly, that they avoid difficult conversations until frustration becomes impossible to contain, that they take on too much responsibility, or that anxiety makes them push harder precisely when their team needs something different from them. Yet, despite all that understanding, the same behaviour can return under pressure. This is one of the most interesting paradoxes in leadership development. We tend to assume that awareness naturally produces change, as though seeing a pattern should be sufficient to free us from it. In practice, the relationship is far less linear. Research on leadership self-awareness has repeatedly shown that the way leaders perceive themselves can differ significantly from the way others experience them, especially in senior roles, where power itself can reduce the quantity and quality of candid feedback. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and Aaron Dimmock have also highlighted that many breakdowns in workplace interactions arise not from bad intentions but from leaders being insufficiently aware of the impact their words and behaviours have on others. Brainz has explored this same question through the lens of leadership self-awareness, noting that self-observation alone is not enough; understanding our impact also requires feedback from the people around us. But even when a leader genuinely does see the behaviour, another problem remains: seeing what we do is not necessarily the same as understanding what keeps making us do it. That distinction has become central to the way I think about transformation. Understanding is not transformation A leader can understand perfectly well that their need for control is counterproductive, that their impatience inhibits others, or that their inability to delegate is exhausting both themselves and their team. They may even understand where the pattern originated and be able to connect it to earlier experiences, beliefs or environments. None of this guarantees that, when a strategic account is suddenly at risk, a critical deadline slips or the organisation enters a period of uncertainty, the old reaction will not return almost instantaneously. This should not automatically be interpreted as a lack of willpower or discipline. What appears on the surface as a behaviour is often sustained by a deeper internal architecture: a belief formed long ago, an emotional association that still carries weight, a protective strategy that once served a purpose, or an identity that has gradually become inseparable from achievement, control, usefulness or recognition. These mechanisms can remain active long after the rational mind has concluded that they are no longer necessary. There is also a physiological dimension to this. A meta-analysis of 51 studies involving 2,486 participants found that acute stress can impair working memory and cognitive flexibility while encouraging a more reactive and automatic cognitive state. In leadership terms, this matters because the moment at which a leader most needs access to nuance, perspective and adaptive thinking may also be the moment when an older and more automatic response becomes easiest to access. This helps explain why insight can be genuine and still remain insufficient. A person may understand the story intellectually while continuing to inhabit the same emotional and behavioural response under pressure. The explanation has changed; the mechanism has not. When strengths become traps The situation becomes even more subtle with highly successful leaders because many of their problematic patterns did not begin as weaknesses. They began as adaptations that worked exceptionally well. A leader who learned very early to anticipate everything that might go wrong may become outstanding at risk management. Someone who discovered that relying on themselves was safer than relying on others may build extraordinary autonomy and resilience. A person whose identity became linked to achievement may develop remarkable stamina, discipline and ambition. Someone who learned to read a room before speaking may become politically sophisticated and unusually perceptive. These qualities can create careers, businesses and reputations. The difficulty appears when the strategy continues to operate after the context has changed. Self-reliance becomes difficulty trusting others, speed becomes impatience, responsibility becomes over-functioning, vigilance becomes control, high standards become chronic dissatisfaction, and commitment becomes an inability to stop. The very qualities that once produced success can gradually become the source of the leader’s next ceiling. That is one reason why some of the most accomplished people are also among the most difficult to help with conventional advice. Telling an entrepreneur who built a company through extraordinary personal drive to “let go” or “delegate more” may be technically correct, but it ignores the fact that the underlying pattern may be intimately connected to the very identity that created their success. The behaviour cannot always be removed as though it were an isolated bad habit because it belongs to a much larger internal logic. The relevant question therefore becomes not simply, “What is wrong with this behaviour?” but rather, “What function has this behaviour been serving, and what would feel at risk if it disappeared?” That is a very different conversation. Pressure reveals the operating system In my experience, one of the most revealing moments in leadership work occurs when the leader is under pressure because pressure has a way of exposing what I think of as the internal operating system. When the environment is stable, most experienced leaders can access the behaviours they know are expected of them. They can listen, delegate, communicate clearly and appear highly self-aware. The more interesting information appears when the plan begins to fail, when someone important disagrees, when results deteriorate, when a team member disappoints them or when they temporarily lose the sense of competence and control on which they normally rely. That is when the gap between the leader we intend to be and the leader we automatically become becomes visible. A scientific review of stress and executive functioning has shown that the effects of stress on cognition are complex and depend on both the situation and the individual, but stress can significantly alter higher-order cognitive processes such as attention, flexibility and executive control. This is why the simplistic idea that strong leaders simply “perform well under pressure” misses the point. Pressure does not merely test performance; it can expose the internal strategies on which that performance has been built. For a leader, this makes pressure diagnostically useful. Rather than asking only, “What kind of leader am I?” it may be more revealing to ask, “Who do I become when the stakes rise?” The answer often points towards the mechanisms that are still governing behaviour below the level of intention. What the leader cannot see spreads The implications become much larger once we move from individual psychology to organisational life because a leader’s invisible patterns rarely remain individual for very long. They influence what is rewarded, what is avoided, how quickly people move, how much dissent is tolerated, how responsibility is distributed and what employees gradually learn they must do in order to succeed. A chief executive who repeatedly intervenes whenever a problem becomes serious may genuinely believe they are being helpful, yet over time, the team can learn that difficult decisions eventually return to the top. A leader who values speed above almost everything else may think they are creating momentum, while the organisation learns that reflection is a luxury and disagreement is a delay. A perfectionist may believe they are protecting quality, while their team gradually learns that experimentation is dangerous. A founder who complains that nobody takes enough ownership may simultaneously be making it almost impossible for anyone else to experience genuine ownership because the most consequential decisions are continually pulled back towards the centre. Brainz has explored a related idea in its coverage of leadership blind spots and organisational problems, arguing that leaders often end up addressing the visible symptom while missing the deeper cause that is shaping the system. This is where the distinction between personal development and leadership becomes critical. A leader’s psychology is never entirely private once other people depend on their decisions. A meta-analysis based on 89 independent samples found that both task-focused and person-focused leadership behaviours were positively associated with team performance, reinforcing something that is easy to underestimate: how a leader behaves does not remain at the level of style or personality; it has measurable consequences for the performance of the team. The practical implication is straightforward: what a leader repeatedly does becomes part of the environment in which everybody else has to perform. The invisible eventually becomes systemic. The limits of behavioural advice Much leadership development understandably focuses on behaviour: communicate more clearly, delegate, listen, give feedback, empower the team, create psychological safety. These are all valuable recommendations, and in many cases they work. The limitation appears when the leader already knows what they are supposed to do and still cannot do it consistently. At that point, repeating the behavioural instruction can become strangely circular. The leader is told to delegate more because they are not delegating enough, even though the real question may be why delegation feels unsafe. They are encouraged to tolerate disagreement, although nobody has explored what disagreement unconsciously represents. They are advised to reduce control, while the internal belief linking control to security or competence remains untouched. The visible behaviour is being treated while the logic producing it remains intact. This is why some leaders accumulate insight without experiencing proportionate transformation. They have more vocabulary, more frameworks and more sophisticated explanations for themselves, but under the right conditions, the original response still appears. In some highly analytical people, intelligence can even become part of the defence. They are exceptionally good at explaining themselves, constructing coherent narratives and understanding complex psychological ideas. That ability is useful, but it can also create the illusion that something has been transformed simply because it has been understood. There is a point at which further explanation stops being the answer. The question beneath the behaviour The most useful work often begins when attention shifts away from the instruction and towards the mechanism. Instead of asking a controlling leader only how they might control less, we might ask what feels dangerous about losing control. Instead of telling someone to delegate, we might explore what failure by another person would mean about them. Instead of encouraging an executive to slow down, we might ask what emerges internally when they stop moving. Instead of correcting perfectionism at the behavioural level, we might examine the identity or fear that makes imperfection feel unacceptable. These questions are not designed to make leadership unnecessarily psychological. They are designed to reach the level at which the behaviour actually makes sense. A recurring behaviour that appears irrational from the outside is often entirely rational inside the system that created it. Once that system becomes visible, transformation becomes possible in a different way because the person is no longer fighting only with the symptom; they can begin to understand and change the mechanism that has been generating it. This is also why the most powerful question is not always the most obvious one. Start with what still repeats For leaders who have already done substantial work on themselves, I often think there is a particularly useful place to begin: not with what they do not know, but with what they already know and still cannot change. What professional situation keeps repeating despite your awareness of it? Which feedback have you heard several times from different people? Which type of colleague or circumstance reliably triggers the same reaction? What responsibility do you repeatedly take back even after deciding to delegate it? Which conflict returns in different forms? What do you keep promising yourself you will do differently once the pressure subsides? These repetitions are not evidence that previous development work has failed. Quite the opposite: they may simply indicate that the next layer of work sits somewhere deeper than the previous one. The pattern itself is information, and for leaders, it is particularly valuable information because the pattern is rarely affecting only them. The more senior the position, the wider the radius of influence. A private fear can become a management behaviour; a management behaviour can become a team norm; a team norm can eventually become part of organisational culture. This is where leadership transformation stops being an individual exercise and begins to become a systemic one. A different starting point We have spent decades developing increasingly sophisticated models of leadership, and much of that work has been invaluable. Yet there is still a tendency to approach development as though the main challenge were to acquire better answers: better behaviours, better tools, better frameworks, better communication techniques. Sometimes the leader already has many of those answers. The more interesting question is whether they can access them when the internal mechanism that overrides them becomes active. For the most experienced leaders, development may therefore begin less with adding something new than with uncovering something old: the pattern that has become so familiar, useful or successful that it is almost impossible to see from inside. The question I increasingly find myself returning to is not simply, "What should this leader do differently?" It is, "What is this leader still unable to see that keeps making the same behaviour necessary?" Because meaningful transformation does not always come from discovering a better answer. Sometimes it begins with discovering the question that changes everything. Call to action Anne Rigaud-Walker works with senior leaders and leadership teams on the invisible patterns that shape behaviour, relationships and performance. Follow her Brainz profile for further articles on leadership transformation, systemic dynamics and the emerging relationship between human capacity and high performance. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anne Rigaud-Walker Anne Rigaud-Walker, Executive Coach & Transformation Strategist Anne Rigaud-Walker is an Executive Coach and Strategic Transformation Practitioner who works with senior leaders, leadership teams and high-performing individuals. Drawing on a corporate background and a broad range of coaching, psychology and neuroscience-informed approaches, she helps uncover the invisible patterns that continue to shape behaviour and performance. Her work is particularly suited to leaders who have already done significant work on themselves yet still encounter recurring limitations or blind spots. She is currently exploring how leadership, human capacity and organisational performance can evolve towards more regenerative models.

Written by Joseph Arabi, Author & Founder of Fiklyn Press Joseph Arabi is an author, storyteller, and founder of Fiklyn Press, an independent publishing house dedicated to cross-cultural narratives. He is the author of Roots Across Borders, Fikayo Saves the Playground, and the novel The Callin Divide. What happens after the suitcase is unpacked and the excitement of arrival fades? Joseph Arabi’s memoir, Roots Across Borders, explores the less visible side of migration, rebuilding a career, learning unfamiliar systems, raising a family, and discovering that belonging is not simply something we find, but something we build. What does starting again really involve? Immigration is often discussed through statistics, visas, and policy, but behind every number is a person making decisions about work, housing, family, identity, and the future. Roots Across Borders brings those questions into everyday life, the workplace, supermarket, school gate, public transport, and family home. Its central message is simple, crossing a border can mean having to prove yourself again, even when your skills and experience are real. 1. Your qualifications may not travel as easily as you do A skilled immigrant can arrive with education, professional experience, and ambition, yet still face rejection or uncertainty. Starting again may mean rebuilding professional credibility and learning how a new labour market works. The lesson is not to mistake an early setback for a final verdict on your ability. Your experience may be real. Your ambition may be real. Your ability may be real, but when you cross a border, you may still have to prove yourself all over again. That is one of the hidden costs of starting again. 2. Knowing the language does not mean knowing the system Everyday English can feel very different from the language of forms, regulations, applications, and official correspondence. Banking, healthcare, housing, and employment can introduce unfamiliar processes and acronyms. Learning the system becomes part of the migration journey, and patience becomes as important as determination. One missed instruction can become another delay. One misunderstanding can become another expense. One rejection can become another blow to confidence. That is where Roots Across Borders becomes particularly compelling. It takes the immigration conversation away from the abstract and brings it into the kitchen, the supermarket, the workplace, the school gate, the bus, the train station, and the family living room. The book's stated focus is the experience of a skilled immigrant worker and his family navigating post Brexit, post COVID Britain, exploring resilience, cultural adaptation, family bonds, career stability, and the search for belonging. It is, in other words, a story about immigration, but it is also a story about being human. 3. Small expenses can carry big emotions Some of the most powerful immigrant stories are not found in dramatic events. They are found in supermarkets, at checkout counters, on buses, in conversations, and in the quiet calculations people make in their heads. Can we afford this? What does that cost in the currency I know? Am I spending too much? What will this mean for the family budget? The memoir captures this emotional side of migration particularly well. The adjustment to British currency and living costs becomes more than an economic exercise. It becomes psychological. The book explores what it calls “Conversion Fever”, the instinctive habit of mentally converting British prices into the currency of one's home country. Suddenly, a seemingly ordinary purchase can become an emotional event. A meal is no longer simply a meal. It becomes a calculation. A supermarket bill becomes a reminder that everything has changed. Slowly, the immigrant has to learn a new financial reality. This is one of the book's strengths, it finds the extraordinary inside the ordinary. 4. The biggest barriers are not always visible An accent, surname, foreign qualification, lack of local experience, or unfamiliarity with workplace culture can create friction. The book avoids reducing every difficulty to discrimination, recognising that bureaucracy, economics, culture, perception, and unfamiliarity can overlap. The immigrant experience can contain both disappointment and opportunity. Roots Across Borders does not suggest that every difficulty is caused by discrimination. Instead, it presents a more complicated picture in which bureaucracy, culture, economics, unfamiliarity, and perception can combine to make integration difficult. That distinction matters because the immigrant experience cannot always be reduced to victimhood, nor can it honestly be reduced to triumph. It is often somewhere between the two. There are disappointments. There are opportunities. There are people who help and people who misunderstand. There are moments of loneliness and moments of profound connection. There are days when simply getting through the day feels like an achievement. 5. Community can turn survival into belonging Neighbours, colleagues, mentors, friends, charities, and fellow immigrants can make an enormous difference. A recommendation, an explanation of a form, or simply hearing “I have been through this too” can restore confidence. Networking, volunteering, and mentorship also create a powerful shift, the person who once needed help can eventually become someone who helps others. The book describes community as a source of practical and emotional support, particularly when navigating employment, healthcare, and cultural barriers. There is something profoundly universal about that. Most people, regardless of where they were born, understand what it feels like to need somebody. The person who explains the form. The colleague who recommends you for an opportunity. The neighbour who checks on you. The friend who says, “I have been through this too.” For an immigrant, those seemingly small acts can become enormous. They say, you are not alone. 6. Children often become bridges between worlds Migration changes the whole family. Children may adapt quickly to a new culture while continuing to encounter their parents’ traditions and expectations at home. Rather than seeing identity as a choice between two worlds, Roots Across Borders suggests that different parts of identity can coexist and even enrich one another. That idea gives the book relevance to anyone who has ever felt caught between cultures, generations, or expectations. 7. Belonging is built through ordinary moments Perhaps the deepest lesson is that belonging rarely arrives in one dramatic moment. It grows through conversations, friendships, work, community, family routines, and shared experiences. A Christmas trip, a new friendship, or simply realising that you are creating memories in your new country can mark a quiet turning point, the place that once felt unfamiliar begins to feel like home. Then there are the moments when life stops being about paperwork, applications, money, or uncertainty, and becomes simply life. In one of the memoir's later chapters, the family takes a Christmas trip to Glasgow. After the relentless rhythm of work, school runs, deadlines, and everyday responsibilities, they decide they need to pause. They board the train. They arrive in Glasgow. There are Christmas lights, markets, music, laughter, food, children discovering new things, a Ferris wheel, and the River Clyde. There is also an elderly couple, kind strangers who offer to take a family photograph. It is a beautiful reminder that the immigrant story is not supposed to remain a story of struggle forever. There must also be room for joy, discovery, ordinary family memories, and the moment when you look around and realise, we are actually living here now. The journey is not simply about arriving Roots Across Borders ultimately moves beyond the question of immigration and towards a universal question, "What does it take to belong?" The answer is neither complete assimilation nor permanent separation from the past. It is the ability to carry your roots while growing in new soil, to question your own assumptions, to contribute to your community, and to remain open to change. Roots Across Borders does not read like an indictment of Britain. Nor does it present Britain as a perfect destination where every dream comes true. Instead, it occupies the much more interesting territory between those extremes. Britain can be difficult. Britain can be welcoming. Systems can be frustrating. People can be kind. Cultural differences can create tension, but they can also create learning. The immigrant can feel like an outsider. The same immigrant can eventually discover belonging. That complexity is precisely what makes the story relevant to readers from different races, religions, nationalities, and social backgrounds. You do not have to agree with every political argument surrounding immigration to recognise the humanity of an immigrant family. You do not have to have migrated yourself to understand sacrifice. You certainly do not need to share the author's background to understand the desire to give your children a better future. A story worth continuing In an era when immigration can become an abstract political argument, personal stories restore the human dimension. Joseph Arabi’s memoir invites readers to look beyond labels and recognise the hopes, pressures, sacrifices, and contributions behind the word “immigrant”. Discover Roots Across Borders and explore the human story behind starting again. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or visit my website for more info. Read more from Joseph Arabi Joseph Arabi, Author & Founder of Fiklyn Press As an author and the founder of Fiklyn Press, Joseph Arabi writes to explore how shared human experiences can heal cultural and emotional divides. His published works range from deeply personal non-fiction capturing the immigrant family journey to inspiring children's books and contemporary fiction. With a craft honed through formal creative writing studies at Teesside University, Joseph combines personal experience with compelling storytelling to spark meaningful conversations. Explore his author profile to discover his books, articles, and latest literary projects.

Written by Inbar Lee Hyams, Feng Shui Consultant Inbar Lee Hyams is a BTB feng shui practitioner in Haifa, Israel, who reads clients' homes and writes Shui-ish, a newsletter that mashes up feng shui with the weekly portion of the Hebrew Bible. She spent twenty years as a copywriter in Israel's startup world and holds an MA in Creative Writing. You want something from the place you live, and it's bigger than a place to keep your things. Most people never say what it is out loud. The ask gets made the day you choose the place, wordlessly, and then you hang the shelves, get busy living, and never go back to it. What is a home actually for? I've lived in 27 homes across three states and two countries, which is 27 chances to notice what I wanted from a place before I finished unpacking. It took me most of them to work out that I was asking for the same four things every time. Becoming. You chose the place as a bet on yourself. You thought you'd be calmer here, or more social, or more focused, closer to the person you mean to be. The desk in the corner was going to make you a writer. The long table was going to make you someone who hosts. Witness. Your home sees the version of you that nobody else gets, at the hours when you've stopped performing. You don't dress for it, and you don't explain yourself to it. It knows how you actually eat dinner. Provision. That there will be enough inside these rooms, and that you'll be taken care of here. This is the one people are least likely to name and most likely to feel, usually in the kitchen, usually at the end of a month. Continuity. Jobs end, children grow, people leave, bodies change. The walls stay where they are. When my household went from one person to three humans, two dogs, a cat, and a bowl of fish in 860 square feet, I stopped asking the apartment to be beautiful. I needed it to hold still while everything else rearranged itself. Why the ask changes while you're not looking None of these is permanent. You might have wanted refuge when you arrived, worn out from whatever you were leaving, and now need those same rooms to let people in. The home doesn't know that. It faithfully keeps the promise you stopped needing, which is a strange kind of loyalty and easy to mistake for the place being wrong. The person who chose this apartment is not the person living in it now, and won't be the one living in it next year either. When I read houses professionally, I ask people what they want from the room we're standing in. Most of them have to think about it, and a fair number end up describing something they needed a while ago. Often the ask was never said out loud to begin with. The place picked it up anyway: which room got the good light and how many chairs stayed around the table. What you have with your home is not a contract Rabbi Jonathan Sacks returned to the difference between a contract and a covenant across decades of writing, using it for marriage and for national politics. A contract is an exchange. Two parties each want something, both state their terms, both deliver, and once the terms are met, the thing is finished. It handles a purchase well and a life badly. A covenant works differently. Sacks describes it as a bond of loyalty in which people come together "to do together what neither can achieve alone." Not an exchange of goods, but a joining of two parties who then find out together what it will require of them. He compared it to a marriage rather than a transaction. That second one is what's running in your house. You never gave the place a list of terms. You moved in, and the two of you started doing something neither of you could have done alone, and neither of you signed anything. Which is why the mismatch doesn't get solved by moving. You renegotiate a contract when the terms stop serving you. You renew a covenant, which is a different action, and it's the one almost nobody performs on a home. One tradition scheduled the renewal There's a scene near the end of Deuteronomy where an entire nation stops to renew a covenant that was already working. Leaders and elders and officials, and in the same list without a pause for rank, the person who chops the wood and the person who carries the water. Everyone, standing. Nothing had gone wrong with the agreement. What had happened was that forty years had passed, and Moses was near the end of his life. Sacks read this scene as the moment the initiative changes hands. God started every earlier covenant in the Torah. Here, Moses appears to start it himself, without being told to. Sacks traces the escalation: nothing was asked of Noah, a gesture was asked of Abraham, and at Sinai the people were asked for their consent before the terms were given, three separate times. By Nitzavim, the human side convenes. The text then extends the covenant to those standing there and also to those who are not there that day (Deuteronomy 29:13-14). Jewish tradition has read that second group as the generations not yet born. An agreement written to bind people who weren't consulted, and renewal is the mechanism by which they get to say yes to it themselves. The Hebrew word for how they're standing is nitzavim, which is not the ordinary word for standing around. It means positioned, placed on purpose, present deliberately. I'm not a religious person, and I came to this the way most people do: sideways, through reading. What I keep taking from it is the design. Somebody understood that agreements go quiet without failing, that the person holding one is never the person who made it, and that the only fix is to stand up once a year and say the terms out loud again. So they put it in the calendar. This passage is read every autumn in the week before the Jewish New Year, which means the renewal isn't left to whenever someone notices it's needed. An object only works while you're still meaning it In the school of feng shui I practice, a cure is an object placed in a specific part of a home to shift something about how it functions. A plant, a mirror, a red envelope, a chime. The object matters and the placement matters, and there's a third thing that's easy to leave out, which is what you meant by it when you put it there. Two people can hang the same crystal in the same window, one meaning something by it and the other liking how it catches the light, and get different results from an identical object in an identical spot. Which is why placement is only the start of the job. After you set a cure, you go back to it. Nine days, or twenty-seven. Nine is the number this school treats as complete, the point at which a thing has finished becoming itself, and twenty-seven is nine three times over, used when you want more weight behind it. You return to the object and repeat the intention, and the repetition is doing something plainer than the numbers suggest. It trains your attention to keep meeting the thing you put there, and your attention is a large part of what keeps it working. Skip that, and the object stays exactly where you left it while your end of the arrangement quietly lapses. Every home has one. The wind chime nobody has heard in a decade. The plant in the corner that died and got replaced by a phone charger, which is now the thing sitting in the spot you chose for something else. How to renew the agreement with your home Twenty minutes, ideally when the house is empty, and nobody is going to ask you what you're doing. Start at the front door, standing inside, facing in. In this school, the front door is where chi enters, so it's the one place worth saying anything you want the whole house to hear. Then walk the rooms one at a time and say out loud what you're asking of each one this year. Out loud is the part people want to skip, and it's the part that works. Something happens to a vague intention when you have to put it in a sentence and hear yourself say it. What you're naming is a quality, not a chore. Not "keep the kitchen clean." Closer to: This kitchen feeds people who are actually hungry, and I'm one of them. This bedroom lets me put the day down at the door. Nothing that belongs to work comes in here. This corner is where I do my own work, and it stops being where other people leave their things. This living room can hold more people than it currently does. I want it used. This entrance gives me thirty seconds to arrive before anyone needs anything from me. Each one binds in both directions. You're telling the room what it's for, and you're agreeing to let it be that, which is the harder half. Naming the corner as yours means you have to stop putting the laundry there. Then go back. For the next nine days, walk the same route and say the same words. Once you know them, it takes two minutes, and the return is the whole point. A promise made once is something you already have and have stopped noticing. When a room won't hold it Some homes have trouble keeping an intention no matter how clearly you name it. You can tell the bedroom it's for sleep and still not sleep in it. You can name the corner as yours and still find it collecting everyone else's things by Thursday. That's usually the room and not you. Something about how the space is arranged is working against what you're asking of it, and no amount of saying it out loud will outargue a floor plan. Layout, light, what's directly across from the door, what you see first when you walk in, what the room is next to. These carry more weight than most people expect, which surprises new clients most. Worth knowing the difference. An intention that fades is yours to renew. An intention the room keeps refusing is information about the room. Before the year gets going Whatever you're asking your home for, you're asking it whether or not you ever put it in words. The list is different for everyone, and it changes more often than the furniture does. The agreement is already running. The only question is whether you'll say the terms out loud this year or let the house keep guessing. Inbar Lee writes a weekly letter about what homes are actually doing here. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Inbar Lee Hyams Inbar Lee Hyams, Feng Shui Consultant Inbar Lee Hyams moved twenty-seven times before she turned thirty and got very good at making a space look and feel good, fast. Then came apartment #28, where life lived, and the chi didn't–a place she now describes as funk shui. She went looking for an explanation and found one in feng shui. She trained in the BTB tradition with Amanda Gibby Peters and now reads clients' spaces. Her weekly newsletter mashes up feng shui, the weekly portion of the Hebrew Bible, and whatever happened in her own house that week, so readers can learn to read their own homes and change what isn't working.

Sam Kim was having paranormal experiences before he had the words to describe them. Raised in a Buddhist household marked by poverty, he grew up sensing things that didn't fit neatly into the world around him, a quiet, private knowing that would take decades to fully unfold. Sam Kim, Teacher, Healer, Reader, and Speaker You often describe yourself as a "spiritual plumber," so what does that mean in your own words, and how did that become the foundation of your work? I would say a plumber is someone who fixes problems in homes regarding anything to do with pipes, I'm guessing you would assume. When I was plumbing, I would go through the walls and pipes to see the problems and issues, to resolve the situations with my clairvoyance. I would mechanically build the two worlds together from the core root, from underground piping and also using other tools and materials from the plumber's aspect, in my problem-solving skill set within the system of the house, where I would do the same as a healer, to clear out by just turning a valve on for the flow to stream through, in the making of ourselves as a spiritual lighthouse. But as spiritual beings, as we all are, there are streams that come to us, through us, and for us, like the water that cleans us in the shower. It is another form of a mystic mechanic, someone who resolves the life challenges we all face every day. Approaching it as problem-solving is where the two can unite, as a mechanic/helper, or even a magician when it comes to water and the astral world. If you're truly spiritual, you would have the skillful means to resolve challenges with your awareness in your being. There's always an internal system moving, in flow or in stagnation, that makes up who and what we are. Our bodies, for example, have pumps, valves, and miles and miles of tubing that keep us alive. The human body processes food, turning it into energy to sustain life, with all the organs and other closed systems working at peak performance. On the other hand, when talking about it spiritually, different kinds of states or attributes come along with the person's representation. With the aspect of spirituality, we're always cleansing, clearing out the old that we hold onto, physically, emotionally, and mentally, which can represent what kind of container or vessel we are. Now, a home or a building would be the same way as well: it needs to hold its own hardware internally, with proper maintenance to stay clean and healthy, just as we would take care of ourselves. As a spiritual plumber starts their investigation into what the problem is, to repair, replace, or install, three options are given in resolving the issue. Like, where's the leak coming from? It's like being the water and seeing how it moves through the pipes, like how we humans carry emotions through our internal plumbing to find the solutions to whatever needs to be resolved. I will say spirituality is a nonlinear point of view; it's more than just believing and not believing. But there is definitely a flow state between the physical, such as plumbing, and the nonphysical, such as spirituality. It's the same as a plumber clearing out the shit that's been clogged and blocked. In spirituality, your life can flow more smoothly, with clearer clarity in living day to day, without the blocks and clogs getting in the way of what it is you're going for. Now that I'm no longer a plumber and am into my spiritual healing practice, I use a lot of my plumbing mindset in my spiritual approach to solving problems, no longer in homes and buildings, but now in human souls. Surviving electrocution and a near-death experience changed the course of your life, so what convinced you that you were being called to become a healer rather than return to your previous path? For five years, I fought myself, going back and forth with plumbing. My body could no longer give me the strength to do the work under the conditions that job demands. Then came the accident. I was electrocuted with 480 volts, and my entire world flipped upside down. During my near-death experience, I questioned this world, because it felt too fake to me after what I went through over there. Like many other near-death experiences, it's a very similar story, with similar concepts and interpretations of the experience, and I can say that what I went through, and the interactions I had, were more real than this world. I met a cosmic light pool, some kind of galactic union of beings. The best way I can describe it is that this pool was spaceless, beyond plasmic, iridescent liquid, all of this and us together in a bubble of endless ocean. That's all pure energy. I didn't want to come back without a choice to stay or go, like in other NDE cases, I'm guessing some souls have that choice. Being told it wasn't my time, that's why I had to go back, really scrambled my brain. After coming back, my nervous system was still fried, and it was not easy. I still feel the effects from it today. Seeking help for my physical, mental, and emotional pain took me on a healing journey. During that process, I accepted that I was not going to be the same person I was before, and my life took a different route. In healing myself, I was also healing others. Getting electrocuted gave me some kind of superpower. Looking back, I remembered my childhood in Korea, when I encountered a Korean shaman in the woods doing a ritual, waving his hands in the air, creating a wind-like force, enough wind that he had control of the cloth he was manipulating. After that, I can remember other supernatural entities and experiences too. Now I look back and can see why all these things happened, especially from my spiritual point of view, as who I am now. I still, from time to time, encounter light beings, and in Korean folklore I can confirm three separate encounters with three separate entities: the Tiger Grandfather, DobKeBi, and a floating fire. With everything I've learned, energy, electrical power from the breath, intuition, synchronicity, trance, and channeling, I can now use what I've gathered in the guidance I've been given, part of a preparation that was set before I even knew of it. In my eyes, we are all multidimensional electrical beings, with emotions, feelings, and intentions that can be measured electrically. I've learned to use this well in my own healing techniques and the modality I've developed over the past several years as a practitioner. As a galactic medium, I do trance channeling to heal, read, and speak through the Clair senses, and I can assure you that all humans can remember their soul beings are one. Figuring out what I need to figure out, when I need to, that's the goal, I would say. You describe yourself as a Galactic Medium, so what do you believe people can learn from understanding their own cosmic blueprint? It's your cheat code and instructions, meant only for you to know. In cosmology, it's a blueprint for your birth chart, a map you learn to read so you can understand and master yourself. Your own blueprint, a cosmic blueprint, is like your soul's specification, like on a real blueprint, the labor and materials of things and what it took to create you. The cosmos was and will be here after we go, millions of light-years apart, they say, as we think we know. Throughout history, in ancient times, their cosmology and astrology were their map as well. Under astrology and cosmology, and through the galaxy, we are just a part of what astrology is; we humans are the pieces in the blueprint that's given to us. While the universe spins and expands through our galaxy and the cosmos, we all evolve genetically without even knowing it's happening as the years go on. In the galaxy and in yourself, there are cycles and upgrades happening at the exact right time when we realize our own cosmic blueprint and understand how it all works. I'm saying this from self-realizations and knowing what I need to know. Galactic represents an overview of how vast a human being truly is, from the physical to the nonphysical point of view, floating on a piece of rock like a tiny particle. As a medium, I translate the messages I receive from the other side to the physical person here and now. Individually and collectively, it all coexists. It's basically understanding your DNA, your family inheritance, your family dynamic, your attributes, and who, what, and where you came from. It can help you understand yourself with ease and compassionate acceptance. Seeing all this through a micro-to-macro perspective, it's a collective puzzle piece where we all work together, galactically. I was given the name The Galactic Medium for a reason, and now I know why. Under the sun, the creator, the central source, gives us exactly what we need to survive on this planet, organically, in a perfect world. But as a human, the medium, I understand the totality that comes with being a human being with a soul, to my own knowledge, to say. But in seeing this in the grand scheme of things, from 3D to multidimensional awareness, I now know and see the blueprint in my own way to live more harmoniously. Like the sun in the galaxy is the soup of cosmic light flowing, rippling out high-vibrational-frequency energy into the Milky Way, to us, through us, to be part of a larger cosmic order as planned. Knowing your map will give you the wisdom to use the tools that are given to you. The Source, the soup, whom I still have dialogue with, gave me the assurance that I'm part of something bigger than myself, other than just being a healer and a reader. I know enough to say idk what idk. But every day I learn more about myself on my own, because I know my own blueprint as civilization evolves too. More people are openly exploring intuition and energy healing today, so what shifts have you noticed in the questions people are bringing to you? The questions people bring to me vary quite a bit, since everyone is at a different point in their understanding. But across the workshops and trainings I attend, I've noticed a recurring theme: people ask how and why. That's a natural, very human question, I understand the impulse, but I've come to feel it isn't the most important one to start with. Often, people want the science handed to them upfront. They want the concept intellectualized before they've done any of the exercise or experimentation themselves. One teacher I studied under opened a class by simply saying, "No question, just do." For what it's worth, I see intuition as inherently healing. It's a kind of energetic awareness that surfaces what we need to know, when we need to know it. In my experience, the"aha" moment reveals itself in time, when the student is ready in their own how and why terms. If we listen and feel carefully, that same intuition can guide real healing. I believe this is a capacity everyone has, not something reserved for a few. If I could ask people one question, it would be, "What is your intention with this practice?" That question is simple and organic, but trends can make the work feel more complicated than it needs to be, sometimes at the expense of the intuitive process that unfolds naturally, in its own time. I'd also gently encourage people toward their own shadow work; that's often where the deeper healing happens. I take this work seriously, and I want to be upfront about that. To put it simply: in energy work, so much depends on the practitioner. By "clean vessel," I don't mean anything about being pure, vegan, or without flaw, I mean setting yourself aside as much as possible during a session, so the work isn't filtered through your own ego or agenda. Healing tends to happen most fully when the practitioner and the person they're working with meet each other with aligned intention, values, and trust. Over nine years of studying both Eastern and Western modalities, I've tried to learn how to meet people exactly where they are and build from there. In sessions, I try not to say more than necessary. My aim is to hold a calm, safe presence so the person can feel at ease with whatever they're carrying. If I sense something worth sharing, I ask permission first and go from there. Most people who come to me are dealing with everyday patterns, habits, lifestyle, recurring behaviors, the kind of thing that shifts once someone commits to doing their own inner work. I'd add that self-honesty, awareness of self-gaslighting, and spiritual bypassing are worth examining on one's own, asking sharper questions of yourself is its own discipline. Though I take this work seriously, I lighten things up from a broader perspective because in the end, we're all just moving through it together. " You bridge spirituality with physical disciplines like bodybuilding and yoga, so why do you believe embodiment is often missing from conversations about personal growth? We overcompensate by compartmentalizing the two separately, but in reality, it's in your one body you have. Though they are different, they both work with one another perfectly in sync when it's balanced correctly. Like water and concrete, you need both to create your molding, but in the perfect amount, of course. Your gut is your second mind, giving you the emotions and feelings so your mind can identify what's being processed through the feelings you're getting from your gut, so you know what emotions are being processed. Your gut has more electrical nerve pathways than your brain does. As a sensitive, I feel a lot with my clairsentient feelings often. They both coexist, but most importantly, you need a healthy, strong body for the mind to work efficiently, and a clean, clear mind gives the physical vessel the ability to channel the balanced mind to operate efficiently. An imbalanced vessel produces cortisol from stress, which creates diseases from the mind mixed with the emotions, amplifying the discomfort and dense heaviness that decays the body. Stress or no stress makes a huge difference in your physique physically! The intention of the mind travels through the body to create that intention you've just created, with cortisol depleting the muscles during that time. It's the mind that creates the body; for five years, I dedicated my mind and physique. An NPC yogi. I can and will say a strong mind can create a powerful temple, the body, where the vessel would just be whatever it needs to be in a moment of time. A masterful mind is a creator, sculpting, and that's what I did during my competition years. At 150 lbs, bench pressing 315 three times and squatting 375 is pretty impressive, even for me to say. But when I look back, I can really say it was more than 75% mindset in competition, especially when you're creating yourself from your own intentions and the hard work you put into yourself. From my experience and point of view in both worlds of culture, from the fitness physique point, comparing the spiritual as a yogi really helped me. From my point of view, two totally different, opposite, but combining the two gives you the innate intuitive understanding of reading your own body from a point of view where your physical body is communicating with you at all times. When the embodiment comes together, like yoga and qigong, the mind, body, and soul connection to the spirit helps you grow into who you really are meant to be. But remember, you are this spiritual, physical being who has this mind and body as a tool to bridge both sides. It's you, just by your pure intention, who chooses what it is that you need to embody: the mind or your body? But the wellness and other holistic modalities community is coming together to complement each other, with science showing proof and evidence that coexisting help works together in this one body we have here and now. Historically and in other cultures throughout time, like the yogis and other masters, their attributes united them both in their day-to-day life to live a mystical life, which is where we're all supposed to live, but society moved this active play so we are distracted by unimportant things like memes and news propaganda. Now, coming together with proof meeting with ancient history and civilizations from the Orient to the Egyptians throughout thousands of years of civilization that came and went through Earth's history. ETs, mediumship, and other nonphysical things have been around for thousands of years if you're comparing it to this year of 2026, especially on soil that's 250 years old on a billion-year-old planet we all are living on. When someone feels disconnected from their intuition, what is the first step you encourage them to take before seeking guidance from anyone else? Check in with yourself, slow down, and ground; try to be still and calm when you're feeling disconnected. Calm and stillness can help you be more aware of your sensitivity; bring yourself back into your body in that moment in the discernment of feeling disconnected. Or I would usually blink a few times to reset and shake off the disconnection, like a dog shaking something off its coat. Long pauses and breathing rhythmically can and will help you to flow back into the connection you thought you disconnected from. It's a learning process in these cases. To notice more of your intuition, it cannot be forced. It must be organic; it's like being in the right place and at the right time through trial and error. Intuition comes in super quick, and it's very subtle, and it comes in many different ways: a whisper, a symbolic sign through the environment, or even a flash through your mind's eye. It's really you becoming more aware of your connection that is always there. Reflection and integration, taking accountability and responsibility for the actions you made, can reset you and restart that intuition to kick back in again. I really feel it boils down to each and every person individually working on themselves, removing baggage and clutter that you accumulated from your old trauma and dramas you still hold on to, which will affect your sensitivity in feeling or noticing your intuition kicking in. Sometimes things take longer, so one can learn to discern and to be more patient. Pay more attention to yourself than to what is happening outside of you, or you miss the shift within because you're not in the present moment at that time. Be OK with what it is now without having to try to figure out everything in every case we come across. Learn and be curious about whatever it is that can help you understand why you got disconnected at that moment. By letting go of the past and the unnecessary things you don't need, you'll help yourself notice your intuition. A clean vessel with less or no filtration from having no attachments is the clear channel that comes into play as we are. I feel one of the most important things is to have one friend, or someone you can talk to about whatever it is, without any judgment. A person who can just be there with you without having to do or say anything for you, but for you to feel seen and understood when feeling disconnected with yourself in whatever way that may be. Overstimulation and distraction will definitely have you disconnected from yourself. For sure, having you pay attention to something other than yourself is disconnection. In reality, you can never be disconnected from yourself ever; even after your death, you're still connected to the universal entanglement. In my opinion and from my own personal observation, society and your upbringing have a huge hold on your self-awareness and your divine connection. Cultural indoctrination and the force-fed system have us humans lose track of our own innate capabilities. Your journey spans poverty, bullying, a learning disability, and rebuilding your life after a near-death experience, so what inner practices have helped you stay grounded through each chapter? A deep breath and a big sigh. “It could have been worse.” I always try to stay humble and remember where I came from. Yeah, sure, I can cry and be miserable from my upbringing in the past, but what is that going to do? If I had chosen the darker path, I know I wouldn’t be here writing this right now. The villains' and the heroes' stories are usually the same, but they both went in different directions. It's too easy to choose the repetitive habit of reactions, but I’ve come to a conclusion and accepted what it is, how human nature works from a victim point of view, and just changed it to a different perception. I understand it's all an evolutionary process everyone goes through, and some people learn and others don’t. Life still continues on after we go, in whatever you want to do, in your belief system and where you may be in the world. It's basically the same soulful journey we are on until our expiration date comes by, but before then, we’re here to live the life we want to create and learn from all the experiences we lived through. I still have my challenges just like anyone else, but those past circumstances I faced were part of the learning curve we all go through to come out metamorphosing into a better version from our learning and growing as adults do. Each chapter of my life was an interesting synchronicity, like everything was meant to happen exactly how it is right now. There are billions of lives on this planet, and I'm one of them, and I can assure you someone else out there has a more interesting story than I do. But the difference is being in the right place and at the right time. People can move effortlessly in ways where they are meant to be at the right time. I’ve learned tenacity, grit, and perseverance to help me go through the tough times. I know I'm not the only one who can get over life challenges; you just have to be realistic with yourself and your goal! Also, being a psycho and completely shutting the world off in the process can help you get where you want to go and be in the right state of mind at each moment of your life. I learned how to mix and match the good and the bad, turning the poison into medicine and alchemizing, turning shit into gold. I really feel the harder the struggle, the bigger the reward. The soul is in seeking what it is that they are looking for in the journey they are on before death knocks on your front door! When that time comes, the door opens, and you smile and welcome it in with no regrets about how you lived your life, what you did, and what you represented as a soul to bring into this world in that time. Again, it's seeing life from a different perception. But organically, from a universal eye point of view, it all comes and goes like the seasons, and your soul is moving through the in-between of the things that are happening during each moment. Perceiving your perceptions can help you get through some hard times, in my opinion. You often speak about balancing masculine and feminine energies, so how has that balance shaped both your life and your approach to helping others? Balancing the yin and the yang so I can act accordingly. The masculine and feminine roles are a bit different energetically in their representation, but they can both work hand in hand when they are both used efficiently and properly. Like fire and water, though one can cancel the other out in an imbalanced proportion, the water can heat up to create steam when they both are being used correctly. Also, depending on the intention, the male and female can coexist within the individual, acting passively or actively in the moment. For example, in a hostile situation, which one of the two would work better in these kinds of situations? A feminine would utilize words more, whereas the masculine would use their physical presence to differentiate the opposite of the two. But when you utilize them both together, that combination can be a force in disassembling hostile circumstances just by being more aware of the situations and handling them with the grace of balancing them into one. It is having the courage in their physicality but still having the finesse in a cordial way. It's like intuition versus logic, and from action-oriented to more strategic planning, it can be a potent insight when they both work together in executing a plan or goal we’re all striving for. Again, it's all energy-based, and when you're comfortable with both sides of yourself, you can be competent with confidence in your being. For me, at times I lean toward my intuition, the feminine side, more to gather whatever it is that I need in that moment. Then I make an actionable decision, taking the steps to make it happen with my will, toward my masculine side, doing what needs to be done. Exactly like in nature, miracles happen when a woman and a man unite together to cocreate a beautiful child organically; it is the power of embracing your own sexual divinity you’ve been seeded with naturally. Especially now, at a sensitive time, talking about this kind of topic is a bit challenging because it can be taken the wrong way from a different point of perspective. But historically, at the end of all troubled civilizations, there is massive confusion and idiocracy due to mismanaged important policy for society to know the truth behind everyone’s masculine and feminine roles. Right now, I notice the two opposites are in a battle. I feel, in my opinion, the system is manipulating organic nature by energetically misleading roles in masses, in confusion. A fool doesn’t know they're a fool, and you don’t know what you don’t know. But when the person welcomes the opposite side of their birth gender in their own divinity, he or she can be a powerhouse, knowing the two energies are one within themselves. The system is designed to make us hate who we are individually. Society allowing this kind of behavior to be normalized is truly harming our existence. Oneness is divinity, bringing both male and female together as a whole in being a human organically. If readers remember one idea from your story, what do you hope inspires them to see themselves differently? To go out with a bang: to think large and huge, where it will take you a few lifetimes to accomplish! But also to be realistic during this lifetime and to set at least two realistic, tangible dreams and goals in the making during your adventure. Of course, we must remember to have the living expenses to live, which is basic common sense we know of as being a human living here on Earth, as I see it. But also to be able to do whatever it takes to accomplish your dreams and goals without harming anyone else or yourself, with honesty, dignity, and integrity, with moral and ethical beliefs, of course! Listen, we live in a dog-eat-dog world; realistically, in 3D, it's super dense and difficult for sure! But I feel morals and ethics can take you to places only your imagination can take you. I hate to sound corny, but positivity and the truth will only give you more than what you need in the process. We’re all in a world with infinite possibilities at your fingertips, with the steps and instructional information to accomplish whatever that may be for you. If you're able to read this article, you're doing better than more than 50% of the population in the world, especially during this time. But most people want the same dumb materialistic shit and a fast way in and out of those things. A quick fix, the instant gratification. It's just a simple choice, whether you want to follow your wants or your needs. Wanting is the surface level instant gratification, whereas needs give you the fulfillment and contentment of your passion and joy without trying to control your destiny on your path. People have to remember the impermanence of things in life and accept that everything changes. Thoughts and feelings change like the seasons, with the people, society, and anything and everything under the sun. As for me right now, I can honestly say that I really don't care what anyone thinks about me or how they remember me, and I’m really truly saying this from my heart in the most compassionate way to anyone who reads this. What’s more important is my own value and how I would feel about myself, rather than others having values toward me. Without sounding pompous or cocky, the older I get, the less important approval from others is to me, especially now that opinions are given out like hot cakes everywhere lol. Remember that you were born pure before you knew what you know now. Way before you knew what fears and worries were. Without anything that influences your pure awareness in your own perception. Your vibratory rate comes from within, and you emit differently due to the intention behind your essence. The key is to be exactly who you are meant to be and master what you love doing. Know you’re the only person doing this; that’s because it’s from your soul and the individual sentient being that you are. It's ok to be different because our imprints and blueprints are set for you and only you. But remember, your difference fits with others who are different like you, but in their own different way as well, just a different shade of coloring in perception. It's following your flow and attracting what you're perceiving. Listen, we all eat shit, bleed, and expire when it's time. Yes, although that is all true, we all fit into this universe uniquely like a big cosmic collective puzzle. Please remember where you started from and how much you overcame to be where you are right now. The path of mindfulness and self-awareness is a master class in creating your life with your own rules and regulations within the parameters of your lifestyle. You want to do what others are doing or do what you want to do, what your soul is meant to do. What’s meant for you will always come back to you in different ways, but it's up to you to see and notice the signs and messages that are given to you every day. To know and understand how it works is to know your own innate. It's smarter than you and I, and it's an intelligence your smart body is entangled with, your own light force. What I mean is that we are all connected to this light force. That is your cosmic light force within, which is part of your intuition, your subconscious, and your unconscious, and it knows more than we think we know. Just by you starting to believe in this kind of stuff, this can be your second nature, getting guidance and help from people, places, and things around you at any given time. A kind of help that comes to you, through you, and for you when it's time. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sam Kim

Written by Dr. Randall J. Dunn, Metaphysician, Teacher, and Author Dr. Dunn is a profound metaphysician, speaker, teacher, and author. He is a former law school trial practice professor and former adjunct professor. He has an educational background with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Metaphysics, a background in Nuclear Medicine Technology (nuclear physics & radiation biology), Cybersecurity, and a Juris Doctor in Law. What if the life you remember is only the smallest fraction of the life your consciousness has experienced? There are moments when something deep within us seems to recognize what the conscious mind cannot explain. You meet a stranger, yet the encounter feels strangely familiar. You walk into a place you’ve never visited, yet something inside you whispers, I’ve been here before. You hear an ancient language, see a symbol, experience a recurring dream, or encounter a particular culture, and suddenly you feel an inexplicable connection that seems to reach beyond your present circumstances. Most people dismiss these moments as coincidence, imagination, déjà vu, or the mysterious workings of the subconscious, but what if we are asking the wrong question? What if the question isn’t whether you remember a past life, but whether some part of you has been remembering all along? For thousands of years, spiritual traditions have preserved the idea that consciousness may extend beyond a single lifetime. Reincarnation, rebirth, the transmigration of the soul, and the continuation of consciousness appear in different forms throughout humanity’s spiritual history. Modern science has not established reincarnation as fact. Yet researchers have investigated unusual cases involving children who spontaneously report memories they believe belong to previous lives, while millions of people around the world continue to hold some form of belief in reincarnation. Between unquestioning belief and outright dismissal lies a fascinating territory, the territory of mystery. Perhaps that is where the real exploration begins. Soul remembrance is the idea that beneath the memories of our current personality may exist a deeper layer of consciousness, one that carries impressions, patterns, lessons, affinities, and perhaps memories that extend beyond this present incarnation. Whether you interpret those experiences spiritually, psychologically, symbolically, metaphysically, or as something science has not yet fully explained, they raise a profound question, What if you are far more than the story you were given at birth? Your name is part of your story. Your family is part of your story. Your culture, career, relationships, successes, failures, wounds, and accomplishments are part of your story. But are they the entirety of who you are? Perhaps the most extraordinary journey of self-discovery begins when we stop asking only, “Who am I?” and begin asking, “Who was I before I became this person?” And deeper still, “What does my soul want me to remember now?” That is the doorway into soul remembrance. The great forgetting: Why would the soul forget? If reincarnation is possible, one of the most fascinating questions immediately follows, "Why don’t we remember our previous lives?" Most people cannot consciously recall another lifetime. Our memories are overwhelmingly connected to the experiences of our current incarnation. Yet many spiritual traditions have proposed that forgetting may serve a purpose. Imagine remembering every relationship, every loss, every betrayal, every accomplishment, every death, and every identity you have ever experienced. Would you be capable of fully entering this life? Perhaps the veil of forgetting allows consciousness to begin again. You are born without consciously knowing who you were, what you experienced, or what lessons you may have carried forward. You encounter new people, new circumstances, new challenges, and new opportunities. In this interpretation, life becomes a classroom where the soul enters with a clean slate, but perhaps the slate is not completely clean. Maybe remnants remain. A fear without an obvious origin. A talent that seems to emerge effortlessly. A profound attraction to a particular civilization or period of history. A relationship that feels strangely ancient. A recurring dream. An inexplicable familiarity. These experiences should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of a past life. Psychology offers many possible explanations for unusual familiarity, memory construction, dreams, and emotional associations, but spiritual traditions invite us to ask another question, "Could some experiences be invitations to explore something deeper about ourselves?" That question is more important than rushing toward certainty. Soul remembrance is not necessarily about proving who you were. It may be about discovering who you are becoming. Past lives: The ancient idea that refuses to disappear The concept of reincarnation is not new. Across various religious and philosophical traditions, the possibility that consciousness continues through multiple lifetimes has been explored for centuries. In Hindu traditions, reincarnation is closely connected with karma and the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Buddhist traditions likewise contain teachings concerning rebirth, although Buddhist understandings of personal identity and continuity differ significantly from the idea of an unchanging soul. Ancient Greek philosophers also explored ideas concerning the transmigration of the soul. Within ancient Kemetic spirituality, concepts surrounding death, resurrection, the afterlife, and the continuation of the person beyond physical existence were central to religious thought. The important point is that humanity has repeatedly wrestled with the same fundamental mystery, "Is consciousness something that happens only within one physical lifetime, or is human existence part of a larger continuum?" Modern culture often approaches consciousness primarily through the lens of the brain. Spiritual traditions frequently approach it through the lens of the soul. These perspectives do not necessarily have to be enemies. Science can investigate what can be measured. Spirituality can explore what can be experienced, contemplated, and interpreted. Actually, the tension between these approaches becomes especially fascinating when people report memories or experiences that they interpret as belonging to another lifetime. Some researchers have investigated children who spontaneously report memories of previous lives. The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, for example, has documented and studied cases involving children who claim to remember previous lives. These investigations are intriguing, but they do not establish reincarnation as scientifically proven. That distinction matters. An unexplained experience is not automatically proof of a supernatural explanation. Yet something does not have to be scientifically proven for us to ask meaningful questions about it. The mystery itself can be worth exploring. The soul knows what the personality forgot One of the most intriguing ideas in spiritual philosophy is that the personality and the soul may not possess the same memory. Your personality is shaped by this lifetime. Your name, family, culture, education, relationships, successes, failures, and experiences have contributed to the person you recognize as yourself, but what if beneath that personality exists another layer of consciousness? Call it the soul. Call it higher consciousness. Call it the deeper self or the higher self. The terminology can vary, but the fundamental question still remains, "Who are you beneath your biography?" This is where soul remembrance becomes more than a conversation about past lives. It becomes a journey of self-discovery. You may never discover the name you supposedly carried in another lifetime. You may never determine the historical identity of another incarnation. Perhaps that isn’t the point. The deeper remembrance may be something much more profound. You may begin remembering your values. Your purpose. Your strength. Your lessons. Your patterns. Your relationships. Your spiritual gifts. Or your connection to something greater than yourself. Perhaps the soul doesn’t need you to remember every detail. Perhaps it wants you to remember the wisdom. Think about the recurring patterns in your life. Why do you repeatedly encounter similar relationship dynamics? Why do certain lessons seem to follow you? Why are particular experiences continually asking you to grow? From a spiritual perspective, these patterns can be interpreted as unfinished lessons carried forward by consciousness. From a psychological perspective, they may reflect learned behaviors, attachment patterns, unresolved experiences, or unconscious beliefs. Either way, the invitation is remarkably similar. Become conscious of the pattern because what remains unconscious tends to repeat. What becomes conscious can become an opportunity for transformation. Awakening soul remembrance If soul remembrance is possible, how would someone begin exploring it? The answer is not necessarily through dramatic rituals or attempting to force memories to appear. In fact, forcing the mind to produce a particular past-life narrative can create problems because human memory is reconstructive and susceptible to suggestion. Instead, begin with observation. Pay attention to what repeatedly captures your attention. What cultures fascinate you? What historical periods draw you in? What places create an unexplained sense of familiarity? What relationships feel unusually significant? What dreams return repeatedly? What fears or emotional reactions seem disproportionate to your current circumstances? Most importantly, don’t immediately assign an explanation. Observe first. Question second. Interpret third. Remain open to multiple possibilities. Journaling can be particularly useful. Write down recurring dreams, unusual feelings of familiarity, significant encounters, and patterns that appear throughout your life. Then ask, "What is this experience trying to teach me about myself?" That question shifts the focus away from proving a past life and toward discovering meaning in the present one. Meditation can also create space for deeper self-observation. Sit quietly. Slow your breathing. Allow thoughts to arise without chasing them. Rather than asking, “Who was I?”, begin with a deeper question, “Who am I beneath everything I have been taught to believe about myself?” That question brings us back to consciousness. Perhaps this is where the paths of the conscious mind and soul remembrance intersect. The conscious mind teaches us to observe our thoughts. Soul remembrance asks us to observe our identity. The conscious mind asks, “What am I thinking?” Soul remembrance asks, “Who is the one experiencing these thoughts?” That is where the journey becomes truly profound. The memory beneath the memory Perhaps reincarnation will one day be understood differently than it is today. I personally believe that it will, as the consciousness of society as a whole continues to develop. Perhaps future research will provide new explanations for experiences that currently remain mysterious. Perhaps many experiences interpreted as past-life memories will ultimately be explained through psychology, memory, culture, or neuroscience. Perhaps some mysteries will remain mysteries. We should probably be comfortable with that. Spiritual maturity does not require pretending to know what we cannot know. It requires the courage to explore the unknown without abandoning discernment. Soul remembrance, therefore, can be approached not merely as an attempt to uncover another identity, but as an invitation to explore the deepest dimensions of our own consciousness. Maybe the question isn’t, “Who was I in my last life?” Maybe the more transformative question is, “What wisdom has my soul been trying to awaken within me in this life?” Because if consciousness does extend beyond one lifetime, then this existence may be more than an isolated event. It may be a chapter. A classroom. A continuation. A moment within a much larger journey. Perhaps the people who enter our lives are not always strangers. Perhaps some arrive carrying lessons. Some arrive carrying challenges. Some arrive carrying love. Some arrive simply to remind us of something we had forgotten. Not necessarily a name. Not necessarily a place. Not necessarily another lifetime, but actually something deeper. A remembrance of who we are. The greatest awakening may not occur when we discover who we once were. It may occur when we finally remember that our identity is larger than the story we have been telling ourselves. Perhaps your biography is only the surface. Perhaps beneath the personality lies consciousness. Perhaps beneath consciousness lies a mystery we have been trying to remember since the beginning of time. The soul does not necessarily ask us to remember the past. Perhaps it asks us to remember ourselves. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Randall J. Dunn Dr. Randall J. Dunn, Metaphysician, Teacher, and Author Dr. Dunn is a profound metaphysician, speaker, teacher, and author. He is a former law school trial practice professor and former adjunct professor. He has an educational background with a PhD in Metaphysics, a background in Nuclear Medicine Technology (nuclear physics & radiation biology), Cybersecurity, and a Juris Doctor in Law. He has authored over 15 books ranging from topics such as cybersecurity, past life regression, consciousness, and extraterrestrial contact. References & recommended reading: Jim B. Tucker, M.D. – Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives: Tucker, a psychiatrist and researcher with the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, examines cases of children who report memories of previous lives. UVA’s research program has documented more than 2,500 cases of reincarnation-type experiences. University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies Ian Stevenson, M.D. – Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation: Stevenson was a psychiatrist who founded the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies and spent decades investigating cases involving children who reported memories apparently connected with deceased individuals. His work remains one of the most frequently cited bodies of research in the modern study of reincarnation claims. University of Virginia, Ian Stevenson Research Jim B. Tucker – “Children’s Reports of Past-Life Memories: A Review”: This peer-reviewed review examines decades of research into children’s reports of past-life memories and discusses cases in which children’s statements were reported to correspond with identifiable deceased individuals. It is particularly useful for readers who want to explore the subject from a research perspective rather than purely from a spiritual one. PubMed, “Children’s Reports of Past-Life Memories” Pew Research Center – “Beliefs About the Afterlife” (2025): This is an excellent reference for demonstrating that reincarnation isn’t simply a fringe Western concept. Pew’s survey of 35 countries found that a median of 33% of adults believe in reincarnation, with substantially higher levels in countries including Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, Nigeria, and Thailand. Pew Research Center, “Beliefs About the Afterlife” University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies – “Children Who Report Memories of Previous Lives”: This is an excellent primary-source reading because it explains the phenomenon directly from the research group that has investigated it for decades. UVA also launched a major new research initiative in 2025 using contemporary research methods to investigate children’s reported past-life memories. University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies, “Children Who Report Memories of Previous Lives” Author’s recommended reading: Dr. Randall J. Dunn – Beyond Past Lives: A deeper exploration of consciousness, reincarnation, soul evolution, and the possibility that our existence extends beyond the boundaries of a single lifetime. Dr. Randall J. Dunn – Soul Remembrance: An exploration of the idea that beneath our ordinary personality and autobiographical memory lies a deeper dimension of identity, purpose, and spiritual remembrance.

Retirement is the perfect time to travel, cruise, and visit family abroad. However, you often face unique considerations when planning overseas journeys, particularly regarding health and pre-existing medical conditions. Standard policies frequently impose age limits or restrict coverage for common health conditions. Travel insurance for seniors meets these specific needs, providing comprehensive financial protection and reassurance while travelling abroad. This blog explains why specialised coverage is essential for worry-free travel abroad. Comprehensive coverage for pre-existing health conditions Managing pre-existing medical conditions like high blood pressure, cholesterol, or arthritis should not prevent retirees from enjoying international travel. Specialised travel insurance for seniors offers tailored medical assessments that allow you to declare health conditions and secure appropriate coverage options. This ensures that any unexpected flare-up or medical emergency overseas receives immediate financial backing without hidden policy exclusions. Choosing this policy eliminates coverage gaps and simplifies foreign medical care logistics. Dedicated medical coverage safeguards your retirement savings while providing essential health support anywhere in the world. Flexible age limits and extended trip options Traditional policies often impose strict upper age limits, restricting coverage for travellers over sixty-five or seventy years of age. Senior-focused policies accommodate older age brackets, offering comprehensive protection without restrictive age caps or unnecessary administrative hurdles. Specialised mature traveller policies provide distinct structural advantages for longer journeys: No upper age restrictions: Offers comprehensive policy terms across diverse senior age brackets. Extended journey limits: Covers long-term international holidays, extended cruises, and multi-country itineraries. Tailored annual multi-trip options: Protects you across multiple overseas trips throughout the year. Enhanced emergency medical and evacuation support Medical emergencies overseas can involve expensive private hospital admissions, specialised transportation, or urgent air ambulance repatriation back home. Specialised policies provide high-limit medical emergency cover alongside 24/7 global support staff who coordinate complex medical care logistics. Senior medical protection includes essential support services tailored to mature health needs: Medical repatriation coverage: Manages air ambulance transit back to home hospitals when medically required. Hospital companion allowances: Covers accommodation costs for travel companions during hospital stays. Prescription replacement support: Coordinates urgent refills for essential daily medications lost during travel. Protection against unexpected cancellation and delays Sudden health changes, family emergencies, or transit delays can force you to cancel or shorten carefully planned travel itineraries. Specialised policies reimburse non-refundable hotel bookings, tour deposits, and airline tickets when unforeseen events disrupt your journey. Financial protection against cancellation ensures you do not suffer significant financial losses due to unexpected health events. If severe weather or transport strikes cause unexpected accommodation delays, policy benefits reimburse emergency lodging and food costs. This financial protection keeps your holiday budgets safe from travel problems that you can't plan for. Protecting valuables, medical equipment, and baggage As a senior traveller, you carry essential health items, such as prescription mobility aids, hearing devices, or specialised medical equipment abroad. Specialised policies provide dedicated cover for personal belongings, ensuring high-value equipment and luggage receive full reimbursement if lost or damaged. Protecting mobility devices guarantees that travel comfort and personal independence remain uncompromised throughout your journey. In addition to physical equipment protection, policies assist with replacing lost travel documents like passports and visas. Experienced support teams guide you through embassy protocols to secure emergency documentation quickly without unnecessary stress. Enjoying retirement journeys with complete confidence Investing in specialised senior travel protection allows you to fulfil your lifelong travel dreams with confidence and security. Tailored health coverage, flexible age limits, and robust trip cancellation protection insulate retirees from unexpected foreign expenses. You can focus entirely on enjoying new cultures, scenic landscapes, and cherished family time abroad. Partnering with a trusted travel protection provider means expert assistance is always available during emergencies. Get specialised insurance today so you can feel at ease about your next trip abroad.

Written by: Editorial Team “Export of cars today remains a promising direction, since there will always be demand for transportation,” says the Ukrainian entrepreneur and businessman, founder of the company GR8 Auto LLC, Illia Korotkyi. “When someone is going through a tough financial period, they'll pass on a new car and look for alternatives, for example, ordering a used vehicle from the U.S. Due to the war in Ukraine, changes in logistics chains and other international factors, we temporarily reduced export activity and focused on the domestic US market. Before the start of full-scale, we exported 50-60 cars per month, now only 3-5. In the long term, we plan to restore and develop this direction.” Since 2024, Korotkyi has been working in America, where he is developing his own company for the sale and export of used cars, GR8 Auto LLC, in North Carolina. In running the business, he applies his own systematic approach, a developed methodology, thanks to which GR8 Auto LLC is successfully developing and operating reliably. “Any business needs order, control and stability. My methodology allows us to structure all processes and ensure the controlled growth of the company. In our work, we combine a systematic approach with modern technologies, CRM, AI tools and automation, which gives us a serious advantage over competitors who work according to outdated methods,” says the owner of GR8 Auto LLC. Export process Although GR8 Auto LLC’s activities are currently concentrated mainly on the domestic US market, Illia plans to expand the full-fledged export of used cars to countries in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa in the near future. He walks through every stage a vehicle goes through, from purchase to overseas shipment. “For both export and domestic sales, most of the processes are the same: vehicle selection, inspection, purchase and logistics. For the domestic market, repairs and preparation for sale are added, and for export, international transportation and customer support until the car is received. First of all, we control quality. Even before the purchase, we check the history through Carfax, analyze the seller and the technical condition of the car. For export, we carry out photo fixation of the vehicle at the auction, at the port of departure and upon arrival in the destination country. This way, we monitor the car's condition at every stage of transport.” At the logistics stage, the company sends about 90% of vehicles in containers. It cooperates with international carriers such as Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and ZIM. Air delivery is used only for individual premium orders when the client is ready to pay for maximum speed. To minimize risks in international car operations, GR8 Auto LLC uses the principle of transparency, and Illia Korotkyi personally checks all processes. “We explain to customers in advance all possible risks, spell out the relevant terms in the contracts, and set out the appropriate terms in every contract. This way we minimize misunderstandings and can work stably. Although there are stages in the international export of cars over which we have no influence. The biggest uncertainties are related to international logistics and changes in customs regulations. Transportation costs, routes, delivery times, and customs payments may change regardless of our company”. Prospects for international export development Korotkyi says that in the near future he plans to fully resume exports to countries where GR8 Auto LLC already has clients and many years of experience. "The priority for us remains Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates. We also see potential for development in certain African markets, where we already have some experience." Such activities will have a positive impact on the US economy. The export of used cars will contribute to an increase in trade volume, support the work of American auctions, transport and logistics companies, and port infrastructure. Transportation of cars abroad will create new jobs in the field of transportation and foreign trade. In addition, this will allow expanding the geography of exports, attracting new international customers and strengthening trade ties between the United States and partner countries. In parallel, new directions will be developed, and processes will be simplified for customers using digital tools and automation. The entrepreneur plans to improve logistics to ensure the fastest possible delivery of the vehicle to the destination. He says that international customers want to receive their car as soon as possible. Due to complicated logistics, they are increasingly asking about the possibility of accelerating delivery. This is especially true for premium segment buyers who are ready to use air transportation. Korotkyi plans to focus on developing this area. The entrepreneur is optimistic about the company's continued growth. Korotkyi expects continued growth for the business. "I see GR8 Auto LLC as an international company with several representative offices in major US states and a strong export sector. We plan to sell over 100 cars per month in America and export over 200 per month to different countries of the world. Our goal is to create a strong international brand that will be associated with reliability, service, and a professional approach to the automotive business."

Written by: Editorial Team Modern life moves at a relentless pace, leaving little space for mental stillness and turning stress into an everyday routine. People worry about work, family, finances, and the constant stream of information that follows them throughout the day. Even moments intended for rest are often interrupted by notifications, news updates, advertising, social media feeds, and endless digital distractions. As a result, many adults struggle to switch their attention, recover mentally, and create space for genuine relaxation. For some, an unexpected solution may be found not in another wellness app or productivity strategy, but at a piano keyboard. Beyond its musical appeal, the instrument offers an opportunity to focus attention, engage the mind in a meaningful activity, and temporarily step away from everyday concerns. We spoke with Olena Zhunda, a Master of Musical Arts, educator, and author of a methodological model for developing artistic skills in pianists, about why more adults are choosing to learn the piano and how musical practice can become a valuable part of modern life. Why it's worth playing According to Zhunda, interest in piano study among adults has grown significantly in recent years. Students arrive with a wide range of goals. Some want to learn a favorite song, others hope to improvise, revive a skill acquired in childhood, fulfill a long-standing dream, accompany their own singing or that of family members, develop a meaningful hobby, reduce screen time, create a personal creative space after work, prepare a musical gift, or simply experience something beyond the routine of everyday responsibilities. For an adult, it is especially important that the repertoire has a personal meaning. Therefore, they often choose classical pieces, film music, jazz, Ukrainian songs, or modern compositions for study. She believes that piano playing represents an active form of recreation because it requires a person to engage with a complex task involving multiple processes at once. While playing, the pianist reads notes or follows the keyboard, listens to the sound being produced, coordinates both hands, maintains rhythm, anticipates upcoming musical phrases, adjusts touch and dynamics, and continuously evaluates and corrects mistakes. Such activity temporarily displaces the flow of thoughts, messages and digital stimuli. A person stops consuming information and shifts into a creative mode. That is why the piano can work as an active digital detox: for a certain time, attention has a clear object, sequence and audible result. “At the same time, I do not call it a treatment for stress. The piano does not replace sleep, physical activity, psychotherapy, medical care or solving real-life problems.” Zhunda also points out how regular piano playing can help support cognitive and emotional well-being. She says that systematic training gives the brain a complex task in which auditory, visual, motor and executive processes are simultaneously involved. During piano practice, individuals engage their auditory attention, coordination, and memory while developing planning, anticipation, concentration, patience, self-control, and the ability to identify and correct mistakes. According to Olena, the feeling of an immediate result is emotionally important. A person presses a key and immediately hears the result of their action. Even a small improvement, for example, a more even pulse or a more natural connection of two phrases, creates a feeling of personal competence. “I do not recommend exhausting hours of classes for beginners. Short regular sessions of about 15 to 20 minutes can be a start. Fifteen minutes is a practical minimum that is easier to repeat systematically. It is better to practice short sessions several times a week than one two-hour class.” Over time, piano study can strengthen discipline, patience, and concentration while teaching students to work toward long-term goals, respond calmly to mistakes, recognize progress, and enjoy the creative process itself. Zhunda says that a regular, screen-free creative ritual can become part of one's daily life. As skills develop, adults may perform for friends and family, accompany singers, participate in amateur music groups, attend group classes, record their performances, or pursue personal creative projects. The most valuable result of classes is the formation of a stable creative connection with music and the habit of moving from the mode of information consumption to the mode of personal action and creation. Playing the piano vs. Meditation Zhunda sees clear differences between piano practice and traditional meditation or mindfulness techniques. She says that in traditional meditation, a person often focuses on breathing, bodily sensations, or observing thoughts. While playing the piano, concentration is maintained through action: movement, listening, rhythm, coordination, musical form. That is, meditation often involves observing, while musical practice suggests organizing and creating. She notes that different people respond to different methods of managing attention. For some, silence creates the ideal conditions for relaxation and reflection. For others, silence simply leaves room for another cycle of thoughts and worries. In those cases, a structured activity may provide a more effective path to concentration because it is demanding enough to interrupt the internal dialogue. She says that the piano is not ‘better’ than meditation. It is a different way of working with attention. Both practices can complement each other. At the same time, Zhunda emphasizes that the benefits of piano playing depend on how the activity is approached. The instrument has a better chance of maintaining a positive emotional state when a person chooses it voluntarily, studies music that has personal meaning, works at an appropriate level of difficulty, practices consistently without excessive pressure, and views mistakes as a natural part of learning and the teacher takes the person's individual goals into account. By contrast, the expected benefits may disappear if adults bring an excessively demanding professional mindset into their musical studies. Constant self-comparison, unrealistic expectations, overly difficult repertoire, physical overexertion, or treating every mistake as a personal failure can undermine the experience. The teacher explains that if a person has a long-term depressed state, panic symptoms, insomnia, severe exhaustion or cannot perform everyday duties, they need professional help. A music lesson is not therapy and should not be presented as a treatment. Mistakes at the start Adult beginners often encounter challenges that slow their progress and reduce motivation. Many repeatedly play an entire piece without isolating difficult passages, set unrealistic goals, compare themselves with professional musicians, focus exclusively on correct notes rather than musical quality, practice despite pain, or continuously search for new learning materials instead of developing a consistent routine. Another common mistake is waiting for inspiration before practicing, even though motivation often appears after the work has already begun. According to Zhunda, all these mistakes reduce motivation, because a person sees only the gap between themselves and the desired result. It is much more useful to compare today’s performance with their own recording from a month ago. Zhunda believes that the piano remains one of the most accessible and practical instruments for adult beginners while also offering opportunities for musicians with prior experience. “One of my adult students used to play the cello, and now she has decided to learn the piano. Her previous musical experience proved an advantage. She was well-versed in the bass clef, because it was the one she used when playing the cello, but reading the treble clef required additional practice. In addition, she is left-handed, so we carefully worked on the coordination of both hands, without altering her natural motor patterns. Unlike the cello, where performers typically focus on a single musical line, piano playing requires reading two staves simultaneously, coordinating both hands, and maintaining a balanced sound. Therefore, one of the main tasks at the initial stage was gradually building the skill of reading two-line notation. We worked in small steps, in no hurry to move on to complex repertoire. More important were regularity of classes, careful reading of notes and understanding of musical text. Today this student plays much more freely with two hands, confidently reads music in both clefs and navigates the musical notation much faster.” Adults successfully form new skills when learning is built sequentially, taking into account their previous experience and individual characteristics. Today, Zhunda lives in the United States, where she works as an accompanist at Wingate University, a piano teacher at Moonlight Music School in Monroe, North Carolina, and a pianist at Messiah Lutheran Church. She is also the founder of La Mi Sol Musical Art LLC, a piano studio dedicated to developing the creative abilities of both children and adults. Her work in the United States is focused on implementing and refining an original piano teaching methodology adapted to the realities of contemporary American music education. The approach aims to strengthen artistic expression and stage confidence while supporting long-term musical development. Its effectiveness is reflected in students’ public performances, competition results, and awards at international events, including the Charleston International Music Competition.

Written by Aran Bray, Founder of Be Outstanding, Speaker & Human Performance Coach Aran Bray is the creator of The Take One Moment Method (TOM), a practical approach to human behaviour that focuses on the moment before action. His work helps people recognise patterns, interrupt automatic responses, and develop real self-direction. It keeps happening because a pattern is running, and the pattern is doing its job. Not bad luck. Not a flaw in your character. A pattern: a loop of trigger, behaviour, result and reinforcement that runs underneath your attention and gets slightly stronger every time it completes. The repeat is the point. A pattern that repeats is a pattern that works, at least for the part of you it was built to protect. That is the whole answer. The rest of this page unpacks it so you can use it tonight: what the loop looks like from the inside, why effort has not broken it, how to find yours in four written lines, and how to interrupt it at the one moment when interruption is possible. The question underneath the question Is something actually wrong with me? No. This matters, because at eleven at night, the question underneath the question is usually that one. Nothing has to be wrong for a pattern to run. Most people typing this into a search box are good at what they do and have been for years. The business is fine. The diary is full. Other people bring them their problems. Somewhere in the background, there is a thing, often one specific thing, that keeps not happening. The conversation that keeps getting postponed. The change you said you would make when things calmed down. Things calmed down. It still did not happen. The sting is the gap between knowing and doing. You know what to do. You have known for a while. When that gap stays open long enough, it stops feeling like a delay and starts to feel like information about who you are. It is not information about who you are. It is information about the loop you are in. Those are different problems with different solutions, which is why treating this as a character problem has got you nowhere. Willpower is a spike, a pattern is a baseline Trying harder is not working because the effort is landing at the wrong point in the loop. You have probably already run the obvious repairs. The notebook system. The early mornings that lasted about eleven days. The podcasts, now playing at one and a half speed while less of their content goes in. Perhaps a coach who worked on the business rather than on the person running it. Each one worked for roughly a fortnight. That fortnight matters more than it seems. It proves the problem was never discipline, because for two weeks you had discipline, and the pattern came back anyway. Here is what trying harder actually does. It pushes on the behaviour, the visible middle of the loop, while the trigger that starts it and the payoff that feeds it stay untouched. The trigger still fires. The payoff still arrives. So the loop wins on any day you are tired, stressed or distracted, which is most days. Willpower is a spike. A pattern is a baseline. If you have caught yourself saying, “I am trying so hard, and it is just not changing,” that sentence is accurate. It is also evidence. Sustained effort with no change means the target is wrong. Stop aiming at the behaviour. The loop never asks your opinion What is actually happening when it repeats is a loop with four stages, running faster than your awareness of it. Trigger. Something starts it. A gap in the day, a certain name in your inbox, a particular tone in a meeting, Sunday evening. Triggers are specific, and they are learnable, which becomes useful in a moment. Behaviour. What you actually do. Usually the avoiding move: the tab that opens, the task that suddenly becomes urgent, the reasonable-sounding decision to wait for a better moment. Result. The immediate outcome. The uncomfortable thing goes away. Relief arrives fast, and fast is what the loop is optimising for. Reinforcement. The relief teaches your brain that the avoiding move works. So the loop becomes slightly cheaper to run next time and slightly more expensive to interrupt. That is the real cost of another lap: not the day you lost, but the deeper groove you paid for it with. Notice what is missing from those stages. A decision. The loop does not ask your opinion. By the time you are aware it is running, you are usually at stage three, feeling the relief and telling yourself a small story about why today was genuinely not the day. There is one moment when you get a say It sits between the trigger and the behaviour, and it is short. I call it the edge: the point where you either continue the existing pattern or choose a different action. Everything useful on this page happens at that moment. Four lines on a piece of paper You find your pattern by writing it down once, in plain words, as four lines. This is not a journalling habit, and it does not need an app. It is a single act of noticing, done on paper, tonight if you want. Take the thing that keeps happening and work backwards through one recent, specific repeat. Yesterday’s version, or last Tuesday’s. Not the general shape of it. One actual occasion. Then complete four lines: The trigger was... What I did was... What I got was... What that taught the loop was... Here is an example, invented for illustration rather than taken from anyone’s life: the conversation you keep not having with a business partner. The trigger: they mention next year’s plans. What you did: nodded, agreed, made a private note to raise it another time. What you got: a comfortable meeting. What that taught the loop: raising it another time is now, once again, the official plan. You will know your four lines are honest when they are slightly uncomfortable to read back. If they read smoothly, you have written the polite version. Go again. Every pattern protects something Then add a fifth line if you can: what the pattern is protecting. Every pattern protects something. Comfort, usually. Sometimes an identity, or the version of events where nothing has been risked yet and so nothing has been lost. Naming the protection takes half the shame out of the loop, because a pattern that protects something is not stupidity. It is machinery, doing its job past the point when the job needed doing. Meeting it at the edge You interrupt it at the edge, with four moves run in order. I teach this as EDGE, and the whole method is here, not a preview of it. Expose. Recognise the pattern while it is happening. This is what the four lines were for. Once the trigger is written down, it stops being weather and starts being a cue. The first sign it is working: a small internal flag, mid-moment, that says, “This is the pattern.” Detach. Create a little space between the trigger and yourself. One slow breath is enough. You are not trying to feel calm. You are trying to feel the gap between the urge and the action, because in that gap, the loop is not driving. Slow the moment down, and the moment stops deciding for you. Guide. Choose a direction, decided in advance, not composed at the edge. The edge is a terrible place to deliberate, so do not deliberate there. Before the trigger next fires, finish this sentence: “When it happens, I will...” Say the first sentence. Open the document. Make the call. One concrete act, small enough to survive a bad day. Execute. Do it immediately, while the gap is open. Small and done beats large and planned. The size of the act matters far less than which side of the edge it lands on. You will catch it afterwards first Be ready for the unglamorous truth of the first fortnight: you will mostly catch the pattern after it has already run. That is not failure. Noticing afterwards is the first repetition of noticing, and the gap between the pattern running and you spotting it shrinks with each one. You are installing a new response next to an old one, and installation is quiet work. Slow is not stuck How long does this take? Weeks. Honestly, weeks. Insight is fast, and change is slow, and the difference between them is repetitions. A pattern that has run for a year has a year of reinforcement behind it. It does not dissolve because you have understood it. It weakens each time it fires and you do something different at the edge, and it weakens slowly at first, then noticeably. The sequence usually runs: catching it afterwards, then catching it during, then occasionally getting there ahead of it. Each stage is progress that the day itself will not feel like progress. So measure the right thing. Do not measure how often the old pattern still fires. Measure how quickly you spot it. That number moves first, and it pulls the rest along behind it. Slow is not stuck. Slow is regulated. Knowing was never the problem If you already know all this, then you have arrived at the real problem, because knowing was never the problem. Somewhere in these repeats, you have probably said the other quiet sentence: “I know I am better than this.” It is usually said like an accusation. Read plainly, it is just accurate. You are better than the pattern. That is precisely why watching it win feels the way it does, and why one more book was never going to be the answer. The gap between knowing and doing does not close with information. It closes with repetitions at the edge, and repetitions hold far better with structure and a witness than they do alone at eleven at night. A page can hand you the map A page like this can hand you the map. It cannot stand at the edge with you on a Tuesday when the trigger fires and the old move is halfway out of the door. That part is the actual work, and it is the work I do with people over ninety days, one-to-one and in small groups. It is not therapy, and it is not for anyone in crisis. It is for someone who can already name their thing in one sentence and has run out of patience with knowing. If that is you, the door is a free introductory conversation at be-outstanding.com. The purpose is suitability, not pressure. If the page was enough, take the four lines and use them tonight. Nothing is wrong with you. A pattern has been running, and now you have watched it run. If you’d like to explore more of my writing on human behaviour, possibility and expansion, visit my website. Follow me on LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Aran Bray Aran Bray, Founder of Be Outstanding, Speaker & Human Performance Coach Aran Bray is the creator of The Take One Moment Method (TOM), a practical approach to human behaviour that focuses on the moment before action. His work centres on why people don’t act on what they already know, and how automatic patterns are formed through repetition, conditioning, and emotional response. By helping individuals recognise and interrupt these patterns in real time, he enables lasting behavioural change and genuine self-direction. Aran works with individuals, leaders, and organisations to develop the ability to act clearly when it matters most.

Written by David Starlyte, Contemplative Psychotherapist & Retreat Leader David is a Contemplative Psychotherapist, transformation advisor, and sacred journey leader whose work explores the psychological and existential dimensions of human suffering and transformation. Integrating Buddhist psychology, relational depth, and contemplative practice, he guides high-functioning individuals through processes of inner transformation, psychological integration, and immersive sacred experiences. Movement is not the enemy. The compulsion to keep moving is the question. Blue light radiates perpetually from skyscrapers and screens, pervading our minds. Highways pulse with cars, Ubers, buses, and delivery trucks. Traffic blares. Podcasts leak into the night. It is no wonder the noise in our minds rarely settles. This compulsion to increase productivity has become a cultural phenomenon. We live in a world that rewards momentum, availability, and output. Yet amid this relentless pace, an important question remains. What are we moving towards, or escaping from? A runner moving with the wind may be expressing athleticism, freedom, and vitality. Or they may be defending against the discomfort of standing still. A person may work from an inner drive to express creativity and passion. Or work because the thought of stopping feels intolerable. We may travel because we are genuinely curious about the world. Or because staying where we are brings us too close to feelings we would rather avoid. Even meditation can hold this tension. We may practise to meet the mind with greater compassion, or we may use it as another way to get rid of suffering. Movement itself is not the problem. Human beings need activity, connection, creativity and purpose. The question is one of intention. Is our movement an expression of life, or protection from what might surface if we paused? When busyness is excessive, it moves beyond a response to life’s demands. It becomes a habitual way of relating to ourselves, a rote modus operandi that keeps us occupied, distracted, and at a safe distance from difficult inner terrain. When we slow down, feelings can arise that productivity has kept at bay. Anxiety. Grief. Restlessness. Loneliness. Uncertainty. Anger. Questions about identity, direction and meaning. We may begin to notice the adaptations, assumptions and roles that once helped us survive, belong, function and feel secure. Then comes a more fundamental question: "Who am I when I am not doing?" Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Peace Is Every Step, wrote, “The first practice is to stop running, come home to our bodies, and recognise our suffering.” Stillness is not simply being alone in an empty room. It does not require the world around us to become quiet. It asks us to become more present within the body, the physical vessel through which we experience our lives. Stillness is less about controlling the external world than changing our relationship to the activity within us. British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott described the “capacity to be alone” not as isolation, but as the ability to feel contained within a reliable relational environment. This matters because stillness is rarely easy when we have learned that being alone with ourselves is unsafe. Our capacity for stillness may depend, in part, on our ability to stay present without immediately needing to escape, perform, or seek external reassurance. What might happen if we stepped, even briefly, outside the momentum of ordinary everydayness? Stillness does not necessarily ask us to change our whole lives. It asks us to develop a different relationship with movement. When stimulation feels ceaseless, we can pause long enough to notice what is happening around us, and within us. That pause can become a small but meaningful act of intentional living. Stillness invites us to pivot in how we meet the inner experience that “busyness” may have been helping us avoid. In stillness, we may enter a liminal space, a threshold between an older stage of life and a new way of being. Identity can pause because the future has not yet crystallised. We are no longer fully who we were, yet uncertain who we will become. This in-between space can be uncomfortable. It asks us to release the mask of “knowing” and loosen identities formed to survive and feel secure. Yet it can also bridge knowing and being, between the old self and the emerging one. Contemporary society persistently asks, “What are you doing?” Shifting this orientation contemplatively, one may rather ask, “What is arriving here now?” The shift from doing to being is not passive surrender. It opens into new possibilities. It is a way of living that does not treat every experience as a problem, project, performance, or identity to manage. German social psychologist Erich Fromm asked, “If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I?” If our only relationship to the world is ownership, achievement, and acquisition, we remain in the mode of “having,” rather than being. Stillness offers another possibility. We can encounter an experience rather than react to it as a means to an end. We can notice, feel, observe, and remain present. The situation itself may not change, but our relationship to it can shift as awareness deepens. Stillness acts as a kink in the machine of modernity. It interrupts automatic living and invites us to pay attention to how we regulate ourselves, where we seek meaning, and how we understand our place in the world. Yet even stillness can become another achievement project. Yoga studios are filled with bodies moving through collective asanas. Carefully curated meditation techniques played over wellness retreats can become another form of striving, an attempt to attain an imagined version of peacefulness. The point is not to perfect stillness. It is to recognise when we are running. Why do we find it so difficult to stop? If we paused for a moment, we might encounter what is already here. Stillness offers the brave an opening to remain present when there is nowhere left to run. Perhaps, in that pause, we discover that what we were escaping from has already arrived. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from David Starlyte David Starlyte, Contemplative Psychotherapist & Retreat Leader David is a Contemplative Psychotherapist, Naturopath, transformation advisor, and retreat leader specialising in psychological suffering, complex trauma, identity, and meaning. With Master’s degrees in Applied Buddhist Studies and Mental Health, formal naturopathic training, and over 25 years of international experience, he integrates psychology, spirituality, and contemplative practice to support meaningful transformation. He also develops premium retreats and sacred pilgrimages for deep psychological and existential integration.