Written by Anika Kumar Vashishth, Positive Psychology Practitioner Anika Kumar Vashishth is a Positive Psychology Practitioner and founder of I Am Enough | Flourish, a community supporting people to cultivate self-awareness, wellbeing, and flourishing. With a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Melbourne, she brings evidence-based psychology into everyday life. Ever since I was a child, I remember being asked the familiar question, "Is the glass half full or half empty?" It always seemed that there had to be a right answer. Half full meant optimism. Half empty meant noticing what was missing. But somewhere along the way, I started answering differently. What if it is both? The glass is half full. It is half empty. Both are true. I have been thinking about this beyond the glass. About how often we do the same thing with ourselves. We want our experiences to fit into one category, one feeling, one version of who we are. We are either doing well or struggling. We are either grateful or wanting more. We are either confident or afraid. But life rarely feels that neat. We can be two things at once. We can even be many things at once. Psychology has given us interesting ways of thinking about this. Our sense of self isn't necessarily one fixed, unchanging entity. Different aspects of who we are can become more visible depending on our roles, relationships and circumstances. The person who feels confident at work may feel uncertain in a relationship. The person who is usually independent may deeply need connection. The person who has handled difficult things before may still have days when something feels difficult to carry. None of these experiences necessarily makes the other untrue. They can belong to the same person. This is where emotions become interesting. We often treat emotions as though one should replace another. If I am afraid, I should become confident. If I am disappointed, I should remind myself to be grateful. If I am hurting, I should find the lesson. Sometimes that helps. But sometimes, in our hurry to feel differently, we may not give ourselves enough space to notice what we are actually experiencing. What if I can be grateful and disappointed? Hopeful and worried? Loving and angry? Afraid and courageous? The presence of one emotion does not necessarily cancel another. Emotional experience is more complex than the categories we often give it. This is where the idea of coexistence becomes useful. Not because every feeling needs to be acted upon. Not because every contradiction needs to be resolved. Simply because two experiences can exist at the same time. There is an important difference between making room for a feeling and surrendering to it. If I feel afraid, I can acknowledge the fear without allowing it to make every decision for me. If I feel angry, I can understand the anger without making anger my behaviour. If I feel uncertain, I can sit amid uncertainty and still choose a direction. Making room is not giving something control. It is allowing ourselves enough space to understand what is there before deciding what to do with it. That is also why acceptance needs to be understood carefully. Acceptance does not necessarily mean approval. It does not mean giving up. It does not mean deciding that something difficult should remain unchanged. Sometimes acceptance means recognising: This is what I am experiencing right now. From there, we can decide what needs to change. That distinction matters because coexistence is not about becoming passive. It may actually give us more room to act with intention. This is particularly relevant to the way we think about wellbeing. Positive psychology has explored what helps people flourish, positive emotions, relationships, strengths, meaning and other resources that support human functioning. Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory, for example, suggests that positive emotions can broaden our momentary patterns of thought and action and build psychological resources over time. But what is most interesting here is not choosing positive emotions over difficult ones. It is recognising that something positive can exist alongside something difficult. We can experience stress and still have instances of connection. We can experience disappointment and still experience gratitude. We can be going through uncertainty and still have hope. The difficult experience does not have to disappear before something nourishing can exist beside it. For me, this is where psychology meets something more personal. There is an Indian Sanskrit word that has stayed with me: Pūrṇa, whole, complete, full. I do not understand wholeness as perfection. Being whole means not being consistently confident, calm, grateful or resilient. Wholeness is simply the recognition that the difficult parts of our experience do not make us incomplete. One part of me can be tired, and another can be hopeful. A part that wants change and another that is grateful for what already exists. A part that is afraid and another that knows I can keep moving. Perhaps none of these parts has to win. They can all offer information. They can all belong. This is also why I find the idea of multiple selves, or different aspects of the self, so interesting. We are not necessarily the same version of ourselves in every situation. We change with context. We grow. We discover parts of ourselves that were less visible before. Sometimes, a difficult period can make us question who we are simply because the version of ourselves that previously felt familiar no longer feels quite the same. Nature as an inspiration to hold opposites together Nature seems to understand this without needing to explain it. A tree does not remain the same throughout the year. There are seasons of growth, fullness, shedding and stillness. We do not look at a tree in winter and decide that it has stopped being a tree. We understand that it is changing. Human beings are, of course, far more complicated. We carry memories, expectations and stories about who we think we should be. But there is still something to learn from the simplicity of a changing season. A difficult season does not erase the seasons that came before it. Being uncertain today does not mean we have lost our capacity for confidence. Feeling tired does not erase our strength. Wanting something different does not make us ungrateful for what we have. We can change without rejecting who we were. We may not have to turn every difficult experience into a lesson immediately. Sometimes it may simply be something we are experiencing. Something we can notice. Something we can understand. Something we can carry while we decide what comes next. That could be the real lesson hidden in the half-full, half-empty glass. Not that we should choose optimism. Not that we should focus on what is missing. But that sometimes both ways of seeing can be true. Perhaps the same is true of us. We can be proud of how far we have come and still wish we were somewhere else. We can love our lives and still want them to change. We can be grateful and still have unmet needs. We can be afraid and still be brave. We can be growing and still find growth difficult. The question may not always be: Which one is true? Perhaps sometimes the better question is, "What else is true at the same time?" We may not always have to choose. Both can belong. Perhaps being whole is not about becoming one consistent version of ourselves. It may be about making enough room for all that is true. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anika Kumar Vashishth Anika Kumar Vashishth, Positive Psychology Practitioner Anika Kumar Vashishth is a Positive Psychology Practitioner whose work explores mental wellbeing beyond the absence of distress, towards flourishing. Grounded in positive psychology and neuroscience, she is interested in what enables individuals and communities not merely to function, but to live with greater meaning, connection, and wellbeing. She is the founder of I Am Enough | Flourish, a community that brings evidence-based approaches to wellbeing into everyday life. Her work is centred on making the science of flourishing accessible, relevant, and applicable to how we live, learn, and connect.

Written by K. Joia Houheneka, The World's Premier Excellence Coach K. Joia Houheneka is Founder & Chief of Gold Standards Media, Open Horizons Coaching, and Delve Travel-Luxury Travel Services, through which she pioneers a model of mission-first luxury entrepreneurship. Her work demonstrates how excellence, leadership, and freedom can be built together, by design. Every environment you build, including the team that surrounds you, your brand pillars, and even your own daily habits, is already shaping you and any others within, whether you designed it that way or not. Here are the six specific ways environment matters, and why raising your standards has to mean redesigning the room, not just reteaching the lesson. "Remember, an environment doesn’t wait for your permission to shape you. It’s already doing it. The only real choice is whether you’re paying attention to how." – K Joia Houheneka, Environments of Formation My work involves coaching entrepreneurs toward a level of excellence that isn't just about the offer, the launch, or the numbers. I’ve come to call it Worthy Excellence, as it’s about the integration of character, judgment, creative responsibility, and stewardship organized around a challenge (i.e., a mission) worthy of an entire life. It's about what’s really meant by self-actualization, the kind that is synonymous with self-transcendence and the expansion of the self beyond one’s physical limits to a cause and a legacy that is, in essence, limitlessly, eternally infinite in its potential for impact. I’ve found that many people who are sincere about building a business, a team, or a life committed to excellence often get something wrong about how excellence is developed and passed on. Namely, they think, for often quite understandable reasons, that excellence can be taught. They believe that if you just gather the right information, deliver the right training, and hand someone the right framework, then the transformation just follows. I certainly understand the appeal of this model, especially for those of us online trying to build businesses around important ideas. This model is clean, it's scalable, it tracks with the kind of education most of us grew up with, and it puts the responsibility for outcomes entirely on content you can produce once and distribute forever. It's also very, very, very incomplete in a way that unfortunately sabotages a lot of otherwise excellent teaching. "Formation doesn't happen through information alone. It happens most significantly through environments." You can teach a team your standards in an afternoon and watch those standards evaporate within a week if the room they return to doesn't reinforce a single word of it. This is the entire principle behind self-actualizer Maria Montessori's prepared environment, and it's just as true for the adult building a brand as it is for the child in the classroom: the environment does much of the forming. The teacher, the mentor, the coach: we prepare the conditions. But the people who are growing must ultimately grow themselves. I've watched this play out many times in many forms, and I imagine you have too. Picture this: a founder who delivers a beautiful keynote on craftsmanship and care, then goes back to a workplace where speed is the only thing that ever gets rewarded in practice. The keynote was information. The workplace is the environment. Fast forward six months, and craftsmanship is losing out every time, not because the team didn't understand the words, but because nothing around them ever made those words true. So, if environment is doing much of the real work, it's worth knowing exactly what work that is. I've identified six specific channels through which any environment shapes the people who dwell within it. Six environments of formation One: Attention Every environment decides what gets surfaced, repeated, and made impossible to ignore. Watch what gets highlighted in your team's Slack channel or your company's weekly update, and you'll learn what your culture treats as important, regardless of what your values deck says. Two: Admiration There's a real difference between whom your team applauds and whom they try to become. The applause is cheap and easy to hand out. The important signal to look out for is the role models people are trying to live up to when nobody's watching. Three: Action Every environment makes certain behaviors easy and others exhausting. Is it easier, on your team, to ship something imperfect and iterate in public, or to hide behind another round of polish because shipping feels riskier than perfecting? That answer tells you more about your culture than any internal memo could. Four: Feedback Every environment decides how much of reality is allowed to reach the people making decisions. Does your organization tell you a launch underperformed in plain terms, or does it arrive pre-softened by the time it reaches your desk, such that you can’t even see a failed attempt for what it is? Five: Identity Every environment establishes an unwritten answer to, "What do people like us do here?" What gets tolerated. What gets mocked once someone's out of the room. Your team absorbs this faster than any onboarding document, and mostly without even consciously realizing it’s happening. Six: Possibility Every environment expands or contracts what people believe they're capable of building. Some rooms make an ambitious bet feel like the obvious next step. Others make the identical bet feel reckless before the pitch is even finished. How to make real progress Six channels are running constantly on everyone in your orbit, whether you've designed them on purpose or not. Interestingly, most founders will plan an exorbitant retreat or rewrite their mission and values statement before they'll ever audit their actual environment against these six. That's backwards. A retreat is a moment of stepping back into reflection. A mission and values statement is an aspiration. These six are the mechanism, the real machinery translating your standards into what your team, your customers, and you yourself become over time. Excellence is never going to be built by teaching people harder. It's built by preparing rooms, both literal and cultural, where the six channels above are intentionally pointed toward the standard you want. Given all this, here's my challenge to you this week. Pick one environment you're responsible for, whether it’s your team, your household, or even just your own morning. Run it through the six: What's getting surfaced? Who's being imitated? What's easy versus exhausting? How much truth reaches you unfiltered? What do "people like us" do here? What feels challenging yet possible? You may not love everything you find. Good. That means you're making progress to finally fix the actual machinery, not just the pretty mission and values statement hanging above it. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from K. Joia Houheneka K. Joia Houheneka, The World's Premier Excellence Coach K. Joia Houheneka is devoted to advancing mission-first luxury entrepreneurship as a lived philosophy, not just a positioning strategy. She views excellence as dynamic and wholistic, an ongoing refinement of craft, character, and vision that one grows over time. Her approach to leadership centers self-direction and the freedom to move beyond inherited scripts, external validation, and false trade-offs. Luxury business building, thus, becomes a path toward self-actualization, where premium offerings and philanthropic commitment strengthen each other. She asks, "What might change, for a leader, for a life, for a legacy, if ambition and mission were cultivated together to be one?"

Written by Diogenes Muse-Cleveland, CEO and Founder Diogenes Muse-Cleveland is no stranger to adversity and business. As the CEO and Founder of Muse Management Services, a work-from-home job platform created in 2024, and a member of the disabled community, he has a long-standing commitment to assisting those with mobility-related disabilities gain independence through auxiliary income. On July 4th, 2025, Donald Trump and the Republican Party cut Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act programs, which helped millions of Americans with and without disabilities, by $1 trillion. Then, on June 18, 2026, the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion saying that the Olmstead Act, which concerns the right of those with disabilities to receive medical care at home in their own communities instead of in institutions, did not need to be enforced in the same way. Shortly after that, within the same month, Tennessee Republicans created a new state law forcing terminally ill children off healthcare based solely on their immigration status. On top of all this, the Trump administration plans on cutting the Medicare subsidy program that helps keep the price of medications low for millions of older and disabled Americans. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is an agenda among those currently in government to chip away at the rights and healthcare of the most vulnerable in this country until there is nothing left. Therefore, relying on government assistance programs like Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is no longer sound. Those in power have proven that they can no longer be trusted to protect the best interests of those with disabilities. It is not far-fetched to wonder how long before the government begins cutting Social Security and SSI as well. They have already been talking about making these cuts, and as much as those in opposition to this have been talking about blocking it, they have not been able to do much to stop everything else they have cut. So, I would not wait around to find out what they are going to do with Social Security. Those who are most vulnerable and can do so must find another means of income for themselves so that if these programs are stripped away, they are not left with no options other than living in an institution. Why not Muse Management Services? Muse Management Services gives access to entry-level jobs that you can work from the comfort of your home and helps cut costs on gas for your car, taxes, electricity bills, and more. This was all explained in one of my prior articles, "The Benefits of Working as an Agent of Muse Management Services". Furthermore, you can work for Muse Management Services even while you are receiving Social Security Income, with no threat of it being cut if you do not earn over a certain amount. This is detailed in question 2 on the FAQ page of my website. This way, if the unthinkable does happen and Social Security is cut, your biggest question will be, "How can I work more hours?" Not, "How am I going to survive?" On top of that, I have detailed in a different article, "How Muse Management Services Is Creating New Paths: An Interview With Diogenes Muse Cleveland," how it is possible to secure grants that you can receive without endangering your Social Security income at all while still earning income from my company. I have even given you the names of some organizations where you can begin your search. If you are on Social Security, watching as rights and healthcare access are being slowly chipped away for people like you, do something about it now. Do not wait until the bottom falls out and you have to scramble for any resource you can grab hold of. With the prices of everything rising as they are, if you decide to wait until later, you might be forced into an institution before you complete the hiring process. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Diogenes Muse-Cleveland Diogenes Muse-Cleveland, CEO and Founder Diogenes Muse-Cleveland is a pioneer in his field. Raised in Flint, Michigan, he suffered a catastrophic injury at the age of 21, leaving him with tetraplegia. Despite the difficulties that came along with his condition, Diogenes has always strived to forge a path forward through intense willpower and determination. Through the establishment of Muse Management Services, Diogenes hopes to improve his life and the lives of all those like him for generations to come.

Written by Ekaterina Leonova, Change Coach Ekaterina Leonova is a Change Coach with a background in psychology, life sciences, and engineering. She blends psychological depth with systems thinking and an evidence-based approach to help accomplished professionals move past feeling stuck or overwhelmed and create the change they need. If only our careers were predictable and followed a clear path based on skills, ratings, and so on. If our only reference points were skills and knowledge, all careers would look pretty predictable and linear, moving from junior to expert levels in a chosen profession, learning more skills and acquiring more knowledge as we go. Top companies would hire those with the highest grades in their field, just like top universities do in many countries. It's not easy to get that top grade, of course, but our career expectations would be clear, and the world would function in a predictable, although somewhat robotic, way. But the world does not work like that. Quite often, who we are as human beings contributes a lot. This includes personality traits, core values, culture, and lived experiences. All of that informs how we interact with the world. The numbers back this up. LinkedIn data from 2020 to 2023 shows that people who listed both hard and soft skills on their profiles got promoted 8% faster than those who listed only hard skills. A more recent Harvard Business Review analysis, looking at over 70 million job transitions, found that things like teamwork, problem-solving, and communication were linked to promotions 11% faster. Leadership skills alone got people there 10% faster. People with broad human skills didn't just move up faster, they earned more and stayed resilient throughout their careers. So this isn't a hunch or a nice story I tell myself. Academic mastery on its own was never the whole story. For a long time, what we now call soft skills have sometimes determined what job we get, whether we are chosen for a particular role, or whether we become a people manager or leader. You might relate. You are most certainly the smartest person in the room, and you have outstanding academic achievements. Yet, your colleague gets more recognition because they are more outgoing, chatty, and noticeable. They are not better at analyzing or at careful, thoughtful execution, but they are much better at being visible than you are. I have a lot of personal experience related to this. I was choosing to be quiet. There is a whole layer of family beliefs, culture, and personal traits in the background, of course. But the point is, I didn't take space to talk about my achievements. I was not the most outgoing person either. I would not do small talk over coffee. A waste of time, I thought. I didn't even like small talk. I still don't, to be honest. I connected only with the people who were most relevant. So I got feedback once: "Why don't you talk to people more?" Yes, I saw that outgoing colleagues were getting exciting projects, even though I was good in my niche. I didn't understand why that was important at the time. Now my approach has changed a lot. Even this article, sharing my knowledge and experiences publicly, is one step towards the visibility that I know I need to build trust as a coach. There's actually a name for this, and it's been studied. The Center for Talent Innovation looked at close to 4,000 professionals, including 268 senior executives, and found that what they call "executive presence" accounts for 26% of what gets someone promoted. Break that down further, and two-thirds of it comes from gravitas alone: how confident you seem, how decisive you are, and whether you can read a room. Two-thirds of the executives in that study said gravitas was the single biggest factor in who they chose to promote, essentially, how you come across. It doesn't stop at promotion decisions. It shapes how your everyday work gets judged too. There's a well-documented "likability bias" in performance reviews: being liked pushes your evaluation up regardless of what you actually delivered, and being disliked pulls it down the same way, independent of your output. From my coaching experience, I see that blocks, issues, and difficulties at work and in a career path don't happen because people lack skills. There's a personal story behind them that makes certain things more difficult. Saying no, setting clear boundaries, making your achievements known and very visible, and how outgoing and social you are will all impact what kind of manager or leader you are, whether or not you are next up for promotion, and whether you get recognition for your contributions. There's a common myth that saying "no" damages your reputation. In my experience, it's usually the opposite. Clear boundaries tell people you know your worth, and they free you up to focus on the work that actually matters instead of drowning in everything that lands on your plate. What looks like a "soft skill" gap here is really a belief underneath it, such as fear of disappointing someone or fear of being seen as difficult. It's not a competence gap at all. I have quite a few clients who are overworked, overwhelmed, and still not really recognized because saying no to their manager isn't even an option in their world. One particular example comes to mind. One of my clients started a new job in a new area, and the volume of work, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and evaluation in this company's culture and way of working depended heavily on being visible, being able to talk about yourself, and saying what you are good at. This client is quite introverted, and it didn't come naturally to them. So our main focus was just that: self-trust, self-esteem, and confidence. We reached a point where the client was more engaged and got more consultancy gigs. The managers noticed them. It all led to higher life satisfaction and increased confidence in other areas, such as finding a supportive, warm partner. I recognize that today, things change so fast, especially in technology, that one needs to upskill constantly. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The chances that you are being overlooked, not appreciated, or not respected mostly have to do with a very human side of you, with your traits, beliefs, traumas, and behavioral patterns. One of my clients was in the process of changing jobs. Although he was invited to interviews and was passing the intro rounds, his main focus was upskilling and learning new technologies. When we discussed what went wrong in the skills interviews with stakeholders, there was always one thing: he gave short answers and couldn't present his technical expertise clearly. Sometimes, his values wouldn't match the company's, and then he would just say something vague instead of being assertive about his values and views. He tried to stay safe this way, but it led nowhere. The reasons for this often lie in imposter syndrome, a pattern I see constantly among the most skilled people I work with. It's more common than most people think. Up to 70% of professionals experience it at some point, and it doesn't spare the top of the ladder either. In fact, 71% of United States (US) Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) report it, and 75% of executive women say the same. It's not just an uncomfortable feeling either. It quietly holds people back from opportunities or pushes them into overcompensating until they burn out. Whatever patterns we have, they don't have to stay that way. You can choose to change your behaviors, address fears, and build your self-esteem. The same goes for the beliefs underneath them: that talking about your work is bragging, that saying no makes you difficult, or that you need every answer before you're allowed to open your mouth. Those beliefs were learned somewhere and can be changed. All the effort to change behaviors and beliefs is often called personal growth or development. That's a completely different task from "get better at your job." Somehow, it is not considered necessary. However, I keep seeing things that prove the exact opposite. It will be the most important thing you will do for yourself. The clients I work with usually start in the same place, convinced they need one more certification, one more skill, or one more year of experience before they're finally "ready." They arrive at a very different place, able to name their own work in a room without shrinking, able to say no without spiraling into guilt, and trusting that what they already know is enough. Their Curriculum Vitae (CV) doesn't change much, but they do. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ekaterina Leonova Ekaterina Leonova, Change Coach Ekaterina Leonova is a Change Coach and founder of Leonova Consulting. Her background spans psychology, life sciences, and entrepreneurship, giving her a rare ability to work with both the emotional and the analytical sides of change. She works with accomplished professionals, managers, executives, founders, and high performers who look successful on the outside but feel stuck, overwhelmed, or disconnected underneath. Rather than offering generic advice, she helps clients identify exactly what's keeping them stuck and helps build a system to implement the change that would actually move them forward.

Written by Annette Densham, Chief Storyteller Annette Densham is a multi-award-winning Public Relations (PR) specialist and is considered the go-to for business storytelling, award submission writing, and helping business leaders establish themselves as authorities in their field. In a near-future Los Angeles, Judge Maddox sits in judgement of those accused. In a court run by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) judge, a detective accused of murdering his wife has 90 minutes to prove his innocence or be executed. With a high probability of guilt before he opens his mouth, the race is on. Judge Maddox has zero mercy. This AI judge rules on the numbers it has access to and what it is fed. That’s it. It doesn’t fall for sob stories or read between the lines. It never questions what’s missing, distorted or hyperbole. That’s the problem with AI. We treat what it spits out as the final word when it’s the first step. Handing high-stakes calls to a machine designed to process what it’s given, not what’s missing, is how you get a confident answer to the wrong question. The awards world is facing this conundrum. What is the role of AI in awards? Should it be used to streamline what can be the onerous judging process? If it is used, can it tell the difference in an entry between something true and something well written? AI strategist and educator Inbal Rodnay, who helps accounting, legal and advisory teams understand the tools, mindset and support they need to make AI work for them, said, “One of the toughest challenges with AI is there’s no textbook or clear guidelines for its use. Everything changes so quickly.” “If awards are using AI for judging, they assume AI removes bias. It doesn’t. It just standardises it. If you start with a system that’s already 97% certain, the outcome isn’t really being judged anymore. It’s being confirmed. That’s the risk when we overtrust AI in any decision that matters.” “What AI gives is speed and structure. What it can’t give you is judgement and nuance. AI can tell you what fits the criteria.” Current state of awards judging Before the awards industry gets precious about protecting the integrity of human judging, it might want to look at what that means in practice. I've been writing award submissions for almost 15 years. I've written thousands of entries across the A to Z of industries. Most programs don’t brief their judges properly, if at all. There's almost zero transparency about the judging process. Criteria are so vague and generic that two judges scoring the same entry can come to two very different decisions. That’s not because one is wrong, but because what right looks like isn’t made clear. Judges fill the gaps with personal opinions and biases. If you don’t win, you have no explanation why. Ninety-nine percent of awards programs give zero feedback. When judging an award, I pointed out to the other judge how Caucasian her top five picks for finalists were. The interesting thing was that two-thirds of the entries were from other cultures. I suggested she had an unconscious bias. We received no training. Here are the entries. Off you go. When there’s no training, guidance, rules or explanation of the criteria, the process becomes subjective rather than objective, like a Rorschach test. Every judge looks at the same entry but sees something different, shaped by their own experiences, assumptions and preferences. Not exactly fair. Entrants want and need to know that the judging process has rigour. They need to trust that every entry is assessed against the same standards by judges who understand the criteria and recognise the biases they may bring into the room. So maybe the idea of introducing AI is a solution. The algorithm has the gavel Human judges aren’t as objective as we’d like to believe or assume. Human brains have this little room where their preconceived view of the world is locked away. Logically and consciously, we believe we’re being fair, but our brains are constantly making shortcuts, filling gaps and favouring what feels familiar without asking our permission. Like the ink in Mrs Marsh’s chalk test, “Ooohh, it does get in.” That doesn’t make judges bad people. It makes them human. AI tools can help judges process large amounts of information more quickly, especially in complex entries. With hundreds of entries across multiple categories, that isn’t a trivial advantage. Speed, consistency and the absence of biased decision-making are appealing. AI doesn’t care whether the submitter is well known, well connected or has their fair share of challenges. It can’t be charmed or swayed by a good sob story. It doesn’t score one entry more generously because the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) once sat on the same panel. If the criterion says “evidence of measurable impact” and the entry doesn’t have it, that’s that. Awards bodies don’t need AI to be better than human judges. They need it to be good enough to clear a backlog of entries without chasing volunteers, managing conflicting scores or delaying the finalist announcement. The argument for a hybrid option The argument against AI in awards judging sounds reasonable until you sit inside the judging process. What do you do if two judges pull out at the last minute? You’re left with a stack of submissions needing hours of careful reading, scoring and written feedback. Judging is often a full marathon that many don’t have the time or energy for. Maybe it’s not one or the other. Perhaps AI isn’t the threat to awards integrity. It might be a chance to enforce it. Karen Perks, CEO of Mikare Health and Meeka Technologies, built an AI awards judging tool after living this scenario. She found AI could process and review a submission in two minutes, freeing human judges to spend 20 focused minutes digging deeper into the answers rather than decoding them. “The knowledge embedded in the tool mirrors the same rubric matrix methodology used in tenders and grant assessments, where evidence against criteria is the basis of the decision. This AI is doing the reading so humans can do the thinking,” – Karen said. Karen’s AI judging model takes the first pass, reads every submission against the criteria and produces a structured assessment. That initial pass flags where entries meet the evidence threshold, scores them against the rubric and gives written feedback to every submitter, regardless of whether they progress. Human judges then receive a shortlist, not a mountain of entries. “The attention goes to the entries where the scores are high, where two submissions are separated by a fraction, or where something in the AI assessment warrants a closer look. The human brings contextual understanding, industry experience and the ability to see original thinking.” “The AI handles volume and consistency. The human handles interpretation and final verdict.” It’s not AI versus humans. It’s a division of labour where AI filters, structures and stress tests, and humans decide the winner. The case against Before handing entries over to Maddox, award platforms need to answer this: what’s the judging process there to do? Is it there to clear 500 entries before the finalist announcement or identify the entrant whose work genuinely deserves to win? Those two goals can coexist, but when speed is driving the decision, Houston, we have a problem. AI can process evidence in seconds, assess against criteria and pump out a verdict. What it can’t do is wonder whether it’s been told the whole story. Awards judging has the same problem. Business awards aren’t marking a multiple-choice exam. Judges are tasked with deciding what excellence looks like across businesses of different sizes, sectors, locations, resources and stages of growth. A 20% increase in revenue can mean one thing in a startup and something different in a business that’s been around for 10 years. Saving five jobs in a regional town may have more impact than creating 50 roles in a capital city. A smaller result achieved with the odds stacked against you can say far more about leadership than a bigger one backed by a hefty budget. The numbers matter, but there has to be meaning attached. A good judge looks at what happened, how it happened, and the challenges faced and overcome. “We introduced monthly team meetings to improve communication” may sound like a leadership initiative, but unless those meetings solved a specific problem and produced a measurable change, it’s routine business as usual, dressed in a fancy frock to sound impressive. A judge can tell when an entrant has buried something remarkable under three paragraphs of clunky writing. AI judges the version of excellence it’s been instructed to look for. Tell it to reward measurable impact and it may favour the entry with the most percentages. Tell it to prioritise innovation and it may reward the biggest idea. Tell it to assess storytelling and the best written submission has an advantage. At that point, who is really judging the award? The AI, the person who wrote the prompt or the company that built the model? CommsHero Awards’ 2025 experiment is a glimpse into this problem. A human and an AI judged four anonymous entries. The judging brief and criteria were fed into ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. While all three came up with the same winners, how they got there exposed noticeably different lenses. Gemini was generous towards ambition, scale and cultural change, even when detailed results were thin. Claude placed more weight on structure, purpose and ethical framing. ChatGPT was stricter and favoured hard metrics, replicable processes and technical logic. That’s a consistency trap. An AI model can be completely consistent with itself while consistently applying an interpretation the awards body didn’t anticipate. We give AI the keys to the mansion and trust what it spits out. AI can get the same thing wrong in every entry, and because it does it consistently, no one may realise the scoring is flawed. AI doesn’t remove bias. It can standardise it. Research into Large Language Models (LLMs) used as judges has found that their decisions can be influenced by factors such as where information appears, how the scoring prompt is worded and the fluency or apparent quality of the response. In other words, the machine can be nudged while appearing to make a purely evidence-based decision. A polished entry may be easier for AI to process than one written by someone whose first language isn’t English. A long answer may appear more substantial than a concise one. A business using familiar corporate language may fit the model’s idea of leadership better than an entrant describing the same achievement in plain English. An entrant who understands how to write for AI may score better than one who did the better work. We could end up rewarding the submission most compatible with the machine rather than the achievement most worthy of recognition. Human judges have blind spots too. The difference is, in a well-thought-out judging process, another judge can challenge the score. The panel can debate an interpretation, revisit the evidence and ask why one entrant has been marked more harshly than another. You can say to a human judge, “You’ve given this entry 62 and everyone else has given it 85. Talk us through why you marked it this way.” What do you ask AI? It’ll give you a beautifully structured explanation, a table and a score out of 100. That doesn’t mean the explanation reflects sound judgement. An 87.5 can still be a subjective opinion. The ethics question The ethical concerns relating to AI use in awards judging need to factor in fairness, transparency, accountability, reliability, privacy and trust. Who trains the model? On what data? Whose definition of excellence gets encoded? If AI is trained on past winning entries, it’ll replicate what’s already been rewarded, which is a good way to lock in bias. The innovative, unconventional, and first-of-its-kind entry would most likely be scored lower by an algorithm that has no prior pattern to match it to. Which version of AI is being used to judge? Was it ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or a purpose-built system? Which version? What prompt was used? Were the entries assessed individually or against one another? Did the order change? Was the process tested before live entries were uploaded? Could the same score be reproduced six months later after the model had been updated? Unless an awards body can answer those questions, it doesn’t have a transparent judging system. It has outsourced judgement and is no better than judging being done by humans with no transparent process. Awards submissions can contain revenue figures, profit margins, client outcomes, intellectual property, staff information and deeply personal stories. Entrants deserve to know whether their material is being uploaded to a third-party AI system, how it’s being stored and who has access to it. “We used AI to make judging easier” isn’t a rock-solid data policy. There’s also the accountability gap. In a legal setting, decisions need to be explained. The Judicial Commission of New South Wales argues that giving reasons helps make a decision transparent, accountable and easier to trust. Awards shouldn’t pretend they’re exempt from the same basic principle. If AI marks an entry down, who explains why? Can the entrant or judging panel question how the criteria were interpreted? Can anyone see which evidence the system ignored or misunderstood? That’s the black box problem. A score comes out, but the reasoning behind it may be impossible to properly examine. If no one can explain or challenge the decision, can the decision be called fair? A bad call is still a bad call. AI is still in test tube mode In awards, experiments are happening, but they’re exactly that: experiments. The technology is moving fast, but fast isn’t the same as ready, and ready isn’t the same as right. Inbal said the problem isn’t that AI is useless or wildly overhyped. “AI is still an emerging technology. A lot of what’s on the market right now is still being tested, tweaked and adapted. Yet, it’s being positioned as a shortcut.” “AI is powerful in pockets and fragile in others. While it’s impressive, it’s far less integrated than many people expect. It's an emerging capability that still needs judgement, literacy, integration and clear ownership.” Inbal said AI isn’t ready for us to outsource accountability to a tool. “There’s the AI literacy gap that has to be factored in. It's not just mastering prompts or using the latest model. It’s understanding what AI is good at, where it’s risky, and when human judgement still matters.” The movie Mercy shows, amidst the action scenes and ticking clock, the danger of confusing speed with judgement. We humans have little patience, and using AI to judge gives judges a reason not to spend more time assessing, digging, reflecting and analysing. What could go wrong? What’s the answer? AI has a legitimate role in awards judging. It can help with shortlisting at volume, flagging entries that fail to meet minimum evidence requirements, identifying inconsistencies in scoring across a judging panel and checking criteria compliance. AI can make the process more rigorous, but it shouldn't make it less human. If an awards program is going to hand over its credibility to an algorithm still in its infancy, it has to factor all this in. Otherwise, it's in danger of becoming a scoring system. Who wants a photo with a scoring system? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Annette Densham Annette Densham, Chief Storyteller Multi-award-winning PR specialist Annette Densham is considered the go-to for all things business storytelling, award submission writing, and helping business leaders establish themselves as authorities in their field. She has shared her insights into storytelling, media, and business across Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US), speaking for the Professional Speakers Association, Stevie Awards, Queensland Government, and many more. Three-time winner of the Grand Stevie Award for Women in Business, gold Stevie International Business Award, and a finalist in Australian Small Business Champion awards, Annette audaciously challenges anyone in small business to cast aside modesty, embrace their genius, and share their stories.

Written by April Michelle Ratchford, Occupational Therapist & Podcast Host April Ratchford, an autistic occupational therapist and the voice behind Adulting with Autism, is a registered/licensed occupational therapist. She supports neurodivergent adults across the world with relatable storytelling, lived wisdom, and empowering strategies for real-life challenges. Getting accepted was one thing. Paying for it was another. But now your parents have bought enough university gear to personally fund the athletic department, your extra-long twin sheets are packed, and everybody is excited. You are probably excited too, along with terrified, overwhelmed, and wondering what the hell you just signed yourself up for. For autistic and other neurodivergent young adults, college requires an enormous amount of executive functioning that nobody puts on the admissions brochure. So let's talk about dorms, roommates, money, accommodations, routines, hygiene, grades, and what happens when Mom is no longer standing behind you with a clipboard. First, get the stuff you actually need If you're attending vocational school, your program will usually be pretty structured. They'll tell you what supplies, books, uniforms, equipment, or materials you need. If you're working with Vocational Rehabilitation, ask whether they can help with books, supplies, tuition, transportation, or other education-related expenses. Community college students, same idea. Check your syllabus. Figure out whether you actually need the physical textbook, an online access code, or something else before spending $300 on a book you're going to open twice. Four-year college students living on campus? Oh, baby. Now we've entered a whole different level of chaos. You need bedding, toiletries, clothes, medications, chargers, laundry supplies, basic cleaning supplies, and whatever else you genuinely use. You do not need to recreate your entire childhood bedroom inside a dorm. Remember, everything you drag into that building eventually has to come back out. Check your mattress size before buying bedding. Many residence halls use Twin XL mattresses, which are just similar enough to a regular twin that you'll confidently buy the wrong damn sheets. Your roommate is not a non-player character (NPC) Dorm shopping has somehow become an industry. You don't need seventeen decorative pillows, a neon sign, six storage contraptions, and an entire Target home collection. Be realistic. A mini fridge and microwave can be useful if your residence hall permits them, but talk to your roommate first. Two people bringing two refrigerators, two microwaves, and everything else into one tiny room is how you end up living inside a very expensive storage closet. My son, Z, already had a refrigerator and microwave when his roommate moved in, so they communicated. "Hey, I already have these. You can use them." Problem solved. Z's roommate was also autistic and was older than him. That didn't mean they automatically had identical needs. They had to learn how to navigate one another. Talk about sleep. Lights. Noise. Visitors. Cleaning. Food. Shared appliances. Temperature. Studying. Personal space. You don't have to become best friends, but you do have to remember that it's not the You Show. Be considerate. Be clear. Don't assume somebody else automatically knows your boundaries. For the love of God, keep the room reasonably clean Your dorm isn't your bedroom at home. Nobody is coming behind you to pick everything up. Residence halls have rules. There may be health and safety inspections. Fire hazards matter. Prohibited appliances matter. Trash piled everywhere matters. Your roommate is also allowed to become irritated if your half of the room becomes a biological experiment. Which brings me to another subject nobody apparently wants to discuss with college students. You still have to wash your ass Yes, we're discussing activities of daily living. You are responsible for showering. Deodorant. Brushing your teeth. Washing your hair. Laundry. Changing your sheets. Eating. Taking prescribed medication. Getting enough sleep. Keeping track of toiletries. Cleaning your room. All of it. Executive dysfunction can make supposedly simple tasks surprisingly difficult. That doesn't make the tasks disappear. If you need a routine, make one. Set alarms. Put things where you'll see them. Make a checklist. Attach showering to another part of your morning routine. Pick a laundry day. Have a medication system that works for you. College independence doesn't mean magically acquiring executive functioning. It means learning how to build systems around the executive functioning you actually have. Please wear deodorant. Nobody likes a stinky roommate. Commuters, I'm looking at you too Living at home doesn't exempt you from learning independence. If your parents are still waking you up, reminding you about every assignment, packing your lunch, washing all your clothes, tracking every appointment, and making sure you leave the house on time, college is an excellent opportunity to start taking on pieces of that responsibility. Not everything tomorrow. Start with something, then something else. Your parents and caregivers won't always be able to manage your life for you. The goal is not to rip away every support you have. The goal is to distinguish support from dependence. Those are not the same thing. Find student accessibility before you need it If you're autistic, have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), are dyslexic, chronically ill, physically disabled, or otherwise qualify for accommodations, find your school's disability or accessibility office, preferably before classes begin. If you're one of my Last Second Sams and Sallies and classes are already starting, go now. Depending on your documented needs and your school's policies, accommodations might include extended testing time, reduced distraction testing environments, note-taking supports, accessible materials, or other appropriate accommodations. But here's the important part: you have to participate in this process. College isn't high school. Your parents aren't automatically handling your educational accommodations anymore. Learn what your school requires. Learn how accommodation notifications work at your particular school. Learn what you need to communicate to professors. This is self-advocacy practice in real time. Tell somebody before you're completely drowning This is where I see young adults make a huge mistake. They struggle quietly. Then struggle some more. Then stop going to class. Then stop opening Canvas, Blackboard, or whatever technological hellscape their university uses. Then suddenly it's November, and they're sitting on six missing assignments thinking, "Well, fuck." Don't wait that long. Your advisor exists for a reason. Tutoring exists for a reason. Student health exists for a reason. Counseling services exist for a reason. Professors have office hours for a reason. People cannot help with a problem they don't know exists. I learned this myself. I attended Spalding University as a single parent. During college, I lost my housing. I missed a final because my life had completely gone sideways. I communicated what was happening. My professor allowed me to take the final late, and the university helped me access assistance while I got back into housing. That experience stayed with me. Asking for help isn't somebody else doing college for you. Asking for help is a college skill. Your brain needs an external hard drive College involves an absolutely ridiculous number of dates: assignments, exams, registration, advising, tuition, housing, financial aid, withdrawal deadlines, meetings, and projects. If you have executive functioning challenges, don't depend on your brain to magically remember all of that. I still use a paper agenda. Yes, in the year of our Lord 2026. People ask why I don't just put everything in my phone. Because it doesn't fucking work for me. I need to physically write things down, preferably in colors. My sister is a total tech person. Great for her. That is not my brain. Use whatever works for your brain: a paper planner, digital calendar, alarms, sticky notes, a whiteboard, color coding, apps, or a giant calendar taped to the wall like you're coordinating a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launch. I don't care. The correct organizational system is the one you will actually use. School comes before gaming I know. I know. But somebody has to say it. If gaming is your special interest, your social outlet, your decompression activity, or simply your favorite thing in the world, you don't have to stop gaming. You do have to learn when to stop gaming. My son loves gaming. He's studying computer science because he wants to work in video game development. But even he had to learn that the game has to wait when assignments need to be done. You cannot spend six hours gaming and then become shocked that the paper you haven't started is still due at midnight. Do the shit first. Then game. Your emergency credit card is not a DoorDash scholarship Now we're going to discuss money. Some of you have checking accounts. Some have credit cards. Some of you are about to discover that a credit limit looks suspiciously like free money when you're young. It isn't. I gave Z a credit card for emergencies, and I was very clear about what I meant: medical supplies, medication, or something genuinely necessary when another source of money isn't available. An emergency. At one point when he was at Western Kentucky University (WKU), that motherfucker ran the card up to around $500. I lost my ever-loving mind because apparently we needed to clarify that an emergency credit card was not for DoorDashing your ass off and having a pizza party. Credit cards are borrowed money. If you carry a balance, interest can make whatever you bought substantially more expensive. Parents and caregivers, define "emergency" before handing over the card. Students, if someone gives you an emergency card, ask what you're allowed to use it for. Everybody will be much happier. Watch those dining dollars too A meal plan can feel unlimited in August. Then October arrives. Oops. Know the difference between meal swipes and dining dollars, flex dollars, or whatever terminology your school uses. Know where each can be used. Check your balance periodically. Don't blow through your flexible dining money in the first six weeks because Chick-fil-A was calling your name every afternoon. Some families can replenish that account. Some cannot. Budget accordingly. That's part of adulting too. Protect your routine, especially during breaks Routine can be incredibly important for neurodivergent students. Once you've finally figured out when you wake up, when you eat, when you study, when you shower, where you sit, how you get to class, and how your week operates, disrupting all of it can be exhausting. School breaks can therefore be more complicated than people realize. Residence hall policies vary considerably. Some campuses or residence halls stay open during certain breaks, while others close or offer limited break housing. Don't assume anything. Check your university's housing calendar and policies ahead of time. Pay attention to your own nervous system. Going home for every available break isn't automatically restorative. Some students love it. For others, traveling home, changing environments, losing their routine for several days, and then returning to campus is harder than staying near school. Learn what works for you. Please do something besides go to class College is education, but it isn't only education. Join a club. Go to an event. Meet somebody who likes the same bizarre thing you like. Try something you've never done. Eat somewhere new. Go to a game even if you don't understand what the hell is happening. Community college students can look for campus organizations too. Vocational students may have fewer formal campus activities, but the larger point still applies: don't let your entire life become school and your bedroom. This is your opportunity to meet different people, experience different things, and figure out who you are outside the environment you grew up in. Use it. Parents, your new job is to sit your ass back This one is hard. I know. You spent eighteen years keeping this person alive, and suddenly everybody expects you to throw them onto a college campus and cheerfully drive away. You don't have to disappear. But your role has changed. I have access to some of Z's information with his permission because financial aid and administrative nonsense can be overwhelming. I'll remind him to check something. I'll ask about assignments. I'll occasionally ask, "Have you looked at your grades?" Because sometimes this child is simply going to class and doing assignments without ever checking the damn grade. But I don't do his homework. I don't earn his grades. I already graduated. Those degrees are mine. This one is his. Parents can scaffold independence without taking it away. The goal is not abandonment. The goal is supported independence. One bad semester does not mean you're done I want students and parents to remember this one. Z's first semester at Marshall was a mess. He was dealing with housing and safety issues. He moved during the semester. His organization wasn't where it needed to be, and he struggled academically. His Marshall Grade Point Average (GPA) ended up around 1.14. That could have become the end of the story. It wasn't. He advocated for himself. He explained what had happened. He used resources. He learned how to navigate campus. He learned the bus system. He made friends. He found tutors. He learned what wasn't working. Then he came back. He retook a class he had failed. He brought his Marshall GPA up to around 2.85, and during the following term, his GPA was around 3.3, close enough to the Dean's List to be thoroughly pissed off that he missed it. That's growth. One disastrous semester is data. It is not a prophecy. Maybe you overloaded yourself. Maybe you didn't understand how much executive functioning college required. Maybe your mental or physical health went sideways. Maybe your housing was a disaster. Maybe you discovered that your course load was simply too damn much. Figure out what happened. Use the information. Change the system and try again. Welcome to college, now go build a life You're going to get some A's. You'll probably get some B's. You may get a C. Hell, I got a D in religion and still passed that bitch. We're not looking for perfection. We're looking for progress. College is one enormous experiment in figuring out who you are when nobody else is running your life. So learn. Advocate for yourself. Ask for help before everything catches fire. Make friends. Build routines. Manage your money. Do your assignments. Call your parents when you need them. For the love of everything holy, wash your ass. Have a fantastic fall semester. Go build yourself a life. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from April Michelle Ratchford April Michelle Ratchford, Occupational Therapist & Podcast Host April Ratchford, an autistic occupational therapist, writer, and global advocate for neurodivergent adults, is a registered/licensed occupational therapist. As the creator and host of Adulting with Autism, an internationally ranked podcast with over two million downloads, she blends clinical expertise with real-life lived experience. April specializes in supporting autistic young adults as they transition into independence, higher education, and adult identity. She is known for her clear, empowering approach that makes complex neurodivergent challenges accessible and manageable. April is currently advancing her studies in neuroscience through King’s College London to further elevate her work in autistic well-being and adult development.

Written by Dr. Erin Oksol, High Performance Psychologist, Speaker & Author Dr. Erin Oksol, "The Success Psychologist" and founder of The Higher Life, is an expert in the psychology of success and helps evolve the human behind the business. She is the best-selling author of the book Mind Your Own Business, a keynote speaker, high-performance mentor, and host of the Oh How Human of Me Podcast on Substack. You don’t need to become less human to become more successful. You need to become better at being human because your business can only expand to the degree that you can hold the expansion. 10 ways I would 5X a business before the end of 2026 Stop trying to fix yourself: You are not the problem your business needs you to solve. Most entrepreneurs have accidentally turned personal development into a full-time job. Another limiting belief to clear. Another morning routine. Another wound to heal. Another version of themselves to become before they’re finally “ready.” Enough. What if you built from the assumption that you are already the way? Your humanity isn’t interfering with your success. It’s the raw material for it. Become the CEO, Chief Emotional Officer: Your ability to feel it all will determine your ability to have it all. A bigger business comes with bigger emotions. More visibility. More responsibility. More opinions. More uncertainty. More opportunities to fail publicly. More money to manage. More people depending on you. The goal isn’t to become unbothered because nothing bothers you. It’s to become unbotherable because you know what to do when it does. Build the emotional capacity to hold the business you’re asking for. Stop believing everything your brain tells you: Your brain is an incredible organ. It’s also occasionally a terrible business consultant. It will tell you. Don’t launch yet. They’re going to judge you. Nobody wants this. You’re behind. You should probably change your entire business model because three people didn’t like your Reel. You don’t need a more positive brain. You need to become the leader of your brain. Thoughts are information. They aren’t instructions. Decide sooner: Indecision is expensive. You can spend six months asking, "Is this the right offer? Should I change my niche? Should I start the podcast? Should I raise my prices? Is this the right message?" Or you can decide, gather information, adjust, and keep moving. Confidence isn’t knowing your decision will work. Confidence is knowing you can handle what happens after you make it. Decide, then become a person who can count on herself. Stop outsourcing your knowing: AI, or artificial intelligence, can give you information. Google can give you strategies. A coach can give you perspective. Instagram can give you approximately 14,782 opinions before breakfast. But none of them can tell you what is true for you. Your competitive advantage in the era of AI will be your ability to access your own inner intelligence. Your signal. Your genius. Your way of creating. Your way of selling. Your way of leading. Your way of making money. Use technology to amplify your intelligence, not replace it. You are the way. Fire yourself from the four jobs that are bankrupting your energy: Proving. Pleasing. Perfecting. Performing. These four will happily consume every ounce of energy you could have used to build your empire. Stop creating to prove you’re smart. Stop selling to please everyone. Stop perfecting things nobody asked you to perfect. Stop performing a version of success you don’t even want. Imagine what you could build with all of that energy back. Make your business unmistakably 'you': 2026 does not need another beige business saying the same thing as everybody else. Your weirdness is valuable. Your stories are valuable. Your opinions are valuable. Your contradictions are valuable. Your lived experience is valuable. Your particular combination of expertise, personality, wisdom, taste, humor, failures, obsessions, and genius is your intellectual property. Don’t dilute it trying to appeal to more people. Turn up your signal. The goal isn’t for everyone to like you. The goal is for the right people to recognize you. Increase your capacity to receive: Everyone talks about making more money. Not enough people talk about becoming someone who can comfortably have more money. More clients. More attention. More support. More praise. More opportunities. More ease. Sometimes we’re incredibly good at chasing success and surprisingly uncomfortable when success starts chasing us. Notice where you immediately shrink, sabotage, overwork, or create a new problem when things get good. You don’t only need the capacity to pursue what you want. You need the capacity to receive it when it arrives. Stop waiting to feel ready: You can be scared and launch. You can feel uncertain and decide. You can have imposter syndrome and walk onto the stage. You can feel disappointed and try again tomorrow. You can have a bad morning and still make a million-dollar decision at 2:17 p.m. This is the freedom nobody talks about. You don’t have to feel better before you can do better. Being a human is tricky. Build the business anyway. Build the business your highest self would actually want to live inside: Not just, "How much money can this make?" Ask, "Who do I become while making it? Does she like her life? Does she have time? Does she create? Does she laugh? Does she travel? Does she sleep? Does she have relationships she actually gets to enjoy? Does success feel like freedom or like another jail cell with prettier furniture?' The goal isn’t simply to 5X your revenue. It’s to 5X the life your business makes possible. Because the biggest business breakthrough of 2026 might not be another funnel, strategy, algorithm, AI tool, or morning routine. It might be realizing that the human behind the business was the technology all along. Your ability to think. Your ability to feel. Your ability to decide. Your ability to trust yourself. Your ability to receive. Your ability to lead yourself through uncertainty. That’s the strategy. That’s the advantage. You are the way. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Erin Oksol Dr. Erin Oksol, High Performance Psychologist, Speaker & Author Dr. Erin Oksol is an expert in the psychology of success and human optimization. She blends science and spirituality to help visionary leaders create a business and life sourced from their truth. She founded The Higher Life, where high performance is informed by and co-created with one's highest self and higher power. Her mission is "to set the captives free", freed from any limitations and freed to live with purpose, peace, and prosperity.

Written by Elizabeth Thornhill, Brain Health & Neuroscience Coach Elizabeth Thornhill is a trauma-informed mental health coach specializing in neuroscience and brain-based healing. Her work focuses on helping women understand how past experiences shape the brain and how to rewire thought patterns for lasting change. Teenagers are often described as moody, impulsive, or difficult. But the choices that seem small right now, how they speak to themselves, respond to stress, and use their attention, may be quietly building patterns that last far longer than parents realize. Your teen’s brain is still under construction, and that is good news The eye rolls, big feelings, impulsive choices, and sudden need for independence can make adolescence feel as if something has gone wrong. But your teen is not broken. Their brain is still developing. During puberty, the brain becomes especially responsive to experience, relationships, and learning, as research on adolescent brain plasticity and development explains. Your teen is not a finished adult, but they are old enough to begin making meaningful choices about who they are becoming. 1. What they repeat becomes a habit, and habits shape character Picture a field of tall grass. Walk the same route every day, and eventually it becomes a well-worn pathway. Thoughts, habits, and reactions work the same way. A teen who practices pausing, praying, or speaking honestly is strengthening a helpful path. Harmful thoughts and patterns can become established too when they are repeated, like constantly thinking, “I am stupid,” scrolling when anxious, or assuming the worst after one awkward moment. Help your teen notice the path they are on and choose a better next step. Small daily practices become habits, and habits shape character. Every time your teen owns a mistake, puts their phone down, prays, or pauses before reacting, they are strengthening a pathway in the brain that supports the person they are becoming and the life they want to build. The same is true of patterns that pull them away from their values and long-term goals. Over time, those repeated pathways can influence the direction of their life. 2. Their brain is deciding what to keep During adolescence, the brain prunes some less-used connections and strengthens frequently used ones. Like a gardener tending a vine, what is consistently cared for grows stronger. Pruning is not something to fear. It is the brain’s way of becoming more efficient as it strengthens the connections your teen uses often and clears back the ones they use less. That is why loving guidance and understanding are so crucial during these years. As the brain becomes more efficient, the patterns a teen practices repeatedly can become more established, whether they move them toward their values or away from them. No one bad decision determines their future, change is always possible. But it is often easier to build healthy patterns while the brain is highly adaptable than to unlearn deeply practiced ones later. 3. Big emotions do not have to decide the story A teen’s emotional alarm system can be loud and fast while the part of the brain responsible for planning and self-control is still developing. That does not excuse harmful choices, but it helps explain why a breakup can feel devastating, why one disappointing grade can make them question their intelligence, or why a conflict with a friend can feel like the end of the world. Whether your teen is grieving a breakup, spiraling after a grade, or hurting over a friendship conflict, begin by helping them feel seen, “I can see why this feels so big.” Then give them time to settle before trying to solve it. When the alarm quiets, they are more able to see that the pain is real without letting it decide what happens next. Seeing adolescence as a process of becoming can help parents move from panic to curiosity. A feeling is real, but it is not always an accurate measurement of the situation. 4. Their inner voice is shaping who they become Many teens carry a private question, "What is wrong with me?" Rehearsed often enough, that question can become a familiar path. You cannot control every thought your teen has, but you can help them practice better words, “That was a hard moment. It does not define you.” One mistake, one emotion, or one difficult season does not get to decide who your teen is. 5. You can guide without controlling the outcome Your job is not to design your teen’s personality, future, or faith. It is to offer safety, truth, boundaries, room to practice wise choices, and permission to be human. Ask questions that invite ownership, “What would be the wisest choice you can make?” “What kind of person are you becoming through this choice?” Practical ways to strengthen trust with your teen can make those conversations more likely to land. The teen years are not a waiting room before real life begins. They are a magnificent opportunity for your child to build patterns that will serve them for years to come. Help your teen understand the brain God gave them Built by Design: A Teen’s Guide to the Brain God Gave You helps teens understand their alarm system, growing wisdom, big emotions, and the power of repetition through practical neuroscience and Scripture. Each chapter includes a short “Rewire It” practice for families to discuss and try together. Purchase Built by Design: A Teen’s Guide to the Brain God Gave You on Amazon Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Elizabeth Thornhill Elizabeth Thornhill, Brain Health & Neuroscience Coach Elizabeth Thornhill is a neuroscience-informed trauma coach specializing in brain-based healing and behavioral transformation. Her work focuses on helping women understand how past experiences shape brain function, driving patterns that often feel impossible to change. Through practical, science-backed tools, she equips her clients to rewire their thinking and create lasting, measurable change. She believes the past does not have to define the future and that meaningful change is always possible. Her mission is to help women break free from limiting patterns and step fully into the lives they are capable of building.

Max Mehta grew up in Peoria, Illinois, surrounded by the practical values of the Midwest. The son of a family he credits as his biggest influence, he developed an early appreciation for basketball, coffee, and the simple pleasures of a life well lived. After graduating from Richwoods High School, he headed east to Boston University for both his undergraduate education and medical school at Boston University School of Medicine. His path through medical training took him to California for his radiology residency at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, then back to Texas for a fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine. The trajectory from small-city Illinois to the specialization of diagnostic radiology wasn't linear, but it gave Mehta the foundation he needed to build a career centered on continuous learning and community connection. The philosophy that carried him through Adversity came, as it does for most physicians navigating long training pipelines and demanding schedules. Mehta didn't turn to traditional self-help or mentorship alone. Instead, he researched Stoicism, drawn to its core tenet of not letting things beyond your control affect you. "A strong mind can overcome any obstacle," he explains, describing how he combined ancient philosophy with modern resilience training. He also studied how Navy Seals are trained to cultivate a do-not-quit mentality despite significant hurdles. The overlap between elite military training and the demands of medicine became clear: both require mental fortitude, adaptability, and the willingness to keep moving forward when the path narrows. Success measured internally For Mehta, success has never been about external benchmarks or accolades, though he did receive the Dale Etaugh Achievement Award during his career. He uses his own internal metric to define success, guided by a simple equation: "Success equals happiness. As long as you are happy, you are successful." That philosophy shapes his goals. In the short term, he focuses on continuing medical education to stay current in a field that evolves constantly. Long term, he prioritizes going to the gym to maintain a healthy body. The balance between personal and professional satisfaction, he insists, is essential to long-term fulfillment. He also emphasizes availability, affability, and being affordable as the qualities that matter most in his work. It's a practical triad that speaks to how he interacts with patients and colleagues alike. Building a career across Texas Today, Mehta works as a diagnostic radiologist across three facilities in South Texas. He previously worked with Advanced Diagnostics in Florida before settling in Texas, where he now resides in Austin. Networking with people in the community has been central to his success. Radiology can be an isolated specialty, with much of the work happening behind the scenes, but Mehta has made connection a priority. Whether attending conferences through the RSNA or building relationships within the hospitals he serves, he understands that medicine is as much about people as it is about imaging. What drives him now Mehta remains an avid coffee lover, still enjoys walks and dining out, and continues to hit the gym regularly. He stays engaged with medical education, both as a learner and as someone who values teaching. His hobbies and routines reflect the same balance he preaches: a healthy mind paired with a healthy body. The Stoic mindset he adopted years ago continues to guide him. When self-doubt creeps in or obstacles appear, he returns to the principle that the greatest weapon anyone has is their mind. It's a lesson he learned not from a single mentor or moment, but from years of study, practice, and the kind of adversity that shapes careers in medicine. Max Mehta's story is one of quiet resilience, built on philosophy, community, and the belief that happiness and success are one and the same.

A long career in public safety is built through thousands of decisions that rarely make headlines. For Peter Grimyser, those decisions added up to 27 years with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Police Department and a career that eventually took him to the role of Detective/Sergeant. Grimyser’s work placed him in situations where facts mattered, communication mattered, and decisions often had to be made with limited time and incomplete information. Over the years, he worked investigations, helped manage critical incidents, coordinated with different groups, and advised organizational leaders on sensitive matters involving people, safety, and risk. Now semi-retired, Grimyser remains connected to service through his volunteer work with the American Red Cross. His career offers a practical example of how leadership develops over time, particularly in professions where trust has to be earned rather than assumed. How Peter Grimyser built a career in law enforcement Grimyser studied Administration of Justice at Marian University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1998. His education gave him a foundation in the justice system, but much of what shaped his approach to leadership came through years of practical experience. He also worked part-time for the Cottage Grove Police Department in Wisconsin before building his career at UW–Madison. “My entire career, 27 years, was with the University of Wisconsin Madison Police Department,” Grimyser said of his professional path. “I retired as Detective/Sergeant.” Remaining with one department for nearly three decades allowed him to see policing from different perspectives. His responsibilities evolved as his experience grew, moving beyond individual tasks toward investigations, coordination, leadership, and decision-making. That progression also required an understanding that public safety rarely happens in isolation. University environments involve students, employees, administrators, visitors, outside agencies, and the larger community. Complex situations can require all of those groups to communicate effectively. What does a detective/sergeant do during complex incidents? Investigative work is often associated with finding evidence and establishing facts. Leadership adds another layer. As a Detective/Sergeant, Grimyser worked in situations that required both. Investigations could involve coordinating information, assessing risk, communicating with multiple stakeholders, and determining what needed to happen next. His career also included advising organizational leadership on risk assessment, incident response, and sensitive situations involving people, assets, and reputation. The bigger idea behind that work is simple: good decisions depend on good information. Grimyser’s approach has centered on remaining composed, understanding the available facts, and communicating clearly with the people involved. In high-pressure environments, those habits can have an impact far beyond one investigation or incident. Why trust matters in public safety leadership One of the strongest themes throughout Grimyser’s career has been trust. Police officers and investigators are often given access to sensitive information and asked to handle situations that people may consider deeply personal. Leadership in that environment requires discretion as much as authority. For Grimyser, professionalism has meant taking responsibility seriously while recognizing that every case involves real people. That perspective also shaped the way he worked with colleagues. Over time, his role included mentoring others and helping teams manage situations where several priorities had to be balanced at once. Rather than viewing leadership as simply directing people, his career points toward a more practical model. Leaders gather information, communicate expectations, listen to the people around them, and accept responsibility for difficult decisions. What 27 years in public service can teach about leadership A career as long as Grimyser’s also brings constant change. Technology changes. Investigative methods evolve. Organizations develop new procedures. Expectations surrounding communication, accountability, and public safety continue to shift. Experience can be valuable, but only when professionals remain willing to learn. Grimyser’s career reflects that balance between established principles and changing circumstances. Integrity, sound judgment, and accountability remained important throughout his work, even as the tools and situations around him evolved. His experience also shows why leadership often develops gradually. It comes from seeing how decisions play out, learning from complicated situations, and understanding when to act independently and when to involve others. Continuing a commitment to service Retirement ended Grimyser’s full-time law enforcement career, but it did not end his connection to public service. Today, he is semi-retired and volunteers with the American Red Cross. The role is different from serving as a Detective/Sergeant, but the underlying idea is familiar: helping people when support is needed. That continuity says something important about the career Grimyser built. Public service was never limited to a job title. After 27 years in law enforcement, his experience has given him a perspective shaped by investigations, leadership, risk, communication, and difficult decisions. Now, he carries those lessons into a different stage of life. For professionals building their own careers, Grimyser’s path offers a useful reminder. Big ideas do not always arrive as dramatic breakthroughs. Sometimes they are principles applied consistently over many years: gather the facts, communicate clearly, protect trust, keep learning, and take responsibility for the decisions that matter.

Aaron Byrnes did not start out chasing rugs and antiquities across borders. He started out on construction sites, mostly residential work, though he later picked up commercial plumbing jobs as well. It was practical work, the kind that teaches you to notice what is actually in front of you rather than what a plan says should be there. That habit of paying attention to the real conditions on the ground turned out to matter more than he expected. In 1990, everything shifted. Byrnes was introduced to the import-export business, and something clicked. He describes it as the moment the entrepreneurial spirit really took hold. He moved into trading rugs and antiquities, a field that rewards patience and a good eye, and one that has almost nothing to do with blueprints or pipe fittings. Looking back, though, he sees more overlap between construction and import-export than most people would expect. Both fields punish guesswork. Both require you to check the material in front of you before you commit to a decision. The poker logic behind the deals Ask Byrnes how he thinks about risk, and he will bring up poker before he brings up spreadsheets. His view is that risk versus reward in business is a lot like a game of poker: you play the person as well as playing the odds. A good hand means nothing if you cannot read who is sitting across from you. That framework shaped how he approached import-export deals for years. Sourcing rugs and antiquities is not a business of fixed prices and predictable supply. It depends on relationships, on knowing which sellers are reliable and which buyers will actually close. Byrnes has said import-export is very similar to poker in that sense: the numbers matter, but the person across the table matters just as much. He carried that instinct with him as his business grew, treating every negotiation as a mix of arithmetic and human judgment. It is a mindset that also shows up away from work. Byrnes is an avid pinochle player, and he plays poker as well, along with other games of chance. He does not treat cards as a separate hobby walled off from his career. For him, the games and the deals draw on the same skill: reading people, weighing odds, and knowing when to hold back. Settling on the West Coast In the early 2000s, Byrnes moved out to Southern California, where he has been living since. The move came after years of building his import-export business on the East Coast, where he was born and raised in Chambersburg, Maryland. His father worked as a plumber, and his mother stayed home, a household that valued steady, hands-on work over formal schooling. Byrnes went straight into working, first in construction and odd jobs, then into the trade that would define his career. Southern California gave him a base to keep running the import-export work while building a life around the water. He picked up sailing, a pursuit that rewards the same close attention to conditions he learned on construction sites years earlier. He also became a regular at pickleball, added fine dining and travel to his list of interests, and kept his card games going on the side. Staying off the noise One detail stands out about how Byrnes runs his life outside of work: he generally stays off social media. In a field like import-export, where relationships and reputation move slowly and depend on trust built over years, he has not seen much use for chasing attention online. Instead, he gets his information from podcasts. He listens to NPR, Freakonomics Radio, the All-In podcast, and Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin, among others, treating them as a way to keep track of economics and ideas without the pull of constant feeds. It is a fitting habit for someone whose career has been built on reading situations rather than reacting to noise. From plumbing jobs to antiquities deals to a poker table, Byrnes has kept the same approach: watch closely, weigh the odds, and pay attention to who you are dealing with before you decide what the hand is worth.

Karl D'Angelo did not start out fixing pipes. He grew up in San Francisco, moved to Santa Rosa at age 10, and finished high school at Piner High School in 1986. His first job out of school was landscaping, work he did for seven years before he ever picked up a wrench for a living. That early stretch matters for understanding how D'Angelo built what came next. He spent his twenties outdoors, learning the rhythm of manual labor and client work before he ever touched the plumbing trade. When he made the switch in 1996, he was not a young apprentice fresh out of school. He was someone who already knew what it meant to show up on time, finish a job, and deal directly with homeowners. Building the license, one certification at a time D'Angelo's path into plumbing was not fast. He spent eight years as an apprentice before earning his C-36 plumbing license from the State of California in 2004. That is a long runway, and it is worth sitting with: eight years of supervised work before the state considered him ready to run jobs on his own. He did not stop there. In 2007, he went to WyoTech in Fremont and came out with an HVAC diploma, adding heating and cooling knowledge to his plumbing base. Then in 2010, he became a Certified Green Plumber, a credential that pointed his business toward water efficiency and lower-impact systems. A year later, in 2011, he added a CA Solar Initiative Thermal Contractor certification, which let him work on solar water heating installations. Each of these was a separate decision to keep learning rather than settle into one skill set. Plumbing was the trade he committed to, but he kept stacking credentials around it for over a decade. Turning a license into a company The license and certifications eventually became Karl D'Angelo Plumbing, doing business as Avante' Plumbing, based in Santa Rosa and serving Sonoma County. Running the company is not separate from the licensing history. The green plumbing and solar thermal certifications are not decorations; they shape what kind of jobs the business can take on and how D'Angelo talks to customers about their options. For a contractor working in a county like Sonoma, where water use and efficiency are ongoing concerns for homeowners, having those specific certifications gives D'Angelo a way to offer more than a standard repair. A customer asking about a water heater replacement can get a straight answer about solar thermal options, because D'Angelo actually holds that certification rather than just having heard about it. Why the timeline is the point It would be easy to describe D'Angelo as a plumber and stop there. But the chronology tells a more specific story: landscaper for seven years, apprentice for eight, licensed contractor in 2004, HVAC diploma in 2007, green certification in 2010, solar thermal certification in 2011. That is roughly three decades of steady accumulation, one credential and one job at a time, with no shortcuts through the apprenticeship years. D'Angelo has talked about wanting to take his career more seriously now than he ever has before. Looking at the certification timeline, the seriousness was already there years ago. What seems to have changed is less the work itself and more his relationship to it, how much he lets himself value the years he already put in. What the trajectory suggests None of this is a fast story. There is no single year where everything changed. Instead, there is a pattern: pick up a new skill, get it certified, keep working. That pattern is arguably the actual asset behind Karl D'Angelo Plumbing dba Avante' Plumbing. It is not one big idea. It is a series of smaller ones, spread across almost 30 years in the trades, each one making the next job a little more possible than it would have been otherwise. For homeowners in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County looking for a plumbing contractor, that history is available to see in the credentials themselves: a C-36 license backed by real apprenticeship years, plus HVAC, green, and solar thermal training layered on top.