After more than 900 starts, the PGA TOUR veteran is still studying his swing, adapting his preparation, and often among the last players to leave the practice area. When Tom Pernice Jr. began playing professional golf, there were no launch monitors sitting behind every player on the range. Swing data did not arrive instantly on a screen. Training rooms looked different, equipment looked different, and the teams surrounding professional golfers were considerably smaller. Pernice has watched all of that change from inside the ropes. More importantly, he has changed with it. The two-time PGA TOUR winner and six-time winner on PGA TOUR Champions has made more than 900 combined starts across the two tours. He has competed against multiple generations of players and watched the game become longer, stronger and increasingly driven by technology and data. Yet he is still competing. For Pernice, longevity has never been about trying to preserve the golfer he was at 30. It has been about figuring out how to get the most out of the golfer he is today. “You cannot expect to do everything the same way at 60 that you did at 30,” Pernice said. “Your body changes, the game changes, and you have to be willing to change with it. The challenge is figuring out what helps you continue to compete.” Still a student of the swing There is an interesting thing that happens after spending most of your life playing golf professionally. You know an enormous amount about your own swing. You also know enough to realize you do not have all the answers. Pernice currently works with instructors David Taraschi and Michael Manavian, who teach the Stack & Tilt system. At this point in his career, Pernice is not interested in rebuilding his swing every time something goes wrong. He wants coaches who understand his tendencies, know what has held up under pressure, and can distinguish between something that needs attention and something that simply needs time. “I have played this game professionally for a long time, but that does not mean I stop learning,” Pernice said. “David and Michael understand my swing and what we are trying to do. I am not interested in changing something just for the sake of changing it. I want to understand why we are doing something and how it is going to help me play better.” That philosophy has become even more important as technology has transformed golf instruction. Today a player can measure club path, face angle, launch, spin, speed and nearly every other detail of a golf shot. Video can reveal movements that once required an experienced eye and a good guess. Pernice values the information. He just does not want to become a slave to it. “You can measure almost everything now,” Pernice said. “That can be extremely helpful, but ultimately you still have to know your own game. The numbers should help you make decisions, not make every decision for you.” Because eventually the launch monitor gets turned off. The player still has to walk onto the first tee and hit the shot. The work has never changed Technology has changed. Training has changed. Pernice’s approach to his body and his swing has evolved. His willingness to work has not. Even now, Pernice is often one of the last players on the practice area after a tournament round. When other players are finishing their day, he can still be on the range working through something in his swing or on the putting green trying to find the answer to something that did not feel right during the round. It is a habit that has followed him throughout his career. “I have always believed that if there is something I can improve, I want to work on it,” Pernice said. “If I did not hit it the way I wanted or did not putt well, I would rather spend some time figuring out why than just leave the course frustrated.” There is a difference between practicing because you are supposed to and practicing because you are still curious about getting better. For Pernice, it remains the latter. After more than 900 starts, he still believes another range session can teach him something. He still believes another half hour on the putting green can matter. And he still believes there is a better round out there. That work ethic has been part of Pernice’s career from the beginning, but it carries a different meaning now. He is no longer a young player trying to establish himself on Tour. He has won on both the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions and has spent decades competing at the highest levels of the game. He could reasonably decide he has put in enough hours. He simply does not see it that way. “The minute you think you have this game figured out, it usually reminds you that you do not,” Pernice said. “There is always something you can work on.” For golfers watching from outside the ropes, longevity can look like a product of talent, fitness or good fortune. Sometimes it looks much simpler. It looks like an almost empty practice range at the end of the day and one player who is not quite ready to leave. The body becomes part of the golf game Earlier in his career, Pernice could spend hours practicing and think very little about what happened afterward. Those days are gone. Fitness, nutrition, strength, mobility and recovery are now part of his golf preparation rather than something separate from it. Pernice remains disciplined about working out and eating well. When circumstances allow, he prefers walking the golf course rather than riding. It is not about proving he can keep up with younger players. It is about making sure his body allows him to do what his mind still wants to do. “As you get older, you understand that the work you do away from the golf course affects what you can do on it,” Pernice said. “If I want to keep competing, taking care of myself has to be part of the preparation.” A professional golf season asks more of the body than four tournament rounds. There are practice rounds, range sessions, travel days, early mornings, changing time zones and week after week of repeating the process. The routine Pernice follows today is different from the one he followed decades ago. The discipline behind it is not. Home at Silverleaf When the travel stops and Pernice returns home to North Scottsdale, much of his golf life centers around Silverleaf. Pernice plays at Silverleaf and proudly serves as an Ambassador for the club, but his connection to it goes well beyond having a place to practice. After a career spent moving from one tournament site to another, Silverleaf has become home. “I love Silverleaf,” Pernice said. “It is a special place. The golf course and facilities are incredible, but what really makes it special are the people. I feel very fortunate to be part of the Silverleaf community and proud to represent the club as an Ambassador.” Between tournaments, it is where Pernice can work through something in his swing, spend time on his short game or prepare for the next event. But it also gives him something professional golfers do not always get. A place where golf does not have to be work. There are days when he can play because he simply wants to play. After a lifetime of golf with a scorecard in his pocket, those rounds have their own value. Knowing when not to fix something Experience does not prevent bad golf. Pernice has had missed cuts, injuries, swing struggles, putting struggles, and weeks when the scorecard bore little resemblance to the way he felt he had prepared. What experience has given him is a better understanding of what to do next. When a player is young and impatient, a poor tournament can send him searching for answers immediately. A new swing thought. A different putter. More practice. Another adjustment. Sometimes that is exactly what is needed. Sometimes it makes things worse. “You have to be honest with yourself about what needs attention without reacting to every bad round,” Pernice said. “There is always another tournament coming, and you have to be ready for it.” After thousands of competitive rounds, Pernice has learned that one of the most valuable skills in golf is recognizing the difference between a real problem and a bad week. Not every missed putt needs a new stroke. Not every poor ball-striking day requires a swing change. Sometimes the hardest thing for a competitive golfer to do is leave something alone. Why he still tees it up There are easier ways to spend a week than professional tournament golf. Pernice knows that. He also knows exactly why he keeps coming back. Competition. He won the 1999 Buick Open and 2001 The INTERNATIONAL on the PGA TOUR, then added six victories on PGA TOUR Champions. Before all of that, he was a two-time All-American at UCLA and the 1981 Pac-10 Player of the Year. The setting has changed over the years. The feeling has not. There is still a first tee. There is still a scorecard. There is still somebody trying to beat you. And Pernice still wants to see what he can do. “The competition is what keeps you coming back,” Pernice said. “I still enjoy working on my game and getting ready for a tournament. I still want to play well. As long as I have that desire and I can compete, I want to be out there.” That may be the simplest explanation for a career that has lasted this long. He still cares. Never finished learning Ask Pernice about longevity, and the answer eventually comes back to something golfers of every ability understand. The game never lets you figure it out completely. Just when you think you have found something, golf has a way of asking another question. That has frustrated generations of players. It is also part of what has kept Pernice interested for most of his life. His swing has evolved. His practice has evolved. His training has changed. Technology has given him information that did not exist when his professional career began. But the pursuit is familiar. Find something that makes you better. Test it under pressure. Learn from what happens. Then go back to work. “You are never finished learning in golf,” Pernice said. “That is part of what has kept the game interesting to me all these years. You keep adjusting, you keep working, and then you go out and compete.” More than 900 starts later, Pernice is still doing exactly that. Maybe the clearest explanation for his longevity is not found in a statistic at all. It is found late in the afternoon after a tournament round, when the galleries have thinned, the range is beginning to empty, and Pernice is still there. Still hitting balls. Still looking for something. Still believing he can get better. And still not quite ready to leave.

Written by Doreen Brown, Founder & Personal Brand Stylist Doreen Brown is an Australian-based personal brand stylist and founder of Let's Get Visible®, helping founders, professionals, and teams turn intentional style and visual strategy into an undeniable presence so they stop being the best-kept secret in the room. Presentation matters. If you're building a personal brand and your message doesn't match what you're wearing, it automatically drops the trust factor. That's not opinion. It's something I've lived through, and something I watch play out with clients every week. The promotion that taught me this the hard way Years ago, I was working inside a large corporate organisation and was promoted into a more senior role. On paper, everything had changed. My title. My responsibilities. The decisions I was now expected to make. But I wasn't taken seriously in that role, and I was overlooked for the opportunities that should have followed because I wasn't dressing the part. My expertise hadn't changed. My title had. But my presentation hadn't caught up to either, and the gap was costing me in ways I couldn't fully see at the time. I didn't get direct feedback. Nobody in that environment was going to tell me my wardrobe was the issue. It just quietly worked against me. Meeting after meeting. Opportunity after opportunity. Until the pattern became impossible to ignore. That's the part people miss. Nobody sits you down and tells you your wardrobe is holding you back. It just quietly does, in rooms you're not even aware you're being assessed in. The mistake I see most often: Blending in The biggest mistake I see in professionals, even highly credible ones, is blending in. Post-COVID, workplaces became more relaxed. A couple of people started wearing casual clothes to the office. No one said anything. Then, almost without anyone deciding it, everyone else followed. Here's what I ask clients to consider: what if, instead of following that drift, you became the influence that changed its direction? People who dress with intention are also perceived as more productive, and that perception has a flow-on effect. Not just for them, but for the team and the company around them. Presentation isn't vanity. It's leadership signalling, whether you're using it deliberately or not. Most people never make an active choice here. They simply absorb whatever the room around them is doing. That's the default setting, and it's costing far more people opportunities than anyone realises because it's invisible until you name it. What's actually being lost This isn't just about being noticed. It's about credibility, and credibility has a direct line to opportunity. Every time your appearance sends a different message than your expertise, you're asking the person in front of you to do extra work, to look past the mismatch and trust your capability anyway. Some people will. Many won't, and they won't tell you why. You simply won't be considered for the next project, the next promotion, the next introduction. The cost isn't loud. It's quiet and cumulative, which is exactly what makes it so easy to miss. Why this is a marketing decision, not a styling one Your wardrobe is a marketing asset because it's part of your personal brand. The way you show up tells people what you expect and how you might be able to help them, before you've said a word. It's a credibility piece. People work with humans they like, know, and trust, and that trust starts forming before you've had the chance to prove your competence in conversation. If your business or your brand carries one message and your appearance carries another, you've already lost something. Often before the meeting has even started. Test it yourself I don't ask clients to take my word for this. I ask them to test it. Go out into the world in different types of outfits and pay attention to how you're spoken to and treated. Notice who holds eye contact longer, who asks for your opinion first, who assumes you're in charge of the room. The data you collect from your own week will tell you more than I can. Where to start tomorrow You don't need to overhaul your wardrobe overnight. Start by asking one question before you get dressed each day: does this match the level I'm operating at and the opportunities I want to be considered for? That single question, asked consistently, is where you start treating your wardrobe as the marketing asset it already is. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Doreen Brown Doreen Brown, Founder & Personal Brand Stylist Doreen Brown has spent over a decade helping talented people stop waiting and start showing up as the leaders, founders, and professionals they already are. An Australian-based personal-brand stylist and founder of Let's Get Visible®, she holds a BA in Psychology and Sociology and has trained with the Australian Style Institute in personal and editorial styling, as well as creative direction. She believes a personal brand is not a business tool–it is a human one. For the people she works with, visibility is not vanity. It is a strategy.

Anna Papadakis is a Transformational Wellness Guide, Jivamukti Yoga teacher, ceremonial cacao facilitator, breathwork practitioner, and retreat creator. Her path has been shaped by intensive training in India, where she immersed herself in the study and practice of yoga, meditation, and spiritual traditions. She creates transformational experiences that blend conscious movement, breathwork, meditation, ceremonial cacao, sound healing, and ritual. Through her work, Anna holds space for others to reconnect with themselves, cultivate deeper awareness, and create meaningful transformation from within. Anna Papadakis, Transformational Wellness Guide What led you from a fast-paced life in Manhattan to creating spaces where people can slow down and reconnect with themselves? I think life eventually brought me to a place where I had to slow down and truly listen to myself. Manhattan was such a beautiful and transformative chapter of my life, but the fast pace, constant stimulation, and always feeling like I had to be “doing” eventually left me craving something deeper. My own journey of healing, self-discovery, nature, movement, ceremony, and coming back into my body showed me how powerful it can be to simply create space to breathe and be. I realized that what I was searching for within myself was something I wanted to offer others too. Now, creating spaces where people can slow down, feel safe enough to go inward, reconnect with their bodies and hearts, and remember who they are feels less like a career and more like a calling. How have your studies in India shaped the way you guide people through yoga, meditation, and inner transformation? My time studying in India profoundly shaped the way I understand yoga, not simply as a physical practice, but as a way of living, feeling, and seeing the world. India taught me to approach the practices with reverence, humility, and a deeper understanding of their roots. My Jivamukti Yoga practice has been especially influential. It brought together asana, meditation, breath, chanting, philosophy, devotion, and conscious living in a way that helped me understand that yoga is ultimately about connection within ourselves and with all beings. That perspective deeply informs the way I guide others. I’m less interested in simply teaching someone how to move through a pose and more interested in creating a space where they can become quiet enough to listen inward, release what no longer serves them, and reconnect with their own truth. For me, yoga and meditation are beautiful doorways into deeper self-awareness and transformation. What does a trauma-informed approach to Breathwork change about the way you hold space for someone? A trauma-informed approach has taught me that holding space is less about guiding someone toward a particular experience and more about creating the safety and freedom for them to discover what they need in that moment. It means honoring each person’s nervous system, offering choice, never forcing a release, and understanding that what feels healing for one person may feel overwhelming for another. I try to create an environment where people feel supported, grounded, and empowered to listen to their own bodies. For me, Breathwork isn’t about pushing someone to break through. It’s about helping them build a deeper relationship with themselves. Sometimes transformation happens through a powerful release, and sometimes it happens in the quietest moment when someone finally feels safe enough to simply breathe. Why do you think practices such as Breathwork and meditation are becoming increasingly important in modern wellness? I think we’re living in a world that constantly asks us to move faster, do more, and stay connected, while giving us very little space to simply be. Breathwork and meditation offer something we’re deeply craving, a way to slow down, come back into our bodies, quiet the noise, and reconnect with ourselves. For me, these practices aren’t about escaping everyday life, they’re about learning how to meet life with more presence, awareness, and compassion. Breathwork can help us gently connect with what may be beneath the surface, while meditation teaches us to become more comfortable with stillness and listening inward. I think their growing importance reflects a collective longing for deeper connection. In a world that can feel so fast and disconnected, creating space to breathe, feel, and come home to yourself is not a luxury. It’s something we truly need. What do you wish people better understood about ceremonial cacao before experiencing it for the first time? I wish people understood that ceremonial cacao is so much more than a beautiful, nourishing drink. Cacao is a powerful superfood and plant medicine that has been honored by Indigenous cultures for centuries, and when approached with intention and respect, it can become a beautiful tool for connection, presence, and inner reflection. It’s not about having a dramatic or mystical experience. It’s about creating space to slow down, open the heart, and become more present with yourself. Cacao naturally invites us to soften and listen inward. I also want people to understand that the experience is different for everyone. Sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes deeply grounding, and sometimes simply a warm, nourishing moment of connection. There’s no “right” way to experience cacao. For me, it’s about approaching this sacred plant with reverence, intention, and gratitude, while honoring its cultural roots and the wisdom that has been carried through generations. When you combine Breathwork, cacao, movement, sound, and meditation, what can emerge that might not happen through one practice alone? When these practices come together, something really beautiful can happen because we’re engaging the whole person, not just the mind or the body, but the breath, emotions, senses, and spirit. Breathwork can help us move energy and emotions, movement brings us deeper into the body, cacao offers grounding and heart connection, sound creates another pathway for feeling and expression, and meditation gives us the stillness to listen and integrate. Together, they can create a space where we soften enough to truly meet ourselves. Sometimes that may be a powerful release, sometimes a moment of clarity, and sometimes simply the feeling of being deeply present and connected. For me, the magic is in the integration. Nothing needs to be forced or “fixed.” When we slow down, become present, and give ourselves permission to feel, we can access parts of ourselves that everyday life often keeps quiet. Sometimes, that’s where the deepest transformation begins. What is one simple practice someone can use when they feel disconnected from themselves or overwhelmed by everyday life? One of the simplest practices I come back to is simply returning to the breath. You don’t need a special space, a long meditation, or anything complicated. Pause for a moment, place one hand on your heart and one on your belly, close your eyes if it feels comfortable, and take a few slow, intentional breaths. Feel your feet on the ground and notice what is happening in your body without needing to change it. Then gently ask yourself, “What do I need right now?” and give yourself a moment to truly listen. We spend so much of our lives moving from one thing to the next that even a few conscious breaths can bring us back into the present moment. Sometimes reconnecting with yourself doesn’t require doing more. It simply requires pausing long enough to remember that you’re already there. What does “coming home to yourself” mean to you personally? To me, “coming home to yourself” means returning to the part of you that exists beneath the noise, expectations, and constant doing. It’s remembering who you are when you’re not trying to be anything for anyone else. It’s learning to listen to your body, trust your intuition, honor your emotions, and give yourself permission to slow down. I think so much of our lives can be spent looking outside of ourselves for answers, when so much wisdom is already within us. For me, coming home to myself is not about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering the person I’ve always been. It’s feeling grounded, present, connected, and at peace enough to hear my own inner voice again. And I think that’s ultimately what I hope to create for others, a space where they can pause, soften, and remember that home has been within them all along. What do you hope people carry back into their everyday lives after experiencing one of your sessions, ceremonies, or retreats? More than anything, I hope people leave with a little more connection to themselves and carry that feeling with them long after the session, ceremony, or retreat is over. I hope they remember what it felt like to slow down, breathe, soften, and truly listen to what was happening within them. Maybe they leave with more clarity, a lighter heart, a deeper sense of trust, or simply the realization that they don’t always have to be doing more to be enough. My deepest hope is that the experience becomes something they can return to in their everyday lives, a reminder to pause, breathe, listen to their intuition, and honor what they need. If they leave feeling more at home in their own body, more connected to their heart, and a little more trusting of their own path, then I feel like the work has done exactly what it was meant to do. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anna Papadakis

Written by Vicky Murgatroyd, Emotional Safety & Relationship Specialist Vicky Murgatroyd is an Emotional Safety Educator and Relationship Specialist who helps people break recurring conflict cycles. With over 15 years of experience working with trauma-informed relational patterns, she teaches emotional safety as the foundation for meaningful, secure connections. Most couples don't have a communication problem, they have a nervous system problem. But while we keep working on our communication, the same arguments keep running, taking us further from resolution and connection than either partner wants. The real reason your arguments keep escalating When an argument starts, most people try harder to get their point across, they explain, justify, and repeat themselves in slightly different ways. They’re convinced that if they could just find the right combination of words, their partner would finally understand. We tend to believe that this understanding will end the argument and return us to our usual connection, even though historically, it never has. Because the argument isn't going in circles because the words aren't right. It's going in circles because both nervous systems are in a threat response. From that threat response, we’re unable to receive or process the words being said, however well structured or factually correct they are. What's happening beneath every circular argument When tension rises, like it does when we’re in conflict with our partner, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for empathy, rational thinking, and communication, is deprioritised. Instead, survival and self-protection take centre stage. This is never a conscious decision. From that state, your partner doesn’t have the capacity to process your words. They’re responding to the activation underneath them, the urgency in your voice, the tension in your body, the felt sense of threat that your nervous system is broadcasting, which also isn’t a conscious decision. It’s two activated nervous systems trying to communicate through avenues that aren’t available in that moment and accidentally escalating one another, even though the intention is to repair. The resolution to your arguments is in your body The quickest route through conflict involves us working from where the activation is, in your body. This is how we bring both people back to a physiological state where communication is neurologically available again. This is what I teach my clients to get them out of these argument loops. The RESET process is a five-stage framework that moves you from those triggered states to a repair-ready state by working directly with the nervous system. Through the five stages, we discharge the activation, identify what's actually happening beneath it, and return to a state where you can show up for the conversation your relationship needs right now. Conflict like this becomes a way of resolving issues and bringing you closer together. In the next section, I'll take you through the first two stages. These alone can interrupt an argument that would otherwise run for hours. 1. Recognise: Identify what's happening in your body right now Without judgment or trying to fix it immediately, take a moment right now and notice, "Where are you feeling activation in your body? Is there tightness in your chest? Heat in your face or throat? A heaviness in your stomach? A restlessness that makes it hard to be still?" In our societies, we are deeply conditioned to live in our minds, so initially accessing the sensations in the body can feel a little clunky. It requires repetition for it to become easier, and practising this in moments of lower activation, outside those big blow-ups just yet, is deeply helpful. Start here, without trying to analyse it or make it make sense, just acknowledge the sensations in your body. “I’m having a physical response to what just happened. My heart is beating quickly, I can feel tightness in my chest and heat in my face.” That's a human nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. It’s detected a threat, and it’s responding to it. When we take even a second to recognise it, we become the observer of the pattern rather than being swept away in it. 2. Exhale: Work directly with the body to create space In this stage, we use somatic techniques to discharge some of that activation, creating the space for us to process the reaction and the necessary emotions without being overtaken by them or acting from them, which is often where our arguments escalate. Start by shaking your body. Yes, this will likely feel strange, but egos aside, shaking is one of the most primal and effective ways to discharge stress from your nervous system. Animals do it instinctively after a threat has passed. Let your body move, arms, legs, shoulders, loosely and freely. Let your breath flow deeply as you do, and do this for around 30 seconds. When you come to stillness, take a deep breath and do a slow scan of your body. Notice what's shifted and where any activation is still noticeable. Has anything softened or moved? Next, take your left hand and place your palm gently over your left eye, covering it completely. With your uncovered right eye, slowly roll your gaze upward toward the ceiling. As you hold that for around 30 seconds, repeat internally, “It’s 'ok' that there is activation in my body. I am still safe.” Stay with this until you feel a physical release, like a deep breath, a yawn, a shiver, or a sense of something softening or releasing. Then gently lower your gaze. Finally, take a full breath in, and as you exhale, hum. As loud as feels comfortable. Really let yourself feel it resonating in your chest and throat. Repeat this three times. Notice what's different now from when you started. That shift, even if subtle, is your nervous system moving out of a threat response. From that slightly more regulated place, reconnection becomes possible. Access the RESET process here to end arguments quicker The remaining three stages of the RESET process take you from this even slightly more regulated place into the heart of what the argument was actually about. Together, these five stages move an argument that would otherwise last hours into something that can be resolved in minutes, all by addressing the nervous system conditions that were making resolution difficult first. The full guided RESET training is free and available on my site. In it, I guide you through the entire process, including the complete somatic exercise sequence and the framework for moving from triggered to repair-ready in 18 minutes. It's designed to be used in real time, for me to guide you through it in the moment you need it most. Understanding why your arguments last longer than they need to is a great place to start. Having a process that actually interrupts the cycle is where real change happens. Access the full RESET training here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Vicky Murgatroyd Vicky Murgatroyd, Emotional Safety & Relationship Specialist Vicky Murgatroyd is an Emotional Safety Educator and Relationship Specialist who helps people break recurring conflict cycles and build secure, fulfilling connections. With over 15 years of experience working with trauma-informed relational patterns, she has helped thousands of clients understand their triggers, regulate reactivity, and rebuild connection from a place of safety rather than survival. Vicky’s work focuses on teaching emotional safety as a foundational human skill, using intimate relationships as the arena where our deepest patterns are most visible.

Written by Sarah Hurst, Coach and Creator of the Mind Medicine Movement™ Drawing on her own healing journey through cancer, Sarah Hurst is a coach and creator of the Mind Medicine Movement™, helping people calm the nervous system, reconnect to themselves, and take back their power to heal body, mind, and soul. When life becomes frightening or uncertain, we are often told to “stay positive”. It is usually said with love, but when you are facing cancer, grief, trauma or another life-changing experience, positivity can sometimes feel like another thing you have to get right. Hope is different. Hope does not ask you to deny what hurts, it simply leaves the door open to the possibility that something else may still be ahead. What is hope? Hope and positivity are often used as though they mean the same thing, but I believe there is an important difference between them. Positive thinking tends to focus on expecting a good outcome, whereas hope can exist even when we genuinely do not know what the outcome will be. During my own cancer journey, I learnt that I did not need to convince myself that everything was going to be fine. Sometimes I was frightened, sometimes I was overwhelmed, and there were moments when I could not see very far ahead at all. What I needed was something quieter and more believable than certainty. I needed to know that there was still possibility. Psychology gives us an interesting way of understanding this. Hope Theory, developed by psychologist Charles Snyder, describes hope as involving both agency, meaning our sense that we can move towards something meaningful, and pathways, meaning our ability to see or create possible routes towards it. Hope, in this sense, is not simply wishing for the best. It contains movement, possibility and a sense that we may still have some choices available to us. That distinction matters enormously when so much of life feels beyond our control. Positivity can become pressure There is nothing wrong with positivity. Optimism, gratitude and noticing what is good can all be valuable parts of emotional wellbeing. The problem comes when positivity becomes an expectation rather than something that arises naturally. People facing cancer know this particularly well. Comments such as “You’ve got to stay positive”, “Everything happens for a reason” or “Don’t think negatively” are usually intended to reassure, but they can unintentionally silence the very emotions someone needs space to feel. Fear does not disappear because we tell ourselves not to feel it. Neither do grief, anger, sadness or uncertainty. When positivity asks us to push these feelings away, it can create another layer of pressure because now, not only are we frightened, but we may also believe we are somehow failing at healing because we are frightened. This is where I think hope offers something much kinder. Hope can say, “This is really hard, and I am frightened, but I am still here.” It allows reality and possibility to exist in the same sentence, which is very different from pretending everything is okay. Hope makes room One of the things I feel strongly about in my work is that emotional healing needs room for the whole human experience. We do not heal by dividing emotions into good ones that are allowed and bad ones that need to disappear. Sometimes fear needs to be heard. Sometimes grief needs to be felt. Sometimes anger is telling us that a boundary has been crossed, and sometimes sadness simply needs somewhere safe to land. Hope does not compete with these emotions. It can sit beside them. You can be terrified before a scan and still hope for good news. You can grieve the life you had before illness and still wonder what your future might hold. You can feel exhausted by treatment and still have a tiny part of you imagining walking along a beach again, seeing your children grow, taking another holiday or simply waking one morning and feeling more like yourself. Holding hope does not make the difficult feelings less real. It simply means they are not the only thing that is real. Hope creates possibility This is one reason hope sits so firmly within the Purpose pillar of my Slow Down, Identity, Purpose and Self-Love (SIPS™) framework. Purpose gives us something to move towards, and hope allows us to believe that movement is still possible. Purpose does not have to mean discovering a huge mission for your life. In the middle of illness or emotional overwhelm, that idea can feel ridiculous. Purpose might simply be wanting enough energy to sit in the garden, having something in the diary you genuinely want to do, reconnecting with someone you love, or deciding that you want to feel a little more peaceful in your own body. Those small desires matter because they point towards a future. In my article Why Healing Begins With Gentle SIPS™, I explored why slowing down comes first in my framework. When we create enough space to hear ourselves again, we begin to notice what matters. From there, identity and purpose can gently start to emerge. Hope gives that purpose somewhere to breathe. It reminds us that the future has not been completely written yet. Why hope matters Hope is not just a lovely idea. It has been studied extensively within psychology and healthcare, including among people living with cancer. A systematic review examining hope during cancer treatment found that hope was positively associated with factors including quality of life, social support and spiritual or existential wellbeing, and negatively associated with psychological distress and depression. A further meta-analysis examining positive psychological resources also found a positive association between hope and quality of life in people with cancer. These findings need to be understood carefully. They do not mean that hope cures cancer or that someone who is struggling emotionally is somehow affecting their chances of recovery. That kind of message places an enormous and unfair responsibility on the person who is ill. What the research does suggest is that hope can be an important psychological resource. When life becomes uncertain, having something meaningful to move towards can influence how we experience that uncertainty, how we cope and how connected we remain to life beyond what is happening today. For me, that is where hope becomes powerful. Finding everyday glimmers Hope does not always arrive as a great surge of confidence. Quite often, it begins much more quietly, through what I call glimmers. A glimmer is a tiny moment that catches your attention because something about it feels good, safe or alive. It might be sunlight coming through the window, the warmth of a mug between your hands, birdsong, somebody making you laugh, a favourite piece of music or the feeling of fresh air on your face. These moments can be easy to overlook, particularly when the nervous system has been living in survival mode. When we are frightened, the brain naturally becomes more alert to threat. As I explored in my article The Nervous System and Healing: Why Calm Is Not a Luxury, It’s Essential, slowing down helps us begin to notice cues of safety again. A glimmer does not need to make you happy. That is important. You might still be having an awful day and notice the sky for ten seconds, and the power is in recognising that, alongside everything difficult, something else exists too. When we begin collecting these tiny moments, we create evidence that our experience is not entirely made up of fear. There are still moments of connection, beauty, humour, comfort and meaning available to us. Those moments may seem very small, but sometimes hope begins exactly there. Hope needs honesty There is another side to hope that I think is particularly important when we are talking about cancer and serious illness. Hope needs to be allowed to evolve. At the beginning of a diagnosis, hope may mean cure. During treatment, it may mean responding well or reaching the end of chemotherapy. Later, it might become hope for a clear scan, more time, less pain, a meaningful holiday, a conversation with someone you love, or simply a peaceful day. Changing what we hope for is not necessarily giving up. Sometimes it is an extraordinarily courageous way of meeting reality while continuing to remain connected to what matters. Research involving people with cancer increasingly recognises the importance of realistic hope, including conversations that honestly acknowledge prognosis while still allowing meaningful hope to exist. Hope does not require false reassurance. In fact, I think authentic hope is stronger when it is grounded in truth. There is a world of difference between saying, “Everything will definitely be fine” and saying, “I don't know exactly what happens next, but we will keep looking for what is possible.” The second leaves room for reality, but it does not close the future. When hope feels distant There will be times when hope feels almost impossible to access. This is particularly true when somebody has just received frightening news, is waiting for results, or has been living with uncertainty for a long time. At those times, asking someone to “find hope” may feel almost as unhelpful as asking them to think positively. We do not need to turn hope into another job. Sometimes we borrow hope. It might come from the medical team, who can still see possibilities we cannot yet see. It might come from a partner, friend, therapist, or coach who can hold a steadier perspective while ours has temporarily disappeared. It might come from hearing somebody else's story, being reminded of something we still care about, or simply having someone beside us who does not try to fix what we are feeling. Hope can be relational. We do not always have to manufacture it alone. This is also why I believe support matters so much after a cancer diagnosis or major life event. There are moments when our own view becomes incredibly narrow because fear takes up all the available space. Having someone calmly walking alongside us can help widen that view again. Hope is not certainty Perhaps the thing I most want people to understand is that hope does not require certainty. If we wait until we know everything will be okay before allowing ourselves to hope, hope becomes impossible in many of the moments when we need it most. Hope lives in uncertainty. It says there might be another path. There might be another option. There might be another beautiful moment tomorrow. There might be strength in me that I have not discovered yet. There might still be life here that is worth leaning towards. This is why I believe hope is more powerful than positive thinking. Positivity can sometimes ask us to change the way we feel about what is happening. Hope allows us to feel exactly as we do while still remaining connected to possibility, and that feels much more human to me. Choose one small hope If life feels uncertain at the moment, you do not need to create a grand vision of the future. Start much closer to where you are. Ask yourself what you hope for today. Not what you think you should hope for, but what would genuinely feel meaningful. Perhaps you hope to sleep well tonight, feel calm for ten minutes, have a conversation you have been avoiding, or notice one glimmer that reminds you there is still beauty around you. Then ask yourself whether there is one tiny thing you can do that supports that hope. This is where hope begins to become more than wishful thinking because, even when we cannot control the outcome, we can sometimes participate in the next step. And if hope feels too far away to hold by yourself right now, allow someone else to hold a little of it with you. You do not need to see the whole path ahead. Sometimes healing begins with believing there may still be a path and taking one gentle step towards it. If you are navigating cancer, illness, or another major life change and would value support in finding your way through fear and back towards hope, you can explore my coaching and the Mind Medicine Movement™. Sometimes the first step is simply having someone in your corner while you begin to see what might still be possible. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Hurst Sarah Hurst, Coach and Creator of the Mind Medicine Movement™ After walking her own path through cancer, Sarah Hurst discovered that true healing isn’t just physical, it’s emotional, spiritual, and deeply personal. She went on to create the Mind Medicine Movement™, helping others calm their nervous systems, rediscover purpose, and reconnect with themselves through her SIPS™ framework, Slow Down, Identity, Purpose, Self-Love. Today, Sarah supports people living with or beyond cancer and anyone seeking calm, clarity, and wellness through her coaching, meditation, and touch therapy practice in Hove, East Sussex. She also offers an online coaching service.

Written by Annyx Day, B.A., M.A., RTT Hypnotherapist and RTC Success Coach Annyx Day is the founder and CEO of Living Life Above, Moving Yourself Forward, an RTT Practitioner/Certified Hypnotherapist, and an RTC Success Coach. She helps and guides her clients to excel in their personal and professional lives. Depending on who you talk to, therapy for maintaining a healthy mind is gaining momentum. Some people still think seeking therapy is taboo. Some people don’t believe they need therapy. Some people don’t see the value based on their experiences with previous therapists. Some people praise themselves for seeking therapy with the purpose of self-betterment. I truly believe we are all on this planet with our own destined purpose, which, in turn, contributes to the overall evolution. I have grown to believe we have an obligation to heal our wounds and personal trauma in order to upgrade our lineage and leave this world in a better place than when we found it. My personal experience with therapy is mixed. I have talked with four different traditional therapists over the years to resolve trauma, grief, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), miscarriage, postpartum depression, anxiety, and stress. Each therapist was different, and my results were different each time. From one extreme to another, I saw one therapist for 6 sessions and one for over two years. But one thing always stood out, I was still left with something inside that was unresolved or unhealed. I discovered Rapid Transformational Therapy® (RTT®) in 2021. I was so intrigued that I signed up for the RTT® course with Marisa Peer, the creator and founder of the RTT® School. I knew nothing about Marisa Peer, RTT®, or hypnotherapy. Therefore, this was a huge leap of faith for me, and as a result, it changed my life in so many positive ways. RTT® was the catalyst for these profound changes, and it has helped me finally heal from past trauma, weight issues, PTSD, permanent injury, grief, loss, bereavement, postpartum depression, anxiety, and stress in only 6 RTT® sessions. Yes, I healed all of these struggles in only 6 RTT® sessions. As Marisa Peer encourages all of her graduates to start their own businesses and help others using the RTT® methodology, that is exactly what I did. In 2022, I created and founded Living Life Above to help others the way RTT® helped me. I was paying it forward, and my clients were experiencing amazing results themselves and succeeding beyond what they thought was possible. I wanted to expand my reach and continue helping my RTT® clients, so in 2023, I registered for Marisa Peer’s Rapid Transformational Coaching® (RTC®) course as well. RTC® was the catalyst for my expansion and has helped me refocus my purpose, embrace a growth mindset, manifest what I want in life, and flourish with gratitude. In essence, RTT® is about healing your past wounds, trauma, and what is keeping you stuck, while RTC® is about adopting a growth mindset and helping you manifest the life you really want and deserve. In my next Brainz Magazine article, I will contrast RTT® and RTC®. Why are people afraid of therapy? It is said that people avoid therapy due to the stigma that asking for help equates to weakness. This fear often stems from anticipating judgment, the sheer vulnerability of opening up to a stranger, a lack of trust, or the daunting realization that the process requires confronting painful emotions and making life changes. Here are some of the root causes and reasons why people decide to avoid therapy: 1. Fear of judgment People’s fear of being judged by others is valid and very understandable. Here is the truth, a therapist who demonstrates true integrity and an excellent work ethic will approach every session with an unbiased mindset and will guide you to true healing. It is a matter of finding the right one who understands what you are going through and has proven experience in helping others with similar issues. Connection with your therapist is highly important, and your level of healing is a direct reflection of that. 2. Vulnerability Disclosing past wounds and discussing trauma is very, very painful. Here is the truth, doing so with the right therapist who uses the right methodology brings about inner peace and freedom. Here is one important thing I have learned over the years. Sweeping past traumatic experiences under the rug only amplifies them, whether you realize it or not, and they surface at the most inopportune times in your life. Enter triggers here. Triggers can happen anywhere with anyone. You don’t see them coming, but you sure feel them when they happen. They hit you like a ton of bricks. Unwanted and unhealed memories can trigger unwanted feelings, behaviours, and actions. This is where the unwanted patterns happen, and the vicious cycle continues. In order to change those unwanted patterns, you need to go through this vulnerable stage and get the help you need from the right therapist to finally get to the other side of healing, where the wounds of past trauma no longer have such a hold on you. Yes, this is absolutely possible! 3. Fear of change People fear uncovering or discovering the root of their problems. Again, this is absolutely understandable. Here is the truth, this is where freedom exists. Freedom exists on the other side of healing the root of the problem. It is like extracting the poison from your body, mind, and soul so it no longer affects you the same way. Of course, change will ensue when you understand where the pattern comes from and when you heal from it. In changing the patterns, you free yourself from destructive behaviours. 4. Stigma and shame I use the term “maintaining a healthy mind” instead of “mental health issues.” There is a negative connotation attached to the latter term because it suggests something is wrong with the person instead of trying to understand what has happened in the person’s life for them to think the way they think and act the way they act. I have stated this in my previous articles, “Are Organizations Missing the Mark on Employee Mental Well-Being?”, “How Healing Past Trauma Can Unlock Peace, Purpose, and Happiness”, and “You Do Not Need Years of Therapy to Heal Trauma: An Interview with Annyx Day of Living Life Above.” Slowly, I am dismantling the stigma of seeking help from a therapist, one person at a time. In my opinion, if people shared their positive outcomes from working with a therapist with proven results, more people would be open to therapy. As a result, the stigma would no longer have a leg to stand on. As for shame, here is the truth, I would argue that everyone has shame about something or has situations in their lives they wish to eliminate. This is a part of life. We are not handed a book on life that describes how to navigate through everything on our paths. We do the best we can with the knowledge we have at the time. Most of us, if not all, wish we could go back in time and have a redo, a second chance, and be pardoned for the mistakes we made. Talking with a therapist who is empathetic and unbiased and who provides constructive support regarding the best way forward is necessary and advantageous for you. 5. The unknown Here is the truth, "Does anyone know what tomorrow brings?" Therefore, tomorrow is unknown, yet we still get up the next morning, start our routine, follow through with our obligations, nourish and hydrate ourselves during the day, complete our daily tasks and responsibilities, travel to and from destinations, come home, finish our days with our personal routines, and go to bed expecting to do the same tomorrow. Of course, there are parts of the therapy process that are unknown. Of course, there are parts of your past you wish you never had to revisit again. Of course, therapy is scary. Of course, you hope to feel better after your sessions. Here is the other truth, read your therapist’s client testimonials and pay attention to the results clients achieve from working with them. This usually gives you a great indication of the types of results you can also achieve. Yes, everyone is different, everyone has different lives, and everyone will have different experiences working with that therapist. But if the results point to positivity, then this may be possible for you as well. Here is a hard truth I have come to recognize when I meet new clients, if a person is skeptical, usually that tells me the person does not trust themselves enough to heal from what is keeping them stuck, and they may feel unworthy of receiving similar results. Five signs someone is ready to experience Rapid Transformational Therapy® (RTT®) Now that I have outlined why people are afraid or hesitant to go to a therapist, I will highlight the signs that someone is ready to experience RTT®. The RTT® methodology is considered more effective than traditional therapy because it combines techniques from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), hypnotherapy, and psychotherapy. Marisa Peer was a traditional therapist for over 30 years, and she always wondered why it took such a long time for her clients to achieve healing results. Therefore, she created and founded RTT®. Unlike traditional therapy, 3 to 6 RTT® sessions are recommended for profound, concrete, and permanent results. Usually, RTT® practitioners and certified hypnotherapists help clients heal one issue per session. Traditional therapy can feel like you are only scratching the surface of what is really going on, while an RTT® practitioner and certified hypnotherapist goes to the root, cause, and reason why you have an issue in the first place, right from the first session. In essence, RTT® is not a band-aid solution, and I have helped my clients achieve concrete, permanent, and profound results in 1 to 4 RTT® sessions. Some clients come to me never having experienced traditional therapy. Many clients come to me wanting to experience RTT® after being in traditional therapy for years. They want to find a different resolution and finally heal at the core of what is keeping them stuck. They feel traditional therapy has gotten them so far, and they are ready for more profound healing. Other clients come to me having tried traditional therapy, including eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), CBT, NLP, group and family therapy, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), talk therapy, Reiki, breathwork, holistic healing, and somatic healing, but never hypnotherapy. RTT® interests them because it sounds so promising, and the prospect of RTT® being a quicker way to healing is very appealing to them. In this section, I will highlight 5 points from my previous article titled “A Roadmap to Healing: How to Know You Are on the Right Path,” which are signs you are ready to experience RTT®. I outline various stages or levels of the healing journey that a person will most likely feel, experience, and overcome. 1. Recognizing I am a firm believer that many people eventually come to a crossroads at which they recognize there is a problem in their lives. Not long after, they are faced with a dilemma, a fork in the road, whether to go left or right. The road to the left represents denial, ignorance, irresponsibility toward personal healing, letting fear dictate your future, and so on. The road to the right represents the opposite. It represents courage, knowing you are worthy of not feeling this way anymore, healing your past, strength, curiosity, facing the unknown, loving yourself enough to know you deserve a better life, exploring limiting beliefs, moving beyond what is keeping you stuck, personal growth, expansion, breaking free from the status quo, having faith in your soul wanting more out of life, and so on. First and foremost, I truly believe everyone at a crossroads has that choice, to go left or right, and that choice determines their outcome. 2. Willingness At that crossroads, willingness is choosing to go right. It represents the willingness to explore why a problem has been plaguing your life and why it has kept you stuck in a looping pattern, the willingness to give yourself a chance at a better life, the willingness to stop fighting and start healing, the willingness to trust yourself and listen to yourself instead of self-sabotaging, the willingness to do something different to get different results, the willingness to prioritize yourself, and the willingness to make that commitment to yourself. 3. Curiosity You have been helped by counsellors, therapists, and psychotherapists. It has been helpful, but you feel there is still something there. It may feel like something is still lingering in your mind, body, and/or memory. It feels like traditional therapy modalities have gotten you so far, and you want to explore another modality, a modern methodology. Then, RTT® may be right for you. RTT® is a different type of therapy with different results. 4. Commitment Once you have made that commitment to yourself, you are in it through thick and thin, for better or worse. For some, making that commitment may be easy. For others, it may be the hardest thing they have ever done. Making that commitment to yourself is prioritizing yourself, wanting better for yourself, and loving yourself. You are declaring your self-worth by making that commitment. It can also be understood as taking accountability to be better and to do better. You are choosing the path to self-betterment. More importantly, if you are fully committed to yourself and your healing journey, you are setting yourself up for a much better life. 5. Action Commitment means taking action. To commit to something without taking action is counterintuitive and does you a great disservice. Taking action involves tapping into a different mindset, putting your body in gear even when you don’t want to or don’t know how, facing the deep emotions and feelings you have been avoiding, even if they are scary and uncomfortable, and reaching out for help. That is the starting point. The key to success is being guided by someone who knows how to heal from past trauma and who has done it for herself. My clients have stated that the actions of reaching out to me and completing their RTT® sessions with me were some of the best things they have done for themselves. If healing yourself is something you wish to explore, if you are ready to heal your past wounds, trauma, and what is keeping you stuck, or if you have started your healing journey and want to experience RTT® sessions with me to achieve true healing in less than 6 months, contact me here, 613-797-8096, or Living Life Above, and I will be honoured to help and guide you! If you would like to know how I have helped my clients heal themselves, please read my clients’ testimonials at Living Life Above. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Annyx Day, B.A., M.A. Annyx Day, B.A., M.A., RTT Hypnotherapist and RTC Success Coach Annyx Day is bridging the gap between people’s personal and professional excellence. Regardless of the various careers she upheld, one theme always stood out to her. Why do people do what they do in their personal as well as professional lives, and what is behind people’s behaviours? Her life’s purpose has always been to help people and to inspire people to move beyond life’s obstacles and challenges and to live a better, more evolved life. Annyx is the founder and CEO of Living Life Above, Moving Yourself Forward, a Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) Practitioner/Certified Hypnotherapist, and a Rapid Transformational Coaching (RTC) Success Coach.

Written by Richard Harrison, Harmonic Resonance Guide Richard Harrison is a Harmonic Resonance Guide and founder of Compassionate Breath. With a rich background in yoga, meditation, and breathwork, he empowers individuals to transform trauma into resilience through his unique blend of breath, sound, and symbolic geometry. As children, we are often unaware of the profound impact that early experiences can have on our lives. For some, these moments become echoes, persistent feelings that shape our identity and influence our choices long into adulthood. At the age of seven, I experienced one such moment that left an indelible mark on my life. It was during a morning assembly, a seemingly ordinary event that transformed into a defining incident. I became dizzy, collapsed, and was taken outside while classmates stared, some even laughing. I didn’t realise it then, but this trauma would cultivate a fear of being seen in public that I would carry for years. The incident: A moment frozen in time I still remember the cool morning air, the smell of polished floors, and the sound of muffled whispers echoing through the assembly hall. As I stood among my peers singing ‘Morning Has Broken’, I suddenly felt lightheaded, the world tilting beneath me. I remember the sensation of nausea rising up, the heat in my cheeks, and then vomiting. I knocked into the children in front of me, and everything spiraled into chaos. The next thing I knew, I was outside the hall, sitting on a cold chair with a bucket beside me. I felt exposed and vulnerable, stripped of the protection of my childhood innocence. Behind me, the assembly ended, and as I sat there, I could hear the whispers and laughter of my classmates as they filed past me, some pointing, some mocking. Their laughter echoed in my ears, not just as noise but as a judgment that pierced my sense of safety and belonging. In that moment, I felt shame wash over me. I wanted to disappear into the ground. I felt lonely, surrounded by a sea of faces that had once been familiar but now felt alien and hostile. I was taken out of the hall, but my spirit felt trapped in that moment, unable to escape the weight of what had just happened. When my mother arrived shortly after, I felt a flicker of safety. As we made our way home together, I found solace in the familiar rhythm of her footsteps and the warmth of her presence. My home was my safe haven, a place where the echoes of laughter could not reach me. But deep down, I knew that I would have to return to that place, the school, where the laughter still lingered in the air, like a ghost haunting my memories. The lasting impact: Fear of being seen This incident planted a seed of fear within me, a fear of being judged, ridiculed, and exposed. Over the years, this fear manifested as a pervasive anxiety that affected nearly every aspect of my life, particularly in social and professional settings. In school, I became known as the quiet one, often overlooked, sometimes even invisible. I learned to hide in the background, convinced that blending in was safer than standing out. When group discussions arose, the thought of speaking sent a wave of dread through me. I would rehearse what I wanted to say, but when the moment came, my voice would falter, or I would remain silent altogether. This quietness was not a choice, it was a shield I wore to protect myself from the embarrassment and shame of being seen. As I transitioned into the professional world, the impact of that childhood incident continued to resonate. I landed a teaching role in information technology (IT), a position that required me to speak in front of groups. I remember the sweat on my palms, the wobbly voice, and the racing heart as I addressed my students. Though I managed to get through it, each moment felt like a battle, and it was never truly enjoyable. Teaching became a challenge, not because of the content, but because of the fear that gripped me every time I stood in front of a room. This anxiety was amplified when I moved into a role in the pharmaceutical industry, where the pressure to perform was unbearable. Speaking to groups and persuading others was a fundamental part of the job, yet I found myself going out of my way to avoid these situations. I would skip meetings, dodge presentations, and seek any excuse to stay behind the scenes. This avoidance made my work life incredibly difficult, as I was trapped in a role where visibility was essential. It was during this time that I first encountered Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Initially, the company wanted us to use it to develop sales techniques, but I discovered a different application, managing my anxiety. NLP provided me with some wonderful tools to reframe my thoughts and control my responses, but it was never a complete fix. The trauma was still there, simmering beneath the surface, and while I learned to cope, I knew I had not fully healed. Over time, I grew more comfortable speaking in front of others, especially as I transitioned into teaching roles where I felt more in control of the environment. Yet there remained an underlying dread, a fear that would bubble up unexpectedly, a whirling washing machine of anxiety in my stomach. Despite my progress, the echoes of that childhood incident continued to reverberate through my life. It was only through the lens of compassion that I began to heal. I learned to extend kindness to my inner child, the child who had felt so alone in that moment. I embraced the fear, acknowledged it, and transformed it into a source of strength. Using compassion toward myself, toward my inner child, and toward all that came with those experiences was the only thing that truly shifted the narrative. It allowed me to reclaim my voice, not just for others to hear, but for myself to finally feel seen. The journey of healing: Compassion as the key Understanding the root of my fear was the first step toward healing. It began with a deep awareness, an acknowledgment of the problem that had silently shaped my life. I realised that the fear of being seen was not just a quirk, it was a pattern woven from years of unprocessed trauma. This awareness was not something I had always known, it emerged only when I began the Compassion Key clearing work, a journey of introspection that unearthed memories I had long buried. The school assembly incident, once forgotten, resurfaced as a powerful clue, a reminder of the moment when my fear first took root. In the stillness of breath, a sacred space arose where I could listen. It was here that the emergence of the wounded inner child occurred, the child who had collapsed in that school assembly, the child who felt unseen and unworthy. I began to have conversations with this part of myself, speaking gently and reassuringly, as I would to a dear friend or a frightened child. “You are safe now. You are seen. You are enough.” I want to acknowledge the amazing people on the Compassion Key journey who helped me create that sacred space to listen. Their wisdom, support, and shared experiences provided the foundation for my healing. Together, we cultivated an environment of understanding and compassion, making it possible for me to face the shadows of my past. Giving compassion to the wounded aspects of my being became a profound act of reclamation. I learned to embrace the shame, the embarrassment, and the loneliness, not as burdens to carry, but as stories that needed to be heard and understood. As the wounded child reintegrated into my consciousness, I felt as though a missing part of me had been rediscovered. But this trauma is just one thread in a larger tapestry. Each wounded aspect from my childhood, be it moments of misunderstanding, silent fears, or unspoken disappointments, is connected. They form a constellation of experiences that shaped my early world. Each piece carries its own story, its own pain, and its own wisdom. As I began to heal this particular wound, I realised that the others were not far behind. They, too, were calling for recognition, for compassion, for healing. It became clear that true integration means not only addressing one pain but embracing them all. It was as if the pieces of a broken mirror were finally coming together, reflecting a more complete and authentic image of who I am. Each story, once fragmented and hidden, now contributes to a fuller, richer narrative, a narrative of healing, wholeness, and resilience. I began to notice the changes. When I stood in front of a group, the overbearing feeling of fear, the worry, and the nausea that once gripped me began to fade. They were replaced by a sense of calm and clarity. Don’t get me wrong, those natural nerves that can be helpful when performing still lingered, but the crippling thought patterns were a thing of the past. The fear that had once paralysed me was no longer in control, it had been transformed into a source of energy that I could channel into my presentations. I realised that our emotions are all there to be felt. They are not the enemy, they are our allies. It is when they become stuck and take over unnecessarily that problems arise. I learned to feel those emotions fully, to give compassion to them, and to honour them as part of my journey. This practice of compassion is the best way I know to bring emotions back into a state of natural function, a state where they serve us rather than hinder us. Through this journey, I discovered that healing is not about erasing the past, it is about integrating it. It is about transforming fear into strength, shame into compassion, and silence into voice. In doing so, I reclaimed not only my voice but also my power to inspire others to do the same. Reclaiming the power of being seen Today, I stand before you not as someone defined by past trauma, but as a person who has transformed pain into purpose. My journey has taught me that our past does not define us, it shapes us. Through the lens of compassion, we can heal the wounds that once held us back. This trauma, the incident that seemed so small in the grand scheme of life, is not the worst people have experienced. Yet, it serves as a poignant example of how something we may have forgotten about can still impact us today. It reminds us that even the most seemingly trivial moments can leave lasting imprints on our psyche, shaping the way we navigate the world and interact with others. In my case, the echo of that school assembly reverberated through the years, influencing my social interactions and professional choices. It was a reminder that trauma does not always manifest in dramatic ways, sometimes, it lingers quietly, shaping our fears and insecurities without our conscious awareness. I may one day share with you further events from my childhood, events that rocked me to my core and challenged my sense of safety and belonging. Each of these moments has contributed to the tapestry of my life, each a thread woven into the fabric of who I am today. But this article is not just about my journey, it is an invitation for you to reflect on your own. Perhaps you, too, carry echoes of moments that still resonate within you. Perhaps there are experiences that have shaped your fears, your choices, and your voice. I want to share my experiences, what has helped me, and what may help you. Through compassion, we can reclaim our narratives. We can transform our wounds into wisdom and our fears into fuel for growth. By sharing our stories, we honour our journeys and create space for others to do the same. Together, we can break the silence that often surrounds trauma and empower one another to rise, to heal, and to be seen. Embrace the power of being seen, and let your voice resonate with the truth of who you are. Your story matters, and it has the potential to inspire healing in others. You are not alone on this journey. We are all in this together. Join me on the journey My journey has not made me a guru or the finished article, it has made me a fellow traveller, someone who has walked the path of transformation and emerged with insights that can light the way for others. If these words resonate with you, I invite you to work with me and explore the practices I’ve cultivated on my journey. From breath and meditation to compassionate listening and healing techniques, each experience is there to empower you to navigate your own path of transformation. How to connect You can find me here or follow my journey here. Whether you’re seeking guidance, inspiration, or simply a space to reflect, I’m here to share what I’ve learned. The possibilities ahead The journey of transformation is not a destination, it is a series of moments, each one a chance to awaken to your true self. Together, we can explore the depths of possibility, uncover the wisdom within, and create a life that reflects our highest potential. Join me, and let’s walk this path together. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Richard Harrison Richard Harrison, Harmonic Resonance Guide Richard Harrison is a Harmonic Resonance Guide and the founder of Compassionate Breath, where he integrates compassion, stillness, and remembering to help individuals transform trauma into resilience. Through a unique blend of breath, sound, and symbolic geometry, he empowers others to reclaim their sovereignty and live authentically. Richard’s mission is to harmonise the human experience through coherence and compassion, offering transformative practices that resonate deeply with those seeking healing and alignment.

Written by April Michelle Ratchford, Occupational Therapist & Podcast Host April Ratchford, Occupational Therapist, Registered/Licensed, is an autistic occupational therapist and the voice behind Adulting with Autism. She supports neurodivergent adults across the world with relatable storytelling, lived wisdom, and empowering strategies for real-life challenges. Have you ever looked around and felt like everyone else's life is moving forward while yours is falling apart? Maybe you've failed at something important. Maybe your relationship ended. Maybe your child is struggling. Maybe your career isn't where you thought it would be. Maybe you're exhausted from constantly rebuilding after setback after setback. I know that feeling. For years, I believed life would eventually settle down if I worked hard enough, planned carefully enough, or simply pushed through one more challenge. What I've learned instead is that life rarely follows the script we write for it. If you're in a season where everything feels harder than it should, I want you to know something, your story is not over. The myth of the perfect life plan We're taught that life should move in a straight line. Graduate. Get the job. Build the career. Find the relationship. Buy the house. Live happily ever after. The problem is that real life doesn't work that way. Life is messy. Plans change. People leave. Dreams shift. Unexpected challenges show up without warning. The sooner we stop measuring ourselves against a perfect timeline, the sooner we can start appreciating our actual journey. What my life really looked like When people look at me today, they see an occupational therapist, podcast host, autism advocate, and mother of a college student. What they don't always see is everything that happened before that. At eighteen, I failed out of college. At twenty, I failed again. My mother believed in me enough to take out a private loan so I could attend nursing school. By twenty-two, I was a nurse. By twenty-six, I had my son, who was born with spina bifida. By twenty-nine, I found my mother dead. In my early thirties, I was fighting for autism services while being told my son wasn't autistic. Over the years, I survived divorce, homelessness, job loss, failing my occupational therapy boards by a single question, an abusive relationship, Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations, lung disease, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), autistic burnout, menopause, and watching my son struggle through college. There were moments when it felt like life kept knocking me down faster than I could get back up. Yet here I am. Resilience is not positive thinking One of the biggest misconceptions about resilience is that resilient people stay positive all the time. That's not resilience. Resilience isn't pretending everything is fine. Resilience is getting up after life knocks you on your ass. Again and again and again. There were times I was angry. Times I was exhausted. Times I wanted to quit. Times I questioned whether anything would ever improve. The goal wasn't to feel inspired every day. The goal was to take the next step. Sometimes that's all resilience really is. Disappointment does not mean failure Recently, I had to let go of a dream I had spent nearly a year planning. I was supposed to travel internationally. I had done the research. Bought the clothes. Planned the experiences. Then my son's educational funding situation changed, and helping him stay on track became the priority. I was disappointed. I was frustrated. I was angry. But disappointment isn't failure. Disappointment is evidence that something mattered. Too many people believe they have to pretend they're okay when they're not. You don't. Feel the disappointment. Acknowledge the loss. Just don't build a permanent home there. Sometimes the detour becomes the destination One of the lessons life keeps teaching me is that the path rarely looks the way we imagined. The opportunities that changed my life often arrived through setbacks I never wanted. Today, my son has another chance to continue his education. The podcast I started has grown to millions of downloads. I finally signed with an agency. I'm working fewer jobs than I once was. None of those victories happened according to my original plan. Every single one came through a detour. Every single one came after a setback. Every single one required me to keep moving when I wasn't sure where the road was leading. What I want you to remember If you're struggling right now, I want you to remember this, a bad chapter is not the end of the book. A failed semester is not the end of your education. A lost relationship is not the end of love. A career setback is not the end of your future. A disappointment is not the end of your story. Life is going to keep life-ing. There will be seasons that challenge everything you thought you knew about yourself. But if there's one thing I've learned after decades of setbacks, grief, burnout, and rebuilding, it's this, you are far more resilient than you think. Your story is still being written At fifty years old, I can tell you something with absolute certainty, the moments I thought would break me became the moments that built me. Not because they were easy. Not because I enjoyed them. But because I survived them. If you're standing in front of a closed door right now, keep moving. The next opportunity may not look like the one you lost. The next chapter may not resemble the one you planned. But your story is still being written. That means there is still hope. To learn more about autism, adulthood, transitions, and neurodivergent life, visit AdultingWithAutism.com and explore resources, coaching recommendations, and podcast episodes designed to help autistic young adults and families navigate life with confidence. Keep fierce. Keep focused. Keep adulting. 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, Occupational Therapist, Registered/Licensed, is an autistic occupational therapist, writer, and global advocate for neurodivergent adults. 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.

Kimberly Stokka Merendino, PhD, is a psychotherapist, writer, speaker, and nonprofit founder whose work explores what it means to remain fully alive through grief, uncertainty, caregiving, relationships, and life’s unexpected transitions. In this interview, she reflects on what more than two decades as a therapist and her own journey from clinician to caregiver have taught her about suffering, healing, enoughness, presence, and the quiet wisdom of ordinary life. Kimberly Stokka Merendino, Therapist Author & Nonprofit Founder How has your understanding of healing changed as you have moved between the roles of therapist, caregiver, writer, and nonprofit founder? I used to think about healing primarily as movement toward resolution. As a therapist, you are often helping people understand what happened, develop healthier patterns, repair relationships, or learn ways to cope with what cannot be changed. Then I became a caregiver, and healing became much less tidy. When my husband was diagnosed with stage IV lymphoma, there was no insight that could remove the uncertainty. There was no therapeutic intervention that could guarantee the outcome I desperately wanted. I began to understand healing less as fixing and more as learning how to remain present to life as it actually is. Writing has deepened that understanding, and founding PaRC Place has expanded it further. Sometimes healing means recovery. Sometimes it means acceptance, accompaniment, grieving, resting, or simply feeling safe enough not to hold everything together. I no longer think healing always means becoming who we were before something happened. Sometimes healing is discovering who we can become because we lived through it. After more than 25 years as a therapist, what has lived experience taught you about suffering that clinical training could not? Clinical training taught me a great deal about grief, trauma, relationships, family systems, and resilience. What it could not teach me was what uncertainty feels like at three o’clock in the morning when the person you love is seriously ill. When my husband was diagnosed with stage IV lymphoma, everything I understood intellectually became emotional. I learned how exhausting it is to live without answers. I learned that people can be grateful and terrified at the same time. I learned that strength is often much quieter than we imagine. Most importantly, I learned that people in pain do not always need someone to make meaning of their experience. Sometimes they need someone willing to stay beside them while there is no meaning yet. That changed me as a therapist. I am probably less interested now in finding the perfect thing to say and much more interested in helping people feel less alone. Suffering taught me that presence is not the consolation prize when we cannot fix something. Very often, presence is the gift. Where do you see people adding unnecessary suffering to pain that is already difficult enough? Life gives us plenty of pain that we do not choose: illness, loss, rejection, disappointment, aging, uncertainty, and change. Then we often add another layer. We tell ourselves we should be handling it better. We compare our grief to someone else’s. We believe we should already know the answer. We replay conversations, try to control outcomes, criticize ourselves for being tired, or decide that another person’s response determines our worth. That second layer is what fascinates me. Pain might say, “This relationship ended.” Unnecessary suffering says, “It ended because I wasn’t enough, and I will never be loved again.” Pain says, “I don’t know what will happen." Unnecessary suffering insists, “I have to figure this out right now.” We cannot eliminate the first kind of pain. I am not sure we would want to, much of it is part of loving and being human. But we can become more curious about the suffering we add. Sometimes freedom begins by asking, “What am I carrying that this moment never asked me to carry?” What do families facing a child’s life-limiting condition need that the traditional healthcare system often struggles to provide? Families need excellent medical care, of course, but they also need something medicine alone cannot provide–a place where the entire family is seen. When a child has a life-limiting condition, the diagnosis does not happen only to the child. It changes the rhythm of an entire household. Parents become caregivers and medical advocates. Siblings adapt around appointments and emergencies. Ordinary family life can begin to revolve around illness. Families need respite without guilt. They need emotional and spiritual support. They need people who understand anticipatory grief. They need opportunities to include siblings. They need environments where their child is recognized as a child first, not simply as a diagnosis. They also need permission to experience joy while living with something terribly difficult. That is part of the vision behind PaRC Place and Hayley House, the first home we plan to build. We want to create care that asks not only, “What does this child medically require?” but also, “What does this family need in order to continue being a family?” Those are different questions, and both matter. As you have developed the vision for Hayley House, what have you learned about supporting caregivers without losing sight of the family as a whole? One of the most important things I have learned is that caregiving rarely belongs to one person, even when one person carries most of the responsibility. Illness enters a family system. Everyone adjusts around it. The primary caregiver may be physically exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed, but partners, siblings, grandparents, and other family members are also experiencing their own versions of uncertainty, fear, grief, and change. That means supporting caregivers cannot simply mean telling them to practice better self-care. Sometimes the problem is not that a caregiver has forgotten to take a bath or go for a walk. The problem is that the family is carrying an enormous amount of responsibility with too little support. Respite matters because it gives families room to remember who they are beyond caregiving. The goal is not simply to help someone endure more. Sometimes the most compassionate intervention is making sure they don't have to carry so much in the first place. When someone is caught in perfectionism or constant striving, what helps them recognize that their worth is not tied to achievement? I think the first step is noticing how often we move the finish line. We tell ourselves we will finally feel settled when we finish the degree, get the promotion, lose the weight, raise successful children, earn enough money, help enough people, or accomplish whatever happens to sit next on the list. Then we arrive, and almost immediately create another finish line. For much of my own life, I quietly believed I was moving toward enough. Enough education. Enough experience. Enough accomplishment. Eventually, I began asking a different question, "What if enough was never something I needed to achieve?" That does not mean giving up ambition or growth. I still love learning, creating, building, and contributing. The difference is that those things no longer have to determine my worth. They can become expressions of a life that is already enough. That distinction changes everything. We can still grow without treating the person we are today as a problem that needs to be solved. How can people become more present in ordinary life without needing a crisis to show them what matters? I wish I could say we always learn this before the crisis. Often we do not. A serious illness has a way of making ordinary things suddenly feel sacred: drinking coffee together, sitting on the porch, hearing someone laugh from another room, waking up beside someone you love. But we do not have to wait for tragedy to begin paying attention. Presence is often much smaller than people imagine. It may mean leaving your phone in another room while you have dinner. Sitting outside for ten minutes without accomplishing anything. Noticing the light through a window. Listening to someone without preparing your response. Last Tuesday, I spent an ordinary day with my family. We talked, ate together, laughed, and simply spent time in one another's company. Nothing extraordinary happened. That was precisely the point. Life is happening while we are waiting for something important to happen. The practice is not creating more meaningful moments. It is becoming available to the ones already here. You describe yourself as a “student of ordinary life.” What has ordinary life taught you about joy and enoughness? Ordinary life has taught me that joy is much less dramatic than I once imagined. It is rarely fireworks. More often, it is coffee in a favorite mug. A dog asleep nearby. Dinner with people I love. Light coming through the trees. A conversation that lasts longer than expected. Someone reaching for my hand. For years, I think I treated ordinary life as the space between important events. I was moving toward the next milestone, accomplishment, trip, celebration, or goal. Now I wonder whether I had it backward. Perhaps the milestones are punctuation marks. The ordinary days are the story. Enoughness has become similar for me. It is not the moment when everything is complete, and nothing more is required. I do not think that moment exists. Enough is recognizing that this imperfect, unfinished life is still worthy of being fully inhabited. The older I get, the less interested I am in waiting for extraordinary circumstances before allowing myself to experience an extraordinary amount of gratitude. What would you encourage someone to lay down today if they want to live with more presence, connection, and hope? I would invite them to lay down one impossible job. Maybe it is making everyone happy. Maybe it is earning your worth. Maybe it is controlling something that was never yours to control. Maybe it is rescuing everyone you love, never disappointing anyone, knowing what comes next, or carrying an old version of yourself because someone else is more comfortable with who you used to be. We accumulate these impossible jobs quietly. Eventually, we can mistake them for responsibilities. They are not. Ask yourself, “What am I carrying because I genuinely value it, and what am I carrying because I am afraid of what will happen if I put it down?” Those answers can be very different. Laying something down does not mean we stop caring. Often it allows us to care more freely. Life will bring enough weight of its own. We do not need to manufacture more. Sometimes hope begins not by adding something new to our lives, but by finally releasing something we were never meant to carry. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kimberly Stokka Merendino

Written by Sophie Anderson, Burnout Prevention Specialist, Creator of AMBP™, Coach, Speaker & Author Sophie Anderson is an ICF-certified coach, speaker, author, podcast host, and the creator of The Anderson Model of Burnout Prevention™ (AMBP). After 25 years working in high-pressure corporate roles, Sophie knows exactly what it feels like to juggle huge workloads, constant pressure, and burnout creeping up. She now helps busy professionals worldwide protect their energy, manage their workload better, and avoid burning out. University lecturers are telling allied health and healthcare students to prepare to burn out, as if it's simply part of the job. It's not true, and telling anyone that burnout is inevitable is doing real harm. Here's what they actually need to hear instead, and why the difference matters more than you'd think. "Just prepare to burn out" Lecturers are telling students to prepare for burnout. You will burn out. It's part of the career. One student, an osteopath, told me their lecturer at least had them read a book on burnout and write a dissertation on how to lower its effects. That part is genuinely great. But the framing underneath it isn't. Telling someone entering their career that burnout is inevitable is not preparation. It's a prophecy, and it's an unnecessary and incorrect one. Here's what students, and honestly all of us, actually need to hear, you might need to be in burnout prevention mode for your whole life. Not because burnout is coming for you regardless, but because prevention, done consistently, is what stops it from arriving at all. Rachel Rachel leads a team of 220 people. Like other leaders in her team, she believes burnout just comes with the role. She's depleted, yet she's still doing everything. She doesn't take leave. She still says yes to covering someone's shift. She bakes the cupcakes for her kid's school event. Her house is clean, her makeup is spotless, and her office is always tidy. She answers messages outside work hours. She works overtime. When she's sick, she works from home. She’s reliable, hard-working, praised, and utterly exhausted. In coaching, what Rachel wants to achieve is to live well alongside burnout. How do I burn out without it wrecking my whole life? She has already decided burnout is part of her life, and her only question left is how to live with it without too much damage. That's what I want to change because I have a lot of respect and admiration for people who are so caring and dedicated that they get there. What burnout actually is Real burnout isn't being exhausted, cynical, and at capacity. It's a mind and body collapse. Complete cognitive and emotional impairment, exhaustion so total that normal rest doesn't touch it, and sometimes physically collapsing and needing medical care. It can mean not being able to get out of bed. It's a very scary place to be, and recovery can take months, sometimes years. Think about what "burnt out" means elsewhere. A light globe that's burnt out isn't dim or flickering, and a rocket that's burnt out has used every bit of fuel it had. That's the true meaning. Most people who feel like Rachel, depleted and stretched to capacity, are not there. That's genuinely good news because it means there is still a lot they can do. The three zones, and why "prevention mode for life" is the point The Anderson Model of Burnout Prevention™ (AMBP) maps how burnout actually builds, in three predictable zones that stack on top of each other rather than replacing one another. Activation comes first. High output, high engagement, and stress starting to show while everything still looks fine from the outside. Over-functioning comes next, where work comes before everything else. Coping strategies are overused to stay afloat, and we become hypervigilant. In these two zones, we call it high-functioning burnout, or invisible burnout. Depletion is the third zone, and it's where most existing burnout conversations actually start. No energy. Unusual errors. Isolation. Panic attacks. This is what most people mean when they say they're burnt out. But it isn't burnout. It's the zone right before it, you've hit a wall and you keep climbing it anyway. Burnout itself sits beyond all three. It's the threshold we absolutely want to avoid. That's why I say that we need to be in prevention mode for our whole working life, lowering demands and building resources isn't a project with an end date, it's an ongoing practice, especially the moment you notice yourself more stressed than usual, more reactive than usual, working non-stop, or telling yourself it will pass on its own. That's what the students in those lectures need to hear. Not "you will burn out," but "you can stay in prevention mode for as long as your career lasts. That's a skill to be learnt." Why the diagnosis itself is subjective Most of the "X% of people are burnt out" headlines lean on the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), a self-report tool built by Christina Maslach and Susan Jackson in 1981 (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Maslach and her colleagues have since said that it was designed as a research tool, not a clinical diagnostic one (Maslach, Leiter & Schaufeli, 2008), and the diagnostic cut-off scores were removed from the official manual in 2016 for having no diagnostic validity (Maslach, Jackson & Leiter, 2016). A 2024 paper by researchers Bianchi, Swingler, and Schonfeld goes even further, arguing the MBI isn't a measure of burnout at all (Bianchi, Swingler & Schonfeld, 2024a), and that true burnout prevalence is very hard to pin down given how inconsistently it's defined across studies (Bianchi, Swingler & Schonfeld, 2024b). None of this means burnout isn't real. It means the number on the headline represents people's perception of burnout but includes a lot of individuals who can still turn things around. Rachel, catching herself Rachel's turning point came the moment she noticed herself in the Over-functioning zone, the zone she's now most wary of because she never wants to see Depletion again. She built boundaries and held them. When she says she's finishing at a set time, she finishes then. She plans her days. She allows herself breaks despite putting fires out all day. She has become a role model for her team. Rachel isn't cured. She's not immune. She's just in prevention mode all the time, and it's working. It's not just the workplace, and it's not just self-care The usual narrative lands in one of two places, it's entirely the workplace's fault, or the fix is more self-care and a good holiday. Both are part of the picture. Neither is the whole picture. Workplaces genuinely can pile on demands and strip away resources. Rest and real self-care genuinely help rebuild them. But plenty of the imbalance comes from inside us too. Perfectionism that won't let good enough be good enough. Saying yes when we mean no. Being offered leave and not taking it because we don't want to let the team down. Knowing we need to change jobs, or ask for a demotion, and not doing it because it feels like failure. Those are demands we place on ourselves, and no policy or bubble bath fixes them without us looking at them directly and taking control. Why this matters My problem with "we're all burnt out" isn't that it's dramatic. It's that it makes people less resourceful because it convinces them they've already reached the end when they haven't. That's the opposite of what I want for anyone reading this, including every student being told to just brace for it. This isn't about anyone being wrong. It's an invitation. If you catch yourself in Activation or Over-functioning, that's not a problem to be ashamed of. It's the easiest possible moment to do something about it. Nothing means you're guaranteed to burn out. Bring awareness to your own signs, make small changes early, and you will change the outcome. Frequently asked questions What's the difference between being depleted and being burnt out? Depletion is hitting a wall and still climbing it, still functioning, even though it's genuinely hard. Burnout is the body and mind forcing a complete stop. One is a serious warning sign. The other is a full shutdown. Is the Maslach Burnout Inventory a reliable diagnostic tool? It's a well-researched self-report measure, but its own developers describe it as a research tool, not a clinical diagnostic one, and its diagnostic cut-off scores were removed from the official manual in 2016 for lacking diagnostic validity. Why do burnout statistics vary so much between reports? Different surveys measure different things, from lifetime prevalence to current self-reported exhaustion, with inconsistent definitions, perceptions, and scoring. There is no universal definition and no clinical diagnostic for burnout. I'm exhausted but still functioning. Am I burnt out? Probably not yet. Exhaustion that hasn't tipped into complete physical and cognitive collapse is more likely to be Over-functioning or Depletion, both of which still leave real room to turn things around. I invite you to start with a visit to your qualified health or medical practitioner to rule out any medical or mental illness, then contact me for support. Can burnout be prevented once you're already exhausted? Yes. Prevention is possible right up until the system fully shuts down. The earlier you can name which zone you're actually in, the smaller the load and the more options you have. Where to go from here This isn't about me being right and everyone else being wrong. It's about giving you and every Rachel out there the language to see exactly where you stand, and the belief that there's still a lot you can do about it. Explore the Anderson Model of Burnout Prevention™ (AMBP) at sophieanderson.au, or come listen to my podcast, No Time for Burnout, where I go deep on exactly this. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Sophie Anderson Sophie Anderson, Burnout Prevention Specialist, Creator of AMBP™, Coach, Speaker & Author Sophie Anderson is an ICF-certified coach, speaker, author, and podcast host. She is the creator of The Anderson Model of Burnout Prevention™ (AMBP), an evidence-based model that helps people understand the predictable steps toward burnout, and more importantly, the protective practices that build genuine resilience and keep us well long-term. She is currently writing a book called “No Time for Burnout” about this. Sophie delivers keynotes, workshops and coaching programs for organisations that want to protect their people from burnout while supporting engagement and productivity. She also works privately with professionals who feel the pressure building and want practical ways to regain clarity, confidence, energy and balance. References: Bianchi, R., Swingler, G., & Schonfeld, I. S. (2024a). The Maslach Burnout Inventory is not a measure of burnout. WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation. Bianchi, R., Swingler, G., & Schonfeld, I. S. (2024b). Burnout: Fifty years later. Workplace Health & Safety, 72(8), 354. Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2(2), 99–113. Maslach, C., Jackson, S. E., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual (4th ed.). Mind Garden. Maslach, C., Leiter, M. P., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2008). Measuring burnout. In C. L. Cooper & S. Cartwright (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Well-Being (pp. 86–108). Oxford University Press. Anderson, S. (2025). The Anderson Model of Burnout Prevention™ (AMBP).

Written by Fanny Elizaga, Certified Trauma-Centered Neuro-Coach and SD Transformational Coach Fanny Elizaga is an occupational therapist, mindfulness practitioner and trainer, Reiki Master Practitioner, and certified Qigong instructor. Over the years, she has embraced her passion for learning, applying, and teaching holistic approaches to mind-body healing in both her personal and professional life. The way we speak to ourselves can shape how we respond to stress, mistakes, and difficult emotions. By replacing harsh self-criticism with self-compassion, we can create more space for calm, clearer thinking, and emotional resilience. Have you ever noticed how quickly your inner critic shows up when something doesn't go as planned? You make a mistake, forget something important, lose your patience, miss a deadline, or simply have one of those days when everything feels harder than it should. Before you know it, that familiar voice begins. "Why can't I ever get it right?" "I should have known better." "What's wrong with me?" Sound familiar? Most of us don't realize how much those quiet conversations shape the way we feel. Your brain is always listening. It doesn't distinguish between criticism coming from someone else and criticism coming from your own inner voice. Harsh self-talk can be experienced as a threat, activating stress responses that make it even harder to think clearly, solve problems, or move forward. Ironically, the very strategy we often use to motivate ourselves can leave us feeling anxious, discouraged, or stuck. So, please don't beat yourself up. Instead, offer yourself a little kindness. It may seem like a small change, but it can have a powerful effect on both your mind and your nervous system. Imagine trying to solve a difficult problem while someone is constantly criticizing you. That's often what we do to ourselves. A little kindness creates the emotional space for the brain to settle, think more clearly, and begin again. One of the most fascinating discoveries in neuroscience is that self-compassion isn't simply a "feel-good" practice. It actually influences the way our brain and nervous system respond to stress. Try this simple practice: The next time you notice anxiety, shame, or self-criticism beginning to take over, pause. Slow down and take a few deep breaths. Then offer yourself a soothing self-hug, gently massaging your arms or shoulders. Choose a form of touch that feels comfortable and reassuring, and give your mind and body a chance to feel a little safer and calmer. Acknowledge what you're feeling without trying to fix it. You don't have to make the difficult feelings disappear. You simply begin changing the relationship you have with them. The next time life doesn't go as planned, pay attention to the first words you offer yourself. They have the power to either deepen the wound or begin the healing. If this article resonated with you, you'll find more brain-based insights and practical strategies for living with greater calm, clarity, and self-understanding in my new ebook, "Living Mindfully with Neurodiversity: Brain-Based Strategies to Reduce Stress, Build Confidence, and Practice Self-Care." Click here to download my free ebook. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Fanny Elizaga Fanny Elizaga, Certified Trauma-Centered Neuro-Coach and SD Transformational Coach Fanny Elizaga is an occupational therapist, certified Neuro-Coach, and trauma-informed mindfulness trainer. Over the years, she has embraced her passion for learning and applying holistic modalities for mind-body healing in her personal and professional life. Fanny is also a Reiki master practitioner and certified instructor in the art of Qi-Gong. Fanny inspires, empowers, and educates her clients by teaching brain-enhancing tools for self-improvement, expanding out of their comfort zone, and thriving. Fanny is an occupational therapist, mindfulness practitioner and trainer, and the founder of Neuro-Wellness Academy. She is passionate about transforming lives by teaching practical brain science for greater wellness, resilience, and personal transformation. Sources: Neff KD. Self-Compassion: Theory, Method, Research, and Intervention. Annu Rev Psychol. 2023 Jan 18;74:193-218. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031047. Epub 2022 Aug 12. PMID: 35961039. Neff, K. D. & Germer, C. (2017). Self-Compassion and Psychological Wellbeing. In J. Doty (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, Ch. 27. Oxford University Press.

Written by Elliot Ross Surgenor, Visionary Entrepreneur and Founder Elliot Ross Surgenor is the founder and CEO of Fly Business Aviation, with operational bases in Miami, Scottsdale, and Cabo. With a background in media, entrepreneurship, and luxury aviation, he specializes in elevating private travel through innovation and exceptional client service. I have never finished a 60-minute meeting and thought, I wish we'd booked 90. I have, however, left plenty wondering why seven people needed to be there, why something that could have been decided in ten minutes took an hour, and whether the whole thing could have been replaced by a reasonably coherent voice note. Running a business in private aviation has probably made me less patient about this than I otherwise would be. Aviation requires constant communication. A single trip can involve pilots, operations, maintenance, a fixed-base operator (FBO), ground transportation, catering, and the client, often with plans changing in real time. Weather moves, departure times change, a passenger wants to leave earlier, or an aircraft needs attention. When something genuinely needs to happen, there is usually very little confusion about why people are talking. Several people can resolve a real operational issue in five minutes because the conversation has a clear outcome. Then you return to normal business life and somehow spend an hour discussing whether another meeting is needed. That contrast has always amused me. Most people I know complain about having too many meetings, yet our response to almost every new situation is to schedule one. Something isn't clear, so we meet. Someone has an idea, so we meet. We need to make a decision, so we invite everybody who might conceivably have an opinion. If two people missed the first meeting, we schedule another one to explain what happened in the meeting they missed. At some point, collaboration became almost synonymous with calendars full of rectangles. The problem isn't that meetings are inherently bad. Some conversations absolutely need to happen in real time. The problem is that we have stopped being particularly selective about which ones do. Talking about work can feel a lot like doing work Meetings are comforting because they look productive. Everyone is present, people are talking, notes are being taken, and somebody is usually sharing a screen. If things are going particularly well, there may even be a spreadsheet involved. From the outside, something is clearly happening. Whether anything is actually moving forward is another question. You can spend 45 minutes discussing a problem and leave with exactly the same problem, except now there are meeting notes. You can spend half an hour deciding who should make a decision. You can invite ten people because each person knows one piece of the story, only to discover that nobody actually owns the outcome. Of course, you can finish by agreeing that the subject needs further discussion next week. Aviation gives you a relatively low tolerance for this because outcomes are difficult to fake. The aircraft either leaves or it doesn't. The car is either waiting, or it isn't. The crew is either available or it isn't. If the client changes the departure time, somebody has to work out what that changes. There is a useful clarity to that. In other parts of business, it is surprisingly easy to talk around something for several weeks and still feel as though everybody has been very busy. This is also why I don't think the solution is simply “fewer meetings.” Sometimes, getting the right people into the same conversation is by far the fastest way to solve something. If a client changes a flight at short notice and that affects crew duty time, the airport, the aircraft, and perhaps the trip that follows, I don't want twenty separate messages moving around between people. I want the relevant people to speak, understand the problem and make a decision. Five minutes can be enough. That is what real-time communication is good at. The problem is using the same tool for everything. If somebody is giving me information, I probably don't need a meeting. If they need a simple yes or no, we probably don't need one either. If it is a status update that requires no discussion, there is a very good chance I could read it in an email in a fraction of the time. This is where my slightly provocative theory comes in. Your meeting probably should have been a voice note. I say that partly as a joke, but only partly. A two-minute message saying, “Here's what happened, here's what I recommend, and I need your answer on these two things,” can sometimes achieve everything a 30-minute call was supposed to accomplish. The point isn't voice notes specifically. It is matching the form of communication to the problem instead of automatically reaching for everybody's calendar. Collaboration can become an excuse Another part of meeting culture I find more interesting has less to do with efficiency and more to do with responsibility. Not everybody needs to be involved in everything. That sounds obvious, but businesses are remarkably good at forgetting it. We often invite people because it feels collaborative, because someone might have an opinion, or simply because it is easier politically than deciding who actually needs to be there. There is an important difference between keeping somebody informed and requiring their participation. A person can understand a decision without sitting through the entire conversation that produced it. Sometimes ten perspectives genuinely make a decision better. Sometimes they give you ten new ways to complicate something that was relatively straightforward in the first place. The fastest way to slow down a perfectly good decision is to make absolutely sure everyone has the opportunity to contribute. Occasionally, I think meetings exist for an even simpler reason. Nobody wants to make the decision. A meeting spreads responsibility. Instead of one person saying yes or no, seven people discuss. Instead of choosing a direction, we “align.” Instead of committing to something, we gather additional input. That additional input creates a few more questions, so everyone agrees to reconvene next Thursday. Nobody has made the wrong decision, which is comforting. Nobody has made any decision either. There is a point where more discussion stops improving the outcome and starts postponing it. Good organizations need collaboration, but they also need people who are willing to eventually say, “We've heard enough. This is what we're doing.” Meetings are more expensive than they look There is also a practical cost to all of this that we rarely calculate. A one-hour meeting with eight people is not really a one-hour meeting. It is eight working hours before you even account for the time around it. There is the person who avoids starting a complicated task because they have a call in twelve minutes. There is the person who needs another fifteen minutes afterward to get back into what they were doing. There is the employee who sits through 52 minutes of a conversation because eight minutes might eventually concern them. Because meetings appear on a calendar rather than an invoice, we tend not to think of them as expensive. Imagine if every time you clicked “Send invitation,” a warning appeared saying, “Estimated organizational cost, 11 working hours.” I suspect quite a few agendas would suddenly become much shorter. None of this means meetings should disappear. Some of the most useful meetings I have been in have been difficult, messy or longer than expected. What made them useful was that everyone had a genuine reason to be there. A decision had to be made, a real problem needed solving, two people genuinely disagreed, or something had changed and the plan needed to change with it. Those conversations feel different because when they finish, something is different from when they began. That may be the simplest test. Did we make a decision? Did we understand something we didn't understand before? Did we solve a problem? Does somebody leave knowing exactly what happens next? If the answer to all of those questions is no, it is probably worth asking what the meeting was for. Communication is essential in my business. Poor communication can ruin a trip long before the passenger reaches the aircraft. But good communication doesn't mean everybody talking all the time. Sometimes the right answer is a meeting. Sometimes it is a five-minute call. Sometimes it is three bullet points in an email. Yes, sometimes it really is the voice note. Before putting another rectangle on six people's calendars, there is one question worth asking, "What needs to happen here that cannot happen more easily another way?" If there is a good answer, book the meeting. If there isn't, don't. Because a good meeting moves the work forward. A bad one simply pauses the work while everyone talks about it. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Elliot Ross Surgenor Elliot Ross Surgenor, Visionary Entrepreneur and Founder Elliot Ross Surgenor is a leading entrepreneur in private aviation and the founder of Fly Business Aviation, based in Miami, Scottsdale, and Cabo. With a background in media and international business development, he has built a company known for its innovation, personalized service, and refined operational standards. Elliot also leads Lusso Jet Design and Air Dining Cabo, subsidiaries focused on luxury jet interiors and in-flight catering. His expertise spans brand strategy, client experience, and aviation operations. He also hosts a podcast exploring leadership and the future of the industry. Passionate about giving back, Elliot supports philanthropic efforts, including initiatives for children in need.