Written by Roje Khalique, Founder of rkTherapy Roje Khalique is a visionary clinical consultant with 20 years of experience in mental health. She is the founder of rkTherapy, a London-based bespoke psychology consultancy, and a specialist in culturally attuned Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). You got the degree, the title, and the seat at the table, and you are exhausted in a way you cannot explain to anyone who was not standing where you stood to get there. Underneath that exhaustion sits a silent, lifelong battle with perfectionism and chronic self-doubt, the kind that has been there since long before the boardroom. When the cracks showed, the mainstream wellness world provided the nearest label, ‘imposter syndrome’. That label ignores the weight of racial trauma, and it ignores the fact that the systems you worked so hard to enter were never designed to include you. What you are carrying is not standard burnout, nor a confidence problem. In psychotherapy, we are encouraged to look inward. We explore childhood experiences, family wounds, and the relationships that shaped us. But for many Black and Asian professionals in the UK, there is a gaping hole in this narrative. While the textbooks teach about family dynamics, many develop an antenna, a survival mechanism built over decades of necessity. It is the ability to walk into a room and know, without a word being spoken, that someone wishes you were not there. You see it in the micro shifts of an expression, the subtle tightening of a jaw, or the "I wasn't expecting someone like you" look that lands before the handshake. These subtle, overt, and covert messages teach that one's worth is determined by race, triggering a fight or flight response not by parents or childhood, but by a world that keeps telling them, particularly those of Black and Asian heritage, that they are not enough. The antenna keeps them safe, but it never switches off, and that is the part nobody is talking about. That is racial trauma. Trauma is not always the same as a diagnosis. Many people carry real, significant trauma and never develop a diagnosable condition like PTSD. They keep functioning, keep performing, keep showing up, and that is precisely what makes racial trauma so easy to miss. It does not need a diagnosis to be real, and it does not need a breakdown to be doing damage. The imposter myth vs. the reality of bias We must move away from the term imposter syndrome when discussing the experiences of Black and Asian women of the diaspora. The phrase implies an internal flaw, a deficit in confidence, or a personal shortcoming. Sexism and racism are not internal. They are structural and societal. In fifteen years of clinical practice, I have never once heard a Black or Asian woman say, "I am going to get found out", or "I am a fraud", or "I got lucky". What I hear instead is that she must work twice as hard to be seen as equally capable, that she tolerates racism in wider society and sexism inside her own community as well. That is not imposter syndrome. That is chronic self-doubt built by what is happening around her, not a distortion inside her mind. Consider the Black or Asian woman passed over for promotion for the third time, watching colleagues with less experience and fewer qualifications move ahead of her. Consider, too, losing that same promotion to a male colleague who plays golf with the CEO, while her own contribution goes unseen. This is not a lack of self-belief. It is two systems of bias operating on the same woman at once, one that favours those who look like the leadership, and one that favours those who sound like it. When the environment is rigged against you twice over, feeling like an outsider is not a flaw in your thinking. It is an accurate read of what is happening. Black and Asian women often navigate racism and sexism simultaneously, in environments where they face constant scrutiny and are required to prove expertise their white male counterparts do not need to. Feeling isolated in that context is not a personal failing. It is an accurate reading of a space that was not built to include them. Calling this imposter syndrome blames them for a problem the system created, and that wrong diagnosis causes real psychological harm. Resilience vs Tolerance: The DNA of survival There is a misunderstanding in our society about resilience and tolerance, particularly for Black and Asian people of the diaspora. Tolerance is what is expected of them, to endure the anti-immigration tenor of social media, the hostility on the streets of London, and global news cycles that question the right to be here, all with quiet, integrated patience. Many Black and Asian people are expected to absorb it and show up the next morning without letting it show. Resilience is what is built in response, the getting up despite gender bias and racial discrimination woven into daily lives, because for the Black and Asian diaspora, resilience is not a choice but a prerequisite for survival, and when professional, emotional, and physical survival is at stake, strength becomes a mandate. We praise resilience as a strength, an asset, something admirable to be congratulated for having. But resilience is not a gift these women were given. It is a price they have had to keep paying. Despite the growing hostility in the media and the relentless immigration debate, I rarely hear these Black and Asian women report being signed off work for stress, anxiety, or burnout. They are still doing full hours, full duties, the same as before. Often, they have never taken a single day of sick leave in their entire career. That is what high achievers do, and it shows you something important. They are not struggling with confidence. They are absorbing real harm and still turning up to work every day. This absorption of harm takes many shapes. It is being passed over for stretch assignments and visible projects that lead to promotion, being interrupted in meetings, or watching your idea credited to someone else, and carrying invisible labour such as mentoring junior colleagues or sitting on diversity committees with no recognition or extra pay. Many Black and Asian women do not want to be more resilient. They want the luxury of turning the antenna off and existing in a space where they are not required to be unbreakable just to be seen as equal. I have observed that for many women, mentorship is rarely the problem. Many have a mentor, someone who will sit with them, listen, and offer advice. What is really missing at the senior levels is sponsorship, someone who puts their own name and credibility behind you in the room you are not in, who pushes your name forward when the partnership or the board seat is being decided. Mentorship can exist quite comfortably without ever becoming sponsorship, and that gap is precisely where the old boys' club reasserts itself, because sponsorship runs on trust built over golf, dinners, and informal relationships that Black and Asian women are routinely never invited into. The impact on the diaspora: Generations of survival We celebrate the high achievers who succeed despite everything, but we do not talk honestly about what those costs are across the first, second, and third generations. What I have observed consistently is that Black and Asian women of the diaspora carry a heavy psychological burden from layered racial trauma that standard therapeutic training never prepared me to address. When I trained, this was never mentioned once, because the assumption was that therapy designed by and for the white majority culture worked for everyone, and it does not. Racial discrimination and gender bias are not historical footnotes. They are active, daily pressures. In the summer of 2024, the streets of Britain saw marches calling for Black and Asian communities to leave, and that was not an isolated event. For many, those images and headlines questioning their right to be here are an acute racial trauma landing on top of a chronic one (Chin et al., 2023), and watching them is not the experience of an outsider. Their belonging is being publicly debated, while they are simultaneously expected to get the children to school, walk into the boardroom, and perform at the highest level the next morning. Acute events do not land on a clean slate. They land on everything that came before, which is what the research on cumulative trauma shows us, and that is bicultural burnout in real time, the emotional and psychological cost of a resilience that should never have been necessary just to belong. Resilience is not an option Many Black and Asian women do not come to therapy asking to be more resilient. They are exhausted, burning out, quietly and from the inside. But it never looks messy. There is no breakdown in the meeting, no missed deadline, no public unraveling, only a modest, composed exit, because many of these women simply leave the job instead. Their burnout is tidy. It is orderly. It looks, from the outside, exactly like success, which is precisely why nobody sees it until it is named. Post-traumatic growth is when people do not just survive adversity but are transformed by it (Tedeschi and Calhoun, 2004), and that transformation is visible in every senior position these women have earned in environments that were not designed to include them. The women carrying those achievements are carrying something else, a deep, unnamed exhaustion that nobody has properly measured or named. It is bicultural burnout, the emotional price of a resilience that was never a choice, and it is time we treated it as the clinical reality it is. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Roje Khalique Roje Khalique, Founder of rkTherapy Roje is a clinical practitioner for a wide range of anxiety disorders and depression. She is dedicated to making quality psychological support accessible to high-achieving professionals in the legal and finance industries in London's high-stakes corporate world. During COVID-19, she recognised a global and increasing need for evidence-based support and developed a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) online, virtual platform and a mobile app. Designed to fit the demanding schedules of professionals not only in London but across Europe, the US, the Middle East, and Asia. References: Tedeschi, R.G. and Calhoun, L.G. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. Chin, D., Smith-Clapham, A.M. and Wyatt, G.E. (2023). Race-based trauma and post-traumatic growth through identity transformation. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1031602.

Written by Tabish Shaikh, Founder & Creative Head With 15 years of experience in construction and fit-out, Tabish Shaikh brings solid expertise in this industry. He is the founder of Nexus Built, a digital platform designed to bring real value by helping clients connect with verified professionals. Imagine buying a fleet of corporate vehicles, but instead of seeing an itemized sticker price, you are handed a single, monolithic bill. No breakdown for the engine, the tech package, or the delivery fees. In the construction and commercial fit-out industry, this "black box" approach isn’t just common, it has been the standard operating model for decades. When clients commission a new office fit-out or structural build, they aren't just buying materials, they are navigating a complex maze of supply chains. Without a transparent agreement between the client and the contractor, projects quickly devolve into a battleground of unexpected costs, delayed timelines, and broken trust. To understand why the industry is desperate for a structural overhaul, we have to look closely at where the traditional procurement process breaks down. The core pitfalls of opaque procurement The traditional method of hiring a contractor relies heavily on legacy networks and asymmetrical information. This ecosystem breeds four distinct vulnerabilities for clients. 1. The hidden cost of third parties: In a standard construction project, the main contractor rarely executes 100% of the work. They rely on an intricate web of third-party suppliers, MEP, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing specialists, and finishing crews. When a deal lacks transparency, the true cost of these third-party providers is obscured. Clients frequently pay heavily inflated markups on subcontracted labor and materials without ever realizing they are covering layers of unearned middleman premiums. 2. The "word of mouth" bottleneck: Historically, because construction feels risky, clients default to a narrow pool of "preferred" or word-of-mouth contractors recommended within their immediate professional circle. While safety in familiarity is understandable, it creates an artificial monopoly. Highly qualified, competitive, and innovative contractors are locked out of bidding simply because they aren’t part of an insular network. 3. The market knowledge deficit: Most clients are experts in their own businesses, banking, tech, healthcare, not construction. They have limited, static knowledge of fluctuating market costs for raw materials like structural steel, specialized glass, or drywall labor rates. Opaque contracts exploit this information deficit, leaving clients unable to judge whether a quote represents fair market value or an aggressive upcharge. 4. The power of competitive choice: True market value is discovered only when multiple qualified parties compete under identical conditions. When a procurement process is closed or restricted to one or two bidders, the client loses their primary leverage, choice. With more contractors actively quoting for a job, clients gain a clear baseline to compare timelines, materials, and execution strategies, allowing them to confidently choose the best partner for their specific scope. The solution: Digital vendor management Legacy Procurement Pitfall The Transparent Alternative Layered intermediary fees: Subcontractor margins are hidden inside a flat lump-sum fee. Itemized veracity: Third-party quotes are presented as open-book items with fixed markups. The "Old Boys' Club": Sourcing is limited strictly to a tight circle of word-of-mouth recommendations. Democratic meritocracy: Bidding pools open to a diverse, verified ecosystem of modern contractors. Information asymmetry: Clients sign off on costs blindly, without an objective market baseline. Data equality: Real-time pricing visibility ensures that both parties negotiate on level ground. The industry cannot fix its transparency problem using the same analog tools that created it. The definitive solution lies in Digital Vendor Management (DVM) platforms. By migrating the procurement and bidding processes to a centralized digital ecosystem, technology opens up the market and establishes absolute transparency for contractors and clients alike. DVM platforms transform the construction lifecycle through three core mechanics: Standardized, apple-to-apple bidding: DVM software forces all competing contractors to input their pricing into identical Bill of Quantities (BOQ) frameworks. This eliminates confusing formatting tricks, making third-party costs completely visible and easily comparable across multiple bidders. A decentralized, verified marketplace: Instead of relying on restricted word-of-mouth circles, these platforms connect clients with an expansive pool of pre-vetted, rated contractors. This gives exceptional mid-tier or specialized contractors a seat at the table, expanding client choices based on objective performance data rather than subjective introductions. An equalized information ecosystem: With automated market data aggregation, both the client and the contractor see real-time cost indexes. This neutralizes the client's knowledge deficit, transforming negotiation from a game of defensive guesswork into a collaborative, data-driven partnership. Building a new foundation Transparency shouldn't be viewed as a regulatory chore or a defensive concession. It is an efficiency driver. When digital ecosystems remove the suspicion of hidden third-party markups and open up the market to healthy competition, projects run faster, relationships stay intact, and financial waste is eradicated. By embracing Digital Vendor Management, the construction and fit-out industry can finally shed its opaque reputation, building a future where the financial framework of a project is just as solid as the physical structures it creates. This is where Nexus Built (NXB) opens up the ocean of healthy competition and transparency, leading to a better vendor ecosystem for both clients and contractors alike. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tabish Shaikh Tabish Shaikh, Founder & Creative Head Tabish Shaikh is an excellent analytical thinker who loves solving problems, and when it is in the construction and fit-out industry, he is all ears. With more than a decade of experience and facing issues in the general market of keeping the process transparent between client and contractors, Nexus Built was born. Founder of Nexus Built and an avid fan of construction technologies, he aims to make the process simpler and easier for the construction and fit-out industry.

Written by Danielle McKinnon, Equine Leadership Facilitator, Social Entrepreneur Danielle McKinon, founder of Eat Sleep Ride, a rural-based charity in Scotland, and a certified Equine Leadership Coach. Part of the global TeachingHorse network, Danielle applies the Diamond Model of Shared Leadership to help individuals and teams lead with confidence through uncertainty. For most of my life, I struggled to read people. The deeper level, what someone was really feeling under their words, the energy they walked in with, never came naturally to me. This is the story of how I finally learned it, and of the unlikely teacher who showed me how. I could always manage the surface. What I couldn’t do was sense what was going on underneath, the thing people weren’t saying, the state they were actually in. I missed it again and again, and I couldn’t work out why everyone else seemed to just know. It took me years to understand that part of this is simply how my brain is wired. I’m ADHD, and the signals other people seemed to read automatically often slipped straight past me. Horses, though, were always there. They were part of my school curriculum, and when the care system and everything that came with it got to be too much, the yard was where I went. I trained the traditional way, riding school, the equestrian pathway, the coaching route, all of it about technique and getting it right. For years that was the lens. What changed everything wasn’t the riding. It was a whole career spent quietly watching people and behaviour, and slowly realising the horses had been teaching me something else the entire time. Because a horse doesn’t care what you say, it reads what you bring. You can’t talk your way past it, and you can’t fake calm. For the first time, something was showing me, honestly and immediately, what I’d been missing my whole life. What a horse taught me to notice Horses don’t read words. They read everything underneath them. To work with one, I had to learn to notice the things I’d always skated over, and over the years, that became a way of seeing I’ve come to trust. The body: So much of what looks like behaviour is physical first, tension, discomfort, something not quite right. The body speaks before anything else does. The environment: What’s happening around them right now, who’s near, what’s changed, and whether they feel safe. The state is shaped by its surroundings. The history: What they’ve carried in from before, the experiences that taught them what to expect from people. The energy: The hardest one to put into words, and the one horses are most honest about. The state a being is actually in, underneath whatever they’re showing you. I didn’t learn these as a checklist. I learned them because a horse will not let you skip them. But first, it made me accountable Here’s the part I didn’t expect. Before a horse would let me read it, it made me honest about myself. You can’t bluff a horse, you can’t blame it, and you can’t hide the state you walked in with. It holds you accountable for what you bring every single time. Learning to read other people started with being made to own myself first. And it taught me boundaries. Reading someone deeply doesn’t mean having no line, it means knowing exactly where the clear, kind line sits, and holding it. A horse needs that to feel safe, and so do people. The boundary isn’t the opposite of care. Done well, it is care. I see it on the yard all the time. A client tries to set a boundary with a horse, quietly asking it for some space. But the ask isn’t clear enough, because they don’t really feel safe asking, and the horse reads that instantly. So it either ignores them or keeps moving into their space. I’ve watched the same pattern in how people live. We struggle to know when to stop, how to ask for room, how to hold a line without apologising for it. The horse just makes it visible. This isn’t just a feeling. It’s measurable. For a long time I assumed what I was learning to sense was unprovable, intuition, nothing you could point to. The science says otherwise. Researchers at the University of Sussex found that horses can read human facial expressions and that the response is physical. When shown an angry face, a horse’s heart rate climbs faster, and it shows more signs of stress. A later study from Sussex and Portsmouth went further. Horses shown a photograph of an angry or happy face recognised that same person hours later and changed how they behaved towards them. They hold a memory of your emotional state. Other research has tracked how a horse’s heart rate can shift in time with the person handling it, our nervous systems quietly influencing theirs. A 2025 study measured this heart rate synchronisation between children and horses in equine-assisted sessions. Experienced riders showed the strongest synchronisation, and strikingly, the children with ADHD synchronised at above-average levels too. None of this is fully settled. The findings are still emerging, and they don’t all agree. But the direction is clear, and it matches what I see in the yard every day. A horse responds to the state you are actually in, not the one you are performing. That is precisely why it can teach you to notice that state, first in yourself, and then in everyone around you. Then I started seeing it in people Once I could read it in a horse, I couldn’t unsee it in people. The young person who’d gone quiet wasn’t being rude, their body was braced and their energy had dropped. The one who arrived “difficult” was carrying something from long before they reached me. I was finally reading the level I’d always struggled to reach, and the horses had handed me the key to it. I think of a TeachingHorse leadership session I ran for a room full of senior CEOs, people who’d come from all over, used to being the most powerful presence in any room they walked into. We began the way I always do, not by talking, but by greeting the horses the way horses greet one another. You stand quietly, you share breath, and you let the animal decide whether to meet you. One of the women, a leader at the very top of her field, chose to do exactly that. What she hadn’t counted on was that the horse could read her body completely, and that standing so close to such a large animal, without her team around her and without a herd to disappear into, would strip away every bit of armour she’d walked in with. Because what none of them knew was that she was blind in one eye. She had never told them. She was frightened that if they saw it, they’d see her as less, that she’d lose something in their eyes. But the horse didn’t read her title, and it didn’t read the armour. It read her, and it stayed. In its own quiet way, it let her know she was safe. And there, with nothing left to hide behind, in front of the very people she’d been hiding from, she finally let herself be seen. Her team didn’t step back. They moved closer. They held her and supported her for the rest of the day. This is what built Eat Sleep Ride (ESR) Eat Sleep Ride is a place, 24 acres, the horses, the people who come through the gate. But it’s more than a place. It came from this. Once I could read what someone actually needed, not what they said, not how they behaved, but what sat underneath, I knew what kind of world I had to build. Somewhere, people could be met at that deeper level by someone who’d learned to see it. Everything we do rests on that one skill. The horses didn’t just teach me about horses. They taught me to read people, and that is the whole foundation this place is built on. Read what’s underneath If reading people has never come easily to you, you’re not broken, and you’re not alone. So much of what we mistake for instinct is really just noticing, the body, the environment, the history, the energy, and noticing is a skill. It can be learned. Whether you’re leading a team, raising a child, or simply trying to understand the person in front of you, it begins the same way the horses taught me, get honest about what you’re bringing, then pay attention to what sits underneath everyone else. And if you’re lucky, the right teacher will show up to help you learn it. Mine had four legs. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Danielle McKinnon Danielle McKinnon, Equine Leadership Facilitator, Social Entrepreneur Danielle McKinnon is the founder of Eat Sleep Ride | Rural-Based Charity in Scotland, a rural charity using horses, nature, and coaching to support disadvantaged and neurodiverse young people. She is a qualified equine-facilitated learning practitioner, coach, and licensed facilitator of shared leadership, working locally and globally to build brave spaces for change. Her work is rooted in lived experience, community care, and the wisdom of the herd. To explore Danielle's leadership programmes, visit the Leadership at Eat Sleep Ride page at Herd Dynamics | Equine Leadership and Personal Development. These programs support Eat Sleep Ride.

Madonna Marie is the founder of Dreams Business Consulting LLC and a business and lifestyle consultant specializing in conscious leadership, authentic branding, luxury wellness, and purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Through her work, she helps entrepreneurs and high-achieving leaders align their businesses, personal values, and lifestyles to create sustainable success, meaningful impact, and a legacy rooted in intention. In this exclusive interview, she explores the connection between spiritual alignment and business growth, overcoming burnout, ethical influence, the evolution of luxury branding, and how leaders can build profitable businesses without sacrificing peace, authenticity, or well-being. Madonna Robinson, Lifestyle & Business Coach What first pushed you to connect spiritual alignment with business and lifestyle consulting? My journey into connecting spiritual alignment with business and lifestyle consulting came from recognizing a truth that many entrepreneurs eventually face, the business is often a reflection of the person leading it. For years, I observed highly capable individuals building impressive brands, generating revenue, and achieving external markers of success while privately struggling with exhaustion, lack of purpose, strained relationships, and a loss of connection to themselves. I believe true success requires more than financial achievement, it requires alignment between your values, your vision, your health, your relationships, and the legacy you are creating. Spiritual alignment, in my work, is not about escaping strategy or business fundamentals, it is about ensuring that the foundation from which you make decisions is rooted in self-awareness, integrity, and intentionality. Through Dreams Business Consulting LLC, I help entrepreneurs build businesses that are profitable, sustainable, and deeply connected to the lives they genuinely desire to live. When the leader heals, evolves, and becomes intentional, the business culture, decisions, and impact often transform alongside them. What patterns do you notice in high-achievers who look successful publicly but feel disconnected privately? One of the most common patterns I see among high-achievers is that they have become exceptionally skilled at performing success without necessarily experiencing fulfillment. Many entrepreneurs have mastered productivity, branding, visibility, and achievement, but they have not created systems that support their emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. A major challenge within modern business culture is that we often celebrate sacrifice without questioning the cost. Constant availability, overworking, and tying personal worth to productivity have become normalized, especially among ambitious leaders. Many of my clients discover that their exhaustion is not caused solely by having too much to do, it comes from operating in environments, relationships, or business models that no longer reflect who they have become. Through conscious leadership practices, intentional lifestyle design, and deeper self-reflection, they learn to redefine success in a way that includes peace, health, meaningful relationships, and personal sovereignty, not just financial milestones. How do you help clients recognize when burnout is actually a deeper issue of misalignment? Burnout is often treated as a time-management problem, but in many cases it can be a signal that something deeper requires attention. A person may optimize their calendar, hire support, or take a vacation and still return feeling depleted because the underlying issue has not been addressed. I guide clients through an examination of where their energy, attention, and resources are being invested. We look at whether their daily actions are aligned with their values, whether their business model supports their desired lifestyle, and whether they are creating from obligation or genuine purpose. Misalignment can appear as resentment toward the very business you once loved, difficulty finding joy in accomplishments, chronic stress, or feeling as though you are living a life designed for someone else's expectations. The goal is not simply to help entrepreneurs work less. The goal is to help them lead from a place of clarity, intention, and alignment so their success feels as meaningful internally as it appears externally. What concerns you most about the way influence and visibility are being used in today’s business culture? We live in an era where visibility has become easier to obtain than credibility. Social media has created extraordinary opportunities for education, connection, and entrepreneurship, but it has also created environments where performance can sometimes replace authenticity. My greatest concern is when influence is pursued without responsibility. Every brand, leader, and public figure shapes conversations, consumer behavior, and culture. When we prioritize attention over integrity, we risk creating businesses that are successful in appearance but lacking in true impact. I believe the next generation of leadership will require more transparency, accountability, and ethical influence. People are increasingly seeking leaders whose lives, values, and actions are congruent with the messages they share. Influence should not simply be measured by the number of people who follow you, it should be measured by the quality of transformation, education, and positive change you create in the lives of others. Why do you believe luxury branding is shifting toward meaning, wellness, and experience rather than status alone? The definition of luxury is evolving. Historically, luxury was often associated with exclusivity, material possessions, and visible symbols of wealth. While craftsmanship and beautiful experiences still matter, today's consumers increasingly seek something deeper, restoration, connection, personalization, and meaning. Modern luxury is having access to time, health, peace, cultural experiences, intentional travel, exceptional service, and environments that nourish the mind and body. This shift is especially evident in luxury wellness, retreat culture, personalized services, and purpose-driven brands. Consumers are becoming more conscious about where they spend their money and the values represented by the businesses they support. For me, luxury has always been about quality of life. A truly luxurious life is one where your external achievements are in harmony with your internal world, your relationships, your health, and your contribution to the communities around you What is one practical change entrepreneurs can make to build success without sacrificing peace or authenticity? One of the most practical changes entrepreneurs can make is to create a regular practice of evaluating whether their current definition of success still belongs to them. Many people spend years chasing goals they inherited from family expectations, societal pressures, or industry standards. They reach milestones only to realize they never stopped to ask whether those accomplishments aligned with their personal values. I encourage leaders to conduct regular personal and business audits. Examine your relationships, your schedule, your clients, your partnerships, your health, and your sources of stress and fulfillment. Building an authentic business does not mean avoiding ambition. It means allowing your ambition to be guided by intention rather than external validation. The most sustainable entrepreneurs understand that peace is not the reward waiting at the end of success, it is something that must be integrated into the process of creating it. How do you guide leaders to become more intentional about the impact they have on communities and culture? I remind leaders that every business leaves a cultural footprint. The way we hire, communicate, market, educate, source products, and serve clients reflects our values. Intentional leadership begins with understanding that profitability and social responsibility do not have to exist separately. Businesses have the ability to preserve traditions, support local economies, create opportunities, improve wellness, and influence how future generations think about success. I encourage entrepreneurs to ask themselves a simple but powerful question, "What does the world receive because my business exists?" That question shifts leadership from ego to stewardship. A meaningful legacy is not only measured by wealth accumulated but also by the communities strengthened, the knowledge shared, and the positive transformation created through your work. How has your belief that business and its leader are inseparable shaped your own leadership journey? My leadership journey has required me to understand that every level of growth in my business required a new level of growth within myself. The habits, mindset, boundaries, and level of self-awareness that built one chapter of my journey may not be sufficient for the next. I have learned that leadership requires constant refinement, how I care for my body, protect my energy, manage relationships, make decisions, and remain accountable to the values I teach. As the founder of Dreams Business Consulting LLC, I do not believe in separating personal evolution from professional excellence. The strongest businesses are often built by leaders who are willing to examine themselves honestly and continuously become better stewards of their influence. My businesses are not just income vehicles, they are extensions of my purpose, my values, and my commitment to creating meaningful change. What do you hope people ultimately experience after working with Dreams Business Consulting LLC? My greatest hope is that every person who works with Dreams Business Consulting LLC leaves with a deeper understanding of themselves, a clearer vision for their future, and the practical strategies required to bring that vision into reality. I want clients to experience transformation that extends beyond business growth. Revenue, visibility, and success are important, but I also want them to experience confidence, clarity, healthier boundaries, stronger relationships, and a renewed connection to why they began their journey. My work is rooted in the belief that true wealth is multidimensional. It includes financial prosperity, physical and emotional well-being, meaningful relationships, cultural contribution, and the freedom to live according to your own values. When someone leaves my ecosystem, I want them to have not only a more successful business but a life that feels deeply aligned, intentional, and authentically their own. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Madonna Robinson

Written by Michelle Le Roux, Human Behaviour Strategist Michelle le Roux is a Human Behaviour Strategist, Executive Coach, and founder of Resolu, with over eight years decoding the patterns that drive behaviour, performance, and results. She helps leaders and teams adapt faster, navigate conflict, and build resilience, because the future of performance is human. Have you ever watched a capable team slowly come apart, not for lack of talent, but because something underneath stopped holding them together? We are living through the peak of the Information Age, and we are beginning to realise that unfiltered information is toxic to the human psyche without a narrative container. Identity is being lost. Here is how the intersection of identity, data, and the Enneagram holds the key to rebuilding the internal architecture of our organisations and teams. What is the enneagram? One of the oldest mysteries in human history is how humans have obsessed over decoding their behaviour and understanding themselves. A fascinating paradox is that although we are physical creatures with flesh, bone, and electrical impulses, we immediately reach beyond our biology when we ask the question of who we are. This is where the Enneagram lives, in this exact landscape of the symbolic and the unseen world of consciousness, and the story of how we came to be. With a rich history dating back to what some have thought to be Pythagorean times, the Enneagram has developed into a modern-day framework that turns biology into narrative, and narrative speaks so accurately to identity. Broken down, identity is at the bedrock of our societal formations and norms, dissertations and citations, abominations and foundations. Our family system, organisational culture and team identity, political and spiritual core are built around narrative. They tell us one thing essentially, how to belong, how to belong at our best, and if we felt we did not belong, what it would take of us to return. It is the path of belonging, to ourselves, our partnerships, organisations, and teams. Our need, whether personal or organisational, is to be seen and known. In that, our worth and value systems are built. It all pivots around identity. What a bad rap identity has had over the last decade, and increasingly so. Yet it is insatiable, the need to know who we are, and whose we are. With identity playing such a centre stage concept, the Enneagram has given us what most other personality assessments do not. Most assessments, like Myers Briggs or DISC, operate as a static mirror, where we get to see what we look like and how we behave. But the Enneagram is entirely different architecturally, in that it reveals core motivation, intrinsic fear, and the internal baseline story driving our behaviour. It tells us the why. It tells us who we needed to be to survive our earliest developmental stages. It shows us the armour we put on to make sense of the world. As we grew, the armour stayed. Jung says so aptly that in the first half of our lives, we are to rightly construct a healthy ego. The second half of life is where we learn to go inward, let it go, and find our true selves. We are not our type. The Enneagram presents us with all the parts of ourselves and invites us to reclaim them. So we use the lines to understand where we go in stress. The Enneagram 2, the considerate helper who grew up learning not to have needs but to help others in need, moves under stress to the angry 8, where they demand their needs be met. In growth, the 2 moves gently into the 4, where they learn to nurture and nourish the creative and care for self, rather than abandoning the self in the ardent tending to others. Why does identity matter in the workplace? Identity is reflected in how we relate, how we transact, and how we sell. It is reflected in our bank balance, in how valuable we see ourselves, and it is revealed in our handshake, in how much of our ego is still loaded into how we present ourselves. Communication, one of the most critical factors in workplace success, is in direct relation to how well we know ourselves in relation to our ego, and it becomes visible in the language we use to describe our ideas, needs, and experiences. Most organisations develop systems that are over-indexed on KPIs, transaction-heavy, highly intellectualised frameworks that strip away the human element that provides the cutting-edge creativity and innovation. We forget that human beings are not built to be optimised, but fulfilled. The language of logic, strategy, and optimisation, devoid of the embodiment of connection, resonance, and purpose, leads to systemic fracturing. Then we wonder why the creatives leave. Does company culture actually affect revenue? For years, this was the sort of thing only coaches and psychologists said, easy to nod along to, easy to file under nice to have. Then the data caught up. It turns out identity is not a soft concern hovering at the edge of the business. It sits in the centre of the balance sheet. Two of the largest research houses in the world have, almost by accident, made the case for the soul of an organisation. The growth triple play McKinsey & Company’s Growth Triple Play research tracked the financial performance of global companies by measuring three core capabilities, analytics, the data driven system, creativity, innovation, and purpose, the narrative and identity element. Only 7% of companies globally managed to integrate all three. The payoff is staggering. When a company weaves a narrative layer, a purpose rooted in identity, into its data systems, something measurable happens, on average, these companies grow revenue at 2.3 times the rate of their peers. During a market crisis, that gap does not close. It widens to 2.7 times. The story does not just create meaning. It creates margin. The same pattern shows up in talent. Deloitte research has linked purpose driven cultures to roughly 40% higher workforce retention, not because of better packages, but because something shifts underneath. When the shared story guarantees belonging, egos stop fighting for survival. People stop defending their position and start contributing what they actually have to offer. What does a storyless culture cost? If McKinsey shows what the story builds, Deloitte shows what its absence quietly costs. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report, surveying 14,000 leaders across 95 countries, exposed the psychological tax of metrics only systems. It pointed to a critical failure in what Deloitte calls human sustainability, the degree to which a company actually leaves its people with greater wellbeing and belonging. The data revealed a rift between perception and reality: 89% of executives believe they are advancing human sustainability. Only 41% of workers agree. That 48% gap is a blind spot at the top and the human cost shows up underneath it: 57% of workers report their company does not leave them better off than when they started. Their top two barriers to performance are rising work stress and technology stripping away human meaning. Bridging the gap is a structural upgrade. Deloitte found that organisations designing their internal framework around human outcomes are 1.8 times more likely to achieve their business goals, and 2.1 times more likely to achieve positive human outcomes such as lower turnover. Strip the percentages away, and you are left with something very old and very simple, people do their best work where they feel they belong. Why is psychological safety the key to performance? At the end of the day, what gets us humans functioning at our best is psychological safety, a sense of belonging that allows us to make mistakes and learn from them, rather than hiding them and retreating into the ego state of hypervigilance, where trust is eaten up for breakfast and commitment and accountability are left at the door. The mask of the ego cannot drop without the presence of perceived psychological safety. Only then can creative genius emerge and stay. In my 1,000 hours of active work with the Enneagram, I have seen it do exactly this, extrapolate the story, have it land, and lead with language that paves the path a team needs to cross. The identity markers and safety pegs that the Enneagram hammers in are powerful and enduring, and they are what carry a team through the masks dropping for sustainable performance to be achieved. What are Tuckman’s stages of team development? Bruce Tuckman gave us this map over sixty years ago, and it remains one of the most validated frameworks we have for moving teams through development. Teams move through four stages, forming, storming, norming, and performing. I have seen the impact of naming what everyone is feeling but does not have language for, the highly masked forming stage, and the difficult storming phase that can feel never ending. Giving it language gives it a name and a place, and validates the elements that hold the team through each stage. A lot of teams get stuck in storming and end up firing a whole group of people, or signing those divorce documents, because we have not normalised the hard parts and how they serve and set us up for the best part of the partnership, the place of flow and performance. Frequently asked questions Is the Enneagram scientifically valid? The Enneagram’s roots are philosophical rather than clinical, but modern assessment tools have changed its standing. The iEQ9, the tool I work with, has been developed with statistical reliability and validity testing, which places it well beyond the casual online quizzes most people associate with the term. How is the Enneagram different from Myers Briggs or DISC? Most assessments describe behaviour, what you do and how you come across. The Enneagram works one layer beneath that, revealing the core motivation and fear driving the behaviour in the first place. It tells you the why, not just the what. Can the Enneagram really improve team performance? Yes, but indirectly. It does not hand a team a set of techniques. It gives each person language for their own patterns under pressure, which is what allows a team to move through conflict instead of getting stuck in it. That shared language is what carries a team from storming to performing. The way back We began with a crisis of identity, the sense that in a world drowning in data, we are quietly forgetting who we are. The Enneagram, for all its ancient strangeness, offers a way back. Not a label. Not a quiz. A map of the territory we abandoned in order to survive, and an invitation to return to it, as individuals and as the teams we build together. That return is the work. It is slow, it is human, and it does not fit neatly on a dashboard. But it is the difference between a group of people who happen to share an office, and a team that knows who it is. If your team is somewhere on that road, forming, storming, or performing on the surface while fracturing underneath, that is the territory I walk in, and it would be a privilege to walk it with yours. Start the conversation here. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Michelle Le Roux Michelle Le Roux, Human Behaviour Strategist Michelle le Roux is a Human Behaviour Strategist, Executive Coach, and founder of Resolu, a consultancy dedicated to decoding the patterns that shape behaviour, performance, and results. With over eight years and 1,000+ hours of coaching experience, she helps executives, leadership teams, and individuals adapt faster to change and complexity, navigate and resolve conflict effectively, and build lasting resilience by decoding the elements that truly drive behaviour. Drawing on the Enneagram, NLP, and CBT alongside a deep understanding of the gut, mind, and limbic emotional brain, she turns diversity and complexity into competitive advantage. Her conviction: "The future of performance is human."

Written by Bobby Goodman, Principal and CEO of Goodman Tolbert Running a small business often means being the CEO, marketer, accountant, and customer service team all at once. But trying to do everything alone can lead to burnout, stalled growth, and missed opportunities. Behind every major piece of infrastructure eventually comes a less visible but highly complex process: its removal. This article explores the rapidly growing industry of infrastructure decommissioning, where engineering, regulation, and environmental responsibility converge to safely retire the world’s aging industrial systems, creating a surprising and highly valuable business opportunity. The billion-dollar industry most people never notice When people think about business opportunities, they often focus on industries that are growing. Artificial intelligence, renewable energy, e-commerce, biotechnology. Yet some of the most specialized and profitable businesses operate in a completely different space, "Helping old infrastructure disappear." Around the world, aging factories, power plants, oil platforms, telecommunications networks, pipelines, rail systems, and industrial facilities are reaching the end of their useful lives. Removing them safely is not a simple demolition project. It is a highly regulated, technically complex, and increasingly valuable industry known as infrastructure decommissioning. Why decommissioning is becoming a major market Every piece of infrastructure eventually faces retirement. Oil wells run dry. Nuclear facilities age. Manufacturing plants become obsolete. Offshore platforms exceed their operational lifespan. Governments and corporations cannot simply abandon these assets. Environmental regulations, safety requirements, land restoration obligations, and public accountability create enormous demand for specialized firms capable of managing the process. In many sectors, the cost of decommissioning can equal, or even exceed, the original construction cost. That creates a surprisingly large market hidden behind industries that receive far more attention. The complexity behind taking things apart Building infrastructure is difficult, and taking it apart responsibly can be even harder, as decommissioning projects often require environmental assessments, hazardous material removal, structural engineering analysis, waste management planning, regulatory compliance, site restoration, and long-term monitoring. A single mistake can create environmental damage, legal liability, or public safety risks. As a result, organizations are willing to pay significant premiums for expertise. Offshore oil platforms: A rare example One of the most fascinating examples exists in offshore energy. Thousands of offshore oil and gas platforms around the world will eventually require removal or conversion. These projects involve underwater engineering, heavy lift vessels, environmental studies, marine logistics, and complex regulatory approvals. Some decommissioning contracts are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. While the public often focuses on energy production, an entire ecosystem of businesses earns revenue from responsibly retiring aging assets. The opportunity created by regulation Many entrepreneurs view regulation as an obstacle. In niche industries, regulation often creates opportunity. The more complex the compliance requirements become, the more valuable specialized expertise becomes. Companies that understand environmental law, remediation procedures, permitting processes, and technical standards can build strong competitive advantages. Because the barriers to entry are high, competition is often lower than in more popular industries. A business built on long-term trends One reason decommissioning is attracting attention from investors is its predictability. Unlike industries driven by consumer trends, infrastructure retirement follows long-term asset lifecycles. Governments know which facilities are aging. Energy companies know which assets will eventually be retired. Industrial operators understand when equipment and facilities will reach end-of-life status. This creates demand that can often be forecast years or even decades in advance. Lessons for entrepreneurs Most entrepreneurs search for opportunities where everyone else is looking. Rare opportunities often exist where few people pay attention. Infrastructure decommissioning demonstrates an important principle, "Not every valuable business is built around creating something new." Some are built around helping organizations responsibly manage what already exists. The biggest opportunities are not always the most visible. Sometimes they are hidden inside complex problems that most people would rather avoid. Final thoughts Business success does not always come from following trends. It often comes from identifying essential work that must be done regardless of economic cycles or public attention. Infrastructure decommissioning is one of those rare industries. It operates largely behind the scenes, requires specialized expertise, and serves a growing global need. For entrepreneurs looking beyond familiar business topics, it offers a powerful reminder, "Some of the most valuable opportunities are found not in what the world is building next, but in what the world eventually needs to retire." Follow him on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Bobby Goodman Bobby Goodman, Principal and CEO of Goodman Tolbert Bobby Goodman is an entrepreneur and advocate for small business growth who understands the realities of business from the ground up. Through firsthand experience, he shares insights on leadership, burnout, and the importance of delegation in entrepreneurship. In Wearing Every Hat: Why Small Business Owners Can't Do It All, Goodman explores the challenges many business owners face while trying to balance every role on their own.

Written by Caren Carnegie, Founder of Transform Fitness Coaching, Intuitive Momentum Coach, Speaker & Writer Caren Carnegie is a coach, psychic channeler, and the creator of Transform, a space where fitness, healing, and intuition meet. She helps people return to themselves by honouring the body and awakening the coach within. Recently, someone asked whether their feelings qualified for a gathering we are holding this fall. The answer was immediate, yes. But the question stayed with me after the conversation ended, not because of the answer, but because of what the question revealed. Why are so many people still asking whether their hardship qualifies for support, community, or witness? What has taught us that our experiences must meet certain criteria before they deserve to be held? Perhaps one of the quiet consequences of modern life is that we have become accustomed to categorizing human experience, and eventually, we begin categorizing ourselves. Mental health, physical health, spiritual health, professional life, personal life, as if humans experience life in neatly separated parts. But humans are not categories. Humans are expansive and we deserve spaces expansive enough to hold us. The body tells us this every day. Stress becomes tension. Grief alters sleep. Joy changes posture. Connection regulates the nervous system. Fear changes breath. The body has never cared much for the categories we have created. It experiences life as one integrated whole. Yet many of our systems continue to ask people to divide themselves into parts. Perhaps this division extends beyond systems and into the invisible walls we carry within ourselves. Because the walls I am speaking of are not only buildings. They are beliefs, titles, expectations, professional lanes, fears, and stories we have inherited about what belongs where, and who belongs where. Before we move conversations beyond walls, we may first need to move the walls within ourselves. The walls we built Many of our professional and regulatory systems were built with good intentions. Privacy legislation protects confidentiality. Professional colleges uphold standards of care. Scope of practice protects the public and preserves expertise. These protections matter. Trust matters. Safety matters. Public accountability matters. This is not an argument for removing those protections. It is an invitation to ask whether protection and separation have, at times, become intertwined. In Ontario, the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) was designed to both protect personal health information and facilitate effective healthcare delivery. The legislation itself recognizes that privacy and care must coexist. Yet anyone working with humans understands the delicate balance between protecting information and fostering connection. Can confidentiality exist without isolation? Can professionalism exist without disconnection? Can expertise coexist with humanity? These are not simple questions, but perhaps they are questions worth asking. Humans do not heal in categories Many helping professionals intuitively recognize what research increasingly confirms, humans do not experience life in categories. The body does not separate physical health from emotional well being. Mental health affects physical health. Relationships affect nervous system regulation. Purpose influences resilience. Connection influences healing. Yet many of the systems designed to support people remain organized into distinct professions, disciplines, and scopes of practice. These structures exist for important reasons. They protect the public, preserve expertise, and uphold ethical standards of care. But as our understanding of human health evolves, perhaps our systems must evolve alongside it. The question is not whether professional boundaries should exist. The question is whether we can create greater connection across them. Because while humans experience life as an integrated whole, many of our systems continue to operate in parts. Perhaps this creates a tension that many helping professionals quietly recognize, the desire to honour the fullness of human experience while working within structures designed for safety, specialization, and accountability. This is not a criticism of the people within those systems. It is an invitation to examine the systems themselves. The walls were built for good reasons, but perhaps some of them have become too rigid for the complexity of being human. There is no hierarchy of humanity. Perhaps there should be no hierarchy of hardship. Our experiences differ, and their impact differs, yet many people have learned to compare their pain before allowing themselves to seek support. I should not complain. Others have it worse. This does not count. But hardship wears many faces, the loss of a loved one, the loss of health, the loss of identity, a relationship ending, a dream that never unfolded, the quiet grief of becoming someone new. No one should have to prove their pain to deserve community. From wealth to wellth For years, I have used the word wellth. Not because wealth is inherently wrong, but because it feels incomplete. When I speak of wellth, I am speaking of something broader. A life measured not only by productivity, performance, or possessions, but by health, connection, purpose, belonging, and the capacity to be fully human. Because what good is wealth if we are disconnected from ourselves, from one another, or from the communities that hold us? Wellth recognizes that a person can appear successful on paper while quietly carrying exhaustion, loneliness, or disconnection. Likewise, a person can be moving through hardship while still experiencing meaning, relationship, and joy. To me, wellth is not the absence of hardship. It is the presence of relationship with ourselves, with others, with community, with purpose, and with the land beneath our feet. Perhaps this is where many of our systems have become too narrow. We have become exceptionally skilled at measuring productivity, outcomes, and resources, but humans are not resources. Humans are relationships. Somewhere along the way, we became exceptionally good at managing human resources. Perhaps the next evolution is learning how to cultivate human relationships, and with them, wellth. Because humans do not thrive in parts, and neither should our measures of success. Moving conversations beyond walls Over the years, I have witnessed something profound happen when movement and conversation leave traditional spaces. When people walk while they talk, when they gather beneath trees rather than fluorescent lights, and when they move their bodies before speaking their truth, something softens. Breathing changes. Posture changes. Conversation changes. People begin to see themselves in one another, even when their stories remain entirely different. Perhaps space itself matters more than we realize, and perhaps healing has always needed room to breathe. This does not mean every profession belongs outdoors, nor does it mean abandoning standards, ethics, or confidentiality, but it may mean expanding our imagination. What if some conversations happened while walking? What if care looked more like community? What if we trusted that people know how to participate in ways that feel right for them? Not everyone opens through words. Some open through movement, some through creativity, some through play, and some through stillness. In spaces I have helped create, I have witnessed meaningful conversations emerge alongside playful activity, walking, movement, shared meals, laughter, music, and time spent outdoors. There is wisdom in this, because humans are not one dimensional. When we create environments that invite both play and presence, people often become more willing to open and receive in their own unique ways, not because they are being asked to perform vulnerability, but because they feel safe enough to be themselves. Perhaps this, too, is part of wellth, not only creating spaces for healing, but spaces for humanity. Because increasingly, people are remembering that they are not one thing. They are not merely minds, or bodies, or diagnoses, or job titles. They are whole humans, and our spaces, systems, and conversations may need to evolve alongside that remembering. Moving beyond walls Perhaps it is time to move beyond walls, but first, we must be willing to move the walls within ourselves. Because the hardest walls to dismantle are rarely made of brick. They are made of fear. Fear of saying too much, fear of burdening others, fear of stepping outside expectations, fear that our hardship is not enough, and fear that our story does not qualify. Perhaps this is why someone felt the need to ask whether their feelings belonged, not because they lacked hardship, but because many of us have learned to seek permission before allowing ourselves to be witnessed. That may be one of the quiet epidemics of our time, not that people are feeling too much, but that too many people have learned to ask whether their feelings are allowed to count. The good news is that moving beyond walls does not require grand gestures. In my work, I have learned that some of the greatest transformations begin with the smallest acts of participation, a walk instead of a meeting, a conversation held outdoors, a workout beneath the trees, a moment of stillness, the courage to say "I'm not okay," and the willingness to ask "How are you, really?" Healing cannot be forced, but participation can be invited. Less, at times, can become more, more connection, more humanity, more space to breathe, and more room for people to arrive as they are. It is time for our stories to move more freely through life with us, not confined to offices or whispered behind closed doors, not categorized as mental, physical, spiritual, or professional, but carried with us into our communities, workplaces, grocery stores, fitness spaces, and everyday conversations. Because when stories move, people begin to recognize themselves in one another, not because their experiences are identical, but because their humanity is shared. Perhaps the future of health is not merely healthcare, and perhaps the future of success is not merely wealth. Perhaps the future is wellth, not the absence of hardship, but the presence of relationship with ourselves, with one another, with community, and with the land beneath our feet. Humans were never meant to be experienced in parts. We were meant to be in relationship. Humans are expansive, and our spaces, systems, and stories should be too. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Caren Carnegie Caren Carnegie, Founder of Transform Fitness Coaching, Intuitive Momentum Coach, Speaker & Writer Caren Carnegie is an Intuitive Momentum Coach, Certified Personal Trainer, and Speaker. She is the founder of Transform Fitness Coaching and creator of Transform HQ in Sebringville, Ontario, a holistic training space redefining strength for the New Human. Caren is an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine and an emerging voice in embodied leadership and soul-aligned well-being. References: Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative. (2024). Competency Framework for Advancing Collaboration. Government of Ontario. Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA), S.O. 2004, c. 3, current version. Canadian Nurses Association. Interprofessional Collaboration in Health Care. Ontario Health. Privacy and Information Practices. Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. PHIPA and the Protection of Personal Health Information. Health Canada. Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Patient-Centred Practice.

Written by Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is the founder of Lotus Journey, a breast cancer survivor, author, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis at 39, she now helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by supporting the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39, I understood immediately that my body would have to endure a great deal. There would be chemotherapy, surgery, scars, physical pain, and countless medical appointments. I expected the physical battle. What I did not expect was the emotional journey that would unfold alongside it. Nobody prepared me for the fear that would wake me in the middle of the night. Nobody spoke about the anger I would feel towards my own body for betraying me. Nobody explained that long after treatment ended, I would still be trying to answer one simple but profound question, "Who am I now?" Breast cancer is often described as a disease of the body. In reality, it touches every aspect of a woman's identity. It can shake your confidence, alter your relationship with yourself, change how you relate to your partner, and challenge your understanding of femininity in ways that are difficult to put into words. For a long time, I felt as though I had lost the woman I used to be. The woman who felt carefree. The woman who trusted her body. The woman who felt attractive and feminine without much effort. The woman who believed life would unfold according to plan. Perhaps the deepest grief of all was not the physical loss itself, but the loss of certainty and innocence. Suddenly, my body was no longer simply my home. It became something to monitor, to scan, to worry about. Every ache had meaning. Every appointment carried anxiety. Trust, once automatic, had to be rebuilt. This loss of trust extends far beyond our physical health. Many women quietly lose trust in their bodies. Some lose trust in life. Others lose trust in relationships. Perhaps most painfully, some lose trust in themselves. I remember looking in the mirror after treatment and not fully recognising the reflection staring back at me. My scars told a story of survival, yet emotionally I was still mourning what had changed. I questioned my attractiveness. I questioned my femininity. I wondered whether I would ever feel completely comfortable in my body again. These are not superficial concerns. They are deeply human. Breasts are often connected to our sense of femininity, sexuality, motherhood, and identity. When cancer changes them, it is natural for our relationship with ourselves to change too. Yet what I discovered, slowly and sometimes painfully, is that femininity was never something that cancer could take away. Femininity is not found in a body part. It is not measured by perfection. It is not dependent on youth, symmetry, or appearance. True femininity is softness and strength existing together. It is compassion. It is intuition. It is courage. It is the ability to love despite having experienced pain. I believe many women discover an even deeper version of their femininity after breast cancer than they ever knew before. Intimacy, however, can feel far more complicated. Many women carry fears they rarely speak about aloud. Will my partner still find me attractive? How will I meet someone new? Will I feel comfortable being seen? Can I allow myself to be vulnerable again? Will I ever feel desirable? I know these questions intimately because I asked them myself. Healing intimacy is not simply about rebuilding physical confidence. It begins with rebuilding emotional safety. It begins with learning to be gentle with ourselves, to honour our scars, to release shame, and to recognise that we are worthy of love exactly as we are. In many ways, the most important relationship I had to heal was not with another person. It was the relationship with myself. I had spent years achieving, striving, and putting others first. Cancer forced me to slow down and ask difficult questions. What do I truly need? What makes me feel alive? Where have I abandoned myself? What would it look like to choose myself, fully and unapologetically? The answers changed the course of my life. My healing journey became about much more than recovering from cancer. It became about recovering myself. I began nourishing my body with greater care. I explored nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and holistic healing. I addressed emotional wounds I had carried for years. I learned to set boundaries, honour my needs, and create a life aligned with my values. Most importantly, I stopped trying to return to the woman I was before cancer. Instead, I allowed myself to become someone new. Someone softer. Someone stronger. Someone more authentic. Someone deeply connected to herself. Today, when I work with women navigating breast cancer and recovery, I want them to know that healing is not only about surviving treatment. It is about learning to trust your body again. It is about reconnecting with your femininity. It is about rebuilding intimacy, both with yourself and with those you love. It is about creating a life that feels meaningful, joyful, and authentically yours. Because breast cancer may change your body. But it does not diminish your worth and sometimes, through the process of healing, you discover a version of yourself more powerful, compassionate, and beautiful than you ever imagined possible. To access my free Breast Cancer Support & Healing Series, please visit here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronika Bubenickova Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is a breast cancer survivor, author, speaker, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis in 2023, she embarked on a profound healing journey that transformed every aspect of her life. Today, she helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by addressing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. She is the founder of Lotus Journey and author of Diary of a Soul Reborn, with a mission to help women thrive beyond breast cancer, not just survive it.

Written by Wolfe Lanier, Communication, Public Speaking, and Voice Coach Wolfe Lanier is a public speaking and communication coach with a Master’s in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, specializing in performance anxiety, stage fright, and vocal confidence. He helps professionals and creatives communicate with clarity, confidence, and authenticity in high-pressure situations. Leadership is often treated as an intellectual pursuit. A common trope I hear is, “I want to make sure that I know what I am talking about before I talk about it.” We read books on influence, communication, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and decision-making. We attend workshops, develop management frameworks, and refine our leadership philosophies. All of which makes sense in theory. Yet despite all this knowledge, all the effort to be a “good leader”, many continue to struggle. Teams become disengaged. Difficult conversations are avoided. Burnout rises. Communication becomes reactive rather than intentional. Disconnection. If this is the case, then maybe knowledge isn’t the key to good leadership. Leadership happens through the body Every leadership action is ultimately expressed through the body. A difficult conversation is spoken through a voice and body. A presentation is delivered through breath, posture, gesture, and presence and body. Trust is established through nonverbal communication long before words are processed and body. When leaders become disconnected from their bodies, they often become disconnected from the information their bodies are constantly providing. Stress becomes normalised. Tension goes unnoticed. Breath becomes shallow. The nervous system shifts into states of protection rather than connection. The result is often leadership that appears competent on the surface but lacks the presence necessary to create genuine trust and engagement. The cost of disembodied leadership From working with many leaders, I have noticed some common trends. Many leaders spend their days moving from meeting to meeting with little awareness of what is happening internally, a cerebral practice of negotiating, intellectualising, and “making sure” whatever needs to happen, happens. They know what they are thinking and what they need to accomplish, but they rarely know what they are feeling intrinsically. As a result, communication becomes less effective. A leader may say all the right things, yet their team senses tension, urgency, or uncertainty underneath the words. Decision-making becomes reactive. When leaders are disconnected from bodily signals of stress, they are more likely to operate from fear, defensiveness, or overwhelm without realising it. Relationships suffer. Human beings are remarkably skilled at detecting incongruence. When words and physical presence do not align, trust erodes. Presence is not a personality trait One of the greatest misconceptions in leadership is that presence is something certain people naturally possess. In reality, presence is often the result of awareness. Leaders who are present are not necessarily more charismatic, they are simply more connected, connected to their breath, connected to their emotions, and connected to the physical sensations that signal stress, excitement, uncertainty, and confidence. This awareness allows them to respond rather than react and to remain grounded when circumstances become challenging. Most importantly, it allows them to communicate from a place of assuredness rather than performance. Reconnecting to the instrument The body is not separate from leadership. It is the instrument through which leadership is expressed. Before entering a meeting, leaders might ask themselves, "What am I feeling right now?" "How am I breathing?" "Where am I holding tension?" "What energy am I bringing into this conversation?" These questions may seem simple, but they create a profound shift. They move leadership from something we think about to something we embody. The future of leadership As workplaces become increasingly complex, technical expertise alone will not be enough. The leaders who create trust, resilience, and meaningful connection will be those who can remain deeply aware of themselves while staying attuned to others. Leadership is not simply a cognitive process. It is an embodied one. When we lose connection with our bodies, we risk losing connection with the very people we hope to lead. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Wolfe Lanier Wolfe Lanier, Communication, Public Speaking, and Voice Coach Wolfe Lanier is a public speaking and communication coach with a background in musical theatre, specializing in performance anxiety, stage fright, and vocal confidence. He holds a Master’s in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where his work focused on the voice as the center of identity and communication. He has worked with clients including Google, Goldman Sachs, and Zoom, and has supported TEDx speakers. He works with professionals, leaders, and creatives to help them speak with clarity, confidence, and authenticity in high-pressure situations.

Written by Catherine Crestani, Inner Authority Guide, Writer and Speaker Catherine Crestani is an Inner Authority Guide, author, speaker, and host of the Willow Healing Matters podcast who works at the intersection of spirituality, psychology, and consciousness. Drawing on her background in allied health and business leadership, she empowers people to reconnect with their inner wisdom and embody transformation. For years, I wore busyness like a badge of honour. I fell victim to what is now commonly known as hustle culture, the belief that success comes from constantly doing more, achieving more, and pushing harder. Every minute of my day had to be accounted for. Every hour needed to be productive. Every completed task was proof that I was moving forward. Somewhere along the way, I began to believe that if I wasn't busy, I wasn't successful. If I wasn't thinking about the next goal, the next launch, the next client, or the next revenue target, I was somehow falling behind. Looking back now, I can see how deeply I had tied my self-worth to my productivity, and I know I'm not alone. The hidden cost of hustle culture The problem with hustle culture is that it often disguises itself as ambition. At first, it feels empowering. You feel motivated, driven, and determined to create results. But over time, that constant pressure to perform can come at a significant cost. For me, it led to burnout, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, and complete nervous system exhaustion. Research continues to show that excessive workloads and chronic stress contribute to higher rates of burnout, anxiety, and declining mental health. Studies examining hustle culture have found that the glorification of constant productivity is often linked to increased stress, reduced well-being, and lower job satisfaction. According to a recent literature review on the influence of hustle culture on mental health, individuals who internalise the belief that their value is tied to constant productivity are significantly more likely to experience emotional exhaustion and psychological distress. Additional research exploring hustle culture and workplace anxiety has found that overworked behaviours are strongly associated with increased anxiety, stress, and reduced overall well-being. What many people don't realise is that burnout rarely happens overnight. It occurs gradually, often disguised as dedication, ambition, and commitment. We ignore the signs because society celebrates overwork. We tell ourselves we'll slow down after the next launch, the next promotion, or the next milestone. Ironically, the more I pushed, the less effective I became. The mindset that had originally been designed to help me succeed was slowly becoming the very thing that was holding me back. Why we became addicted to hustle The truth is, hustle culture didn't appear overnight. For decades, society rewarded busyness. The entrepreneur who worked weekends was celebrated. The executive who answered emails at midnight was seen as committed. The parent who carried the weight of everyone else's needs without stopping was praised for their selflessness. Somewhere along the way, exhaustion became a status symbol. We began measuring success by how full our calendars were rather than how fulfilled our lives felt. Being busy became proof that we were ambitious, productive, and valuable. Social media only amplified the message. We were constantly exposed to stories of overnight success, six-figure launches, and entrepreneurs claiming they built their businesses by working around the clock. The underlying message was clear, if you wanted more, you had to do more. But what if we've confused activity with achievement? What if constant productivity has become a socially acceptable form of self-abandonment? When I look back on my own experience, I can see that I wasn't chasing success as much as I was chasing validation. Every task completed gave me a temporary sense of accomplishment. Every item crossed off my to-do list reinforced the belief that I was enough. Yet no amount of achievement ever created the feeling of fulfilment I was searching for. Because fulfilment doesn't come from proving your worth. It comes from knowing your worth, regardless of how much you accomplish. Why more work doesn't equal more success One of the biggest myths perpetuated by hustle culture is that more hours automatically create better results. The research tells a different story. A landmark study by Stanford economist John Pencavel found that productivity declines sharply after approximately 50 hours of work per week, with output dropping so significantly after 55 hours that working additional hours produces very little meaningful gain. In many cases, employees working 70 hours achieved almost the same results as those working 55 hours. Other studies have found little evidence that employees working excessive hours produce better outcomes than those maintaining healthier work boundaries. In fact, chronic overwork is often associated with reduced creativity, lower engagement, increased mistakes, and poorer decision-making. For many of us, this is uncomfortable to hear because we've been conditioned to believe that effort and exhaustion are evidence of commitment. Yet some of the most innovative ideas, meaningful relationships, and life-changing decisions happen when we step away from the constant pressure to perform. Productivity isn't simply about doing more. It's about creating the conditions that allow our best work to emerge. This challenges one of the foundational beliefs of hustle culture, that relentless effort is the key to success. Perhaps the goal isn't to work harder. Perhaps the goal is to work more intentionally. The rise of sustainable success Thankfully, we're beginning to see a shift. More organisations are recognising the importance of workplace well-being, flexibility, and mental health. Conversations around burnout prevention, nervous system regulation, work-life balance, and employee wellness are becoming mainstream. Many workplaces now offer meditation programs, wellness initiatives, flexible work arrangements, and mental health support because they understand that healthier people create healthier businesses. Research into flexible and hybrid work environments has shown improvements in employee well-being, reduced stress, lower burnout levels, and increased productivity. A large-scale study reported by The Guardian found that employees working in hybrid environments were happier, healthier, and more productive, while experiencing lower levels of burnout than their office-based counterparts. This isn't laziness. It's evolution. We're beginning to realise that human beings are not machines. Learning to leave space As a woman, mother, entrepreneur, and healer, one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn wasn't how to do more, it was how to do less. I remember the first time I intentionally left a day in my diary completely empty. No meetings. No deadlines. No tasks that needed ticking off. Just space. Honestly, it made me uncomfortable. I kept feeling the urge to fill it, to be useful, to prove that I was being productive. Years of conditioning had taught me that movement meant progress, and that a full calendar meant I was successful. Sitting still felt foreign. That day, I found myself reaching for my phone more times than I could count, looking for something to do, something to achieve, something that would justify my time. But as the day unfolded, something unexpected happened. I went for a walk without listening to a podcast. I sat with a cup of tea and watched the sunlight move across the room. I allowed my mind to wander instead of forcing it to focus. In that space, I heard myself again, not the voice of my to-do list, not the voice of expectation, but my own voice. The irony was that the clarity I had been desperately trying to force through endless action arrived effortlessly when I finally stopped pushing. Ideas flowed in. Solutions appeared. Creative inspiration landed in ways it never could when I was rushing from one task to the next. It taught me something profound, some of life's greatest breakthroughs don't happen when we're working harder. They happen when we create enough space to hear what has been trying to reach us all along. The moments I once labelled as "unproductive" became some of the most transformative moments of my life. From hustle to flow For me, the shift from hustle to flow wasn't something I learned from a book. It came from hitting a wall. I remember sitting at my desk one afternoon, staring at a to-do list that never seemed to end. My body was exhausted, my mind was racing, and despite all the effort I was putting in, I felt further away from the life I was trying to create. I had spent years believing that success required sacrifice, that rest had to be earned, and that slowing down meant falling behind. But something inside me knew there had to be another way. In spiritual circles, we often speak about flow, and for a long time, I misunderstood what that meant. I thought flow was passive. I thought it meant sitting back and waiting for life to happen. What I discovered was the opposite. Flow is not about doing nothing. It is about aligning your actions with your energy. It is about recognising that we are not designed to operate at full speed every single day. Nature doesn't work that way. There are seasons for growth, seasons for rest, seasons for creation, and seasons for reflection. Yet hustle culture teaches us to ignore those natural rhythms and push through regardless of what our body, mind, or soul is asking for. When I began allowing myself space, space to rest, space to think, space to simply be, I noticed something remarkable. The ideas I had been chasing suddenly arrived. The opportunities I had been forcing began to unfold naturally. The clarity I had been searching for emerged in the quiet moments I once considered unproductive. Some of my biggest business breakthroughs didn't come from working harder. They came while walking on the beach, sitting in meditation, spending time with my children, or allowing myself an afternoon with no agenda at all. The more I trusted myself, the less I felt the need to control everything. The more I honoured my energy, the more productive I became. The more I embraced flow, the more life seemed to meet me halfway. A toast to the end of hustle culture If hustle culture has taught us anything, it's that being constantly busy does not guarantee success. In fact, it may be the very thing keeping us stuck. Stuck in cycles of burnout. Stuck in the belief that our value must be earned. Stuck chasing goals that no longer align with who we are becoming. The irony is that many of us started hustling because we wanted more freedom, more abundance, more fulfilment, and more joy. Yet somewhere along the way, the pursuit of success became more important than actually experiencing it. Perhaps the next evolution of success isn't about doing more. Perhaps it's about becoming more intentional. More present. More connected. More willing to trust ourselves. More willing to honour the natural rhythms of life. So here's my toast to the end of hustle culture. To releasing the belief that your worth is measured by how busy you are. To choosing sustainable success over chronic exhaustion. To allowing yourself moments of rest without guilt. To trusting that your value does not disappear when you slow down. To remembering that productivity and self-worth are not the same thing. Most importantly, to remembering that life was never meant to be lived as a never-ending checklist. Your soul does not thrive under constant pressure. It thrives in presence. It thrives in connection. It thrives when there is space to breathe. Success isn't found in how hard you push. Sometimes, it's found in how willing you are to pause long enough to receive what you've been working so hard to create. Ready to create success without burnout If this resonates with you, perhaps it's time to stop forcing and start listening. Through intuitive coaching, energy healing, and transformational mentoring, I help women reconnect with themselves, release burnout, and create success in a way that feels aligned, sustainable, and deeply fulfilling. You don't have to keep pushing through exhaustion to prove your worth. You can create a life and business that supports you, rather than one that drains you. If you're ready to explore what that could look like for you, I'd love to support you on your journey. Connect with me through Willow Healing and take the first step towards creating success from flow, not force. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Catherine Crestani Catherine Crestani, Inner Authority Guide, Writer and Speaker Catherine Crestani writes and speaks about consciousness, inner authority, and embodied leadership. With a background in allied health and entrepreneurship, she has built and led successful businesses before turning her focus toward empowering others to reconnect with their inner wisdom and live from embodied self-trust. Her work bridges spirituality and psychology to explore the deeper dimensions of healing, awareness, and human potential. She is the host of the Willow Healing Matters podcast. At the heart of her work is a simple knowing that when we remember who we truly are, everything changes.

Geneva Martin is an executive leadership strategist, author of Surrendered in Silence: The God Who Stayed, and co-founder of The JITT Group. Throughout her career, she has worked alongside leaders navigating growth, change, and complexity, which has led her to explore a question that has become central to her work, "Who are we beyond our titles, accomplishments, and roles?" In this interview, Geneva discusses thoughtful transformation, leadership, AI governance, resilience, and why she believes the strongest leaders are not defined by their titles but anchored by their identity. She offers a human-centered perspective on leadership, encouraging readers to reconnect with their values, purpose, and what she calls their North Star. Geneva Martin, Executive Strategist | Leadership Consultant | Author | Speaker | Co-Founder of The JITT Group What inspired you to create The JITT Group and build your work around the idea of thoughtful transformation? Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of working alongside highly successful leaders—people with impressive titles, influence, and accomplishments. Yet in private conversations, I often heard a different story. Many were exhausted, unfulfilled, and struggling to find meaning beyond their roles. They had achieved success, but somewhere along the way, they had lost touch with who they were beyond the title. Those observations challenged me to think differently about leadership and transformation. I believe thoughtful transformation is the intentional process of aligning who you are with how you live, lead, and serve. It begins with self-awareness, not strategy. Before leaders can transform organizations, they must understand what drives them, what they value, and what guides their decisions. That’s what inspired The JITT Group. Our work helps leaders move beyond performance-driven identities and reconnect with their purpose, values, and what I call their North Star—the beliefs, values, and purpose that guide their decisions regardless of circumstances. Because when leaders know who they are, they lead with greater clarity, resilience, and impact. How has your experience in AI governance and data governance shaped the way you develop leaders today? “Governance taught me that leadership is stewardship and that trust is the currency of AI, data, and people.” My experience in AI governance and data governance fundamentally changed the way I think about leadership because it taught me that every decision has a human impact. For years, governance, risk, compliance, privacy, and data professionals have worked to help organizations understand that data is not just an asset. Behind every data point is a person, a customer, an employee, or a community affected by the decisions we make. Yet in many organizations, the focus remained on speed, innovation, revenue, and competitive advantage. AI has brought that reality into sharper focus. As AI becomes more powerful, leaders can no longer separate technology decisions from human consequences. The questions are no longer just, “Can we do this?” They must also ask, “Should we do this?” and “What impact will this have on people?” That perspective has deeply influenced how I develop leaders. I believe leadership is stewardship. It requires balancing innovation with responsibility, performance with purpose, and progress with accountability. The best leaders understand that sustainable success is built not only on what an organization achieves, but on how those achievements affect the people it serves. What role does self-awareness play in helping leaders make better decisions under pressure? "I believe self-awareness is one of the most important leadership competencies because pressure reveals what leaders are truly anchored to. When circumstances become difficult, leaders don't rise to a new identity, they return to the one they've already built." When leaders are under pressure, they rarely rise to a new level of thinking. Instead, they default to whatever is already anchored within them. That’s why self-awareness matters so much. I often think of it like a compass. When you know your North Star, you always know where true north is, even if you’ve temporarily lost your bearings. The circumstances around you may change. The environment may become chaotic. The pressure may increase. But your core values, purpose, and guiding principles remain steady. Throughout my career, I’ve watched leaders respond very differently to the same challenge. Some immediately focus on blame, protecting their position, or finding fault. Others focus on understanding the problem, serving the people involved, and finding a path forward. The difference is often self-awareness. Leaders who know who they are don’t need every decision to validate their title or authority. They can remain grounded, ask better questions, and respond rather than react. Self-awareness creates clarity under pressure because it keeps leaders anchored to their North Star when everything around them is shifting. As AI becomes more integrated into business, where do you think leaders need to be especially thoughtful and intentional? “As technology becomes more powerful, human-centered leadership becomes more important, not less.” As AI becomes more integrated into business, leaders must think beyond efficiency, productivity, and short-term competitive advantage. Those outcomes matter, but they cannot be the only measures of success. The decisions being made today will shape how future generations work, learn, create, and contribute. That requires leaders to think with a longer horizon. Throughout history, every major technological shift has transformed the workforce, the economy, and society itself. AI is no different. The question is not whether AI will change the way we work. It already is. The question is whether leaders will be intentional enough to prepare people for that future. I believe leaders must balance innovation with stewardship. They must consider not only what technology can do, but how it affects people, organizations, communities, and opportunities for future generations. Governance, ethics, accountability, and human-centered leadership are no longer optional conversations. Technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. The leaders who create lasting impact will be those who can see both the possibilities of AI and the responsibility that comes with shaping its future. Why do so many transformation initiatives fail to create lasting change within organizations? I believe many transformation initiatives fail because organizations focus on changing processes before they focus on changing people. When leaders talk about transformation, the conversation often centers on new systems, new policies, new technologies, new operating models, or new ways of working. While those changes are important, they are only part of the equation. Processes do not transform organizations. People do. Throughout my career, I’ve observed organizations invest significant time and resources into designing the future state while spending far less time understanding the people who must operate within it. We often ask employees to adopt new behaviors, learn new skills, and embrace new ways of working without fully understanding what they need to make that transition successfully. Transformation is ultimately a human experience. Before implementing change, leaders must understand how people think, what motivates them, what concerns them, and what support they need to succeed. When people gain clarity, confidence, and ownership, processes naturally evolve. Sustainable transformation happens when leaders recognize that change management is not primarily about managing processes, it’s about helping people navigate change. If you can help people transform, the organization will follow. When a leader feels overwhelmed by complexity, what is the first step toward creating clarity? “Clarity is not the absence of complexity. Clarity is knowing what matters most within the complexity.” The first step toward clarity is not taking action, it’s creating space to think. When leaders feel overwhelmed, there is often a temptation to move faster, gather more information, hold more meetings, or react to the loudest problem. In my experience, that usually creates more noise rather than more clarity. I encourage leaders to pause and reconnect with what I call their North Star, the values, purpose, and principles that guide their decisions. Just as a compass continues pointing north during a storm, leaders need something that remains steady when circumstances become chaotic. Clarity is not the absence of complexity. Leadership will always involve competing priorities, uncertainty, and difficult decisions. Clarity comes from knowing what matters most and filtering decisions through that lens. Once leaders reconnect with their foundation, they can begin asking better questions, "What problem are we actually trying to solve? What outcome are we trying to create? What matters most right now?" The calmer the leader becomes, the clearer the path forward often appears. How can leaders strengthen resilience without losing sight of their values and purpose? “Resilience is not the ability to carry everything. It is the wisdom to know what is yours to carry.” Resilience is often misunderstood. Many people view resilience as the ability to carry more, endure more, or push through more adversity. In reality, I believe resilience is the result of refinement. Like a sword forged through fire, leaders are shaped through challenges, setbacks, pressure, and experiences that test them. The strongest leaders are not those who have avoided difficulty. They are the ones who have been tested by it and emerged with greater wisdom, perspective, and self-awareness. The challenge is that many leaders continue carrying burdens that were never theirs to carry. Over time, that creates exhaustion, misalignment, and burnout. Resilient leaders understand the difference between responsibility and ownership. They know when to lead, when to delegate, when to listen, and when to let go. Most importantly, they remain anchored to their values, purpose, and what I call their North Star. When leaders know who they are and what guides them, adversity may shape them, but it does not redefine them. Their circumstances may change, but their foundation remains intact. Your work often connects leadership with wholeness and personal growth. What has that taught you about leading others well? “Wholeness is not perfection. It is alignment.” It has taught me that leadership is ultimately an inside-out journey. For many years, I believed personal growth was primarily about learning more, achieving more, or becoming more. What I eventually discovered is that growth often requires letting go of things we were never meant to carry in the first place. That realization is a central theme in my book Surrendered in Silence. What many people don’t realize is that surrender is not a one-time event. It is a daily practice. Sometimes it is an hourly practice. It is the ongoing decision to release fear, control, expectations, and identities that no longer serve us so we can remain aligned with who we truly are. For me, wholeness is not perfection. It is alignment. It is living, leading, and serving from a place that is consistent with my values, purpose, and what I call my North Star. That has changed the way I lead others. I’ve learned that people do not need another leader telling them who to become. They need leaders who create space for them to discover who they already are and to become their true selves. When leaders operate from that place of honesty, self-awareness, and alignment, they help others grow in a way that is both meaningful and sustainable. What is one mindset shift that can help someone move from simply surviving to leading with greater intention? The most powerful mindset shift is moving from asking, “What do I need to achieve?” to asking, “Who am I?” Many of us spend years building careers, pursuing goals, collecting titles, and measuring success through performance. While there is nothing wrong with achievement, problems arise when those things become the source of our identity rather than the expression of it. I encourage leaders to imagine removing everything that society uses to define success. Remove the title. Remove the position. Remove the income. Remove the accomplishments. Then sit quietly with a blank sheet of paper and ask yourself a simple question, "Who am I?" At some point in life, every person will face that question. Sometimes it comes through a career transition, a loss, a setback, retirement, or simply a season of reflection. The sooner we answer it, the more intentionally we can live and lead. When leaders understand who they are, their purpose becomes clearer, their decisions become more aligned, and their confidence becomes less dependent on external validation. The title doesn’t disappear, it simply takes its proper place. You remain the focus, and the title becomes the accessory. The strongest leaders are not defined by what they do. They are anchored by who they are. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Geneva Martin

Written by Dr. Trish Avery, Founder of the AINT Foundation CIC and the AINT Model | Trauma-Informed Therapist Dr Trish Avery is a trauma‑informed therapist and founder of the AINT Foundation CIC and the AINT Model, recognised with two awards for innovation and Mental Health impact. She believes people heal when they feel safe, respected, and free from judgment, allowing the brain to relax, trust, and accept support. After years of research, clinical practice, and personal experience with trauma, Dr. Trish Avery, Founder, Clinical Lead, and CEO of AINT Foundation CIC, is calling for a more honest, compassionate conversation about the limitations of standardised mental health treatments in the UK, particularly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). “This is not an attack on the NHS,” Dr. Avery emphasises. “It is an honest view formed after many years of research and experiencing these methods myself. I have seen the strengths of the system, but I have also seen the gaps and the people who fall through those gaps.” CBT works for some but not for trauma survivors NICE guidelines for depression (CG90) and anxiety (CG113) recommend CBT as the first-line treatment. NHS Talking Therapies is built around these guidelines because CBT is measurable, manualised, and fits the system’s targets. But trauma is not cognitive. Trauma is emotional, relational, physiological, and stored in the body (van der Kolk, 2014). This means CBT, a cognitive model, can unintentionally cause harm when applied to trauma survivors. Real-life examples from clients include: “I felt like I was being told my trauma wasn’t real.” A woman with childhood abuse was asked to challenge the belief “I’m not safe.” Her belief came from real danger. She left therapy feeling invalidated and ashamed. “Exposure made me worse.” A man with complex PTSD was pushed into exposure exercises before he had emotional regulation skills. He dissociated during sessions and experienced panic attacks afterwards. “I couldn’t do the homework, so I thought I was failing therapy.” A young adult with trauma struggled to complete CBT worksheets. They believed they were “not trying hard enough,” when in reality, their nervous system was overwhelmed. “I didn’t feel safe enough to talk.” A client with relational trauma described CBT as “cold” and “clinical.” They needed connection, not correction. “These are not failures of the clients,” Dr. Avery explains. “These are mismatches between the model and the human experience.” Even NICE guidelines warn against using standard CBT for trauma NICE guidelines for post traumatic stress disorder (NG116) clearly state that standard CBT is not appropriate for complex trauma, that stabilisation and emotional regulation must come first, and that trauma focused CBT must be adapted, not delivered as a generic protocol. Yet many trauma survivors are still placed into standard CBT because it is the only option available. EMDR helps but it often comes too late EMDR is recommended by NICE for post traumatic stress disorder and can be transformative. However, in the NHS it is often only offered after someone has already “failed” CBT, after long waiting lists, and after symptoms have worsened. “Trauma should not be treated as a last resort,” Dr Avery says. Introducing the AINT Model: A human trauma informed innovation In response to these systemic limitations, Dr. Avery created the AINT Model (Avery Integrative Non Judgment Therapy), a trauma informed, relational, integrative approach designed to meet people where they are, not where a manual says they should be. “AINT was not created in a classroom,” Dr. Avery explains. “It was created from lived experience, clinical experience, and human experience. I built it because people were being shaped to fit the therapy, instead of therapy being shaped to fit the person.” The AINT Model is integrative, drawing from multiple evidence based approaches; trauma informed, grounded in nervous system understanding; relational, prioritising safety, attunement, and connection; non judgmental, removing shame from the healing process; and human, created by someone who has lived trauma, not just studied it. Where CBT focuses on thoughts, AINT focuses on emotional capacity, nervous system regulation, relational safety, understanding the origins of beliefs, and stabilisation before change. “AINT fills the gap between what people need and what the system can offer,” Dr. Avery says. “It is not a protocol. It is not a manual. It is a human approach to human pain.” A call for honest, compassionate change “This is not about criticising the NHS,” Dr. Avery emphasises again. “It is about acknowledging reality. The system is doing what it can with the resources it has. But standardised therapy cannot meet the needs of people with trauma. People deserve more than a pathway. They deserve to be seen, understood, and supported in a way that reflects their story, not a guideline.” Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Trish Avery Dr. Trish Avery, Founder of the AINT Foundation CIC and the AINT Model | Trauma-Informed Therapist Dr. Trish Avery is a trauma‑informed therapist and the founder of The AINT Foundation CIC, where she developed the AINT Model. Her work has earned both a Global Recognition Award and a Business Awards UK honour for innovation and Mental Health impact. Dr. Avery supports adults who don’t feel understood or supported within traditional services. She believes healing begins with safety, respect, and the absence of judgment, allowing the brain to finally trust and accept help. Her mission is to offer therapy that feels gentle, human, and genuinely accessible. References: NICE CG90 – Depression in adults NICE CG113 – Generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder NICE NG116 – Post traumatic stress disorder NHS Talking Therapies Manual (2023) Roth & Pilling (2007) – CBT and trauma competence frameworks Bessel van der Kolk (2014) – The Body Keeps the Score Judith Herman (1992) – Trauma and Recovery