Singapore, 6 June 2026 – In a city known for its pace, ambition, and constant movement, The Curious Circle by El Brand offers something increasingly valuable: a space for genuine conversation. Launched by Singapore-based cross-border marketing agency El Brand, The Curious Circle is a curated gathering that brings together founders, creatives, business leaders, and decision-makers from diverse industries to exchange ideas, challenge perspectives, and build meaningful connections through curiosity. The inaugural edition, held on 22 May 2026 at Chez Suzette in Singapore, gathered women leaders, entrepreneurs, architects, designers, marketers, and innovators under the theme "Curious Women Build Powerful Things." The evening focused not on traditional networking but on thoughtful conversations, shared experiences, and the possibilities that emerge when people from different disciplines come together. "Community is not about size, but about supporting and building trust," said Paula Andrade, Founder of El Brand and creator of The Curious Circle. "We wanted to create a space where conversations have depth, where people feel comfortable sharing ideas, and where connections are built through curiosity rather than transactions." The event featured speakers from various industries who explored topics spanning leadership, sustainability, personal identity, collaboration, and the environments that shape how people work and grow. Featured speakers included: Naomi Chang, Business Development Manager of The Work Boulevard, shared insights on how physical environments influence creativity, confidence, and professional growth. Clarence Koo, Founder of Amica Labs and Signal House, discussed the importance of collaboration, trust, and cross-border partnerships in an increasingly connected Southeast Asia. Alodia Cecilia, Founder of ACMS, who explored the relationship between personal style, self-awareness, and authentic self-expression. Ar. Joan De Leon-Tabinas, Managing Director of CORE+ Studio and Founding Partner of GBUILDEX, spoke about sustainability, leadership, and designing systems that serve both people and communities. The gathering also welcomed media leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals from across Southeast Asia, including representatives from The Metro Edit and Expat Living. According to attendees, what distinguished The Curious Circle was its intentional atmosphere. Rather than focusing on scale, the event prioritized meaningful exchanges, thoughtful dialogue, and authentic relationship-building. The result was an evening where conversations continued long after the formal program had ended. The concept behind The Curious Circle reflects El Brand's belief that curiosity remains one of the most valuable drivers of innovation, collaboration, and growth. Research continues to show that curiosity strengthens learning, relationship-building, and the exploration of new ideas, making it a critical ingredient in both personal and professional development. Following the success of its first edition, El Brand plans to continue growing The Curious Circle as a recurring platform for founders, creatives, business leaders, and curious minds seeking meaningful conversations and collaborative opportunities. The initiative aligns with El Brand's broader mission of connecting people, ideas, and opportunities across borders through storytelling, community-building, and strategic partnerships. About The Curious Circle The Curious Circle is a curated event series created by El Brand that brings together founders, creatives, leaders, and decision-makers for meaningful conversations, idea-sharing, and authentic relationship-building. Through carefully curated discussions and community gatherings, The Curious Circle aims to create spaces where curiosity leads to collaboration, learning, and new possibilities. About El Brand El Brand is a Singapore-based cross-border marketing agency that helps businesses strengthen their brand presence, connect with the right audiences, and grow through strategic storytelling, digital marketing, branding, website development, SEO, AI visibility, events, and partnerships. Founded by Paula Andrade, El Brand works with brands across Singapore, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Media contact El Brand Pte Ltd Email: marketing.elbrand@gmail.com WhatsApp: +65 8493 6997 Website: www.elbrand.solutions

Written by Samantha J. Goddard, Self-Mastery & Leadership Mentor Samantha Goddard is a Self-Mastery & Leadership Mentor, author and the creator of the Reiki Remastered™ framework. Her work explores the intersection of energy, leadership and personal responsibility, supporting individuals to cultivate depth, resilience and conscious alignment in modern life. From the outside, many women appear to be thriving. They are capable, high-functioning and outwardly successful. They are building businesses, leading teams, raising families, supporting others, managing responsibilities and continuing to achieve. They are often the women others rely upon and the ones who hold everything together. I have been that woman. Yet beneath that external capability, many are quietly carrying a very different internal experience, a growing disconnection from themselves. This is not necessarily because something has gone catastrophically wrong, but because somewhere along the line, constant pressure, performance and responsibility have slowly and quietly pulled them away from their own internal relationship and authentic self. This is something I see increasingly with the women I work with. Women who are intelligent, self-aware and deeply capable. Women who have often already invested significantly in their personal growth and development and who, on paper, are doing well. Yet privately, they describe feeling flat, lost, overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted and disconnected from their own sense of meaning, clarity or purpose. What is important to recognise is that this is not always burnout in the traditional sense. In fact, many women continue functioning exceptionally well. They continue to achieve, be productive and support everyone around them. Externally, they continue to appear and state that everything is “fine”. However, something I have come to realise after years of lived experience is that “fine” is often an immediate red flag of disconnection. An autopilot response born from cultural conditioning and from not having the time, space or tools to stop and ask ourselves truthfully, “How am I feeling?” This is a simple exercise I invite so many of my clients to do. Pause, breathe into the belly and ask yourself the question, “How am I?” Then stop long enough to genuinely listen to the body’s response, not that of the mind. For many, it is incredible to witness the void between “fine” and the actual answer they find. Performance over presence Modern culture often rewards performance over presence. We are encouraged to achieve, improve and push forward almost constantly. As a result, extreme productivity becomes normalised and over-functioning becomes praised. Over time, this can create a dangerous disconnect. Eventually, many women become highly skilled at managing life externally whilst simultaneously losing touch with what is happening within themselves. Their nervous systems remain in a near-constant state of activation. Their bodies rarely fully rest, and their minds rarely become quiet. Their internal landscape becomes something only briefly visited in the spaces between responsibilities, if at all. The problem is that no amount of external success can fully compensate for a loss of connection with ourselves. Achievement may temporarily distract from disconnection. It may even validate us socially for a time, but it cannot replace the fundamental human need for presence, purpose and relationship with self. This is true of all human beings. It is also why, on so many occasions, we reach goals once longed for, only to discover that something still feels missing. Awareness changes everything Over the past few years, I have found myself speaking more and more about awareness because I believe awareness changes everything. Real mindful awareness. Not the overly curated version often presented online, but the ability to notice ourselves honestly. To recognise when we are operating from pressure rather than presence. To become aware of the nervous system patterns driving our behaviours. To observe the ways we abandon ourselves in order to maintain performance, approval or productivity, and to be brave enough to ask ourselves why. This is where practices such as mindfulness, breathwork, Reiki and embodiment become so important, not as trends or quick fixes, but as foundational tools for returning to ourselves. True self-mastery is not about becoming more impressive or mirroring someone else. It is the ongoing practice of remaining connected to ourselves as life ebbs and flows around us. It is learning how to lead, achieve, create and grow without abandoning our own wellbeing, truth or humanity in the process. It is developing the capacity to pause, listen, feel and become more honest about what is actually sustainable for us, so that we can begin to recognise that slowing down is not the same as falling behind. A different relationship with success For many men and women, this requires an entirely different relationship with themselves and with success itself. A movement away from constant proving and perpetual performance towards a more embodied, sustainable and internally connected way of living and leading. Because ultimately, success means very little if we lose ourselves whilst trying to maintain it. So perhaps the real invitation is not to enter this next chapter from a place of old habits, conditioning and behaviours, but instead to reconnect with who we are beneath them and learn to lead from that place. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Samantha J Goddard Samantha J. Goddard, Self-Mastery & Leadership Mentor Samantha Goddard is a Self-Mastery & Leadership Mentor, author and the creator of the Reiki Remastered™ framework. With over 25 years of experience guiding individuals through personal and professional transformation, her work integrates energetic intelligence, nervous system awareness and disciplined self-development. Samantha supports artists, entrepreneurs and leaders to cultivate deeper alignment, resilience and clarity in times of transition and growth. Her work emphasises depth over performance and personal responsibility as the foundation of meaningful leadership and service.

Written by Danielle Van de Velde, Meditation Teacher, Reiki Master, Psychic Medium, and Author Dani Van de Velde is a passionate advocate for living a spiritually aligned life in the modern world. She is a meditation teacher, Reiki Master, psychic medium, and author of Spirited. She is the founder of Spirited Living and Spirited Business online communities, a broadcaster on News for the Soul Radio, and host of The Modern Crone podcast. We like to believe we make decisions consciously, choosing our careers, relationships, priorities, and paths through deliberate thought and free will. Yet beneath almost every decision lies something quieter and more powerful, our values. Values shape what we pursue, what we tolerate, what we defend, and what we are willing to sacrifice. They influence our politics, relationships, boundaries, ambitions, ethics, and even how we define success. Our values, both as a person and in business, are like our inner counsel, guiding us when we make decisions about partners, collaborators, and opportunities, and alerting us when something or someone breaches them. They also inform us about the type of client and client behaviours we want to attract, and when we may need to make the call to let a client go. When we haven’t given much intentional thought to our values, the signals from them usually emerge as a felt cognitive dissonance, which we can override and then regret not seeing the ‘red flags’ in hindsight. When we are clear about our values, we recognise much more consciously when an event, opportunity, or person is not aligned with us, and we can respond graciously with choice and discernment. Clarifying our values is a key first step in my Spirited Business coaching program for founders of businesses that offer wellbeing to others. I have learned that when we align with our values and make decisions from that alignment, our offerings send clear, powerful signals to the universe. We become magnetic, even when we turn down misaligned opportunities. The fascinating thing is that many of our values are inherited long before they are examined. They arrive through family systems, culture, religion, education, trauma, reward, survival, and belonging. Over time, they become internalised, invisible operating systems that quietly guide our lives beneath conscious awareness. Yet most people rarely stop to ask: What are my values? Do these values still belong to me? This is where the idea of Active Values begins, consciously examined, intentionally chosen values that actively shape how we live and work. I believe this is an exercise that is best repeated because values are not static. They evolve as we do. The quality of our lives is often shaped by whether we live according to conscious values or unconscious conditioning. The values we never chose Many of the values we hold began as adaptations. A child raised in instability may grow into an adult who values control above all else. Someone who received love for achievement may unconsciously prioritise productivity over well being. A person raised to maintain harmony at any cost may value loyalty while quietly sacrificing themselves in relationships. Some values are deeply beautiful. Others are survival strategies, dressed as virtue. Because these values often operate invisibly, we mistake them for identity. We say, “That’s just who I am.” But maturity often involves recognising that some of our most deeply held values were shaped by environments we have already outgrown. One of the most confronting forms of self awareness is realising that a value that once protected us may now be limiting us. The quiet consequences of unexamined values We rarely intentionally destroy our lives. More often than not, we follow unconscious values to their logical conclusion. A person who unconsciously values external approval may remain in relationships that diminish them. Someone who values achievement above balance may slowly burn themselves out. A business owner driven primarily by visibility or status may eventually lose touch with the deeper purpose that once animated their work. In my arena, I see so many spiritual practitioners driven by a desire to be perceived as ‘special’. Many crises are, at their core, values crises. Moments when our outer life no longer reflects what our deeper self knows to be true. I have experienced this personally in my work. There have been opportunities I have deliberately declined because, although they may have offered visibility or financial gain, they did not sit well with my values. One was a proposed mediumship demonstration for a well known documentary maker, which leaned heavily towards spectacle and performance. While genuine healing is possible within evidential mediumship, this event felt more aligned with entertainment than with meaningful spiritual service. I could feel subtle pressure to perform spirituality rather than facilitate insight, reflection, or transformation. I politely declined. Another client’s primary interest was not inner work, healing, or growth, but testing psychic ability itself. The interaction shifted from self awareness to proving or disproving something externally. I suggested they see another healer. While discernment is healthy, the energetic dynamic felt fundamentally misaligned. Earlier in my career, I may have said yes out of obligation, for visibility, under financial pressure, or out of fear of missing an opportunity. But values clarity changes decision making. Sometimes the most important thing we do is decline what pulls us away from ourselves. Active values When people are disconnected from their values, they often lose touch with their intuition as well. Decisions become reactive rather than aligned. Success becomes externally measured rather than internally experienced. I have watched members of our 2026 Spirited Business cohort start making radically different decisions once they became clearer about what genuinely matters to them. Some turned down clients who consistently drained them. Others stepped away from partnerships that looked impressive but felt energetically off. Some stopped underpricing themselves to maintain approval or avoid discomfort. Almost every time, something remarkable happened. Space opened. New opportunities arrived that were more resonant, reciprocal, sustainable, creative, and alive. This is one of the paradoxes of values based living. When we say “no” to opportunities that breach our values, we also say “yes” to those that honour them. Alignment itself becomes magnetic. Values shape energy, boundaries, self trust, and the standards we unconsciously communicate to the world. Over time, they shape what we allow ourselves to receive. Values evolve as we do What we value at twenty may not be what we value at forty. Life and experience shift priorities. Illness can make us value vitality. Grief can make us value presence. Burnout can make us value simplicity. Parenthood can reshape our identity. A spiritual awakening can redefine our sense of success. Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is admit that our old values no longer fit who we are becoming. That can be uncomfortable, especially when those values are tied to family expectations, cultural conditioning, identity, or a sense of social belonging. But there is a profound liberation in consciously redefining what matters according to our truth. Fulfilment and coherence Fulfilment is not merely getting what we want. It is experiencing a sense of coherence between our inner world and our outer life. There is a psychological and even physiological cost to living in ways that run counter to our values for prolonged periods. Internal conflict creates stress. Fragmentation drains energy. Pretending exhausts the nervous system. By contrast, alignment creates a different quality of experience, coherence. A sense that who we are internally and how we live externally are no longer in conflict. Perhaps this is where self trust truly begins, in no longer abandoning ourselves in the process of making it. Living by active values Living consciously by values requires honesty. It requires us to examine: What do I actually believe? What matters most to me now? What am I no longer willing to betray within myself? Where does my life feel aligned? Where does it not? Values are not proven by what we say. They are revealed by what we repeatedly choose. Transformation comes when we become deliberate, one aligned decision at a time. When we have not consciously examined our values, we often mistake them for universal truths rather than personal frameworks shaped by experience, culture, conditioning, and identity. From there, it becomes easy to judge others whose choices, lifestyles, ambitions, relationships, or beliefs do not mirror our own. Passive values often create rigidity. We unconsciously divide the world into “right” and “wrong,” successful and unsuccessful, worthy and unworthy, without realising we are often measuring others against inherited standards we never consciously chose. But active values create something quite different. When values become conscious, embodied, and intentionally lived, they stop being tools for judgement and become sources of personal power. True alignment creates coherence, and coherence is magnetic. People feel it. Opportunities respond to it. Relationships reorganise around it. The clearer we live by our values, the more our lives begin to reflect them. Misaligned opportunities lose their appeal. Aligned experiences become easier to recognise and receive. Our values shape our decisions. Our decisions shape our behaviour. Our behaviour shapes the energetic and practical reality we build around ourselves. Certainly, in my own experience and that of the people I coach, over time, we stop chasing everything. Begin attracting what genuinely belongs. When was the last time you intentionally examined what you stand for in your life? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Danielle Van de Velde Danielle Van de Velde, Meditation Teacher, Reiki Master, Psychic Medium, and Author Dani Van de Velde is a meditation teacher, Reiki Master, psychic medium, and author of Spirited. She is the founder of the Spirited Living and Spirited Business communities, supporting spiritually aligned growth and conscious leadership. Dani is a broadcaster on News for the Soul Radio and host of The Modern Crone podcast, exploring modern spirituality and embodied wisdom. Her work bridges intuition and everyday life, offering grounded, accessible pathways to self-trust and inner clarity. She is known for a warm, practical approach that honours both the mystical and the real.

Written by Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice Paula Rose Castronova is a sustainability leader and speaker who turns complex concepts into practical action. She champions sustainability as a human issue, uniting strategy and everyday choices to align purpose with performance and inspire systemic, real-world change. For too long, sustainability has been framed as something managed by institutions while individuals watch from the sidelines, waiting for change to happen elsewhere. This article explores why that mindset is shifting and how the future of sustainability depends on everyday people stepping into active, personal leadership. The future of sustainability is not passive, it is personal For years, sustainability has been treated as a problem for governments, scientists, activists, and corporations to solve. People have largely been cast as spectators, encouraged to recycle more, consume less, and hope those in power make the right decisions. But something is changing. Across the world, people are beginning to recognize that sustainability is not simply an environmental issue. It is also a leadership, cultural, and human issue. It shapes how we live, work, buy, build, communicate, educate, vote, innovate, and care for one another. The future will not be shaped by passive awareness alone. It will be made by active participation. This is where Active Sustainability Leadership emerges, not as a title reserved for executives or policymakers, but as a mindset available to everyone. It is the recognition that leadership begins the moment we stop waiting for permission to care, to act, and to influence change. People have always created extraordinary change throughout history. Sustainability’s evolution will be no different. Sustainability is no longer a side conversation There was a time when sustainability sat on the sidelines, discussed mostly within environmental circles, scientific communities, or political debates. Today, it touches every part of our lives. Climate events are reshaping economies, insurance systems, food production, migration, health, infrastructure, and global stability. Oceans are under pressure. Biodiversity is in decline. Waste systems are overwhelmed. The fashion, technology, agriculture, construction, and energy industries are now forced to confront the consequences of unsustainable growth. At the same time, people are facing a quieter crisis beneath the headline. Emotional exhaustion, eco anxiety, disconnection, and uncertainty about the future. Many of us know something is wrong. The challenge is that awareness alone does not automatically lead to action. In fact, awareness without direction can create paralysis. People become overwhelmed by the scale of the problems and underestimate the power of their own influence. They assume sustainability belongs to experts and wait for governments to legislate change or for corporations to innovate solutions. Meanwhile, they disconnect from the role they themselves can play. But sustainability was never meant to be outsourced entirely to institutions. It was always meant to be lived. The myth that leadership belongs to important people One of the greatest misconceptions in modern society is that leadership belongs only to those with authority, wealth, status, or visibility. We have been conditioned to equate leadership with titles such as CEO, politician, activist, founder, or expert. Yet real leadership has never been confined to boardrooms or podiums. Leadership is influence. It is a parent teaching a child to value nature that demonstrates leadership, and a teacher inspiring critical thinking who practices leadership. It is a business owner transforming supply chains who is a leader, or a consumer choosing to support ethical brands who is leading the way. A community member starting difficult conversations is practicing leadership, and just as significant, a young person refusing to accept indifference is a leader. Active sustainability leadership recognizes that influence exists everywhere. Some of the most transformative movements in history began not with institutions, but with individuals who chose to think, speak, and act differently long before society caught up. The sustainability transition will require millions of people stepping into leadership in their own way, not perfectly, but deliberately and with intention. From passive awareness to active participation Modern society has become effective at producing information. We are bombarded with headlines, documentaries, statistics, warnings, and predictions about the planet's future. Yet information rarely changes behavior. People do not transform because they are overloaded with facts, they transform when something becomes emotionally real and personally relevant. This is why Active Sustainability Leadership is not just about knowledge. It is about participation. It asks a deeper question. Now that you know, what will you do? This question shifts sustainability from abstract concern to lived responsibility. It invites people to move beyond guilt, fear, or performative gestures and into conscious, meaningful engagement with the world around them. Participation will look different for everyone. It may mean changing the way a person shops or consumes, or it may involve reshaping business practices. It could be using a person’s voice, creativity, platform, or profession to influence wider systems. The goal is not perfection. The goal is momentum, because sustainable change is built through participation at scale. Small actions are never small One of the most damaging beliefs people hold is that individual actions do not matter. People often say, “What difference can one person make?”, “My actions are too small”, “The problem is too big”. Yet history repeatedly proves otherwise. Cultural shifts rarely begin with majorities, they begin with small groups of people willing to act before it is convenient. Every large scale transformation starts somewhere. A conversation, business decision, innovation, refusal to accept the status quo, or one person influencing another. Individual actions matter not only because of their direct impact but also because of their ripple effect. Human beings are deeply influenced by social behavior. We mirror norms, values, habits, and expectations. When sustainable actions become visible, they become culturally contagious. This is how change spreads. A single business adopting ethical practices can influence its competitors. Communities reducing waste can influence councils and local policy. Consumers demanding transparency can influence entire industries. Parents influence future generations. Creators influence audiences. Employees influence workplaces. No action exists in isolation. The real power of Active Sustainability Leadership lies in recognizing that everyday choices, consistently made, collectively reshape systems. Sustainability is about more than the environment One of the core limitations of traditional sustainability conversations is that they are often framed solely through an environmental lens. But sustainability is not simply about protecting nature, it is about sustaining life itself. That includes environmental wellbeing, but it also encompasses mental health, social equity, community resilience, ethical leadership, cultural values, economic systems, education, and human connection. A society disconnected from empathy cannot create a sustainable future. A business built on exploitation cannot claim to be sustainable. A culture driven entirely by overconsumption cannot sustain wellbeing. This is why sustainability must be holistic. The future requires leaders who understand the interconnectedness of people, planet, purpose, and progress. Active Sustainability Leadership recognizes that external sustainability and internal sustainability are deeply intertwined. How we treat ourselves often mirrors how we treat the world around us. Burnout culture, relentless consumption, emotional disconnection, and environmental destruction are not separate issues, they are symptoms of a deeper imbalance in how modern society defines success. The future demands a new model of leadership, one rooted not only in productivity, but in consciousness, responsibility, adaptability, and care. Businesses have the influence Businesses hold enormous power in shaping the future. They influence supply chains, employment, consumer behavior, innovation, media narratives, manufacturing systems, investment flows, and cultural aspirations. For decades, sustainability was treated by business as an optional add on or a marketing tactic. Today, it is rapidly becoming a defining factor in long term resilience and trust. Consumers are asking questions about where products come from, who made them, how they are sourced, what impact they create, and whether businesses genuinely live up to their stated values. The shift toward sustainability is not driven by consumers alone, as employees, investors, and younger generations also demand greater accountability. The business that thrives in the future will be the one that understands sustainability not as a constraint, but as a catalyst for innovation. This moment calls for courageous leadership, leadership not driven purely by quarterly profits, but willing to think long term. Active sustainability leadership in business means recognizing that influence carries responsibility. It means understanding that every industry, from fashion to food, construction to technology, beauty to energy, has the capacity either to accelerate harm or to drive regeneration. Governments have the incentive Governments also play a critical role in shaping sustainable futures. Policy, infrastructure, incentives, regulation, education systems, and international cooperation all influence the speed and scale of societal transformation. However, governments rarely move independently of public pressure and cultural demand. Political systems often respond when populations begin demanding different priorities. This is why people still matter. Communities influence politics. Culture shapes policy. Public expectations guide leadership. The relationship between citizens and institutions is deeply interconnected. Active Sustainability Leadership does not reject systemic responsibility, it strengthens it by recognizing that systems themselves are shaped by human behavior, public values, and collective participation. The future requires both top down and bottom up change working together. The emotional side of sustainability One of the least discussed aspects of sustainability is the emotional experience that surrounds it. Many people today feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. They feel fear for future generations, grief for environmental loss, confusion in the face of misinformation, guilt about consumption, frustration about inaction, and helplessness in the face of scale. Yet these emotional responses are deeply human. The danger is not in feeling them, it is becoming immobilized by them. Fear without empowerment creates paralysis. Awareness without action creates despair. This is why hope must become active. Not blind optimism, denial, or toxic positivity. Active hope is the decision to participate in building better outcomes, even when uncertainty exists. Active Sustainability Leadership helps transform eco anxiety into agency. It reminds us that while no individual can solve every problem alone, every individual can contribute meaningfully to collective progress, and this is how we change history. Redefining what progress looks like For generations, society has equated progress with speed, consumption, expansion, and economic growth at any cost. Yet many of the systems driving modern success are also fueling ecological strain, social fragmentation, and declining wellbeing. The future demands a broader definition of progress. What if progress also meant healthier communities, cleaner oceans, regenerative agriculture, circular economies, ethical innovation, mental wellbeing, stronger relationships, long term resilience, deeper connection to nature, and purpose driven business? Sustainability challenges us to rethink not only how we live, but why we live the way we do. This does not mean rejecting advancement or modernity, it means evolving them. The next era of leadership will likely belong to those who can balance innovation with responsibility and ambition with awareness. The power of becoming At its core, sustainability is not only about saving the planet, it is about becoming the kind of people who can create a better future. This is a deeply personal process. At some point, each of us reaches a moment of awareness. A moment when we can no longer unknow what we know. The question then becomes, "Will that awareness lead to avoidance, or to transformation?" Active Sustainability Leadership invites people into transformation, not through shame, not through perfection, but through participation. It calls on individuals to recognize their influence, reclaim their agency, and contribute their unique strengths to positive change. The future will not be shaped by institutions alone. It will also be created by people who decide that indifference is no longer enough. Conclusion: Extraordinary change begins with us The sustainability enterprise is not waiting for superheroes. It is waiting for participation, and the future will be shaped by millions of decisions made every day, what we support, tolerate, consume, teach, create, value, ignore, and choose to change. Active Sustainability Leadership means recognizing that leadership is not reserved for the few, it belongs to anyone willing to engage consciously with the future. Extraordinary change has always begun this way, not with perfection, not with certainty, but with people who choose to move forward. The most important shift of our time is not technological or political, it is human, and it begins the moment people realize they are not powerless. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Paula Rose Castronova Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice Paula Rose Castronova is a sustainability leader, speaker, and holistic thought architect transforming how people and organizations respond to today’s defining challenges. With a career rooted in creativity, design, storytelling, and leadership, she turns complex sustainability ideas into clear, actionable pathways. She sees sustainability as fundamentally human, shaped by how we live, lead, consume, and connect. As an Active Sustainability Director, she identifies opportunities where others see obstacles, using systems thinking to link environmental, social, and economic issues. Through her writing, speaking, and strategy, she bridges policy and daily action, turning knowledge into meaningful change.

Written by Katie Simons, PharmD, BCPS, CCHT, Transpersonal Hypnotherapist and Coach Dr. Katie Simons, PharmD, BCPS, CCHT, is a clinical pharmacist, transpersonal hypnotherapist, psychedelic medicine facilitator, and coach specializing in nervous system regulation, personal transformation, and holistic healing. She is the founder of The Holistic Apothec, a resource for coaching and education on healing through altered states of consciousness. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from doing too much of the wrong thing for too long. It’s the exhaustion of living in careful compliance with the rules, expectations, unspoken agreements about who you are supposed to be and how much space you are allowed to take up. It’s the fatigue of a nervous system that has been on its best behavior for decades and is politely losing its mind. Most therapeutic frameworks will tell you the answer is more awareness. More journaling. More understanding of your attachment style, nervous system, and childhood wounds. They are not wrong, awareness matters. But awareness alone will resolve this pain point. At some point, healing stops being an insight and turns into a choice. Specifically, the choice to stop following rules that were never written with your well-being in mind. I call this choice intentional defiance. I would argue it is one of the most underrated healing practices available to us. What intentional defiance actually means Before you worry too much, intentional defiance does not mean breaking the speed limit because you are late to work or lying to your spouse because the truth is uncomfortable. Sorry, folks, this is not an excuse for poor behavior. On the contrary, it requires aligning with your values and morals prior to taking any action. Intentional defiance is the practice of prioritizing your own values and well-being in how you choose to live, even when, or especially when, that requires breaking social norms, family expectations, internal “shoulds,” or, dare I say it, the law. It is the deliberate, conscious choice to break the rules that do not serve your good or align with your values. By doing so, your choices become a vehicle of freedom. Most of the rules I am talking about are not the ones in a legal code. They are the subtler ones, the internalized agreements most of us have been following since childhood without ever consciously signing the contract. Rules like your needs come last, and self-sacrifice is admirable. Rest must be earned. Conflict is dangerous. Being difficult is worse than being diminished. Say yes. Be likable. Make it easy for everyone else. These rules were not handed to us as rules. They arrived as love, as safety, as the implicit terms of belonging, which is exactly what makes them so hard to see, and so costly to keep following once you do. The training we did not sign up for Most of us do not consciously choose how we show up in the world. We were trained early in life, before we had a cognitive filter or a sense of self. As children, we learned quickly what it meant to be good, agreeable, polite, emotionally regulated in a way that made those around us comfortable. Approval was rarely unconditional. It was contingent on performance, compliance, and how reliably we could suppress the parts of ourselves that were inconvenient to others. In adulthood, the training simply upgrades its wardrobe. We show up regardless of how we feel. We avoid conflict to keep the peace. We rest only after we have sufficiently justified it. We say “yes” when we mean “no” so fluently that we eventually stop noticing the gap between the two. We become high-functioning, reliable, productive, and somewhere amid all that competent self-abandonment, we wonder why we feel so disconnected from ourselves. It is not a mystery. When chronic self-abandonment becomes the baseline, anxiety, burnout, and depression are not signs that something inside us is broken. They are the nervous system sending a very clear, very persistent message, this arrangement is not working. Something has to change. Intentional defiance paves the way to finally listen. Why the system is not neutral Here is something worth saying plainly, most of the systems we live in were not designed for our wholeness. They were designed for productivity and function. Healthcare often manages symptoms more efficiently than it resolves root causes. Workplaces reward output, not nervous system regulation. Rest is glorified in theory and often penalized in practice. We are told to take care of ourselves, as long as it does not disrupt productivity or make anyone uncomfortable. This is not a conspiracy. It is just the architecture of a culture that runs, in part, on human overextension. It means that choosing your own wellbeing over your output will sometimes feel, and be perceived, as an act of defiance, simply because it is inconvenient to the system. Healing asks you to listen inward instead of outward. To rest when your body says rest, not when the calendar permits it. To set a limit when something feels wrong, even when setting it is the harder short-term choice. To trust your own perception in systems that spent years teaching you not to. The guilt that often arises is a sense of selfishness. But this is not selfishness. It is sovereignty. Sovereignty, in a culture built on your compliance, will occasionally look like rebellion. Wear it well. What intentional defiance looks like on a Tuesday Intentional defiance rarely arrives as a dramatic, glamorous gesture. More often, it looks almost embarrassingly ordinary. You stay home when you are sick instead of pushing through. You say no without a three-paragraph explanation for why. You do not respond immediately. You stop carrying emotions that were never yours to hold. You stop asking permission to take care of yourself first. You follow the thing you are actually drawn to instead of the thing you think you should do. At first, these moments do not feel like freedom. They feel uncomfortable and suspect, like you might be getting away with something you are not supposed to. That discomfort is a signal of rewiring old, subconscious brain code. Because you are not just changing behavior. You are interrupting conditioning that your nervous system built for survival. Guilt will show up on schedule. Shame will have opinions. The fear of disappointing someone will arrive right on time, carrying its little clipboard of reasons to reconsider. This is why so many people know exactly what they need and still cannot seem to do it consistently. It is not a mindset problem. It is a safety problem. If your nervous system learned that safety came from compliance, then choosing yourself will register as a threat, even when it is the most coherent thing you have ever done. The body has to accumulate evidence that the world does not end when you say “no.” That recalibration takes time, repetition, and a willingness to be temporarily uncomfortable in service of something truer. There are therapeutic modalities that make this rewiring process easier by accessing the brain’s innate neuroplasticity, including hypnotherapy and neurolinguistic programming. Not all internal change has to be a grind, just like life does not have to be a grind. Reach out if engaging with these modalities suits you. Defiance without integrity is just chaos Before we go any further, I would like to re-emphasize a point touched on earlier. Intentional defiance without a foundation of integrity is not a healing practice. It is just an excuse to do whatever you feel like and call it sovereignty. This distinction matters. Living in integrity does not necessarily mean moral perfection or rigid rule-following. It means being in alignment, living in such a way that your actions, values, and honest sense of what is true and right line up. It means knowing what you actually stand for, not just what you are reacting against. It is the difference between a compass and a mood. This is the step most people want to skip, because identifying your core values requires a quality of honest self-examination that can be genuinely difficult. It asks you to look past the values you were handed by your family, religion, or culture and find the ones that are actually yours, the ones that remain when you strip away the performance of being good and ask what you would choose if no one were watching and nothing were at stake except your own integrity. Without this foundation, intentional defiance turns into bypassing, a justification for impulsivity, for avoiding accountability, for dressing up emotional reactivity in the language of healing. Acting however suits you in the heat of a moment is not intentional defiance, it is just acting a fool. When your values are clear, intentional defiance becomes precise. You are not breaking rules at random. You are breaking specific rules that conflict with specific things you know to be true about who you are and how you want to live. Your values become the North Star. That North Star is what makes this a healing practice rather than a free pass. The most obvious example of intentional defiance we are not talking about If you want a clear illustration of how threatening genuine healing is to systems built on managed suffering, look no further than the current conversation around psychedelics. We have substantial and growing evidence supporting the therapeutic potential of substances like psilocybin and MDMA for depression, trauma, addiction, and end-of-life distress. We also have a legal framework that, in many places, still classifies them alongside heroin. The tension reflects exactly what these medicines threaten, the authority of external systems over your internal experience. What psychedelics tend to do, at their core, is remind people of something fundamental, your healing does not live outside of you. They create conditions for you to see yourself more clearly, to feel what has been suppressed, to access parts of your psyche that have been buried under decades of careful performance. Psychedelics have a particular talent for dissolving the stories we built around our own smallness and showing us, often with uncomfortable directness, what is actually true. That is a destabilizing proposition for any system that benefits from you outsourcing your authority, which may explain why the medicines most associated with radical self-trust and direct spiritual experience are the ones we were told, for decades, to be most afraid of. Suppressing access to your own consciousness is, it turns out, a very old strategy. Engaging with these medicines within a thoughtful, intentional container is perhaps one of the most literal acts of intentional defiance available to us. It is the choice to access your own inner landscape on your own terms, outside of the systems that decided they should be the gatekeepers of your healing. From compliant to sovereign The most radical thing you can do in a culture built on your compliance and complacency is decide that you are no longer available for it. At the heart of intentional defiance is an identity shift that is simple to describe and genuinely hard to make. The compliant identity, the one most of us built for survival, is constructed on the belief that your worth is contingent on your usefulness, agreeableness, and willingness to prioritize others over yourself. It is exhausting, extremely well-practiced, and very good at disguising itself as virtue. Sovereignty is something different. It is rooted in self-trust, discernment, and the willingness to follow what is true for you, even when it may cost you something. Although it is self-centric, it is not the absence of care for others. To the contrary, it is realizing that we can only give from a place of fullness. The sovereign life is not a life without difficulty, but it is a life you actually chose. One that fits you, was built by you, and reflects what you genuinely value rather than what you were handed and told to be grateful for. It is a life of meaning and purpose. Intentional defiance is a vehicle that gets you there, one small, deliberate choice to be loyal to yourself at a time. How to heal through breaking the rules Start with one honest question, "What would choosing my wellness and values look like today?" Sit with it. Envision it clearly. Then ask the follow-up, "What is standing in my way, and what am I afraid will happen if I actually choose myself here?" Then, and this is the part that requires actual courage, choose it anyway. Intentionally. Not in reaction to someone else, but in alignment with yourself. Say “no” to the thing you do not want to do. Rest without justifying it. Speak the honest thing instead of the comfortable one. Follow the pull of what is true for you, even when you cannot fully explain it yet. Notice what happens internally. Notice that the world does not end. Notice that the discomfort was survivable. Notice who shows their true colors in a relationship. Notice, slowly, that you are accumulating a different kind of evidence about what is actually safe. Notice how your body responds to you when you honor yourself first. Then do it again. The point of all of it Healing is not a return to some pristine pre-trauma baseline that never actually existed. It is an expansion into capacity, authenticity, and into the life you are willing to claim as your own. It is the ongoing, imperfect, occasionally inconvenient practice of choosing yourself in a culture that would prefer you did not. Real healing has edges. It asks things of you. It challenges what you are willing to tolerate and what you are willing to settle for, which can make things temporarily complicated before it makes them genuinely better. The result, on the other side of all that disruption, is freedom. The freedom to feel honestly. The freedom to forge a meaningful life rather than inherit someone else’s idea of one. The freedom to know your authentic self. Intentional defiance is how you find your way back. That is not rebellion. That is the whole point. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Katie Simons Katie Simons, PharmD, BCPS, CCHT, Transpersonal Hypnotherapist and Coach Dr. Katie Simons, PharmD, BCPS, CCHT, is the founder of The Holistic Apothec, a platform for coaching, education, and healing transformation through altered states of consciousness. A clinical pharmacist turned transpersonal hypnotherapist, psychedelic medicine facilitator, and coach, she blends neuroscience, somatic practices, trance techniques, and spiritual wisdom to guide clients in creating lasting change. Drawing on a decade in academic medicine and years in holistic healing, Katie’s programs focus on nervous system regulation, trauma recovery, overcoming limiting beliefs, and medication tapering. Her work bridges science and mysticism, offering a grounded, accessible path to deep healing, authentic living, and personal freedom.

Written by Hamid Acharrab, Identity Transformation Expert Hamid Acharrab, known as The Reality Engineer, helps high-performing leaders dismantle their internal ceilings. Through his proprietary Ultimate You Method™, he has liberated over 3,000 visionary entrepreneurs from their conditioned identities, empowering them to create from nothing. You don’t have a strategy problem. You have a self-problem. I have watched it for twenty-eight years, across more than five hundred breakthroughs and forty retreats: capable people, founders, executives, high performers, who have read the books, hired the coaches, built the systems, and are still circling the same wall they hit a decade ago. They assume the answer is more. A better framework. A sharper habit. A new version of themselves. It is not more. It is less. The thing standing between you and the life you keep almost building is not a missing skill. It is an entity you built so long ago you mistook it for who you are. Most people know it by its visible face, the false self. I call the whole of it The Act, because that is what it is: an entire identity that arose from a single declaration you made while coping with something you could not survive any other way. The work is not to improve The Act. The work is dismantling it entirely. What the false self actually is The false self is the visible face of something larger. To take it apart, you have to see the whole of it, the entity I call The Act. It begins with a declaration. At some early moment, you could not survive on your own terms, so you decided something about yourself, about people, about what is and is not allowed for you. I am too much. I am not enough. I must never need anyone. I am not allowed to have what I want. You did not reason your way to it. You declared it, the way a child declares the world, with total authority and no appeal. From that one declaration, an entire entity grew up around it to enforce it. That entity is The Act. The false self is simply the mask it wears in public. It is not a flaw. It is engineering. The Act read your environment, what earned love, what earned punishment, what kept you safe, and built a self that optimized for the declaration. Be useful. Be impressive. Don’t need anything. Never be caught not knowing. It worked. It got you here. That is precisely the problem: it worked so well that you never questioned it, and now it runs the operation without your consent. Every high performer I have met is running an old declaration at a scale it was never designed for. The drive that protected you at seven is the drive that burns you out at forty. The need to be impressive that won approval then is the need that makes you unable to delegate, unable to rest, and unable to be seen as anything less than in control now. You are not lazy. You are not undisciplined. You are loyal, to an entity that solved a problem you no longer have. Why self-improvement keeps failing you Here is what almost no one will tell you, "You cannot improve a fiction into the truth." Most personal development is The Act trying to upgrade The Act. You add a morning routine to an entity built on the declaration that your worth is conditional. You install discipline on top of a fear of being ordinary. The scaffolding gets taller, more elaborate, more impressive, and the declaration underneath never changes. This is why the same pattern returns no matter how much you achieve. You are not failing to grow. You are succeeding at growing the wrong thing. This is the difference between self-improvement and Reality Engineering. Improvement asks, how do I become more? Engineering asks, what is actually here when I stop adding? We repair nothing. We take the entity apart and look at what was holding it together. Underneath, every time, is the original declaration, made before you had language, that you have been protecting with your entire life. What dismantling actually means Dismantling the false self is not destruction. It is subtraction. You do not have to add a single quality you lack. Everything you are reaching for, the calm, the clarity, the capacity to create without first proving you deserve to, is already there, buried under the entity you built on top of it. The work is removal. You locate the original declaration, you see it clearly enough that it can no longer operate in the dark, and The Act, which existed only to enforce it, simply stops needing to be defended. An entity built to protect a declaration cannot survive the moment you see the declaration was never true. I know this because I built one of the most efficient Acts I have ever encountered. I lost my mother at three. I left Morocco for the Netherlands. I became a sales prodigy at nineteen and then spent years quietly dismantling my own success, because at some point I had declared that I was not allowed to have it. It took me a long time, and more than three hundred thousand euros invested in my own development, to understand that I was not broken. I was defended. The day I saw the declaration for what it was, there was nothing left to fix. Creating from nothing On the other side of the dismantling is the part no one prepares you for: nothing. Not emptiness in the bleak sense. Emptiness in the architectural sense: cleared ground. When The Act comes down, the compulsion comes down with it, and for the first time, you are not creating from a wound, to prove something, or against a fear. You are creating from nothing. From choice. From a self that no longer needs the result in order to be allowed to exist. This is the quietest and most powerful state I know, and it is the actual prize. Not a better version of the person you have been performing. The end of The Act. Where to begin If any of this lands, the beginning is not a course or a commitment. It is a diagnosis. My new book, Imprisoned by My Little Me: A Reality Engineer’s Blueprint for Escaping Your Conditioned Identity, is the full map: how The Act is built from a single declaration, how to find that declaration, and what becomes available when you take the entity apart. It is available now in pre-sale ahead of launch. Reserve your copy here. If you want to see your own Act before you read another word, take the Diagnostic, fifteen questions that surface the specific declaration running your operation. It is free, and it takes only a few minutes. Start the Diagnostic here. You do not need to become more. You need to see what is already holding you in place. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Hamid Acharrab Hamid Acharrab, Identity Transformation Expert Hamid Acharrab, widely known as The Reality Engineer, is a Global Authority in identity transformation and the pioneer of Self-Liberation. Rejecting traditional self-improvement, he helps elite entrepreneurs and visionary leaders dismantle the invisible internal ceilings that cap their potential. Through his proprietary Ultimate You Method™, Hamid strips away "The Act"—the conditioned illusions that keep high-performers successful but imprisoned. He has structurally re-engineered the realities of over 3,000 clients and hosted more than 50 exclusive global retreats. His mission is to guide leaders back to their authentic core, "The Diamond," enabling them to execute with zero internal friction and master the art of creating from nothing.

Written by Katya Sokol, Family Constellation & Business Mindset Coach Katya Sokol is a systemic family constellation therapist (Hellinger method), ICF-certified coach, and creator of generational systemic meditations, specializing in business psychology and entrepreneurial mindset. She works with women entrepreneurs who want to grow in income, scale, and visibility. One of my clients went through several coaching programs in a row. She tried new strategies, hired support, and tested different tools. Each time, her income climbed a little, only to return to the same amount. She was convinced the problem was in her marketing. When we started working together, it turned out the problem lay elsewhere entirely. We all live inside systems Each of us carries several systems at once: family, social, historical, and cultural. They do not operate separately. They overlap and shape each other constantly. The women I work with come from different countries and backgrounds. Some grew up in post-Soviet cultures, where generations lived under conditions where standing out was genuinely dangerous and asking for more meant breaking a collective rule. Others were raised in American families that survived the Great Depression or other economic crises, where money became inseparable from instability and fear. The systems are different, but the result is strikingly similar. The belief that wanting too much is unsafe shows up regardless of where someone grew up. This is why business tools sometimes produce results and sometimes do not. The external system can only go as far as the internal one allows. Understanding family scenarios Every family system runs on unspoken rules that define what is permitted. In some families, financial success belonged only to men. In others, earning more than your parents was an unconscious violation of loyalty. In others still, any kind of public visibility felt like a threat. These rules were never stated out loud. They were simply part of the air you breathed growing up, and they continue to operate whether you are aware of them or not. A 2016 study published in Biological Psychiatry by Rachel Yehuda and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that children of Holocaust survivors carry measurable biological changes in the FKBP5 gene, which regulates the stress response. These changes corresponded directly to what the parents experienced. The children themselves went through no trauma. This was one of the first direct demonstrations of epigenetic trauma transmission between generations in humans. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, conducted by Kaiser Permanente and the CDC across more than 17,000 adults, documented a consistent, dose-dependent relationship between family-level events in childhood and financial, physical, and psychological outcomes decades later. What happened in your family before you were born continues to shape your decisions right now. Related: Intergenerational Trauma and How It Shows Up How does this show in business This is not theoretical. Here is what I see with women entrepreneurs again and again. A client prepares carefully to present a new, higher rate. The market supports it, her value is clear, and her competitors charge more. In the moment when money comes up in conversation, something shifts the price she names is lower than she planned, or a discount appears without anyone asking for it. A few minutes later, she has an explanation ready for why that was the right call. When we look at this together in our work, we often find a belief inherited from somewhere in the family, which means breaking a rule. This sometimes feels like a personal weakness. More often, it is a rule that was written into the system a long time ago, under conditions that no longer exist. A second pattern: money comes in and immediately disappears. A strong period is followed by a large unexpected expense, a major medical bill, or another significant financial event. The calendar fills up with clients, then several leave at the same time for no visible reason. Income settles at exactly “enough,” and every attempt to hold a higher level ends in a reversal. In that client’s family system, there is often someone who paid for success with loss, loneliness, illness, or separation from people they loved. The system holds her where it learned to feel safe. Related: 4 Ways To Heal Generational Money Wounds Keeping You From Financial Freedom A third scenario appears in women who cannot build a team or delegate responsibility. “If it’s not me, everything will fall apart” sounds like careful entrepreneurial thinking. In practice, this often turns out to be loyalty to someone in the family line who was the single point of support for everyone and carried everything alone. The pattern repeats because no other model was available. A fourth pattern: anxiety at any step toward visibility. This includes recording content, reaching a wider audience, or presenting yourself publicly. The body responds with anxiety that has no clear cause. In my work with immigrant women, I see a particular version of this for some people, immigration itself was an act of disappearing, of starting over somewhere no one could find them. When a family’s survival strategy was built around staying hidden and moving on, visibility feels like a direct threat to that strategy. A system that learned to hide does not easily step into the light. Why awareness is not enough Many women have already read the books, done the therapy, worked with coaches, and the pattern still returns. Knowing about a limitation and being free of it are two different things. Cognitive approaches work at the level of thinking. Family scenarios are stored in the implicit memory of the nervous system, in layers that conscious intention cannot directly reach. This is why the reaction to money or success shows up before the thinking mind catches up. You can intellectually agree that you deserve more and still act from the limitation in the actual moment. The family constellations method, developed by Bert Hellinger and expanded widely in systemic psychotherapy, works with the family system as a whole. It allows you to see what role you occupy in the system, what is blocked within it, and where exactly the process stalled. When the system becomes visible, what changes is how you feel when you encounter money, success, or visibility. This shift happens at a deeper level than replacing beliefs on paper. Related: The Energetics of Wealth and Clearing Money Blocks for Good Steps to take now Start with observation. Is there an income level in your financial history that you cannot seem to hold? Or a situation in your business that repeats itself no matter what you do? That is the first signal from the system. Talk to yourself and to people who knew your family. How did the people around you relate to money, and to those who earned a lot? Who was the anchor that everyone leaned on? What was said about people who stood out or lived visibly? The point is not to judge anyone. The point is to see where the rules you live by came from, and in what world they were written. The past cannot be changed, and accepting that matters. But you are not required to keep living by rules that were written for a world that no longer exists. Strategy, sales skills, and business tools are necessary. They work significantly better when inner work is happening at the same time. A complete approach gets results where external changes alone fall short. One question to start Before changing your strategy or signing up for another sales training, ask yourself: Who in my family never earned beyond a certain level? Was there a reason for that? If you want to find the specific place in your system where the process has stalled, send me a message on Instagram. We can start with a conversation. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Katya Sokol Katya Sokol, Family Constellation & Business Mindset Coach Katya Sokol is a systemic family constellation therapist (Hellinger method), ICF-certified coach, and creator of generational systemic meditations, based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She trained in Russia, Europe, and the United States and has completed 500+ hours of one-on-one work with 160+ clients over 6 years of private practice. She works primarily with Russian-speaking women entrepreneurs in North America on financial growth, visibility, and business scaling. Her work consistently shows that financial ceilings and fear of scaling are often tied to systemic patterns passed through generations. The combination of constellation work, coaching, and generational meditations allows her to find the source and create lasting results.

Written by Danijella Dragas, CEO The Bear Stearns Investment Banking firm employed Miss Dragas for over 18 years. She worked in their offices in London, São Paulo, Beijing, New York, and Irvine. Her specialty was asset management, capital markets/investment banking during her final four years at Bear Stearns. Miss Dragas was one of the original team members who introduced Bear Stearns mortgages to the banking industry in the residential wholesale market. The role of management is evolving faster than ever. For decades, great managers were defined by how well they organized people, delegated tasks, and motivated teams. Today, a new layer has entered the workplace: AI agents. These intelligent systems are transforming how work is executed, decisions are made, and innovation is scaled across organizations. AI agents are not simply another productivity tool. They represent a fundamental shift in how teams operate. Unlike traditional AI assistants that only respond to prompts, AI agents can independently analyze information, make decisions based on patterns or rules, and execute multi-step tasks with minimal human oversight. According to a PwC study, 66% of organizations incorporating AI agents into their work are already seeing measurable value. The most effective managers understand that AI agents are not replacing people. Instead, they are expanding human capability. The future belongs to leaders who know how to combine human creativity, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking with the speed and efficiency of AI-powered execution. The new era of delegation Great managers have always mastered the art of delegation. The difference today is that delegation no longer applies only to people. Managers can now distribute work across both human talent and AI agents, allowing teams to scale output without proportionally increasing headcount. This creates a major competitive advantage. Routine administrative tasks, repetitive reporting, scheduling, coordination, and information gathering can now be handled by AI agents, freeing employees to focus on higher-value work such as innovation, collaboration, customer relationships, and strategic planning. The managers who thrive in this environment are not those who simply adopt AI tools. They are the ones who redesign workflows around human strengths while allowing AI agents to manage operational complexity behind the scenes. Defining clear roles for AI agents One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is treating AI as a general-purpose helper without clear responsibilities. Great managers understand that AI agents perform best when assigned a defined role within the team. An AI agent may act as a meeting summarizer that captures action items and follow-ups, a project analyst that identifies delivery risks before deadlines are missed, a reporting assistant that gathers performance data automatically, a content collaborator that generates first drafts for marketing campaigns, or a workflow coordinator that monitors bottlenecks and task dependencies. When employees understand exactly what an AI agent is responsible for, trust and adoption increase significantly. AI becomes embedded into the workflow rather than viewed as a novelty or disruption. Clear role definition also helps employees focus on what humans do best: critical thinking, relationship building, emotional intelligence, and creative problem-solving. The key question every manager should ask is: “What specific role is each AI agent playing on our team today?” Managers who can answer this clearly are already ahead of the curve. Integrating AI into everyday workflows Technology adoption often fails when it creates additional friction. Great managers avoid this by integrating AI directly into the tools and systems employees already use every day. Instead of forcing teams to open separate platforms or learn entirely new systems, AI agents should operate naturally within project management boards, communication channels, reporting dashboards, planning meetings, CRM systems, and customer support workflows. When AI becomes part of the normal flow of work, employees experience it as support rather than an interruption. This seamless integration increases consistency, productivity, and engagement. For example, imagine a project manager reviewing a dashboard where an AI agent automatically highlights delayed milestones, suggests priority adjustments, and drafts status updates for stakeholders. Rather than spending hours gathering information manually, the manager can immediately focus on strategy and decision-making. This is where AI agents create their greatest value, not by replacing leadership, but by amplifying it. Human leadership still matters most Despite rapid technological advancement, great management remains deeply human. AI agents can process data, automate tasks, and identify patterns, but they cannot replace empathy, trust, mentorship, or vision. Employees still look to leaders for direction during uncertainty, emotional support during challenges, recognition and motivation, conflict resolution, and cultivating team culture and inspiration. The best managers use AI agents to remove operational burdens so they can spend more time leading people effectively. In many ways, AI gives managers the opportunity to become more human-centered rather than less. Organizations that succeed with AI will not be the ones with the most advanced technology alone. They will be the ones whose leaders know how to balance automation with authentic leadership. Building a culture of innovation AI agents also create opportunities for experimentation and innovation at every level of the organization. Great managers encourage employees to explore how AI can improve workflows, enhance creativity, and eliminate inefficiencies. Instead of fearing automation, high-performing teams treat AI as a collaborative partner. Employees become more empowered when they realize AI can handle repetitive work while they focus on strategic contributions that drive business growth. Managers who foster curiosity and adaptability create cultures that are more resilient in rapidly changing markets. They recognize that AI adoption is not a one-time initiative, but an ongoing evolution in how work gets done. The future of great management The workplace is entering a new era where leadership is no longer defined solely by how many people a manager oversees, but by how effectively they orchestrate both human and AI capabilities together. Great managers of the future will clearly define AI responsibilities, integrate AI seamlessly into workflows, empower employees to focus on meaningful work, use AI insights to make faster decisions, preserve strong human leadership and culture, and encourage continuous innovation and learning. AI agents are becoming an inflection point for modern teams. Leaders who embrace this shift thoughtfully will unlock higher productivity, stronger collaboration, and faster innovation than ever before. The future of management is not human versus AI. It is human leadership enhanced by intelligent execution. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Danijella Dragas Danijella Dragas, CEO Born and raised in England. She earned a BS in Economics/International Trade and Banking from the prestigious University of London. The Bear Stearns Investment Banking firm employed Miss Dragas for over 18 years. She worked in their offices in London, São Paulo, Beijing, New York, and Irvine. Her specialty was asset management, capital markets/investment banking during her final four years at Bear Stearns. Miss Dragas was one of the original team members who introduced Bear Stearns mortgages to the banking industry in the residential wholesale market. She has been in residential and commercial lending for 36 years. Her focus has been on construction finance, asset repositioning, fintech, and the blockchain market. In addition, numerous prestigious commercial projects on an international level. Miss Dragas has also worked in multi-sector business finance, corporate sponsorships, hospitality, clean energy, trade programs, and pre-IPO.

Written by Darren Jewell, Inspirational Speaker Darren Scott Jewell is a NeuroResilience Coach and a brain injury thriver who helps people build calm, focus, and confidence through neuroplasticity. After discovering one-third of his brain was non-functional from a childhood accident, he rebuilt cognitive function and now teaches others. A lot of people think a great speaker is someone who has never faced tough times. But what truly makes a speaker memorable is showing that you are not broken, but growing. Your brain and your story can change, no matter what you have been through. I see it differently. Often, the most powerful speakers are those who have faced struggles, doubted themselves, and still found a way to keep going. For much of my life, I believed I was not good enough. Not clever enough, not confident enough, not capable enough. As a toddler, I fell from a balcony. As I grew up, I did not really understand why some things seemed harder for me than for other people. Years later, I discovered something that changed the way I saw my whole life. A third of my brain was not working. That could have become the end of my story, but then I learned something that changed everything. The brain is not fixed. The brain can adapt. The brain can rebuild. The brain can create new pathways. The brain can change through practice, by facing challenges, through our environment, by learning, and by what we believe. That is neuroplasticity. This gave me a new way to understand my life. For years, I thought my struggles meant something was wrong with me. Now I see they were just patterns, shaped by experience and reinforced over time. These patterns felt like part of my identity because I repeated them for so long. Many people still live with this today. They believe they are too old, not smart enough, undeserving of success, or that they have missed their chance. They tell themselves that confidence is not for people like them and that this is just who they are. But what if those thoughts are not actually true? What if they are trained patterns? What if confidence can be rebuilt? What if resilience can be strengthened? What if your brain has been adapting all this time, just not always in the way you hoped? That is why I now talk about neuroplasticity, resilience, confidence, brain health, and starting over. It is not just because I read a few books and found them interesting. I have also experienced real change myself. I have lived the possibility of change. My message is simple. You are not finished. Your brain is not finished. Your story is not finished. Today, with all the pressure, uncertainty, new technology, burnout, self-doubt, and constant change, people need more than just motivation. They need hope and practical tools. They need science that helps us be more human. They need someone who can stand in front of them and say, “I know what it feels like to doubt yourself, but I also know the brain can change.” This is the message I share when I speak. I speak to organisations, communities, schools, wellbeing events, podcasts, and groups that want to help people understand how the brain changes, why confidence can be trained, how adversity can shape us without defining us, why learning new things matters at every age, how small daily actions strengthen mental resilience, why identity is not fixed, and how people can begin to regain belief in themselves. Sometimes, the person sitting quietly in the room does not need another inspirational quote about success. They need a story that helps them believe change is still possible for them too. Your organisation, event, podcast, school, workplace, or community may be looking for a speaker on neuroplasticity, resilience, confidence, reinvention, brain health, growth after adversity, human potential, or mindset in later life. If this message resonates with you, let us connect. My mission is to help people see that no matter their age, what they have been through, or what they believe about themselves, the brain can still learn, the mind can still grow, and the story can still change. Sometimes, the most powerful message a room can hear is this: You are not broken. You are becoming. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Darren Jewell Darren Jewell, Inspirational Speaker Darren Scott Jewell is a NeuroResilience Coach, speaker, and brain injury expert who helps people build calm, focus, and confidence through neuroplasticity and nervous system regulation. After a childhood balcony fall, he later discovered in adulthood that one-third of his brain had been non-functional. Through gentle, consistent brain training, he rebuilt cognitive function and reshaped his identity from the inside out. Today, he teaches practical tools for staying steady through stress, change, and overwhelm, without forcing or hustling. His mission is personal as well as professional, shaped by losing his mum, Elizabeth, to vascular dementia in October 2025. Darren's a message of hope: you're not broken, you are patterned, and your brain can learn again.

Written by Louise Chapman, Author, Creator of the Embodied Identity™ Method, and Trauma-Informed Life Coach Louise is the author of You Are the Cause and creator of the Embodied Identity™ Method, a framework built on one radical premise, that identity, not effort, is the true engine of transformation. She draws on 7+ years in healing service roles and certifications in NLP, Somatic Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Compassion Key, and Akashic Record Reading. Here is something that nobody ever told you, and that changes everything once you finally hear it: you have not been living your life. A character has been living it for you, a character that was built in childhood, assembled from fear, pain, and urgent necessity, and then sent out into the world to do a job it was never truly qualified for: being you. This character has a name. It has a set of tactics. It has a signature way of responding to threat, intimacy, failure, and love. Until you can see it, clearly, precisely, without flinching, it will keep running the show. It will keep choosing your partners, sabotaging your opportunities, and generating the exact emotional loops you have been trying for years to escape. In the Embodied Identity™ Method, we call these characters Pattern Archetypes. The moment you recognise yours is the moment your transformation truly begins. "You cannot dismantle a prison you refuse to map." – The Embodied Identity™ Method The six archetypes Before we name the archetypes, understand something crucial: none of these patterns are evidence that something is wrong with you. Every single one of them was born as a solution, a creative, intelligent act of self-preservation by someone doing the absolute best they could under circumstances they did not choose. The problem is not that you developed these patterns; the problem is that they have outlived their usefulness, and no one ever gave you permission to put them down. As you read through the following six archetypes, pay attention not to your analytical mind but to your nervous system. Which one produces a flicker of recognition in your chest? Which one makes you want to look away? That is the signal. Archetype 01: The people pleaser Says yes when they mean no. Shrinks to fit what others need. Apologises for existing. Gives endlessly, not from overflow, but from the terrifying belief that being needed is the only way to be safe. The cruel irony: by performing love instead of feeling it, they are never truly known by anyone. Archetype 02: The emotional shutdown artist Goes cold when intimacy deepens. Intellectualises everything. Often perceived as aloof or withholding, not because they feel nothing, but because feeling once felt lethal. The cruel irony: the walls built to prevent pain guarantee that love can never fully land. Archetype 03: The overachieving avoider Keeps moving, producing, striving at a pace that looks like ambition but functions like escape. The moment they slow down, the wound rushes in to fill the silence. The cruel irony: each achievement raises the bar, making rest feel more dangerous than before. Archetype 04: The chaos creator Unconsciously disrupts stability the moment it arrives. Picks fights in good relationships. Creates emergencies that keep everyone, including themselves, too distracted to feel the deeper pain. The cruel irony: they genuinely believe the chaos happens to them, not through them. Archetype 05: The invisible person Makes themselves small in every room. Rarely expresses needs or opinions. Has a rich, vivid inner world that almost no one gets to see, because being seen once felt like it might destroy them. The cruel irony: the invisibility that protects them ensures they are never truly known. Archetype 06: The armoured warrior Projects strength, control, and dominance at all times. Responds to threat with aggression or cutting sarcasm. Cannot show weakness without feeling their entire identity is at risk. The cruel irony: the armour that commands respect ensures they can never receive the tenderness they need. Most people carry a primary archetype with one or two secondary ones orbiting it. You might be a People Pleaser in intimate relationships and an Armoured Warrior at work. You might shift from Invisible Person to Chaos Creator depending on how safe you feel. These are not rigid diagnoses. They are lenses, and once you look through the right one, you cannot unsee what it reveals. The reframe that changes everything Now we arrive at the part of this work that most people have never encountered, the part that separates genuine transformation from yet another round of self-improvement that quietly deepens self-hatred. Most people who recognise themselves in one of the archetypes above will do one of two things. They will either minimise it ("Oh, I'm not that bad") or weaponise it against themselves ("See? This is proof I'm broken"). Both responses are understandable. Both will keep you exactly where you are. The Embodied Identity™ Method asks you to do something radically different: to understand your pattern before you attempt to change it. "Compassion is not the enemy of change, it is the only reliable pathway to it." – The Embodied Identity™ Method Here is what this means in practice. Every pattern you carry had a job. It was hired by a younger version of you to solve a problem that felt, at the time, like a matter of emotional survival. The People Pleaser learned that keeping others happy was the safest way to prevent abandonment. The Emotional Shutdown Artist learned that feeling nothing was preferable to feeling a pain too enormous to survive. The Armoured Warrior learned that strength was the only currency that bought safety in a world that had shown them vulnerability was dangerous. These were not mistakes. They were logical conclusions drawn from real evidence, by a person doing the best they could with what they had. If you had grown up with full access to your authentic power, a regulated nervous system, and the tools we teach in this program, you would never have needed the pattern in the first place. Think of your pattern as a loyal security guard, hired by your six-year-old self to protect the building. That guard has been working for thirty years, faithfully, without a single day off, without ever updating their instructions. They are not the enemy. They are an exhausted, dedicated employee working from dangerously outdated information. Your job is not to fire them in rage. Your job is to call them into the office, thank them sincerely for their service, and give them a new brief. This reframe, from pathology to protective logic, is not an exercise in self-indulgence. It is not a permission slip to keep doing what you have always done. It is the precise clinical move that makes genuine change neurologically possible. Because here is what decades of psychology and somatic research have confirmed: you cannot rewire a nervous system that is under attack. Shame activates the same threat response that created the pattern in the first place. Self-compassion, by contrast, creates the physiological conditions of safety, and safety is where transformation actually happens. Compassion is not the same as permission Let us be absolutely clear about something, because this is where people misunderstand the work: understanding your pattern is not the same as excusing it. Seeing the protective logic behind the People Pleasing does not make it acceptable to keep betraying yourself. Recognising the fear behind the shutdown does not make it okay to keep stonewalling the people you love. Compassion for the wound does not mean tolerance for the destruction the wound keeps causing. The Embodied Identity™ Method holds both truths simultaneously, and this is what makes it different from every other approach you may have tried. We hold deep compassion for the self that created the pattern alongside unflinching honesty about what that pattern has cost. We look at the full bill: the relationships it has damaged, the opportunities it has closed, the version of yourself it has kept hidden from the world. We need you to feel the full weight of that cost, not to punish yourself, but to build the fuel that genuine transformation requires. When you feel, in your body, exactly what staying costs you, change stops being something you want and becomes something you absolutely cannot live without. "The pattern that once felt like your personality is beginning to reveal itself as your prison." – The Embodied Identity™ Method That distinction, between wanting change and needing it the way you need air, is what carries you through the moments when transformation gets hard. It will get hard. But it will not be as hard as another decade inside the loop. The question is no longer whether you can change. The question is whether you are finally ready to. Stop living as a product of your past. Start living as the deliberate author of your life. This article is drawn from Week Two of the Embodied Identity™ 8-Week Transformation Program, a complete, somatic, identity-level approach to breaking free from the patterns that have kept you trapped in emotional pain. Each week builds on the last, moving you from excavation to activation, to a life you are actively, powerfully, deliberately creating. Four spots are available for the intake starting June 1st. Visit The Causemakers to apply. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Louise Chapman Louise Chapman, Author, Creator of the Embodied Identity™ Method and Trauma-Informed Life Coach Louise is the author of You Are the Cause and creator of the Embodied Identity™ Method, the framework that proves identity, not effort, is what actually changes your life. A trauma-informed spiritual life coach with seven years in healing and certifications across NLP, Somatic Therapy, Hypnotherapy, and the Compassion Key Method, she has spent her career doing one thing, orienting people back to the truth that they are the cause of their experience - and therefore, the only one with the power to change it.

Written by Dr. Victoria A. Elasic, Founder of Oak & River Dr. Victoria A. Elasic is the founder of Oak & River and a coach specialising in whole-system recalibration for high-capacity women navigating demanding careers, complex family systems, and competitive educational environments. Maya is six years old, and until recently, she loved school. She bounded into her classroom each morning with excitement, wrapped her arms around her teacher during greeting time, proudly completed her work, and eagerly shared stories about her day at the dinner table each evening. Her teacher described her as joyful, engaged, kind, and deeply connected to the classroom community. But sometime during the final weeks of school, something shifted. Maya suddenly became more emotional and irritable at home. Mornings grew harder. She no longer wanted to go to school. Small frustrations turned into tears. She became clingier with her mother and more reactive with her siblings. At school, her teacher noticed changes too. Maya struggled more during transitions, became distracted during activities she once loved, and seemed unusually sensitive to corrections or changes in routine. Other children in the classroom appeared different too: louder, sillier, more emotional, more dysregulated. Maya’s mother was confused. As a teacher herself, she recognized the pattern immediately. She had seen similar behavior changes emerge in classrooms every spring during the final six weeks before summer break. Despite years in education, she realized something surprising: No one had ever really taught her why this happens, and resources were not readily available when she sought clarity and strategies for supporting her little one. There were endless resources about academic readiness, behavior management, and summer learning loss, but very little discussion about the emotional and environmental experiences children go through as the school year begins to close. What if children like Maya are not simply “acting out” at the end of the school year? What if they are responding to something much deeper? Every year, it happens almost predictably. A class that once felt calm, connected, and steady suddenly becomes louder, more emotional, more impulsive, or more dysregulated as summer approaches. Teachers begin noticing increased conflict, clinginess, tears, defiance, distraction, regressions, or emotional outbursts, even from children who are typically confident and well-regulated. Parents often notice it too. Children who seemed settled throughout the year suddenly become more sensitive, anxious, irritable, emotional, or exhausted in the final weeks before summer break. Adults frequently interpret this as children “checking out” for summer. Consider this, "What if something deeper is happening?" What if many children are not celebrating the transition into summer, but grieving the loss of the environment that helped them feel safe, connected, regulated, and seen? Children experience school as an emotional ecosystem Adults often think of school primarily as an academic environment. Children do not. Especially in the elementary and primary years, children experience school as an entire emotional ecosystem. Research on school belonging increasingly shows that teacher relationships, emotional safety, and school connectedness significantly influence children’s wellbeing and sense of security within school environments. For many children, the classroom provides predictable rhythms, emotional connection, relational safety, sensory consistency, routines and rituals, community belonging, encouragement and celebration, meals and physical care, movement and outdoor play, adult attention and co-regulation, and opportunities for competence and identity. In many cases, particularly within under-resourced communities or high-stress family environments, school may be one of the most emotionally stable and responsive places in a child’s life. Children bond deeply with their teachers, classmates, routines, and classroom environments. Unlike adults, children do not yet fully understand time, transitions, or temporary endings in the way we do. To adults, summer break may feel exciting and temporary. To children, it can feel uncertain, disorienting, and emotionally enormous. The invisible environmental shifts adults often miss One of the most important things educators and caregivers can understand is this: Children often sense environmental changes long before adults explicitly discuss them. In Montessori education, we understand that children absorb environmental information constantly, not only through direct instruction but through tone, rhythm, energy, movement, pacing, and relational shifts. Long before the final day of school arrives, children begin noticing subtle changes such as altered routines, less structured academics, schedule disruptions, countdown conversations, teachers packing classrooms, end-of-year testing, field days and assemblies, emotional shifts in adults, changing expectations, substitute teachers, classmates moving away, and discussions about summer plans they may not share. Even when adults perceive these as positive or harmless changes, children’s nervous systems often interpret them as signals that something important is changing. When children cannot fully articulate those feelings, the emotions frequently emerge through behavior. Behavior is often communication, not defiance Montessori philosophy and other relationship-centered educational approaches remind us that children often communicate emotional experiences through behavior long before they can articulate them through words. A child who suddenly becomes more emotional, oppositional, silly, clingy, or withdrawn may not be “misbehaving”; they may be communicating uncertainty, anticipatory grief, anxiety about change, fear of losing attachment, sensory overwhelm, confusion about expectations, loss of predictability, concern about what summer will feel like, and worry about next year’s teacher or classroom. This is especially true for children who rely heavily on external structure and co-regulation. Children who are neurodivergent, highly sensitive, anxious, or carrying significant stress outside of school may experience the end of the school year as a major nervous-system disruption. Their behavior is not random. It is adaptive. A reflective tool for teachers and caregivers To help educators and families better understand the invisible emotional load children may be carrying during end-of-year transitions, I created a free reflective resource called: The end-of-year transition compass Inspired by Oak & River’s environment-based approach, the worksheet helps adults reflect on predictability and rhythm, emotional safety, nervous-system load, transition awareness, belonging and connection, and summer preparedness. Rather than asking, “How do we stop the behavior?” the tool encourages adults to ask, “What environmental changes might this child be responding to right now?” Access the free worksheet here. Why transitions matter so deeply in childhood Developmentally, young children experience time differently from adults. Six weeks may feel manageable to us. To a child, it can feel enormous. When transitions are named, visualized, discussed, and emotionally held by trusted adults, children are more likely to move through them with confidence and security. The goal is not to eliminate emotion but to help children feel safe enough to process it. In Montessori education, there is a concept known as indirect preparation, intentionally preparing children emotionally, cognitively, and environmentally for what comes next before transitions occur. Children feel safer when change is named, visualized, discussed, emotionally supported, and woven into predictable rhythms. When transitions are abrupt, unpredictable, or emotionally unsupported, children often experience dysregulation. However, when adults intentionally prepare children ahead of time, children are more likely to move through change with confidence, security, and emotional steadiness. Sometimes, what looks like “end-of-year behavior” is actually a child trying to hold onto a place, a relationship, or a feeling of safety they are not yet ready to lose. Practical ways teachers can support children in the final weeks of school 1. Name the transition openly Children often feel calmer when adults gently acknowledge what is happening. Simple language matters: “We are getting close to the end of our school year.” “A lot of children have big feelings during this time.” “Even exciting changes can feel emotional.” “Your classroom memories and relationships matter.” Naming emotions reduces uncertainty. 2. Use visual timelines and countdowns Children benefit enormously from visual representations of time, such as paper chain countdowns, classroom calendars, visual schedules, “what to expect” boards, and transition maps for summer and next year. This helps children feel cognitively oriented instead of emotionally overwhelmed. 3. Preserve connection and belonging Children often fear being forgotten, and memory-building activities can be profoundly regulating, including classroom memory books, shared photographs, letters from teachers, class reflections, “favorite memories” circles, autograph books, portfolios of work, and class videos. These tangible reminders help children understand: “This mattered. You mattered. The relationship was real.” 4. Maintain as much rhythm and predictability as possible While flexibility naturally increases near summer, maintaining familiar routines can significantly support regulation. Predictable morning meetings, consistent expectations, familiar transitions, and structured classroom rhythms provide emotional safety during periods of change. Children often need more structure during transitions, not less. 5. Prepare children for summer in concrete ways Many children feel anxious simply because summer feels abstract. Help make summer understandable for children by discussing what summer days may look like, brainstorming activities, creating “summer idea” lists, talking about camps, parks, libraries, routines, or family traditions, encouraging continued reading and creativity, and helping children identify safe adults and comforting routines. The more predictable summer feels, the safer children often feel emotionally. 6. Support parents in understanding the transition Parents may unintentionally interpret increased emotionality as behavioral problems without recognizing the developmental context, and schools can help by sharing transition guidance, emotional regulation strategies, visual schedule ideas, summer rhythm suggestions, and reminders that regression or emotional sensitivity can be normal during major transitions. When adults understand the “why,” they often respond with greater compassion and steadiness. Children do not simply leave environments, they carry them One of the most important truths educators learn is that classrooms are never “just classrooms.” They become emotional worlds. Research on school belonging increasingly shows that children experience schools as emotional and relational ecosystems, not simply academic environments. For many children, the classroom provides far more than academics alone: rhythm, belonging, predictability, co-regulation, encouragement, and relational security. Children carry the feeling of those environments long after the school year ends; a child may not remember every lesson taught, but they do remember how safe they felt, whether they belonged, who noticed them, who celebrated them, who helped them regulate, whether school felt emotionally predictable, and whether adults understood their behavior with compassion. As adults, we have an opportunity to understand end-of-year behavior not as resistance, but as information. Children are showing us that transitions matter. When we support those transitions intentionally, we help children build emotional resilience, trust, and security that extend far beyond the classroom itself. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Victoria A. Elasic Dr. Victoria A. Elasic, Founder of Oak & River Dr. Victoria A. Elasic is the founder of Oak & River, where she works with high-capacity women seeking greater clarity, steadiness, and margin in complex professional and family systems. Drawing on her background in Montessori education, leadership, and coaching, she guides clients in recalibrating how they carry responsibility across work, home, and school environments. Victoria’s work focuses on reducing hidden friction in daily systems so capable women can experience greater lightness, clearer decision-making, and more sustainable leadership. She works privately with a small number of clients and leads curated small-group intensives.

Written by Jenny Hersey, Life Coach and Counsellor Jenny Hersey is a counsellor, life coach, supervisor, and critical incident debriefer. She has spent two decades in this field and works with individuals, groups, and businesses. Chronic illness is something I have lived with since I was a teenager, and gosh, it annoys me. It is inconvenient, frustrating, and disabling at times. There are days when I feel like I can take on the world and days when I cannot leave the house. But I have had to accept it for what it is. I fought against it for over two decades, and because of that, I have spent a lot of time in hospital. In fact, I have had 11 admissions where I spent my time hooked up to an IV drip, being pumped full of steroids. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis after years of pain and getting nowhere with the health care system. Ulcerative colitis is an inflammatory bowel condition for which there is no cure. I also have IBS, a wheat allergy, inflammatory arthritis, diverticulitis, and proctitis in my hips. Basically, my body is full of inflammation. I was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but this has since gone. I have a gastro team and a rheumatology team at my local hospital who look after me, and I have to visit them for check-ups several times a year. Oh, the joy. I hated my body for so many years. I could not accept that it would not behave itself. I would be getting ready for an event, and my stomach would swell to the point that I looked six months pregnant, ruining the outfit I wanted to wear. I would be out and about and panicking because I could not find a toilet. The accidents I have had are many, but I will not go into detail, as no one needs to hear that, do they? I would have a walk with a friend arranged, and I would wake up in excruciating pain in my hips, so I would have to cancel. I would be driving across the country to critical incident jobs and would not be able to get out of the car when I arrived because my body was completely stiff. Then I would hobble around all day on the job. I have to wear special insoles in my shoes to take the pressure off my joints because I have flat feet. But the worst thing about having chronic illness? Having to explain yourself to everyone around you repeatedly. I am not talking about new people—they will, of course, ask why you are limping or why you need to be next to a toilet. I am talking about people who know you, family, friends, and co-workers. The number of times I have heard, “Oh, you have a bad belly, what do you think that is?” or “Why are you limping?” is countless. Not all disabilities are visible, so people could not see when I was in agony with my bowel and fatigued from fibro. But when they would comment on how I was presenting, it made me think I was overreacting. “Can’t you take a paracetamol?” Well, yes, I could, but that would not stop me going to the toilet 20 times a day, and it would not help with the fatigue. It would not stop my joints swelling or numb the pain in my hips. But thank you for your feedback. Some people would get annoyed when I was unwell, especially if I was at an event and kept disappearing off to the toilet or needed to sit down. It was suggested that I was being difficult, “Why are you always ill?” Having chronic illness can be very isolating, and a lack of understanding from the people in your life is hard to manage. It left me feeling unseen. Many times, I received more kindness and understanding from strangers than from the people who knew me well. I have never let my illnesses stop me from doing anything, and this has been both positive and negative in my life. On the plus side, I have been able to educate myself and gain experience from the different roles I have had in my working life. It has given me a determination to succeed despite how I may have been feeling and has given me empathy and understanding for my clients and the people I work with when they are struggling with their health. The downside is that I have not looked after myself enough, which has caused many of the hospital admissions I have had. I have worked myself to the point of exhaustion and have suffered from burnout. I would never say no to anyone and would help family and friends when in pain. I would not allow myself any self-care because of my stubbornness and the false narrative I had, which told me I did not deserve to rest. I was always such an advocate for self-care in others but was blind to the lack of care I was giving myself. It was during my healing journey that I started to realise that my physical health was connected to my mental health. The trauma that had plagued me for so many years had some responsibility for my ill health. My poor body has been through the ringer. When I was a child going through the horrors of abuse, I would often get severe pain in my stomach and pass out. Whenever I was feeling depressed, anxious, or frightened as an adult, my IBS would kick off. My fibromyalgia would have me falling asleep at my desk, and my body would be throbbing in pain. I would often feel as though I were walking through quicksand, and my brain would be so foggy that I would forget simple words. When I was going to an event I did not want to attend, my stomach would swell, and I would be on and off the toilet. I tried to make friends with my body, and I started to understand what it was trying to tell me, “Stop, for the love of God!” So, I started to say no. I said no to events I did not want to attend, and I said no to people who expected me to come running in like a white knight on a horse to help them. This was not easy after a lifetime of saying yes. I felt guilty a lot of the time, but I powered through. I started to rest when my body told me to, and I began to see a difference in my health. What I also realised was that the burdens placed on me by other people were contributing to my poor health. When I gave these burdens back to them, the fibromyalgia I had suffered from for years suddenly disappeared. My body felt lighter, and my fatigue was gone. I needed no medication for it anymore, and again, this clarified how much my mental health was affecting my body. I had energy for the first time in my life. Although I am not skipping around the house like Mary Poppins all the time, my body can move without pain. I have not had a hospital admission in eight years, although I will be on medication for the rest of my life. I still get tired and limp around some days, but compared to what my life was like before, it is a huge difference. I also changed my diet, cut out wheat, and reduced my alcohol intake. This was hard, mainly because I was frustrated that I had to. I wanted to eat a bacon sandwich on soft white bread or have a pint, and I did, often. But it made me so unwell afterward that it was not worth it. Please do not think I am preaching about your body being a temple. I am not. It annoys me all the time that I cannot eat and drink what I want. It sucks. Gluten-free is just not the same! But I feel so much better for it, and I must try to keep my inflammation markers down in my body. If anyone reading this suffers with their health, I see you, and I understand how lonely it can be. But how much do you think your suffering is made worse by your own decisions? A lot of my illness was made worse because I would not help myself. But I also know how hard it is to put yourself first when you have been conditioned to put yourself last. So, ask yourself, "Do you say yes all the time? Is this because you think you must? Do you allow yourself to rest? If not, why not? Have you been conditioned to believe that you should not? Do you put everyone else’s needs before your own?" What I have learned over the past two decades is that your body is a lighthouse, and it will tell you everything you need to know. Listen to it because it is trying to help you, not harm you. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Jenny Hersey Jenny Hersey, Life Coach and Counsellor Jenny Hersey runs her own business, working with people to create a life that brings them purpose and joy. A victim of childhood abuse, she has since dedicated her life to helping others. She works internationally and has clients in different parts of the world as well as in the UK, where she is based. Jenny's mission is to educate people about the ability to heal themselves. She believes that everybody should have access to counselling and life coaching, no matter what their circumstances are.