Written by Taylor Elane, Rest Practitioner Taylor Elane is a rest practitioner and certified Yoga Nidra guide whose work sits at the intersection of somatic science, ancestral wisdom, and organizational well-being to help mission-driven organizations and people leaders build cultures where the foundation of rest and sustainable capacity makes the work, and the people doing it, last. Leadership burnout is no longer a fringe concern whispered about in executive coaching sessions. It's a measurable, well-documented occupational hazard. Recent workforce research puts burnout among managers and executives well above general employee rates [1], with global surveys showing a majority of leaders reporting elevated stress [2] and a significant share describing burnout as a regular, even weekly, experience [3]. The causes are structural. Leaders carry what researchers call "responsibility without recovery" [4], the psychological weight of their teams, combined with upward accountability to boards or executives, in a state of ambient alertness that rarely fully switches off. Summer offers something rare, cultural permission to slow down. But most leaders default to a single, hard-earned week away, followed by an immediate return to full throttle. The science tells a different story about what actually restores a depleted leader, and it starts with understanding why that one week isn't enough. Why "pushing through" doesn't work Effort recovery theory, a foundational framework in occupational health psychology, holds that sustained work effort draws down physiological and psychological resources, including elevated cortisol, cognitive fatigue, and emotional depletion, and that without real recovery, this strain simply accumulates [5]. Rest isn't indulgence, it's the mechanism by which the body and mind repay the debt work creates. Here's the uncomfortable part. Research on vacations consistently shows a "fade out effect." A meta-analysis of vacation studies found that time off reliably improves well-being, showing reductions in stress and exhaustion, and boosts in positive affect. But these gains disappear almost entirely within the first week back at work [6]. One widely cited study of a three-week summer vacation found health and well-being peaked around day eight, then returned to baseline within a week of resuming work [7]. Longer vacations didn't produce longer lasting benefits. The amount of consecutive vacation days mattered less than what happened immediately after. For people leaders, this has a direct implication. An annual two-week trip, however well-earned, is not a burnout strategy. It's a temporary reprieve that the return-to-work environment will erase unless something changes about how leaders reintegrate. What actual recovery requires Organizational psychologist Sabine Sonnentag's research identifies four distinct recovery experiences that determine whether time off actually restores a person [8]. Psychological detachment: Genuinely mentally disengaging from work, not just physically leaving the building. This is the single most researched and most protective recovery experience in the literature, and it's the one leaders struggle with most, because leadership roles often demand a sense of constant availability. Relaxation: A state of low activation and reduced physiological arousal. Mastery experiences: Activities that offer a sense of challenge and accomplishment outside of work, which paradoxically help people recover by building resources rather than simply resting them. Control: The ability to decide for yourself how you spend your recovery time. Notably, research also shows that a leader's own detachment, or lack of it, doesn't stay contained to that leader. It actually predicts their team's detachment, exhaustion, and need for recovery [9]. A leader who answers emails at 11 p.m. isn't just depleting themselves, they're signaling to their team that switching off isn't safe. This is one of the more important findings for anyone in a people leadership role. Your recovery habits are a policy, whether you intend them to be or not. For leaders looking for a practical way to build these recovery experiences into an already packed week, Yoga Nidra, a guided, lying down practice sometimes called "yogic sleep," is worth naming directly. Physiologically, it reliably shifts the body toward parasympathetic dominance, with measurable reductions in cortisol and blood pressure and improvements in heart rate variability, alongside a shift from active beta brainwaves toward calmer alpha and theta states [10, 11]. That maps onto two of Sonnentag's four experiences in particular. It's a fast, structured route to relaxation. Because it requires following a guide's voice rather than checking a phone, it also enforces genuine psychological detachment for the length of the rest session, something leaders otherwise struggle to achieve on their own. A randomized study of college professors found that one Yoga Nidra session produced anxiety and stress reductions comparable to seated meditation over three months [12], and the practice has been studied successfully in other sustained high-stress occupational groups, including healthcare workers and military groups [13, 14], some of the same stress conditions many leaders operate under daily. Unlike a hike or a vacation, a single Yoga Nidra session typically runs twenty to thirty minutes, making it one of the few evidence-backed recovery practices that fits inside a lunch break. The nature effect: A cognitive case for getting outside Summer's other advantage is environmental. Attention Restoration Theory, developed by Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, proposes that directed attention, the effortful, sustained focus leaders use constantly for decision making, is a finite resource that becomes fatigued with overuse [15]. Natural environments, by contrast, engage a softer, more involuntary form of attention, allowing the directed attention system to recover [16]. Research applying this theory has found measurable improvements in working memory, sustained attention, and cognitive flexibility after time in nature, compared to time in built, urban environments [17]. This isn't a wellness metaphor, it's a documented cognitive mechanism, and it's one leaders have unusual access to in summer, when longer days and better weather make outdoor time logistically easy. Seven best practices for building a summer sabbatical mindset The research suggests a leader's version of a "summer sabbatical" isn't necessarily taking one long trip out of town. It's a deliberately designed pattern across the summer season that protects the recovery experiences shown to matter most. Schedule recovery like you schedule strategy: Block recurring, protected time, not just one annual trip, across the summer months. Shorter, more frequent breaks with genuine detachment tend to outperform a single long vacation because the fade-out effect resets the clock every time. Make detachment structural, not aspirational: Turn off notifications, delegate decision rights explicitly before you leave, and resist the urge to "just check in." Research on the stressor detachment model shows that poor detachment during off hours is directly linked to increased strain [18], the mechanism doesn't care how good your intentions are if your phone is still in your hand. Model it publicly for your team: Because leader detachment predicts team detachment, the most effective thing a people leader can do for organizational rest culture is visibly disconnect, out-of-office replies that don't apologize, no weekend Slack messages, and no "quick call" during someone else's vacation. Use Yoga Nidra as a fast, structured route to relaxation and detachment: Since a single guided session can run twenty to thirty minutes, it's one of the few evidence-backed recovery practices that fits inside a workday. It's incredibly useful for the time between vacations when a longer break isn't yet on the calendar. Protect at least one mastery activity: Choose something during the summer that offers genuine challenge or accomplishment outside of work. This could include a physical goal, a creative project, or a new skill you want to build. Pure passive rest matters, but mastery experiences build resources in a way that idle time alone does not. Get outside, deliberately: Given the cognitive research on attention restoration, treat time in nature as a recovery tool, not just a pleasant backdrop. Take a walk without a podcast, a weekend away from screens, or a lunch outdoors instead of at your desk. Plan the re-entry to work, not just the exit: Since fade-out accelerates when job demands hit hard immediately upon return, build a lighter first few days back, fewer meetings, no major decisions scheduled for day one, and continued small leisure or relaxation experiences in the weeks after. Research shows that this measurably slows the fade-out of vacation benefits. The rest reframe people leaders need The leaders who recover best from burnout don't treat rest as something they've earned after performance. They treat it as the resourceful infrastructure that makes sustained performance possible at all. Given that manager burnout doesn't just affect the manager, but visibly cascades to teams, culture, and retention, a leader's summer rest isn't a personal indulgence. It's one of the more consequential decisions they'll make about their organization all year. Practices like Yoga Nidra matter precisely because they turn abstract recovery science into something a leader can actually do between meetings, a concrete, repeatable habit rather than a vague intention to "rest more." Rest, done right, isn't the opposite of leadership. It's one of its core disciplines. If you're looking to explore more ways of embedding rest in your leadership infrastructure, begin with a House of Duafe discovery call. Or, if you would like to experience firsthand the rest Yoga Nidra provides in a short amount of time, try Remembering Ease, a 10-minute Yoga Nidra practice available on Insight Timer, free and accessible anywhere. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Taylor Elane Taylor Elane, Rest Practitioner Taylor Elane is a Chicago-based rest practitioner, certified Yoga Nidra guide, and liberation-centered wellness educator. A former equity and inclusion leader in higher education, Taylor holds certifications in Non-Performative Yoga, Yoga Nidra, equity and inclusion consulting, and trauma-informed resilience. She facilitates rest-centered experiences for mission-driven organizations, caregivers, and advocates, and guides Yoga Nidra meditations on Insight Timer. References: [1] Franco, D. D. (2026, July 21). How to tackle leadership burnout (2026 edition). Meditopia for Work. [2] Development Dimensions International. (2025). New DDI study signals looming leadership exodus, with 71% reporting increased stress. [3] Pacheco, J. (2025). The burnout risk: Strengthening your midlevel leaders. Harvard Business Impact. [4] Breakfast Leadership. (2026). Leadership burnout strategies: How to overcome it. [5] Meijman, T., & Mulder, G. (1998): [6] Speth, F., Wendsche, J., & Wegge, J. (2023). We continue to recover through vacation!: Meta-analysis of vacation effects on well-being and its fade-out. European Psychologist, 28(4), 274–287. [7] de Bloom, J., et al. (2009). Do we recover from vacation? Meta-analysis of vacation effects on health and well-being. Journal of Occupational Health, 51(1), 13–25. [8] Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). Journal of Occupational Health Psychology: [9] Sonnentag, S., & Schiffner, C. (2019). Psychological Detachment from Work during Nonwork Time and Employee Well-Being: The Role of Leader’s Detachment. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 22, E3. [10] "The Psychophysiological Effects of Yoga Nidra: A Systematic Review", IJCSPUB - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CURRENT SCIENCE (www.IJCSPUB.org), ISSN:2250-1770, Vol.15, Issue 4, page no.777-788, December-2025, [11] Ghai, S., et al. (2026). "Effects of Yoga Nidra on Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: [12] Ferreira-Vorkapic, C., et al. (2018). The Impact of Yoga Nidra and Seated Meditation on the Mental Health of College Professors. International journal of yoga, 11(3), 215–223. [13] Fialoke, S., et al. Functional connectivity changes in meditators and novices during yoga nidra practice. Sci Rep 14, 12957 (2024). [14] "How can Yoga Nidra Benefit Individuals in High Stress Jobs?" (2025). [15] Kaplan, S. (1995). Attention Restoration Theory, Journal of Environmental Psychology: [16] Ohly, H., et al. (2016). Attention Restoration Theory: A systematic review of the attention restoration potential of exposure to natural environments. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 19(7), 305–343. [17] Scott, E. E., et al. (2023). Measuring affect and complex working memory in natural and urban environments. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1039334. [18] Sonnentag, S., and Fritz, C. (2015). Recovery from job stress: The stressor-detachment model as an integrative framework, J. Organiz. Behav., 36, S72–S103,

Written by Aleta St. James, Energy Healer and Life Coach Aleta St. James is a globally renowned energy healer, intuitive, bestselling author, and transformational coach. Known as the “Indiana Jones of the Soul,” she has spent decades helping people achieve greater success, vitality, abundance, and purpose through her pioneering energy transformation methods. Most people believe success comes from having a brilliant mind. They're right to a point. But after coaching executives, entrepreneurs, performers, and leaders for decades, I've discovered something that surprises almost everyone. Your mind alone can't sustain your success. If you're in your late 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond and beginning to feel exhausted, uninspired, or like you're constantly pushing uphill, you're not necessarily working too hard. More often than not, you're leaking energy in places you don't even realize. I call these Ageless Saboteurs, the hidden emotional and subconscious patterns that quietly drain your vitality while you continue performing at a high level. The mistake many high achievers make is believing they're only a brain. They rely almost exclusively on intellect, discipline, and willpower. Those qualities can certainly build a successful career, but they can't sustain a joyful, vibrant life. The truth is, you're made up of four interconnected systems, your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies. When one of them becomes depleted, the others begin compensating until eventually the entire system starts running on empty. Years ago, in LifeShift, Let Go and Live Your Dream, I introduced the concept of Alpha Burnout. It's what happens when we spend years operating almost entirely from our masculine, action-oriented energy, constantly achieving, solving problems, producing results, and pushing forward, without balancing it with the restorative qualities of intuition, joy, connection, creativity, and renewal. Many people believe burnout is simply the price of success. I don't. Success should expand your life, not slowly drain it. One of the greatest teachers in my life has been working with people during the final stages of their lives. I can honestly tell you that I've never heard someone say, "I wish I'd made more money." What I have heard is, "I wish I had spent more time loving, connecting, being present, truly living." That's why I believe the greatest measure of success isn't what you've accumulated, it's the quality of the energy you bring to your life every day. The good news is that once you identify your own Ageless Saboteurs, you can begin releasing them. When your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies begin working together instead of being out of sync with each other, your energy returns, your creativity expands, your resilience grows, and success becomes far more sustainable and joyful. You don't have to choose between achievement and vitality. You can have both. One of the greatest hidden energy leaks I see in high performers is this. The very fear that helped create your success can become the thing that quietly robs you of it. For many people, success begins with fear. The fear of failure. The fear of not having enough. The fear of being invisible, overlooked, or never feeling worthy. In the beginning, those fears can be incredibly motivating. They push you to work harder, achieve more, and climb higher. But eventually, they become exhausting. I've worked with highly successful executives, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and performers who appear to have everything. Yet underneath their accomplishments lives a quiet voice that says, "I'm still not enough." That's what we commonly call imposter syndrome, the fear that one day people will discover you're not as capable or deserving as they think you are. One Emmy-winning actress I worked with dreaded every red carpet and acceptance speech. Despite all her success, childhood wounds had convinced her she still had to prove herself. She couldn't fully receive the recognition because she was always afraid it would be taken away. I've seen the same pattern in boardrooms. During a talk I gave to fashion industry executives, I asked, "How many of you secretly worry that one day people will discover you don't really know what you're doing?" The room erupted in laughter, and most of the hands went up. Let me tell you, most of them were top-ranking executives. Success driven by fear may get you to the top, but it rarely allows you to enjoy being there. That's the hidden cost of success driven by fear. You've driven yourself to get there, but you're never convinced you're good enough to deserve it. When your achievements are fueled by the belief that you have to prove your worth, your nervous system never gets permission to rest. You keep chasing the next accomplishment because no achievement ever feels like enough. Real freedom begins when your success is no longer driven by fear, but by purpose, joy, creativity, and love. That's when you stop merely achieving and begin receiving. In my experience, that's one of the greatest shifts you can make, not only for your happiness, but for your vitality and longevity. So let me ask you a question: What part of you still believes you have to prove you're good enough? Is there a younger part of you that's still chasing approval, love, recognition, or security? If so, that part may have helped create your success, but it could also be quietly draining your life force. I can honestly tell you that, at 78, I have as much energy as I did in my 30s. I don't wake up trying to prove myself anymore. My life is fueled by passion, purpose, curiosity, and joy. Even raising my 21-year-old twins energizes me because I'm living from what fills me up, not from what empties me. That's the secret. Fear burns energy. Love, joy, and purpose create it. Once my clients learn my Clear, Shift, and Recreate process, they stop chasing success to feel worthy and begin creating from a place of inner freedom. That's when they discover a level of energy they never knew they had. So before we go any further, ask yourself one final question: "What is fueling your success today, fear, or love?" If you're ready to discover the answer, I'd like to guide you through one of the same LifeShift exercises I've shared with clients for decades. This helps you get in touch with your inherent greatness, self-love, and appreciation, which is where ultimate success thrives. Journaling prompt: Releasing the story that no longer serves you Find a quiet place, take out your journal, and allow yourself to write without judgment. Don't worry about grammar, spelling, or making sense. Simply let your thoughts flow. Step 1: Explore the root Reflect on these questions: What am I holding on to that makes me feel like I'm not enough? What experiences have shaped this belief? When do I feel "not good enough," and what memories surface? Write freely. Let your stream of consciousness lead you wherever it needs to go. Don't censor yourself. Step 2: Give both voices a place Allow your younger self, your inner child or adolescent, to have a voice. Write from their perspective. What are they still carrying? Perhaps they're holding on to a moment of rejection, disappointment, or feeling unseen. It could be being left out at school, a painful breakup, not getting chosen, or a collection of experiences that quietly shaped how they see themselves. Whatever comes up is welcome. Then, switch perspectives. Write as your present-day adult self. Imagine sitting beside your younger self with compassion, understanding, and wisdom. Begin a conversation. You might write. "I'm here for you. Look how far we've come. You don't have to carry this alone anymore. You don't have to keep worrying. You're safe with me now." Continue the dialogue. Let your younger self respond, and allow your adult self to offer reassurance, perspective, and unconditional support. Step 3: Close with gratitude and truth Leadership is not defined by a single quarter, project, or period of output. It is defined by longevity, adaptability, and resilience. Pregnancy does not remove a woman from leadership. It challenges her to lead in a way that is more sustainable, more self-aware, and more aligned with long-term performance. Affirm your new story Slowly repeat: Isn't it wonderful that I I'm proud of Look how far I've come I've overcome Today I choose to let go of From this moment forward, I choose to believe I am enough exactly as I am. I celebrate my growth. I choose love over fear. My best years are still ahead of me. Remember The experiences you've carried have shaped you. They do not have to define you. Your adult self is here now, with wisdom, compassion, resilience, and choice. You are no longer living from the wounds of the past. You are creating from the freedom of the present. That is where lasting vitality begins. Coming next I'll continue sharing more LifeShift practices, inspiring client stories, and the latest discoveries where longevity science, ancient wisdom, and neuroscience intersect, so you can learn what it truly means to live an ageless, vibrant life. Because if you've ever wondered whether your best years could still be ahead of you. I promise you, they can. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Aleta St. James Aleta St. James, Energy Healer and Life Coach Aleta St. James is a world-renowned energy healer, intuitive coach, and author who helps people transform their lives from the inside out. For over 30 years, she has guided clients to attract love, enhance fertility, grow their careers, increase financial flow, and embody ageless living and vitality at any age. Aleta embodies the rare ability to awaken, balance, and transform energy fields at the deepest level. Her unmatched vibrancy is living proof of her mastery in energy work and longevity.

Written by Jenny Gaynor, Social-Emotional Learning Coach and Founder Jenny Gaynor, author and founder of Calm Education, teaches SEL tools to help kids, families, and teachers build confidence, connection, and calm. There is something about August that changes the air. The calendar hasn’t officially declared the end of summer, but somehow we all know it is coming. Store shelves fill with backpacks and notebooks. Emails begin arriving. Calendars start filling up. Conversations shift from vacations to schedules, sports, homework, and bus routes. For many parents and educators, August doesn’t just bring a new season. It brings big feelings. Maybe you’re excited to return to routines. Maybe you’re grieving the slower pace of summer. Maybe you’re wondering if you’re ready for another school year. Or maybe you’re feeling all of those things at once. If any of this resonates with you, you’re not alone. One of the greatest misconceptions of emotional wellness is that we should simply “stay positive.” But emotional intelligence teaches us something different. Every feeling deserves to be noticed. We don’t have to ignore sadness to experience joy. We don’t have to pretend we aren’t nervous to feel hopeful. Instead of pushing our feelings away, we can learn to examine the thoughts that are fueling them. Our thoughts shape how we experience the world. While we can’t always control the first thought that pops into our mind, we can choose whether we continue believing it. Or we can gently replace it with one that is more balanced, compassionate, and helpful. Notice I didn’t say “more positive.” Helpful thoughts aren’t about pretending everything is wonderful. They’re about seeing the whole picture. Here are a few thought flips you can practice as August unfolds. Thought: “Summer is over already.” It is easy to focus on what is ending. But when we stay there, we miss everything we’ve gained. Try this instead: “I am grateful for the memories we made this summer, and I am looking forward to making new ones this school year.” Gratitude doesn’t erase sadness. It allows both to exist together. Thought: “I’m not ready.” Whether you’re a teacher preparing your classroom or a parent trying to get everyone back into a routine, this thought can feel overwhelming. Instead of waiting until you feel completely ready, you can remind yourself of the truth. Try this instead: “I don’t have to have everything figured out today. I only have to take the next step.” Confidence often grows after we begin rather than before. Thought: “Everything is about to become stressful again.” Busy schedules are real. School mornings are busy. Meetings, homework, sports, and activities all demand our attention. But stress doesn’t have to become the entire story. Try this instead: “There will be busy days, and there will also be moments of laughter, connection, and calm. I can intentionally create those moments.” You can create those moments with one deep breath before walking into school, one family dinner together, one bedtime story, or one cup of coffee enjoyed without rushing. Small moments have a big impact. Thought: “We didn’t do enough this summer.” This might be one of the most common thoughts parents and educators carry into August. Social media has a way of convincing us that everyone else squeezed every ounce out of summer, while we somehow fell short. But children rarely measure summer by how many vacations they took or attractions they visited. We don’t measure summer by how much we got done, either. We remember how we felt. We remember the laughter. We remember making memories together. We remember the little things, like catching lightning bugs, watching movies on the couch, or having conversations over a nice dinner. Try this instead: “We made meaningful memories, and that is enough.” Enough really can be enough. Thought: “The school year has to be better this year.” Teachers, parents, and students feel it. The pressure to get everything “right” can steal the joy from the very experiences we are hoping to enjoy. Try this instead: “Perfection isn’t the goal. Presence is.” Children don’t need perfect adults. They need adults who apologize when they make mistakes, who model resilience, who show them that feelings are normal, and who prove that hard days don’t last forever. These lessons are far more valuable than perfection could ever be. A simple practice for August Take five quiet minutes this week to write down the thoughts that keep showing up as school approaches. Then ask yourself if these thoughts are true and if they are helping you. Then try to find a kinder and more balanced way of looking at the situation. You don’t have to force yourself to feel differently overnight. Just becoming aware of your thoughts and feelings is often enough to begin shifting them. One final thought As parents and educators, we spend so much time helping children manage their emotions that we sometimes forget to take care of our own. This August, permit yourself to feel whatever comes up. Celebrate the beautiful moments summer gave you and grieve the ones you wish had lasted longer. Don’t forget to also look forward to the opportunities a new school year will bring. Most importantly, remember that while we can’t always choose our first thought, we can choose the one we hold onto. Sometimes, making that small shift in our thinking is enough to change the way we experience an entire season! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jenny Gaynor Jenny Gaynor, Social-Emotional Learning Coach and Founder Jenny Gaynor is the author and founder of Calm Education. She teaches children, families, and teachers essential SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) skills. Her mission is to help others build confidence, resilience, and healthy connections. Jenny is a former educator with over 20 years of classroom experience. She holds certifications in both elementary and special education. Jenny also has training in yoga, meditation, and SEL facilitation. She lives in Barrington, Rhode Island, with her family and therapy cat, Tiller.

Written by Céline Kusters, Yoga Teacher Céline Kusters is a certified yoga teacher and founder of Namunyak Yoga. Driven by the mission to show that yoga is for everybody and every body, she offers simple, accessible, and down-to-earth practices, on and off the mat, that help people cultivate balance, ease, and presence in everyday life. You breathe every moment of every day, and yet you probably rarely pay attention to how you breathe. But what if I told you your breath has the power to influence how you feel in any given moment? Whether you’re feeling stressed, anxious, low on energy, distracted, or simply looking to relax, the right breathing exercise can completely shift your body and mind. By learning to breathe more consciously, you can improve both your physical and mental health. The best part? It doesn’t have to be complicated. Even a few deep breaths can make a big difference. In this article, I share 8 simple breathing exercises for every mood. Each one supports a different mood or need and will help you use your breath as a practical tool for everyday well-being. 1. Distracted: Notice your breath It doesn’t get simpler than this. Simply take some time to notice your breath. You can do it anytime and anywhere. If you feel comfortable, close your eyes. Then just observe your breath. Are you breathing fast or slow? Through your nose or your mouth? Into your chest, ribs, or belly? How does the air feel when you inhale? Cold or warm? How does that change when you exhale? 2. Stressed: 5-5 breathing When you feel stressed or tense, try inhaling for 5 seconds, then exhaling for 5 seconds. Repeat for a couple of rounds. Simple as that. This breathing exercise will help you regulate your nervous system and promote relaxation. 3. Anxious: Box breathing Box breathing is my go-to breathing exercise when I struggle with anxiety. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds, then repeat a few more times. 4. Frustrated or irritated: Lion’s breath This is a fun one! It may feel a little awkward, but it is super effective. Take a really deep breath in through your nose. Then take a really deep breath out through your mouth as you stick out your tongue and make a "ha" sound. Repeat a few more times. 5. Low on energy: Three-part inhale A quick energy booster! Take three really quick inhales through your nose, then a really big sigh out through your mouth. If you want to add a little bit of movement, lift your arms all the way up in three parts, following your inhales. Then drop them down on your exhale. 6. Restless: Taco breath This one is for those restless days when you just can’t sit still. Take a deep breath in. Then roll your tongue, like a taco, and exhale through your mouth. Repeat for a few more rounds. 7. Too busy and unbalanced: Alternate nostril breathing Alternate nostril breathing is there for those days when you’ve planned a little too much, and your mind is all over the place. Bring your index finger to your right nostril and softly close it. Then inhale through your left nostril. Bring your index finger to your left nostril to softly close it, then exhale through the right. Inhale through the right, then close your right nostril again. Exhale through the left. Repeat at least two more times. 8. Overstimulated: Extended exhale breathing Can’t sleep? Or struggling to relax? Try extended exhale breathing. Breathe in through your nose for four seconds, then breathe out for six seconds. Repeat a couple of times and feel your body and mind relax. Make it a daily ritual No matter how you’re feeling, there is a breathing exercise for you. By practicing these breathing exercises regularly, you’ll become more aware of how your breath influences your body and mind. Try it out, discover what works for you, and remember that it doesn’t have to be complicated. Even a few conscious breaths can already make a big difference in how you feel. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Céline Kusters Céline Kusters, Yoga Teacher Céline Kusters is a certified yoga teacher and founder of Namunyak Yoga. With a background shaped by personal healing and professional training, she’s dedicated to making yoga accessible, inclusive, and practical. Through her classes, social media, and writing, she shares practical, down-to-earth ways to integrate yoga into daily life and help people find ease, balance, and connection. Céline’s mission is to show you that yoga is for everybody and every body, and that even a few mindful breaths can change how you move through the world.

Written by Leoniek van der Maarel, Academie voor Verlies/Grief Training Centre Leoniek van der Maarel is a Dutch psychologist, grief expert, author, and trainer with a clear and powerful mission. "Creating a world where grief is no longer a silent struggle, but a supported path forward." You know the feeling. Your clients come in, and the conversation circles again around the same conflict. The same accusations, the same deadlock, the same exhaustion on both sides. You try to stay neutral, you reflect back what you hear, you look for openings, and yet nothing really shifts. What looks like conflict is often loss underneath. Loss of trust, of certainty, of the future they had imagined. Loss of the home they shared, of daily life with their children. When that loss goes unacknowledged, the conflict keeps refuelling itself. It has nowhere else to go. The SCHIP method, developed by Tineke Rodenburg and Leoniek van der Maarel, authors of Vechten voor je scheiding, schipbreuk geslaagd (Fighting for Your Divorce, A Successful Shipwreck), offers a framework that takes both seriously, the conflict and the loss that drives it. The acronym, S for Sharing the past, C for Conflict and Loss, H for Helpful listening, I for Integration, P for Partners in parenthood, gives you a clear arc to work with. Not a rigid script, but a way of orienting yourself when you're not sure where to go next. Here are five ways to bring that into your practice: 1. Recognize that conflict and loss are two sides of the same coin This is the foundation of the SCHIP method, and it changes how you listen from the very first session. When a client describes their ex partner's behavior with fury or contempt, underneath that is almost always something lost, a relationship they believed in, a version of themselves, a sense of safety. The conflict is real, but it's also a container for grief that hasn't found another form yet. The S, Sharing the past, phase is about creating enough safety for both dimensions to be present. Before anything can move, your client needs to feel that you see the whole picture, not just what went wrong, but what it cost them. When you name that early, something often loosens. The defensiveness drops a little. There's more room to breathe. Conflict without loss is rare. Loss without conflict, in a separation, is almost impossible. Holding both at once is where your work begins. 2. Don't rush to resolve the conflict: First, make room for grief The C in the acronym stands for Conflict and Loss. It's a familiar pull, you want to help, so you move toward solutions. What agreements can we make? How can we improve communication? These are useful questions, but asked too early, they land on unprepared ground. Asking them without getting to the bottom of what has been lost leaves partners feeling unseen and unheard. The H in SCHIP stands for Helpful listening, and it asks you to slow down before you problem solve. What does your client actually need right now? Often it's not a strategy. It's to be heard in the full weight of what they're going through. They need and want to be heard and acknowledged by the other partner. The pain the other partner "caused". The grief of a divorce is not a side issue to be processed before the real work starts. It is the real work, for a long time. Practitioners sometimes worry about opening up grief, afraid it will overwhelm the session, or that they won't know how to hold it. But grief that's been given space tends to become less consuming, not more. What stays stuck is grief that keeps being redirected into conflict because there's nowhere else for it to go. Helpful listening means tolerating the not knowing together. It means not filling the silence too quickly. 3. Understand that people process loss differently One partner is already making plans for the future. The other can't get out of bed. One is angry. The other is numb. One wants to talk endlessly, the other has shut down completely. These differences are not personality flaws or signs of bad faith. They're different expressions of the same loss, processed through different nervous systems, different histories, different ways of coping. But when ex partners don't understand this, they read each other's responses as attacks. The one who's moving forward seems cold and unfeeling. The one who's still grieving seems manipulative or unstable. As a practitioner, naming this dynamic explicitly can shift something. When your client understands that their ex partner's apparent indifference might be a different form of grief, not the absence of it, the conflict often becomes slightly less personal. Not resolved, but reframed. That's enough to create a little more space. 4. Help clients name what they have actually lost The I in SCHIP stands for Integration, and integration can only happen when the loss has been made concrete enough to grieve. Vague grief is harder to move through than specific grief. Your client can say it in a hundred different ways, "I lost the house," "I lost the life I thought we'd have," "I lost the version of myself I was when we were together." Ask them directly, what is actually gone now that wasn't gone before? This isn't just a therapeutic exercise. It's what allows the conflict to loosen its grip. As long as the loss stays abstract, a general sense that everything is wrong, it has nowhere to land. It keeps circulating back into blame, into old arguments, into the same three accusations on repeat. Naming the loss specifically gives it a place to exist that isn't the conflict itself. Integration doesn't mean the loss disappears or that your client feels fine about it. It means they can carry it without it running the whole show. They can think about their ex partner, about the future, about their children, without every thought pulling them straight back into the fight. That's the shift the I is aiming for, not resolution, but room. In the Integration phase, they find a common ritual to leave the past behind them, a kind of funeral for their relationship. This way they decide to take the step into the future and let bygones be bygones. 5. Guide ex-partners toward staying parents together, even when the partnership is over The final phase in the SCHIP method is the connection in parenthood, in such a way that benefits the children. The P stands for Partners in parenthood, and it's the phase where everything from S, C, H, and I gets put to use in the one relationship that doesn't end with the divorce, the shared responsibility for the children. This step is often where practitioners feel the pull to rush. There are school schedules to sort out, holidays to divide, decisions to make, and it's tempting to move straight into practical agreements. But if the loss underneath hasn't been acknowledged yet, those agreements tend not to hold. The same conflict resurfaces, just wearing a new topic. When your client has had room to grieve what's gone, the marriage, the shared future, sometimes the version of the family they'd imagined, something becomes possible that wasn't possible before. They can separate the ex partner from the co parent. Not because the hurt is gone, but because it's no longer the only thing in the room. Your role here is to help them see that staying connected as parents isn't a betrayal of what they lost. It's a different kind of relationship, built on what's left rather than what's over. Some clients find this easier than others. Some circle back to old conflict when a new decision needs to be made, and that's not failure, it's part of how this phase moves. What you're really helping them build is a working partnership around their children, one that can hold disagreement without collapsing back into the old fight. That's the arc the SCHIP method was designed for, from conflict, through loss, to a new form of being connected. In conclusion Conflict and loss are not two separate things to address one after the other. They're intertwined, and the work is to keep holding both, from the first session where you name what's underneath the anger, to the last stretch where two people learn to trust each other again, maybe forgive each other, and co parent from a place that isn't the marriage anymore. If you recognize this pattern in your own practice, the conversations that keep circling, the moments where you're not sure whether to hold space or move toward solutions, the SCHIP method gives you a map for that terrain. Grief Training Centre offers training in applying it in your own practice, for practitioners who want more than a framework to read about, who want to actually know what to do when it gets difficult. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Leoniek van der Maarel Leoniek van der Maarel, Academie voor Verlies/Grief Training Centre With over 25 years of experience and a deeply personal connection to her work, Leoniek has become one of the leading voices in the field of loss and transition. Her approach is grounded in the understanding that grief does not always begin with death, and healing is never one-size-fits-all. Her career is defined by one central truth: grief is everywhere. In the aftermath of a death, a divorce, a broken family bond, or a lost dream, it weaves itself through human lives in ways both visible and silent. And yet, society still often asks us to "move on" too quickly, or without the right support. Leoniek’s life's work is to change that.

Some people measure success by what they finish. Shahriar James Ekbatani tends to think about what happens after the ribbon is cut. When he looks at a commercial development, he does not immediately think about construction timelines or square footage. He imagines families meeting for dinner, local businesses finding customers, and neighborhoods gaining places where people naturally gather. The same mindset shapes his work as Chairman of Lotus Behavioral Health, where the goal is not simply to help teenagers through a difficult moment, but to give them the chance to build a better future. "I've always been interested in outcomes," Ekbatani says. "The question I ask is simple: what difference will this make five years from now?" That way of thinking has led him through multiple industries, but today it connects two very different parts of his life. One focuses on commercial real estate. The other focuses on helping young people recover from addiction. At first glance, they seem unrelated. To him, they are built on the same foundation. Why Shahriar James Ekbatani believes every project starts with purpose Ekbatani says the excitement of starting a project wears off quickly. What keeps him motivated is having a clear reason for doing it in the first place. "When you know what you're trying to accomplish, the daily challenges don't distract you as much," he says. "You keep moving because the bigger picture stays in front of you." That perspective influences every project he takes on. His recent work in Central Florida includes commercial developments near The Villages, investments throughout the region, and the upcoming Eola Food Hall in downtown Orlando. While each project serves a different purpose, he sees them as opportunities to create places that people will continue using long after construction crews have packed up. "A building isn't successful just because it's completed," he says. "It's successful when people want to come back." Looking beyond the blueprint Commercial real estate often begins with drawings, permits, and schedules. Ekbatani believes those are only part of the process. Before thinking about the physical structure, he asks how the project fits into the community around it. Who will visit? What businesses will benefit? Will the space still matter years from now? Those questions help guide decisions long before construction begins. "It's easy to focus on what's being built," he says. "I think it's more important to focus on why it's being built." That long-term approach has become increasingly important as Central Florida continues to grow. New residents bring new opportunities, but they also create new demands for gathering places, healthcare services, restaurants, and retail. Rather than viewing development as simply adding more buildings, Ekbatani sees it as responding thoughtfully to how communities change over time. What Lotus Behavioral Health has taught him about leadership Although commercial real estate occupies much of his professional life today, Lotus Behavioral Health represents something different. Founded in 2020, the nonprofit helps adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 who are struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. For Ekbatani, the organization's success is measured very differently than any commercial project. "The goal isn't to finish something," he says. "The goal is to help someone build a future they didn't think was possible." Working with Lotus has reinforced lessons about patience that apply far beyond nonprofit leadership. Recovery rarely follows a straight path. Progress often happens gradually, with setbacks along the way. He believes leadership works much the same way. "You have to stay committed even when progress isn't immediately visible," he says. "That's true whether you're leading an organization or helping someone through recovery." Why big ideas require small daily decisions People often assume that major projects come together because of one breakthrough moment. Ekbatani sees it differently. He believes lasting results are usually created through hundreds of small decisions made consistently over time. "It can be tempting to look for shortcuts," he says. "I've learned that steady progress almost always beats quick progress." That philosophy has shaped how he approaches both business and nonprofit work. Whether reviewing development plans, working with community partners, or supporting Lotus Behavioral Health, he prefers to focus on what can be improved today instead of trying to solve everything at once. Over time, those small improvements begin to add up. Creating places people remember As Orlando and surrounding communities continue to evolve, Ekbatani hopes the projects he helps create will become more than addresses on a map. He wants them to become places that people associate with positive experiences. A family gathering for dinner. A local entrepreneur opening a first business. A teenager finding hope through recovery. Those moments may look very different, but he believes they share something important in common. "They all begin with someone deciding to invest in the future," he says. Looking back across his career, Ekbatani is less interested in individual accomplishments than in the lasting effect of the work itself. Projects eventually reach completion. Buildings open. Organizations grow. What remains, he believes, is the impact they have on the people they were created to serve. "When I think about success," he says, "I don't think about what was built. I think about what continues long after the project is finished." That perspective continues to shape everything Shahriar James Ekbatani does today. Whether he is helping guide a new commercial development or supporting Lotus Behavioral Health's mission, his focus remains remarkably consistent: create something meaningful enough that it continues making a difference long after the work is done.

Some people spend their entire careers building one business. Others spend their careers building the confidence to begin again. Russell Mann, Nevada, has spent decades doing the latter. Looking back at his career, it would be easy to focus on the different industries he has worked in. Hospitality. Mortgage lending. Retail. Fitness. Tourism. Outdoor recreation. On paper, those experiences may seem disconnected. In reality, they tell one continuous story. Every new chapter began because Russell noticed an opportunity, believed he could build something better, and was willing to take on the challenge of learning something new. For Russell, success has never been about finding one perfect business and staying there forever. It has been about asking a simple question whenever circumstances changed or a new opportunity appeared: "What's next?" "I've never been afraid to try something different," Russell said. "Every business teaches you something that helps you with the next one." Where Russell Mann learned his first business lessons Russell grew up in Las Vegas, where he earned the rank of Eagle Scout before graduating from Clark High School in 1983. He later attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and studied Hotel Administration. Although his education gave him a foundation, many of his most valuable lessons came from his first jobs. Working as a busboy and waiter in the gourmet restaurants at Caesars Palace exposed him to an environment where details mattered. Every guest expected exceptional service, and every interaction contributed to the overall experience. "When you're working with people every day, you learn to pay attention," Russell said. "You notice what makes someone happy, what frustrates them, and how small things can make a big difference." Those observations stayed with him long after he left the hospitality industry. While the businesses he owned would eventually change, his belief that people remember how they are treated remained constant. Why Russell Mann never felt limited by one career After spending approximately ten years in the mortgage industry, Russell also bought and sold residential properties, completing both short-term investments and long-term holds. The experience gave him a practical understanding of real estate, changing markets, and how to evaluate opportunities beyond a single transaction. Eventually, he reached a point where he could have stayed on a familiar career path. Instead, he chose to pursue entrepreneurship full time. Over the years, he owned clothing and fitness stores before expanding into tourism and outdoor recreation. He went on to build businesses including Las Vegas ATVs, Vegas Off Road Racing, Bullets and Burgers, Las Vegas Water Sports, Las Vegas Outdoor Adventures, Vegas Kayak Tours, Vegas Hiking Tours, Helicopter Adventures, Grand Canyon Glamping Resort, and Arizona Last Stop. He also helped develop the Arizona Last Stop Travel Center and a Taco Bell location and is currently involved in planning a new Dunkin' Donuts. To an outsider, those businesses might seem unrelated. Russell sees something different. "I've always looked for opportunities," he said. "If you're paying attention to what's happening around you, you'll see ideas that other people overlook." That mindset has allowed him to move comfortably between industries without feeling like he was starting from scratch. Every new business is built on lessons learned from those before it. What Russell Mann looks for before building something new Many entrepreneurs spend their time studying competitors. Russell spends more time observing people. He believes opportunities often reveal themselves through everyday conversations, changing customer interests, and patterns that become obvious only after taking the time to notice them. "I constantly watch what's going on around me," he said. "People will tell you what they want if you're paying attention." That habit has become one of the defining characteristics of his career. Instead of becoming attached to a single idea or a single way of doing business, he remains open to what comes next. He applies the same approach when challenges arise. "If a big problem comes up, I don't rush into a decision," Russell said. "I'll think about it overnight. The next morning, you usually see things differently." Rather than reacting emotionally, he believes giving himself time to think often leads to better solutions. Why customer experiences have always been the common thread Although Russell's businesses have served different markets, they all share something in common. They are built around creating positive experiences for people. That philosophy first developed during his years in hospitality and continued as he built tourism businesses throughout the Las Vegas area and the Southwest. Whether someone was booking an ATV adventure, enjoying an outdoor activity, or visiting one of his other businesses, Russell believed the experience mattered just as much as the service itself. "When someone has a great experience, they remember it," he said. "That's something I've believed since my first days working in hospitality." That perspective has influenced the way he approaches business. He believes responding quickly to customers, listening carefully when problems arise, and following through on commitments creates relationships that last much longer than a single transaction. The habit that has defined Russell Mann's career There is one habit that has remained unchanged throughout Russell's career, regardless of the industry or business he was building. Every morning begins at 5:00 a.m. with a workout before the workday starts. For Russell, that routine is not simply about fitness. It represents consistency, discipline, and the practice of beginning each day with purpose. "You just keep moving forward," he said. "Some days are easier than others, but you take things one day at a time." That same mindset has carried him through decades of entrepreneurship. Markets have changed. Customer interests have evolved. Entire industries have transformed. Yet Russell has continued looking ahead instead of looking back. What Russell Mann’s story says about entrepreneurship Russell Mann's career in Nevada is not defined by a single company or industry. It is defined by a willingness to keep learning and a belief that every new opportunity is a chance to build on the experiences that came before it. The businesses he has created may be different, but the thinking behind them has remained remarkably consistent. He has always been curious enough to notice opportunities, patient enough to think through difficult decisions, and confident enough to begin again when a new idea made sense. That is what makes his career noteworthy. It is not simply the number of businesses he has owned or the industries he has explored. It is the fact that he has never allowed one chapter to define the rest of his story. For Russell, every business has been another opportunity to learn something new, meet new people, and build on everything he learned from the last venture. Looking back, it becomes clear that his greatest accomplishment was never building just one successful business. It was developing the mindset to keep asking, "What's next?" and having the determination to turn the answer into reality.

Written by Ronald Harris, Founder and CEO Ron Harris, MBA, CFEI, MBE, is the founder of Financial Literacy Group and the author of Hybrid Financial Arbitrage. He has spent more than two decades developing financial strategies for everyday Americans, and he is recognized as a leading voice on closing the wealth gap through structural financial education. For generations, the American Dream ran on a simple formula, work hard, buy a home, save a little, and retire comfortably. In 2026, millions of families are following that formula to the letter and still falling behind. The problem is rarely the size of the paycheck. It is what happens to that paycheck the moment it lands, and a growing number of households are learning a very different way to change the outcome. Is the American Dream still alive in 2026? The dream is not dead. But for a lot of hardworking people, it has quietly moved out of reach, and the numbers explain why. Americans now owe a record $18.8 trillion in household debt, up roughly 33 percent in just five years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit card balances sit near an all-time high of about $1.25 trillion. Mortgages and auto loans keep climbing. At the same time, the personal saving rate has slid to the mid single digits, less than half the long-run average of 8.4 percent tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read those two trends together, and a picture emerges. Debt is at a record high. Savings are near a historic low. Families are earning more than ever in raw dollars, yet the dream feels further away, not closer. That is not a motivation problem. It is a math problem, and it has a cause most people never see. Why working hard is no longer enough Most households are doing the right things. They are making payments, saving when they can, and trying to invest for the future. Still, the finish line keeps moving. The reason is that too much of the average family’s monthly cash flow is captured before it ever has a chance to build wealth. Banks earn the spread on the money they lend. Lenders collect the interest. Credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and mortgages each take their cut. Then taxes take another. Whatever survives that gauntlet is what a family is expected to use to build a retirement. Traditional financial advice answers this with three words, save more, wait longer. But that advice ignores the backpack. It asks people to climb the financial mountain while carrying a load of liabilities that quietly drains their cash flow the entire way up. You can be strong, disciplined, and consistent and still barely move, simply because of the weight you are carrying. The hidden problem: Your money can only do one job Here is the flaw at the center of the traditional system. It treats debt, retirement, insurance, and taxes as four separate conversations that never talk to each other. Debt is handed to lenders. Retirement is parked in a 401(k) or IRA. Life insurance is treated as a death benefit for someday. Taxes are dealt with later. Cash flow is almost never optimized as one unified strategy. The result is that most of your money can only ever do one job at a time. When you send a dollar to pay down debt, that dollar disappears from your balance sheet. It reduces a liability, but it does not create an asset you can use. The bank makes the spread on that transaction. You do not. That single limitation is why so many families run in place for years. They are moving money, but the money is only working once, and it is usually working for someone else. What banks and wealthy families have always understood The strategy that changes this equation is not new or exotic. It is based on the same logic that banks, corporations, and wealthy families have used for generations. A bank borrows money at one rate and lends it out at a higher one. The difference, the spread, is where institutional wealth is built. Banks use capital, collateral, and leverage to make the same dollar do several things at once. Ordinary households are simply never taught to think this way. A change in the tax code made this thinking far more accessible. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 modernized Internal Revenue Code Section 7702, the section that defines what qualifies as life insurance for tax purposes. The old rules were built on interest rate assumptions from the 1980s, often 4 to 6 percent, which had become badly out of step with reality. The update lowered those assumptions, allowing properly structured permanent life insurance policies to hold more cash value relative to the death benefit while keeping their tax advantages intact. In plain terms, the update turned certain permanent policies into far more efficient places to accumulate money. That is the door a strategy called Hybrid Financial Arbitrage walks through. A new blueprint: Turning debt into a wealth engine Hybrid Financial Arbitrage, or HFA, is built to do one thing the traditional system cannot, make the same cash flow eliminate debt and build wealth at the same time. It uses two tools working together. The first is debt optimization technology that identifies exactly how to redirect cash flow to pay down debt faster. The second is a properly structured privately owned life insurance policy, or POLI, designed for cash accumulation rather than the death benefit alone. Here is how it works in practice. The discretionary income that would normally vanish into debt payments is redirected into the policy, where it becomes cash value. That cash value becomes collateral. The policyowner can then borrow against their own accumulated cash value, not the death benefit, and use those funds to eliminate debt, invest, or seize an opportunity. The part most people miss is what happens next. When properly designed, the money inside the policy can continue earning indexed interest even while the borrowed funds are being put to work elsewhere, often with downside protection through a policy floor. Suddenly, the same dollar is doing several jobs at once. It can serve as collateral, help wipe out debt, continue growing, provide liquidity, support tax-advantaged retirement income, and still leave a legacy behind. In the old model, the bank captures the spread. In this model, when the policy is structured and managed correctly and remains within IRS limits, the policyowner captures the spread. That is the entire difference. What the American Dream looks like in 2026 The American Dream in 2026 is not defined by a bigger paycheck or a lucky break. It is defined by control, specifically, control over where your money goes and how many times it works for you before it leaves your hands. It looks like a family that no longer has to choose between paying off debt and saving for the future because the same cash flow is doing both. It looks like owning the asset instead of renting the advantage back from a lender. It looks like building a pool of tax-advantaged income that can help offset the taxes waiting inside a traditional 401(k) or IRA. It looks like leaving the next generation a real head start instead of a pile of obligations. The families getting ahead in 2026 are not necessarily earning more than their neighbors. They have simply stopped handing the entire financial advantage to banks and lenders and started repositioning their own money into their own assets. That is the modern American Dream. It is not about working harder for the system, but about making the system work harder for you. Take back the advantage If your income is doing everything except building your future, the issue may not be how much you make. It may be how your money is structured. A short, personalized review can show you exactly where your cash flow is going today and what it could be doing instead. Ron Harris is the founder and CEO of Financial Literacy Group, an author, educator, and financial strategist focused on helping working and middle-class Americans eliminate debt and build tax-advantaged wealth. To learn how Hybrid Financial Arbitrage could apply to your situation, book a strategy session with the Financial Literacy Group team. This article is for educational purposes only and is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Results depend on individual circumstances, policy design, and proper structuring within IRS guidelines. Consult a licensed professional before making financial decisions. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ronald Harris Ronald Harris, Founder and CEO Ron Harris, MBA, CFEI, MBE, is the founder of Financial Literacy Group and the author of Hybrid Financial Arbitrage: A Real-World Guide for Working-Class Americans. A financial educator and Certified Financial Educator with more than twenty years of experience, Ron developed Hybrid Financial Arbitrage to give ordinary American families access to the kind of wealth-building structures that banks and corporations have used for over a century. He speaks and writes on financial literacy, retirement planning, and closing the wealth gap.

Written by Sarah Ailish McLoughlin, Neurodivergent and Disabled Founder Sarah McLoughlin is the creator of Strategic Self-Advocacy™, founder of EduLinked and EduPsyched, and developer of Microsoft-supported digital tools that turn burnout into strategy across disability, education, and mental health systems. Artificial intelligence can now generate almost anything, including emails, reports, business plans, marketing campaigns, lesson plans, images, code, and research summaries, all in seconds. For years, digital success was measured by output. Publish more. Respond faster. Create more content. Build more products. Reach larger audiences. AI has fundamentally changed that equation. When generation becomes abundant, judgement becomes scarce, and scarcity creates value. The competitive advantage is no longer simply producing more. It's knowing what deserves to be trusted. The age of infinite content We're entering a world where AI can generate far more information than any individual or organisation can realistically review. That changes the nature of expertise. The question isn't, can we create it? It's, should we believe it? AI is remarkably good at producing convincing answers. It is far less reliable at understanding context, recognising consequences, or accepting responsibility. That's where humans become indispensable. Verification is more than proofreading Human verification isn't simply correcting grammar or spotting the occasional typo. It's making judgement calls. Does this recommendation fit the situation? Is the evidence reliable? Has important context been overlooked? Would this advice still make sense for this audience? What are the consequences if it's wrong? Verification is where critical thinking, ethics, and experience intersect. It's the difference between publishing information and standing behind it. Confidence isn't the same as accuracy One of AI's greatest strengths is also one of its greatest risks. It communicates with confidence, even when confidence isn't justified. An AI generated report can appear polished while missing crucial context. A strategic recommendation may sound persuasive without understanding organisational culture. A learning resource can read beautifully while failing the people it's meant to support. Fluency creates an illusion of certainty. Human judgement is what separates confidence from credibility. Trust becomes the competitive advantage As AI makes content easier to produce, trust becomes harder to earn. That makes verification more than a quality control process. It becomes a strategic capability. For business leaders, that means ensuring AI generated proposals genuinely reflect organisational values, customer relationships, and commercial realities. For entrepreneurs, it means balancing speed with sound decision making. For creators, it means protecting originality in a world increasingly filled with algorithmically generated sameness. Your audience may not remember who produced the most content. They'll remember who consistently produced content they could rely on. Context cannot be automated Every decision exists within a context shaped by relationships, culture, timing, history, community expectations, accessibility needs, and lived experience. These factors rarely appear in a prompt, yet they often determine whether a decision succeeds or fails. AI works from patterns, while humans understand situations. That's particularly important in education, healthcare, government, and community services, where every recommendation has the potential to affect real lives. Technology can assist judgement, but it cannot replace accountability. Verification should be built into the system Many organisations still treat review as the final step. Generate first. Check later. Increasingly, that approach is becoming inadequate. Verification works best when it's designed into the workflow itself. That might include: Requiring evidence before important claims are published. Introducing human approval before client facing communication. Distinguishing between AI generated drafts and verified outputs. Reviewing accessibility before publication rather than after complaints. Identifying high risk decisions that should never be fully automated. The strongest AI workflows aren't those that eliminate humans. They're the ones that position humans where judgement matters most. Human expertise is being redefined Using AI effectively isn't about writing better prompts. It's about asking better questions. Who could be affected if this is wrong? What evidence supports this conclusion? What assumptions has the AI made? What isn't being said? What requires lived experience rather than statistical prediction? These are increasingly becoming leadership skills rather than technical skills. The new premium skill As AI becomes cheaper, faster, and more capable, the market won't simply reward people who generate the most. It will reward people who know when to question the output. It will reward those who can distinguish evidence from opinion, signal from noise, confidence from credibility, and automation from responsibility. The future belongs to people who can move comfortably between AI speed and human judgement, using technology to accelerate work without outsourcing accountability. Questions worth asking If AI is becoming part of your daily work, consider these questions: Where does human judgement add the greatest value? Which decisions require evidence before action? Where could an unchecked AI error damage trust? Which parts of your workflow depend on relationships rather than information? How do people know what has been reviewed and what hasn't? What should never be automated? These aren't simply operational questions. They're strategic ones, because every answer shapes the kind of organisation you're building. Responsibility doesn't scale automatically Artificial intelligence has made generation almost limitless, but responsibility remains entirely human. The organisations that excel over the next decade won't necessarily be those using the most AI. They'll be the ones that build the strongest systems for verification, accountability, and trust. In the AI economy, generating content is becoming a commodity. Human judgement is becoming a premium. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Ailish McLoughlin Sarah Ailish McLoughlin, Neurodivergent and Disabled Founder Sarah Ailish McLoughlin is the neurodivergent founder behind EduLinked and EduPsyched and the creator of the Strategic Self-Advocacy™ framework. Her work transforms lived experience into trauma-informed, policy-smart tools that restore clarity and agency. Through digital apps, therapeutic messaging, and emotionally literate reform training, she helps carers, educators, and system-changemakers navigate complexity without self-erasure. Her Microsoft-backed NDIS Navigator app and emotional literacy campaigns are reshaping advocacy, access, and wellbeing across Australia.

Written by Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is the founder of Lotus Journey, a breast cancer survivor, author, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis at 39, she now helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by supporting the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 39, I quickly discovered that my life had become filled with appointments. My calendar revolved around consultations, scans, chemotherapy sessions and treatment plans. Every member of my medical team was focused on one objective: treating the cancer. I will always be grateful for the expertise, compassion and dedication of the healthcare professionals who cared for me. Their work was essential to my recovery. Yet, as I moved through treatment, I found myself asking questions that no one seemed to have time to answer. How could I better support my body during chemotherapy? What foods would nourish me rather than simply fill me? How could I reduce inflammation? What role did sleep, stress and movement play in my recovery? How could I help my body cope with treatment and prepare for life beyond it? These questions led me to discover Lifestyle Oncology, an approach informed by evidence that focuses on the everyday habits that support health and wellbeing before, during and after cancer treatment. It does not replace medical care. Instead, it complements it by helping patients optimise the aspects of their health that are within their control. Looking back, embracing these principles became one of the most empowering parts of my journey. While I could not control every outcome, I could choose how I cared for myself each day. Nourishing my body rather than simply eating One of the first changes I made was to completely rethink my relationship with food. Instead of asking, “What can I eat?” I began asking, “What will nourish my body today?” My plate gradually became filled with colourful vegetables, fruit, legumes, herbs, spices, nuts and seeds. I explored ingredients that could help reduce inflammation, increased my intake of fibre and focused on eating foods that supplied vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. Fresh juices and smoothies became a practical way to increase my fruit and vegetable intake, particularly on days when treatment affected my appetite. This was not about perfection or restrictive dieting. It was about giving my body the building blocks it needed while it was working incredibly hard to heal. Movement became an act of self-compassion There were days when exercise meant taking a gentle walk around the block. On other days, it meant simply stretching or breathing deeply. I learned to stop measuring movement by calories burned or distances covered. Instead, I viewed it as a way to improve circulation, maintain strength, lift my mood, and remind my body that it was still capable. The goal was not performance. The goal was partnership with my body. Sleep became part of my treatment plan Before cancer, I often viewed sleep as something that could be sacrificed. After my diagnosis, I realised that restorative sleep was one of the greatest gifts I could offer my body. Creating a calming evening routine, reducing stimulation before bed and allowing myself genuine rest became just as important as attending my medical appointments. Healing requires energy, and sleep is one of the body’s most remarkable ways of restoring itself. Reducing stress was no longer a luxury Cancer forced me to acknowledge something I had ignored for years. My body had been living under chronic stress long before my diagnosis. While stress alone does not cause breast cancer, living in a constant state of tension can affect many aspects of our physical and emotional wellbeing. Meditation, breathwork, journalling, spending time in nature and energy healing became regular practices that helped calm my nervous system. More importantly, they helped me reconnect with myself during a time when life felt deeply uncertain. Healing my emotional wellbeing One of the greatest lessons I learned was that emotional health deserves as much attention as physical health. Fear, grief, anger and uncertainty are natural responses to a cancer diagnosis. Ignoring those emotions does not make them disappear. For me, healing meant creating space to process what I was experiencing rather than carrying it alone. Coaching, therapeutic approaches, meditation, and honest conversations became as valuable to my recovery as many of the practical lifestyle changes I introduced. The healthier I became emotionally, the more resilient I felt physically. Reducing what no longer served me Healing was not only about adding healthier habits. It was also about letting go. I began reducing unnecessary stress, setting healthier boundaries, spending less time with draining influences and becoming more intentional about what I allowed into my life. This extended beyond relationships to the products I used in my home, the information I consumed and even the expectations I placed upon myself. Cancer became an invitation to simplify and prioritise what truly mattered. Healing is about more than surviving Perhaps the greatest gift Lifestyle Oncology gave me was a new perspective. Instead of seeing health as something that depended solely on hospital appointments, I began recognising the extraordinary power of everyday choices. No single food, supplement or habit can guarantee an outcome, and Lifestyle Oncology should never be viewed as a replacement for medical treatment supported by evidence. However, our daily habits influence how we feel, how we recover and how we live. For me, these changes did far more than support my body during treatment. They helped me build a healthier, more intentional and more meaningful life. Today, when I work with women navigating breast cancer, I encourage them to see healing as a partnership. Your medical team brings knowledge, skill and treatment. You bring your daily choices, your resilience and your commitment to caring for yourself. Both matter because healing is about far more than reaching the end of treatment. It is about creating a life in which your body, mind and soul have the opportunity to flourish long after cancer. To access my free Breast Cancer Support & Healing Series, please visit here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronika Bubenickova Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is a breast cancer survivor, author, speaker, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis in 2023, she embarked on a profound healing journey that transformed every aspect of her life. Today, she helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by addressing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. She is the founder of Lotus Journey and author of Diary of a Soul Reborn, with a mission to help women thrive beyond breast cancer, not just survive it.

Dr. Jessica Herbert is an executive coach and organizational strategist who develops leaders at the moments that define their organizations, promotions, new commands, restructures, and culture crises, across public safety and beyond. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience and more than 100 transformation projects across 36 states, she helps leaders align the three forces that determine whether change actually lasts, leadership, people, and technology. In this interview, Jessica shares what stayed constant across a career spanning criminal investigations, cybersecurity, and executive coaching, what technical experts must unlearn to lead well, and the mindset shifts that help executives stay steady, and make change stick, through their highest-stakes transitions. Dr. Jessica Herbert, PCC, Executive Coach Your career has taken you from criminal investigations and cybersecurity to executive coaching and organizational strategy. What has stayed consistent throughout that journey? From the outside, my path can look like a series of hard turns, criminal investigations, cybersecurity, executive coaching, organizational strategy. I don’t read it as chaos. Every role has pointed at the same thing, complex problems that only get solved when leadership, people, and technology align. What changed was where I stood in relation to those three forces. Early on, I was the doer, running investigations, then leading teams and middle management through cybersecurity work. Later, I became the owner and the strategist, guiding not only my own organization but many others through the same alignment. The constants have never moved. The intentional design of leadership, the way you empower the people around you, and the way technology is leveraged to sharpen how work actually gets done, those have been the through-line for nearly 30 years. What has evolved is our sophistication. The technology is faster, and our understanding of how to lead and motivate people is deeper than it was when I started. But the core question I’m always answering is the same one, how do you get leadership, people, and technology moving in the same direction, at the same time, toward something that lasts? You've worked in highly technical roles yourself. What do leaders often need to unlearn when they move from being the expert to leading the organization? The hardest jump for a high technical performer is the move into management and leadership, because it asks you to stop doing the very work you’re known for. We underestimate what that costs. You’re not just setting down a task, you’re setting down the thing you were so good at that we promoted you for it. That’s a real grief, a genuine loss, and most people are unprepared for it. The new work looks nothing like the old work, and by definition you haven’t been trained for it, so you’re suddenly not excellent at your job in the way you’re used to being. What has to be unlearned is the belief that you should be the one holding the answers to the deep technical problems. Stepping in because it’s faster for you than empowering the person now in your old seat feels like ease, but that ease is your comfort, not the organization’s benefit. When you won’t fully sit in your own chair, you leave two seats poorly filled, and that harms the whole organization. The shift is to fully release the work and find your passion in guiding it and developing the people who now do it. You developed the DTAC methodology after leading more than 100 transformation projects. What patterns convinced you that leadership, people, and technology have to evolve together? I think of leadership, people, and technology as three independent forces, and they rarely evolve at the same pace. Technology moves at a speed humans struggle to match. People and leadership take longer; it still takes four years to finish a degree and months to grow into a role. So the pattern isn’t that they must evolve simultaneously. It’s that an organization has to keep pushing the right levers to keep the three in balance. Picture a three-legged stool. If one leg stops growing, you don’t hire enough people, or skills wither, that leg shortens, and the stool wobbles or won’t hold you at all. Meanwhile, technology keeps stretching its leg longer and longer, throwing the whole thing off-kilter. That’s exactly what convinced me, across more than a hundred projects, the failures traced back to a neglected leg. We’re watching it happen right now with AI. Organizations assume agents can simply absorb the work of people, but what they’re really creating is a teetering stool, not enough people in the seats to balance the pressure technology is applying. You cannot stabilize on two legs, no matter which two they are. Leadership’s job is to keep investing so all three hold. Organizations invest heavily in new technology, yet many transformation efforts still fall short. Where do you see leaders making the biggest mistake? The biggest mistake I see is letting the cost and complexity of the technology create a myopic view of what’s actually happening in the organization. These implementations are enormous, licensing, servers, infrastructure, vendor training, procurement cycles that can run twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months. Because it demands so much money, time, and energy, leaders start to believe the technology is the whole job. “We just need to get this in.” And that blinds them to everything else the change requires. Nobody has mapped what the workflow will look like the day after go-live. No one has built internal champions and subject-matter experts to absorb the waves the new system creates. People are trained once, by a vendor, instead of being taught the tool through the institution’s own knowledge and context, which is what actually turns resistance into adoption. When a leader spends one, two, ten million dollars on technology and sets aside nothing for ongoing training, support, and development, they’ve told me plainly that they only funded one leg of the stool. Three and four years later, the system is used incorrectly, the data is a mess, and the capability they paid for was never realized, because the people were never funded from the start. You often say that data should strengthen leadership rather than replace human connection. How can leaders use data without losing sight of the people behind it? I’ve always said we should be data-informed, not data-driven. Data helps us understand a topic and its outcomes, and when it’s measured accurately, it should strongly inform a decision, but it should never be the only thing driving it. The trap is over-focusing on the quantitative and forgetting the qualitative. Say you’re comparing two units. Team A has ten people and produces a hundred widgets; Team B has fifteen and produces two hundred. The raw numbers say Team B is more effective. But the numbers don’t tell you that three of Team A’s people just transferred in and don’t yet know the job, so that team is actually working at a deficit. They don’t tell you about culture, about a toxic personality, about who’s understaffed or misaligned. Performance figures describe output; they don’t explain the people producing it. So the discipline for leaders is to give the data depth, to ask what’s really working and not working underneath the number. That depth usually doesn’t come from another survey or culture test. It comes from trusting your mid-level managers and the people closest to the work to tell you what’s rising, what’s falling, and why it matters. When you're coaching an executive through a major transition, what is one mindset shift that consistently helps them become a more effective leader? Every transition carries uncertainty, and when we’re uncertain, the brain rushes to fill the gaps. Leaders are built to think from thirty or fifty thousand feet, but the uncertainty of a transition lives down at three thousand feet. So the mind gets pulled into these short, low cycles, and that’s exactly where worry, anxiety, frustration, and self-sabotage take hold. The shift I coach is to climb back up and think ahead, to stay on the balcony. Instead of fixating on “what will this job be like when I get there,” the executive fully visualizes the future version of themselves in the role. Six weeks, six months, a year out, this is how I communicate, this is how I hold my emotions, this is my mindset. You make that future self the goalpost. Then, as the transition delivers its knowns and unknowns, its prepared and unprepared moments, you can read each one as a step toward that vision rather than a threat to it. In coaching we call it future pacing, it lets you move through today’s anxieties because tomorrow is drawn in clearer terms. Executives already know what works for them; that clarity just gets lost in the small loops. The balcony is where you lead at your strongest. After working on more than 100 transformation projects across 36 states, what have the strongest organizations done differently to make change stick? The strongest organizations do three things differently. First, they choose the right leader, not simply the person with the title or the one who happens to sit in the relevant department. They ask how long they need that person in the seat, and what characteristics the role truly demands, a strong communicator, someone who documents and problem-solves, who can operate autonomously and hold emotional intelligence under pressure. That champion has to carry the effort for the two to three years these transformations take, even as CEOs, mayors, or city managers change around them. Second, they structure the team intentionally across phases. The people who excel at startup, testing, and problem-solving before go-live are often not the team you need for stability and duration. Recognizing that, and bringing in external consultants for the startup phase when needed, keeps the effort from stalling. Third, they buy technology only after they clearly understand what it’s meant to fix, which existing systems it will retire, and how it fits a strategic plan that moves at the pace of the organization, not the pace of the vendor. Underneath all three is the same muscle, intention. They understand roles and behaviors, they put people in the right seats, and they rotate those seats when the work changes. You often say that everything is possible once you find the steps and the momentum. How has that belief shaped your approach to leadership and coaching? Leadership puts constant pressure on you to generate momentum, when sometimes what you actually need is a pause. There are other seasons where you’re the opposite, frozen, stuck in the pause, because the pressures never make it clear what the real priority is. Both ends are costly. Chase momentum too hard and you burn out; the role consumes you, becomes the only thing you think about, with no healthy way to release the stress. Freeze because you can’t see the path or everything feels on fire at once, and you’ve stopped making decisions, which is its own signal of burnout, and just as harmful to the organization, because a leader who won’t decide while everyone is looking to them does real damage. So the work isn’t choosing speed or stillness. It’s about regulating the momentum. You keep taking the steps and moving forward, but you don’t race to a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and you don’t slam on the brakes until nothing moves at all. Once you learn those regulatory practices, how to sustain a steady pace without redlining or stalling, you start to see not just what’s possible, but the pace at which it’s possible without costing you yourself along the way. If readers could take away one lesson from your work that would help them become stronger leaders tomorrow, what would you want it to be? If there’s one lesson I’d want a leader to carry into tomorrow, it’s this, practice honest self-reflection, the kind that makes you emotionally capable of letting go of the very expertise that earned you the position. When you release it, you open yourself to everything there still is to learn, and that is what actually builds a stronger leader. If you step into leadership clutching the traits that got you there, you’ll miss the lessons waiting on the other side, because those traits don’t serve you once you’re in the seat. A new role demands a new set of skills, and what carried you here will not carry you to the next level if you refuse to set it down. Honest self-reflection means embracing all of it, your good qualities, your difficult ones, your superpowers and your weaknesses. That’s where leaders get stronger, in the willingness to let go of things that served them well, so they can stay open and absorb what’s coming next. Do that, and you won’t wear your strengths like a badge until they exhaust you, and you won’t reach for your weaknesses as the excuse for why something didn’t happen. You’ll simply keep growing. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Jessica Herbert, PCC

Written by Adam Markel, Author & Wellness Expert Bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher Adam Markel inspires leaders to master the challenges of massive disruption in his new book. Something’s broken in the modern workplace, and it’s not what most leaders think it is. We keep talking about productivity metrics, retention numbers, and engagement scores. But underneath all that data sits a quieter, more corrosive problem: people don’t feel connected to each other anymore. Most organizations are trying to solve it with tools built for a version of work that no longer exists. People show up, do the work, and leave, often without ever really knowing who they’re working alongside. Trust has fractured. Collaboration has become transactional. The culture initiatives companies keep rolling out aren’t fixing the problem because they never get close enough to the real issue. I’ve seen this across industries. Post-pandemic, organizations tried to engineer culture back into existence with mandatory mixers, team-building events, and carefully curated values on office walls. But when you talk to leaders and teams honestly, the same theme keeps surfacing: people feel the disconnect between what’s promised and what’s actually lived. They feel it in how decisions get made. In whether their voices matter. In whether the person sitting next to them would support them or protect themselves first. This isn’t a nice-to-have problem anymore. It’s a strategic imperative. How we got here The disconnection didn’t happen overnight. It’s been building for years. Remote work scattered teams across homes and time zones. Digital communication replaced hallway conversations. Rapid growth brought people into organizations without ever fully weaving them into the fabric of the culture. Leaders, often unintentionally, defaulted to managing output instead of cultivating relationships. Then the pandemic hit, and everything fragile cracked open. What those years exposed is that you can’t build innovation, accountability, or real collaboration without connection. The teams that emerged strongest weren’t the ones with the best Slack channels or the most polished return-to-office plans. They were the ones where people actually knew each other. Where trust existed. Where someone felt safe saying, “I don’t know how to do this,” or “I made a mistake,” without fear of being sidelined or exposed. That kind of trust is becoming rarer. Organizations are paying for it. Why the old playbook doesn’t work Traditional culture-building assumes you can change how people feel by changing what you tell them to believe. New mission statement. New values campaign. New leadership retreat. But culture doesn’t work top-down like that. Culture emerges from daily behavior. It’s built into the small choices people make about whether they can show up honestly or whether they need to hide behind their role, title, or politics. I’ve watched organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on culture initiatives that landed flat because the initiative had nothing to do with how people actually experience work. There’s a disconnect leaders often miss. You can’t declare psychological safety on a poster and then run meetings where only certain voices matter. You can’t preach collaboration while rewarding internal competition. You can’t ask people to trust leadership if leadership only becomes visible when performance drops. People feel the gap between the narrative and the reality. Eventually, that gap becomes the culture. The old tools were built for a world where proximity naturally created connection. People sat near each other. Conversations happened organically. Trust is built slowly through repetition and shared experience. That world is gone. Now we’re hybrid, distributed, and moving faster than ever. Which means connection can’t be accidental anymore. It has to be intentional. Three pillars of reculturing This is where the framework comes in. There are three foundational pillars leaders need to understand if they want to rebuild trust and connection inside their organizations. I’m not unpacking the entire model here, that’s in the book, and honestly, I want to leave some curiosity intact, but here’s the foundation. First: Clarity People need to know what matters, why it matters, and what role they play in making it real. Not in an abstract mission-statement way. In the way decisions actually get made. When people understand the direction, the standards, and the trade-offs, collaboration becomes more authentic because everyone understands the game they’re playing. Second: Connection This is the heart of it. Not networking events. Not forced icebreakers. Real connection happens when people have opportunities to be known and to know others beyond their job title. It happens when vulnerability becomes normal instead of risky. Trust is rarely built in big moments. It’s built in small moments repeated consistently over time. Third: Courage Leaders have to model what they’re asking from everyone else. The courage to admit what they don’t know. The courage to say when something isn’t working. The courage to protect the culture even when it costs something in the short term. That’s the part many organizations avoid. But when clarity, connection, and courage work together, something shifts. People stop protecting themselves and start supporting each other. That’s when culture starts becoming real again. You’re not a manager, you’re an architect This shift in thinking changes everything. Stop thinking of yourself as a manager of output and start thinking of yourself as an architect of connection. Managers focus on what gets done. Architects design the conditions where great work becomes possible. An architect thinks about how people move through systems. How information flows. Where collaboration naturally happens. What barriers prevent honest conversation. An architect understands that the environment itself either pulls people in or pushes them away. When you lead from that mindset, your leverage changes. You stop trying to force motivation and start building environments where people actually care. You stop trying to manufacture innovation and start creating the trust where people feel safe sharing unfinished ideas without worrying they’ll be judged or weaponized. That’s a different kind of leadership. Honestly, it requires more presence than many leaders are used to. You have to slow down enough to notice what’s actually happening in the culture. You have to stay visible. Curious. Accessible. But that’s where the real impact lives. This is non-negotiable now The organizations that will thrive over the next five years won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets or the smartest strategy decks. They’ll be the ones where people feel like they belong. Where trust exists. Where collaboration is real instead of performative. Culture repair isn’t something you wait to do when things fall apart. It’s ongoing work. It happens in small moments, every day, through what leaders pay attention to and how they choose to show up. It’s whether you ask questions when someone seems off. It’s whether you admit when you got something wrong. It’s whether you protect struggling people when pressure rises or sacrifice them to preserve appearances. This is the work of leadership now. Everything else flows from it. Culture repair isn’t about fixing morale. It’s about rebuilding the human connection that performance depends on. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Adam Markel Adam Markel, Author & Wellness Expert Bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher Adam Markel inspires leaders to master the challenges of massive disruption in his new book, “Change Proof – Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience” (McGraw-Hill, Feb. 22, 2022). Adam is the author of the 1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly bestseller, “Pivot: The Art & Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life.”