Written by Ben Robins, Business & Leadership Coach Ben Robins, a business and leadership coach and former EMEA leader of a global consultancy, helps established business owners gain more control, more profit and more time by building a business that no longer depends on them for everything. Many leaders can articulate a clear vision, but struggle to follow through when it matters most. This article explores why and how self-leadership changes that. Why good leaders fail to follow through on their vision Early in my career, I worked with a director who came into the role on a wave of expectation. They spent three days walking us through their plan for the region. It was the kind of vision that makes you pay attention, and everyone was bought in. If you had asked me then, I would have said they were exactly the kind of leader people want to work for. But six weeks later, nothing had changed. The vision that seemed so compelling had already faded, and the team that had been so engaged began to question what they were actually meant to be doing. What made it more striking was that this didn't look like a struggling leader at all. They were likeable, had bold ideas and were good in a room. If you asked them where we were going, they could tell you. But when it came to making decisions, following through, and creating an environment where people could perform at their best, they were largely absent. The gap between who they were in a good week and who they became when the pressure was really on fascinated me. Because on the surface, everything looked right. Yet when it actually mattered, it was a different version of them showing up. And that gap matters more now than it ever has. Why leadership is now the last remaining competitive advantage AI is stripping away a lot of what used to make companies hard to compete with. Things that once took years to build, technology, data, even specialist knowledge, are now easier to access, easier to replicate, and moving faster than most organisations can keep up with. What remains are the people. The ones who create, who solve, who build something worth having. AI changes how the work gets done, but it doesn’t change who is directing it. This makes the leader more important than ever. How you attract great people, retain them, and direct them toward something worth building has always lived with the person at the top. In a world where the best people have more options and increasingly less tolerance for leaders who aren't worth following, the cost of getting that wrong has never been higher. According to Gallup, managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement, and only one in five employees globally are truly engaged at work. That gap has a price. And it sits squarely on the leader. I spent a decade leading teams in the corporate world, and now work with leaders navigating exactly this through leadership coaching focused on decision-making and clarity. The real reason leaders struggle with decision-making under pressure It shows up most clearly under pressure. A difficult conversation where you say less than you know you should. A decision you've already made, but soften the moment you say it out loud. A meeting where you hold back, not because anyone has challenged you, but because of how you think they might. These moments aren't about strategy or knowledge. And it doesn’t always feel like hesitation in the moment, it feels like being reasonable. They come back, almost without exception, to a story. A story formed long before you had the title, that continues to shape how you lead without ever being questioned. These stories might sound like, if I push back on this, I'll lose the room. Or if I'm not across every detail, something will go wrong. Or if this doesn't work, it's on me. Individually, they don't sound particularly significant, but over time, they accumulate. Your decisions become smaller and more cautious than they need to be. Your vision gets diluted in an attempt to make it more acceptable. You say things slightly differently depending on the room you’re in, not because you don’t have something valuable to add, but because you’re constantly adjusting yourself. Your team feels it, even if they can't quite explain why. They see the priorities that shift, and the direction that is less certain, which leads to second-guessing what matters and where to focus. The people you most want to keep, the ones who care, the ones who want to build something meaningful, start to disengage or leave altogether. The team joined because of what was promised. They leave because of what they experienced. Why senior leaders struggle to see their own blind spots At a senior level, this becomes even more pronounced. The higher you go, the less you are meaningfully challenged. The people around you have careers that are shaped by your opinion of them, which means feedback gets filtered and softened. You can ask for honesty and still receive a version of what people think you want to hear. At the same time, your schedule fills up. Back-to-back meetings, constant decisions, leaving very little space to step back and look at how you’re actually showing up. And on top of that, you have built your success a certain way, which makes changing it feel like a risk, not an opportunity. I saw this first-hand while working with global brands during the ecommerce expansion. Even after entire categories had been transformed, some of the most intelligent and successful leaders I knew were slow to engage with what was changing. Not because they couldn't understand it, but because it had very little to do with ecommerce itself. It was about identity. And their running story was: my value here is built on what I know. This is something I don't yet understand. And I'm not sure what it means if my experience stops being enough. That’s the part that’s hard to see. On the surface, it looks like a strategic call. A choice to hold back and take stock. But often it’s being driven by something else. The same pattern plays out in different forms. As knowledge becomes easier to access and replicate, the differentiator is less about what you know and more about how you lead. What is self-leadership, and why it changes the way you lead Self-leadership is the work of becoming the leader you already know you want to be, not by adding more, but by examining what has been shaping your decisions up until now. In practice, it is the ability to recognise what is shaping your response in a given moment, and choose deliberately rather than defaulting to it. To catch what shows up under pressure, question whether it's actually true, and to decide how you respond. It starts by creating space. To look at the moments where you didn't show up as you intended, understand what was behind that, and to see that those patterns aren’t fixed. They’ve been learned, which means they can be changed. When you challenge these stories, it is subtle but significant. You’re able to make decisions with more conviction, not because you have more information, but because you are no longer negotiating with the same internal constraints. You handle pressure, rather than passing it on. And you hold your vision more consistently, even when it is challenged. Your team feels that immediately. They know where they are going, because you do. The opportunity is to do this work so that when the moment comes, you are not reacting unconsciously but choosing deliberately. The next time you notice yourself holding back, changing direction, or softening something you had already decided, pause. Ask what is actually driving that response. What story is showing up here? Most leaders have a story like this, often more than one. The difference is not whether it exists. It's whether you recognise that story in the moment, it's shaping how you lead. It’s whether in that moment, you recognise that story and how it’s shaping how you lead. Because if you don’t, you won’t experience it as a story. You’ll experience it as you. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more info! Read more from Ben Robins Ben Robins, Business & Leadership Coach Ben Robins is a business and leadership coach and keynote speaker who spent a decade in senior leadership, including running EMEA for a global consultancy with clients such as Google and Meta. He has seen the pattern from the inside: companies that have grown but still rely too heavily on the owner for decisions, client relationships and to keep things moving. His work sits where business strategy, leadership and mindset meet. He helps owners change how the business runs, while also challenging the habits, beliefs and ways of leading that keep them at the centre of it. Ben works with business owners across London, Dubai, Singapore and the US who are ready to lead the business rather than carry it.

Written by Ben Robins, Business & Leadership Coach Ben Robins, a business and leadership coach and former EMEA leader of a global consultancy, helps established business owners gain more control, more profit and more time by building a business that no longer depends on them for everything. For years, the advice was the same, do more. More habits, more goals, more hustle. I followed that playbook. It worked, and it nearly broke me. Here's what I discovered when I finally stopped adding and started removing instead. I was leading the European business of a global consulting firm. Managing teams across multiple countries, advising major international brands, hitting every target that had been set. On paper, I was winning. Off paper, I was exhausted, burnt out, and despite every external milestone, something fundamentally still felt off. I'd been doing everything the personal development playbook prescribed. Early mornings, meditation, the gym, reading the right books. I was optimising everything, and yet I still felt like I was running on empty. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise the problem wasn't what I needed to add. It was what I needed to remove. Michelangelo, when asked how he sculpted David, said he simply looked at the marble and removed everything that wasn't David. The masterpiece was always there. It just needed everything else cleared away. Now I am certainly not saying I am a masterpiece, but the idea of chipping away at my life, rather than adding more, appealed to me. It changed my relationship to life, and it's the same removal-first approach that has transformed the lives of the people I now coach. Why addition is the wrong starting point You can absolutely build a life through addition, more discipline, more systems, more force. I did it for over a decade. It does work, but at what cost? If you're trying to juggle a million different things, adding more to your already full plate likely isn't going to make things better. And all the morning routines in the world won't last if they're stacked on top of unconscious patterns, beliefs that no longer serve you, and an identity you didn't consciously choose. You end up building a taller house of cards, not a more fulfilling, meaningful, or joyful life. Removing first is faster, more sustainable, and considerably more easeful. What follows are the four layers I worked through, and the things I removed at each one. Layer 1: Clear the external noise Before you can add anything meaningful, you need to stop letting chaos into your environment and mind. The first thing I removed was mental clutter. Bizarre as it sounds, I used to pride myself on being able to keep everything going, just by holding it in my head without a to-do list. Sure, I never dropped anything, but I hadn't considered the tax I was paying. My brain was holding far too much, and as a result, I felt constantly fragmented and overwhelmed. It wasn't so much because of my large workload, but because I had so many mental tabs open. The solution was to get everything out of my head. Once it was out on paper, I could sort it. Will I ever use this? No? Then I don't need to think about it. Do I need to take action on this? Then it goes on a to-do list I can actually check off. The mental clarity that followed was startling, and I see this with clients too. They think they need better time management. What they invariably need first is to start by closing those cognitive loops draining their energy. The second piece of external noise I cut was the news. It's controversial, as people always ask, aren't you ill-informed, how do you stay up to date with things? But I have always found that if something important happens, people will tell you. The news, by design, keeps your attention by making you feel the world is worse than it is. Churchill's doctor banned him from listening to broadcasts during the war, noting they were spiking his anxiety without informing his strategy. I found the same thing. Watching the news late at night left me lying awake replaying disaster scenarios that had nothing to do with my actual life. Removing it changed how I thought, slept, and acted, more than almost anything else I've done. It's not really about the news, but letting external perspectives influence your life, so I have always since become ruthless at cutting out things like doomscrolling, social media, or constantly checking emails. Layer 2: Remove the misaligned actions Once the noise is cleared, the next question is, what are you actually doing with your time and energy? For me, this meant getting very clear on my schedule, rather than it running me. I found that if I wasn't clear on my priorities, my calendar would decide them for me, or worse still, someone else's. I'd previously get pulled into meetings that didn't require me, conversations that didn't move anything forward, obligations that felt urgent but weren't aligned with what actually mattered. I once suggested a client tell a meeting organiser, 'I'll join when it becomes relevant for me to contribute.' They were convinced they'd lose respect. Instead, they gained it. Your time signals your value, but only if you treat it that way first. The second misaligned action I removed was having too many goals. I used to believe that ambition meant excelling at everything simultaneously, top performer at work, peak fitness, learning a language, reading 52 books a year, the list would go on. I was making progress on everything and real progress on nothing. Before the 2008 Olympics, Michael Phelps had one goal, eight gold medals. His coach Bob Bowman made him quit everything else, no sponsorship deals, no parties, no distractions. Phelps later said the hardest part wasn't the training. It was saying no to everything that wasn't the pool. But he won all eight golds. Even the greatest Olympian of our time didn't pursue competing goals. When I cut to one clear priority, I finally had the focus to make real progress. Layer 3: Stop chasing the wrong things This layer goes deeper. It's about what you're actually chasing, and whether you're chasing it for yourself or for someone else. For years I was caught in comparison. Measuring my career against others, defining success by money, prestige, and how it looked from the outside. It took a moment in Portugal, sitting with my partner by a lake, with a little space from the rush of our day-to-day lives, to finally say out loud what I'd been avoiding. The life looked right, but it wasn't truly mine. What I tell my clients now, it's okay to be weird. In fact, the more your life looks different to everyone else's, the more likely it is that it's actually yours. A question I ask myself now before adding another achievement to chase is, do I want this, or do I think I ‘should’ want it? Layer 4: Examine the stories running beneath everything This is the deepest layer, and the one that makes the most difference. The stories we tell ourselves become the life we live. Not 'I made a mistake,' but 'I am a failure.' Not 'I'm learning,' but 'I'm just not that type of person.' These start as thoughts, but repeated long enough, they become identity. Identities we defend without ever questioning whether they're true or not. As Carl Jung put it: 'Unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will run your life, and you will call it fate.' For me, the story was rooted in believing life 'should' have been different, that I had time to make up for, ground to recover. It showed up as relentless overthinking, replaying conversations, overanalysing decisions. Nothing ever felt quite significant enough. Maya Angelou had a similar problem. She felt every sentence had to be perfect, every word was analysed to the point of paralysis. Eventually she started writing her recurring worries on a 3x5 index card. She filled fifty cards in the first week. When she spread them on the floor, she realised she'd been having the same twelve thoughts for thirty years. She kept the cards in a box, never looked at them again, and removing those stories allowed her to write seven autobiographies. You can add all the habits and systems you want. But if you're operating from an old, unexamined belief, you will keep sabotaging yourself without ever understanding why. To better understand the stories holding you back, here are some questions to reflect on. When you next feel hesitation, when you don't go for the thing you say you want, pause. Write down what you're telling yourself in that moment. Then ask, is this actually true today? Or is it a story formed at some earlier point and never re-evaluated? Most of the time, you'll find it belonged to a younger version of you. You've just been carrying it forward like a permanent label. The question worth sitting with The personal development industry will keep telling you to add more. More routines, more optimisation, more systems. And some of that is genuinely useful, but only once you have the capability to handle more. Stack habits on top of mental clutter, misaligned commitments, borrowed goals, and unexamined stories, and you're not building a better life. You're just building a taller version of the same one. So before you add anything else this week, ask yourself one question, what is the single thing you could remove that would create the most space, in your mind, your schedule, or your sense of who you are? Start there. The rest will follow. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ben Robins Ben Robins, Business & Leadership Coach Ben Robins is a business and leadership coach and keynote speaker who spent a decade in senior leadership, including running EMEA for a global consultancy with clients such as Google and Meta. He has seen the pattern from the inside: companies that have grown but still rely too heavily on the owner for decisions, client relationships and to keep things moving. His work sits where business strategy, leadership and mindset meet. He helps owners change how the business runs, while also challenging the habits, beliefs and ways of leading that keep them at the centre of it. Ben works with business owners across London, Dubai, Singapore and the US who are ready to lead the business rather than carry it.

Written by Philip Mallourides, Lifestyle Architect Philip Mallourides specialises in accountability. He is the founder of Activate Your Success and coaches small business owners who have the desire for success. He is also a keynote speaker, talking on self-belief and overcoming adversity. What is holding you back in your business? When I ask the small business owners I work with, I get many different answers: automation, consistency, cash flow, time, marketing, staffing, and competition. But when I sit with any of them for an hour and dig beneath the surface, I find two common denominators missing: clarity about what they are actually trying to build and accountability for the actions that would get them there. These two forces do not operate in isolation. Clarity without accountability is just a nice plan gathering dust. Accountability without clarity is busywork, running hard in a direction you have not actually chosen. It is only when the two work together that momentum builds, and momentum is what separates the businesses that grow from those that simply survive. I have come to see this relationship through three connected stages: clarity, confidence, and commitment. Let us take each in turn and look at how they reinforce one another. 1. Clarity: Knowing exactly what you are building Clarity is deceptively simple to describe and remarkably hard to achieve. It is not just about having a vision or setting goals in the vague sense that most business owners already believe they have. Real clarity means being able to answer, without hesitation, questions like: Who exactly are you serving, and what specific problem are you solving for them? What does success look like in 12 months, in concrete and measurable terms? What are the two or three priorities that actually move the needle today, and what are you willing to stop doing to protect time for them? Most business owners I meet are busy. However, very few are clear. They are reacting to whatever is happening that day, whether it is an enquiry, an invoice, or a fire that needs putting out, rather than operating from a defined sense of direction. This is not a character flaw, it is what happens naturally when you are running a business without deliberately stepping back to define it. The cost of unclear direction is easy to underestimate because it does not show up as a single dramatic failure. It shows up as a thousand small inefficiencies: marketing that does not convert because the message is wrong, trying to speak to everyone without being specific, talking too much about yourself, hiring decisions made under pressure rather than through strategy, and pricing that undervalues the work because there is no confident story about the value being delivered. Ambiguity is expensive, it just charges you slowly, through wasted effort rather than a single visible cost. Your homework Before you can expect anyone, including yourself, to be accountable for results, you need a written, specific definition of what those results are. Not a mission statement, but a working document that answers these questions: Who is your target client? What is your 12-month goal? What are your top three priorities? If you cannot write it on a single page, it is not clear yet. 2. Confidence: The natural output of clarity Confidence is often treated as a personality trait, something you either have or do not. In business, that is a misunderstanding. Confidence is much more often a byproduct of clarity than an innate quality. When you know exactly what you are doing and why, confidence follows almost automatically. When you do not, no amount of positive thinking will manufacture it convincingly. Think about the difference between a business owner who can explain their offer in one clean sentence and one who rambles through three paragraphs of caveats when someone asks, “So, what do you actually do?” The rambling is not a communication problem. It is a clarity problem wearing a communication costume. Give that same person real clarity about their value and their market, and the confident sentence appears on its own. This matters commercially because confidence is contagious, and so is its absence. Clients and customers can sense hesitation. They can tell when a business owner is not quite sure of their own pricing, process, or promise. Confidence, built on genuine clarity, is what allows you to hold your prices, say no to the wrong fit clients, and make decisions quickly instead of second-guessing every move. Behind all of this sits self-belief, and it deserves to be named directly because it is the part most business owners are least willing to examine. Clarity can hand you a perfectly sound plan, but if you do not genuinely believe you are capable of executing it or worthy of the success it points to, that plan will quietly be sabotaged from the inside. Self-sabotage rarely looks dramatic. It looks like underpricing just to be safe, delaying a launch that is actually ready, preparing excessively instead of publishing, or accepting the wrong fit client because a small voice says you cannot be sure the right ones will come. Each of these feels like caution in the moment. In reality, it is self-belief quietly overruling clarity, and if it goes unchecked, it will erode the very confidence that clarity was supposed to produce. The business owners who move fastest are not the ones who never doubt themselves, they are the ones who notice the doubt, recognise it for what it is, and act on the plan anyway. Confidence also changes how you handle setbacks. A business owner without clarity treats a lost sale or a difficult month as evidence that perhaps the whole thing is the wrong idea. A business owner with real clarity treats it as data, a single data point to learn from, not a verdict on the entire venture. That resilience is not stubbornness. It is the stability that comes from knowing your direction is sound, even when this week’s results are noisy. Your homework Test your own confidence as a diagnostic tool. Where do you feel hesitant, apologetic, or unsure in your business: pricing, your message or positioning, or a particular service line? Treat that hesitation as a signal that clarity is missing in that area, and go back to stage one before trying to act more confident. Confidence built on nothing is fragile. Confidence built on clarity holds under pressure. 3. Commitment: Where accountability does its work Clarity tells you where to go. Confidence gives you the belief that you can get there. But neither one, on its own, gets the work done. That is the job of commitment, and commitment is sustained in practice by accountability. This is the stage where most business owners lose momentum, and it is rarely because the plan was wrong. It is because there was no structure holding them to it once the initial motivation faded, and motivation always fades. Three weeks after the strategy session, the excitement has worn off, a busy period has arrived, and the carefully defined priorities quietly slide back down the list behind whatever is urgent today. Accountability is the mechanism that prevents this slide. It works because it introduces something that willpower alone cannot reliably provide: a fixed point outside yourself that the plan has to answer to. This can take several forms: A coach or mentor who checks in on specific commitments, not just general progress. A peer accountability group made up of other business owners who report on their stated goals. Scheduled review points, weekly or monthly, where you measure actual results against the plan you wrote in stage one. A public commitment, such as telling your team, a client, or your network what you intend to deliver and by when. None of these works through magic or pressure alone. They work because they force a regular, honest confrontation with the gap between intention and action. They also do it before three months have quietly slipped by unproductively. A monthly review that shows you are two priorities behind schedule is uncomfortable, but it is far less costly than discovering the same thing at year-end, when there is no runway left to correct course. It is worth being honest about something here: accountability without clarity is close to worthless. If you do not know what you are meant to be accountable for, a check-in simply becomes a vague conversation about being busy. This is why the order matters. Clarity defines the target. Confidence supplies the belief to pursue it. Accountability protects the commitment to keep pursuing it once the initial energy has faded. Your homework Choose one accountability structure and put it in place this month, not when things settle down, because they will not settle down on their own. It does not need to be elaborate. It could be a standing 30-minute call with a peer, a monthly self-review against your one-page plan, or a coach who asks direct questions about specific commitments. The format matters less than the fact that it exists and that it recurs. 4. Bring the three together Here is the pattern worth remembering: clarity, confidence, and commitment are not three separate initiatives. They are a single sequence, and each stage depends on the one before it. Without clarity, confidence is just performance, and it cracks under pressure. Without confidence, commitment is exhausting because you are forcing yourself toward something you do not fully believe in. Without accountability, commitment quietly erodes the moment life gets busy, which is to say, almost immediately. Business owners often try to shortcut this sequence. They chase confidence through motivational content without doing the clarity work first. They try to force commitment through sheer discipline without an accountability structure to sustain it. Both approaches can produce short bursts of progress, but they rarely last because they skip the foundation. The businesses I see growing steadily, not by luck but by design, are usually the ones where the owner has done the unglamorous work of getting clear first, allowed that clarity to build genuine confidence, and then built an accountability structure sturdy enough to carry that commitment through the inevitable slow weeks. If you take one thing from this piece, let it be this: do not ask, “How do I become more disciplined?” Instead, ask, “What, exactly, am I trying to build, and who is going to hold me accountable for the work of building it?” Answer both questions, and the discipline tends to take care of itself. Come work with me I am a mentor and coach who can provide guidance, support, and insights based on my own 40 years of experience in small business. Look me up here. I run Clear Momentum, a clarity session followed by goal setting and 12 weeks of accountability, based on the quarters of the year. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Philip Mallourides Philip Mallourides, Lifestyle Architect Philip Mallourides is a coach and mentor for the small business owner who desires success. With over 35 years in the SME space, he leads from experience and went from being a millionaire to losing it all and now dedicates his life to helping others. He believes that if we just have that self-belief, then we can all achieve anything we want, but it must be what we want!

Written by Miranda Jane, Neurodivergent Affirming Nervous System Coach Miranda Jane is a Neurodivergent-Affirming Somatic Coach and Consultant, specializing in the masked and late-identified autistic and ADHD experience. Their personal crusade is to help recently identified AuDHDers understand and appreciate themselves, mind, body, and nervous system! Many neurodivergent (ND) people have a hard time feeling their feelings. On its face, this is a curious concept, after all, it's right in the name. Feelings should be easy to feel. There are several reasons why autistic and ADHD people don't readily access their feelings, and it is a skill you can practice and improve at. The physicality behind feelings: Interoception and alexithymia Interoception is the brain's ability to perceive bodily signals like thirst and hunger, physical cues that let you know what you need. It provides you with the ability to regulate your physical and emotional health, using sensations in the body as data about what is needed. Many autistics and ADHDers have trouble with interoception. Sometimes we can’t feel the sensations at all or get overwhelmed by them. Often, we struggle to associate the sensation with the underlying need. Alexithymia is a similar condition, also very commonly experienced by NDs, in which we have a hard time identifying and expressing our emotions. For years, I built resentment against my partner for misunderstanding me because he would frequently say I was “anxious” when I was just problem-solving. When I finally asked him why he thought I was anxious, he said, “You’re hunched over, clutching your stomach, chewing your nails, and pacing.” I finally saw it. I was anxious! Very likely my reasoning was impaired by my anxiety, which meant it was time for a snack or a walk and not time to problem-solve. Thank goodness for an outside perspective. Environmental safety and masking Masking is another reason we often miss our emotional cues. When one is masking, they are hyper-focused on what other people need and tend to turn the volume down on what they want or need inside. While masking, we are too busy prioritizing what is the safest thing at the moment instead of how we actually feel about the thing that's happening. Sometimes masking is a conscious choice, but often it’s subconscious. Reflexive masking happens more often with undiagnosed autistic people, where we are essentially “performing human” because we know it hasn’t worked well to just be ourselves. This is instinctive, similar to how animals don't show they're in pain in order to camouflage vulnerability. In the same way, masking reflexively is a camouflage to fit in, and typically, we are not aware we are doing it. Unaware masking reduces your ability to truly know how you feel about yourself and your feelings. I tend to see this in many new clients who will come to me and say, "How can I be 50 years old and not know who I am?" Unreliable feelings There is no right or wrong way to have an emotional experience. But we are often taught in childhood that there is a correct way, and we are doing it wrong. This makes emotions even more confusing. When we are raised to believe that certain reactions are unacceptable, it makes our emotions painful. Think about things like heartbreak, fear, and the physical sensations that go with our big emotions. If we don't have a strong, regulated nervous system, it can be preferable to just not feel them at all. When we are left alone with shutdowns or meltdowns, our nervous system perceives that emotions are life-threatening. We feel our heart is literally going to break. Or we are literally going to be scared to death. Our brains do these incredible loops and twists to keep us away from these tender places. One of the first things I do with my clients is work on feeling their feelings safely in their adult bodies, with adult skills, bringing compassion, curiosity, and self-acceptance to their feelings. Defense mechanisms Ultimately, the deepest part of the powerful defensive response has been building since infancy, when your system perceived emotional pain to be deadly. Sometimes emotional pain is deadly. Suicidality is one such example. Suicidal thoughts are an urgent and dangerous matter, but you can make peace with them. Please check out my other blog post on suicidal thoughts and actions. There are also reports of people having profound physical reactions to emotional experiences, like hair going white from shock, or losing vision or hearing suddenly from trauma. While these are extremely rare experiences, for NDs, physical reactions to our internal state can be a part of daily life. When we are afraid or angry, we may experience selective mutism, colloquially known as “going non-verbal.” We melt down. We shut down. So it makes sense that our defenses against feeling our feelings are strong, and that it will take some active engagement to turn it around safely. How to start feeling your feelings To begin to feel your true feelings, start by bringing compassion to your situation. You want to get the information from your emotions, but you struggle to do so. That's hard. You can start by acknowledging that it sucks to have to work so hard to get this information. It will take time and effort. That's okay. Bring the love to yourself, and this will help you with the next steps. Set the stage by making it safe enough. First, cover your vital organs using a pillow or weighted blanket, or even a stuffed animal. Covering your vital organs is important because your body often responds as if there is a physical threat in the environment, even if the threat is emotional. Just thinking about the threat makes our bodies respond as though a tiger is growling at us. When you put a pillow over your heart and lungs, your belly, your skull, whatever feels the most threatened, your skin senses the safety and reduces the physical responses. If you'd like, bring in extra sensory-pleasing items that make you feel emotionally safe. These can be things like aromatherapy, a journal and pen, or music. It's whatever you find soothing. If you're hypermobile, find a way to make your body loose, like a wet noodle. Because hypermobile people are typically very tense, make sure you are not holding or bracing your muscles. You can lie on the floor or make a pillow nest to support whichever limbs feel painful. Setting your environment this way creates a safe space to access the deeper emotions that hide behind your usual armor. This way, you can be with the emotion without fearing that you will fall into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Next, identify boundaries, like time limits. Commit to not making any changes based on what you learn. This is just information gathering. All thoughts and parts are welcome. There is no judgment. There will be no big consequences during this time. Bring to mind the closest guess of where your emotions lie. Maybe you are thinking about a certain topic and sensed a flicker of something you couldn't quite understand. Take yourself back to that moment and get curious. Ask yourself what bad thing might happen if you got the full message of your emotions. Listen to your fears. Write them down. See if there is anything else you can do to make it safe enough to hear what your emotions have to say. When the fears are addressed, move towards the topic again. Get curious about what you're feeling. Notice your thoughts and the sensations in your body. Perhaps you've received some feedback from a friend. Tell your feelings that you want to know what they know. Remember that this is a process. You can repeat this as many times as you'd like until you begin to feel that you are letting your feelings out. As you get to know your emotions, you will get to know yourself in the process. At ND Friendly Life, we specialize in supporting late-identifying autistic and ADHD adults who recognize these patterns of loss of feeling in their own lives. Through individual coaching, couples and family coaching, and supported self-assessment, we help you understand your neurodivergent nervous system and build a life and career that work with it instead of against it. All sessions are offered online, serving clients in Vermont and worldwide. Curious to learn more? Whenever you're ready, you can learn more or book a free consultation on our website. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Miranda Jane Miranda Jane, Neurodivergent Affirming Nervous System Coach Miranda Jane is a late-identified autistic ADHDer with a passion for helping people like them lead more pleasurable and fulfilling lives. They work with adults who are “twice exceptional” (2e), in many ways brilliant and in many ways struggling to function and disabled in their everyday lives. This particular blend of special skills and (often invisible) disability is particularly dangerous, leaving those who are 2e feeling thwarted in achieving their goals and leading to high rates of self-loathing, despair, and suicidality.

Written by Rita Farruggia, CEO & Founder of Happy Being Well Rita Farruggia is the CEO and Founder of Happy Being Well, a platform dedicated to awakening a billion people globally to the power of self-love and daily spiritual practices. Through her mission, she teaches others how to reprogram their subconscious, align with universal truths, and incorporate self-care rituals into everyday life for greater personal transformation. The personal development industry has never been bigger. Millions of people meditate, journal, attend therapy, listen to podcasts, read bestselling self-help books, and invest significant time and money into becoming the “best version” of themselves. Yet despite all this effort, many still quietly ask themselves the same question: “Why do I still feel stuck?” That question became the foundation of one of the most eye-opening conversations I have had on the Happy Being Well Podcast with New York Times bestselling author Gary John Bishop. His latest book, "Now What?: You, Your Life, and the Truth You’ve Been Avoiding," challenges many of the assumptions we have accepted about healing and personal growth. Having sold more than 4.5 million books worldwide, Gary has built a reputation for saying what many people need to hear, even when it is uncomfortable. Our conversation was not about finding another productivity hack or adding another morning routine. It was about confronting an uncomfortable possibility: What if the endless pursuit of self-improvement is actually preventing us from fully living? The difference between awareness and transformation One of the most powerful insights Gary shared was deceptively simple: Self-awareness does not automatically create change. Many of us spend years understanding ourselves. We become experts in our childhood stories, attachment styles, limiting beliefs, emotional triggers, and personality patterns. Understanding ourselves certainly has value, but understanding is not transformation. There is a significant difference between knowing why we behave a certain way and actually choosing to behave differently. As Gary explains, insight without action eventually becomes another place to hide. That idea stopped me in my tracks. How often do we mistake understanding for progress simply because it feels productive? When self-improvement becomes another identity The self-help industry encourages continual improvement. There is always another habit to master, another mindset to adopt, or another course to complete. Growth is valuable, but Gary introduces a fascinating paradox. What if constantly trying to improve yourself quietly reinforces the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you? Instead of experiencing life, many people become lifelong projects. They postpone happiness until they are healed enough, confident enough, successful enough, or ready enough. Eventually, the pursuit of becoming someone else replaces actually living as the person they already are. That shift in perspective may be one of the most liberating ideas discussed during our interview. Being stuck is not always what we think Many people describe themselves as feeling stuck. Gary offers a perspective that is both challenging and empowering. Rather than viewing stuckness as something that simply happens to us, he invites us to examine the decisions we continue making every day. These are not always dramatic decisions. They are often small ones, such as the conversations we avoid, the opportunities we postpone, the commitments we negotiate with ourselves, and the stories we continue telling because they feel familiar. This is not about blame. It is about recognizing that responsibility often creates more freedom than explanation ever can. Clarity creates evolution One of the reasons I created the Happy Being Well Podcast was to explore conversations that help people see themselves and reality with greater clarity. To me, intelligence is not simply about accumulating more information. Intelligence is about increasing our clarity regarding reality. When we begin seeing reality more accurately, we naturally make wiser choices. Our relationships improve, our resilience deepens, and our purpose becomes clearer. Ultimately, this continual expansion of awareness is part of our personal evolution. Gary John Bishop’s work aligns beautifully with this philosophy because he does not offer comforting answers. He offers clearer questions. Sometimes, the most transformative conversations are not the ones that make us feel better immediately. They are the ones that fundamentally change how we see ourselves. Why you should listen to the full conversation Our discussion covered far more than could ever fit into a single article. During the interview, Gary explores: Why self-awareness often fails to produce lasting change. The hidden downside of endless self-improvement. What unconditional responsibility actually means. Why confidence is not required before taking action. How integrity becomes a daily practice instead of an ideal. Why waiting to feel “ready” keeps so many people trapped. What inspired his powerful new book, "Now What?" Whether you have been immersed in personal development for years or are just beginning your journey, this conversation offers a refreshingly honest perspective that challenges conventional thinking while providing practical wisdom you can immediately apply. You can listen to the full interview on the Happy Being Well Podcast or listen on Spotify. About the Happy Being Well Podcast The Happy Being Well Podcast brings together bestselling authors, leading researchers, wellness experts, entrepreneurs, psychologists, and inspiring thought leaders for conversations that help listeners cultivate healthier minds, stronger relationships, greater resilience, and more meaningful lives. Each episode is designed to encourage curiosity, challenge assumptions, and provide practical insights that support genuine personal growth, not through quick fixes, but through greater awareness and intentional action. If you enjoy conversations that expand your perspective and increase your clarity about reality, I invite you to learn more about the podcast and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Learn more and subscribe to the Happy Being Well Podcast here. Subscribe on Spotify. With exciting guests joining us regularly and thought-provoking discussions covering personal development, wellness, psychology, neuroscience, emotional intelligence, leadership, relationships, and human potential, every episode is an opportunity to continue growing. As Gary John Bishop reminds us in Now What?, perhaps the next step is not finding another way to fix ourselves. Perhaps it is finally deciding to live. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rita Farruggia Rita Farruggia, CEO & Founder HappyBeingWell Rita Farruggia is the CEO and Founder of Happy Being Well, with the mission of being the 1 Self-Care Community in the world. Her mission is to awaken a billion people globally to their love while teaching them how to love themselves, reprogram their subconscious, align with truth, universal laws, and create a daily spiritual practice that involves self-care practices. Happy Being Well offers the tools/products, education, and inspiration to use in our daily spiritual & self-care practice. Rita believes a daily spiritual practice is not limited to yoga and/or meditation. The truth is, when we are manually cleaning our dishes, we often go into a trance. This is also a form of meditation. Rita believes our personal hygiene (self-care) and home cleaning sessions can also be our spiritual practices. Self-care and spiritual practices changed Rita's life and increased her ability to love herself.

Jamie Coscia, LCSW-R, is a licensed clinical social worker, a mindset coach, and founder of Time to Heal Coaching. For nearly 30 years, she has helped individuals heal from anxiety, trauma, and the emotional patterns that keep them feeling stuck. Through her coaching practice, Jamie specializes in helping high-achieving women in midlife who seem to have it all together on the outside but privately struggle with self-doubt, perfectionism, overthinking, and self-sabotage as they prepare for the next chapter of their lives. By integrating nervous system regulation, trauma-informed healing, and energy alignment, she guides women to confidently step into their next chapter without the weight of "what if?" Jamie Coscia, Mindset Coach After nearly thirty years of working in trauma and mental health, what inspired you to create Time to Heal coaching for high-achieving women? I kept meeting women who had already done the work, years of therapy, every book, every framework, and were still stuck. Being a high-achieving woman isn't a mental health diagnosis, but behind a lot of high-achieving women is a trauma history, anxiety, procrastination, perfectionism, self-sabotage, the same patterns I saw in my clinical practice, just dressed up as ambition. These women thought something was wrong with them, that they were defective, when really they just didn't have the tools to get unstuck. I always thought something was wrong with me too. So I wanted to create a formula for these women, a way to understand there's nothing wrong with you, and to stop allowing that belief to be the roadblock. My coaching isn't about diagnosing what's broken, these women already know what's going on. It's about visioning something different and then moving toward it with momentum and consistency. You often describe self-sabotage as a protective pattern rather than a personal flaw. How does that shift change the way women approach their own growth? When we do something and feel anxiety or trepidation, it activates our survival system, fight, flight, or freeze. Our nervous system wants to protect us from what it perceives as a threat. In this case, it's not a physical threat, but a psychological one. What if I say something stupid? What if visibility makes me look foolish? What if I fail? So our system does exactly what it's designed to do. It steers us away from anything that feels risky. The problem is, the things it's steering us away from are often the very things that would move us forward, posting a video, showing up online, taking up space. So we find every reason not to do them. That's not a flaw. That's protection. When women start to see it that way, something shifts. Instead of "what's wrong with me," it becomes "my system is working exactly as it should. I just need to teach it that this isn't dangerous." That reframe alone can take the shame out of being stuck, and shame is usually what keeps women most stuck of all. Discovering EFT tapping changed the direction of your work. What did it help you understand that traditional therapy alone could not? EFT tapping gave me the key to something I felt was missing in how we approach trauma processing. So many of us come into our lives feeling unworthy in some way. We're told what to do by parents, teachers, and authority figures. Depending on our trauma history, that feeling deepens. Nothing we do feels good enough, so we don't feel valuable or worthy. What EFT does is literally tap away the self-doubt and negative emotions held in the body. It combines psychology, energy, and somatic release in a way traditional talk therapy doesn't touch. Here's what matters, you don't have to lie to yourself to get there. You tap and say all the negative things first. You tap and release, tap and release. You lighten the load. I've watched clients feel noticeably better in front of my eyes, and it's remarkable. What traditional therapy alone couldn't do is give people permission to feel their emotions fully while simultaneously releasing them from their body. That's the missing piece. Why do you think so many accomplished women still struggle with perfectionism, overthinking, and fear of moving forward? Many women are raised to nurture and care for everyone else. We manage families, guide children, support our people at work, and in doing all of that, we abandon ourselves, often willingly. Over nearly thirty years, I've watched women do this for decades without even naming it. They say, "I raised my family," "I cared for aging parents," and "I was invaluable to my boss." But then the kids leave, retirement approaches, and they realize they don't know who they are anymore. They remember dreams from when they were younger, things they kept putting off. Now those dreams feel impossibly big. They think, "I'm too old for that. Who would listen to me now?" The self-doubt is crushing. What they're really craving isn't a part-time job or a hobby. It's a soul project, something that calls them, something they'd regret not doing. Perfectionism, overthinking, and fear are all ways we talk ourselves out of even trying. Nervous system regulation is everywhere in coaching now. But what do you think people are missing about what actually creates lasting transformation? Nervous system regulation alone doesn't create lasting transformation. Without a clear vision of where you're going, your survival system will keep you circling back to what's familiar. You need to know her, the version of you that's moved forward. What does she look like? How does she walk, talk, and enter a room? What are her hobbies, her habits? Does she take care of her skin, eat better food, and drink more water? You have to study her and understand her so you can literally walk into her. That's where manifestation meets neuroscience. When you rewire your brain around a clear identity, your nervous system stops being dysregulated by the old things. You're no longer afraid of visibility, of taking chances, or of speaking online. You've changed the baseline. Now you can actually move forward. What is one practical way someone can begin building self-trust when they feel stuck in old patterns? Self-trust is built on one simple thing, doing what you say you're going to do. Even the smallest thing. You have to hold yourself to a standard. If you say you're going to walk for twenty minutes, then walk for twenty minutes. You will feel good about yourself knowing that you kept your word. That's self-trust. It sounds too simple, and clients often want something bolder, fancier, more dramatic. But it doesn't work that way. Self-trust is built in the small, unglamorous moments. Not eating the cookies when you said you wouldn't. Posting the video even though you're nervous. Keeping the tiny promise to yourself. Every single one of these is a self-trust exercise. Over time, those small acts of integrity compound. You start to believe what you tell yourself, and that changes everything. For someone who has spent years talking themselves out of their goals, where is the best place to start creating an identity shift? The best place to start is visualization and writing. Don't be afraid to dream about who you want to become. But visualization alone isn't enough. You'll also need to do the energy alignment work and nervous system regulation to actually embody her. I used to walk into a room, anxious, dropping everything. Then I'd visualize my future self doing the exact same thing differently, putting the papers down calmly, smiling, relaxed. It took a few years, but then I was doing that. I was embodying her. My nervous system had learned through all that repetition what this version of me could be, and I kept writing it down, kept steering my boat in that direction. That's how identity shifts happen. You often talk about the power of identifying negative self-talk rather than accepting it as truth. How has that understanding shaped both your life and your work? Once I identified my negative self-talk, my entire life changed. I used to have this mental list of things that only happened to me. When something bad occurred, or what I perceived as bad, I'd say, "There's another thing for my list." I have bad luck. There's a dark cloud over me. I truly believed it. I observed negative things happening and convinced myself they only happened to me. Logically, I knew other people experienced hardship, but I thought certain things were unique to me. Then one day, I got a speeding ticket coming back from the gym, and I was done. Of course I'd get a ticket. Why do these things always happen to me? And then I stopped myself. Wait. Am I the only person who's ever gotten a speeding ticket? No. That's when I realized my inner critic was shaping everything. But here's the thing, I didn't even know it was negative self-talk. I thought I was telling the truth. I thought those thoughts were facts about me. Not until I heard someone say, "Your thoughts and feelings aren't facts," did it click. I was treating my inner critic like evidence. Now I work differently with myself and my clients. Instead of accepting what that voice says as true, I ask, is this a fact? Or am I choosing to believe something about myself that isn't serving me? That shift changed everything. If every woman reading this interview remembers just one thing about becoming the person they are capable of becoming, what would you hope it is? Becoming the person you're capable of becoming is a matter of believing it, even when you can't see it yet. It's about visualizing her, creating her in your mind, and accepting yourself along the way, not with some perfect self-love affirmation, but with basic compassion. You got here. Everything that's happened to you brought you here. If you could have done it differently, you would have. You did the best you could with what you had. Now you want something different. Now you want to become that woman you always knew you could be. The only thing standing between you and her is believing you deserve to be her. That's it. Belief is the doorway. When you decide you're worthy of becoming her, she shows up. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jamie Coscia

Written by Sharon LeShane, Executive Leadership Coach, Speaker, and Business Consultant Sharon LeShane is an Executive Leadership Coach, Speaker, and Business Consultant. Her experience of combining coaching with resilience and wellbeing practices transformed the way she leads, lives, and supports others. Inspired by that journey, she partners with leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and emerging professionals to cultivate greater clarity, confidence, resilience, and authentic leadership. Believing exceptional leadership begins with leading yourself first, Sharon empowers clients to create meaningful and lasting impact in their lives, organizations, businesses, communities, and beyond. Grief touches every life, yet how we respond can shape whether it becomes a weight we carry or a path toward healing and growth. In this article, we explore grief as both a natural response to loss and a powerful teacher. By allowing ourselves to feel deeply, honour our emotions, and embrace vulnerability, we open the door to resilience, compassion, and renewal even in the face of life’s greatest challenges. What is grief? Grief is the natural emotional suffering we feel when we perceive that something or someone we love has been lost. The sorrow we feel reflects the depth of our love. As with all emotions, it’s necessary to feel before we can heal. The more we try to control or suppress our feelings, the heavier they become. What we resist will continue to persist. However, if we allow ourselves to sit with our emotions and accept what we are feeling, we suffer less. How we process grief will depend on our past experiences, relationships, beliefs, and our ability to regulate our emotions. It is healthy for us to feel and express emotions. Suppressed emotions lead to unhealthy habits that become unconscious patterns, leading to self-sabotage and suffering. Pain is natural, but suffering is optional. In the Buddhist philosophy, suffering arises from attachment and the need to control. We suffer not because life is painful, but because we resist flowing with life due to our attachment to the outcome. Healing one layer at a time Grief is unpredictable, as it is not a linear experience. It unfolds in waves as we loop back to feelings and memories that we thought we had already healed and left behind. It’s a spiral with many layers, as we revisit feelings many times but view them from increasingly higher perspectives as we continue to heal and grow. If a loved one dies suddenly, we are in shock and disbelief. If it’s someone young, this shock intensifies as we often have the perception that they were taken before their time. We may have thoughts of things we wanted to say to them or feel that we should have done more. It is only in acceptance, faith, and trust in a divine unfolding that we find peace. When a loved one is diagnosed with a debilitating disease, the grieving process begins long before their passing. This type of grief unfolds in stages, deepening as we witness the deterioration of our loved one. While our loved one is physically present and feeling relatively well, there is mourning for the impending gradual loss of who they are. We experience waves of grief as each phase of the decline feels like another loss. If involved in caregiving, the daily experience of our loved one's decline can lead to burnout and stress. Balancing the practical needs of caring for them and our self-care needs can be challenging. If our loved one is placed in a long-term care facility, we may have the confusing feelings of sadness for having them there, at the same time, feeling a sense of relief that they are safe and getting the care they need. It’s common to experience conflicting emotions, especially as our loved one nears the end of their suffering and becomes palliative. We may feel relief from the anticipation of their suffering ending, however, sad knowing we will experience another level of loss. Once our loved one has crossed the veil, grief progresses to a stage where we feel sadness for the loss but are relieved by the end of their suffering. It is at this stage that closure is possible if we allow ourselves to feel and lean into all the accompanying emotions. Grief comes not only with death, but with change. It may arise from divorce, job loss, a decline in health, or loss of a home. As I write this article, wildfires are burning in several communities in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Over 10,000 hectares have burned, and those who lost their homes are grieving. They grieve the loss of their homes but also the loss of memories and their identity. Grieving your home is like grieving a part of yourself. However, loss can open space for resilience, community, and a deeper connection to what truly matters. Regardless of its form, grief can be a powerful tool of transformation. Roles we play If grief is not expressed, it’s suppressed. Suppressed grief keeps us in the drama triangle of roles, victim, persecutor, or rescuer. The victim is helpless and defeated and needs to assign blame to themselves or others. The persecutor is angry and judgmental because they feel they are out of control. The rescuer is self-sabotaging because they consistently prioritize the needs of others before their own. We can choose to stay in the drama triangle and continue suffering. We often unconsciously stay in suffering because we don’t know who we are without it, or because our beliefs and programming make us think we should feel guilty for being happy. We believe that if we don’t continue to suffer, it would mean we don’t miss whoever, or whatever, we lost. That somehow, we are doing the right thing by suffering. However, we can choose to reclaim our power. When we transcend the drama triangle, we become empowered conscious co-creators of our experience. We choose accountability, healthy boundaries, and the ability to support others without self-sacrifice. Becoming conscious creators of our experience, pain, and grief becomes our teacher, inspiring us to live with purpose and pursue what truly matters. The shift is internal and very powerful. Freedom to choose Transmuting means to change something into a different form or substance in a significant manner. To transmute is not to merely alter its appearance, but to change it at its core. We can choose to channel the raw energy of pain and grief into healing energy that supports and nourishes. Feeling and integrating grief peels away layers, revealing the truth about who we are. Loss has the potential to open our hearts and be a doorway to rebirth. In the book, “The Awakened Being”, Marci Lock describes pain as an acronym that represents an invitation to “Pay Attention Inside Now”. We will feel pain as we move through the stages of grief, however, acknowledging and feeling all the feels allows us to transmute it into our power. Pain is not a problem that has to be fixed, it’s an energy to be witnessed and transformed. Through the lens of alchemy, death is not a destructive force but a transformative one. Death is not the end of life but a change of form. In the book, “Conversations with God”, Neale Donald Walsh referred to death as the soul’s celebration, referring to it as Continuation Day. Those who have had and shared near-death experiences described similar feelings. Many find this a source of peace. Society and expectations Grief brings peace one moment and waves of sorrow the next. Flow with the emotions and allow yourself to feel their full depth. We are safe to feel emotions, although many of us have been taught to silence them. Often, this is to make others feel more comfortable because they are not accustomed to feeling or expressing. Your expression of grief may not meet other people’s approval. One of the most liberating truths in grief and transition is realizing that other people’s opinions do not reflect what is right for your journey. Others may, intentionally or unintentionally, impose expectations, which project their discomfort with loss. Some feel the need to validate how they handled their grief as being superior to what another did or how you are handling the situation. Grief does not have a one-size-fits-all, it's very personal, so remember others’ opinions or judgments are not yours to carry. They reflect them and their experiences, not yours. You don’t have to explain your faith, trust, or the peace you have found. Others may not understand, and that’s okay. Honoring your path and that of others will bring harmony. There is immense freedom in releasing the need for validation or to explain how you feel or prove your way is the right way. There is no right or wrong, it’s just the way that is right for you. Sharing pieces of my experience My most recent experience with grief was less than 6 months before publishing this article. My Dad was 83 when he passed after living with Parkinson's for over 11 years. He had spent the last 3 1/2 years of his life in a long-term care facility due to his severely deteriorating condition. My Dad offered us a lifetime of love, compassion, and lots of laughter. He emanated that even his last week with us. I find comfort in reflecting on and sharing our family memories and humorous stories. While the pain of watching him deteriorate was intense, it sparked deeper healing, creativity, and growth, and I am more resilient because of it. There is rebirth after death if you allow. It's been over 40 years since my sister Darlene, at age 11, and her friend, at age 12, lost their lives in a tragic motor vehicle accident. It has taken many years to process that spiral of grief, as I was young when it happened and didn’t have the tools, understanding, or support that I have now. Darlene’s transition resulted in deep inner healing for me, for which I am forever grateful. I was able to transmute anger into forgiveness. At that time, I felt the healing was complete because it created powerful shifts in my mindset and how I lived my life. However, there was even deeper healing and inner peace as I transmuted forgiveness into understanding. It was the realization and acceptance that we are all doing the best we can with the tools we have and the level of consciousness from which we are operating. There was nothing to forgive. I continue to heal these layers. “A Course In Miracles” by Dr. Helen Schucman shares that a miracle is not something that occurs outside of us, as we have been led to believe. The real miracle is an internal shift that begins with a willingness to see things differently. A true miracle is not us controlling and changing the world around us, it’s a shift from our limited beliefs and perceptions to a higher, clearer perspective. We tend to build walls around our hearts to protect ourselves, however, these walls imprison us. In grief, the pain often cuts through and forces us to feel everything we had buried. In “A Return to Love” by Marianne Williamson, she states that “Healing is a return to love. Illness and death are often painful lessons in how much we love, but they are lessons nonetheless. Sometimes it takes the knife that emotionally pierces our heart to pierce the walls that lie in front of it.” Opening our hearts with a willingness to change is transformational. Innate wisdom and clarity offered from a higher perspective will begin in our hearts. You deserve support When you are grieving, the emotional weight can be overwhelming. Talking to friends is helpful, however, discussing with someone who has experienced and integrated grief is valuable, as they can relate to what you are experiencing. Many tools and practices can support healthy emotional processing of grief. They include meditation, journaling, somatic practices, energy healing, writing, nature walks, and many more. I describe them in more detail in another Brainz article called, “Is Positivity a Blessing or a Curse?” under the heading, “Healthy strategies for emotional healing”. You would benefit from someone who can provide a safe, non-judgemental space for you to express your true thoughts and feelings that you may not want to share with your family and close friends for fear of upsetting them or of being judged. I am so grateful for all who have, and continue to, offer me support and guidance. Although I am a coach, energy healer, and spiritual mentor, I continue to be divinely guided to work with others to support me as I continue my journey of healing and growth. I recognize that if I do not continue my inner healing, it will limit the level of support I am capable of offering others. I have heard many times that we can only take others as far as we’ve gone ourselves. If you are experiencing the pain of grief, I recommend that you research and find counselors, therapists, coaches, psychologists, or spiritual healers who resonate and feel in alignment with you. You are worthy of healing and support. You don’t have to face it alone. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sharon Doyle LeShane Sharon LeShane, Executive Leadership Coach, Speaker, and Business Consultant Sharon LeShane founded LeShane Seaside Vitality, offering Reiki, Reiki training, personal coaching, yoga, women’s circles, meditation and sound alchemy. She also created the empowering coaching experiences, Awaken Your Authentic Self and Sacred Feminine Rising. With a background as a Chartered Professional Accountant, business consultant, and instructor, expanding into business coaching and consulting was a natural evolution to meet her clients’ changing needs. This inspired the rebrand to LeShane Synergy.

Written by Sharon LeShane, Executive Leadership Coach, Speaker, and Business Consultant Sharon LeShane is a Transformational Coach, Intuitive Reiki Master, Spiritual Mentor, Sound Alchemist, Yoga Teacher, Speaker and Writer. The “Awaken Your Authentic Self” and “Sacred Feminine Rising” programs were inspired by her personal growth and enhanced by her unique combination of holistic wellness experience and expertise as a Post Secondary Business Instructor and Chartered Professional Accountant. Is there anything from your past that you would benefit from releasing? Do you hold grudges? Are you skeptical that forgiveness would be helpful? Explore the value of forgiveness and learn how Sharon discovered its power and why she is motivated to share its healing potential. What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is letting go. It is a conscious decision to release and surrender anger, blame and resentment. Forgiveness does not come naturally. We are not programmed to forgive. Most of us automatically think and talk about our troubles. Our default is to focus on our problems rather than possible solutions. This keeps us stuck reliving our negative experiences and worries leading to emotional blockages. What about grudges? Grudges are feelings of anger and resentment towards someone who mistreated us in the past. The truth is that holding grudges only hurts the person harboring them, not the individual against whom the grudge is held. Resentment leads to higher levels of stress and anxiety which is damaging to our health. To quote Buddha "Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake." This realization is powerful. We have a choice. If we choose to change and decide to release grudges, we don't have to do it all at once. We only need to take that first step. Does forgiving mean it was acceptable? Forgiveness does not mean we approve actions that hurt us. It also does not mean we pretend that they never happened. It is about acknowledging, feeling and accepting the pain. We then make a conscious decision to let it go. This is a gradual process and not an overnight fix. It's important to note that we do not need to have a relationship with the person(s) we are forgiving. Forgiveness is for us and our inner peace. Afraid to forgive? Sometimes, we are afraid to forgive. We may not know who we are without the pain, especially when we have been carrying it for a long time. If we have allowed an experience to define us and take over our lives, it can be challenging to imagine our life without it. We tend to fear change, even if on some level we know it's for our highest good. Forgiveness of self can be the most fearful. It's often easier to forgive others than it is to forgive ourselves. Although forgiveness can be very challenging, especially when the wounds are deep, it is valuable for our healing. A decision to prioritize peace of mind and well-being over the need for revenge or justice is empowering. This allows us to live in the present and focus on building a fulfilling and joyful life. We all deserve that. The impact of forgiveness on my life I will share the trauma I experienced and how my life was affected. I will also discuss the healing and transformative shifts that led to forgiveness. Trauma Just a few weeks after I graduated from high school, my younger sister and her friend were in a fatal car accident. It was July 14, 1984, when my sister Darlene Doyle and her friend Karen lost their lives at the ages of 11 and 12. I was in shock! It was unbelievable. I felt it could not be, that the doctors could surely do something. But there was nothing they could do. I remember feeling helpless at first then the anger brewed. I was grieving the loss of my sister and felt lonely. That fall I moved to attend university. My parents did try to convince me to stay home and postpone but I left anyway. I recall the pain of visiting home even though I loved visiting my parents and my two younger brothers. It felt painful and lonely because I didn’t acknowledge or share my true feelings. Looking back, I was filled with grief and anger. This was amplified when I found out the driver was impaired. I remember feeling enraged and wanting revenge. To say I held a grudge was an understatement. It was a long road to healing since back in those days we did not have the support available now. I remember well-meaning family and friends telling me to "be strong for my parents". Unfortunately, I took their advice and did not grieve or show my true feelings especially not in the presence of my parents. I later realized I had suppressed my grief for many years. Whenever we suppress our feelings, it creates an energetic imbalance. It manifested as an inability to trust and being emotionally distant. I was either indifferent toward others or projected anger toward them because I was triggered. I realized later that the suppressed grief had created those responses as a means of protection. Ignoring our emotions is detrimental to our health and happiness. Suppressed emotions will fester, grow, and lead to stress and strain on our relationships. Including our relationship with ourselves. It creates an emotional block that prevents us from fully connecting and trusting and negatively affects self-confidence. It was years later before I realized that my energy would be better spent on nurturing my personal growth and fostering healthy relationships. Healing In 2015, I began to feel increasingly called to spend time in nature. My husband, son, and I spent that summer camping. We had an amazing unobstructed ocean view alongside a beautiful brook. Spending time in nature, I reconnected with my inner child which began my journey of healing. I was not aware of its significance until years later. In 2018 I joined a meditation group and experienced my first energy healing session. Since then, I have worked with spiritual mentors, coaches, reiki masters, yogis and so many beautiful souls that I find impossible to label the space they hold and the healing they offer. I have had many deep experiences during my journey of awakening. Some of these happened during transcendental meditations and others during energy sessions. I am grateful for all the love and guidance I received along the way. Shifts Two profound shifts in my life were transformational. Both are related to the unexpected and tragic death of my sister Darlene. After our beautiful son was born in 2001, my husband was pleasantly surprised to hear me singing lullabies. He commented that he loved my voice, and asked why in our nine years together he never heard me sing. That comment prompted my reflection, and I realized that when Darlene passed my singing voice was silenced. In 2005, I felt inspired to write my thoughts on paper which became a poem about the loss of my sister. The poem removed a dense heavy energy from my heart, and I felt lighter and free. I started singing at home then at small gatherings and eventually in public. I learned how to play guitar and became a performer joining a monthly show at the local theatre. That poem was the first major life-changing shift however, I did not fully recognize its power until much later. I named the poem "DD" and it was shared with my husband only for many years. In 2022 when my website was created, I was meant to share with my family first, then posted the poem on my website. The second life-changing shift occurred during a profound meditation in 2019. I experienced a deep liberating meditation during which I released resentment, hate, blame, guilt and anger. I offered full forgiveness to the driver of the vehicle. I felt Darlene with me and her absolute joy when I offered unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness. The space it freed was filled with light, peace and unconditional love. I am so grateful I was able to forgive because it did set me free in so many ways. Life purpose The isolation in the following year due to the 2020 pandemic, provided even more time for me to work on self-development and healing. I was inspired to learn reiki and trained to become a life coach. I discovered I had a gift for empowering others and began leading meditations allowing them to flow intuitively. I realized my life purpose was to hold space for and empower others to release their limitations and discover their authentic self. My mission was clear, to help others move from their busy mind to their beautiful hearts so they too would realize they are sovereign and free. I created LeShane Seaside Vitality that year and offered reiki and coaching from my home in Lower Island Cove, Newfoundland. In 2022 I started sharing a studio in Carbonear and expanded my services offering in both locations. I had completed more training and continued my healing which awakened my creativity. I created a program called “Awaken Your Authentic Self”. That became module one and I am currently developing the fourth module of this program. My newest offering is “Awaken Circle For Women” which starts this fall in September 2024. LeShane Seaside Vitality continues to grow and evolve as I do. What if I am not ready to forgive? Forgiveness is not something that can be forced. We all have our unique journey and how it unfolds for you will be different than it is for others. Regardless of what you have experienced, it would be helpful to work towards self-love and acceptance. If you are not ready to forgive yet, accept that truth and love yourself where you are. Allow yourself to feel any emotions that surface from that realization, without judgment. Where do I begin? Not ready to forgive but ready to make changes? If you are holding grudges, you can begin by softening them. Set an intention to release any need for retaliation. The energy of revenge is very toxic and self-sabotaging. If forgiveness is not possible, you could take the first step toward releasing grudges or resulting plans for revenge. If you are not already working with a coach, mentor or energy healer, I highly recommend it. Having guidance from someone who understands what you are experiencing is reassuring and uplifting. A safe non-judgemental space for you to feel safe to share facilitates and accelerates healing. Can I heal myself? Just setting your intention to heal is powerful. Self-help books can assist you in creating a positive mindset and developing practices to improve your quality of life. This is a great place to start. There are also meditation applications and personal development podcasts to help you along the way. To use an analogy, assume you know how to replace the brakes on your car, but you don't have all the necessary specialty tools or the experience of a mechanic. Regardless, you decide to do it yourself. You get the brake job completed but it takes you 6 hours. Had you brought the vehicle to the garage, it would have taken only 1 hour. It would have been more effective and efficient for the mechanic. They have the tools and experience to do a quality job faster. This compares to working with a coach or mentor for your personal development, they offer you valuable tools and insight from their experiences and training to support and accelerate your healing. Do you want to improve your life? I am grateful for the beautiful souls I have worked with. It's an honor to hold space as they journey toward their authentic selves. I also appreciate all the amazing healers and guides that have helped me. I am so happy I invested in myself by enrolling in programs, coaching and energy sessions. Without them, I would not be where I am today. I continue to work on my healing and growth because as I evolve so do the energy and services that I offer. If you feel it would be in alignment to work with me, module 1 of the Awaken your Authentic Self program will be offered again this fall. If you prefer a more personal customized experience, transformative coaching may be more suitable. You can set up a complimentary discovery call by emailing me here. These and other services are offered live in person and online. To learn more about my offerings please visit here. Through the act of forgiveness, I reclaimed my sovereignty. This created space for more light and positive experiences in my life. In essence, forgiveness was a gift that I gave myself in a powerful act of self-love. I would be honored to hold sacred space for you offering love and guidance as you heal and embrace your beautiful authentic self. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sharon LeShane Sharon LeShane, Executive Leadership Coach, Speaker, and Business Consultant LeShane Seaside Vitality ensued from Sharon's strong passion for empowering others toward a more fulfilling personal and professional life. She offers Transformative Coaching, Intuitive Reiki Healing, Illuminating Sound Alchemy, Yoga, Meditation, Women’s Circles, Employee Wellness, Restorative Retreats and the Awaken your Authentic Self and Sacred Feminine Rising Programs. Sharon LeShane is a Transformational Coach, Intuitive Reiki Master, Spiritual Mentor, Sound Alchemist, Yoga Teacher, Speaker and Writer. She meets clients where they are as she listens and leads with love to inspire and empower.

Written by Leonie Blackwell, Naturopath, Author & Teacher Leonie Blackwell is the founder of Empowered Tapping® and a naturopath with over 30 years' experience in emotional wellbeing. She trains practitioners globally and empowers individuals through her Bwell Institute and personal growth community, the Tappers Tribe. Have you ever been told you think too much? Perhaps you’ve replayed a conversation long after it ended. Maybe you’ve imagined every possible outcome before making a decision or found yourself returning to the same painful memory over and over again. When that happens, people are often given simple advice, “Stop overthinking.” While well-intentioned, that advice misses something important. Not all thinking is the same. Some thinking keeps us trapped in the past. Some thinking leaves us worrying about the future. Some help us understand ourselves more deeply. Some help us create solutions. The question isn’t whether you think too much. The question is, what kind of thinking are you doing? 1. Rumination: Thinking that replays past experiences is often mistaken for problem-solving. In reality, it is the mind replaying the same thoughts without moving towards a solution. Questions become: Why did this happen? Why me? If only Why can’t I stop thinking about this? Rumination seeks resolution, but instead of finding it, it repeatedly revisits the same emotional experience. The result is often exhaustion, hopelessness, and the feeling that life has become stuck. 2. Overthinking: Thinking that seeks certainty through overthinking looks different. Instead of returning to the past, it jumps into the future. The mind begins filling in missing information, imagining hidden meanings, and predicting possible outcomes. Questions sound like: What does this mean? What if? What are they really thinking? What happens if I’m wrong? Overthinking is usually trying to reduce uncertainty. Ironically, it often creates even more uncertainty because assumptions begin replacing evidence. Relationships become confusing. Decision-making becomes harder. Anxiety increases. 3. Reflective thinking: Thinking that creates understanding marks an important shift. Rather than assuming, the mind becomes curious. Instead of looking for certainty, it begins gathering information. Questions become: Is that actually true? What evidence do I have? Could there be another explanation? What haven’t I considered? Reflection creates space. Space to think. Space to feel. Space to respond rather than react. It is often the bridge between surviving life and understanding it. 4. Strategic thinking: Thinking that creates possibilities is fundamentally different again. It doesn’t seek certainty. It doesn’t replay the past. Instead, it prepares for possibility. Strategic thinking asks: What are my options? What are the possible influences? If this happened, how would I respond? What’s my best next step? Rather than becoming attached to one outcome, strategic thinking remains flexible. It recognises that new information may emerge. Plans can change. Understanding can deepen. This flexibility allows people to adapt with confidence rather than becoming overwhelmed by uncertainty. The real difference Each thinking style serves a different purpose. Rumination attempts to resolve pain. Overthinking attempts to prevent pain. Reflection seeks understanding. Strategic thinking prepares for possibility. All of these thinking styles have stemmed from life experiences. They produce different outcomes. Some create rigidity. Some create anxiety. Others create flexibility. Flexibility is one of the greatest predictors of psychological well-being. A different question The next time you notice your mind racing, don’t immediately ask yourself how to stop thinking. Instead, ask a different question. What kind of thinking am I doing right now? That single question creates awareness. Awareness creates choice. Choice creates change. Your mind has always been trying to help you. Sometimes it tries to protect you by replaying the past. Sometimes it tries to protect you by predicting the future. Sometimes it stays in the present moment and allows for uncertainty. As healing occurs, thinking naturally becomes more flexible. It becomes more curious. It becomes less interested in guarantees and more interested in understanding. Perhaps that’s one of the clearest signs of growth, not that you think less, but that your thinking creates more freedom than fear. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Leonie Blackwell Leonie Blackwell, Naturopath, Author & Teacher Leonie Blackwell is a leader in emotional wellness, with over 30 years of experience as a naturopath and educator. She is the creator of Empowered Tapping® and founder of the Bwell Institute, offering accredited practitioner training and transformational personal development. Leonie has worked with thousands of clients, trained hundreds of students, and taught internationally, including trauma recovery programs for refugees. Her published works include Making Sense of the Insensible, The Box of Inner Secrets, and Accessing Your Inner Secrets. She is passionate about helping others live with authenticity, purpose, and joy.

Written by Mary Rose Connolly, Wellbeing-Led Education Consultant Mary Rose Connolly is the founder of POSA Consulting and an experienced international educator with over 20 years in schools in Ireland and the UAE. She works with teens, families, and schools, bringing a strong background in positive health, wellbeing, and safeguarding to provide clear, personalised educational guidance. For years, organisations have searched for the elusive formula that keeps employees engaged. Better salaries, flexible working, office perks, wellbeing programmes and career development have all been promoted as the answer. Yet despite unprecedented investment in employee wellbeing, burnout remains high, engagement continues to decline in many sectors and organisations are still grappling with how to create workplaces where people genuinely flourish. Positive Organisational Psychology (POP) offers a different perspective. Rather than focusing solely on reducing stress or fixing organisational problems, it explores what enables individuals, teams and organisations to perform at their best. It asks not simply how workplaces can prevent burnout, but how they can cultivate purpose, resilience, connection and sustainable performance. Importantly, it is not about relentless positivity. At its best, positive organisational psychology acknowledges the realities of pressure, complexity and uncertainty while recognising that organisations can intentionally create conditions in which both people and performance thrive. Flourishing is an organisational responsibility For many years, wellbeing was viewed as largely an individual's responsibility. Employees were encouraged to become more resilient, exercise regularly, practise mindfulness or improve their work-life balance. While these interventions undoubtedly have value, positive organisational psychology suggests they represent only part of the picture. Research increasingly demonstrates that flourishing is shaped not only by individual behaviour but also by organisational culture, leadership, relationships and the wider working environment. People rarely thrive in isolation. They flourish within systems that either support or undermine their wellbeing. This changes the conversation significantly. Rather than asking employees to become more resilient in unhealthy workplaces, organisations are challenged to ask whether the workplace itself enables people to do their best work. Relationships remain the strongest predictor One of the most compelling findings from contemporary wellbeing research comes not from business schools but from the Harvard Study of Adult Development. After following participants for more than eight decades, researchers concluded that the quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health, happiness and life satisfaction. While this research extends far beyond the workplace, its implications for organisations are profound. Supportive colleagues, psychologically safe teams and trusted leaders are not simply 'nice to have'. They contribute directly to wellbeing, resilience and engagement. People perform better when they feel connected, valued and supported by those around them. In highly collaborative workplaces, relationships become a strategic asset. The science of positive energy One of the most influential contributors to positive organisational scholarship is Kim Cameron, whose work explores what he describes as positively energising leadership. Unlike traditional leadership theories that emphasise authority or control, Cameron argues that leaders create lasting impact through behaviours that generate positive relational energy. Gratitude, integrity, compassion, forgiveness, humility and trust are not simply admirable personal qualities, they influence how teams function, innovate and respond during periods of challenge. Central to Cameron's work is the concept of the heliotropic effect. Borrowed from biology, heliotropism describes the tendency of living organisms to move towards life-giving energy, much like plants naturally turn towards sunlight. Cameron proposes that people behave similarly within organisations. We are naturally drawn towards environments characterised by encouragement, meaning, hope and positive relationships. This is not naïve optimism, it is an argument that positive emotional climates create the conditions in which people are more willing to collaborate, solve problems creatively and remain engaged over time. Character strengths change leadership Positive organisational psychology also challenges traditional assumptions about leadership. Historically, effective leaders were often defined by decisiveness, authority and technical competence. Contemporary research suggests another dimension deserves equal attention, character. Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman's work on character strengths proposes that qualities such as courage, kindness, fairness, humility, perseverance and integrity are not simply desirable personality traits but measurable strengths that contribute to effective leadership and organisational performance. The implication is significant. Great leadership is less about possessing all the answers and more about creating environments where other people can contribute their best thinking. Strengths are powerful, but not enough One of the defining ideas within positive organisational psychology is strengths-based leadership. Rather than concentrating exclusively on correcting weaknesses, strengths-based approaches encourage organisations to identify and develop what individuals naturally do well. Evidence suggests this can increase engagement, confidence and performance. Yet perhaps the more sophisticated insight comes from the concept of the golden mean, strengths are most effective when used in balance and within the right context. Courage without judgement becomes recklessness. Humility without confidence may become passivity. Leadership without empathy risks becoming authoritarian. The goal is therefore not to maximise strengths indiscriminately but to apply the right strength, at the right time, in the right amount. This also has important implications for teams. High-performing organisations are rarely made up of people with identical strengths. Instead, success often comes from recognising complementary differences and creating opportunities for strengths to work together rather than compete. The danger of toxic positivity Positive organisational psychology is sometimes criticised for appearing unrealistic. Critics argue that an excessive focus on optimism can unintentionally suppress disagreement, discourage honest feedback and create cultures where employees feel pressured to appear positive regardless of how they actually feel. Some scholars argue that organisations which celebrate positivity without encouraging challenge risk silencing important conversations and overlooking legitimate organisational problems. It is an important reminder. Healthy organisational cultures do not avoid difficult conversations. They make those conversations possible. Optimism without honesty quickly becomes performative. Culture cannot compensate for broken systems Perhaps the greatest misconception surrounding workplace wellbeing is the belief that culture alone can solve structural problems. An inspiring leader cannot permanently compensate for chronic understaffing. Free yoga classes cannot eliminate excessive workloads. Resilience workshops cannot resolve dysfunctional organisational processes. Positive organisational psychology does not suggest otherwise. In fact, one of its strengths is recognising that wellbeing emerges from the interaction between individual behaviours and organisational systems. Leadership matters enormously, but so do workload, accountability, fairness and access to meaningful work. Organisations seeking lasting change must address both. Otherwise, wellbeing initiatives risk becoming little more than cosmetic solutions layered over deeper organisational challenges. Building workplaces where people thrive The future of work is unlikely to be shaped by another office redesign or employee wellbeing app. Instead, it may depend on something far more fundamental. Positive organisational psychology reminds us that flourishing organisations intentionally cultivate trust, meaningful relationships, strengths-based leadership, psychological safety and opportunities for people to contribute with purpose. They recognise that performance and wellbeing are not competing objectives. They reinforce one another. When organisations invest in environments where people feel valued, energised and connected, they do more than improve employee satisfaction. They create the conditions for innovation, resilience and sustainable success. Ultimately, the organisations that will thrive in the years ahead are unlikely to be those asking, How can we get more from our people? They will be asking a better question. How can we create the conditions in which our people can flourish, and in doing so, enable the organisation to flourish too? Follow me on Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Mary Rose Connolly Mary Rose Connolly, Wellbeing-Led Education Consultant Mary Rose Connolly is an international educator and school leader with over 20 years’ experience supporting young people and families in Ireland and the United Arab Emirates. Beginning as an English teacher, she developed a lasting belief in student voice and in empowering teenagers to grow into confident, capable adults. As a senior leader, she embedded well-being into school culture to strengthen relationships and drive outcomes. In 2025, she founded POSA Consulting to champion young people and provide trusted, unbiased guidance to families throughout their educational journey.

Written by Annika Sörensen, MD, Stress Strategist & Calm Creator At Ask Dr Annika, we empower executives and high-performing professionals to transform stress into strength. Led by Dr. Annika Sörensen, a seasoned physician and stress & business mentor, our approach fuses medical science, mindset mastery, and real-world strategy. Here, you’ll find tailored mentoring, leadership tools, and stress management practices to thrive without burnout. For women in leadership, pregnancy is often framed as a disruption to performance, timing, or career trajectory. Yet this perspective overlooks a critical reality. Leadership and pregnancy are not mutually exclusive, but they do require a more intentional approach to health, stress, and decision-making. As more women step into executive roles, the question is no longer whether pregnancy fits into leadership, but how leaders can navigate it without compromising their well-being, performance, or long-term trajectory. The unspoken reality: Pregnancy bias in leadership Despite progress in workplace equality, pregnancy bias remains present, particularly at senior levels. It may not always be explicit, but it often shows up as doubts about reliability or availability, assumptions about reduced commitment, hesitation in assigning high-impact responsibilities, and subtle exclusion from strategic decisions. For women in leadership, this creates an additional layer of pressure, “The need to continue performing at a high level while managing both physiological and organizational expectations.” The myth of “perfect timing” in leadership and pregnancy One of the most persistent questions among high-achieving professionals is, “Is there ever a right time?” From a biological and career perspective, the answer is often no. Pregnancy cannot always be precisely planned, and neither can career peaks. Waiting for the “perfect window” can lead to prolonged stress, delayed decisions, or missed opportunities, both personally and professionally. For leaders, the more effective approach is not perfect timing, but adaptive planning, adjusting expectations, reprioritizing strategically, and leading with flexibility rather than rigidity. The physiological reality: Why stress management matters more than ever Pregnancy is not only a life transition. It is a physiological state that requires increased regulation of stress, energy, and recovery. Elevated stress levels during pregnancy can influence hormonal balance, sleep quality, immune function, and overall maternal well-being. For leaders accustomed to operating under pressure, this requires a shift from high-output mode to regulated performance. Redefining performance during pregnancy Sustainable performance during pregnancy is not about maintaining previous intensity at all costs. It is about preserving cognitive clarity, managing energy intentionally, protecting physical health, and maintaining decision-making quality. This shift is not a limitation. It is a strategic recalibration. Leadership while pregnant: What actually works Women can and do lead effectively during pregnancy. The key is not pushing harder, but leading differently. Set strategic boundaries: Clear boundaries around workload, availability, and recovery time are essential. This is not a reduction in leadership. It is a refinement of it. Prioritize energy over time: Energy management becomes more important than time management. Leaders who align demanding tasks with peak energy periods maintain effectiveness without overexertion. Communicate with clarity: Transparent communication with stakeholders reduces assumptions and builds trust. It also allows for better structural support within teams. Leverage delegation: Delegation becomes a critical leadership skill. Not just for efficiency, but for sustainability. Empowering teams ensures continuity while reducing unnecessary strain. Navigating workplace perception without internalizing it One of the most challenging aspects of pregnancy in leadership is not the workload. It is perception. Leaders may feel pressured to: Prove continued capability Overcompensate for anticipated bias Minimize the visible impact of pregnancy However, internalizing these pressures often leads to unnecessary stress. Effective leadership during pregnancy involves: Maintaining professional standards without overextension Recognizing that perception does not equal reality Anchoring decisions in health, not external expectations A leadership principle that matters most At its core, this is not just a conversation about pregnancy. It is a conversation about prioritization under pressure. Pregnancy makes one principle unmistakably clear. Not everything can come first at the same time. For leaders, this becomes an opportunity to: Strengthen decision-making clarity Align actions with core priorities Lead with greater intentionality Leadership, longevity, and making sustainable choices 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. If you are navigating leadership while managing significant life transitions and want to explore evidence-based strategies for stress regulation and sustainable executive performance, you can learn more about Dr. Annika’s mentoring and resources here. Because strong leadership is not about pushing through every phase unchanged. It is about adapting intelligently to each one. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, or visit my LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Annika Sörensen Annika Sörensen, MD, Stress Strategist & Calm Creator Dr. Annika Sörensen is a Medical Doctor, Stress Management Mentor, Author, and International Speaker on topics revolving around the successes brought by less stress, including financial and business success. She specializes in health and stress strategies and has a solid background in Swedish Public Health Care for 30 years. With profound personal, clinical, and scientific knowledge about the subject of stress, she made it twice to TEDx. She is officially certified by The Big Talk Academy. Today, Dr. Annika is helping stressed-out Business Leaders slow down, reflect, feel less stress, and then ramp up and get more done and create bigger success without having to work harder. She does it through speaking and workshops. Resources: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists – Work During Pregnancy Harvard Business Review – Pregnancy and Motherhood Bias in the Workplace

Written by Noelle Rivet, Clinical Hypnotherapist and RMT Noelle is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, RTT® Practitioner, and Registered Massage Therapist pioneering subconscious literacy and embodied integration as the foundation for individual and systemic change. She supports clients and organizations through her private practice, keynote speaking, and experiential work that sparks radical transformation. One of the most common questions I'm asked is, "Does hypnotherapy actually work?" It's a fair question. If you're investing your time, money, and trust into any form of therapy, you want to know whether it's going to help. My answer usually surprises people. A better question is, "Are you the kind of person hypnotherapy works for?" Because hypnotherapy isn't something that happens to you, it's something you actively participate in. The most effective sessions aren't created by magic, blind belief, or the therapist doing all the work. They're created when the right modality meets a qualified candidate. As a Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) practitioner, I've worked with clients struggling with anxiety, phobias, burnout, low self-esteem, procrastination, emotional eating, money beliefs, public speaking, performance, and self-sabotaging patterns, to name a few. Some experience life-changing shifts after a single session. Others create profound change over months. A few leave disappointed because they expected hypnosis to do something no therapy can do, change them without their participation. "Hypnotherapy isn't a magic cure. It's a collaborative process that helps you change the subconscious patterns you've been unable to change consciously." Most people don't fail because hypnotherapy doesn't work. They struggle because they're unclear about what they want, unwilling to participate actively in the process, or expecting someone else to do the work to create a life only they can build. How the subconscious actually works Many people's understanding of hypnosis comes almost entirely from entertainment. They imagine hypnosis as a state where someone else takes control of their mind, making them think, feel, or behave differently without any effort on their part. The goal of hypnotherapy isn't about surrendering control. It's to help the client develop greater control by bringing subconscious patterns into conscious awareness. Together, the therapist and client identify the beliefs and learned behaviours driving the problem and clarify the outcome the client genuinely wants. From that understanding, change becomes intentional rather than reactive. As James Clear writes in Atomic Habits: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." One of the most powerful systems influencing your life is your subconscious mind. It is already shaping your thoughts, emotions, habits, decisions, and behaviours every day. As healthier subconscious patterns are strengthened through repetition, your conscious mind no longer has to rely solely on willpower to take aligned action. As Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman observed in Thinking, Fast and Slow: "We are blind to our own blindness." One of the greatest benefits of working with a trained hypnotherapist is an objective perspective, someone who can recognize the assumptions, unconscious patterns, blind spots, conflicting subconscious beliefs, and conditioned behaviours that a client cannot see in themselves. Having blind spots isn't a moral failure or a lack of insight on the client's part. It's a structural limitation of the human mind. The subconscious mind that formed the pattern is the same mind trying to examine it, so the behaviour feels normal, automatic, and thus invisible to the conscious mind. As those patterns are brought into conscious awareness, clients begin developing metacognition, the ability to observe their own thoughts, beliefs, emotional reactions, and behaviours rather than being automatically driven by them. That awareness creates choice. Conscious choice makes intentional change possible. How does change actually happen? Transformation doesn't always feel dramatic. In my experience, lasting change may happen in one of three ways. Instantaneous change: Occasionally, change happens in a single moment. A client of mine had survived cancer but developed a significant sugar addiction during chemotherapy. Her mindset at the time was understandable. If I might not survive this, I may as well enjoy whatever I want. She beat cancer, but the habit stayed. About a week after her RTT session, she reached out and, without even realizing how significant her words were, happily announced, "I'm indifferent to sugar." It happened to be around Halloween, a time when she would normally binge on candy. She was elated and told me she breezed through the holiday without eating any of it. There was no internal battle, no relying on willpower, and no feeling of deprivation. The desire had disappeared. Gradual change over time: Not every breakthrough happens in a single afternoon. Part of the RTT process is listening to a recording after your session to reinforce the desired suggestions and begin building new neural pathways. One client came to see me with an intense fear of needles. She also had a medical condition that required her to inject herself with medication regularly. Still, she couldn't bring herself to do it and relied on family members for help, leaving her feeling frustrated, dependent, and like a burden to the people she loved. After her RTT session, she committed to listening to her personalized recording every day. About a month later, she shared that, for the first time, she had been able to inject her medication herself. It gave her back a sense of independence and confidence that she thought she had lost. Retrospective change: This type of change is one of my favourites because it's the one clients least expect. Because the behaviour becomes automatic, you often don't notice it's changing until you look back months later. One client originally came to see me for binge eating. Nearly a year after her session, she reached out with an observation. Her clothes had become noticeably looser, and she realized she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a binge episode. She looked back through months of grocery receipts and noticed the foods she used to buy specifically for binge eating had quietly disappeared from her shopping habits. As my client shared about her transformation, she said something that made me smile. She didn't say she had lost twenty pounds. She said she was twenty pounds lighter. We intentionally avoided programming her subconscious to focus on losing weight because the subconscious often associates loss with something negative. Instead, we focused on becoming healthier and feeling lighter. She hadn't spent the year fighting cravings. She had become someone who no longer lived the same pattern. Who gets the best results with hypnotherapy? If hypnotherapy can create lasting change at the subconscious level, why do some people experience extraordinary results while others remain stuck? In my experience, the clients who don't benefit share a familiar pattern. They aren't willing to be active participants in their own transformation. They don't actually want what they say they want. Often, it's someone else who wants the change for them, a partner, a parent, or a doctor. They're looking for a quick fix or hoping someone else will do the work on their behalf. After years of working with clients from all walks of life, I've noticed that the most successful hypnotherapy clients consistently share three traits. Clarity: The most successful clients are clear about what they want. They may not know exactly how to create the change yet, but they can identify the problem, describe the outcome they want instead, and make a conscious decision to move toward it. Clarity activates intention. It gives the subconscious mind a direction and allows the therapeutic process to focus on a specific outcome rather than circling a general feeling of dissatisfaction. Personal responsibility: The most successful clients take personal responsibility for their role in the process. Personal responsibility does not mean blaming yourself for what happened to you. It means recognizing that although you may not be responsible for the experiences and conditioning that shaped your patterns, you are responsible for what you choose to do with them now. Early in my career, I hosted a workshop to help people quit smoking. One of my massage clients had complained about the effects of smoking so many times that I invited them to attend, certain it would help. They asked me, "Do you have to want to quit for it to work?" The answer was yes. They purchased the workshop but never showed up. That experience reinforced something I still see. People often say they want change when what they actually want is relief from the consequences of remaining the same. Hypnotherapy can identify the subconscious beliefs driving a behaviour, interrupt the established pattern, and reinforce a healthier response. It cannot decide for you or act on your behalf. The client must participate. Willingness to be uncomfortable: The most successful clients are willing to be uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable, and creating a different life often requires doing the thing you do not want to do to reach the place you say you want to go. Years ago, I facilitated a workshop on manifestation. Before it began, one participant proudly told me she'd purchased a lottery ticket on the way there and asked how the process would help her become a millionaire. I asked her, "What beliefs about yourself make you think winning the lottery is your only path to becoming wealthy?" We talked about the difference between wishing for an outcome and becoming the kind of person capable of creating it. The odds of winning a lottery jackpot are famously long, about 1 in 292 million for a game like Powerball. In comparison, Ramsey Solutions' National Study of Millionaires, the largest survey of millionaires ever conducted, found that most built their wealth through years of consistent investing, avoiding debt, and disciplined saving, not lottery tickets, inheritances, or luck. Then I asked, "Do you value responsibility?" Holding wealth requires responsibility. Developing the habits, decision-making, emotional regulation, and resilience required to create wealth is often what prepares someone to keep it. She wasn't happy with that answer and later left me a one-star review. The single most important prerequisite for hypnotherapy to work is wanting the change. I often ask clients, "How much do you want what you really want?" The honest answer tells me more about their likely outcome than anything else I could assess. No therapeutic approach can move you toward a destination you haven't truly chosen. If part of you is still committed to protecting the old pattern or avoiding the discomfort of change, that conflict must be recognized before it can be resolved. Tony Robbins famously said, "Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." In my experience, there's another threshold people have to cross. Lasting transformation begins when your commitment to the life you want becomes greater than your attachment to the life you've outgrown. Understanding contraindications As with every healthcare profession, clinical hypnotherapy involves situations in which treatment may not be appropriate or in which additional assessment is recommended before proceeding. These are known as contraindications, circumstances in which a particular treatment may pose unnecessary risk or require modification to ensure client safety. A qualified clinical hypnotherapist completes a thorough health history to determine whether hypnotherapy is the most appropriate approach. Sometimes that means proceeding with treatment. Sometimes it means collaborating with another healthcare professional or obtaining medical clearance first. For example, hypnosis is generally considered contraindicated for individuals with epilepsy or seizure disorders because the induction process has the potential to trigger a seizure. In these situations, client safety must always come first. Similarly, individuals with a history of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder involving psychotic or manic episodes, severe dissociative disorders, certain personality disorders, or other significant psychiatric conditions that significantly affect a person's ability to distinguish reality from altered perceptions may require additional assessment and collaboration with the client's treating physician or mental health team before considering hypnotherapy. Certain therapeutic techniques, such as regression, may not be clinically appropriate in these circumstances and could potentially worsen symptoms rather than improve them. The purpose of these precautions isn't to exclude people from receiving help. It's to ensure they receive the safest, most appropriate care based on their individual circumstances. Becoming the kind of person who gets results The clients who create extraordinary results are the people who become clear about what they want, take personal responsibility for creating it, and are willing to become uncomfortable in the service of growth. Hypnotherapy can help you uncover and recondition the subconscious patterns standing in your way, but it cannot decide your future for you. That decision has always been yours. Ready to take the first step? I practise at Wellness on Whyte in Edmonton. Learn more here. If you're curious about how your subconscious mind is shaping your thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and habits, book a complimentary consultation. Together, we'll explore your goals, identify the subconscious patterns that keep you stuck, and determine whether Rapid Transformational Therapy is the right approach to help you create meaningful, lasting change. Most people want relief from staying the same. Those who get extraordinary results want something different, to consciously choose the life they're building and take aligned action. The only real question left is this, who are you choosing to become? Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Noelle Rivet Noelle Rivet, Clinical Hypnotherapist and RMT Noelle Rivet is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, RTT® Practitioner, and mind-body expert specializing in subconscious literacy and integrative healing. With a unique approach that blends belief, emotion, and physiology, she helps clients create lasting change by learning the Rules of the Mind. Her signature process — Activate, Participate, Transform — empowers people to Think and Be Well.