Written by Darren Jewell, Inspirational Speaker Darren Scott Jewell is a NeuroResilience Coach and a brain injury thriver who helps people build calm, focus, and confidence through neuroplasticity. After discovering one-third of his brain was non-functional from a childhood accident, he rebuilt cognitive function and now teaches others. Today, it is easy to spend hours scrolling online, yet much harder to sit quietly with our own thoughts for even ten minutes. That is not a sign of weakness. It is simply the result of the environment we have become used to. Modern life constantly trains our brains to expect stimulation. Notifications, short videos, endless information, multiple tabs open at once, and constant interruptions have become normal. Reflection and deep thinking have become rare. As a result, more and more people are beginning to notice the effects. Brain fog, mental fatigue, poor focus, low motivation, and difficulty making decisions have become common experiences. Many people quietly feel that their minds are not as sharp as they once were. What worries people most is the belief that this must mean they are declining mentally. But what if the real issue is not that our brains are broken? What if our brains have simply adapted to the environment we repeatedly place them in? The brain is always adapting. It constantly rewires itself around repetition. If we repeatedly train ourselves to be distracted, move quickly, and think only on the surface, our brains become more efficient at distraction, speed, and shallow thinking. One of the biggest problems today is that many of us spend most of our lives reacting. We wake up, check our phones, respond to notifications, consume content, react to stress, and repeat the cycle again the next day. There is very little silence, very little deep concentration, and very little meaningful cognitive challenge. Yet the brain was designed for far more than passive consumption. It was built to solve problems, create ideas, imagine possibilities, learn skills, adapt to challenges, struggle through difficulties, and eventually master new things. I understand this personally because my own journey forced me to confront what the brain is truly capable of. For years, I had no idea that one third of my brain had not been functioning properly after a childhood accident. When I eventually discovered neuroplasticity, I became obsessed with one question, "Could the brain still change after decades of limitation?" What I discovered changed my life. The brain responds to challenge. Not comfort. Not endless entertainment. Challenge. Every time we learn a new skill, practise an instrument, struggle through difficulty, learn a language, improve coordination, solve problems, speak publicly despite fear, or repeat something until confidence develops, the brain responds. Neural pathways strengthen. Confidence grows. Identity begins to shift. Many people wait to feel motivated before they begin. But motivation often arrives after action, not before it. The brain changes through repetition first. That is why learning something new can initially feel uncomfortable. Discomfort is often a sign that adaptation is taking place. What concerns me today is that many people have stopped giving their brains meaningful challenges. We consume more information than any generation before us, yet deeply process far less of it. We receive constant stimulation, but very little true cognitive resistance. I believe many people confuse underusing their brains with actual decline. The brain needs resistance, just like muscles do. That resistance might look different for every person. It could be learning piano at 55, starting a business after failure, taking up dancing despite embarrassment, writing your first book, learning technology later in life, returning to education, travelling somewhere unfamiliar, learning to juggle, speaking on stage, or even cooking meals you have never cooked before. Challenge creates adaptation. Adaptation creates growth. Growth creates hope. One of the biggest lies people believe is this, “If I were ever going to become confident, focused, creative, or successful, I would already be that person by now.” But the brain does not care how old you are. It responds to repetition, environment, and challenge. That is one of the most beautiful things about neuroplasticity. It reminds us that our future does not have to be limited by our past. Your habits are not fixed. Your confidence is not fixed. Your focus is not fixed, and perhaps most importantly, your story is not fixed. The modern world constantly competes for your attention. Maybe one of the most rebellious things you can do today is train your brain to think deeply again. Read longer. Learn difficult things. Sit in silence occasionally. Create more than you consume. Challenge yourself deliberately. Become comfortable being a beginner again. Because every time you challenge your brain on purpose, you remind it that it is still alive, and a brain that continues to be challenged is a brain that remains capable of change. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Darren Jewell Darren Jewell, Inspirational Speaker Darren Scott Jewell is a NeuroResilience Coach, speaker, and brain injury expert who helps people build calm, focus, and confidence through neuroplasticity and nervous system regulation. After a childhood balcony fall, he later discovered in adulthood that one-third of his brain had been non-functional. Through gentle, consistent brain training, he rebuilt cognitive function and reshaped his identity from the inside out. Today, he teaches practical tools for staying steady through stress, change, and overwhelm, without forcing or hustling. His mission is personal as well as professional, shaped by losing his mum, Elizabeth, to vascular dementia in October 2025. Darren's a message of hope, you're not broken, you are patterned, and your brain can learn again.

Maitreya Buddha is a teacher of self-realization and liberation whose work challenges the foundational assumptions behind identity, healing, and personal growth. In this interview, she explores how suffering is not inherent, but actively constructed and maintained through patterns of identification, thought, and conditioning. Through a precise and grounded lens, she dismantles the idea of becoming and points directly to spiritual awakening as a recognition of what is already present. The conversation offers a clear, uncompromising look at how these patterns operate, and how they can be interrupted at their source. Maitreya Buddha, Awakening & Liberation Teacher What shifted for you at 21 that fundamentally changed how you see identity and suffering? At 21, I didn’t adopt a new belief or spiritual philosophy. The entire structure that had organized itself as “me” collapsed. The sense of being a separate self, someone located behind experience, managing, controlling, and narrating life, dissolved. Experience continued, but no center stood behind it claiming ownership. That shift revealed something fundamental: identity is not a fixed entity. We construct it continuously through memory, thought, perception, and repetition. The mind references the past, anticipates the future, and organizes experience into a narrative of continuity, creating the impression of a stable self that exists at the center of life. Once I saw that process, my understanding of suffering changed. Life itself does not create psychological suffering. We create suffering through identification, by accepting that thought, emotion, sensation, and self-image are who we are. The moment identification forms, the system contracts around protection, resistance, control, and completion. Everything becomes personal. This suffering transforms from something mysterious into something observable. The mind generates distress through narrative and identification. Once I recognized the process clearly, interruption became possible. Without identification sustaining it, suffering lost the solidity and permanence it once seemed to possess. When you say suffering is “maintained,” what are the actual mechanisms you’re seeing in people? When I say suffering is “maintained,” I’m pointing to a process we participate in without realizing it. We don’t just experience suffering, we reinforce it through attention, interpretation, memory, and behavior. A painful event may happen once, but we return to it mentally again and again, deepening its emotional and psychological hold each time. Eventually, we stop relating to pain as something we experienced and begin relating to it as part of who we are. We also train the nervous system through what we focus on. If we scan for rejection, uncertainty, inadequacy, or loss, the body adapts to those conditions and begins anticipating them. We start bracing against life before anything has happened. At the same time, we develop coping strategies to protect ourselves, control, avoidance, perfectionism, overthinking, emotional suppression, but those strategies reinforce the very suffering we want to escape. They condition us to believe we are fragile, threatened, or incomplete. Over time, thought, emotion, physiology, and behavior reinforce one another until suffering feels permanent and personal. Most of us never question that process because repetition creates the illusion of truth. Once we see the mechanism, we stop unconsciously feeding it, and something different becomes possible. How do you interrupt a pattern at the level where experience itself is being generated? We cannot interrupt a pattern by fighting with its final expression because that energy is the surface result of a process already in motion. When we manage a thought, regulate an emotion, or control a reaction, the mind and body organize around the pattern. Interruption requires earlier awareness and precision . The critical moment occurs when the mind converts raw experience into psychological meaning. A sensation arises in the body. We classify and narrate it and build an identity around it: something is wrong. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t handle this. Most people never notice they are constructing the experience they believe they are merely observing. Interrupting the pattern means slowing that process down. Before our interpretation organizes the experience, we stay with it. We feel pressure in our chest, tightening in our stomach, a rush of energy, an impulse to react, without turning it into a fixed personal meaning. We stop resisting our body. Most people unconsciously brace against discomfort through tension, suppression, distraction, or control. The moment we stop fighting the sensation, our body no longer needs its defenses. That shift changes everything. We stop constructing an identity around the experience, and the pattern loses authority. You challenge the idea of healing as a gradual journey, what do you see that model getting wrong? I think we often approach healing with the assumption that time itself transforms us. We create an identity around being wounded, then spend years trying to improve, repair, or evolve that identity into a better version of itself. In many cases, we unknowingly turn healing into another form of self-construction. That approach can absolutely produce change. We can develop emotional skills, regulate our nervous system, gain insight, improve relationships, and function more effectively in life. But improvement and liberation are not always the same thing. A person can become highly self-aware while remaining psychologically attached to deficiency, lack, or the need to become someone else. What concerns me is that the “healing journey” can sometimes keep wholeness psychologically distant. We continue seeking the next breakthrough, the next method, the next transformation, while reinforcing the assumption that wholeness exists somewhere in the future. I’m not dismissing growth or therapeutic work. Those things matter deeply. But at some point, we have to question the identity at the center of the process. We have to ask whether the constant effort to become whole may actually prevent us from recognizing what has never been broken. Do you think the personal development industry unintentionally reinforces the very loops people are trying to escape? Yes, I think it does, even when it genuinely wants to help people. Much of the personal development industry revolves around optimization, becoming more successful, confident, disciplined, attractive, productive, healed, or spiritually evolved. On the surface, that seems empowering. But underneath, we often carry an assumption: who I am right now is insufficient. When we build from that premise, self-improvement can become endless. We achieve one goal, then create another. We fix one insecurity; the mind generates a new one. We chase useful habits, higher performance, and deeper healing, while reinforcing the belief that fulfillment exists somewhere up ahead. The industry also profits from people’s endless searching for more, better, and greater success. If people recognized that no future version of themselves could permanently complete them, much of the psychological striving that drives the industry would lose momentum. That doesn’t make the tools useless, many practices improve people’s lives. But improvement doesn’t necessarily free us from the cycle of seeking. We have to question the assumption underneath the search itself, and ask, “Has self-improvement become a sophisticated form of self-rejection?” Transformation begins when we stop building identity through endless becoming and start examining the one who believes it must become something else. What does “Instant Liberation” look like in a real moment of anxiety or emotional trigger? “Instant Liberation” changes our relationship to the moment faster than the mind can solidify that energy into identity. In an emotional trigger, most of us react. We defend, explain, and justify. We shut down, attack, seek reassurance. The reaction happens quickly, and we mistake it for reality. If we become present at the point of activation, something else becomes possible. We watch the rising impulse to react without obeying it. We feel anger without needing to discharge it, fear without building a future around it, and hurt without turning it into a story about what someone thinks of us. The moment we see the trigger without reacting matters. Our emotional patterns no longer have continuity. Every time we act from a trigger, we strengthen the conditioning underneath it. But when we remain conscious in the middle of activation, the pattern loses its momentum. Liberation, then, is not emotional numbness or calm. It’s the ability to remain undivided in the middle of intensity. The trigger may appear, but it no longer takes over perception, behavior, or identity. Instead of becoming the reaction, we stay present enough to let the experience move through without turning it into another layer of psychological history. How can someone recognize, in real time, that they’re operating from conditioned patterning rather than clarity? We can recognize conditioned patterning by the loss of receptivity. The moment conditioning takes over, curiosity disappears and compulsion replaces it. We stop meeting the moment and start defending a position, protecting an image, or pursuing a predictable emotional outcome. Conditioning narrows perception. We stop listening and start preparing responses, trading observation for conclusion, reacting not to what’s happening, but to what our mind expects, fears, or remembers. Here, we don’t encounter reality freshly, we experience our conditioning, and we interpret the present through the accumulated residue of the past. Clarity feels different. Clarity doesn’t rush, fix, dominate, or withdraw. It leaves room for uncertainty, allows silence before reaction, and remains present long enough for spiritual intelligence to emerge. We don’t default to habit. Without that pause, the mind simply recycles what it already knows. One of the signs of conditioning is repetition. We have the same arguments, chase validation, attract dynamics, or recreate emotional outcomes in different forms. The pattern changes costumes, but the underlying movement remains the same. The moment we recognize repetition while it’s happening, we step out of mechanical living. Awareness interrupts the cycle and restores the possibility of conscious choice. I call this “Being Awake.” If there is no path and nothing to become, what actually changes after awakening? After awakening, life stops revolving around psychological resistance. Before that shift, we spend enormous energy negotiating with reality, trying to hold on to certain experiences, avoid others, control outcomes, preserve identities, and secure permanence in a world that constantly changes. That struggle shapes almost every human decision. Awakening changes the relationship to impermanence itself. We stop demanding that life provide lasting psychological security. We stop expecting people, emotions, success, relationships, or achievements to stabilize us internally. As that demand falls away, mental conflict disappears with it. And what fills the resulting empty space is presence. Connection. Greater intimacy with life. We listen directly, respond honestly, and experience grief, beauty, uncertainty, joy, loss, and love more fully because we no longer expend so much energy resisting change. That energy transforms into motivation. Fear, insufficiency, comparison, and lack no longer drive our actions. We stop trying to complete ourselves and direct that energy into creativity, work, relationships, and being of service. The result feels extraordinarily ordinary. Nothing needs to become spiritually dramatic. Life simply loses the constant background tension created by trying to secure what was never stable to begin with. What is one thing people can stop doing today that would immediately reduce unnecessary suffering? Stop postponing your life until you feel ready to live it. Unnecessary suffering comes from standing at a distance from life, waiting for the perfect moment. We wait to feel healed, certain, worthy, fearless. We imagine that ahead of us there is a version of ourselves that will know, finally, how to live without vulnerability, loss, or pain. But life never asks for perfection before participation. It asks only for presence. The tragedy is not that we suffer. The tragedy is how much life we refuse to touch while trying to protect ourselves from suffering. We hold back love until we feel safe, silence our voice until we feel confident, and delay joy until circumstances improve. In doing so, we turn waiting into a way of life. The moment we stop treating life as something we must earn the right to enter, Grace descends. Not because fear disappears or uncertainty resolves. But because we recognize that life has always been happening here, in the middle of the unfinished, imperfect, uncontrollable moment we kept trying to outgrow. Often, what heals us most is not control, certainty, or mastery, but our willingness to stop standing outside our lives and step into them. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Maitreya Buddha

Written by Stacey Jane, Founder, Life Coach, and Radio Host Stacey Jane is a Self-Leadership Coach who helps capable women and business owners stop betraying themselves and lead their life, relationships, and decisions under pressure. You know exactly what you want. The relationship. The business. The version of yourself you’ve been imagining. So why isn’t that your reality? The answer isn’t a strategy gap or a knowledge gap. It’s a choices gap. Everything in your life right now is the sum of what you’ve been choosing, including what you’ve been choosing instead. Your results are a mirror Your results are not random. They are not luck. They are not just “how things turned out.” They are a direct reflection of what you have been choosing every single day. What you tolerate. What you avoid. What you say yes to when you should say no. What you keep delaying because it feels too hard, too scary, or too uncertain. People say they want more, more connection, more success, more confidence, more freedom. But when the moment of choice arrives, they choose comfort instead. Then they wonder why nothing changes. The real problem isn’t clarity, it’s courage Here is what I know from working with people who feel stuck. Most of them are not confused. They know exactly what they want. They can feel when something isn’t right. They know which direction they need to move in. But instead of choosing what they actually want, they choose: Keeping the peace Not disappointing others Avoiding judgment from people around them Staying where it’s familiar, even when it’s unfulfilling Maintaining the version of themselves that others expect So they stay stuck. Not because they don’t know, but because they won’t choose. Why choosing differently feels so uncomfortable The moment you make a different choice, everything shifts. That shift doesn’t feel empowering at first. It feels like fear, like doubt, like guilt, anxiety, and a creeping sense of uncertainty. You start questioning yourself, “Is this the right decision?” “What if I lose everything I’ve built?” “What will people think of me?” This is the part most people misinterpret. They feel the discomfort and they think, “This feels wrong, so it must be wrong.” But it’s not wrong. It’s unfamiliar. There is a very big difference between the two. You’re not stuck, you’re just returning to what feels safe Here is what actually happens when most people try to change. They make a new choice. They step outside their comfort zone. They begin creating a different direction. Then the discomfort hits. Instead of holding that discomfort, they go back. Back to old patterns. Back to old behaviours. Back to what feels safe and known. Then they say, “Nothing is changing.” But something is changing. You are choosing the same thing again. That is the change. That is the pattern. The goal isn’t to eliminate discomfort. The goal is to stop letting it make decisions for you. Growth requires you to hold the discomfort If you want different results, you don’t just need a new decision. You need the capacity to hold that decision through discomfort. Because every new level of your life will feel uncomfortable at first. The relationship you actually want will require new levels of communication and vulnerability. The business you want will require visibility, risk, and showing up before you feel ready. The version of you that you’re working toward will require letting go of who you’ve been. None of that is comfortable at the start. But discomfort is not a stop sign, it is a growth signal. The shift most people never make The people who actually change their lives are not fearless. They are willing. There is a difference. They are willing to: Feel uncomfortable without retreating Be misunderstood without needing to explain themselves Be judged without letting it stop them Stay the course without having certainty about the outcome Keep choosing the new direction even when the old one is calling them back They don’t make one bold decision and expect instant results. They make the decision, and then they keep choosing it. Over and over again. Until it becomes who they are. Your life changes when your choices become consistent Confidence doesn’t come from knowing. It comes from choosing yourself repeatedly. Self trust isn’t built in a single moment of courage. It’s built through consistent action that is aligned with what you know is right for you. Results don’t come from one breakthrough moment. They come from the accumulation of small, consistent choices made daily. The choice to speak up. The choice to set the boundary. The choice to show up for yourself even when it’s hard. Every time you choose in alignment with what you actually want, you cast a vote for the life you’re building. Every time you revert to comfort, you cast a vote for the one you’re trying to leave behind. So what are you actually choosing? If your life doesn’t reflect what you want, start here. Not with a new strategy. Not with more information. With an honest question. Where am I choosing comfort over what I say I want? Because that is where your power is. Not in waiting for the right moment. Not in hoping things get easier. Not in understanding yourself a little more before you act. In choosing differently. Staying with that choice long enough for it to work. Ready to start choosing differently? If you know what you want but you’re not acting on it, that is not a strategy problem. That is a self leadership problem. It is exactly the work I do with my clients, helping them stop defaulting to comfort and start leading themselves with clarity, integrity, and consistent action. If you’re ready to change your results, start with your choices. If you want support in actually following through, connect with me. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Stacey Jane Stacey Jane, Founder, Life Coach, and Radio Host Stacey Jane is a Self-Leadership Coach, business mentor, and founder of Stacey Jane Coaching and the Good Girl Gone Bad movement. Before coaching, she built what looked, from the outside, like the right life – the career, the marriage, the house, the stability. Underneath it, she was disconnected, self-abandoning, and running on autopilot. So she made the decisions most people avoid. She ended her marriage. Sold her house. Walked away from corporate. Not to start over – but to finally start leading herself. That shift became the foundation of her work. With a decade of experience in corporate construction and over six years in coaching, Stacey helps her clients break patterns, communicate effectively, and follow through consistently – with clarity, emotional regulation, and integrity. Through her private coaching, Good Girl Gone Bad Academy, courses, podcast, radio show, and speaking, she is known for her direct, no-fluff approach that creates real, lasting change.

Groningen, Netherlands – May 26th 2026 – Reality Cult, the multidisciplinary artistic research platform founded by Stephanie Smit, has launched Past Life Podcast, a six-episode conversation series examining how emotional patterns, creative impulses, and unresolved themes may echo across lifetimes. The podcast emerges from Reality Cult's broader research into reincarnation, symbolic memory, and recurring cultural dynamics. Through long-form conversations with artists, thinkers, and creative practitioners, the series explores identity continuity, karmic patterns, and the subtle ways individuals and communities shape collective mythologies over time. "Many of the people appearing in these conversations are connected through recurring themes and historical overlaps that revealed themselves through our wider archive," said Smit. "The podcast documents that process in a direct and human way." Recorded throughout 2025, Season One features guests connected to Reality Cult's expanding research archive and forthcoming Soul Constellation Map, an interactive platform mapping recurring relationships, creative lineages, and symbolic continuities across historical eras and contemporary life. The first episode features Victor Evink examining identity formation, systems of limitation, and creative expression within rapidly shifting cultural structures. Reality Cult's archive currently contains more than 250 interconnected research cases spanning historical figures, contemporary individuals, and recurring creative communities. The platform employs immersive performance, installations, lectures, essays, karmic astrology, archival research, and AI assisted pattern recognition to investigate memory, consciousness, and cultural transformation. The Soul Constellation Map is expected to launch publicly in the coming weeks. Additionally, elements of Reality Cult's research will be presented at this year's Spirituality and the Arts Conference at Harvard Divinity School, where Smit will participate alongside the Vision Lab collective. Other experimental initiatives include IWasJimMorrison, examining recurring identity claims and collective mythologies surrounding reincarnation narratives. Episodes of Past Life Podcast are available now through Reality Cult. About reality cult Founded by artist and researcher Stephanie Smit, Reality Cult operates across performance, music composition, costume design, installations, writing, lectures, and digital media. The platform develops constellation based archives, immersive experiences, and symbolic investigations connecting contemporary participants, historical figures, and recurring creative communities across time. Media contact Stephanie Smit, Founder, Reality Cult Email Webiste

Written by Barbara Suigo, Senior HR Consultant, Author, Charisma Expert Barbara Suigo is a charisma expert, HR consultant, and author. Specializing in the development of soft skills, she has published the "Charisma Trilogy" and offers personalized training and coaching programs for leaders and professionals. Reflections inspired by the work of Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on how success does not merely generate admiration, but often rewrites the stories and character of winners, softens their most unpleasant traits, and turns results into proof of virtue. Admiring winners is human and rewriting them is the next step Admiring those who have succeeded is natural. Throughout history, people who manage to rise above others have attracted attention, respect, curiosity, and sometimes even awe. Success draws the eye because it highlights what stands out, what seems to have left a mark, what appears stronger, more visible, more capable of imposing itself on the average. Up to this point, there is nothing surprising. The delicate point comes later, when success stops being merely a result and begins to become a retrospective lens through which we reinterpret the person who achieved it. It is in that passage that the story changes nature. The winner’s past appears more orderly than it may actually have been, contradictions are softened, setbacks seem to lose their weight, and what in another context would have appeared ambiguous or simply human begins to be reinterpreted as an early sign of greatness. Looking backward, everything tends to be rearranged into a trajectory that seems more coherent, cleaner, almost inevitable. The reflections of Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, are particularly useful on this point, because they force us to distinguish between what actually happened and the way we later choose to tell it. In his essay We’re Still the Same, he observes that when we look at successful people or organizations, we tend to attribute positive traits and behaviors to them that we assume were the reason for their success, even when those traits may not have truly been there or may not explain the final outcome at all. In other words, success does not simply reward winners. It often changes the way we read them. We no longer see only a person who has achieved a great deal, we begin to see a person who, precisely because they have achieved a great deal, must surely possess something superior, more vision, more strength, more depth, more truth. The final result ends up reflecting back onto character, almost as if it certified it. When the result becomes moral proof This is where success stops being merely an outcome and begins to function as proof. We no longer simply say that someone has achieved power, prestige, wealth, or influence. We begin to think that the result reveals something essential or exceptional about that person, a superior quality, a special clarity, a consistency that perhaps we would not have seen with the same conviction before. The achievement then starts to look like evidence that the winner “must” have had something more. Pfeffer connects this tendency to a very deep and very human need, the need to believe in a world that is more orderly and more just than it often is in reality. Much of our imagination about work still rests on the idea that merit naturally emerges, that hard work is spontaneously recognized, and that the system somehow ends up rewarding those who truly deserve it. In his essay, Pfeffer openly speaks of wishful thinking, a desire that disguises itself as an explanation of the world. We would like success to confirm a moral order, those who rise very high must have had superior qualities, and the final result must make those qualities visible. The problem is that this need for order tends to stiffen the story. We struggle to accept that success can also arise within ambiguous, discontinuous trajectories, shaped by networks, power relations, opportunity, timing, and social tolerance toward behaviors we would not call exemplary at all. We prefer a cleaner story. A more readable one. A more comforting one. This is how success stops being a fact to be analyzed and begins to become a retrospective justification. Winners write history, but we help them do it One of Pfeffer’s strongest insights is that “winners write history” should not be understood only in the classical sense, meaning that those who hold power control the narrative. There is also another level, subtler and perhaps more important, those who observe, and especially those who tell the stories of winners, tend to reconstruct them in ways that make their success more justifiable and more consistent with our ideas of positive qualities. The distortion, then, does not come only from those who have won. It also comes from those who watch, those who write, those who select what to say and how to say it, those who retrospectively organize the confused material of reality into a story that “makes sense.” This is where many success biographies become misleading. Not necessarily because they invent everything, but because they clean up, select, compress, and moralize. They see the final outcome and then reconstruct the rest as if everything had always been leading precisely there. A path that may have also included discontinuity, opportunism, improvisation, luck, networks of relationships, environmental tolerance, and the ability to impose oneself is rewritten as if it had been, from the beginning, the linear journey of an exceptional person destined to arrive exactly where they arrived. This mechanism is particularly insidious because it also operates when the story seems intelligent, refined, even honest. Crude lies or blatant hagiography are not necessary. All it takes is the need to give a linear shape to something that was not linear at all. All it takes is turning a powerful outcome into an exemplary biography. All it takes is taking success as the final point and using it to reorganize the past as if the past had always contained that success in a clear and visible way. When success softens what we would otherwise judge harshly At this point, a second mechanism comes into play, even more interesting than the first. Sometimes it is not possible to attribute enough positive qualities to winners to make their success fully edifying. Some traits remain unpleasant. Some behaviors remain harsh, aggressive, humiliating, toxic. This is where, according to Pfeffer, the work of justification appears, when the unpleasant side cannot be entirely denied, it is minimized, contested, or placed within a more noble frame. In his essay, Pfeffer refers precisely to the media and memorial treatment of figures such as Steve Jobs and George Steinbrenner to show how unpleasant or openly problematic behaviors are often reinterpreted in light of the results achieved. This is where we can see most clearly what we might call the narrative immunity of success. When a person wins a great deal, the final result creates a kind of interpretive shield. Some behaviors that would be judged severely in a mediocre or unsuccessful person become more tolerable, more explainable, almost more legitimate in a winner. Harshness turns into high standards. Arrogance is read as confidence. Brutality is softened into demanding perfectionism. Toxicity is absorbed back into the myth of exceptional character. The flaw, in short, does not disappear. But its status changes. It is no longer merely a flaw. In the story, it becomes the dark side of a greatness still considered superior to the final balance of its costs. Here lies one of the great illusions that continues to circulate in managerial discourse, the idea that certain toxic traits become almost noble when accompanied by extraordinary results. The cultural price of sanitized stories Up to this point, one might think that the problem concerns mainly the way we talk about winners. In reality, the damage goes deeper. Because from these sanitized stories we do not only derive a distorted image of their protagonists. We also derive the wrong lessons about work, power, character, and leadership. When the narrative is moralized too heavily, we begin to believe that harshness necessarily produces excellence, that a difficult character is a sign of genius, that aggression is the inevitable price of vision, and that the final result proves the value of the traits we attribute to the winner. Complex stories become simple recipes. Simple recipes, when applied to organizations, become managerial nonsense. The damage, then, is twofold. On one hand, we misunderstand winners. On the other, we learn badly from them. We take an outcome and turn it into a formula. We take a biography and read it as if it were a clear lesson. We take a winner and make them a model, forgetting how much of their path may also have involved contingency, previously accumulated power, the ability to impose themselves, timing, networks, and social tolerance toward their worst traits. Jeffrey Pfeffer has long insisted on the cost of half-truths and overly polished narratives in management. His work on power and influence, as well as his course Paths to Power, also stems from the idea that people need realistic tools to understand how careers, organizations, and leadership actually work, not reassuring fables. Stanford itself presents that course as one of its most sought-after because it speaks frankly about dynamics that truly matter in professional life but are rarely addressed elsewhere with the same clarity. In this sense, sanitized success stories do not only make bad literature. They also make bad education. Success deserves analysis, not embellishment The point is not to tear winners down, nor to deny that some people truly have talent, vision, strength, or exceptional qualities. That would be a crude shortcut. The point is something else, to stop treating success as automatic proof of virtue. A great achievement deserves analysis, not moral embellishment. It deserves to be read with greater precision, greater distance, and less need to turn it into an edifying tale. It deserves to be placed within its context, networks, timing, previously accumulated power, opportunities, asymmetries, and the narratives that come afterward. Because the moment we mistake the final outcome for proof of character, we stop truly understanding both success and the power that accompanies it. This is where Pfeffer remains so useful. Not because he invites cynicism, but because he forces a form of intellectual sobriety. He reminds us that outcomes do not automatically illuminate causes, and that stories about winners, precisely because they are seductive, deserve more caution, not less. In the end, the problem is not that we admire winners. The problem is that too often we mistake their success for proof of truth. We see the final result, then project onto it coherence, vision, superior talent, and even moral goodness. If unpleasant aspects emerge, we soften them. If the trajectory was disorderly, we rearrange it. If ambiguities remain, we treat them as details. In this way, success does not simply reward people, it rewrites them. When this happens, we do not only produce distorted stories. We also produce bad lessons about leadership, merit, character, and power. Success, then, should not be demolished. It should be freed from the moral embellishment that too often surrounds it. This article draws on reflections from my forthcoming book, Charismatic Psychopaths, The Dark Side of Charisma, currently in progress. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Barbara Suigo Barbara Suigo, Senior HR Consultant, Author, Charisma Expert Born in Italy and naturalized as a French citizen, Barbara Suigo is an HR consultant, author, coach, and trainer specializing in the art of charisma. With solid experience in corporate communication and extensive training in NLP, persuasion, and storytelling techniques, she supports professionals and companies by offering personalized coaching, training programs, and in-depth content. Barbara is the author of the Charisma Trilogy, a work that deeply explores how to develop and harness personal influence and leadership presence. She has also published other books focused on personal and professional growth, solidifying her role as a leader in the field of soft skills development.

Written by Lindy Lelij, Founder of Mpowerme Coaching Lindy Lelij is the founder of Mpowerme Coaching. With more than 30 years of leadership and international experience, she helps people navigate migration, cultural transitions, and identity to thrive personally and professionally. When people think about immigration, they often focus on the obvious milestones. Securing a visa, finding housing, enrolling children in school, understanding systems, and of course, finding employment. But there is one pathway that is often underestimated in its power to transform an immigrant’s journey in New Zealand, volunteering. Not simply as a “nice thing to do,” but as one of the most practical, human, and strategic ways to integrate into both New Zealand society and its work culture. Having worked for more than 12 years in volunteer management within a large health organisation, I have had the privilege of working alongside hundreds of volunteers of all ages, backgrounds, and life stages, including many migrants and immigrants trying to find their footing in a new country. Over the years, I have seen firsthand that volunteering often becomes far more than service. For many immigrants, it becomes belonging, builds self confidence, and often creates connections and new opportunities. Volunteering: A gentle introduction to “New Zealand Work Experience” One of the most common frustrations immigrants face is hearing the phrase, “Do you have New Zealand work experience?” For many, this question can feel deeply discouraging. How do you gain local experience when employers want local experience before offering you the opportunity? Volunteering can become one of the kindest and most welcoming introductions to this challenge. Unlike formal employment, volunteering allows immigrants to experience aspects of New Zealand work culture without the same pressure of needing to perform perfectly or the fear of failing in a paid role. It offers room to observe, contribute, ask questions, and adapt. You begin learning things that no handbook or recruitment website can truly teach: How New Zealanders often communicate in collaborative and understated ways How teams tend to value humility, reliability, and initiative How workplace hierarchy can feel more informal than in many other countries How relationship building often matters just as much as qualifications How trust is often built through consistency rather than status Volunteering gives people permission to learn while contributing, and that combination is powerful. My own first lessons in New Zealand through volunteering When I arrived in New Zealand in 2003, I was eager to work with people and contribute meaningfully. My first volunteer role came in 2004 and 2005, when I coached the coaches at a teenage youth conference here in Auckland. That experience became one of my earliest windows into New Zealand work culture. To be honest, it was also a culture shock. I quickly noticed differences in how people managed others here compared to what I had previously known in The Netherlands. At times, I found myself unsure whether what I was observing reflected broader New Zealand workplace culture, or whether it was simply the leadership style of that specific organisation. But what that experience did give me was something deeply valuable is awareness of myself. It showed me where I naturally worked differently. It highlighted communication habits I had brought from my previous environment. It made me realise where I felt out of my depth in what was still a ‘foreign’ country. That kind of learning is often uncomfortable, but incredibly important. Volunteering gave me that insight before entering deeper professional spaces. Volunteering is not only for newly arrived immigrants One misconception is that volunteering is only useful when someone first arrives. In reality, volunteering can serve immigrants at multiple stages of their journey. 1. Early arrival: Learning and settling in When newly arrived, volunteering helps immigrants understand local communication styles, build social confidence, improve language fluency in practical settings, create friendships and local networks, develop familiarity with workplace expectations, and reduce isolation. At this stage, volunteering often says, “You belong here, even before employment begins.” 2. During career transition: Building credibility Many immigrants are highly skilled professionals who may need time to re establish themselves. Volunteering can show employers current engagement in New Zealand society, demonstrate reliability, initiative, and adaptability, build local referees and references, fill employment gaps positively, and provide examples of leadership, teamwork, and contribution. Showing volunteer commitments on your CV signals something important. You are actively willing to contribute to the greater good of your community and country. Then, when “New Zealand work experience” comes up during an interview, you have already laid valuable groundwork. 3. During unemployment or career gaps: Maintaining purpose One of the most moving things I have seen in volunteer leadership is when former volunteers return while temporarily out of paid employment. Not because they “had nothing else to do.” But because volunteering gave them a sense of belonging, continued purpose, social connection, emotional wellbeing, routine, and visibility within networks. Many found themselves surrounded by others who understood similar challenges, or who introduced them to opportunities they otherwise may never have accessed. Sometimes volunteering protects identity when employment feels uncertain. 4. Later settlement: Leadership and giving back Once immigrants become established, volunteering can evolve again. It becomes a way to mentor, lead, advocate, and contribute from lived experience. This often strengthens both confidence and community influence. Volunteering does not always mean joining existing systems My own journey taught me that volunteering is not always limited to stepping into predefined shifts or structured roles. Sometimes, volunteering means creating something where a need exists. Over time, I initiated several community led projects myself. These included: Helping establish a Montessori primary unit within an existing school in my neighbourhood Assisting with fundraising and renovation efforts for our tribal chapel Co creating a Māori mock up village during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, showcasing cultural aspects of Māori life This final project was particularly meaningful. It required me to actively seek out local Māori and Pākehā participants and bring people together around a shared vision. That experience taught me something profound. Volunteering can also be leadership. It can require initiative, trust building, cross cultural understanding, and collaboration. These are exactly the qualities many New Zealand employers value. What employers quietly notice While volunteering is not a shortcut to employment, it often demonstrates qualities employers respect deeply, commitment, reliability, community mindedness, initiative, adaptability, leadership, cultural awareness, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and resilience. In New Zealand, these human qualities often matter more than people realise. A strong CV tells employers what you have done. Volunteering often helps show who you are while doing it. Beyond employment: What it gives you personally In my passion and drive to work with people here in New Zealand, these experiences have proven invaluable, not only for future employers, but for me personally. Volunteering gave me far more than “experience.” It gave me confidence in unfamiliar environments, understanding of local dynamics, community relationships, cultural insight, opportunities to contribute, growth through discomfort, and a stronger sense of identity within New Zealand. Perhaps most importantly, it shifted me from simply arriving in New Zealand to actively participating in it. Final reflection For immigrants, volunteering should never be seen as “free labour” or something only to do while waiting for real opportunity. Often, it is part of real opportunity. At different points in an immigration journey, whether arriving, rebuilding, transitioning, pausing, or leading, volunteering can become one of the most practical bridges between identity, community, and work. Because a very powerful way to build a life in a new country is not to first ask, “Where can I get hired?” but rather, “Where can I contribute?” to lay a solid foundation in your sense of belonging. In New Zealand, belonging often leads to opportunity. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Lindy Lelij Lindy Lelij, Founder of Mpowerme Coaching With Māori and European heritage, Lindy knows firsthand what it means to live between cultures. She spent over four decades abroad before returning “home” to Aotearoa New Zealand. Today, as founder of Mpowerme Coaching, Lindy helps people navigate migration, cultural transition, and identity. Through positive psychology, deep journaling, energetic tuning, and narrative reframing, Lindy offers clients practical tools for growth and resilience. Backed by more than 30 years of leadership, governance, and business experience across Health, governance, and international trade, she brings both professional expertise and lived wisdom to her work.

Written by Millah, Founder & CEO of YouTuneIn Millah Barbosa, Founder & CEO of YouTuneIn, is a wellness innovator dedicated to elevating consciousness through sound and frequency. She bridges science and spirituality to help people and organizations achieve clarity, balance, and transformation. We are living in a moment where technology is moving faster than the human body can process. AI is accelerating decisions, communication, productivity, expectations, and pressure. Companies are asking people to adapt faster, learn faster, produce faster, and stay emotionally available through constant change. But there is one question many corporations are still not asking deeply enough, is the human nervous system keeping up? I truly believe that a regulated nervous system is one of the most important foundations for the future of work. When a person is regulated, they think better. They solve problems with more clarity. They communicate with more awareness. They relate better. They have more access to empathy, patience, creativity, and emotional intelligence. When a person is dysregulated, the opposite begins to happen. The body enters survival mode. The mind becomes reactive. Communication becomes defensive. Small problems become bigger. Teams become divided. Leadership becomes exhausted. The collective energy of the company slowly becomes driven by pressure and fear instead of clarity and vision. This is not just a wellness conversation anymore. This is a business conversation. A company is not only built by strategy, technology, and capital. A company is built by nervous systems working together every single day. Every meeting, decision, conflict, innovation, and leadership moment is filtered through the emotional state of the people inside the organization. Right now, many companies are navigating layoffs, restructuring, AI transformation, economic pressure, and uncertainty about the future. People are afraid. Some are losing their jobs. Others are afraid they might be next. Many are trying to reinvent themselves while carrying chronic stress in their bodies. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report continues to show rising stress and disengagement across workplaces worldwide, creating trillions of dollars in lost productivity. The World Health Organization has also reported that depression and anxiety cost the global economy approximately 1 trillion dollars every year in lost productivity alone. This is why nervous system regulation matters. Because a regulated person does not only “feel calmer.” A regulated person has more access to clarity, emotional balance, adaptability, and creativity. Neurologically, when the body feels safer, the brain becomes more available for learning, problem-solving, innovation, communication, and new neural pathways. In the AI era, this becomes essential. Technology can process information faster than humans ever will. But humans still need to create meaning. Humans still need empathy, discernment, emotional intelligence, intuition, and conscious leadership. There is also another subtle shift happening that many people are beginning to notice, and honestly, I see this in myself sometimes too. As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, many of us are slowly outsourcing small cognitive tasks we once naturally exercised ourselves, writing emails, organizing thoughts, brainstorming ideas, communicating more personally, even creating sentences from our own emotional process. While these tools absolutely save time and improve efficiency, overreliance can also create a kind of mental fog. Many people are beginning to feel less present in their own thinking, less connected to their creativity, and more mentally fatigued despite “working smarter.” This is not because technology is bad. Technology is extraordinary. But the human brain still requires active engagement, emotional balance, presence, and recovery to function well. When the nervous system is chronically overwhelmed, overstimulated, or operating in survival mode for too long, cognitive performance can suffer. Focus decreases. Creativity narrows. Communication becomes more automatic and less conscious. This is one of the reasons practices that support nervous system regulation are becoming increasingly important inside corporate environments. The American Psychological Association has highlighted emotional exhaustion, workplace stress, and psychological safety as some of the biggest challenges affecting modern work culture today. At the same time, most people now know someone, or live with someone, experiencing anxiety, burnout, depression, panic, or emotional exhaustion. Mental health challenges are no longer isolated experiences. They affect families, relationships, teams, communication, and entire workplace dynamics. This is why corporations can no longer treat emotional regulation as a luxury or a once a year wellness initiative. It needs to become part of the culture. The good news is that support does not need to be complicated. One of the reasons I became deeply interested in sound technology, frequencies, binaural beats, and guided regulation practices is because of how simple and accessible they can be. People do not necessarily need extensive training to begin supporting their nervous system. Sometimes it is simply about pressing play for five or ten minutes before a meeting, after a difficult conversation, during a stressful day, or before sleep. That small pause can shift someone’s internal state enough to improve focus, communication, emotional regulation, and productivity. What makes these tools especially interesting is that they are noninvasive and easy to integrate into daily life. Employees can use them at work, during travel, before presentations, after stressful meetings, or at home with their families. Because nervous system regulation does not only impact work performance. It impacts the human being as a whole. Perhaps this is one of the greatest paradoxes of the AI era, while technology becomes more intelligent, humans must become more emotionally aware. The next corporate advantage may not come from pushing people harder. It may come from helping people regulate better. Because when people are regulated, they do not only perform better. They communicate better. They collaborate better. They become more resilient, more creative, more emotionally intelligent, and more capable of navigating change without losing themselves in the process. For years, I have been observing how sound technology, frequencies, binaural beats, and guided regulation practices can support people emotionally, mentally, and cognitively through the work we do at YouTuneIn. What continues to inspire me is how simple the process can be. Sometimes, it starts with five minutes, a pair of headphones, and the decision to pause long enough for the nervous system to breathe again. In a world moving faster than ever, perhaps one of the greatest investments corporations can make is not only in smarter technology, but in helping humans remain connected to clarity, creativity, emotional intelligence, and humanity itself. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Millah Millah, Founder & CEO of YouTuneIn Millah Barbosa is the Founder & CEO of YouTuneIn, a wellness innovation company pioneering advanced sound and frequency solutions for emotional balance, clarity, and resilience. With two decades of experience as a creative entrepreneur and coach, she bridges science and spirituality to help people and organizations align with their highest potential. Her work empowers leaders, teams, and individuals to live with greater purpose and consciousness. Sources: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace Report World Health Organization, Mental Health and Productivity Reports American Psychological Association, Work in America Report NAMI Workplace Mental Health Poll NIH/PubMed research on mindfulness, stress regulation, auditory stimulation, and workplace well-being

Written by Simer Dhillon, Executive Leadership Strategist Simer Dhillon is the Founder and Chief Architect of SHARP™ Leadership Academy, a global platform redefining ethical performance systems for executives. She transforms leadership through measurable integrity, resilience, and presence. AI is changing the workplace faster than ever, but most organizations are making a critical mistake, they are giving everyone the exact same tool. In this article, Simer Dhillon, Founder and Chief Architect of the SHARP™ Leadership Academy, challenges the "one-size-fits-all" approach to technology. Utilizing the foundational pillars of the SHARP™ Framework – Standards, Honesty, Alignment, Resilience, and Presence, she breaks down why companies must build a "dual-mirror" AI strategy. Discover why leaders and employees require entirely different AI systems to protect corporate secrets, avoid dangerous executive echo chambers, and maintain the irreplaceable value of human leadership presence. The one size fits all AI illusion The promise of Artificial Intelligence in the corporate world was supposed to be the ultimate equalizer. We were told that a single, powerful LLM (Large Language Model) could serve the entire enterprise, democratizing data and flattening hierarchies. But as organizations integrate AI deeper into their workflows, a stark reality is emerging. AI is a mirror. It adapts, absorbs, and evolves based on the data it digests and the human behavior it interacts with. Because an executive's cognitive load, strategic horizon, and governance responsibilities are fundamentally different from a frontline employee's operational tasks, treating AI as a one size fits all tool is a critical leadership failure. To build an organization that scales efficiently without losing its soul, we must look at corporate AI architecture through a higher standard. By viewing technology deployment through the lens of the SHARP™ Framework, we can intentionally design a dual mirror ecosystem that separates executive strategy from employee execution while maintaining absolute structural integrity. 1. Standards (S) guarding the integrity of data and boundaries An organization's infrastructure is only as reliable as its highest standard. At the executive level, AI is a strategic sounding board dealing with high level financial modeling, mergers and acquisitions, and sensitive talent metrics. Frontline employees utilize AI for process optimization, code generation, or customer response workflows. Deploying the exact same unpartitioned AI across these distinct tiers compromises organizational security. Without strict, tiered boundaries, an enterprise AI can inadvertently "leak" high level strategic data into operational outputs. True executive leadership requires setting rigorous Standards for data compartmentalization, ensuring that while the employee’s AI optimizes execution, the leader’s AI safely synthesizes macro strategy. 2. Honesty (H) breaking the algorithmic echo chamber AI is highly impressionable. If a leader regularly uses an AI assistant to refine thoughts, draft communications, and model decisions, the system begins to mirror that specific leader’s tone, cognitive shortcuts, and biases. The danger here is the creation of a sophisticated confirmation bias engine. Instead of acting as an objective advisor, the executive AI starts telling the leader exactly what they want to hear, validating flawed assumptions with elegantly generated text. Radical Honesty in leadership requires implementing deliberate "red teaming" prompts and objective algorithmic guardrails. Your executive AI must have the intellectual honesty to challenge your perspectives, not just echo your preferences. 3. Alignment (A) the hub and spoke architecture How do you prevent an organization from fracturing when leaders and employees are using entirely different AI configurations. The answer lies in structural Alignment. If leaders and workers use different AI tools, how do we keep the company together. We use Alignment. Harvard Business Review research on embedding AI into strategic decision making demonstrates that success requires a socio technical approach where human judgment and secure data platforms work together. Think of it like a wheel. Human in the Loop. The Hub. A centralized, baseline AI model trained strictly on the organization’s overarching values, ethical frameworks, regulatory governance, and brand voice. The Spokes. Customized, adaptive application layers built on top of that hub, one tailored for executive strategic thinking, and others tuned for departmental execution such as Sales, HR, and Engineering. This ensures that while individual tools adapt to the daily realities of their users, the entire enterprise remains rooted in the same core mission. 4. Resilience (R) human oversight in automated workflows As employee facing AI tools automate repetitive workflows, operational speed skyrockets. However, over reliance on automated systems creates hidden vulnerabilities. When an AI adapts too closely to routine operational data, it can struggle to handle unprecedented market disruptions or edge case anomalies. Building a resilient organization means ensuring that AI never replaces critical human judgment. Leaders must cultivate adaptive resilience within their teams, training employees to audit, question, and cross examine AI outputs. True operational resilience ensures that when automated systems face a novel crisis, the human workforce possesses the agility to pivot instantly. 5. Presence (P) protecting strategic and somatic authority Perhaps the greatest risk of different AI adaptations is the dilution of executive Presence. If a leader relies entirely on an AI to generate their strategic vision, their corporate communications, or their cultural directives, the workforce will eventually sense the lack of human substance. AI can synthesize market trends, but it cannot embody leadership. It cannot project somatic presence, convey authentic empathy, or build deep institutional trust during a crisis. Executive presence requires a leader to use AI as an invisible backend tool for cognitive heavy lifting, while ensuring that the final output, whether a keynote speech or a board directive, is deeply infused with their personal conviction, authentic voice, and human signature. AI can’t replace the human touch The biggest danger is losing your leadership Presence. If a boss uses AI to write every speech, email, and company plan, people will notice. It will feel fake and hollow. Executive board experiments published in Harvard Business Review showed that unsupervised AI outputs are often seen as "commonplace, unsurprising, or clichéd". AI can crunch data and spot trends, but it lacks a human heart. It cannot project somatic presence, convey authentic empathy, or build deep institutional trust during a crisis. Leaders must use AI in the background to handle the cognitive heavy lifting, but the final voice, character, and human presence must always be their own. The bottom line for modern executives Do not ask how to implement AI across your company. Ask how to build a dual mirror architecture where the employee's tool accelerates execution, the leader's tool sharpens strategy, and both remain unyielding in their alignment to organizational standards. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Simer Dhillon Simer Dhillon, Executive Leadership Strategist Simer Dhillon is a leadership strategist and the Founder of SHARP™ Leadership Academy, a global platform integrating ethics, emotional intelligence, and performance systems for the modern workplace. Drawing on two decades in corporate finance and executive leadership, she developed the SHARP™ Framework (Standards, Honesty, Alignment, Resilience, Presence) to help leaders turn integrity into infrastructure. Her work blends business intelligence with emotional depth, empowering organizations to build cultures of measurable trust and sustainable success. Simer’s mission is to lead a new generation of ethically intelligent leaders who transform systems from within. Related Article: When AI gets the Board Seat

Written by Hazel N. Williams, Relationship Strategist & Author Hazel N. Williams is an author, speaker, and relationship coach helping couples navigate pressure, emotional distance, and communication breakdown. Through Holding On Together, she brings over 40 years of lived marriage and family experience into practical relationship support. Nobody warns you about this part. Not at the wedding. Not in the early years. Nobody sits you down and says, there will come a season in your marriage where you are still very much together, still committed, still showing up, but something underneath the surface has quietly shifted. The intimacy has thinned. The connection that once felt natural now requires effort you are not sure how to give. The hardest part is that you cannot quite name when it changed. If this is where you are right now, I want you to know that this is one of the most common and least spoken about experiences in marriage today. Not just in long marriages. In marriages at every stage. The reason nobody talks about it is precisely why it keeps growing in silence. So let us talk about it. You still love each other. You still share a bed. But something feels different! Intimacy is not one thing, and that is where most couples get lost Understanding the different types of intimacy in marriage and why the sex and intimacy disconnect begins long before the bedroom. When most people hear the word intimacy, their mind goes straight to the physical. While physical and sexual intimacy are absolutely part of a healthy marriage, they are only one layer of something far more complex. Intimacy, in its fullest sense, is the experience of being genuinely known by another person and choosing to remain present with them in that knowing. There is emotional intimacy, the safety to bring your real self into a conversation without bracing for correction or contempt. There is intellectual intimacy, the pleasure of thinking together, disagreeing respectfully, and being genuinely curious about how your partner sees the world. There is experiential intimacy, doing life together in a way that feels shared rather than parallel. There is spiritual intimacy, a shared sense of meaning and values that anchors a couple through difficulty. There is sensual intimacy, which is broader than sex and encompasses touch, warmth, and physical presence without expectation. There is even conflict intimacy, the ability to disagree, repair, and come back together without lasting damage. Most couples have never mapped their intimacy in this way. They have never sat down together and asked, where are we strong, and where have we quietly let things go? Which means when they feel the disconnect, they often misread it. They assume it is a physical problem when it is actually an emotional one. They try to fix the symptom when the real conversation is about the atmosphere of the relationship itself. Because here is what I have come to understand deeply, emotional intimacy almost always comes before physical intimacy. When emotional safety is present, when two people genuinely feel heard, accepted, and emotionally pursued by each other, physical and sexual connection tends to follow. When emotional safety starts to erode, physical intimacy is usually one of the first places where that erosion shows up. When the relationship becomes emotionally unsafe How emotional safety and emotional intimacy are connected, and what happens to a marriage when that safety quietly disappears. When a relationship becomes emotionally unsafe, couples often stop bringing their real selves into conversations. Instead of openness, they begin protecting themselves. Conversations become defensive. Corrections feel like attacks. Vulnerability starts to feel dangerous. Accountability disappears because admitting hurt, fear, disappointment, or your own contribution to a problem feels too exposing. Once that happens, emotional intimacy starts draining out of the relationship. Not overnight. Quietly. People begin censoring themselves, avoiding difficult conversations, walking on eggshells, withholding affection, not out of cruelty but out of self protection, staying physically present but emotionally absent. Eventually, the relationship can shift from connecting to coexisting. Two people sharing a life, managing a household, raising children, functioning perfectly well on the surface, but not truly together in the deeper sense. One important thing needs to be said here, because this is where many couples get stuck in blame. This dynamic is rarely created by only one person. Sometimes a wife becomes defensive because she has felt unheard, dismissed, criticised, or emotionally abandoned over a long period of time. Sometimes a husband shuts down because he has found that honest expression leads to conflict, emotional escalation, or rejection. Both responses make complete sense given their individual experience. But both responses also accelerate the disconnect. Understanding how you each arrived at where you are now, without assigning blame, is often the beginning of real change. Coexisting and connecting are not the same thing The difference between coexisting and connecting in marriage, and the quiet signs that a couple has crossed from one to the other. Coexisting can look a lot like a functioning marriage from the outside. The bills are paid. The children are cared for. The house runs. Conversations happen. But they are mostly about logistics, what needs collecting, who is working late, what is for dinner. The relationship operates efficiently. What it has lost is depth. Connecting is something different. It is the moment your partner says something, and you feel genuinely seen by it. It is laughter that comes from real shared history. It is a conversation that goes somewhere unexpected and leaves you both feeling closer than you were before it started. It is touch that is affectionate rather than habitual. It is the quiet, consistent choosing of each other in the small, everyday moments. Many couples reading this will recognise the gap between those two descriptions. They will know, honestly, that their relationship has become more about coexisting than connecting. Many of them will have sensed that for a while without knowing what to do with the feeling. What I want to say to those couples is this, noticing the gap is not a failure. It is awareness. Awareness is always the beginning of something. The sex and intimacy disconnect nobody is talking about Why couples avoid the sex and intimacy conversation in marriage, and what the silence is actually costing them. I want to name something that I believe sits at the heart of why so many couples are struggling with this and not getting the support they need. We have created a culture around marriage and relationships where the conversation about sex and intimacy is either highly clinical, reserved for therapy offices, or highly sensationalised, reserved for content that is more about titillation than truth. Neither of those spaces feels safe or relevant for the majority of couples. The couple who have been married for several years, who love each other, who are not in crisis, but who have quietly noticed that their physical intimacy has become infrequent, routine, or somehow disconnected from genuine closeness, that couple has nowhere obvious to take that conversation. It does not feel bad enough for therapy. It feels too personal for a podcast. It definitely does not feel safe enough to bring up with friends. So they do not bring it up with each other either. The subject becomes quietly off limits. The silence fills with assumptions. He assumes she is not interested. She assumes he only wants the physical. Neither of them says it. Both of them feel it. The distance increases. The cost of that silence is significant. Not just to the physical relationship, but to the emotional climate of the marriage, to how safe each person feels, to how desired and pursued and genuinely known they feel by the person they chose. When that starts to erode quietly over time, it affects everything. Mood, patience, kindness, the capacity to be generous with each other in the small daily moments. The sex and intimacy disconnect in marriage is not just a bedroom problem. It is a relationship health problem. It deserves an honest, warm, genuinely useful conversation. This is exactly why I created an upcoming conversation space around this topic, because too many couples are carrying this quietly. What has become a brake in your relationship Understanding the emotional and relational brakes that quietly reduce intimacy and connection in marriage. One of the most useful frameworks I use with couples is the idea of accelerators and brakes. An accelerator is anything that helps you feel emotionally safe, desired, connected, and present with your partner. A brake is anything that quietly reduces that sense of safety or desire, even when it is not intended to. Common brakes include stress that never fully lifts, exhaustion that becomes the permanent backdrop of daily life, unresolved conflict that gets managed rather than repaired, criticism that has become the default communication style, and the accumulated weight of feeling unseen or emotionally tolerated rather than emotionally pursued. What matters about brakes is that most of them are not chosen. Nobody decides to let stress become the third person in their marriage. Nobody consciously chooses to stop being curious about their partner. Life fills up, pressure builds, and the things that used to come naturally start to require more intention than the week allows. But understanding your brakes, naming them honestly between the two of you, without blame and without defensiveness, is one of the most clarifying conversations a couple can have. Because once you know what is shutting you down, you can start to make different choices. Not perfect choices. Just more deliberate ones. Rebuilding intimacy begins with emotional honesty, not grand gestures How to rebuild emotional and physical intimacy in marriage through honest conversation, consistency, and emotional safety. I have spent enough years around this work, and inside a long marriage of my own, to know that the couples who come through the intimacy disconnect are not the ones who never struggled. They are the ones who chose not to look away from it, who decided that the discomfort of a real conversation was worth more than the comfort of quiet avoidance. Rebuilding intimacy does not begin with a romantic weekend, though those have their place. It begins with something simpler and harder, honesty. The kind that says, I have been feeling distant from you, and I miss us, without it being an accusation. The kind that creates an opening rather than a confrontation. It builds through small, consistent choices. The phone put down during a conversation. The question asked that is not about the schedule. The affection that is offered without expectation. The willingness to repair after conflict rather than letting it settle into unaddressed resentment. It deepens as emotional safety is rebuilt. Because when both partners genuinely feel that they can bring their real selves into the relationship, when vulnerability stops feeling dangerous and starts feeling like connection, the physical intimacy that so many couples are quietly grieving tends to return. Not instantly. But it returns. Your marriage is not too far gone for this. The fact that you are reading this, noticing, and thinking about it honestly means you have not stopped caring. That is the only thing that was ever actually required to begin. Where to start Practical first steps for couples experiencing a sex and intimacy disconnect who are ready to reconnect. Tonight, before the week takes over again, try one of these. Ask your partner one question that is not about the logistics of your life. Ask them what they have been thinking about lately. What they are quietly looking forward to. What has been weighing on them.Then, and this is the most important part, listen without fixing it. Or simply say the thing out loud that you have been carrying quietly. I miss feeling close to you. Six words. But those six words have opened more real conversations in marriages than most couples ever realise is possible. If you are ready to go deeper, I would love for you to join me for an honest, warm, and genuinely useful conversation about exactly this. On 3rd June, I am hosting a live webinar called ‘The Sex and Intimacy Disconnect That Nobody Talks About’. It is a safe, honest, and interactive space designed for couples who are ready to have the conversation they have been putting off. You do not need to be at breaking point to join us. You just need to care about your relationship enough to give it an evening. Free Register here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Hazel N. Williams Hazel N. Williams, Relationship Strategist & Author Hazel N. Williams is an author, speaker, relationship coach, and founder of Holding On Together, supporting couples and families through communication breakdown, emotional distance, and relationship pressure. With over 40 years of lived experience in marriage and family life, she brings a practical and relatable voice to conversations around connection, resilience, and restoration. Hazel also speaks into corporate wellbeing, helping organisations understand the hidden impact personal and relational pressure can have on focus, confidence, wellbeing, and workplace performance. She was recognised as a Tesco Inspirational Mum of the Year for her community impact work.

Written by Claire R. Silverstone-Bright, Author, Expert by Experience and Criminologist Claire Silverstone-Bright is an author, speaker and criminology researcher whose work connects lived experience with public education. She is the author of A Life Lived Chronically: Memoir of a DES Daughter and writes on DES, justice and rehabilitation. DES exposure is often spoken about as if it belongs to medical history. For many of us, it is not history at all. It is a lifelong inheritance carried in our bodies, our fertility stories, our medical records and sometimes in the silence between generations. There are some medical stories that arrive with sirens. Others move quietly, passed from mother to child, from appointment to appointment, from one unexplained symptom to the next. DES belongs to the second kind. Diethylstilbestrol, usually known as DES, was a synthetic oestrogen prescribed to pregnant women, particularly between the 1940s and 1970s, in the belief that it could help prevent miscarriage and other pregnancy complications. The tragedy is that it did not protect those pregnancies in the way women were led to believe. Instead, it became one of the clearest examples of how a drug given during pregnancy can have consequences not only for the person taking it, but for the child developing inside her. For some people, DES is a medical footnote. For others, including me, it is biography. I am a DES daughter. That means I was exposed to DES before I was born. I did not choose it, swallow it, consent to it or even know about it in the beginning. Yet it became part of the architecture of my life. What is DES? DES is the common name for diethylstilbestrol, a man made form of oestrogen. It was prescribed to millions of pregnant women around the world before researchers identified serious risks associated with exposure. The National Cancer Institute describes DES as a synthetic form of oestrogen that was prescribed to some pregnant women between about 1940 and 1971 to prevent miscarriage, premature labour and related pregnancy complications. The first public alarm bell came when DES exposure in the womb was linked to a rare cancer called clear cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina and cervix in young women. The American Cancer Society notes that this cancer remains rare, but that the risk is increased in women exposed to DES before birth. That word matters. Rare does not mean imaginary. Rare does not mean irrelevant. Rare does not mean acceptable when the risk was created by a medication given to pregnant women without proper understanding of its long term effects. What does it mean to be DES exposed? A person with DES exposure may be a DES mother, DES daughter, DES son or potentially a member of the next generation whose health questions are still being studied. A DES mother is a woman who was prescribed DES during pregnancy. A DES daughter is a woman exposed to DES in the womb. A DES son is a man exposed in the womb. There are also questions about DES grandchildren, although the science here is more complex and still developing. For DES daughters, the known concerns can include reproductive tract changes, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, premature birth, early menopause and a lifelong need to be attentive to certain cancer risks. The National Cancer Institute notes that DES daughters have increased risks of several health outcomes, including clear cell adenocarcinoma, reproductive tract abnormalities, pregnancy complications and early menopause. This does not mean every DES daughter will experience every risk. It means the exposure should be known, documented and taken seriously. That is the quiet cruelty of DES. It can make the body feel like a locked room where the key was lost before birth. Why is DES still so poorly understood? One reason DES remains hidden is that many people do not know they were exposed. Some mothers were never told what they were given. Some prescriptions were recorded under brand names. Some medical notes have disappeared. Some families never discussed pregnancy loss, fertility treatment, gynaecological symptoms or the painful private history of trying to have children. Another reason is that DES sits in an awkward place in public understanding. It is not quite remembered like thalidomide. It is not widely taught as a mainstream women’s health issue. It lives in the margins, despite having affected families across countries and generations. Even among medical professionals, awareness can vary. A woman may say “I am a DES daughter” and be met with recognition, confusion or a hurried search of the screen. That is not always the fault of an individual doctor. It is often a failure of institutional memory. But when the system forgets, patients have to become archivists of their own bodies. Why should doctors, influencers and the public care? Doctors should care because DES exposure can affect screening, diagnosis, fertility history, pregnancy risk and the interpretation of symptoms. It is not enough to treat each symptom as a lonely island. DES can be the map. Influencers should care because awareness saves people from isolation. A single post can reach someone who has spent decades thinking her health history was simply bad luck, bad nerves, bad timing or bad genes. The public should care because DES is not only a medical story. It is a trust story. It asks uncomfortable questions. What happens when medicine moves faster than evidence? What happens when women’s bodies become testing grounds? What happens when harm is discovered, but the people affected are left to find one another in fragments? DES matters because it reminds us that “the past” is not past when it is still being lived in bodies. The emotional impact of DES exposure Medical harm is often described in clinical language. Risk, incidence, abnormality, outcome. Those words are necessary. They are also incomplete. To live with DES exposure can mean living with uncertainty. It can mean wondering whether a symptom is ordinary or significant. It can mean attending intimate examinations with a history that requires explanation before care can begin. It can mean carrying fertility grief, pregnancy trauma, surgical histories, cancer anxiety or the strange loneliness of being part of a group many people have never heard of. It can also affect identity. When something happened to you before you were born, where do you place the anger? The grief? The responsibility? The story? For me, writing A Life Lived Chronically Memoir of a DES Daughter was part of answering that question. I did not want DES to remain a ghost in the notes, a shadow over symptoms, or a phrase understood only by those already carrying it. I wanted to give it language. DES is not only a women’s issue Although DES is often discussed through the experiences of mothers and daughters, it is not only a women’s issue. DES sons may also have health concerns, particularly involving reproductive and genital development. Research into the full effects across exposed populations and future generations continues. It is also not only a patient issue. It belongs in conversations about medical ethics, pharmaceutical accountability, informed consent, public health communication and gendered medicine. Every DES story is personal. The pattern is public. What should someone do if they think they were exposed? Anyone who believes they may have been exposed to DES should try, where possible, to gather family and medical history. This may include asking whether their mother was given medication during pregnancy, checking old records, or discussing the possibility of DES exposure with a GP, gynaecologist or relevant specialist. It is important not to panic. DES exposure is not a diagnosis of a particular illness. It is a risk factor and a medical history point that deserves informed care. People who know or suspect they were exposed should ask their clinician what screening or follow up is appropriate for their age, sex, symptoms and medical background. The best care begins when the exposure is not dismissed. Why I am writing about DES now I am writing about DES because too many people still do not know what it is. I am writing because some women have spent their lives being told their pain was mysterious, exaggerated or unrelated. I am writing because medical history should not be tidied away when the consequences are still unfolding. I am writing because lived experience has a role in public education. Research matters. Clinical knowledge matters. But testimony also matters. It carries the human weather of the facts. DES is not simply something that happened. It is something that happened to people. A call for recognition The first step is awareness. The second is listening. The third is ensuring that people affected by DES are met with informed care rather than blank looks, disbelief or bureaucratic fog. If you are a doctor, ask the question. If you are an influencer, share the information. If you are a DES exposed person, know that your story belongs in the room. If you are a reader encountering DES for the first time, let this be the doorway. Hidden harm does not become less real because it has been poorly remembered. It becomes more urgent. To learn more about my personal experience of DES exposure and its lifelong impact, my memoir A Life Lived Chronically Memoir of a DES Daughter explores the body, memory, family and resilience behind the medical term. It is one story, but it is part of a much larger one. That larger story still needs to be told. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Claire R. Silverstone-Bright Claire R. Silverstone-Bright, Author, Expert by Experience and Criminologist Claire Silverstone-Bright is an author, speaker and criminology researcher working at the intersection of hidden medical harm, justice and rehabilitation. Her memoir, A Life Lived Chronically: Memoir of a DES Daughter, explores the lifelong impact of DES exposure and the wider consequences of being medically harmed, misunderstood and unheard. Through her writing, public speaking and research, Claire examines how identity can be rebuilt after adversity. Her mission is to transform lived experience into public education, compassion and meaningful change.

Written by Safiya Abidali, Neuroscientist and Professional Coach Safiya Abidali is a neuroscientist and professional coach specialising in behaviour change, resilience, and emotional regulation. She takes neuroscience research to develop practical tools for sustainable habits and mental well-being. Most of us are very good at measuring what we produce. We have systems, habits, and end-of-week reviews built around tracking our own output. But very few of us have an equivalent practice for measuring what we receive- the people, the conversations, and the quiet, consistent acts of support that make the work possible in the first place. The brain was not designed for solo performance James Coan's Social Baseline Theory offers a picture of human beings that looks quite different from the one our culture tends to promote. His research shows that the brain does not treat social connection as a reward or a luxury. It treats it as the expected operating condition. We evolved to function within a group. When we are supported, physically or emotionally, the brain genuinely does not have to work as hard. Tasks that feel overwhelming alone register as more manageable when we know others are with us. The nervous system, by design, shares the load. When we try to go it alone, the brain registers it as a higher cost. More resources are required. More threat must be monitored. The result is greater vigilance, reduced cognitive flexibility, and a narrowed capacity for the kind of clear thinking our best work demands. For many high performers, this is a quiet and unexamined cost. The self sufficiency they have been rewarded for is not a neutral choice. It is a tax on their own nervous system. The invisible village theory Through my work as a neuroscientist and coach, I have come to call this the Invisible Village Theory. The village, the network of people who hold us, support us, and make our growth possible, does not disappear when we stop seeing it. It continues, quietly and consistently, in the background of everything we do. The problem is not that it vanishes. The problem is that we were never taught to look for it. The invisibility problem The village does not become invisible because people stop showing up. It becomes invisible because we were only ever taught to measure what we do, not what we receive. Consider the last significant thing you achieved. A project completed, a transition navigated, a hard season survived. Now ask honestly, "Who was in the room with you, even when they were not physically present? Whose belief in you held you on the days you doubted yourself? Whose practical help freed up the time or energy that made it possible?" Most people, when they pause with these questions, find an answer that surprises them. The support was there all along. It simply was not being counted. When we do not count it, we carry more than we need to. We interpret struggle as personal failure rather than a signal to reach for our people. The nervous system, already working hard, loses access to the very resource it was designed to rely on, not because the resource is gone, but because we stopped registering it as real. Making the village visible When the brain consciously registers social connection, it recalibrates toward safety. Stress responses ease. Cognitive capacity improves. The resources you need for your best work become more accessible. Seeing your village is not a soft practice, it is one of the most neurologically intelligent things you can do. Here is where to start. Name your village now, not at a milestone. Write the acknowledgements for the chapter of life you are currently in. Who is making this possible? The answer is rarely just you. Audit your inputs, not just your outputs. At the end of each week, ask, "Who supported me this week?" This includes practical help, emotional presence, and the people who believed in you when you forgot to believe in yourself. Tell people they are in your village. Most of us have no idea the role we play in someone else's story. A message, a call, a simple acknowledgement, it costs nothing and lands more deeply than you might expect. Receive support in real time. When someone shows up for you, pause before moving on. The brain needs a moment to encode what safety feels like, and that encoding is what makes the village visible over time. Notice where you are performing self sufficiency. There is a difference between choosing to work through something alone and performing independence because you were taught that asking for help is weakness. One is a choice. The other is a cost. The village has always been there. The people who make your growth possible, who hold you steadier than you realise, who show up in ways you have not yet learned to count, they are present, consistent, and real. The work is not to find them. It is to let yourself see them. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Safiya Abidali Safiya Abidali, Neuroscientist and Professional Coach Safiya Abidali is a neuroscientist and professional coach specialising in behaviour change, resilience, and emotional regulation. With a background in social anthropology and applied neuroscience, she bridges brain science and behaviour with lived experience. Safiya writes about motivation, uncertainty, habit formation, and mental resilience. She is the founder of Neuropath Coaching, a neuroscience-informed coaching practice.

Written by Jessica Hastings-Lesperance, Realtor®, Director of Operations, Co-Owner Fierce and epic all rolled into one, she’s an absolute rockstar. Jessica Hastings-Lesperance was raised with Real Estate™ for her entire life. She is co-owner, Marketing Visionary, Director of Operations, and realtor® at the Terri Hastings Real Estate Group/Keller Williams Realty Centres, one of the top-producing Keller Williams teams in all of Canada. The first thing I noticed about 55 Devils Glen Road wasn’t the waterfront. It was the privacy. Pulling up to the property felt like exhaling for the first time in a while. Quiet. Peaceful. Tucked away just enough to feel like the rest of the world had softened outside the trees. Then I walked inside, and the kitchen honestly stopped me in my tracks. It looked like something straight out of a Pinterest board I’d save for “someday,” or maybe for the day my daughter buys her first home and we design a kitchen together. The quartz countertops, the warmth of the space, the way everything felt elevated without trying too hard. It was beautiful, but still deeply livable. And as I ran my hand along the countertop, I caught sight of the water through the windows, just glistening softly through the trees. That moment shifted everything for me. I could instantly picture my kids running barefoot outside while the dogs chased after them. I could already imagine my teenager claiming the bunkie as his own little escape with friends, creating the kind of memories they’ll laugh about years later. The kind of summers that feel endless while you’re living them, then priceless once they’ve passed. As I walked down toward the shoreline and took a deep breath in, I knew exactly what our afternoons would look like there. Skipping rocks. Catching frogs. Muddy feet. Wet towels. Fishing conversations with my oldest out on deeper water, where somehow the best talks always happen. Then coming back just in time for a fire and sunset. That’s when it hit me. The definition of luxury is changing. More and more, I’m noticing families and grandparents stepping away from the idea that bigger always means better. People are becoming less interested in keeping up appearances and more interested in creating experiences. They want slower mornings, gardens in the sun, grandkids making a mess in the kitchen, ice cream melting too fast, sand everywhere, the dog probably stealing half the snacks, and then doing it all over again the next day. We’re entering a season where people crave presence more than perfection. Where emotional wealth matters more than status symbols. Where the most valuable homes aren’t necessarily the biggest ones. They’re the ones where life is fully felt. That’s what legacy living really is. Not perfection. Not square footage. Not impressing anyone. It’s hearing, “Do we really have to leave already?” It’s your kids falling asleep in the car before you even leave the driveway because the day exhausted them in the best possible way. It’s discovering a frog hidden inside a jacket pocket later because someone wanted to bring a piece of the adventure home without Mom noticing. Those are the stories people carry forever. After speaking with the sellers, I realised those exact moments have filled this property for years. They talked about kayaking with their daughter, grandchildren playing by the water for hours, and their son and his friends spending summers in the bunkie, laughing long after sunset. That’s why properties like 55 Devils Glen are becoming increasingly rare. Not because of the waterfront alone. Not because of the updates. Not because of the market. But because some homes hold something deeper. They hold the kind of life people are quietly longing to return to. In a world moving faster than ever, properties along Lake Huron are quietly becoming sanctuaries for families wanting to reconnect with nature, with each other, and with the moments that actually matter. Maybe that’s the new luxury after all. Not bigger homes. Just fuller lives lived inside them. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jessica Hastings Lesperance Jessica Hastings-Lesperance, Realtor®, Director of Operations, Co-Owner Fierce and epic all rolled into one, she’s an absolute rock star. Jessica Hastings-Lesperance was raised with Real Estate™ for her entire life. She is co-owner, Marketing Visionary, Director of Operations, and realtor® at the Terri Hastings Real Estate Group/Keller Williams Realty Centres, one of the top-producing Keller Williams teams in all of Canada. Jessica is an inspiring entrepreneur, real estate investor, coach, speaker, and published author. She has been featured on major media outlets, including podcasts and real estate TV talk shows, and has been published in various magazines. Recently, she was recognized as one of Canada’s Top Fitness Instructors for 2023 by Impact Magazine.