Written by Lidija Poth, Transformational Coach Lidija Poth is an AC-accredited transformational coach and founder of MyLifeCoachingHub, guiding women and leaders toward authentic living and relationship healing. With expertise in architecture, city planning, and teaching at TU Delft, she facilitates transformative retreats and coaching for lasting freedom and joy. At the end of last year, I met someone who felt familiar before the facts had arrived. We could finish each other’s sentences. When we met in person, I did not recognize him. Later, in a dream, I saw us together when we were much younger. I recognized him. I did not recognize myself. When he withdrew, the loss was out of proportion to the time we had known each other. Months followed. Deep talks. More dreams with familiar faces, flashes of having been together, a pull that cost more energy than I had to give. Life no longer felt like life. I sought help in two places that speak a different language from the one I usually trust. A dear friend guided me through pendulum sessions and a regression session. Later, I also worked with Chris Koa. Both helped me step back. To see the connection as something that had been, and was no longer. That is where the question began. What is real? Was this imagination? If I am someone who wants evidence, what do I do with a knowing that evidence cannot yet hold? The split between what I know and what I feel I live in two rooms. In one, I want research, names, mechanisms. Society is loud in that room. If you cannot measure it, it is fantasy, projection, or a wound. In the other room, something in me recognized a person before the facts had caught up. Dreams arrived. The body kept a score the mind could not file. Carl Jung did not ask us to choose. In Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, he described meaningful coincidences that are not caused in the ordinary sense, yet feel ordered.[1] He treated dreams as messages from a layer of the psyche the daytime mind does not run. That does not prove a past life. It does refuse the cheap conclusion that a charged inner event is “nothing.” Neuroscience sits beside that, not against it. Matthew Walker, in Why We Sleep, shows that dreaming helps the brain process emotion and consolidate memory. The body responds with a racing heart, a leftover ache.[2] The limbic system does not wait for a logical file. It tags an encounter as significant, and the tag can outlast the facts. On Brainz, Dreams, the Messages From the Mind, Body, and Soul holds the same tension. Mind, body, and soul may be meeting in the same image. I do not need to win the argument about where the image came from. I need to notice what it asked of me. Why the loss felt larger than the time A short meeting can still train a powerful loop. Anticipation and reward are closely tied to dopamine. The brain lights up not only when something arrives, but when it might. When the other person withdrew, the prediction failed. What followed was not only sadness. It was a drop in the system that had been organizing attention, sleep, and energy around that possibility. Helen Fisher’s work on the neurobiology of romantic love describes early intense bonding as a state that recruits reward circuits, similar in intensity to other highly motivating drives.[7] That does not make the feeling fake. It explains why a brief bond can occupy the whole nervous system. The mind says, “We barely began.” The body says, “This mattered.” Add ambiguity, and the cost rises. Pauline Boss, in Ambiguous Loss, names the grief that has no clear ending. The person is gone from the daily world and still present in the inner one.[3] There is no ritual for “we barely began, and something ancient seemed to end.” Without a clear ending, the brain keeps scanning. That is why analysis exhausted me. The mind wanted a verdict. The nervous system wanted safety. The body that would not let the story go Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory is useful here, not as a dismissal of the spiritual, but as a map of cost.[4] A bond that keeps the body in a state of search, waiting for a message, replaying a dream, and bracing for contact will drain a life, however beautiful the story. Chronic activation of the stress response raises cortisol, narrows attention, and makes rest feel impossible. Distance was not a betrayal of the feeling. It was how I stayed in my own life. Dreams with familiar faces fit this picture. The brain rehearses what is unfinished. Walker’s research and clinical work on trauma, including Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, both point to the same fact. Unfinished emotional material returns in image and sensation until the system is given another way to complete it.[2][8] Looking from a distance was that other way. Not denial. Completion. In the dream, I recognized him and not myself. That was already the lesson, arriving before I was ready to take it. Looking at yourself from a distance and what the mirror reveals From a distance, the other person became less the subject. I did. The connection worked as a mirror. It showed a woman who could feel deeply, attach quickly, and lose herself in the charge. It also showed who I am when I stop merging: free, loving, determined, dancing through life, simply herself. Kristin Neff’s research on self-compassion matters in this exact place. Self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness reduce the shame of “I should have known better” and support the systems that help us regulate rather than spiral.[5] The lesson was not to become less sensitive. It was to love the sensitive one enough to let the story go. Jung would call this a meeting with a figure who carries what is not yet lived. Whether that figure is memory, archetype, or a real person with an uncanny fit, the psychological task is the same. Take back the projection and keep the gold.[1] The gold was not the reunion. The gold was the clearer sight of who I am. What I actually learned Looking back, the teaching was not about the other person. It was about me. I had to let go. Not as a spiritual slogan, and not as indifference. As a decision to stop feeding a bond that was costing me my life, the dreams, the scanning, the energy that no longer belonged to me. Letting go did not make the connection unreal. It made my days mine again. Each replay is another training trial for a system that was already exhausted. Stopping the feed was how the nervous system could settle. I had to love myself more. Again. The mirror had shown how quickly I can merge, how deeply I can feel, how easily I can leave myself for a charge that feels ancient. Self-love, here, was not a mood. It was the choice to stay with the woman who remained when the story ended: free, loving, determined, dancing through life, simply herself. The dream in which I did not recognize myself was the first clear signal. I had left the frame. The sessions with my friend and the work with Chris Koa did not give me a verdict about the other person. They gave me distance from the charge. From that distance, I could choose again: to stop feeding the bond and to love the woman who remained. Neff’s work names this cleanly. Self-kindness makes it possible to hold the ache without turning it into a reason to abandon yourself.[5] The more I loved that self, the easier the letting go became. The two lessons were one lesson. Everything else followed from that. Observe, do not analyze. Analysis kept the bond alive. Observation returned me to the day, where life can move again. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow describes that shift. Self-consciousness drops, and the present becomes usable.[6] Go with what is, not with what might have been. Synchronicity, if it is real, does not require us to force the ending. On Brainz, The Real Secret Behind Synchronicity and The Science Behind the Soul Work names detachment as mastery, not passivity. Dare to feel. Feeling was the door in and the door out. Numbing would have kept the bond in the body. Naming sensations–tightness, ache, heat–is how the system updates. Trust that this, too, is held. Not a guarantee about the other person. A trust that I would still be here and that I would be well. Now it sounds like a memory. Something that was. Something that formed me. A mirror, not a destiny. What it formed is simple: a woman who can let go and who loves herself more for having done it. And you? What have you had to let go of to come back to yourself? Where are you being asked to love yourself more, not in theory, but in the choice you make today? You do not have to decide whether the connection was imagination, memory, or love. You do have to decide whether it still gets to run your life. I am still the woman who wants evidence. I am also the woman who felt it. Both can be true. From a distance, what remains is not the other person. What remains is me, having let go and loving myself more. Footage by Michelle Muus Fotografie at Suitehotel Pincoffs, made possible by the PUT-IT-ON platform. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Lidija Poth Lidija Poth, Transformational Coach Lidija Poth is a transformational coach with an OTHM Level 7 qualification and accreditation from the Association for Coaching (AC) United Kingdom. She is the founder of MyLifeCoachingHub. With two decades shaping urban environments as an architect, city planner, and educator/mentor at TU Delft, she now channels that strategic insight into empowering individuals, executives, high-intelligence professionals, and those recovering from toxic dynamics. Her co-creative approach builds deep trust to unlock personal freedom, authentic leadership, and joy. Through 1:1 coaching, programs, and immersive retreats in Bali and Croatia, she guides clients to reconnect with their true selves and thrive sustainably. Her mission is to ensure no one is left behind in their journey to becoming their best, most aligned version. References: [1] Jung, C. G. (2010). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1952.) [2] Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. Scribner. [3] Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press. [4] Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton. [5] Neff, K. D. (2011). Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. William Morrow. [6] Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row. [7] Fisher, H. (2004). Why we love: The nature and chemistry of romantic love. Henry Holt. [8] Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Written by Juna Ting-Wei Chang, Forest Therapy Guide Juna Ting-Wei Chang is a forest therapy guide and founder of Shinrin-Yoku Taiwan, specialising in evidence-based forest therapy and Shinrin-yoku. She supports individuals and organisations in slowing down and gently returning their attention to themselves and the more-than-human world through nature. Why your brain works differently the moment you step under the trees, and what cortisol, attention, an ancient love of living things, a Japanese village landscape, and the threshold between worlds have to do with it. Cross the first hundred meters of a forest trail and something quietly shifts. Not in the trees, but in you. Breathing slows, the gaze softens, and the mental tabs you’ve held open all day start closing on their own. Participants often ask me the same question: Why does my brain feel so different out here? It deserves a real answer. In Relational Forest Therapy™, the approach I practice through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT), we say that the forest is the therapist and guides open the door. But a door only matters if something real waits on the other side. So let’s look at what science, and a few older ideas, say is waiting there. Your attention is tired, the forest is built to rest it Psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan called the problem directed attention fatigue. Every notification you ignore, and every decision you make, asks your brain to suppress distractions and stay on task. That effortful focus is a limited resource, and modern life drains it all day long. Their Attention Restoration Theory proposes that natural settings let it recharge because they hold our attention gently and without effort. They named this soft fascination: moving leaves, shifting light, running water, birdsong. Things worth noticing that demand nothing back. A city street or a screen does the opposite, grabbing your attention and refusing to let go. The Kaplans also described what makes a place restorative: a sense of being away, to the extent that it feels like a whole world, gentle fascination, and compatibility with what you need. A forest walk checks all four. Researchers still debate how precisely the theory can be tested, but studies have repeatedly found that people perform better on cognitive tasks after time in nature. Your body hears it first: The cortisol story Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone, and it’s a useful window into what a forest does to you. In field experiments across 24 forests in Japan, researchers sent 280 young adults to walk in forest and city settings. The forest groups showed lower cortisol, slower pulse, and lower blood pressure, along with more parasympathetic activity (your rest and recover mode) and less sympathetic activity (your fight-or-flight mode). To be fair, the evidence isn’t perfectly uniform. Some studies find weaker effects on cortisol or blood pressure. But reviews and meta-analyses keep pointing in the same direction: lower stress markers, a calmer heart rate, and less tension, anxiety, and low mood after forest bathing. Your mind follows: The loop loosens Rumination is the mental replay button: the same worries, the same self-criticism, round and round. In a 2015 Stanford study, 38 adults took a 90-minute walk in either a natural setting or beside a busy road. Only the nature walkers reported less rumination, and their brain scans showed reduced activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, a region linked to that kind of negative self-focused thinking. Why does it work? Three older ideas Biophilia. In his 1984 book Biophilia, biologist E. O. Wilson popularized the idea that humans carry an innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. We spent nearly all of our history inside living systems, and cities are a blink in evolutionary time. Honesty matters here: biophilia remains a hypothesis, and Wilson himself said hard evidence was still early. But whether the pull is inherited, learned, or both, most of us feel it. Relational Forest Therapy takes the next step, from affinity to relationship: a two-way exchange rather than a one-way pull. Satoyama. In Japanese, sato means village and yama means hill or forest. Satoyama describes a mosaic of woodland, farmland, ponds, and grassland where people and nature shape each other over generations. Villagers once coppiced trees and gathered fallen leaves for the fields, and in return, the landscape gave food, fuel, and shelter. Satoyama landscapes cover nearly 40% of Japan. I find it a helpful picture of what we invite on a walk: not the forest as scenery, and not as wilderness we only visit, but as a partner in a reciprocal relationship. The liminal world. Liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. In 1909, anthropologist Arnold van Gennep described rites of passage in three phases: separation, a middle phase, and return. Victor Turner later called that middle phase “betwixt and between”: you’re no longer who you were, and not yet who you’re becoming. A forest walk borrows that shape. You cross a threshold, leave your roles and schedules behind, and enter a space where the usual rules loosen. It’s why a guide’s work is to open a door. A threshold is where the journey inward begins. What shifts in the body Stress hormones settle: lower cortisol compared with city environments. The heart calms: slower pulse and lower blood pressure. The nervous system rebalances: more rest and recovery activity, less fight-or-flight. Immune support (emerging): early research links tree compounds called phytoncides to higher natural killer cell activity. What shifts in the mind Attention restores: effortful focus rests while soft fascination takes over. Rumination quiets: fewer looping, self-critical thoughts. Tension and low mood ease: lower anxiety and heaviness after time in the forest. Belonging returns: a felt sense of kinship with the living world and a new perspective on your own life. The trip within Nothing about this is magic, and that’s what I love about it. Attention restored. Stress chemistry settling. Loops of thought loosening. An old affinity remembered, a reciprocal relationship offered, a threshold crossed. We do not hand you a new brain. We invite you to notice what yours was built for, and the forest does the rest. If you’re ready to embark, the door is open. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Juna Ting-Wei Chang Juna Ting-Wei Chang, Forest Therapy Guide Juna Ting-Wei Chang is a forest therapy guide and founder of Shinrin-Yoku Taiwan, now part of Green Shower. She is the first Taiwanese guide certified by the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) and also holds the Taiwan Forest Therapist Certificate. With a background in languages, cross-cultural experience, and landscape and recreation management, Juna brings science, tradition, and lived experience together in a warm, grounded way. Her work supports individuals, organisations, and international groups in cultivating emotional resilience, presence, and sustainable wellbeing through nature-based practices. References: Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., Hahn, K. S., Daily, G. C., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(28), 8567–8572. Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press Park, B. J., Tsunetsugu, Y., Kasetani, T., Kagawa, T., & Miyazaki, Y. (2010). The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing): Evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, 15(1), 18–26. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Aldine Publishing. Van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage (M. B. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1909). Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Harvard University Press.

Written by Dan King, Spiritual Conduit & Medium, Author, Speaker, & Coach Dan King is an international speaker, medium, and author who has been intuitively guiding people toward their greatest lives for nearly two decades. Known as the "Rated-R Avatar," he merges spiritual insight with an unapologetic, contemporary edge to deliver deeply transformative, life-altering experiences. If you know me, you know I quite enjoy calling out what I like to call “spiritual bullshit” because, well, in this day and (new) age, there are mounds of it. There is now, more than ever, a plethora of misleading metaphysical teachings not only diverting people off their paths but also straight into the ditch of unconsciousness and ego-based living, all while being prettily packaged as divine fact. From the manifestation myth to the real “secret” of how the “Law of Attraction” has been presented to us in a mainstream manner so far from accuracy that it’s cruel, to one of my personal favorites, the teaching that if something “feels good,” it is, and we should act on it. I mean, I’m sure getting high on meth feels great for a meth user, right? Meanwhile, I’m quite confident that Stevie Wonder could see there could be no benefit to using meth. There are many nuggets of spiritual guidance nudging us anywhere but towards a higher way of living. The make-believe of mystical misinformation that I will be putting on blast in this article is the “my truth” movement. You know, the seemingly Soul-permitting act of speaking “your truth” at all costs under the guise of self-empowerment and honoring one’s divine self. Don’t get me wrong. Authentic expression is a good thing and is something we all should allow for ourselves and each other, in a respectful manner, of course. The problem is, just because it’s “your truth” or “my truth” doesn’t in the slightest mean that it is the truth. Although all human beings’ feelings are valid, just because we feel something doesn’t make it true. As much as we’re allowed to feel whatever we feel, it doesn’t make those feelings correct based on the reality of any given situation. No, perception is most certainly not necessarily reality. Like our feelings, just because we perceive something to be a certain way doesn’t mean it actually is that way. Every single one of us perceives the external world through the filter of our internal worlds, which are dictated by our past experiences and conditioning at the hands of those experiences and the influential people in our lives. As Anaïs Nin notably said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” So what’s the big deal if we just enable each other to speak “our” respective truths confidently? It’s not a big deal at all, really, provided we’re consciously aware of the fact that it doesn’t mean it’s the actual fucking truth. The issue arises when “your” or “my” truth is confused with the truth, which can only cause us to remain stuck in levels of unconsciousness that bring us anywhere but the truth and, therefore, enable us to continue living a lie–a lie that may easily be keeping us from true healing, freedom, and a level of authenticity required to truly live the life our Soul has incarnated to experience. The “my truth” movement is too often nothing but an egoic justification for one’s often trauma-fueled feelings, and if one is living from ego, then we sure as shit are not living from the Soul. If we’re not living from the Soul, we sure as shit aren’t living from the truth. If we’re not living the Truth, we’re barely living at all. That's a big fucking deal. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dan King Dan King, Spiritual Conduit & Medium, Author, Speaker & Coach A pioneer of “spirituality with an edge” and dubbed the “Rated-R Avatar”, Dan has an unapologetic, controversial, and contemporary delivery that oozes authenticity, commands attention, and ultimately transforms the lives of those who experience his work. He has been called a “revolutionary force in the conscious living movement” and a “spiritual rock star”, as his fresh and brash approach to Life and spirituality merges inspiration, enlightenment, and entertainment while Dan reveals the answers to life’s big questions.

Written by Janie Terrazas, The Mindfulness Coach Janie Terrazas is a Mindfulness Coach and the creator of PazMesa. This self-mastery guide helps you access inner peace, joy, vitality, and prosperity through mindful living and unconditional love. There is a profound difference between being stimulated, being entertained, being gratified, and being truly alive. We live in a world overflowing with stimulation yet starving for meaningful connection. Entertainment, convenience, information, and instant gratification are constantly within reach. Yet many of us feel emotionally exhausted, disconnected from ourselves, and uncertain about what gives life meaning. How can we have so much available to us and still feel so empty within? Perhaps because we have confused pleasure with fulfillment, stimulation with vitality, performing for approval with living authentically, attention with connection, and existing with truly living. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, explored our need for purpose and the emptiness that can arise when life feels meaningless. His philosophy invites us to consider an uncomfortable truth: "When meaning feels absent, pleasure can become a distraction rather than a source of genuine nourishment. We may spend years avoiding the inner world that could help us understand what we truly need." The pleasure trap: When feeling good replaces being well The path back to aliveness begins when we become curious about what our discomfort is asking us to notice, rather than automatically reaching for an escape. Pleasure is not the enemy. Joy, sensuality, play, adventure, and enjoyment enrich life. The important distinction is whether we choose them freely or compulsively pursue them to avoid discomfort. We feel lonely, so we seek attention. Anxious, so we scroll. Inadequate, so we chase validation. Overwhelmed, so we fill every quiet moment with activity. Sometimes we seek purchases, entertainment, or gratification to escape feelings we have not learned to face. The behavior alone does not reveal the problem. The emotional need driving it often tells a deeper story: Is this choice enriching my life, or helping me avoid something I need to face? The nervous system can become accustomed to constant stimulation Our brains naturally respond to novelty, rewards, and attention-grabbing stimuli. Dopamine plays an important role in motivation, learning, and reward-seeking. But repeated engagement with highly stimulating experiences can also reinforce habits that make it difficult to disengage. When we repeatedly reach for distraction in response to discomfort, we may become less practiced at sitting with ourselves. Silence can feel uncomfortable, stillness can feel boring, and introspection can feel threatening. Meaningful REALationships require patience, vulnerability, and presence, qualities that can be harder to practice when immediate rewards dominate our attention. This does not mean pleasure is inherently addictive or that our nervous systems are damaged. It means repeated habits can become easier to repeat, while situations we continually avoid remain difficult to navigate. PazMesa emphasizes nervous system regulation, emotional processing, and intentional attention training, practices that help us remain present with ourselves. The difference between temporary gratification and genuine fulfillment Gratification asks: "What can make me feel good right now?" Fulfillment asks: "What makes my life meaningful, nourishing, and worth living?" Gratification may arrive instantly. Fulfillment grows through actions aligned with our values, genuine intimacy, contribution, and caring for ourselves and others. A meaningful life does not require constant happiness. Some of its most meaningful moments involve uncertainty, vulnerability, effort, and grief: Raising a child. Caring for a loved one. Healing a painful wound. Building a healthy partnership. Standing up for what is right. Learning to take accountability for the harm we have caused. Choosing integrity when dishonesty would be easier. These acts of love, courage, and integrity may not always feel pleasurable, but they can give life depth. Pleasure makes moments enjoyable, while meaning helps make a life worthwhile. We need not choose one over the other. Are you living consciously or simply reacting to life? Autopilot can keep us busy without keeping us engaged. We check our phones, rush through responsibilities, react to stress, and repeat, sometimes barely noticing the day we have lived. We may function, produce, and consume without asking: Am I actually experiencing my life, or merely getting through it? Our breath, senses, capacity to love, creativity, connection with nature, and relationships with others invite us back into direct experience. They offer something constant stimulation cannot guarantee: Presence. The ability to notice and participate in the life unfolding right now. The PazMesa reorientation: From escapism to embodiment PazMesa invites us to stop treating our inner world as something to escape and to become loving guardians of our own lives. Self-mastery is not about controlling every thought, suppressing emotion, eliminating pleasure, or shaming our coping patterns. It is about developing awareness, emotional intelligence, nervous system flexibility, and enough inner safety to choose consciously. Through the PazMesa S.N.A.P. Protocol, we begin interrupting our automatic patterns: S: Stop and take a breath. Pause before reacting or reaching for distraction or gratification. Breathe in gently through your nose, then exhale slowly through your mouth, allowing your exhale to be slightly longer than your inhale. N: Notice and name. What am I feeling? What am I thinking? What is happening in my body? What am I actually needing right now? A: Accept and allow. Make room for the experience without judgment, suppression, or self-invalidation. Discomfort is information, not necessarily an emergency. P: Proceed to respond mindfully. Choose what genuinely supports your health, values, relationships, and well-being. Sometimes the mindful choice is rest or play. Sometimes it is asking for support, having a difficult conversation, setting a boundary, or addressing an unresolved wound. Sometimes it is simply enjoying pleasure without guilt. The goal is not deprivation. The goal is liberation from unconscious dependency on anything we use to avoid ourselves. Returning to the fullness of being alive At the heart of PazMesa is restoring harmony among mind, body, heart, and soul. When we feel fragmented, our thoughts, physical signals, emotions, and sense of purpose may pull us in different directions. Recognizing these competing signals gives us an opportunity to respond with greater care and intention. We may discover that peace does not require perfect circumstances, and joy does not always need to be loud. Rather than chasing the next thrill, we can become more fully engaged in the life unfolding before us. The question is not whether you are breathing, it is whether you are truly living A full calendar can coexist with loneliness. Hundreds of online connections may not provide intimacy. Financial success may not deliver meaning. Constant entertainment may leave little room for genuine joy. The question becomes: What helps us reconnect with the life we are actually living? This is why the PazMesa journey begins with a radical invitation: Stop outsourcing your aliveness. Learn to inhabit your body. Become curious about your inner world. Examine the beliefs and conditioning that shape your reality. Heal what you can. Accept responsibility for what you create. Cultivate authentic, meaningful connections. Practice unconditional love without abandoning discernment or healthy boundaries. Make room for wonder, beauty, pleasure, creativity, and play. Live with greater reverence for yourself, others, nature, and existence itself. Because the ultimate goal is not to become a human being who never feels pain and suffering. It is to become a human being who knows how to remain connected to their higher self, even when life is challenging and uncomfortable. We are capable of more than consuming, performing, producing, and surviving. We can participate consciously in life with wisdom, vitality, compassionate curiosity, and reverence. Are you filling your days with distractions to avoid feeling empty, or cultivating a life deeply connected to meaning? Aliveness is not measured by how much stimulation we consume, but by how fully we participate in life with peace, presence, and purpose. This is the PazMesa Effect. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Janie Terrazas Janie Terrazas, The Mindfulness Coach Janie Terrazas, known as The Mindfulness Coach, transformed her media career into a life-coaching and wellness-advocacy mission after a spiritual awakening in 2011. As the creator of the PazMesa self-mastery program and the force behind Rise Above TV, she fosters balance and mindfulness in others. Her triumphs and trials deeply shape her coaching as she helps clients address stress and trauma and build safe relationships. Janie combines spiritual depth with actionable strategies to guide individuals toward a joyful, vital life. Her coaching transcends conventional methods, empowering clients to find peace and purpose within. Janie's empathetic and innovative approaches offer a safe roadmap for self-discovery and authentic living and loving.

Written by Yvonne Cote, Founder of There Is an Angel for That™ Yvonne Cote is a spiritual mentor, intuitive guide, and the founder of There Is an Angel for That™, a holistic guidance platform. She is a co-author of the international bestselling books "My Mess is My Message II" and "Learning Through Pain" and the creator of Celestial Soul Mastery, her flagship transformation journey. Have you ever felt a quiet nudge to reach out to someone or pay attention to something you couldn’t explain? Many of us brush these moments aside as coincidence or imagination. Yet they may be among the gentle ways your Angel reaches you. Discover five messages your Guardian Angel may be offering and simple ways to begin noticing that guidance in everyday life. Why does your angel whisper? I believe your Guardian Angel is with you throughout your life, offering love, encouragement, and guidance while honouring your freedom to choose. That guidance often arrives quietly: a nudge, a hunch, a flash of inspiration, or a thought that draws your attention back to something. A whisper invites you to pause and listen. You have room to consider what you sense and decide how to respond. With practice, those small moments can help you become more familiar with your own inner knowing. Research offers an interesting perspective on intuition. A study published in Psychological Science found that emotional information presented outside conscious awareness could improve participants’ accuracy and confidence in a laboratory decision task. The study explored unconscious emotional processing rather than Angelic communication. In my own spiritual practice, I see intuition as one of the ways we can become receptive to guidance. One morning, while I was getting ready for my day, a friend I hadn’t spoken to in a while kept coming to mind. There was no particular reason for it, and at first I told myself I would reach out later. But even as I moved on to other things, I kept thinking about her. Finally, I picked up my phone and sent a simple message: “You’ve been on my mind this morning. How are you?” When she replied, she shared that she was going through a difficult time and had been feeling quite alone. We ended up having a conversation we might never have had if I’d waited until I had more time. I couldn’t solve everything she was facing, but I could listen. Afterward, I felt grateful I had paid attention. That is what an Angelic nudge feels like to me. In the moment, it can be so ordinary that you almost overlook it. Sometimes you only recognize its meaning after you respond. 5 messages your angel may be sending 1. You’re right on time So many of the people I work with feel behind in their careers, in love, or in the dreams they once had for themselves. If that sounds familiar, your Guardian Angel may be reminding you that your life does not have to follow someone else’s timetable. A delay can be an opportunity to gather strength, learn something important, or reconsider what you truly want. If repeating numbers catch your attention on a clock or receipt, you might use that moment to pause and ask: “What is one step I can take from where I am today?” Trusting your timing can include taking action. 2. You are deeply loved On a difficult day, it can be easy to forget how much you matter. I believe your Guardian Angel’s message of love can reach you through small, everyday moments: a song that brings comfort, a kind word, a pet curling up beside you, or a memory that makes you feel close to someone you love. I call these moments Angel Winks. Their meaning is personal. Something another person might pass by can touch your heart because of what it means to you. Give yourself a moment to receive that comfort. 3. Trust the nudge A nudge might be the gentle feeling to call a friend, slow down, explore an opportunity, or say no to something that doesn’t feel right. It can be easy to dismiss these impressions before giving them any attention. You don’t have to act on every feeling. Begin by noticing it. What were you thinking about when it arrived? Is there a small, sensible action you could take? Following a simple nudge, such as checking in on someone, gives you an opportunity to learn from what happens next. Related article: Listen to your gut. Trust your intuition. Be confident! 4. Your light matters It is easy to believe that your small kindnesses don’t make much difference. Yet an encouraging word can help someone try again. Sharing something you have learned can give another person a starting point. Being willing to listen can help someone feel seen. Your Guardian Angel may be encouraging you to recognize the value of what you already offer. If you have been holding back an idea or waiting until you feel more confident, consider one small way to share it. You may never know the full effect of your kindness, but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful. 5. You can receive support, too Many of us are wonderful at giving help and far less comfortable accepting it. Your Guardian Angel may be encouraging you to let others in, ask for what you need, and allow yourself to be cared for. There was a week when several things I was trying to get done all seemed to need my attention at once. A friend called, and when she asked how I was, I gave my usual answer: “I’m good. Just busy.” But as we talked, I admitted I was feeling overwhelmed. She asked, “Is there anything I can take off your plate?” I immediately started to say no. Then I caught myself. There was something she could help with, but asking felt uncomfortable. I said yes, and we worked out what she could do. Afterward, I noticed how relieved I felt. There was less to get done, and I had allowed someone to see that I needed help. It made me think about how often we ask our Angels for support, then struggle to accept it when it comes through another person. That experience reminded me to leave room for my prayers to be answered in practical, ordinary ways. Is this message for you? Not every passing thought needs to be interpreted as a message. In my experience, Angelic guidance feels compassionate and supportive. It invites reflection and leaves room for your own judgment. When something catches your attention, write down what happened, how you felt, and what it meant to you. Consider it alongside the practical circumstances of your life. A feeling of peace or a repeating thought can be worth exploring without needing to treat it as proof or an instruction. Over time, this practice can help you recognize what feels meaningful and understand how your intuition speaks to you. You can begin with curiosity and allow your understanding to grow through experience. Related article: Intuition or anxiety? How to trust your inner guidance Hear your angel’s message Perhaps one of these five messages speaks to something you’re experiencing right now. If you would like to explore the guidance your Angels have for you, I’d love to welcome you to a personal Angel Message Reading. Through an Angel Tarot reading using four cards, we explore the messages, Archangels, and numerology within your cards and how they relate to your life. It’s an opportunity to receive encouragement, reflect on your questions, and consider your next steps. Readings take place on Zoom, so you can join from wherever you are. If this speaks to you, book your Angel Message Reading. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Yvonne Cote Yvonne Cote, Founder of There Is an Angel for That™ Yvonne Cote is a spiritual mentor, intuitive guide, and the founder of There Is an Angel for That™, a holistic guidance platform. She is a co-author of the international bestselling books "My Mess is My Message II" and "Learning Through Pain" and the creator of Celestial Soul Mastery, her flagship transformation journey. Through her teaching and private mentorship, she helps sensitive, intuitive women reconnect with their inner wisdom and navigate life with greater clarity and confidence. Known for her warm, grounded approach, she blends spirituality, energy work, and practical personal development to help others trust themselves and reclaim their inner authority.

Written by Shelly O'Connell, Flirting Coach for Women Shelly O’Connell is redefining flirting by challenging outdated assumptions with fun, insightful perspectives. She is a flirting coach for women and the author of the book “Finding Your Flirt.” Through her coaching, writing, and programs, she helps women build confidence, express interest authentically, and create genuine connections without playing games. When was the last time you played just for the sake of playing? Not because it was productive. Not because it accomplished something. Not because it checked a box on your list of things to do. Simply because it was fun? For many women, play gets squeezed out of life somewhere along the way. Responsibilities take over. Careers become demanding. Relationships require attention. Families need care. Somewhere between accomplishing everything we're supposed to accomplish, we can forget what it feels like to simply enjoy ourselves. But play isn't frivolous. It isn't something you have to earn after you've finished everything else. Play is part of being fully alive. When you bring more play into your life, you may discover it changes much more than your mood. It can change the way you connect, flirt, communicate, and experience yourself. Play isn't just for children Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that adulthood meant becoming serious. We learned to be responsible. Productive. Appropriate. Accomplished. We became very good at getting things done. But play asks something completely different of us. Play asks us to be curious. To experiment. To laugh. To follow an impulse. To try something without knowing exactly where it will lead. That can feel surprisingly uncomfortable when you've spent years being in control. That's precisely why play can be so powerful. It gives you permission to experience life instead of constantly managing it. Play brings you into the present When you're genuinely playing, you're usually not thinking five steps ahead. You're not analyzing whether you're doing it correctly. You're not worrying about what the outcome will be. You're simply engaged in what is happening right now. That same quality of presence is at the heart of authentic flirting. Flirting isn't about delivering the perfect line or following a formula. It's about noticing. Responding. Connecting. Allowing curiosity and warmth to guide the interaction. Play creates that same openness. You aren't trying to control the moment. You're participating in it. Flirting is a form of play This is one of the reasons I believe flirting has been misunderstood. We often think of flirting as something serious. Something connected to dating, seduction, or getting someone's attention. But flirting can simply be playful connection. A smile. A teasing comment. A lingering look. A genuine compliment. A little laughter. A moment of shared amusement. None of these have to lead anywhere. That's part of the fun. When flirting becomes an invitation to play rather than a strategy for getting someone to choose you, the pressure changes completely. You can enjoy the interaction without needing to know its outcome. Play makes room for confidence Confidence isn't always about knowing exactly what to say or feeling completely fearless. Sometimes confidence is being willing to experiment. You smile even though you're not sure what will happen. You make eye contact. You start a conversation. You allow yourself to be a little silly. You laugh at yourself. You express interest without demanding a particular response. Every one of those moments gives you an opportunity to discover something important: you can trust yourself. You don't need every interaction to go perfectly in order to be confident. You simply need to know that you can participate, respond, adjust, and keep going. What happens when you stop taking everything so seriously? There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from lightening up. You stop turning every interaction into a test. You stop deciding that every attractive person you meet has to become something. You stop interpreting every glance or text as a sign that needs to be decoded. Instead, you become curious. What happens if I smile? What happens if I flirt a little? What happens if I let myself have fun? That curiosity can change the entire dating experience. You're no longer trying to predict the ending. You're enjoying the story as it unfolds. Play helps you reconnect with yourself Play isn't only about how you interact with other people. It can also reconnect you with parts of yourself that may have become buried under responsibility. Maybe you used to dance. Maybe you loved dressing up. Maybe you laughed more easily. Maybe you were spontaneous. Maybe you tried things simply because they sounded interesting. Maybe you weren't so concerned with whether you looked foolish. Those parts of you aren't necessarily gone. They may simply need an invitation to come back out. Flirting can be one of those invitations. When you flirt, you give yourself permission to be expressive, curious, sensual, playful, and alive. You remember that you're more than your responsibilities. Play creates connection Think about the people you feel most comfortable around. Often, they're the people with whom you can laugh. You don't have to carefully manage every interaction. You can tease each other. You can be spontaneous. You can share a ridiculous observation. You can laugh at something that makes no sense to anyone else. That's connection. Play creates a shared experience. Shared experiences create opportunities for intimacy. You don't always have to have a deep conversation to create a meaningful connection. Sometimes you simply need to enjoy something together. A laugh can be a connection. A smile can be a connection. A playful moment can be a connection. You don't have to be good at it One of the beautiful things about play is that it doesn't have to be done perfectly. In fact, perfection can ruin it. If you're worried about looking silly, you may never dance. If you're worried about saying the wrong thing, you may never flirt. If you're worried about rejection, you may never initiate. Play asks you to loosen your grip. Try something. See what happens. Adjust. Laugh. Try again. That mindset is incredibly freeing in dating because it allows you to stop treating every interaction like a reflection of your worth. Sometimes a flirt lands. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes there is chemistry. Sometimes there isn't. That's information, not failure. Play can make you more magnetic There is something naturally attractive about someone who enjoys herself. She's engaged with life. She's curious. She's expressive. She's willing to laugh. She isn't constantly monitoring how she's being perceived. She's not waiting for someone else to make her life interesting. She's already participating in it. That kind of energy is contagious. It doesn't come from trying to appear magnetic. It comes from actually being engaged with your own life. This is why I encourage women to think about flirting differently. Your goal isn't simply to attract someone else. Your goal is to reconnect with your own sense of aliveness. What if play became part of your everyday life? You don't have to wait for a date to practice play. Play with your morning coffee. Play with your outfit. Play with music. Play with your friends. Play with your environment. Make eye contact with someone who catches your attention. Give a genuine compliment. Try something new. Take a different route. Dance in your kitchen. Laugh more. Be curious about people. Notice what makes you smile. The more comfortable you become with play, the more naturally playful energy can show up in your relationships. When you bring that energy into flirting, it becomes less of a technique and more of an expression of who you already are. Play doesn't mean losing your boundaries Being playful doesn't mean being careless. You can be playful and still have strong boundaries. You can flirt without giving someone access to you. You can express interest without making promises. You can enjoy attention without owing anyone anything. You can change your mind. You can say no. You can walk away. In fact, authentic play becomes easier when you feel safe enough to choose your boundaries. You're not performing. You're exploring. You're always allowed to decide what feels good to you. Your inner flirt loves to play I often talk about finding your flirt because I believe your flirt is more than the woman who attracts someone else. She's the part of you that is awake. Curious. Playful. Expressive. Connected. She's the woman who notices the little things. She laughs. She takes chances. She allows herself to enjoy attention. She doesn't need everything to have a purpose. She understands that pleasure and joy aren't rewards for being productive. They're part of a full life. Sometimes finding your flirt simply means giving yourself permission to play again. Never underestimate what play can change Play can change the way you enter a room. It can change the way you talk to someone. It can change how you experience your own body. It can change how you respond to attention. It can change how willing you are to take a social risk. Perhaps most importantly, it can change how you experience yourself. Instead of asking, How can I make someone like me? you begin asking, What would be fun right now? That is a very different question. Sometimes a very powerful one. This is where flirting becomes more than dating When you reclaim play, flirting stops being something you do only when you're looking for a relationship. It becomes part of how you engage with life. You notice beauty. You enjoy connection. You express yourself. You allow yourself to be seen. You laugh. You become more present. You become more willing to follow curiosity. That energy can ripple into every area of your life. Because play isn't the opposite of confidence. Play can be a pathway to confidence. It reminds you that you don't have to know exactly what you're doing to enjoy the experience. Let yourself have more fun You don't have to overhaul your life to bring more play into it. Start small. Smile at someone because you feel like it. Put on music and dance. Wear something that makes you feel fabulous. Tell a friend the silly thought you would normally keep to yourself. Make eye contact. Laugh. Try something new. Flirt with life. Notice what happens. You may discover that the playful woman you've been looking for isn't someone you need to become. She's someone you simply need to give permission to come out and play. “Play isn't a distraction from life. It's one of the ways we experience it.” If you're ready to reconnect with your playful energy, build authentic confidence, and discover how flirting can help you create more fun, connection, and joy, explore my flirting coaching options at Shelly O’Connell, Flirting Coach for Women. You don't have to figure it all out alone. Let's bring your flirt and more fun back into your life. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Shelly O'Connell Shelly O'Connell, Flirting Coach for Women Shelly O’Connell is a dynamic innovator offering a fresh perspective on what flirting truly is at its heart: an authentic expression of confidence, connection, and joy. As a flirting coach for women and the author of Finding Your Flirt, she blends insight, humor, and real-world experience to help women feel at ease expressing interest. Her work empowers women to enjoy dating again, create genuine connections, and attract high-quality partners without playing games. Through her writing and coaching, Shelly invites women to release limiting patriarchal rules and rediscover flirting as a natural, learnable, and enjoyable skill.

Written by Justin Matley, Professional Coach Justin Matley is a professional development coach and consultant who has spent over two award-winning decades working with individuals, Fortune 500 companies, and everyone in between in multiple roles. Through Matley Coaching, he helps individuals and organizations strengthen communication, improve time management, and develop practical strategies for personal and professional growth. We’re all dealt a messy hand one way or the other. Some are born with it, handed the cards at birth. Some acquire it over time, through a tragedy, a mistake, or perhaps a very rational judgement that took on a life of its own. Like a shifty poker game, we are given a set of cards. With the hand we are given, we then make a series of calls, balancing our own sense of right and wrong with decisions influenced by centrifugal forces largely out of our control. It can make life both maddening and interesting. Starting with myself, I’m a bit of a bulldozer when it comes to making decisions. This has led to both successful resilience and epic whiffs in judgement. One of my personal challenges is the fact that I am a stutterer. I think I’m so affixed to its dragooning that sometimes I think I’ve almost written it off in a way. But that’s not true: stuttering is a struggle that in many ways defines aspects of me, even if it does not define me. When the condition, the struggle, comes face to face with making decisions, I’m reminded that these characteristics, my tendency to (sometimes carelessly) plow through something and my persistent, frustrating vocal blocks and tics, are intertwined at the root. My impatience, impulsivity, and restlessness feel genetically bound to my psyche, much like stuttering is bound to both my overt verbality and my covert communication processes. In fact, the majority of the battle with disruptive speech is happening between the ears, out of sight, wildly steering a litany of firing neurons toward a result that often looks, sounds, and lands awkwardly. This is because the stuttering is forcing the stutterer’s hand in more than just the verbal. It’s widespread. Long before another person hears or sees anything, there is an internal negotiation taking place. I have realized my physical ability to communicate directly impacts how I make decisions because, quite literally, my ability to communicate is itself a series of messy decisions. This gets to my point. Most of our struggles exist between the ears, relegated to a place where we must coexist with them in some way to get through the day. By wearing them on our sleeves, we let them have power, and our tendency is to sap them of this strength. When faced with a choice, how do deeply personal characteristics, such as disability, fear, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and trauma, intervene in our ability to execute a decision? What is it about who we are that impacts the critical moment of “now do the thing”? We’d like to think of a decision as a relatively clean transaction: gather the information, weigh the options, determine what matters, and hit the gas. But we aren’t neutral arbiters. We bring us with us: our fears, our history, our insecurities, our habits, and our impulses. Sometimes we bring a disability. Many times it’s something we have gotten very good at pretending isn’t there. Perhaps the most consequential parts of those things are the ones nobody else can see. Perhaps the way we make decisions is driven, in large part, by our communication skills, internal or external. That distinction seems applicable far beyond speech. A person who is naturally averse to risk may experience the same opportunity differently from someone who is impulsive. Someone who’s experienced failure deeply and intimately may assign a different weight to the possibility of it happening again than someone whose experience has mostly reinforced their confidence. A highly conscientious person might deliberate long enough to miss an opportunity that an impulsive person would seize. Hell, the impulsive person might also make three decisions in the time it takes the conscientious person to make one and ultimately regret them all. No single person is necessarily making a “better” decision than another. They are making a decision through the machinery they have. Consider that perhaps our greatest challenge is actually our most intuitive skill. I think stuttering gives me a sense of empathy I’m not sure I’d have otherwise. It gives me an understanding of daily struggle (and yes, others have it far, far worse than I do). It exposes me, for better or worse, as authentic. As much as I try and weave and bob around speech, there’s no getting around the fact that there’s something there, and I think this is curious to some people, even if they are bewildered. Also, my stuttering reminds me that maybe I do actually need to listen to the abbreviation of speech. Maybe my brain is telling me to stop, by force, to consider being more thoughtful, to listen to the world around me and express myself more earnestly. It’s important to recognize that we all have a superpower disguised somewhere in there as a nuisance, or even a demon. By claiming this new power, we may reshape a decision we might make or avoid. I think, in that sense, we should welcome our struggles, perhaps not with open arms, but with a curiosity we may have long sought to avoid. 5 ways to activate our own superpowers Pain is learned empathy: What’s beautiful about it is that pain is a direct path to someone, perhaps a friend, a loved one, even a stranger. You may just not know it yet. By being transparent, just a little, and allowing yourself to share a bit of your story with someone, you can oftentimes dramatically help someone just by being you. This goes so much further than trying to solve their problem with a series of “do this” and “do that” instructions. Insecurity sparks curiosity: What makes us feel vulnerable is an invitation to educate ourselves because we’re already admitting the presence of a void. It doesn’t matter if the void doesn’t feel intellectual in nature. It’s still an opportunity to broaden our knowledge. A willingness to learn, to help fill the void with information and a new sense of perspective, creates a more rounded sense of self and the world. That makes us better parents, friends, employees, just better people. Adversity creates adaptability: While the ways in which we have dealt with our struggles may not always have been stellar, those judgements, our lapses in judgement, created improvisation. Our ability to coexist with the challenges, fight them, dance with them, be buried by them, or kick them to the curb has empowered our ability to roll with the punches. Our ability to be nimble in times of strife is a gift because it shows us there is not a single path to an outcome. Anxiety informs risk: There’s ample evidence that anxiety does a good job of preventing us from doing things, but when recognized as anxiety and managed as part of the assessment equation, it is incredibly good at determining risk level. This allows our brains to assess which scenarios may just be temporary obstacles and which may become problems over the long term. Our anxiety is a physical manifestation of a very healthy power, and the trick is relegating it to the role of a friendly advisor. Failure, and the fear of it, opens our eyes to patterns: Regret, disappointment, perhaps a history of decisions that didn’t turn out as you hoped, these shape our sense of self and can instill in us a sense that we’ll never get it right. But they also help us discover opportunity where others may not see it. With the perspective of failure comes experience. This lived hardship is empowering as long as you use it as something to build upon, not bury yourself within. It gives you the ability to advise others too, a child, a mentee, or a friend, which can be incredibly empowering and rewarding in itself. We all have experiences or a part of our identity that makes us feel a certain way, and we do have control over how these direct, impede, or inform our decisions. I hope some of my struggle can help you navigate your own in a way that feels more productive than burdensome. The best way to start is to be yourself, warts and all. The more you can begin from a place of authenticity, the more directly you can navigate decisions in a way that leads to intentional outcomes. The more people can know you without you having to concoct the persona cocktail you present to them. That doesn’t always mean you will make the right decisions. It’ll just mean they were the ones who fit who you were in that moment. Oftentimes that’s about as right as we can get. Where it leads us, who knows? I’m still figuring out how my struggle shapes the choices that I make, and writing this piece was one of those choices. I hope it can help inspire a decision of your own. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Justin Matley Justin Matley, Professional Coach Justin Matley is a professional development and communication coach and consultant and runs Matley Coaching, focused on effective communication, time management, and planning for individuals and businesses. He has spent over two award-winning decades working across media, production, advertising, and news industries, and a decade teaching in higher education. Justin is deeply committed to community and the ability of people and organizations to find balance, resonate authentically, and connect empathetically in a world rapidly making it more difficult to do so. He coaches individuals and consults with businesses across the country remotely and from his studio in Connecticut.

Written by Gina Blundell, Divorce Financial Coach for Midlife Women I’m Gina Bee, a divorce financial coach for midlife women. I help them break free from emotionally and financially abusive relationships of many years, rebuild their confidence with money, and create a future of independence, clarity, and true financial power on their own terms. For many years, I thought I was financially secure. I had been married for nearly three decades. We had a home, assets and what looked from the outside like a comfortable life. Before having my children, I had also spent around 18 years working as a management accountant in London. I understood numbers, budgets, accounts and financial information. However, what I came to realise much later was that understanding money professionally and having financial independence personally are two very different things. When I eventually filed for divorce at 55, I had to look at money and my relationship with it very differently. That experience taught me something I now believe passionately: when you own your money, you own your choices and ultimately your life. Financial security isn’t always what it appears to be We often associate financial security with how much money someone has. Do they own a house or have savings? Does their partner earn a good salary? Do they live a comfortable lifestyle? None of those things necessarily mean a woman is financially independent. You can live in a beautiful home and still have very little understanding of what you own. You can have significant household income and still feel that you need permission to spend money. You can be married to someone who manages the finances and gradually become disconnected from decisions about pensions, investments, mortgages and savings. Sometimes it happens so slowly that you don’t even recognise it. This is particularly relevant for women who have stepped away from careers to raise children or support their partner’s career. I did exactly that. At the time, you don’t necessarily calculate what that decision could mean twenty years later. You’re thinking about your family and what works in that moment. You don’t think about the pension contributions, savings, investments or earning capacity you could lose by leaving employment, or how those losses could ultimately affect your financial independence. It doesn’t mean staying home with children is the wrong decision. It just means women need to understand the financial impact of the decisions they make. Knowledge creates choices. Divorce changed the way I saw money When I filed for divorce, money suddenly wasn’t an abstract subject. It represented choices and raised questions: Where would I live? What would my future look like? What did I actually need? What assets did we have? What would happen to pensions? How would I create income again? Perhaps the biggest question: Could I really start again at this stage of my life? I was 55, and there can be an enormous amount of fear attached to starting again financially in midlife. Women often tell themselves they have left it too late. Too late to build a career, invest, understand pensions, create a business, build wealth. I don’t believe that. Starting later may mean you need to make different decisions, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have options. A financial settlement is not a financial plan One of the biggest lessons I learned through my own divorce is that receiving a financial settlement doesn’t automatically create financial security. You still have decisions to make about what to keep in cash, what to invest, the income you need, what your future lifestyle realistically costs and what happens to your pension. You also need to decide whether to buy a property, what risks you’re comfortable taking and how to make the money last. These questions can feel overwhelming, particularly when you have just come through a difficult divorce. Plus, fear can create paralysis. I’ve met women who have money but are frightened to do anything with it. They are so worried about making the wrong decision that they make no decision at all. That is why financial confidence matters just as much as financial knowledge. You don’t need to become an investment expert overnight. However, you do need to become an active participant in your own financial life. Rebuilding is about more than a bank balance After my divorce, I invested in myself. I worked with coaches. I retrained. I learned more about myself, money and the patterns that had shaped my life. I began building a business and later returned to something else I had always been interested in: property. Not every decision was perfect, and that’s another lesson. Financial independence isn’t about never making a mistake. It’s about having enough knowledge, confidence and trust in yourself to make your own decisions, learn from them and keep moving forward. For me, rebuilding wealth became part of rebuilding my life. However, wealth now means far more to me than simply accumulating money. Wealth is about having choices and assets, understanding what you own, knowing where your money is and having the confidence to ask questions. It’s being able to walk away from situations that no longer serve you and knowing that your future isn’t entirely dependent on somebody else’s decisions. Know your numbers One of the simplest things I encourage women to do is also one of the most powerful: know your numbers. Know what comes in each month, what goes out, what savings and pensions you have, what debts you owe, what assets you own, which accounts are held in your name and what your lifestyle costs. Also, it’s important to know what you would need financially if your circumstances changed. This isn’t about expecting the worst. It’s about being financially aware. We insure our homes and cars without assuming something terrible is going to happen. Understanding your financial position should be viewed in exactly the same way. It is simply part of taking responsibility for your future. You are not too old to learn about money One of the messages I want more women to hear is that financial education doesn’t have an age limit. Whether you’re 35, 45, 55, 65 or beyond, you can start understanding your money differently. You can ask about your pension, learn what investing means, build savings, understand compound growth, explore property, create additional income, start a business and change the way you think about money. You can also make different decisions from the ones you made twenty years ago. Your financial past does not have to dictate your financial future. Money gives us choices Money itself doesn’t create happiness. Yet having financial independence creates something incredibly important: choice. The choice to stay because you want to, rather than because you have to. To leave a relationship that is no longer healthy, change careers, take time out, invest in yourself, help your children, build something new and create the next chapter of your life on your own terms. That is why I talk so much about women understanding their finances. It isn’t simply about spreadsheets and bank statements. It’s about freedom. Starting again can become your beginning When I filed for divorce at 55, I couldn’t see exactly where my life would take me. I certainly couldn’t have mapped out everything that has happened since. Yet I can see now that starting again forced me to take ownership of areas of my life that I had gradually handed over. Money was one of them. Today, when I work with women who are facing divorce, rebuilding after it or simply questioning what they want from the next stage of their lives, I want them to understand one thing: you don’t need to have every answer today. Just start asking the right questions. Where am I financially? What do I own? What do I want my future to look like? What do I need to learn? What is the next decision I can make for myself? Financial independence isn’t about having millions in the bank. It’s about knowing that you have a voice, you have choices and you have a plan. Sometimes the most powerful financial decision you can make is simply deciding that, from now on, you are going to understand your own money. Own your money. Own your choices. Own your life. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Gina Blundell Gina Blundell, Divorce Financial Coach for Midlife Women Gina Bee is a divorce financial coach and abuse expert helping midlife women break free from emotionally and financially abusive relationships of many years. After leaving her own marriage of 30 years, she rebuilt her life and financial independence from the ground up, bringing both lived experience and professional expertise to her work. Through her coaching, speaking, and the Divorce Reset Podcast®, she empowers women to move from feeling stuck and fearful to feeling clear, confident, and back in control of their lives and finances. Gina’s approach focuses on shifting behaviours around money, rebuilding trust in oneself, and creating lasting financial independence.

Written by Rosanna Ho, Clinical Hypnotherapist & RTT® Practitioner Rosanna Ho is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, RTT® Practitioner, and cultural identity expert who helps global top performers and Third Culture Individuals (TCIs) find their way “Home.” With nearly a decade of counselling experience, she bridges psychology and subconscious healing to help professionals trade chronic stress for Peaceful Productivity. When all you know is striving, what do you do when you finally “get there”? Steve had been striving his entire life. At the age of 5, his parents enrolled him in multiple after-school tutoring classes. By age ten, he was already collecting academic awards. By high school, making the honour roll was no longer considered an achievement; it was considered something he should meet. So he did. By the time he logged into my virtual office from his hotel suite during an international conference, his profile matched that of a quintessential high-performer: top manager at an executive firm, exceptionally bright, recently promoted, and internally terrified. “It seems like I’ve spent my entire life sprinting towards this goalpost,” Steve said as he stared blankly at the screen. “Now that I am finally here, I feel like I’m about to…explode.” On paper, Steve’s life looked picture-perfect. His career offered continuous opportunities for growth, prestige, and substantial compensation. He was a straight-A student who followed the conventional road to success. He made it. But when your entire identity revolves around “getting there” to the peak of success, then what do you do once you get there? For Steve, reaching the peak felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. The subconscious blueprint of striving When your entire identity is built on becoming, then arriving becomes inherently destabilizing. For high achievers like Steve, striving was never simply a work ethic; it was his survival strategy, blueprinted at a very young age. As a child, he learned that love, attention, and safety were conditional and only granted when he performed well. The performance began in the classroom and transitioned into the boardroom. Over the course of our work together, we explored how his subconscious mind began to equate achievement with safety. Without consciously realizing it, many top performers begin to form the following belief, “As long as I am performing, I am safe.” For decades, the daily grind keeps their nervous systems in constant motion. Although fast-paced and demanding, it is familiar, and to the subconscious mind, what is familiar is equated with what is safe. Moreover, striving provides structure and a clear target to aim for. Success often begets ambition, and for high achievers, a problem solved provides a clear, tangible metric to validate their worth. The paradox emerges then, once you actually achieve your goal. As such, when the promotion is secure, the financial target is reached, or the milestone is achieved, the subconscious mind encounters something it is not familiar with and therefore has never been trained to handle: stillness. When “arrival” triggers the alarm To a nervous system that is familiar with and conditioned to constant effort, stillness does not feel like peace. Instead, stillness feels like vulnerability. Consequently, when you stop running, the subconscious mind may associate the quiet and calm with a threat to one’s safety, a phenomenon I examine when explaining why your brain uses overthinking as a safety response. Without a new goalpost to strive towards, certain patterns often emerge: The existential void: Questioning your identity once the target is achieved. Questions arise, such as “Who am I without a goal?” and “If I am not producing, then what is my worth?” Subconscious self-sabotage: Subconsciously manufacturing a crisis, interpersonal conflict, or unsustainable workload simply to feel in control by returning to what is familiar: striving. Hypervigilant fear: Living with a constant, underlying dread that something will suddenly appear to take it all away. This often occurs because your internal container has not yet expanded to safely hold this level of success. When Steve expressed that he felt ready to “explode,” he was not suffering from a lack of discipline or ambition. Rather, his subconscious mind was simply experiencing a safety alarm after hitting its capacity for success and safety. Reconditioning the internal baseline Solving this very human paradox requires more than intellectualizing, rationalizing, or managing stress levels. What helped you climb the corporate ladder often hinders you from experiencing internal alignment. You simply cannot logic your way out of a subconscious safety response. Real alignment occurs when we delve into the subconscious root to decouple self-worth from perpetual output. Steve, like many of my clients, had already explored talk therapy, executive coaching, and a multitude of other modalities. While valuable, they remained on the cognitive surface and did not provide the deep, lasting relief that Steve craved and needed to feel grounded again. Through targeted subconscious dialogue and rewiring, Steve updated his internal architecture of habits, beliefs, and behaviours. Internal narratives we form through our work together can be exemplified as follows: From conditional safety to internal baseline: “I am safe because I am performing” shifts to “I am safe within myself, regardless of my output.” From anticipatory anxiety to present capacity: “I must prepare for the next crisis” becomes “I am allowed to enjoy the present moment.” From high-pressure hustle to peaceful productivity: “Stress keeps me sharp” transforms into “Sustainable success comes from internal stability, not high-stakes adrenaline.” When you upgrade your subconscious baseline for safety, success stops feeling like a fragile peak you may fall off of and begins to feel like an organic, natural extension of who you already are. Success can feel good. Success can be sustainable. Success can be who you are, naturally. Alignment as a natural state When you are aligned internally, emotionally, and subconsciously, your behaviours, actions, and results will organically realize themselves. Consider physical nutrition: when you nourish your body with essential nutrients, clear skin, sustained energy, and restorative sleep follow naturally. Conversely, living in subconscious misalignment is like consuming junk food or food your body is allergic to: no matter how disciplined you are, your system becomes fatigued, inflamed, and strained. Prioritizing internal alignment is as fundamental as hydration. Research confirms that there is a robust connection between psychological needs being met and optimal functioning. Just as depriving the body of water leads to physical breakdown, living out of alignment deprives the mind of the essential nourishment required for vitality, openness, and sustained performance. Consequently, living out of psychological alignment can lead to greater apathy, insecurity, and even psychopathology.[1] Taking steps to align yourself is just as important as hydrating yourself. Alignment is the nourishment that restores a dehydrated sense of self. For Steve, our work revealed that for most of his life, he had been living to fulfill his parents’ expectations rather than his own truth. He came to see that he personally did not crave continuous accolades; rather, what he desired most was to build a secure, meaningful life with his partner as they prepared for their upcoming journey into parenthood. “I want my child to have the childhood I didn’t have,” Steve shared in one of our final sessions. “One where you are accepted and valued regardless of your output.” As he became more aligned with who he was and what he truly wanted from his life, he was able to let go of the frantic energy of self-sabotage. He then used that additional space, time, capacity, and energy in his life to learn how to become a father he could be proud of. Now driven by a newfound and aligned sense of purpose, Steve’s ambition to excel even further in his career grew so he could build something substantial he truly and deeply valued: raising a happy and healthy child—one whose self-esteem did not rely on awards and accolades. Today, Steve still holds his executive role, but instead of running solely on the fear of not being good enough, Steve is now driven by the fulfilment of fatherhood. With this grounded commitment, he is building a legacy from peaceful congruence. Expanding your internal capacity If you find yourself sitting at the peak of your career feeling unstable, anxious, and ungrounded despite, and sometimes because of, achieving your success, I invite you to pause and reflect: What does success mean to you when performance is removed from the equation? Is your current momentum fueled by internal alignment or subconscious hypervigilance? What is one boundary you can set today to honour your internal stillness? For executives, founders, and leaders ready to transition from fear-driven ambition into Peaceful Productivity, true expansion begins within. Upgrading your subconscious safety baseline allows you to not only reach the peak, but to fully inhabit, hold, and enjoy the life you have worked so hard to build. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Rosanna Ho Rosanna Ho, Clinical Hypnotherapist & RTT® Practitioner Rosanna is a dedicated guide for global citizens and high-performers navigating the complexities of identity, belonging, and mental load. Combining her background in Clinical Hypnotherapy, Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT®), and Third Culture identity, she helps clients bridge the gap between external success and internal fulfillment. After overcoming two decades of chronic eczema using RTT®, Rosanna now empowers others to resolve their physical and mental manifestations of stress, such as insomnia, burnout, and weight management. Her mission is to help overachievers return to their authentic selves and lead lives of “Peaceful Productivity” rooted in the core tenets of freedom, fulfillment, and peace of mind. Reference: [1] Legault, Lisa. (2017). Self-Determination Theory. 10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1162-1. The client’s identity has been modified to protect confidentiality. The testimonial reflects the client’s individual experience, and results may vary.

Part-time and seasonal workers face a healthcare problem that most insurance plans were never built to fix. Traditional group plans assume a stable, full-time workforce that stays with one employer long enough to hit eligibility windows and pay steady premiums. Agriculture crews, janitorial staff, seasonal retail workers, and gig-adjacent employees rarely fit that pattern. Their hours change by the week. Their employment can end before a waiting period is even over. The result is a large group of working people who technically have access to insurance in theory but almost never in practice. They are told a plan exists. They are rarely in a position to use it. John Zabasky is CEO of WorXsiteHR Insurance Solutions, Inc., the exclusive third-party administrator for the HealthWorX Plan. HealthWorX is a no-cost medical plan, subsidized by a non-profit, built specifically to give lower-income, part-time, and seasonal workers access to healthcare they can actually use. That focus makes Zabasky a useful voice on why this particular slice of the workforce keeps falling through the gaps. Why eligibility rules quietly exclude people Most employer plans set eligibility around hours worked per week, averaged over a set period. That math works fine for someone on a fixed 40-hour schedule. It breaks down for a farmworker who does 45 hours during harvest and 10 the rest of the month, or a janitorial worker who is added and dropped from a client contract several times a year. Zabasky points out that the problem is not that these workers are uninsurable. It is that the plan design assumes a kind of stability their jobs don't have. A worker can be perfectly healthy, employed, and earning wages, and still never cross the threshold that would let them enroll. What this looks like in practice: A seasonal worker starts a new eligibility clock every time hours dip below the required average A part-time employee splits time across two employers, and neither one counts enough hours alone A worker becomes eligible in month three of a four-month contract, right before the job ends The cost problem sits on top of the access problem Even where eligibility isn't the barrier, cost usually is. A lower-wage worker asked to pay even a modest premium share, plus a deductible before care kicks in, will often skip coverage entirely. Not because they don't want it. Because the math doesn't work on their paycheck. Zabasky's view is that a plan only counts as coverage if a worker can use it without a financial calculation standing in the way. A no-cost model removes that calculation. There is no premium to weigh against groceries or rent, so the decision to enroll and use it stops being a trade-off. What employers should actually check For employers weighing options for a part-time or seasonal workforce, a few questions do more work than reading a benefits brochure. Does the eligibility formula match the actual work pattern? Ask for the plan's eligibility rules in plain numbers, not just "look-back period" language. Find out what happens to a worker whose hours swing from week to week. If the answer is that they lose and regain eligibility repeatedly, that plan was not built for this workforce. What does a worker pay at the point of care? Premium cost is only half the question. Ask what a worker pays out of pocket for a basic visit, a prescription, or an urgent care trip. If the answer involves a deductible that has to be met first, many workers in this income range will functionally have no coverage at all, even while technically enrolled. How fast can someone actually see a provider? A plan that takes weeks to activate, or that has a thin local provider network, adds friction that seasonal workers don't have time to absorb. Zabasky's experience with the HealthWorX Plan points to speed and provider access as the difference between a plan that gets used and one that sits unused in an enrollment folder. A step employers tend to skip Employers often stop at asking whether a plan is offered to part-time staff, without asking whether it is actually reachable by that staff. Those are different questions. A plan can technically extend to seasonal workers on paper and still exclude nearly all of them in practice, once eligibility math, premium cost, and provider access are added up together. The fix is not complicated. It means running the eligibility formula against real schedules before choosing a plan, not after. It means asking a provider directly what a worker pays at the point of care, in dollars, not percentages. And it means checking whether the network actually covers where seasonal and part-time workers live and work, not just where the employer's office is. None of this requires a bigger budget. It requires asking sharper questions before signing, rather than assuming a plan built for full-time staff will bend to fit everyone else.

Written by Eda Şahin, Founder of Eda Design Studio Eda Şahin is the founder of edadesign.studio, a brand identity and web design studio based in Germany. With 12 years of entrepreneurship and a background shaped by two cultures, she brings a unique perspective to building brands that feel authentic, distinctive, and deeply connected to the people behind them. Do you ever end a long day completely exhausted and deeply grateful at the same time, and wonder whether you are allowed to feel both? As a female entrepreneur and mom, you carry many roles at once, and it is easy to believe that tiredness means you are ungrateful. It does not. In this article, I share why exhaustion and gratitude can live in the same heart, and five habits that help me build a business and a life on my own terms. It's 9:12 p.m. The dishwasher is humming, the school bag is packed, and the house is finally quiet. I sit down with a cup of coffee that went cold two hours ago, and a thought arrives, wrapped in a sigh: I am so tired. Right behind it comes another one, softer and almost embarrassed by how much it means: I am so lucky. Or maybe I should say tucky. For a long time, I thought I had to choose between these two feelings. Either I was allowed to be exhausted, or I was allowed to be grateful. Admitting both felt like a contradiction, as if tiredness meant I was ungrateful and gratitude meant I had no right to be tired. After twelve years of being self-employed, many of them as a mom, I've learned something different: they are not opposites. They are two sides of the same life. The tiredness no one posts about as a female entrepreneur and a mom Let's start with the tiredness, because it deserves honesty. As a female entrepreneur and mom, you are rarely off duty. Your day might include a client call, a design revision, an invoice, a sick child, a last-minute deadline, a school event, and a content calendar that still isn't finished. You are the creative director, the accountant, the customer service team, and the household manager. When something falls through the cracks, there is often no one else to catch it. This is not the tiredness of one hard day. It's the tiredness of carrying many roles at once, with a mental load that never fully clocks out. You can feel it in your shoulders, in the way your mind keeps a running to-do list at midnight, and in the moments when you realize you haven't had a quiet thought since breakfast. It's also the tiredness that comes from caring. Because you don't just want to get through the day. You want to deliver excellent work, be present for your child, and build something you're proud of. Doing all of that at once is simply a lot. The luck I didn't expect to feel so deeply Yet. I can take my child to an appointment without asking anyone for permission. I can shape my day around the people I love instead of squeezing them into the gaps of someone else's schedule. I can build a business that reflects my values, work with clients I genuinely admire, and decide what success looks like for me. Then there are the moments that make the tiredness melt. A client writes, "This is exactly me," after seeing her new brand for the first time. A founder tells me her confidence has changed because her business finally looks like her. Those messages remind me that my work isn't just pixels and layouts. It helps women step into visibility. That is the luck I mean. It isn't the absence of effort. It's the privilege of effort that feels like mine. Why we struggle to hold both feelings So why does it feel so hard to say, "I'm exhausted and grateful"? Many women are raised to believe that gratitude means not complaining. That if we have something good, we shouldn't talk about what it costs. In the entrepreneurial world, there's another pressure: the glossy story of the effortless boss babe who has it all figured out, wakes at 5 a.m., and never feels overwhelmed. The truth is far more human. You can love your business and still need a break from it. You can adore your child and still crave ten minutes of silence. You can be proud of how far you've come and still feel the weight of how much you carry. Holding both feelings isn't a sign that something is wrong. It's a sign that you are paying attention to your own life. What helps me carry both I don't have a perfect system. But a few things have genuinely made the tired-but-lucky days lighter: I stopped measuring my worth by how much I do: Some days, "enough" is one great client deliverable and a warm dinner with my child. That counts. I build my business around my life, not the other way around: Clear offers, defined timelines, and boundaries around my availability protect my energy. A business that drains you is not freedom, no matter how good it looks from the outside. I say the honest thing: When a friend asks how I am, I try to answer with the real version: "Tired, but really happy." Naming both makes me feel less alone, and it gives other women permission to do the same. I celebrate the small bricks: Every finished project, every bedtime story, and every invoice paid on time is a brick in the house I'm building. Looking at the bricks, not just the unfinished roof, keeps me going. I rest without earning it first: Rest is not a reward for productivity. It's part of the foundation. The house we are building When I think about why I do all this, I don't think about the long days. I think about what my child will remember: a mother who built something, who showed up, who was brave enough to follow her own path and gentle enough to still be home for the small moments. That is the quiet power of the bossmom life. It isn't flawless, and it isn't easy. But it is deeply meaningful. So if you're reading this at the end of a long day, with cold tea and a full heart, I want you to know that you are allowed to be both. Tired and lucky. Overwhelmed and proud. Worn out and wildly grateful. You're not failing. You're building. Every late night is a brick in a house you get to call your own. Ready to build a brand that feels like you? If you are a female founder who wants a brand and a website that look and feel unmistakably like you, I would love to support you. Discover my brand identity, web design, and 1-on-1 brand coaching offers, and take the first step today. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Eda Şahin Eda Şahin, Founder of Eda Design Studio Eda Şahin is the founder of Eda Design Studio, a brand identity and web design studio based in Germany. With 12 years of entrepreneurship, she helps female founders and solopreneurs build distinctive brands that reflect who they truly are. As a designer between two worlds, she combines strategy and intuition, structure and emotion to create brand identities that go beyond aesthetics. Her work explores the intersection of branding, psychology, identity, and human connection.

Written by Inga Kalace, Self-Development Mind-Body Coach Inga has been recognised for her approach to deep, meaningful change in three steps. She is a coach in self-development and mind-body work, as well as a co-founder of Whispered Desires, a brand creating cinematic sleep tapes for subconscious reprogramming and working with high-profile clients. How do you speak to yourself when no one else is listening? What do you tell yourself when you make a mistake, miss an opportunity, look in the mirror, or feel you should be further ahead in life? For many people, the harshest voice they hear does not come from someone around them. It comes from within. “You should have done better.” “You always get things wrong.” “Why can’t you be more like everyone else?” Self-criticism can become so familiar that we stop recognising it as criticism. We accept it as part of our personality, or even as the motivation we need to improve. But does being hard on ourselves truly help us grow, or does it slowly disconnect us from ourselves? As a coach in personal development and the connection between mind and body, I have seen how deeply the way we speak to ourselves shapes our confidence, relationships, choices, and even how safe we feel within our own bodies. Self-criticism is not simply negative thinking. It is often a learned emotional pattern, built on the belief that we must earn acceptance by being better, stronger, or more successful. Where does self-criticism begin? The inner critic does not appear without a reason. It is shaped by the emotional environment in which we learned who we needed to be. Perhaps you received the most praise when you achieved something. Maybe mistakes were met with disappointment, comparison, or silence. You may have learned that being helpful, quiet, or emotionally strong made you more accepted. As children, we cannot always understand that another person’s criticism may come from their own fears or limitations. Instead, we turn it inward and think, “There must be something wrong with me.” Over time, that belief becomes an internal voice. Even when the person who criticised you is long gone, their words continue through the way you speak to yourself. When self-criticism becomes protection Self-criticism may sound cruel, but underneath it there is often an attempt to keep you safe. If you criticise yourself first, someone else’s judgment may feel less surprising. If you expect perfection, perhaps you can avoid embarrassment or rejection. If you search for your faults, you may believe you can fix them before anyone notices. Your inner critic says it is preparing you for life. In reality, it can keep your mind and body under constant pressure. You may overthink conversations, replay mistakes, struggle to make decisions, or dismiss compliments while instantly believing criticism. Your body hears how you speak to yourself What happens inside your body when you tell yourself you are failing or not good enough? Your chest may tighten. Your stomach may feel unsettled. Your shoulders may rise, your jaw may tense, and your breathing may become shallow. Your body can respond to your inner voice as though it is facing a threat, even when that threat comes from within. This creates a painful cycle. A critical thought brings tension into the body. That tension becomes anxiety. The mind then treats those feelings as proof that something is wrong. You think, “Why am I feeling like this? I should be able to handle it.” The criticism begins again. This is why positive thinking alone rarely creates lasting change. You can repeat “I am enough,” but if your body has spent years expecting judgment, those words may feel unfamiliar. Healing involves understanding the pattern, creating a sense of safety in the body, and practising a different response A familiar moment Imagine a woman who sends an important email and notices a small error an hour later. Nobody has complained. Yet by the evening she has replayed it a dozen times, her shoulders are tight, and she is telling herself she is not cut out for her role. The mistake lasted seconds. The criticism lasted all night. When she learned to pause, place a hand on her chest and breathe out slowly, something shifted. She corrected the error, moved on, and slept. Her standards had not changed. What changed was how she treated herself while meeting them. Awareness without further judgment Awareness does not mean watching yourself more closely so you can find more things to fix. It means noticing what is happening without immediately attacking yourself for it. The next time a critical thought appears, ask: “What am I telling myself right now?” “Do I know this is true, or am I assuming?” “Whose voice does this sound like?” “What am I feeling in my body?” There is a difference between taking responsibility and punishing yourself. Responsibility says, “I made a mistake. What can I learn from this?” Self-criticism says, “I made a mistake because there is something wrong with me.” One creates growth. The other strengthens shame. Is it your true voice or your inner critic? The inner critic speaks with urgency and fear, using words like “always,” “never,” “should,” and “not enough.” Your true inner voice is calmer and more specific, and it points towards what you can do next. Critic: “You always get things wrong.” True voice: “That did not go as planned. What would help next time?” Critic: “You should be further ahead by now.” True voice: “I am learning, and I can take the next step.” If a thought leaves you smaller and more afraid, it is probably the critic. If it leaves you steadier, even while being honest about a mistake, it is closer to your own voice. But doesn’t the critic keep me motivated? This belief keeps many people stuck. Research on self-compassion, much of it associated with psychologist Kristin Neff, suggests the opposite: people who respond to failure with understanding rather than harshness tend to be more willing to try again and learn because failure feels less threatening. Self-compassion is not lowering your standards. It is keeping your standards while removing the punishment. 3 practices to begin with Name it. Say quietly, “That is my inner critic speaking.” Separating yourself from the voice weakens its authority. Settle the body first. Place a hand on your chest, breathe in slowly, then breathe out for longer. Repeat three times. Speak as you would to a friend. Ask, “What would I say to someone I love who made this mistake?” Then say that to yourself. None of this will feel natural at first. A voice practised for years takes time to change. You are allowed to grow without being at war with yourself The way you speak to yourself sets the emotional climate in which you make decisions, build relationships, take risks, and recover from setbacks. You do not need to silence the inner critic by force. You can begin by listening differently, understanding what it is protecting you from, and offering it something it has rarely heard: safety, patience, and support. This week, notice one critical thought and ask: “Would I say this to someone I love?” If not, rewrite it in a kinder, truer way and say it out loud. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Inga Kalace Inga Kalace, Self-Development Mind-Body Coach Inga is a coach in personal development and the connection between mind and body, known for her approach to deep, meaningful change in three steps that actually works in practice. From a young age, she was drawn to understanding human behaviour and the patterns that shape how we experience life. That curiosity grew into a lifelong exploration of the connection between mind and body and why people struggle to create lasting change. She works with individuals to break patterns, build trust in themselves, and create change from within. As cofounder of Whispered Desires, she is part of a brand creating cinematic sleep tapes designed to support subconscious rewiring. Her mission is to help people understand themselves and create a life that truly reflects who they are.