Written by: Robert McAlister, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Why do some people and groups seem to be better able to cope with hardship or perform better within a crisis than others? While everyone’s situation is different, it is true that people with resilience tend to have a higher tolerance for the emotional distress generated by hard times. The more resilient you are, the better you’re able to tolerate the feelings of stress, anxiety, and sadness that accompany trauma and adversity—and find a way to rebound from setbacks. I have worked in many parts of the world, often in challenging or fragile environments and the one thing I have witnessed is in the places that suffer regular hardship, crisis, or disaster the more you find resilient people. I believe that the key to building personal resilience is repeated exposure to difficulties, challenges, and complexity. Building Resilience Resilience isn’t a macho quality, and it isn’t fixed; it’s an ongoing process that requires effort to build and maintain over time. Unless you’ve faced adversity in your life before, it’s unlikely you’ve had the need or opportunity to develop resilience. Drawing on past experiences can help you cope with the challenges you’re facing today. While it’s often difficult to imagine anything good coming out of tough experiences, building resilience can help you find any positives in the difficulties you’ve faced. Surviving hardships can teach you important things about yourself and the world around you, strengthen your resolve, deepen your empathy, and in time enable you to evolve and grow as a human being. Building resilience can also help you to: Stay focused, flexible, and productive, in both good and bad times. Feel less afraid of new experiences or an uncertain future. Manage and tolerate strong emotions outside your comfort zone, even those you’d rather avoid like anger or despair. Strengthen your relationships and improve your communication skills, especially under pressure. Bolster your self-esteem. Be confident you’ll eventually find a solution to a problem, even when one isn’t immediately apparent. You can develop and improve these qualities of resilience at any time, regardless of your age, background, or circumstances. Changing Mindsets It is quite common for clients to come to my sessions with past experiences that have left them feeling like they can’t move forward when a task is overwhelming. I can help them overcome that negative mindset by building their confidence through experiences that develop their competence. One activity I run involves showing clients that some things, which seem impossible or too confusing at first, can be broken down into easy-to-understand parts. I use puzzles that appear complicated and sometimes impossible to complete. When they have been given the challenge, I ask them to discuss how it might be solved, the object is to build their resilience to feeling overwhelmed by letting them discover, on their own, how complex things can be broken into parts. When they’ve completed the task explain that they have just experienced their ability to break something down into more understandable parts. The experience will build their competence awareness. Dividing big assignments or jobs into small tasks will give them the confidence to get started and the resilience to persevere. This resonates with my many own experiences of personal challenges over the years where resilience has been essential. I remember recently having to dig deep into my personal resilience when to make up the miles for an extreme walking event I had to keep forcing myself to head away from comfort and warmth into the cold and darkness whilst tired and injured and that takes a certain mindset. What helped enormously was breaking the task down mentally and the many hours of preparation and conditioning. Achieving the Impossible In his book The Art of the Impossible, Steven Kotler explains that top sports stars who achieve what we perceive to be impossible feats, come from those individuals’ mindsets of pushing themselves a little farther each time. To the outside world, it looks like they are accomplishing the impossible and they are but only by first achieving many smaller impossible challenges and goals on the way. He goes onto explain the four steps to peak performance and you will see that persistence, grit, and resilience are high on the list for achieving sustainable high performance. Motivation. This means stoking your intrinsic curiosity and passion, as well as developing the skills needed to sustain motivation over the long haul—skills like persistence, grit, resilience, and the ability to delay gratification. Learning. This refers not only to the ability to acquire new skills and knowledge but also to the ability to understand the process of learning itself, using tools like the scientific method and first-principle thinking. It also means cultivating the self-awareness needed to know where you need to improve. Creativity. Technically, this means the ability to produce novel and useful ideas. In practice, it means mastering a whole subset of skills, including idea generation, pattern recognition, and risk-taking. Flow. Finally, learning how to get into focused and absorbed flow states is the master skill that will turbocharge all the other steps, and power you to peak performance. Self-Awareness I personally think that the above point made regarding self-awareness is key to developing strong personal resilience. Self-awareness helps you build resilience, so you can bounce back from setbacks and difficulties. When you understand your own personal strengths and areas for improvement you can adjust accordingly, acquire extra knowledge when necessary and make positive decisions. I like the term personal strengths, and this is something I feel many of my clients overlook or simply do not understand about themselves. It is an area I tend to focus on and use as a foundation to build their capabilities upon. Over the last year, I have used this baseline approach when coaching a senior executive and she has found the results very practical and useful across many diverse areas of responsibility. But most importantly the ability to embrace those personal strengths to build relationships and reduce conflict. Learning from failure When you incorporate opportunities for clients to experience mistakes as an expected part of learning, you build their resilience to setbacks. Through individual or group discussions, their own mistakes, and building knowledge of their brain’s programming, your clients will gain the competence, optimism, and understanding to persevere – and even make progress – through failure. Henry Ford is quoted as saying, “Failure is simply the opportunity to start again, this time more intelligently.” This quote reminds me of a lovely restaurant I pass daily, the owner spent months trying to make his vision work but realised he was not making the money needed to return his investment. I thought he would close and sell by his downbeat manner but to his credit he and his team are learning from their mistakes and changing strategy accordingly, it will be interesting to see the impact of these changes, but one thing you can visibly see, is his remotivated outlook and determination. I feel the most important part of this story is the owner’s ability to not remain fixed to his original vision and be self-aware and flexible enough to change the plan once required. These are the types of routine daily challenges we all face, overcome and in doing so develop resilience, from these small incremental steps and lessons learned. Beyond the Plan Thinking When I coach, I call this ‘beyond the plan thinking’ the ability to adapt and think differently when the context has changed, and the plan no longer fit the new context. I have written about this in my previously Brainz article “Threats Change So Must Our Thinking” and the perfection traps we set ourselves. The military has an old saying “no plan survives first contact with the enemy” and there is some truth in this. You need a plan, but you cannot remain fixed to that plan if it is failing or not working. The ability to quickly adapt is easier for some than for others, particularly individuals with a fixed or rigid mindset, but again it’s about confidence through exposure and conditioning. If you do not like the military version, Mike Tyson (Boxer) said the same about having a plan until punched hard in the mouth! So, when your coaching clients and they are beating themselves up for making mistakes, explain that these are not failures: they are opportunities for the brain to build a bridge that will bring them success in the future. More importantly, when you correct an error, your brain builds new wiring to guide you to make a better choice next time. So doing something wrong can be beneficial in the long-term, replacing misinformation with firm experience. The strongest understandings we have do not come from what we’ve memorised but rather from what we’ve learned from failure. By building clients’ resilience in this way, you can help them realise that when they engage confidently with a challenge, anything is possible, and failure is not something to fear. This is vitally important. After all, it’s not what they know, but what they can do with what they know, that is the first step of coaching them for the impossible. Follow me on Instagram , Twitter , LinkedIn , or visit my website for more info! Read more from Robert! Robert McAlister, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Robert’s mantra is ‘think differently’ and he certainly walks that talk in everything he does. Certainly not one for taking the easy path, he thrives on a challenge and the words ‘the most tenacious person we know’ are a major understatement. He is a recognized leader in the field of leadership and team coaching. and is the Director and driving force behind Glenbarr Coaching, who offers a very different coaching experience. For over 30 years he has worked globally with a diverse range of high-profile clients from Governments to NGO’s, Private Sector Corporates to Public Sector Agencies. Celebrities and Senior Executives who have all benefitted from his sought-after talents. Such a wide portfolio and body of work has provided him with very unique insights and approaches to training and coaching strategies that work and are sustainable. The central theme to Robert’s career has been people development and growth. Specialising in mindset, behaviours, and team dynamics to effect positive outcomes and increased performance. Equally, at home in the boardroom or challenging field environments getting his hands dirty, Robert’s real magic is bringing the best out of individuals or teams to achieve their goals. If you are looking for a truly transformational experience that is remembered and relived long after any official training or coaching session, then Robert is the guy to talk to!

Written by: Samantha Vlasceanu, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. You are no stranger to social media marketing. In fact, your Instagram account is full of well-curated posts, and you achieved the right balance of creating value and offering promotions. As a result, your stories are the envy of your competitors, and you know your unique brand voice. Should you even be on TikTok? Does that need to be a priority for your business right now? YES! A thousand times yes! I am a TikTok coach, so obviously, I believe that. However, there are strong, practical reasons that your marketing plans for 2022 should include TikTok. The longer that you wait, the more money you are going to be leaving on the table. So let’s waste no more time and understand why YOUR business and Brand need a seat on TikTok! TikTok’s Explosive Growth We have talked before about how TikTok has the audience and demographic that you want. TikTok has been downloaded billions of times and has hundreds of millions of active users each month. Half of those users are over the age of 30, meaning that your audience on TikTok will have disposable income. Not only that, but TikTok’s consumer spending continues to grow. In fact, in Q2 2021, TikTok saw one of its largest quarter-over-quarter increases in consumer spending, with $534.6 million being spent. Even other big names in the social media industry have taken note of TikTok. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, himself said that “TikTok is huge.” So Instagram says that it needs to keep up with TikTok - that alone should tell you that this is where you need to be. Clearly, there are good reasons to market your business on TikTok. But, why the urgency? Dealing with Oversaturation Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms are oversaturated, meaning businesses have already built their audiences there. As a result, trying to stand out in that market feels almost impossible. Imagine trying to get someone’s attention across the room, but the room is full of people shouting in their direction. Even if you look great and your message is important, you’re going to be drowned out. Now, imagine being on stage in a quiet room with your audience facing you. How much easier is it to be heard? The same is true of TikTok. While everyone is trying to shout over each other on other platforms, you have an audience spending time on TikTok just waiting to hear your message. Being an Early Adapter Studies have shown that early adoption of new social media is key for lesser-known brands. While established brands can use their visibility to build a following quickly, most brands are not household names. For smaller brands, success depends on quickly hopping on a new trend or platform to build an audience over time. TikTok may be a newer social media platform, but the principles that made the early adopters of Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Google+ successful are true for TikTok. Embracing a new platform and being willing to put themselves out there is how companies are the most likely to succeed. By the time your competitors wake up and realize the potential of marketing on TikTok, you will have already built a loyal audience who loves the value that your content is giving them. (Unless, of course, you miss this opportunity and let someone else have that success.) Trust and Authenticity It’s often said that customers buy from people that they know, like, and trust. TikTok provides a way for your brand to build that relationship in a way that connects to how the modern user is approaching social media. Because TikTok promotes connection and conversation, having your brand on this platform gives your audience a chance to get to know you, like you, and trust you. Over time, that converts into sales and loyal customers. One of my clients, a sleep coach, said that using our strategies on TikTok not only helped her to build “...a great engaged audience on TikTok but these followers have now become raving fans on Instagram and email lists.” TikTok makes your brand approachable. Approachable brands have long-term relationships with their customers. Isn’t that what we all want for our business? Is it enough to just have an account? It would be absurd to say that a business can succeed on any platform just by showing up. Many of my clients have TikTok accounts but are not seeing any movement. That is where I come in. There’s more to TikTok than just posting videos. It’s about understanding TikTok’s unique algorithm and how to optimize your content to convert followers into customers. The type of content that you put on TikTok relates to its success. Each social media platform is unique. Succeeding on TikTok means that you must understand TikTok and have a framework for your marketing geared to this platform. Time to Get Started Walt Disney famously said that the best way to get started is to get started. The difference between today and six months from now is that you will regret not having started sooner. Also, your competitors may not be waiting and you will have to catch up to their established audiences (Hint: My best guess says in 1-3 years, all shall be on TikTok) However, getting started today and six months from now, you have the opportunity to see real results and movement in your business. The key is starting TODAY. If you want to know more about TikTok and why it is a vital marketing tool for today’s savvy brands, you will love our new FREE guide, “A to Z of TikTok”. You can sign up for it here. Follow Samantha on her Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and visit her website for more info. Samantha Vlasceanu, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Samantha Vlasceaunu, The TikTok Coach, is on a mission to convince businesses and brands that TikTok is not just for our teenagers (and no dancing required)! When COVID-19 hit, her other traveling business had to shut down and she had to pivot - FAST. That's when she realized that she'd been organically reaching her audience on TikTok all along and realized the power TikTok could have for businesses if they gave them a chance. Fast forward to today, Sam works with marketing agencies, coaches, lawyers, corporate Brands - you name it! Sam ensures all her clients are using the app with intention as a sales funnel in finding their target audience and coaching the strategies of converting their followers into ACTUAL paying clients.

Written by: Dr. Hynd Bouhia, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. The most successful entrepreneurs started from nothing. They worked hard. They persevered to reach their goals. They made sacrifices. Their families made sacrifices for them to acquire the right education and reach financial freedom and respect. When you stay focused, you work hard along with a good education, everything becomes possible. In particular, if you are a woman, and if you get the power to contribute in decision-making processes, you can surely transform the world. An important affirmation you need to keep in mind, to be able to inspire the next generation. You become a role model for every young girl and every young woman. Not only working hard comes from childhood, but confidence finds its roots in the first years of life. Good things don’t come effortlessly just by magic. You need to have not only the right mindset but also great discipline and perseverance at all times. And more importantly not be afraid to lose and take on risks and challenges. In fact, the only way to reach success is by being ready to take on risks, by developing resilience through failure, and by standing back up again no matter what. A strong mindset, a deep belief in the ability to reach your goals and professional success, coupled with hard work paves the way to excellence. Yes, excellence is the brand you want to have.As a woman, you know that in order to navigate through a men dominated professional world, you need to work harder, be more creative, get better results and show up perfect all the time. And when you reach a high-level leadership position and become a member of the boards of large corporations, you not only carry the hope for all women, but you represent all the women who could not make it. You know who you are, where you belong and where you come from. You also know how long and challenging the journey was to get there. This is why, the first step to success is to know what you really want to become. Having a clear vision of your goal and your objectives is necessary to reach fulfillment and success in both your professional and personal life. Oprah Winfrey is the perfect role model for all women around the world, spreading motivation and inspiration. Oprah shines through her strong conviction: “you don’t get what you wish for, you don’t get what you hope for, you get what you strongly believe in”. Thus, having a clear vision of what you want to reach by articulating your dreams and ambitions sets the tone for what type of success you will be reaching. A strong belief in the achievable goals will take you a long way to reaching it [1]. You will grow a strong inner power to be able to overcome the obstacles and all the challenges on the road to success. You will learn how to shut down any little voice in your head telling you the opposite. You are responsible for what is happening to you. This is why by taking responsibility for your own destiny, you will make major leaps towards success and fulfillment. And, when your goal is vivid about having a life full of happiness and abundance combined with a strong and deep belief that you deserve such a life, you will see it materializing. Everyone wants to be famous. People are admired for being famous. The only thing is that fame fades away and what stays on is the service rendered. As rightly expressed by Martin Luther King « not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service ». When you know what is your goal, you will find the perfect service you can provide and get paid for it. And for long-lasting success from the service you offer, you have to be the best at it. This way, it becomes very difficult to replace you as you confirm your position as an authority, a leader, and an expert. By providing the best service, you get an overwhelming satisfaction from changing people’s life. You will keep distinguishing yourself through your excellence by raising yourself up to the top. In the top, there is no competition! But with success comes hatred, jealousy, and cruelty; All these negative energies could affect you if you let them affect you. It is therefore important to master how to navigate through all these energies without letting them impact your inside. Unfortunately, even the closest family and social environment will not always be happy for her success. You can be labeled arrogant and selfish. On the one hand, you become perceived as selfish because your leadership could make you sound arrogant. On the other hand, you are considered selfish because you did not take everyone with you towards the same success—like if you had a boat and everybody needed to be in it. Even if you have always been generous and helping whenever you can, you can never be appreciated the same way ever again. You need to be ready for that. That is how you see appearing an impressive range of detractors and attackers. The best response is to aim for excellence and to become the greatest expert! Yes, excellence should be your brand. It will be the best response that you could give to injustice, attacks, and toxic people around you. And most importantly, excellence is the best gift you can give to herself. Finally, success is correlated with how you surround yourself with positive and like-minded people. Network with people who can help you achieve that excellence and bring the very best in you! For more info, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and visit my website! Read more from Hynd! Dr. Hynd Bouhia, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Dr. Hynd Bouhia has cumulated more than 20 years of professional experience in high-level and leadership positions, covering investments, financial structuring, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development strategies. Hynd Bouhia was nominated by Forbes among the 100 most influential women in the world in 2008 and among the most influential women in Business in the Arab World in 2015 and honored as a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2018. References: [1] www.balmethod.com

Written by: Kylie Mort, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Change is the only constant in life. Oh yes… and time, one must never forget that ticking clock. We all have the same 24 hours in the day, it is true, but we certainly don’t use it similarly, and even within our own personal circadian rhythm, sometimes it just seems that time gets lost. So where does the time go? Firstly there are the cognitive manipulations and contortions of our mind that I like to call the AAA effect. The first A of the acronym refers to Anticipation. That feeling of hope and excitement as we look forward to a pleasurable situation or outcome. The clamorous butterflies in the stomach and the irrepressible urge to grin. That state of mind when we really see the world around us, the colours more vibrant, the beauty more breathtaking, relishing the keenness of small delights. And whilst you are marvelling at the sheer pleasure of being alive your brain is enthusiastically feeding you more of this feel-good emotion, drugging you with the natural high of dopamine. This is the cognitive reaction craved by the drug addict, those who rely on the legally accessible alcohol or nicotine, but also restricted narcotics such as cocaine and LSD. Dopamine receptors in the brain can be violated and hacked by these external elements but they can just as easily be unlocked and explored by the simple pleasures we take for granted, such as food choices, sleep, music, meditation, and exercise (especially yoga). Most important to this particular discussion though is dopamine’s ability to speed up time. No, I don’t mean black holes and time travel, I’m referring to the cliched, “time flies when you’re having fun!” The space-time continuum remains the same, your brain is just dancing to the beat of its own drum as dopamine fuels the fire of your chronological awareness. Conversely, it is the same for a reduction of dopamine production as this will seem to make time crawl. My most horrific memory analogy would be the way I was sent to my bedroom “to think about it” before the inevitable punishment came when I was a child. The feeling of abject terror as you waited for what seemed to be eons, running through the possibilities of what the punishment would be today. On a short-term timeline, this is when the child’s brain is frantically calculating the consequences and the dread is pouring in. On a more sustained level this is where you see a child present as lack-lustre, unmotivated, and apathetic as a character. The child’s brain is a unique balance of chemical reactions sustained through patterns of predominance and if the fusion is off, so too is the behaviour. So is time just about feeling good and the cognitive chemicals that create our perception of it? Not exactly. In a broader contextual focus, time does appear slower through the eyes of a child. This is due to the encoding process of memory. New and novel encounters are denser to encode and thus seem to take longer. Neuron pathways are thicker and therefore more time-consuming to construct. Conversely, as life becomes more routine and the novelty of experiences wane, we do perceive a quickness that can be labelled as the reflective pining for the languor of our youth, as encapsulated in the stereotypical warnings of our elders to heed the rapidity of later years. Age makes time seem to pass more quickly as the pathways through our brain are more deeply ingrained. Yet the third A is more universally felt. The third part of this time acronym is for Autopilot. The brain is an incredibly efficient machine. As we learn and adapt to situations the neuron pathways evolve and develop from the tentative tracks of the intrepid traveller to the careless careening of familiar frontiers. Neuron pathways are deepened, strengthened, and emboldened until such time as cognitive awareness becomes unnecessary. This inevitably leads to time seeming to pass faster, but does it also lead to time being lost? Is it all in the mind? Can we control time cognitively? Perhaps that is a little too simplistic, but I was keen to drill down on the mind-body balance and how we can cater for this in our productivity. I recently conducted an experiment that proved beyond a doubt what I already knew. Now putting aside the obvious confirmation bias, why am I so adamant? Because I am not the only one to preach it. I remind my clients, my children, my husband. I make social media posts about it; I speak about it at my performance coaching events. The proverbial reminder: you cannot pour from an empty glass. To give your best you need to be your best. And this takes time. Specific time scheduled for self-care. Yet, if I was going to successfully preach the message, I needed to live it, I needed proof. As a qualified educator and student of psychology, I do not want to be just another voice. I am a holistic performance coach that teaches from experience. Thus I began my journey as my own laboratory rodent at a high-stress period where I faced deadlines like the craggy cliff walls of an insurmountable mountain. Again, I had bitten off more than I could chew. How was I going to fulfill all of these commitments? How could I find more time every day? I would neglect that which so many people classify as indulgence. I would remove that subjective pleasure we so often need to justify to ourselves, just so we do not feel weak and selfish. I removed my morning run, my meditation, and my yoga, successfully taking back 1½ hour of every day in my 7-day week, 10½ hours total. Now, what could I achieve with all that time? The consequences came gradually. Yet just as the proverbial frog will eventually boil in the heating water; I too saw the culmination of liveable limitations leading to a new world order of a different nature. The first indication was my ankle. I have lived with the limp of my partial paralysis since childhood. The almost imperceivable intimation of my historical trauma. Insidiously, it grew worse and more painful as the damaged nerves lamented the loss of daily stretching and massage. And as the challenges of this weakest link grew so too did the burden increase for the knee and then the hip, as my body adapted to its necessary asymmetry. The consequences compounded in my newly sedentary lifestyle. The historical blip on the radar of my nervous system was increasingly inhibiting my musculoskeletal system. I was feeling bloated and heavy as my digestive system went into culture shock also. As I was not stimulating either system my energy declined and so did my mood. I felt harried and beleaguered as the ripple effect of this one change damaged all routines, including meals and sleep. The mind-body connection continued to falter still further as a lack of dedicated meditation caused a lack of mindful gratitude and my mindset spiralled. Yes, I was working. I was committing everything I had to reach these deadlines. But at what cost? Did I have more work hours? And more importantly, were they more productive? To start with the basic calculation, I had an extra 10 ½ hours per week to dedicate to my office; on average an extra 21 hours over the fortnight or 16 ½ over the 11 days before my university deadline. I spent 34 hrs on this task, which was 45% of my work time. Let us not begin to drill down on the convulsive oscillation of competing commitments, company objectives, and deadlines. It was an 11-day sprint and anyone who runs multiple companies and a household equipped with multiple children knows the race is never won. Empathetically and objectively, it is a race that has no finish line. These are why milestone wins, daily gratitude, and celebrating small achievements are so important! Yet, I digress… Spending 75 hrs working over 11 days equates to an average of 6.8 hrs per day which equals an average 48-hour workweek. That is a pretty good balance for someone like me. But was it more time at work than the previous 11 days? This will inevitably highlight the possible success of the sprint and the benefit of sacrificing self-care. Looking at the schedule for the prior 3 weeks I averaged 43 hours at the coal face each week. That was taken from 128 ½ hours total which roughly equated to 6 per day. Excellent, it looks like a successful trade-off as this is equivalent to 66 hours over 11 days! The difference between the sprint of 75 hours and the preceding average of 66 hours means I worked on average an extra 9 hours… But what is this? My self-care generally takes 16½ hours! Where did the other 7½ go? That is an entire extra day! Let’s talk about productivity. One of my favourite people to quote is Muhammad Ali and he is also one of my favourite people to model. "I don't count the sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting." Just like he doesn’t count the easy sit-ups, I don’t count the off-task hours. To be on-task you need to be laser-focused. There is a myth that people can multitask. You can’t. When you believe you are focusing on two things at once you are simply dividing your focus and, in most cases, doing both tasks badly. Think about the last time you listened to someone and scrolled Facebook at the same time. How much did you retain from either task? People do not multitask; our brains use autopilot in relation to priorities. If I count an hour of work, I have focused for that hour. No phone calls, no messages, no emails. No daydreams, no time-outs. Commit. Get in, get it done, get out. My missing day was a lack of productivity because I lacked strength. Lack of focus, lack of energy, lack of commitment. I had expected more of my mind and my body, and I had given less. Instead of preparing each day with a mind-body connection and the cognitive chemicals that would empower me, I had skipped straight to the battlefield. And I had been weaker. Ultimately if you are skipping your self-care, take a look at what it is that you are routinely scheduling and how much you genuinely enjoy it. One of my best friends lives in Melbourne, Victoria, unfortunately, one of the most restricted, locked-up cities in the world during the past 18 months. We motivate each other each day by sharing our workout targets and successes. Yet do I do her workouts? No! I loathe the star jumps, the burpees, and ultimately for my unique body, the ankle damage. My workouts are yoga-based flows. Am I still smiling through the pain to tone and sculpt? Certainly, but my ankle doesn’t protest, and it is a rhythm that suits my individual personality. Two ten-minute workouts can equate to a 20-minute run. Choose your self-care in a way that serves you, so you look forward to the dopamine release rather than grimace at the scheduled pain. All bodies move, all bodies need movement maintenance, and all mind-body connections need stimulation. If you are not doing it for the bikini body, do it for the cognitive chemicals. Not only will you reap the results of efficiency, efficacy, and energy, you will strengthen your mind-body connection and your success mindset. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram and visit my website for more information! Read more from Kylie! Kylie Mort, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Kylie Mort works with individuals of all ages to embrace and support the Academic Mind, Self-Awareness & the Mind-Body Connection. Assisting individuals by tailoring bespoke mentoring packages supporting academic, physical, and personal advancement and success. Kylie is an International Author and Writer for Global Magazines, writing both academically and creatively to connect with those who seek guidance and inspiration to be their best selves. A former Secondary School Teacher & VCE Leader with 20 years of teaching experience, Kylie is a qualified & registered: School Teacher, Yoga Teacher & Performance Coach. She is also an entrepreneur, leading multiple-award-winning companies. She is currently studying Psychological Science at Deakin University to provide holistic mentoring to her clients better, having spent decades honing her skills in face-to-face teaching, mentoring, and business & company development. Now, she is focused on the human mind and its power to empower through reimaging, redesigning, and recreating.

Written by: Suzie Ayonna Suttles, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Childhood psychological abuse and emotional neglect will often manifest in our adult lives as feelings of emptiness and loneliness. When people attempt to mask, ignore, or hide these feelings, they often find it challenging to thrive with minimal human contact. Spending time with others allows them to feel emotionally healthy and happy, but what happens when those people aren’t there to fill their unfulfilled needs? Human connection is necessary for us to grow and evolve in life, but it is 100% our responsibility to provide for our emotional health and happiness. When we hold ourselves accountable for our emotional health and happiness, we build stronger and healthier relationships with others. If you are struggling with feelings of emptiness and loneliness, here are five ways to combat those feelings and become your own best friend. Check your emotions. When you experience feelings of emptiness and loneliness, it often stems from the emotions of the child within who didn’t feel valued. When these emotions arise, find ways to support happy feelings and practice being kind to yourself. Eliminate any self-deprecating thoughts or limiting beliefs about yourself, and find ways to show yourself some love. Take yourself out on a date, buy yourself some flowers, or give yourself a nice present. Give the love and kindness that you so freely give to others to yourself. Take care of your body. The hidden emotions found in the feelings of emptiness and loneliness are usually key indicators that your body requires relaxation on a mental and emotional level. When these feelings arise, it may be a perfect time for you to get out in nature for a hike, walk, or maybe visit your favorite water source. Perhaps your emotions prompt you to limit your artificial sugar intake and treat your body to water, fruits, and vegetables. Eliminate any addictions and seek out the proper resources if you are having trouble with addiction issues. Taking care of your physical body allows you to be more in sync with your mental and emotional body. Start a hobby. What were some things you enjoyed doing as a child? As we age, we tend to put aside the hobbies or activities we loved as a child. We may have grown older, but the child inside is still very much alive and desires to be cared for and nurtured. If you love photography, create some time in your schedule to spend a day or a few hours doing nothing but taking pictures. Creativity is your seat of happiness, and feelings of emptiness and loneliness can surface when we are not exercising our creative energy regularly. A hobby is a great way to bring fulfillment and pleasure into your life. Foster or Adopt a pet. If you don't have a pet, you may want to consider getting one. Studies show that having a pet and caring for a pet provides for our emotional health and happiness. The relationship you have with your pet is often 99% greater than your relationships with other humans. Pets, unlike humans, live carefree lives similar to a child; therefore, the worries of the world don't fill their minds. Learning to live a life carefree of all your stresses and worries brings more satisfaction and fulfillment into your life. It can create more mental, emotional, and physical happiness because you no longer feel depressed, sad, or anxious worrying about tomorrow. Maintain a self-care routine. Lack of self-care is the number one reason why most people often feel empty or lonely. It's so important to treat yourself with love and care, especially when no one is looking. Maintaining a self-care routine creates a healthy emotional balance within yourself. Making sure that you make yourself meals instead of eating fast food is a great way to care for yourself. Taking a warm shower daily and washing off the world's cares is a great way to practice self-care. It's essential to take care of yourself when you're by yourself because if you only take care of yourself when people are around, you're doing it for others and not for yourself. You are your priority and should treat yourself as such, and the more you practice self-care regularly, the more it will become a lifestyle and your daily routine. If you’ve struggled with external relationships in the past, make today the day that you decide to become your own best friend and start cultivating that relationship with yourself. The most important relationship you will ever have in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. If that is not a positive experience, your external relationships won’t be positive either. Self-love is the key to inner happiness and success and is a skill that you develop with the proper training and assistance. Without self-love, you face an obstacle with self-development. Subscribe to our monthly self-care newsletter, and start cultivating healthy self-love. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or visit my website for more info! Read more from Suzie! Suzie Ayonna Suttles, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Suzie is a Certified Intuitive Guide, Healer, and Reader, who is a survivor of childhood psychological abuse, and domestic violence abuse. She is a thriver of PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and an Intuitive Guidance Coach fostering the heart of men beyond the abuse of their past. Empowering men to move from the mindset of the victim to the mindset of the victor. She is a published author of 6 books, and her work was featured on HubPages, HealDove, and The GTCC Titan Review. Suzie is a proud member of the Phi Theta Kappa National Honors Society.

Written by: Jane Christine, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. You have a desire and need to help others, it’s in your nature. But if you feel responsible for everyone and everything this can have a negative effect on your central nervous system. This can cause stress, burnout, anxiety, guilt, low self-esteem, and this stress on your body sends a message of fear to your brain. “You’re too busy taking care of everyone else and in the process neglecting your own needs and wants.” It makes sense why you’re overbooked in your schedule, you’re too busy taking care of everyone else and in the process neglecting your own needs and wants. And it also makes sense why you constantly feel overwhelmed, any slight deviation from “the plan” you blame yourself and feel guilty. Ever thought you could have prevented a problem from occurring if you could have planned better? You have an overactive sense of responsibility. This means that you feel overly responsible for everything around you, even beyond your control, including taking on the responsibility for others, perhaps even obsessing about it. Of course, you find logical justification for why it’s your responsibility, but the truth of the matter is you’re actually doing more harm than good. You know when you are at your best, you can better assist those in need. But you’ve developed this pattern of putting your needs last and that’s affecting your nervous system. Let’s Find Out Let’s do a little test to find out if you have an overactive sense of responsibility: You feel overwhelmed and burnout regularly You can easily get annoyed by the irresponsibility of others You resent others whom you feel are taking advantage of your generosity You feel like you need to schedule everyone’s calendar You constantly remind yourself of what you need to do You feel compelled to remind others of their responsibility You feel responsible when things don’t go to plan If you resonated with 5 or more of these statements, then you have an overactive sense of responsibility. There are many reasons why this could have developed; as a child, there may have been a family member who was being under-responsible and you picked up the slack to keep harmony in the house, perhaps when you are in control it gives you a sense of security, it makes you feel safe knowing all the details, you like to please others to the point you accept their responsibility. “Remember it’s been years you’ve used this strategy and it will take some time to release yourself of everyone else’s responsibility.” The good news! You can identify what is truly your own responsibility and how to start handling back responsibility to the rightful owner. You’ll be able to reframe your current perspective and take a step back and choose 1 part at a time to focus on. Remember it’s been years you’ve used this strategy and it will take some time to release yourself of everyone else’s responsibility but have grace and compassion towards yourself during this moment of change and growth. Here’s how to set responsibility boundaries. Step 1: Draw a plate (circle) on a blank piece of paper – this represents everything you have on your plate right now Step 2: Write all the things you are responsible for right now at the bottom of the page Step 3: Now allocate a percentage of your plate to each item – think about of how much each thing takes up to create a pie chart Step 4: What is the amount leftover for you? The percentage remaining is what you’ve allocated for yourself. Ask yourself this question “Where do you fit into this equation?”. That little piece left – if there is any – is where you seem to fit into your own life Step 5: Let me ask you a question, if you showed your younger self this plate diagram what would she say? Step 6: Start by giving back the responsibility to those who it belongs – write down the true owner of each item Step 7: Teach them the tools and complete an official handover so you may remove this responsibility from your plate You can calm down your central nervous system by releasing the responsibility you’ve acquired from others. This will reduce your stress, anxiety, overwhelm, guilt and it will increase your self-esteem and confidence. If you’re finding it difficult to release your overactive sense of responsibility, I would recommend working with a qualified mindset coach to get to the root cause of this belief that’s holding you back. Follow me on Instagram, connect with me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jane! Jane Christine, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Jane Christine is a certified Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, and author. Originally from Australia working in the corporate world until she questioned her life's purpose. Jane believed there had to be more to life, so she sold everything she owned and set off for a nomadic lifestyle traveling around the world searching for answers and a place to call home, which she finally found in Spain. Her search and transformation took her to over 37 countries. Life experiences and her own personal growth guided her to become a certified Life Coach. Her travels inspired her quest to learn about the world around us and why we do what we do. Since 2012, Jane Christine has been studying how our pasts shape us, the effects of societal standards, and the impact of values. With Neuro-Linguistics Programming techniques and through the power of transformation, learn how to; bridge the gap, define self-worth, set tangible goals, find comfort through change, and how 1% micro-changes can alter lives. Jane Christine is the author of "How You Know Already: Questions to ask yourself to find the answers within," as she believes we are all unique, and so are each of our paths to follow. She is dedicated to her clients and supporting their growth and journey. Her motto: Design your life, don't just live it!

Written by: Jenny Vukovcan, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Building a business can be challenging. There are a lot of moving parts that get to be in alignment to run your business smoothly. You must have the know-how to create, build, and grow a successful business. You must also be able to manage your time effectively, have laser focus on the right tasks, and be able to manage distractions that hold you back from making daily progress. I have been a lifestyle business coach for overwhelmed and overworked online entrepreneurs for many years now, and one of the biggest hurdles I see that’s holding visionary entrepreneurs back from making daily progress in their business, is managing their time and energy effectively. They are pulled in so many different directions, have constant interruptions, and don’t know how to prioritize their time, energy, or tasks in a way that translates to daily progress in their business and life. This is a skill set that comes from experience, many trial and errors, knowing yourself, and having a simplified system set up that works for all areas of your life. Most entrepreneurs talk about time management as the only process for being more productive in their business, when in fact there are a lot more components that go into time management than implementing strategies. Before you think about what strategies to apply to increase your productivity and feel more accomplished, I invite you to consider what outcome you are really after. Are you looking to reclaim a few hours a day so you can be more present with your children or are you looking to check off a few more task boxes on your to-do list? Is it really that you need to manage your time more effectively or is it that you just need to manage your energy better? The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs do is to tackle their productivity challenge with the wrong approach. If you have a really hard time focusing and get easily distracted, setting up work hours and time blocks might not be the right solution for you. You might need to focus more on decluttering your workspace, finding work-life flow, and creating a routine that takes all your priorities into consideration. Likewise, if you feel you are not making the appropriate progress for your goals, maybe you get to look at breaking down your goals to more manageable steps, structuring your day differently, or streamlining your business instead of focusing on your motivation strategy. Of course, many of these approaches overlap; however, when you are clear on what category your problem is in, you can more easily find the right solution for where you are instead of going in circles and applying strategies that do not work. Having a freedom business means running your business and life like a well-oiled machine with clarity, insights, and strategies that take all your needs into considerations. For more info, follow me on Facebo ok , Instagram , LinkedIn , YouTube or visit my web site ! Read more from Jenny! Jenny Vukovcan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Jenny Vukovcan is an international best-selling author, productivity coach, business mentor, executive contributor writer, founder of the Modern Boss Academy and host of the Unstoppable Boss Podcast. Often referred to as the Productivity Queen, Jenny teaches overworked and overwhelmed online entrepreneurs how to manage their time, be more productive, and accomplish their goals, so they can build a business working only four hours a day and have more freedom in their lives. Unlike other coaches who only focus on generic questions and cookie-cutter strategies, Jenny digs deep and focuses on transformation from the inside out. Using her signature 3 levels of wisdom framework and business freedom formula, she has helped hundreds of online entrepreneurs increase their productivity, manage their time and energy, and build a business and life they love without sacrifice and guilt.

Written by: Kim Parker, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. My husband’s health journey and that of my own, while both difficult, have been rewarding in so many wonderful ways. These experiences set me on a path that has led me to where I am today as a health coach and health advocate, living on purpose and loving the valuable contribution I am making to others in need. I was in my late teens/early twenties when I became distinctly aware of the extent of conditioning of humanity with regards to what causes the illnesses we are suffering from and how to prevent them and help our bodies heal. I began to realise how much faith people had lost in their own ability to take care of their health and to heal. Very few questioned what didn’t make sense and even fewer challenged the status quo. As individuals and a collective, we truly don’t know how immensely powerful we are. We have in fact forgotten our magnificence. Without even realising it we have given away our power and it’s time to take it back. Now, more so than ever before. The good news is I can feel the tide is turning. My husband and I met when we were eighteen. His health issues were just beginning and fifteen years later, just after the birth of our second son, he was finally diagnosed with Coeliac Disease and chronic Dermatitis Herpetiformis. His journey to good health was a long one, with many difficult twists and turns and ups and downs. We finally managed to heal him after twenty-three arduous years. He went through so much and we learned so many valuable lessons. I learned that your personal experience and research empower you like nothing else and in feeling empowered you are more likely to take ownership of your health. It became crystal clear to me that being in the driver's seat and holding yourself responsible for your own health is a catalyst to your healing. I learned that being prepared to travel the road less travelled, challenge the status quo and be and remain open to new ways of thinking (often condemned by both mainstream and alternate), was not only enlightening but transformational and opportunity-laden. I learned how to heal myself. I learned that most people felt, feel, and will feel confronted about my choice to step away from the conditioned thinking and narrative that the majority of humankind are sitting in, and that I will often feel very much alone. I learned to meet people where they are at, as everyone is on their own journey. I learned that through it all, as a critical thinker, standing in my truth, my knowingness, although lonely, was where I wanted and needed to be, no matter what people thought of me. I learned that dimming my light did not serve me, my family or the world. In honouring myself, my intuition, and my inner guidance, I have found and experienced the most extraordinary health and well-being solutions, that are now touching the lives of many in the most exquisite ways, and for this I am so deeply grateful. My journey through darkness has empowered me to find a light. A beautiful light that I now shine in places that reveal answers, hope, new ideas, love, and ultimately healing. I would love to shine this light for you. Disclaimer Kim Parker holds no registered or recognised medical or health qualifications. Information shared by Kim Parker is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. We encourage you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified healthcare professional. If you take any action based upon information provided by Kim Parker without the supervision of a qualified healthcare professional, you do so at your own risk. You should always speak with your healthcare professional before taking any medication or nutritional, herbal, or other supplements, or adopting any natural treatment for a health problem. Kim Parker, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Kim Parker is a thought leader and coach in health transformation and healing, both physically and spiritually. She has over 30 years experience and her journey embarked when her husband began suffering from a debilitating health condition. Their struggle to find the root cause of his illness and appropriate healing solutions spanned decades. After finally helping her husband heal, she was determined to share her findings, extensive research and experience with others to help prevent long-term suffering. Her mission is to educate and empower people so they feel confident to take ownership of their health and well-being. She is a distributor for USANA Health Sciences cellular supplementation and has been working in the supplementation industry since 2010. She was ranked their number one customer enroller in Australia in 2014 and also served as an ambassador for this global company. She is a passionate health advocate and conscious truth seeker and knows we all have the power to heal.

Written by: Chris Janssen, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Don’t think of green. Don’t think of green. Don’t think of green. What are you thinking about? Green, of course! Here’s the deal: your thought language drives your focus. Your mind will latch like Velcro to your focus—good or bad. Focusing on what you don’t want will stick you with that negative mindset. The words you allow to rule your subconscious matter, and today is the perfect time to refocus your mind. You get what you focus on, so: focus on what you want—not what you don’t want. focus on what you can control—not what you can’t. focus on what you have—not what’s missing. Simply put, mind your mind space. If thought is garbage, toss it out to make room for the good stuff. If past gunk starts to suck you down in its quicksand, free your mind by focusing on where you want to go, not where you are and where you’ve been. The words you allow to play in your head matter—and moving forward really is a thinking thing you can control. Peak performance in life demands focus. Choose your focus; otherwise, other things or people will choose for you. Here’s a simple focus-minded exercise: On a colorful piece of paper, write down what you want to focus on (or find a picture that illustrates it) and use that goal as a focal point throughout your day. Consider making it your smartphone wallpaper. Post it on mirrors in your home and office. Make it the screensaver for your laptop. The trick is to strategically place that focus where you’ll see it quickly and often. Whenever an off-the-positive-track thought tries to hijack your mindset, shift your eyes to your new focal point. Practice bouncing your focus from what you don’t want to what you do want. Soon your new focus will become your natural mind language. You’ll train your brain to focus on where you want to go. So, what’s your focus today? © 2021 Chris Janssen. No part of this article may be reproduced online or in print without the author’s written permission. Want to learn more from Chris? Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or visit her website. Read more from Chris! Chris Janssen, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Chris Janssen is a Board Certified Life Coach with an honest, strategic style who helps her clients master habits and skills to move toward and thrive in what they love. Chris excels in working with high performers and understands the character traits associated with driven achievers. As a trained Business Coach, Chris specializes in closing the gap between where a company or individual is and where they want to be. Chris partners with her clients to access their creativity and resourcefulness necessary to achieve the sustainable results they want. She cares deeply about her clients' careers, relationships, spirituality, wellness, health, patterns, and mindsets. Chris says her clients are experts at what they do and she is an expert at the psychology of what they do. Together they are unstoppable.

Written by: Christine Deschemin, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Prioritizing your mental health through hypnotherapy can give you the tools you need to overcome the stress, conquer your anxieties, and take your business to the next level. Managing Mental Health in the Business World Business owners are under intense pressure these days. Monitoring a business, caring for employees, and addressing client needs can keep you going from the time the sun comes up until it goes down. During busier periods or times of stress, you might find yourself struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance. You may feel as if you are stretched too thin or pulled in too many directions. Hypnosis can help you regain that balance. Using hypnosis can help you prioritize your mental wellbeing so that you can keep doing what you do best. The Importance of Mental Wellness The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals list mental and psychosocial wellbeing as a global development priority. Emotional issues, from anxiety and stress to worry and depression, can interfere not just with your personal or social life but also with your business. While this is perhaps most commonly seen in family businesses, mental struggles can strike any entrepreneur or a business owner. According to the World Health Organization, mental wellness can be defined by: Realizing your abilities Coping well with normal life stress Working productively Contributing to the community In other words, according to the WHO, mental wellness is not merely the absence of mental illness but thriving in both your personal and professional lives and engaging socially. Your mental state affects not just you, however, but also your business. A survey conducted by the City Mental Health Alliance Hong Kong in conjunction with Oliver Wyman found that a lack of mental wellness costs employers about HKD 5.5 to 12.4 billion a year (~USD 700 million to 1.6 billion). Emotional stress affects not only business owners but employees, too, dampening productivity and creating strain in the workplace. Hypnosis is a powerful corporate wellness tool that is easy to incorporate into even the busiest schedule. It can give you and your team the necessary tools to overcome stress, conquer anxiety, and take your business to the next level. Protecting Your Emotional Wellbeing with Hypnosis Your mental wellness is as important as your physical health, but it can be easy to overlook, especially in times of stress. Hypnosis is an invaluable tool that can help you flip the script on stress and restore your mental and emotional wellbeing. A hypnotherapy app can help you address a variety of common issues that contribute to mental strain and anxiety, including: 1. Creating healthier boundaries Entrepreneurs and small business owners often find the line between work and life blurs. Creating healthier boundaries can help you prioritize your emotional wellbeing and protect against burnout, an issue that is associated with fatigue, depression, and other potentially serious symptoms. With hypnotherapy, you can take control of subconscious issues that are holding you back. You can learn to create and enforce healthier boundaries that work for you and your business. 2. Getting Motivated Burnout not only causes physical symptoms; it can also sap your motivation. When you feel burned out, you may struggle to concentrate or find your passion. You may also struggle with other emotional symptoms, such as irritability, impatience, and disillusionment. As you become increasingly dissatisfied with your work, your unhappiness might seep into other aspects of your life. The ability to focus your attention, a.k.a. hypnosis, is a deeply relaxing practice, and as you use it, you can develop a healthier new perspective. That intense focus can help you feel excited and energized about your work once again. 3. Making time for self-care When life gets busy, we tend to neglect ourselves first. While occasionally putting your own needs on the backburner might not have any serious long-term effects, doing so regularly can leave you emotionally exhausted. When stressed, your risk of burnout increases, and you may feel unable to meet your day-to-day responsibilities. Taking the time to care for yourself through a nutritious diet, regular exercise, and stress management can go a long way towards protecting your wellbeing. Hypnosis is easy to add to any self-care routine, and you and your employees can use it to gain new insights, clarify your goals, and achieve work-life balance. Prioritizing your wellness through hypnotherapy can give you the tools you need to overcome the stress, conquer your anxieties, and take your business to the next level. With digital hypnotherapy, the ability to care for oneself from the inside out has become reality. As a business owner, you might not get many days off. Stress and nonstop work can take a heavy toll on your emotions, leaving you fatigued, mentally exhausted, and anxious. Hypnosis can be a powerful corporate wellness tool that keeps you and your team balanced, healthy, and whole. Visit UpNow.com today to learn more or to download the app. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Christine! Christine Deschemin, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Christine Deschemin is a certified hypnotherapist and founder of the Renewed Edge Hypnotherapy Centre in Hong Kong. With a keen interest in resilience, she leverages her experience as an athlete and as a former engineer and banker in high-stress environments with her executive and sports clients. In March 2020, she released the UpNow hypnosis app to bring the benefits of self-hypnosis to the fingertips of anyone in need. The self-hypnosis downloads can be accessed online and offline to make mental health aids very affordable. In addition to her many scholastic achievements, Christine Deschemin has a Master of Science from the Ecole Polytechnique (France) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is fluent in four languages.

Written by: Joanna Hakimi, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. “No, no, no!” we hear busy parents of toddlers screaming often. “No, I don’t want the guacamole on my burrito” easily flows out of our mouth at lunchtime. "Just say NO” is a famous phrase we have taught generations of youth when it relates to drugs. No. Such a simple, tiny, two-letter word that is often one of the first babies learn. However, it may be the most difficult word to say when it comes to defining boundaries. There is never enough time for ME is a common complaint of all adults. Why do we find ourselves in this hamster wheel of not managing our own needs and possibly feeling resentful? Likely because you are prioritizing your spouse, your kids, your boss, your parents, your friends, and so on, before your own self-care. There is an easy fix to this problem. SAY NO. But that simple fix isn’t so simple, is it? Why is it so hard for people to say no? 1. You’re a pleaser. You always want to make everyone happy and by saying no you might disappoint someone. You feel bad you aren’t giving yourself to someone else. 2. It feels confrontational. Telling someone no could trigger them to be angry with you and thus brings on conflict, which you avoid at all costs. 3. You want to show that you are dedicated or committed to someone. Saying no feels like you are turning your back on those you care about. If you say no, are you really devoted to those you love and treasure? 4. You’re worried it could hurt you in the future. If you say no to a coworker or boss will it affect your prospects in the future? Will you be overlooked for promotions and other incentives because you are not viewed as a team player? Ultimately, this mindset is only hurting YOU. When we don’t say no and set boundaries for what we take on in our lives, we are unable to give 100% to anything. That means that everyone suffers. If you are not able to give a full commitment because you lack the time for self-care, you are not doing anyone any favors. How can you work on changing your mindset so saying no feels like a favor to yourself rather than a negative, nasty word? Start small. Sometimes it’s as simple as savoring your morning coffee for a few minutes longer before you wake the rest of the family. Ruminate in that extra minute by taking a deep breath and acknowledging that you took a moment of self-care time. From there, start by saying yes to yourself. This is easier than saying no to others. For example, say yes to allowing yourself to get to that mid-day spin class you’ve been wanting to try. Or, say yes to yourself to that solo vacation you’ve been dreaming about. Once you have mastered saying yes to yourself, you can more easily say no to others. When posed with a question, favor, or commitment that would pull you too thin, take a moment to reflect before you respond. It is ok to say “let me get back to you on that.” When you take a moment prior to responding, you have an opportunity to evaluate if committing is the right choice or not. If you determine that the answer is no, remind yourself…no is a complete sentence. No one can do it all and the only way to do anything well is to say no to some things. Ultimately, if it doesn’t feel like it serves you, the simple, but not so simple answer is no. Saying no is hard, there is no question about that, but it’s often the right thing to do. If you find yourself struggling to end the sentence with no, here are a few simple suggestions that might make it feel a bit better, but still get the same message across. No, I can’t, but thank you. My schedule is booked right now. I have a prior commitment. I wish I could make it work. Unfortunately, it’s not a good time. I’m not comfortable doing that. Just remember, you are entitled to set boundaries and while saying no might feel uncomfortable in the short-term, it’s going to make you feel better about your life overall! Follow Joanna on her Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and visit her website for more info. Read more from Joanna! Joanna Hakimi, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Joanna Hakimi is a proud entrepreneur and licensed marriage and family therapist. Starting her first successful business at the age of 17 and being president of the Young Entrepreneur’s Society at the University of Georgia, she never closed the door on opportunity. She then went on to Northwestern University and attained her Masters in Science, becoming an LMFT. After being a successful LMFT in the northern suburbs of Chicago for more than 10 years while simultaneously running a mindful goods boutique for 5 years and accomplishing a 200-hour yoga teaching certification, Joanna was itching for a new adventure. Seeing a need to connect independent professionals such as life coaches, wellness coaches, therapists, and career consultants searching for new clients, LifeChangers.info was born. Joanna's goal is to empower and enlighten others to reach their full potential while being their most authentic selves.

Written by: Jerilyn Ito, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. When people come up to me and ask questions, it is usually with the intent of wanting a direct answer. I feel from them the hope that my answer will be the resolution to that particular problem, but as well as many other problems that they are experiencing. As an intuitive reader in the past, I did give answers to their questions that I sensed, and then the person walked away feeling as if they knew how to go about with their life. There were people that reached out to me from here at home in Hawai'i to the continental United States, Japan, parts of Europe, and India. What I did notice is that it doesn’t matter where they lived or what even they do for a living. They were all searching for the same thing. They were seeking definitive answers to questions and confirmation of what they already knew. But I realize now that through my intuitive readings, in some way, I also took away from their own decision-making. I also realized that I took away the trust in themselves. That no matter what I said to them, they didn’t fully trust in taking the next steps. After a while, I stopped doing intuitive readings as, quite frankly, I got frustrated with people continually asking me what do I see and what they should do. Additionally, it would be the same questions asked for different situations. That is when I knew that I wanted to help people on a deeper level. That I desire for people to experience epiphanies. I realize that these epiphanies are not just experienced in your thoughts but are reverberations that occur throughout your body. It is a full-on body epiphany experience that echoes throughout you as you finally hear from your soul. But for these moments of epiphany to occur, I have also discovered there are core realizations that can easily turn into misconceptions. For one, judgment. Judgment can very easily turn into what people perceive as being judgmental, but in actuality, you need to tap into your own judgment. This is needed for you to become aware of the contrasts and differences. It is quite easy to question your judgment based on the outcome of your decision and feedback from others. But realize, an outcome based on your judgment is no right or wrong. Especially when it comes from your intuition, it is quite easy to judge if the information received really did come from your intuition based on the outcome. This questioning occurs from your mind. But when judgment comes through your body, it’s like the full effect. You just know. Another core realization is discernment. With discernment, you become aware of those differences and are abl e to recognize it for what it is. It is quite easy to go back and forth between discernment and judgment, but once you are able to feel the difference and know its relationship, you will know and recognize discernment. And finally, trust. Trust is what brings everything together. This is when you have full realization and recognition throughout your entire being. Realize, though, there are no how-to steps for any particular order. That is what most hope for to get to where they want to be. These core realizations are for you to sit with—a bringing of your awareness to it. If you glaze over this or have a blatant disregard, you will continue to search for answers to the same question. It’s time to move on. You have achieved so much in your life thus far, but now it is time to go beyond learning and listen to yourself—the discovery through your own evolution of trust and belief. Isn’t it time for you to go from a high achiever to a high believer in yourself? Follow me on Faceb ook , Instagram , LinkedIn , or visit my website for more info! Read more from Jerilyn! Jerilyn Ito, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Jerilyn Ito is a gifted creator and guide in the realms of energy healing and confidence. She had been shy and quiet since childhood and could not overcome this shyness. When spirituality suddenly came into her life in 2014, she not only had to figure out how to make sense of spiritual information from a practical sense, but she discovered how to tap into her confidence. She also uncovered her ability to guide her clients through the process of breaking down complexity and sparked intuition for her clients to create tangible ideas and concepts for their work and business. She has a deep desire to help others stand in their own power of expression from their body, mind, and soul and live through their soul confidence 24/7.