Written by: Alaina Schwartz, 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. Consistency is the Number One thing that holds people back from achieving their next level of success, even at 6-7+ Figures. Most entrepreneurs who come to me are working 50-80 hours a week. There’s no question that they are busy. Yet few of them are actually highly productive. They tend to do a lot of busy work (and also have a lot of distractions). When we dig deeper into how they spend their time, even though they may be constantly working, they are not consistently taking the type of action that really moves the needle forward. Why is that? I believe underlying inconsistency is a belief system, elaborate excuses concocted to be good but not be great. Of course, it doesn’t feel like excuses. It feels like reality because they’re working hard. Our subconscious mind has created patterns, mostly from the time we were younger than seven years old, to keep us in our paradigm. Our paradigm is our assumptions and beliefs that determine how we see the world and ourselves, how we look at things. Our subconscious mind knows how to address the problems that arise in our current paradigm. Therefore, it knows it’s going to be safe. Its number one job is to keep us safe and alive. Being consistent requires accepting one hundred percent ownership of and responsibility for our actions AND results. It’s so much safer to come up with excuses why we won’t succeed than to accept that we aren’t yet willing to pay the price our dream asks of us. By paying a price, I don’t mean working more or harder. I rarely advocate for people to work harder. In fact, people hire me to help them work significantly less. We created our paradigm to help us survive our childhood, but that belief system no longer serves us as adults and prevents us from reaching our goals. Usually, paying the price means letting go of that old paradigm and adopting a new empowering paradigm, instead. Very simple, but not necessarily easy. “That person is succeeding because ____, but I’m not that lucky.” “That strategy works for that person, but it won’t work for me.” “I’m doing everything I should be doing, but I’m still not seeing the result.” “You don’t know what I’m going through, what’s happening to me is different.” Please don’t feel bad, because EVERYONE does this. Everything we want, all of our goals, are outside our comfort zone. Because our comfort zone is safe to our subconscious mind, it wants to keep us in our comfort zone. And our subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than our conscious mind. I often liken our minds to a computer system. We have this database stored in our subconscious mind of all the experiences that we've had over the course of our life. When we go to do something that we haven't done before, like take action on a goal we’ve set, it searches the database and tries to figure out “How have I done this and survived?”, except because we haven't done it before, it doesn’t have evidence of how we survived it. There’s no record of what we did to survive it in the database. Therefore, it doesn't believe we are going to survive. It will then create some form of self-sabotage in our life so we stop taking the very action that would move us towards achieving our goals. Because our subconscious mind is trying to prevent us from taking the kind of action that would move us closer to our goals, we take the right action inconsistently. By way of example, we may take the right action but not get the outcomes we want and expect from that action. Believing that we should have gotten immediate results, we create a narrative that the action isn’t working and give up either temporarily or permanently. Most of us haven’t learned that mistakes and perceived “failures” are part of the journey of success; they’re not moving us in the opposite direction. It’s like driving a car with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. It’s easy to see that it would be challenging to arrive at our destination this way or take far longer than we anticipated. Integrity in business is when our values, words and actions are aligned. When we say we’re going to do something and don’t do it, we create an Integrity Gap. To be able to override the subconscious belief that the goal, and the action to get there, are unsafe, the Integrity Gap needs to be closed. That means taking the right action CONSISTENTLY without regard to the fruits of that action. A person could have five tasks that they commit to doing today. If they only complete three of those five things, they are widening the Integrity Gap. They haven’t done everything they committed to. It’s important to only commit to what we know we will do in the time frame we say we’ll do it. Doing this consistently eliminates the Integrity Gap. It allows our subconscious mind to build trust in us - that we will do what we say we will, when we say we’ll do it. When we shift our mindset and understand that what we want is so much closer than we think (and it is), and be consistent in our actions, we see growth quickly. Seeing different results with regularity is what allows us to override the old programming so that the subconscious mind expands our comfort zone. It now knows that the goal and the action are safe and can trust us to get there. When we show up, follow the right systems, put in the focused effort, over and over again, our success becomes inevitable. It is a choice. So what are you choosing? If you’re a purpose-driven entrepreneur and would like to scale with lightning speed while shaving 20+ hours off of your workweek, I invite you to connect with me here on LinkedIn. Here’s a free case study to watch. For more info, visit Alaina Schwartz and follow Alaina on Facebook and Instagram. Read more from Alaina! Alaina Schwartz, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Alaina Schwartz is the Founder & CEO of Alaina Schwartz Enterprises. She’s a speaker, author, and Business & Mindset Mentor. At 14, Alaina suffered a traumatic brain injury, and her mother was told she’d have permanent brain damage. Her mother retrained Alaina’s brain for a full recovery. Then, after 18 years as an attorney in the music industry and the EVP and Exec Board Member of the largest independent music company globally, she walked away from it all to discover her purpose. Her personal life completely unraveled. She became hyper-focused on building her life purpose and rewiring her brain again for success and fulfillment. She has created multiple six-figure companies and a beautiful life since. As a business and mindset coach/mentor, she uses those experiences and her training as the foundation of her work with entrepreneurs, helping them scale their income & impact while working 20+ hours a week less. Alaina’s mission is to help people remember who they truly are so they can live their purpose and full potential.

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. Preparing young women to become future leaders starts in the early ages of their childhood. In fact, it is never too soon to prepare the girl for a technological transition. At six years old, or elementary school, she is already learning to develop skills that will determine what path she will take in the world. The right tools at the right time will shape her behavior, build her confidence, and help her develop the necessary attitude to become tomorrow’s leader. Those first years of childhood will structure how any girl thinks about herself and her place in the world, allowing her to project herself further and further into the future. Exposure to scientific questions and technological principles will prepare her growth trajectory and encourage her to seek and find openings and possibilities, choosing any outcome she wants. Her dreams should only be limited by the consistency of her efforts shown throughout her life. By age six, girls and boys have begun to classify jobs according to gender, as reflected by the trends they see around them. By twelve, half of all girls aspire to seek only those jobs for which she is stereotyped. Such strong early formative preferences can have a powerful impact on the decisions she will later make about school courses, job application, and the direction of her professional career. Thus, a girl’s nurturing environment in childhood will set the tone for the way she thinks, how she behaves, and the choices make as, or becoming, an adult. Positive pull from peers Peer pressure can be a positive force. Throughout her studies, if a girl can successfully integrate scientific, technological and mathematical fields, her excitement and interest will lift up her female friends alongside with her. Inner strength grows from positive reinforcement. That’s why she should be constantly surrounded with messages for encouragement and support. The combination will help her transcend the inevitable criticisms, obstacles, and negative feedback coming from traditional society, family members, and the cultural environment. She will need confidence, generated externally and from within. The world is entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, fueled by technological and digital breakthroughs, and she will need to the experience, tools, and outlook to prepare herself for a central role at its cutting edge. Africa needs more and more girls to become leaders, to play a strategic role in parliament, in government agencies, in corporate boards, in universities, and in starting new small businesses. None of that can happen if she is held back, or if she remains one of the world’s more than 62 million girls not even enrolled in school due to culture, poverty, or both. Some parts of Africa lack schools with sanitary facilities, electricity, drinking water, or a location within walking distance of her home. The worst is that had such a school been available, and educated her, the girl could and would reinvest her resources at home to lift her family and community out of the misery and poverty trap. Better still, she might even discover a cure to a disease, develop innovations, launch a new product. She could play a leading role in local or national governance, inspire her fellow citizens, and become a role model for other girls around the world. That’s why conditions today must liberate her spirit to win in games, contests, exams, elections, or scientific and artistic competitions. Education makes anything possible. The African girl learns to set goals, reach with imagination, and grasp a world even beyond the constraints of her body. Education unlocks social and economic doors. A diploma offers her freedom of choice. Her family and her community will start to regard her with respect, ask her questions, seek her opinion. In this way, education adds value to her own human capital, as well as to the community around her. A princess, or a pioneer? Boys and girls of the same age celebrate birthdays in different ways. While boys are fighters, explorers, superheroes, athletes and chiefs, girls tend to be princesses. Stereotypes begin at birth, if not earlier. Adults use a different tone of voice when speaking to a newborn boy (low) versus a girl (high). We dress them in blue or in pink. We decorate boys’ rooms with cars, planes, powerful figures, and girls’ rooms with fairies, birds, dolls and castles. Each gesture comes with good intentions. Yet, these measures subconsciously program kids to replicate cultural and historical prototypes. A simple gesture –even a purple-colored steam train in a girl’s room, -- can foster scientific creativity from her earliest days. The bedtime stories we read can also open her imagination and plant seeds for a different beanstalk she might climb, and even fight the giant herself. The tired old tale of a passive Snow White or Sleeping Beauty – waiting to be rescued by a prince’s kiss – is over at last. Happily, strong roles for females have made it into modern cartoons. Animation artists and story creators have seized the opportunity to empower girls from the beginning, with fairy tales and imaginary figures. Screens offer little girls a spectrum of new idols who demonstrate leadership, creativity, and innovation, while still being girls. Dora the Explorer sets her own course. Pocahontas chooses her own river current; what’s more, now she is the one to rescue her helpless “prince.” Merida, in Brave , beats the male archers, rejects her suitors, and reconciles with her bearish mother. The lead ‘maiden’ protagonist of Mulan disguises herself as a male warrior in order to save her father. There’s Miraculous Ladybug, or even Ballerina, the little girl who runs away from the orphanage with her friend, to become an Opera dancer and her friend an inventor. And finally, and most triumphantly, we find the sisters in Frozen , Ana and Elsa, who overcome obstacles, and men of dubious value, to rescue each other. As part of my mission to empower a billion girls and women around the world, our new publishing house Rawan Learning ( www.rawanlearning.com ) has just launched after the success of “African Girl African Women” a series of five books with stories entitled “Take care of your natural friends” to simplify the understanding of sustainable development and climate change to children. Children will hence contribute at an early age to the protection of the environment and become the superheroes of the planet. Rawan learning has the objective to provide children and girls in particular with fun stories and books besides princesses, creating lovable and enjoyable characters related to the environment, the science, technology and mathematics. This way, girls will grow up mastering the basics of technology and science. This will raise her confidence and will help her master the tools necessary to becoming a well-rounded future leader at an early age. For more info, follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn and visit my webs ite ! 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 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. With a Ph.D. from Harvard University (GSAS 1998), an Engineering degree from Ecole Centrale Paris (1995), and a Master from Johns Hopkins SAIS (2000), Hynd Bouhia started her career at the World Bank in Washington before joining Morocco’s Prime Minister as an economic advisor. She was appointed in 2008 as the Managing Director of Casablanca Stock Exchange. After that, she structured and managed investments and venture capital funds. As the CEO of Strategica, she advises entrepreneurs, companies, and institutions on economic intelligence, sustainable finance, and growth strategies. Dr. Hynd Bouhia is the author of the motivational book for women entitled "Africa Girl, African Woman: How agile, empowered, and tech-savvy females will transform the continent for good." [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08Z8FQ6H5?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_ mng_calw_0&storeType=ebooks

Written by: Shelley Tilbrook, 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. If the Olympics has shown us anything over the past two weeks, it’s that athletes have the ability to inspire the world. There have been so many resilient performances, acts of courage, and demonstrations of leadership that rival and arguably surpass most commercial organizations and leaders. Memorable moments like: Australian Kayaker Jessica Fox refocusing with determination, poise, and skill to claim gold in the C1 Canoe Slalom. USA Gymnast Simone Biles withdrawing from competition to focus on her mental health, sending a message to the world, ‘ It’s OK, to not be OK’. At his eighth Olympics, aged 62, Andrew Hoy secured a team silver and individual bronze in the equestrian eventing, proving you’re never too old to follow your dream. World-class swimmer Cate Campbell’s stunning come-from-behind victory in the 4x100 Medley Relay with an anchor leg that showed grit and determination to perform under pressure for her team. And the unwavering support of Australian decathlete Cedric Dubler to training partner and teammate Ash Moloney to help him through the final decathlon event to hold out bronze. The Olympics is not just about winning. It’s the demonstration of teamwork, leadership, and overcoming obstacles to achieve your best. And there is so much to be admired about it. The emerging new faces and stories of resilience are great for their sport but even better for the positive social impact in their community. It was also refreshing to hear real and raw interviews rather than the standard sporting cliches. But what’s next for these athletes? For many, a short break and back into training. For a lucky few, lucrative sponsorship deals with setting up their future. And for some, retirement. But for most of them, a lull, a post-Olympics blues, and a rhetorical question of “what’s next?”. Not all sporting stars are as fortunate as golfers, tennis players, or basketballers who have seven and eight-figure salaries. Having worked with elite athletes and sporting organizations over the past decade, I have developed a passion for helping them translate their sporting prowess into the commercial return. Remembering many are training and competing for the love of it and living below minimum wage. This has involved strategic storytelling , building their personal brand , raising their media profile, developing commercial-driven events and ambassador sponsorship deals. At the core of these commercial deals is having a clear, consistent personal brand that attracts the ideal partnerships and opportunities. The athlete brand represents what the commercial brand wants. Nowadays, athletes can also easily raise their profile organically with a sound social media strategy. But to monetize their following, it certainly helps to have a personal branding website to direct fans and followers to revenue-generating, commercial properties. Take Michael Phelps as a case in point, his website showcases his swimwear, swimming equipment, and training videos. He has also recently launched a subscription-based app to further monetize his swimming expertise. Athletes who discover and develop something that is on-purpose, on-passion, and uses their ‘super’ power will be far more satisfied than one who tries to start a new career at 25 with no experience and no passion for the new direction. More recently, I became involve d with the opposite side of sports commercialization, sports philanthropy. To support community causes, I became involved with not-for-profit, Athletes For Hope Australia , which helps athletes identify their passions and purpose beyond the sporting field and connect them with causes that are personally meaningful to them. The charity - originally founded in the USA by high-profile elite athletes including Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali , Alonzo Mourning, and others - is all about making a positive impact and leaving a lasting legacy in your community. Australian sport integrity leaders, Iain Roy and Laura Johnston, recognized the strength of this program and decided to co-found it in Australia. They are passionate about getting funding to cover the costs of workshops to inspire and support Australians to give back to the community. An investment in Athletes For Hope Australia has a ripple effect. Develop the athletes, support many causes, impact thousands in the community. The contribution of athletes to social causes allows their impact to be felt exponentially due to their high profile and is part of the formula behind the program’s success. Another is the Athletes For Hope Australia personal development Workshops that help athletes transition skills they have learned on the field, as well as learn new skills to take them beyond their sporting careers, to support worthwhile causes. Firstly , identifying what they wan t to stand for and which causes align with their values and life purpose. This is as much about developing their own personal brand as it is clear on what you want to achieve in life. The second part is developing the athlete and enhancing their skills like leadership, storytelling, social media, empathy, connection, and resilience. The program is designed to bring athletes together, to educate, inspire and empower them to channel their energy for a common goal: to make a difference in the world through sports philanthropy. To find out more about Athletes For Hope Australia , go to athletesforhope.org.au or learn more about personal branding by Shelley Tilbrook, visit fruitfulgroup.online Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Shelley! Shelley Tilbrook, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Shelley Tilbrook is a leader in building brands, presenting persuasive pitches, and using storytelling to captivate, connect and convert audiences. After a corporate career in sports and events as a senior marketing executive, she launched her own digital marketing and branding agency, Fruitful Group. She combined her mission 'to engage, educate and empower entrepreneurs to scale sustainable brands' with her expertise around strategic marketing, digital transformations, and brand storytelling. She developed the fruitful foundations for building blooming brands, the pitch-perfect program, and the fruitful formula of content marketing to help start-ups and scale-ups succeed. She founded the Fruitful Faculty, an online school for entrepreneurs and consults across sport-tech, ed-tech, med-tech, and eCommerce with clients including; Athletics Australia, Athletes for Hope Australia, Kidney Health, Political Racquet, and many startups. Her purpose: To positively impact lives with fruitful brand solutions.

Written by: Irina Costea, 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. More than a year and a half ago, I was buried very deep in my suicidal postpartum depression, and I did not see a way out. My head was spinning on a daily basis, ruminating about how awful my life was at the moment. Why is everything happening to me? Why can’t something good happen for me? I had support from my husband, I was going to therapy for more than 5 years at the moment, and still, I could not manage to keep my head above the water. At a certain (low) point of that depression, I discovered coaching. It was my last resort, and it was the last attempt that I was going to have to get better. And looking back, I really believe that coaching saved my life. With coaching, I started to question everything I knew about my reality. About my belief systems, about my models of reality, about what I thought was wrong and right, and about how this world should work. I soon discovered that I had a calling for coaching, that from my wounds, I could help other people heal. And I enrolled in a coaching school, and everything changed. I discovered a new universe. A universe in which not only I was seen and heard, but I was valued, and people would help me rise and heal. It took me a while to define what kind of coaching I would like to pursue, but the more I coached, the more it became clear. Transformation (healing) is one of the most important processes a human can ever go through. In the Transformational & NeuroMindfulness® Coaching process, we use neuroscience-based tools and practices of mindfulness that sustain the transformation and its new habits. If I review my steps towards transformation, I can see clear patterns with my clients also, and it helps a lot with holding the space for them because I was them. As we go through these steps, I will explain which mindfulness practices suit each step and why, especially from a neuroscience point of view. First Step: Awakening Or better said, the stage in which you become aware, when you stop ignoring the “elephant” in the room, when you stop dissociating from your feelings and emotions when you start sitting with your wounds and accept them. In this part of the coaching process, we start to expand the (judgment-free) awareness. We become observers of our patterns, of our triggers, and we become curious. Not judging, but curious. This is the stage in which I recommend clients to start a mediation practice for 10 minutes a day (guided meditations are awesome for beginners) for a minimum of 30 days. When people start to question things and become aware that something is going on, they often feel anxious, disoriented, depressed, and overwhelmed. Why? Because our brain is not keen on changes. Our brain has evolved in order to keep us safe, and the unknown fires all the red flags. Meditation is one of the greatest tools that can help us counteract all these “side effects”. How? Meditation reduces the activity of the Default Mode Network (responsible for mind-wandering), and it trains our presence, concentration, meta attention (free from the bondage of thoughts and emotions; you make space in your mind). When you start observing your thoughts without being attached to them, you start to understand that you are not your thoughts. The nature of the thought is to come and go. And anxiety often appears when we get a hold of a certain thought, and we start to ruminate it again and again. Second Step: Discovering Your Character Strengths When you become aware of the fact that you are not your thoughts, you start to understand that your inner voice might be telling you some not-so-true things about yourself. Over 80% of the clients that I have are not in touch with their own authenticity, meaning that they don’t really know what their character (natural) strengths are. Why does this happen? If I look at my 3 years old son, he is raw and authentic and not afraid to step up for himself whenever he needs to. But if I look around me, I see a lot of grown-ups that are afraid to even admit they are good at something. This happens as a result of our experiences (when it was not emotionally safe for us to be ourselves, so we started to detach from who we really are in order to fit in) or as a result of the environment (we were told – I know I was – to not be “too proud”, to not “show off” because of what people will think about us). In order to reach your goals, you need to know what you bring to the table. So then, you will know in each situation or challenge what skills or character strengths will help you navigate through your growth opportunities. In this stage, it is helpful to start a journaling practice (5 minutes/day). You can let your coach guide your journaling questions, you can write freely, or you can use a mindfulness journal. Whatever you choose, journaling for 5 minutes/day along with 10 minutes of meditation (they don’t have to happen in the same moment of the day, even though the journaling practice is boosted after a meditation), will help you have clarity, observe patterns and make space in your mind. This space allows you to have new insights, make connections, and understand yourself more. And this leads us to the next step. Third Step: Mapping Fears And Blockages As a Transformational Coach, I am particularly focused on fears and blockages because behind every challenge lies a dormant skill that we can cultivate or express. At the coaching school that I graduated from, Dave Buck (the CEO of CoachVille) said something that stuck with me: “your fears are the road map to your superpowers.” Fear is a very useful emotion. It helped us through the evolution process by keeping us safe. The thing is, the brain doesn’t make a difference between emotional survival and physical survival. That is why we have “irrational” fears. They are not irrational. They are trying to protect us from being hurt, even though sometimes it means to have a difficult conversation, to express ourselves, or anything else that is not classified as “a real danger”. For example, when I worked as a recruiter when I had to make “cold calls” to potential candidates, my hands froze, my throat dried, and I was feeling punched in the stomach. Because my brain recognized a pattern, at some point, I experienced bullying, and that left deep traces in my body. Strong emotions leave physical traces that our brain and body use in order to signal us not to come near that kind of threat again. So when you start listening to your body (meditation and journaling set a solid foundation for this step), you will observe patterns of when your brain thinks something is wrong. In this stage, we start using some powerful visualization tools combined with emotional body scans. It takes a lot of practice and awareness to be able to go beyond the self-preservation zone (comfort zone), as Dave Buck calls it, and this is why usually these visualizations are guided by the coach. When strong emotions are not processed, they leave traces in our bodies. Whenever we come near similar situations that trigger those emotions, our bodies send us signals. The visualizations and the body scans help us process that emotion in a safe space, and we basically rewire the neural paths, so the brain understands that now we are safe to act or to express ourselves. Fourth Step: Mastering Self-Confidence As Mel Robbins once said, self-confidence is “the decision to try” Because when you are self-confident, you are able to look at yourself as you really are, with no exaggeration. You can own your strengths, and you can look at your growth opportunities without feeling like a failure. You are not defined by your failures, as you are not defined by your wins. You just are. Failure is an important topic in coaching because the way we look at it sets the foundation for our mindset. If we identify ourselves with our beliefs, with our failures, we have a fixed mindset (as Carol Dweck states in her book “Mindset”). If we are flexible, if we are willing to learn from our failures, and if we use them as stepping stones, these are strong indicators of a growth mindset. The thing that I came to realize in my own transformation journey, is that self-confidence is not loud. It whispers. And you have to have a clear mind, to be focused, in order to be able to listen to it. We are biologically wired to look for negative things because this kind of mindset is the one that kept us safe through the millions of years of evolution. “The amygdala (the part of the brain that has the “fear response” job) reacts by default to negative thoughts, but it can react to positive triggers if primed to do so.” (Arnaud Complainville, founder of the NeuroMindfulness ® Institute). In this particular stage, we prime the brain to look for positive aspects of our lives, to rearrange our lives around our strengths, through a gratitude practice. We learn how to appreciate and see the small details that make our lives better, because the truth is, most events and days in our lives are actually positive. And I am not talking about toxic positivity, and I am talking about emotional resilience. Fifth Step: Freedom This is the most challenging of all stages because it requires you to never stop growing. It requires you to keep your awareness sharp, to be present as much as you can, and the most important, to be able to have self-compassion when you fall back into old patterns. We are only humans, and we will, at times, fall back into what our brain likes the most: familiarity and safety. In this stage, we cultivate self-compassion, self-love, and authenticity. Because this is what I like most about neuroscience: it brings the power back into the hands of the people. When you are driven by unknown processes, you don’t have influence over them. When you understand the neuroscience behind your behaviors, triggers, and self-defense mechanisms, you have to power to act upon them. In a way, neuroscience brought me what I needed most: self-compassion. Because I understood that nothing is wrong with me. My patterns are the way in which my brain is trying to protect me. My triggers are my allies because they show me where to look for growth opportunities. My behaviors point me to the road that I need to follow in order to heal. Change can be temporary. Transformation is an irreversible process. Once you become aware of your patterns, triggers, and self-defense mechanisms, you cannot ignore them. And this is why the coaching process is so powerful. It puts a mirror from which you cannot look away. Sometimes it’s painful, uncomfortable, frustrating, but it’s worthwhile. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Irina Costea, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Irina Costea is a Transformational & NeuroMindfulness Coach® and a former HR Professional. After a severe postpartum depression scattered with suicidal thoughts, Irina discovered Positive Psychology and the power of coaching. Once enrolled in the coaching school, she soon realized that her personal mission is to help other people unlock their true potential through practices of neuroscience and mindfulness. She believes that only by mapping and following your fears and blockages you can live authentically. Because only when you use them as your stepping stones you can connect to yourself again. Costea has been trained as a Coach at CoachVille, one of the first coaching schools in the world, and as a NeuroMindfulness® Practitioner at the NeuroMindfulness® Institute. She also worked as a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist for one of the biggest travel platforms in the world.

Written by: Caroline Holke, 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. We often hear, "there is no such thing as a dumb question," or "the only dumb question is the one that is not asked." The people who say these things mean well. They intend to put others at ease and feel comfortable asking whatever is on their minds. This fosters a culture of inclusion and keeps a discussion open. It also surfaces the overlooked topics or the ones deemed obvious. These are all important and add value. However, it is important to acknowledge that there are dumb questions. These are the negative questions that we ask ourselves. What makes them dumb is that they do not serve us. The first reason for this is the brain’s negativity bias. Negativity bias helped our ancestors survive. We do not have to worry about saber tooth tigers today, but the primitive brain has been working in this fashion for 200,000+ years. When normalized to a 100-year timeline, the wheel was first invented 3 years ago. The automobile, lightbulb, and telephone were introduced in the last month, and 9-11 was just 3 days ago. This perspective helps explain why the primitive brain has the power that it does over day-to-day life. The other factor at play is that the human brain is literal. When we ask negative questions, we will get negative answers. I work with women who want to learn how to drink less alcohol. The worst question that I come across is, “why do I drink too much?” The question is bad because of the responses that it generates. I have no willpower. I am unsure of myself in social situations. I do not care enough. There must be something wrong with me. The self-judgment landmines make it very difficult to get anything helpful in these responses. And unfortunately, it is very easy to wallow and stay stuck here. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes. More high quality, empowering questions are: How can I make better choices today? What would drinking less look like if it were easy? What can I do to address my underlying stress rather than a drink? How can I end this struggle without feeling deprived? The difference is night and day. The second batch of questions provides helpful responses. These will help you achieve your goal rather than giving you more reasons to feel terrible. Bad questions are out there. Acknowledge this and stop wasting your time on them. Be purposeful with your questions so that you will get helpful answers. Do you typically use empowering or disempowering questions? The next time you are trying to solve a problem, how can you reframe your questions to ensure that they are working for you? Do a gut check to ensure that they will solve the problem that you want to solve! When we ask questions and seek quality answers, we ask more of ourselves. This is a critical part of achieving any goal. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Caroline Holke, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Caroline Holke coaches women who want to continue to drink alcohol without the downsides. Caroline’s unique approach is successful because it respects how the human brain works, is augmented with science and is tailored to each individual’s situation. By identifying and addressing what is holding each client back, Caroline is able to help her clients make sustainable change. At the end of her 12-week coaching program, her clients are happier and 100% in control of their relationship with alcohol.

Written by: Andrew Cowie, 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. Meditation saved my life. Of that, I am in entirely no doubt. It helped me recover from anxiety and depression a decade ago and is one of the most powerful tools in the therapeutic arsenal I now deploy with my clients at Phoenix Coaching & Therapy . One of the most common questions I get asked is: "Yes, but what exactly does meditation do? " Seldom has a term been shrouded in such a fog of confusion, misunderstanding, and downright misinformation. Until recently, it was still widely associated with hippy culture, dismissed by many as New Age mumbo-jumbo, considered a bit woo-woo, and most probably synonymous with recreational drug use also. At the very least, it probably conjured images of bearded yogis sitting atop a Himalayan mountain in the lotus position chanting mantras – not something the average westerner could readily relate to. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that meditation is, in fact, a rather loose umbrella term covering a vast array of practices, most of which have as their common aim the focusing of a person's concentration to a level of laser-like intensity in which great things become possible, not least the experience of states of deep calm, bliss, and internal wellbeing. These techniques can include everything from yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong to Buddhist mindfulness-based practices, breathing exercises, and the Zen art of concentration, as well as work involving the use of sound and color. Many of the methods used in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) – particularly its New Code games pioneered by John Grinder – are also designed to induce this same high-performance state in which the left and right brain hemispheres are operating together in perfect synchronization and harmony. Hypnosis, in its therapeutic forms, is a type of guided meditation. Even everyday tasks such as washing the dishes can be turned into meditation if you are know-how. Put simply; meditation is a superpower with the capability to transform anybody's life for the better and with an infinite number of performance-enhancing real-world applications. Is it easy to master? No, but nothing worthwhile ever is. It takes time, patience, dedication, and practice, but the rewards are bountiful for those prepared to put in the work. The benefits of meditation are increasingly being backed by hard science. An eight-week study led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital a few years ago documented for the first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain. Participants in the study spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this was all it took to stimulate a major increase in grey matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped area buried inside the temple on each side of the brain and is part of the limbic system, a set of inner structures associated with emotion and memory. The hippocampus is covered in receptors for the stress hormone cortisol, and studies have shown that it can be damaged by chronic stress, contributing to a harmful spiral in the body. Indeed, people with stress-related disorders like depression and PTSD tend to have a smaller hippocampus. Participants who reported reductions in stress were also shown to have decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety. Crucially, none of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time. The benefits of meditation were further underlined by research conducted by neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin a few years ago, which led to 66-year-old Tibetan monk Matthieu Ricard being labeled the world’s happiest man. Researchers attached 256 sensors to the monk’s skull. When he meditated on compassion, the researchers were shocked to see that Ricard’s brain produced a level of gamma waves that were “off the charts”. These are the brainwaves linked to consciousness, attention, learning, and memory. He also demonstrated excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, meaning he had an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, according to the researchers. During the same study, the neuroscientists examined the minds of other monks. They found that long-term practitioners – those who have engaged in more than 50,000 rounds of meditation – showed significant changes in their brain function, although those with only three weeks of 20-minute meditation per day also demonstrated some change. One of the primary goals of meditation is to quieten or still the mind to alleviate anxiety and negative thinking. Mindfulness achieves this objective by encouraging the practitioner to live in the present moment with an attitude of non-judgemental awareness. The roots of mindfulness are based on Buddhism, but it doesn’t have to be undertaken as a religious practice. It’s a fantastic tool for stress management and for cutting down on stray thoughts and unhelpful rumination. We're all guilty of spending much of our lives mulling over past mistakes or fretting about an imaginary future that might never happen instead of fully appreciating the Now. The past is done. We can't change it, and we gain nothing by expending vital mental and emotional energy reliving it. Similarly, the future hasn't happened yet, and we don't benefit ourselves one bit by envisaging worst-case doomsday scenarios which might never come to pass. It's true that we can't stop thoughts from popping into our heads, but we can choose whether or not to indulge them. When we indulge thoughts, they frequently snowball into something much larger, which bears very little, if any, relation to reality. The fast-paced nature of today’s world has fuelled this problem massively and made it increasingly difficult for us to switch off. Smartphones, the internet, and social media have created a culture in which we’re always on the go and where people have multiple ways of getting in contact with us at any time of the day or night. The result is that our brains have become overstimulated, over-anxious, and over-reliant on other people’s feedback and approval. Mindfulness-based meditation can help us to switch off, slow down and find a state of internal stillness and quiet. It's about taking that extra moment to fully appreciate the scent of a rose, the shape of an ancient tree, a cloud formation, the sound of running water, or the ornate stonework of a building we're passing. At that moment, we cease to be a slave to our own thoughts and the emotions that they generate. We become a Jedi. Meditation isn't just beneficial for stress relief but also as a means of achieving excellence in every area of our lives. By cutting down on internal chatter and learning to monitor our thoughts more closely, we can make our mind single-pointed and focus it like a laser on achieving specific goals. This is the high-performance state sportsmen refer to when they talk about being "in the zone". Tennis star Novak Djokovic credited the practice of meditation with contributing towards the near-superhuman levels of intensity he was able to achieve during a phenomenal period of dominance in 2015-16, which saw him become only the third male player in history to hold all four Grand Slam titles simultaneously. Six-time world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan has dabbled with Zen, while Olympic marathon runner Deena Kastor says mindfulness helped her recover from injury and go on to break four world records. This same high-performance state can be applied to a myriad of other applications, including business, music, and performing arts, enabling people to reach their full potential by freeing themselves from the restrictive shackles of tension and stress and channeling the full power of their innate mental energies into achieving excellence in whatever their chosen field or goal. This is our mission at Phoenix Coaching & Therapy . So if it's that crash-hot, why isn't everyone doing it? The trouble with meditation is that too many people give up if they don't get immediate results. They have difficulty silencing their internal chatter and staying in the present. Their mind wanders, intrusive thoughts creep in, so they decide "It's not working," and they abandon it. But the practice of meditation is much like building muscle. It's a gradual process that has to be built upon, one day at a time. You can't expect to gain automatic control over your mind and thoughts and reach supernal heights of bliss at the first attempt any more than you could benchpress 500lbs if you’d never lifted weights before. It takes time and patience to gradually bring the mind under control. But if you stick with it, follow tried and tested techniques, and allow new habit patterns to form around it, you will start to experience the benefits in time. Will you still suffer setbacks and bad days? Yes, of course, because negative experiences are part and parcel of human life, and there's no escaping them. But meditation will massively increase your ability to cope with such knocks when they arise. It will minimize the impact and make you more robust and resilient, enabling you to maintain a plateau of serenity from which you cease to be buffeted about like a ship in a storm by life's trials and tribulations. Persevere for long enough, and something rather magical will start to happen in your life. Trust me, I'm speaking from personal experience here. How to meditate: Try concentrating on something, such as your breath and the feel of it going in and out. Alternatively, you could concentrate on your feet, a tree, a stone, a pepper pot, or a candle flame. The breath is handy because we carry it around with us. Whatever it is, though, try to focus all your attention on it. When your attention wavers, and it will do almost immediately, gently bring it back to the object of concentration. Above all, don’t beat yourself up if you struggle initially. Start small and grow. For more info, follow me on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn and visit my websit e ! Read more from Andrew! Andrew Cowie, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Andrew Cowie is a transformational life coach, psychotherapist, and author dedicated to helping people overcome adversity and achieve their full potential. He came to the world of therapy after a 20-year career in newspaper journalism was brought to an abrupt end by severe burnout. In the course of his own recovery, he was introduced to meditation, mindfulness, hypnotherapy, yoga, martial arts, and NLP. He went on to retrain under some of the world's leading spiritual and personal development teachers to become an expert in these fields. Andrew has since dedicated his life to passing on this knowledge, synthesizing the various disciplines into one overarching system blending ancient spiritual practices with the latest cutting-edge techniques from the field of modern psychology. He is the owner of Phoenix Coaching & Therapy and the founder of its associated 'magical training school' The Ancient and Mystical Hermetic Order of the Phoenix (AMHOP). His debut book Rise Like a Phoenix was published in 2021 and is described as a manual for personal regeneration. Andrew works with clients worldwide and is passionate about mental health and exploring the latent potential of the human mind.

Written by: Madeleine Shaw, 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. Q: What is the first thing you should do if you find yourself stuck in quicksand? A: Stop struggling. Q: What do most people do when they are stuck in quicksand? A: Struggle harder. You are in “quicksand” at work when you are extraordinarily busy and trying to get out of it by working harder and harder while only becoming more exhausted, sinking deeper, and falling further behind. Quicksand at work looks like this: Working longer hours Canceling holidays (or working through them) Doing everything yourself so it “gets done right” Sacrificing your personal time and health Self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs. It’s not a good news story, and it leads to burnout. Certain factors can make this particularly acute. Do any of these look familiar? Perfectionism A strong work ethic; a drive to compete and succeed A work culture of long hours and high expectations A focus on the negative: risk, problems, and what could go wrong Fear of failure These tendencies can lead you to lean further into the problem – throwing more effort at it, sure that if only you try hard enough, you’ll get through it. But if throwing more good energy after bad worked, it would have worked by now. The paradox for many high achievers is this: these traits that are weighing you down are likely the very same traits that are in many ways responsible for your success. It’s no wonder it’s hard to let go of them! Rather than try to eliminate these drivers, it’s helpful to keep enough of them to reap their benefits but to identify where they are being overplayed and, therefore, counterproductive. I looked up an article about how to escape actual quicksand. It applies well to work too. If you’re sinking: stop struggling. Then, 1. Make Yourself As Light As Possible – Toss Your Bag, Jacket, And Shoes For us, that means culling. Can you hand over or pause any work? Stop going to some meetings? Or perhaps even ditch the weight of your high standards and aim for good enough? Which is, in fact, good enough. 2. Try To Take A Few Steps Backwards When were you last on solid ground? What resources can help you now – Friends? Family? Perhaps even practical methodologies like that amazing time management technique you used to love but have stopped using? 3. Keep Your Arms Up And Out Of The Quicksand It can be tempting to look for who to blame, but that won’t actually get you out of the quicksand. It’s more constructive at this point to keep your focus on solutions. 4. Try To Reach For A Branch Or Person’s Hand To Pull Yourself Out Wanting to fix it alone can be a trap for high achievers who are used to being able to do whatever they set their mind to, but help helps. Consider family, friends, colleagues, your EAP, your GP, or – yes – a coach. 5. Take Deep Breaths Fight/flight/freeze mode inhibits your higher-order problem-solving capacity. Slow, smooth breathing helps to re-set your brain and body at the moment so you can think more effectively. I also include taking care of physical wellbeing more generally under this point. Quick wins in the form of prioritizing healthy boundaries, sleep, exercise, and good nutrition will really help. 6. Move Slowly And Deliberately For many of us, feeling we should be making massive changes only heightens the overwhelm, leaving us even less likely to change anything. Small, iterative steps are more likely to stick. Start where you are, make a small change, see how it goes, then think about the next one. Prevention is better than the cure for both real and metaphorical quicksand. Once you’re back on solid ground, the bigger and more sustainable win comes from understanding how you ended up in quicksand in the first place. As the article suggests, “Know your quicksand danger zones”. This is partly about the terrain and partly about how you travel through it. Identifying those traits that seem helpful but actually hold you back - and building your skill at getting them into balance — is where you’ll find long-term improvement. Want to learn more from Madeleine? Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or visit her website. Read more from Madeleine! Madeleine Shaw, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Madeleine Shaw PCC is an in-demand executive coach, speaker, and facilitator. She helps C-suite and other leading professionals navigate challenging career issues so they can thrive in work and life. Madeleine works at the intersection of mindset and evidence-based wellbeing and resilience. Her recent clients include major international consulting, accounting, and law firms, listed financial services organizations, an internationally renowned technology disrupter, and a highly ranked university. Madeleine has helped thousands of leaders in complex, demanding roles find progress and satisfaction again. She has been there herself in her previous career as a lawyer with top-tier firms in the USA and Australia and a multinational telco. That means this isn’t just nice words and abstract theory: Madeleine knows the drill and can help you sort out your hard questions fast.

Written by: Susan Hum, 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. Good relationships don’t “just happen”. One common statement many of my clients make about relationships is: “If I have to work at it and it doesn’t flow, then it’s not the right relationship.” This is not a true statement, any more than it’s true that you don’t have to work at good physical health through exercise, eating well, and a positive attitude towards life to reduce stress and anxiety. I’ve discovered, in the 20 years that I’ve been life and love coaching business leaders and busy professionals on their relationships, 5 simple steps that you can work on that will not only improve your relationships but can turn a failing relationship into a successful one. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF This is the most important choice you can make to improve your relationship. This means that you learn how to take responsibility for your feelings and needs. It also means that instead of trying to get your partner to make you feel happy and secure, you learn how to do this for yourself through your thoughts and actions. Learning to treat yourself with kindness, caring, compassion, and acceptance instead of self-judgment is the work. Self-judgment will always make you feel unhappy and insecure, no matter how wonderfully your partner is treating you. For example, when I got together with my now-husband and became an instant stepmom to a 3-year-old, I completely relinquished my very vibrant and colorful 10-year single life and dedicated all my minutes, hours, day, and 3 full years to be the best wife and best stepmom I can be while working a full-time corporate career of my own. I had ZERO social life and began feeling unfulfilled because I lost connection with the fun me. I started losing my sense of purpose. Nothing my poor husband did was enough. He would do everything I “demanded” to appease me but soon enough, I needed even more. Until one day, he asked me “Please tell me exactly what will make you happy?” I was stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t answer him. That’s when I decided to build my own social life outside of my family. I needed ME time. When you learn how to take full, 100% responsibility for yourself, then you stop blaming your partner for your upsets. Since blaming one’s partner for one’s unhappiness is the number one cause of relationship problems, learning how to self-care is vital to a good relationship. TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS To take accountability is not the same as taking responsibility for yourself. When we look at being accountable, it involves an awareness of how we contribute towards the overall results of that relationship. The one important thing to always remember is trust is earned, not demanded. The work is learning how to communicate consciously. Knowing when and how to take ownership of when things go wrong is the key, however, this takes a lot of self-awareness from both parties. The only way we can truly build trust and be honest at the same time is by being as honest as we can to ourselves. At the beginning of my marriage, my husband would share every one of his thoughts and emotions with me as that is one of the core value systems we share: open communication. However, at times, when he would share his vulnerabilities, I would get upset with him for being “weak” and start telling him how to change. After I while I noticed he spoke less; I then accused him of being non-communicative. Then he was courageous enough to call me out and told me that he no longer felt respected or safe to be open because I was not listening. I was judging. He was simply sharing his truths. I should have been more compassionate and appreciated his openness and honesty. I took accountability for my contribution towards him shutting down. Once we understand and acknowledge that our baggage is not caused by the current relationship and the triggers are simply a sign of something we need to work on personally, then we can step away from the emotions to engage in fair communications. Remember, the best communication requires both people to be more responsive, not reactive. KINDNESS, COMPASSION, ACCEPTANCE Treat others the way you want to be treated. This is the essence of a truly spiritual life. We all yearn to be treated lovingly with kindness, compassion, understanding, and acceptance. We need to treat ourselves this way, and we need to treat our partner and others this way. Relationships flourish when both people treat each other with kindness. While there are no guarantees, often treating another with kindness brings kindness in return. If your partner is consistently angry, judgmental, uncaring, and unkind, then you need to focus on what would be loving to you rather than reverting to anger, blame, judgment, withdrawal, resistance, or compliance. Kindness to others does not mean sacrificing yourself. Always remember that taking responsibility for yourself rather than blaming others is the most important thing you can do. If you are consistently kind to yourself and your partner, and your partner is consistently angry, blaming, withdrawn and unavailable, then you either have to accept a distant relationship, or you need to leave the relationship. You cannot make your partner change - you can only change yourself. LEARNING INSTEAD OF CONTROLLING When conflict occurs, you always have two choices regarding how to handle the conflict: you can decide to learn about yourself and your partner and discover the deeper issues of the conflict, or you can try to win or to be right, through some form of controlling behavior. Control comes in many guises and these are some subtle ways of trying to control others into behaving the way we want: anger, blame, judgment, niceness, compliance, caretaking, resistance, withdrawal of love, explaining, teaching, defending, lying, denying, and so on. All the ways we try to control create even more conflict as we steamroll another person’s freedom of expression. Remembering to learn instead of control is a vital part of improving your relationship. For example, most people have two major fears that become activated in relationships: the fear of abandonment or of losing the other - and the fear of engulfment or of losing oneself. When these fears get triggered, most people immediately protect themselves against these fears with their controlling behavior. We go into survival mode. But if you choose to learn about your fears instead of attempting to protect yourself, your fears will eventually heal. This is how we grow emotionally and spiritually, by learning instead of controlling. DATE NIGHTS, FUN, AND PLAY When people first start dating or fall in love, they make time for each other. Things are still uncertain but because our hearts are not invested 100%, we can still have fun. That’s what we call the “honeymoon period”. Then, especially after getting married, they get busy and the chase is gone. Both parties become comfortable. Relationships need time to thrive. It is vitally important to set aside specific times to be together to talk, play, make love. Intimacy cannot be maintained without quality time together. We all know that all work no play makes Jack a dull boy. Work without play makes for dull relationships as well. Relationships flourish when people laugh together, play together, and when humor is a part of everyday life. Is it time to spice it up?? Stop taking everything so seriously and learn to see the light and funny side of life. Intimacy flourishes when there is a lightness of being, not when everything is heavy. APPRECIATION INSTEAD OF COMPLAINTS Positive energy flows between two people when there is an attitude of gratitude. Constant complaints create heavy, negative energy, which is not fun to be around. Practice being grateful and appreciative for what you have rather than focusing on what you don’t have. Complaints create stress, while gratitude creates inner peace, so gratitude creates not only emotional and relationship health, but physical health as well. The greatest challenge in a relationship is knowing whether it is worth working on or it’s time to let it go and walk away. Knowing the cause of the problems goes a long way towards bringing you to more certainty because then you know what you need to work on. There is relationship expiry where both people are not aligned and where it is advisable to move towards a healthy uncoupling of the relationship, however, you will move closer towards certainty if you have worked on these steps before deciding to go separate ways. If you and your partner agree to work together with these 5 steps, you will be amazed at the improvement in your relationship! Follow Susan on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , or visit her website for more info! Read more from Susan! Susan Hum, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Susan Hum, aka the LoveHacker, is a thought leader and self-mastery expert specialized in the area of love and relationships with a specific focus on emotional intelligence. Her own personal journey in forming a unique voice and unraveling her personal truth led Susan to achieve success in all pillars of life – family, career, financial freedom, and most importantly, love and incredible relationships. Susan´s success in helping high achievers attract more love and passion into their lives has led her to work with some very prominent leaders in business, sports, music, and Hollywood. In 2020, she created the Steel Rose Movement, a conscious leadership platform for women with a mission to elevate love consciousness in the world by narrowing all divides in society, whether between women, genders, races, cultures, identity preferences, or personal beliefs.

Written by: Santosh Naidu, 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. Namaste, Bonjour, Hola, Halo, Greetings! In my last article, I defined wellbeing and listed the various ways to measure health. In this edition, I would like to continue with mental health but before that, rejoice in the pinnacle of human excellence with all the Olympians for their extraordinary performances. Quite substantial due to the pandemic - the wait and all the difficulties they had to overcome leading up to the summer Olympics. On display, the passion, grit, persistence, sacrifices, pain, tears of celebrations, etc., remind us what it takes to compete at the highest levels on the planet. Hence the Olympics is that one occasion where we truly celebrate healthy competition combined with sporting excellence. What Does It Take To Perform At Superhuman Levels After Bubbles And Lockdowns? I am sure we all are cheering for our respective nations and engrossed with the achievements of our athletes, but here in India, I believe we are excited to be at a cusp of a sporting renaissance. Never before has there been such buzz around a sport that is not cricket. The medal in Hockey was won after a gap of 41 years, with the men winning the bronze under Coach Graham Reid and the most significant achievement that shook many in the country and the world out of all their rendezvous was the performance of the Indian Women’s Hockey team under the guidance of Coach Sjoerd Marijne. Starting with 3 consecutive losses to beat Australia 1-0, the girls simply re-invented their play and went on to finish 4th. Their superhero effort won the praise of the whole sporting world and became Champions overnight. More than a billion were celebrating these accomplishments along with all the medal winners in Chanu in weightlifting, Lovlina in boxing, Sindhu in badminton, and Ravi and Bajrang in wrestling. Got to mention commendable performances in golf and equestrian, too, and no wonder I say these are exciting times for Indian sport. As a person with a sporting background myself, I can relate to what it takes . I have overcome with emotion on many counts when I saw the winners on the podium. It’s a team job that includes the efforts of the players, the Coaches, sponsors, and the support staff that made it possible. It’s An Incredible Feeling To Win One can only imagine what their journey was like, but such achievements definitely inspire and motivate us to do more, lift ourselves up and push us to put that one more step forward in our own journeys of life. In a world that is struggling to get back to normal from the impact of COVID-19 , there is quite a change that is being witnessed in the way we go about our business. With most change being forced on us involuntarily, there is quite a lot of stress that many are experiencing. The recent inputs from Gallup surveys show a significant rise in negative emotions such as anger, depression, and sadness globally . Following are a few data points: 45% of the people say their life has been affected “a lot” by the COVID-19 situation 43% of the employees experienced “a lot” of stress, was 30% in 2009 41% of employees experienced “ a lot” of worry, was 30% in 2009 And I recently read that millions are quitting jobs their jobs, a trend was spotted in the US . With such impact and uncertainty, it is easy to be discouraged and disappointed . Add to it the demands of modern-day sport where athletes pushing themselves to the limit can sometimes lead to injuries. Some are physical, and some are mental. The latter was evident with the number of athletes pulling out of competitive sport recently due to mental health issues. We had Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Ben Stokes, Adam Zampa, Mathew Wolff, Liz Campagne, etc . Being the professionals that they are, I am sure they have made informed decisions with their coaches and support staff to take a break and come back afresh. Such breaks also serve as ways to re-invent themselves, and being the champs they are , and I am sure they will bounce back Stronger. Yes, champions perform at superhuman levels, and so can normal people . The difference is a bespoke solution that works for that individual, a winning formula . So What Is A Winning Formula? Is it better self-awareness, coaching, discipline, hard work, determination, work ethic, consistency, motivation, focus, attitude, persistence, etc.? We can look for all those good words and their synonyms, but there is no one “magic potion” that will help anyone, and we got to create our own solution, a “formula .” Inspired by Druid Getafix from Asterix comics, I strongly learned to believe that every solution is a type of a formula, a potion from Druid or fairy Godmother, a medicine/vaccine, a mix with a specific quantity, a combination to heal, to solve, to use or to entertain. Be it a recipe, a product, a team, a toolkit, or a mix of talents, a combination of learnings, certifications, etc. Just that formula needs to be formulated, tested and released, repeated or reproduced for success, or changed when encountered with failure. The formula works as long as it’s created, improved upon, factoring the unique variables we come across, and that includes success or failure. When I was a kid, my Coach said, "success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan," and that there will be many to claim credit for your wins and none to associate themselves with your failure. No One Likes To Associate Themselves With Failure, And That's Where Many Fail Failure is indeed unpopular and demotivating, but in fact, it is giving you another chance to get better because you know what does not work for you by knowing that you discover your measure. An accurate measure is halfway there, like a recipe in a book; you need to get the ingredients right and follow a process. I am on a mission to #makingfailuresexy So if you are gloomy, don’t know what to do, sad, depressed, or angry with your situation, let me tell you that it is not a bad situation for you to be in, but it’s possible to emerge from that rock bottom to perform at highest level. Treat this as an opportunity to Re-invent yourself, to unload, reload and re-launch yourself, a long-awaited career pivot move that you long desired. As a Coach, I can vouch for the fact that there is nothing that can stop you from achieving your dreams as long as you decide to put in that effort. One of the sub-formulae is Talent x Effort = Strength So are you ready to Re-invent yourself with that winning formula? Therefore the high-level construct of the formula is as follows: What talents are you gifted with? Assess what’s wrong - determine the problem Measure the problem accurately Analyze what the causes are Enhance your formula Pilot test the improved formula You can start with a self-assessment of your wellbeing with our app, and factoring the construct above. I will help you create that bespoke winning formula by working with you discover those dormant talents, put in efforts where it matters, learn from those failures, and inculcate those practices that will help you emerge a better human and eventually become the champ you deserve to be. For more info, follow me on LinkedIn , Twitter , or visit my w ebsite ! Read more from Santosh! Santosh Naidu, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Santosh Naidu is a Management Consultant and a Brainpower Coach with over two decades of international experience across Asia, N America, and Europe. At the turn of the century, he was employed with GE Capital, IBM, and Fidelity Investments and, in his last role, was heading HR S Operations Excellence for the APAC region at Deutsche bank group. He has been running his consulting and coaching practice for the last 10 years under the brand name santhnaidu®. His objective is to facilitate relevant change and human wellbeing. He is excited about solving some of the most pressing problems, such as unemployment, mental health issues, and climate change. He is well known in industry circles for taking a stand on unethical practices. Over the years, he invested in treehouse building, soil rejuvenation and loves playing his part in innovating sustainability solutions. As a brainpower and strengths coach, he ensures wellbeing for his clients by diagnosing and addressing various issues impacting the modern populace. This is done by using credible surveys, credible APPs, and coaching methodologies. His unique coaching approach helps clients' spot causes affecting them, especially after the recent pandemic where many are struggling and suffering silently. Be it physical, mental, career, social, or community aspects, his unique coaching formula addresses most lifestyle aspects by helping his clients build strengths from natural talents, gain confidence from physical, mental, and nutritional methods to sustain the changes they make to successfully thrive.

Written by: Silvana Avram, 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. Faster Higher Stronger – Together If you have been, like me, following the unbelievably inspiring stories unfolding at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, you are also probably aware that on 20 July 2021, the International Olympic Committee approved a change in the Olympic motto that recognizes the unifying power of sport and the importance of solidarity: t he word “together” was added, and the new Olympic motto now reads: “Faster, Higher, Stronger - Together .” The Latin version has also been updated to “Citius, Altius, Fortius - Communiter,” and t he French motto is now: “Plus vite, Plus haut, Plus fort - Ensemble .” IOC President Thomas Bach explained the decision in his remarks before the unanimous vote: “Solidarity fuels our mission to make the world a better place through sport. We can only go faster, we can only aim higher, we can only become stronger by standing together — in solidarity.” Whilst this may seem like a small step , I believe it is, in fact, a reflection of the shift in consciousness we are starting to see in the world and that it has the potential to be “a giant leap for mankind ,” a turning point for humanity. We are currently at a time in history when it is becoming more and more apparent that the updated Olympic motto must be applied not only to sporting prowess – but to every aspect of life in our society. The Earth is suffering. Our systems have shown their limitations. We seem more divided than ever, socially, politically, economically, and the current pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated these divisions. Yet, if we keep the faith, if we look deeper, we start to see a different picture: the countless gestures of kindness and support, the selfless sacrifice and courage of so many, the strength and resilience that keeps all of us going - and a new paradigm emerging: the paradigm of solidarity. It is up to us to turn the current crisis into an opportunity. Let us rise to the challenge. Let us seize this opportunity and decide, together, to write a more positive, uplifting story for each one of us and for humanity – a story based on the power of solidarity and the strength in unity. The Paradigm Of Division The truth is there for all to see: the narrative we have embraced so far has not made us happy. We have hurt our planet. Our world is plagued by violence, mistrust, injustice, discrimination, poverty. And everywhere we look, there is division. D ivision is at the heart of our geography, our history, our social and political systems, our models of the economy. Despite regular reminders, throughout the ages, from inspired leaders in all fields of knowledge, about the power of compassion and the strength found in unity, we have created a world in which most of our efforts are directed towards reinforcing division, not solidarity. Division breeds competition, judgment , and discrimination. It brings about feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, injustice, helplessness, and despair. On a metaphysical level, the division has led us to believe that we are separate from the universe, in conflict with nature – vulnerable and lonely. We have lost trust in life. We have lost trust in ourselves. We have lost trust in our capacity to be generous and happy. We have lost trust in humanity. From Competition To Shared Joy And Solidarity But there is hope. There are signs that we are starting to see the limits – the absurdity - of our old story. We know, deep inside, that all forms of discrimination are absurd. We know that selfishness does not bring happiness. We know that “being first” at any cost is meaningless. We know that hiding from the truth will only add to our misery. What we need now is courage, honesty, humanity. And that is why this year’s Olympic Games and their inspired updated motto could well turn out to be the turning point in our story. We saw resilience and humanity when the refugee Olympic team reminded us that “We all share the same story .” We saw courage when Simone Biles decided to put her well-being ahead of success and image and be truthful. We saw countless examples of honesty and respect summed up beautifully when the French judoka Clarisse Agbégnénou, gold medalist, warmly hugged and thanked her opponent, Slovenian Tina Trstenjak. And we saw the best of friendship and solidarity when Qatar's Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi decided to share the men’s high jump gold medal rather than continue to fight for “supremacy .” These and so many other beautiful stories seem now more poignant – and more potent than ever. They duly remind us that individual success is only meaningful when shared, when in service to a common good, when contributing to a larger story. “Faster Higher Stronger – Together” – Remember? That word, “together” – makes all the difference. We can only succeed together. We can only be truly happy together. Only by being kind to ourselves and each other, recognizing greatness in others, and sharing our achievements will we get to be the best we can be and write a better story for humanity. A Once In A Lifetime Opportunity The past two years have been challenging. The COVID pandemic has affected every corner of our planet, every aspect of our lives. We had to stop, adapt, and change our ways. The crisis has forced us to face our vulnerability and confront our deepest fears, but it has also reminded us of our resilience and humanity. As crises often do, it has brought us a huge opportunity. Rather than allowing things to further deteriorate or trying to go back to a “normality” that wasn’t really working, we must act now. Much like the athletes who have to rise to the challenge – we must seize this chance and write a better story. Together. We can go Faster. We must aim Higher. We will feel Stronger – Together. Are you ready? The old model of ruthless competition and division, of selfishness and greed, of “everyone for themselves ,” is clearly outdated. Sure, we will not be able to change it overnight. But we can make a start. Today. With courage, honesty, clear vision…and solidarity. 3 Steps To Write A Better Story For Yourself And For Humanity: 1. Go Faster Take the initiative. Replace the old narrative of division with the paradigm of solidarity in every context, with every opportunity. There have been many voices throughout history, encouraging us to treat everyone with compassion, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We haven’t been listening, obviously. Let’s make a start today. Let’s lead the way. It will not be easy, but if each one of us commits to doing it, we will succeed. And it will be worth it. Here is what you can do: Every time a situation arises where there is conflict, opposition, division, acknowledge it and make a conscious decision to choose inclusiveness, peace, harmony, solidarity. Be kind and patient with yourself. The “me against you” “us against them” narrative has permeated our world. You will inevitably fall into its trap again and again. Notice it and smile. Turn every such situation into an opportunity to practice kindness, test your new philosophy, and apply your firm decision to remain compassionate. Do it when you notice your reaction to people and events. Do it with situations arising in your family and in society. Don’t be discouraged if you fail, if you forget. This will take time. But you have made a start, and you are showing the way. When you feel tired or disheartened, remind yourself that you are doing this for all of us. Remind yourself that there are no enemies. We are all brothers and sisters. Really. Unquestionably. Our individual stories merge into a bigger story – the story of humanity. We have a common destiny. Do you believe that we are all in this together? That together we can do so much better? That solidarity makes us stronger? Do you agree that we have a common destiny, as humanity? Then use this belief as your constant reminder and motivation. And trust that the rest will follow, naturally. 2. Aim Higher Embody the new paradigm of solidarity. Be an example of inclusiveness, kindness, and compassion with every opportunity – daily. Make it a point to do random acts of kindness daily. Make it a routine – do it deliberately. It can be as simple as a kind remark, positive feedback, or a small favor you do a friend or a stranger. Just praise or encourage someone, honestly, lovingly – as many times as you can – daily. Do it consciously, do it joyfully. Shifting the focus from yourself to others is liberating and reinforces solidarity. Imagine that your gesture sends ripples of light and positivity to the world, to our common story. Ask yourself every morning: How can I help? How can I be of service today? You are doing it for all of us –for humanity - but also for yourself. Helping others makes us happy. 3. Stronger Together! Spread Positivity! Share your joy, your trust. Pay attention to - and share - all the great stories you encounter. Stories of courage and humanity, of love and sacrifice, of resilience and generosity. Stories that inspire, stories that uplift. As often as possible, share positivity. The more of us doing so, the better. It will take effort to change the prevalent negativity we see everywhere around us. Be patient and keep faith in our vision for humanity. Together, we can make solidarity trendy. Don’t let yourself be discouraged. This should not be hard work. Instead, it should feel like play. You know this is the future. You know you are already writing a better story. Spread the word. Tell someone – tell everyone that you have decided to see the world, your life, our life – in a different light. We are not talking about a new religion, another “woke” movement…or an attempt to get attention. We are simply waking up to the truth we have known all along. That we are all in this together. That we are part of a common story. Together, we can make this awareness the new trend…the new paradigm…the new reality…and thus, we will have really changed the story of humanity…from a story of war and self-destruction to a story of togetherness, of courage and beauty. The symbolic gesture of updating the Olympic motto can truly become a turning point for each one of us and for humanity. “Faster Higher Stronger – Together” Let’s do it. Let us change paradigms. Let us upgrade our vision of the world. Let’s take responsibility. Let us replace division with solidarity. Lets’ do it for us, let’s do it for all of those who dreamt it before us…let’s do it for the future generation. Let’s do it for humanity. “Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one”. It is time…it is time…it is time… To move Faster To aim Higher To choose to be Stronger – Together. Are you in? Follow me on Faceb ook , Instagram , LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Silvana Avram, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Silvana Avram is a successful, Inspirational Life Coach, philosopher, author, teacher, and founder of Life Coaching with Silvana - whose mission is to empower us to embrace our uniqueness, fall in love with life, fulfill our potential and create a beautiful legacy. Fascinated from a young age by the mystery of life and our place in the universe, Silvana has been on a quest to find her own answers to the big existential questions facing humanity. Now an acclaimed Coach and Author, she draws on her extensive study of Philosophy, Psychology, Meditation, Holistic Healing, and Spirituality to create a uniquely inspirational and empowering style of Coaching - also reflected in her Book “Being You and Loving You” in which she guides us through an unforgettable, transformative journey of self-discovery and self-love. Convinced that we can overcome the prevalent paradigms of fear and division, Silvana has recently focussed her attention on developing a radically innovative approach, outlined in her upcoming book, “Living in Eternity” – and which has earned her an unexpected nickname: “Miss Eternity”! She argues passionately that, rather than chasing goal after goal and living for tomorrow, we should, instead, live every day, every moment, with the joy, awe, and serenity we experience when we see our lives from the perspective of Eternity. When we choose to live in Eternity, everything falls into place, everything we do takes on a different meaning, and we become aware that, as humanity, we are, in fact, constantly creating our common legacy. Silvana’s ambition: to inspire us to write a better story for ourselves – and for humanity – in Eternity!

Written by: Sam Chia, 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. A top performer speaks to his wife to share his disappointment. He has missed the promotion opportunity as the vacant position that he has been groomed for was filled by a new hire. He works long hours getting things done on time. He is always firefighting to resolve issues for his team. He is known as Mr. Fix all as he is good at solving problems and getting his hands dirty to keep the operation running. His superior has feedback to him that while he has met most of the criteria for the potential position, the selection committee felt that he still lacks in strategic thinking that is important for this new senior role. This high performer has been spending time doing without investing time to think strategically. He could have avoided some of those recurring issues or having some foresight to anticipate some of the problems if he has developed better strategic thinking. Many leaders fall into the trap of short-term thinking focus on solving immediate problems and meeting short-term financial numbers. They fail to think deeper about the big “picture” or potential long-term implications resulted from their decisions or actions. What Is Strategic Thinking? The Harvard Business Review describes people with strategic thinking this way, “Strategic people create connections between ideas, plans, and people that others fail to see.” Strategic thinking is a long-term thought process to ensure a team or organization can sustainably influence and achieve success towards its longer-term goals and vision. This means having the ability to anticipate the future while having the discipline to get ready now; having the ability to gets ahead with competition to win in the long run. A strategic thinker invests time to gather relevant information, evaluate and filter the information and identify options to the problems or decisions. Strategic thinkers also collaborate and are open to feedback to improve their confidence and knowledge to achieve their goals. Strategic thinkers set measurable long-term performance goals and continue to refine them based on the changing environments or competitive situations. Strategic thinkers enjoy developing others to perform their best and achieve their full potential. They understand how to optimize resources and to leverage the strengths of their team, and drive sustainable positive changes. Benefits Of Strategic Thinking To Accelerate Career Progression Strategic thinking requires us to think, reflect, decide and influence others to act to achieve success for the business. With the fast-changing environment, people with strategic thinking capabilities can better manage through such an environment that is described as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Strategic thinkers can maneuver through the challenges, anticipate problems, thinking critically, logically, and be better prepared to create a positive impact in business. Strategic thinking skills are one of the most highly sought-after leadership competencies in the future. Dealing With Uncertainty And Complexity With strategic thinking, you can take proactive actions to consider ways to develop and progress in your career. You can define your career goals with clarity and develop a path towards them. You take the initiatives to narrow the skills and knowledge gap that stops you from moving forward. You don’t wait around hoping that something will turn up or that someone else will come forward to offer you a new opportunity. Growth Mindset And Continuous Improvement Strategic thinkers are likely to be effective and efficient as strategic thinking constantly drives you to think of doing things faster and better. You anticipate trends and keep up with best practices. You develop your brand to differentiate from others to gain visibility and competitive advantage when opportunities arise. Leverage Data To Develop Personal Branding Strategic thinkers use data to help them plan for the longer term. You are resourceful and know where to find reliable resources to collect intelligence data to support your ideas. With insights from data, you develop better self-awareness to leverage your strengths and unique capabilities. You make time to think and reflect, visualize and plan for the future. Choices And Decisions In running a business, they are always choices and decisions to be made. Same with planning for our career, a strategic thinker will be able to develop options and choices based on their values, interest, and strengths. They will have the capability to objectively evaluate the various career options and select the best path forward. Tips To Develop Strategic Thinking Skills: Like any other leadership skill, strategic thinking skills can be developed. You need to embrace a curious and growth mindset to look at opportunities and challenges differently. Strategic thinking includes the ability to challenge, anticipate, decide, learn, align and interpret the problems or opportunities. Make Time To Think While this looks like a simple idea, it is often very hard to do. Many of the leaders I had coached seems to have a challenge finding time to think. I have a client who shared with me feedback from her superior that she lacks strategic thinking though she is excellent in execution. This is hindering her promotion. She shared with me her daily routine and the daily challenges she had to deal with. She is so preoccupied with the daily operations of getting things done and hardly has time to think. Having a space in your calendar for thinking is as important as spending time problem solving and decision making. You shall prioritize and block your calendar like any important task for thinking. Asking Strategic Questions When asking strategic questions relating to your career challenge and opportunity face in your current situation, it can help you to achieve clarity on your next course of action. The common questions include asking yourself whether you shall continue to stay in your current job or to embark on a new career opportunity. This will spin off more questions like What is my career aspiration? What are the pros and cons of staying? Is the opportunity align with my career vision? What is the skill gap to be successful in this new role? Does the new opportunity align with my career values and interest? Contrarian and Opposite Thinking A contrarian thinker normally takes an opposite view to popular opinion. Contrarian and opposite thinking can help you challenge your beliefs and assumptions relating to the challenge and opportunity. It can help you to see things that others might not see, and it will lead to more favorable outcomes. This includes challenging questions like What can go wrong with these career decisions? Is there another consideration you may have overlooked? Shall you consider an unconventional career? Anticipates Trends “The trend is your friend” is one of the best-known sayings by an investor in the stock market. When planning for our career, it is equally important to understand the industry and technology trends that are happening relating to the career aspirations you want to embark on in the future. The ability to anticipates trends allow you to better prepare and equip yourself with the necessary skills and knowledge to take advantage of the opportunities. It will also help you to avoid steering your career towards an industry that may be declining. Seeking Feedback Shifting from tactical to strategic thinking involves changes in some habits. Develops a habit of Inviting diverse opinions and thoughts from people around you can add a new perspective to your thinking. Whether you have a challenging situation or an opportunity, seeking views from people, especially those who may have experienced the same, can add a new dimension to the thinking process. They may have suggestions for doing things differently or their life experiences you may be able to leverage to shorten your learning curve. Continuous Learnings You require new knowledge and explore new ways of doing things in strategic thinking. Having a diverse knowledge of information relating to your career and the industry you intend to serve can add a new perspective to your thinking process when you make a decision or solve a problem. With technology, they are many ways you can access information. You can learn by readings articles online, taking short courses, review and reflect on your experiences. Six Thinking Hats Method The six thinking hats developed by Edward De Bono, a renowned doctor, and psychologist, help you focus on how to incorporate factual, emotional, critical, constructive, creative, and metacognitive information into your thinking process. De Bono’s six hats consider and incorporate the following thinking process for thinking about your career: The blue hat is for metacognition or the overall organization of the thinking process. What are the overall career goals you like to achieve? Do I have a career plan and career path in place? The white hat is for gathering neutral information. Does the existing information sufficient for a new career decision? Any other critical information missing? The red hat is for emotions. Will I enjoy the new role? Do I like the people and environment relating to the role? The black hat is for criticism. Am I ready for the role? Do I have the capability to take on the new role? The yellow hat is for positive feedback and developing solutions. What is the best outcome from this career decision? What do I need to do to make this role successful? The green hat is for new, creative ideas. What additional value can I bring to this role? What new possibilities and ideas can I make a difference? In any career you are planning to embark on , developing a strategic thinking capability can put you ahead or differentiate you from the crowd. Strategic thinking skills can empower you to spot new opportunities, prepare for emerging challenges, and be better ready to accelerate towards your future career. Follow me on LinkedIn , Twitter and visit my website for more info! Sam Chia, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Sam Chia, is a business and executive coach with over 25 years of global experience as a regional corporate leader, business consultant, and coach. He applies insights using assessment technology, positive psychology , action learning, coaching, and blended learning to help people to expand their performance and organizational capabilities. He is the CEO of SC Coaching Asia, a premiere results-driven coaching practice that supports people to unleash their unique capability and maximizing their full potentials. His coaching clients include executives from Dell, Adobe, Salesforce, Linkedin, Zendesk, NetApp, Micron, Gap, Walmart, IMF, Citibank, Visa, S&P Global, Accenture, E&Y, ABB, HeroMotorCorp, Merck, J&J, MacDermid Enthone, Alcon, Varian. He is the co-editor and co-author of a groundbreaking publication on Asia executive coaching practices, Coaching in Asia: The First decade. He is a coach-writer for Betterup, the inventor and global leader in virtual professional coaching. He is also a leadership and mindset content writer for The Strategy Journey, a transformation best-seller in the digital age. His mission is to empower people to achieve a positive and meaningful career and life.

Written by: Nida Leardprasopsuk, 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. Having the opportunity to work with businesses of all sizes, from small to large to Fortune 500 companies, I discovered that despite knowing how important offers are, many entrepreneurs struggled with finding the right offer to offer in their businesses. It also happened to be my biggest frustration as a consumer in this market. I have hired and paid a lot of money to hire experts, including copywriters, coaches, digital marketing agencies, branding experts that weren’t capable of providing quality work for their clients and therefore not giving the clients the results that were promised. The factor that sets extraordinary businesses apart from the average ones is they have an exceptional offer that solves their clients' and customers' problems better than anyone else in the industry. The offer is the solution, and it is the sole purpose of why your business exists in the first place. When we look at companies like Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, what makes them exceptional is their innovation and their ability to think ahead of the game. Predict your clients’ problems and solve it for them before they are even aware it’s a problem. Wow, your clients, that’s how you build an exceptional business. Now we know that common sense is not always common practice, and oftentimes entrepreneurs get lost by focusing on other things like the latest social media platform or finding ways to improve ads or closing more sales. They forget to think about the most important and most fundamental thing, which is their offer. When we studied Marketing 101, we all learned about the USP, the unique selling proposition. But when we actually got into the business, we got lost in the numbers game, thinking that more sales are good. More sales are not always good, especially if you aren’t delivering a high-quality service and your profitability is low. I worked with many clients on revising their offers and crafting an offer that was unique, powerful, innovative, and brought high profitability for their businesses. That’s how I developed my methodology for creating an exceptional offer. The mission behind it was to help businesses challenge the industry norms where clients had no choice but to accept sub-par results from the services and expertise that were provided. I wanted to help businesses raise the bar in their industries and fully deliver to their clients. Most expert-based businesses and service providers aren’t aware that their offer is hindering their growth, and they often don’t have the resources to create an outstanding offer. Those resources include the ability to understand the psychology of their clients and the hidden problems and challenges that they themselves probably aren’t aware of. Before we develop a solution or any client in any industry, the most important thing to do is to empathize and truly understand the client. What are their perceived problems? These are called symptoms. It’s what they think their problems are. But the truth is there is a deeper layer of problem that needs to be solved. We need people skilled in research, psychology, and consumer behavior to dig for these insights. Secondly, there is a specific process for innovating your offers. You need to be a good problem solver, be creative, and be able to think of solutions other people can’t. Thirdly, when businesses put in the effort to get feedback from clients, they don’t do it correctly, and a lot of the time, clients won’t tell you the whole truth. I know this because we’ve completed a lot of research and client interviews for our clients, and I can tell you most of the time, clients are only telling you half of what they really think. What does Genius Offers™ look like? 1. Solves seen and unseen problems. Oftentimes we as the experts think we know what our client’s problems are. But most of the time, we only know part of the problem. A lot of the time, the clients themselves don’t even know their real problems. Sometimes they see the symptoms that are caused from their real problems. Genius Offers™ solve both the client’s seen and unseen problems, helping clients fully achieve what they set out to achieve working with you. 2. Delivers incomparable results. An exceptional offer offers results for clients that they could not have found anywhere. You offer a one-of-a-kind solution that is truly irreplaceable. If you are a career coach, for example, and every other career coach is offering coaching sessions and resume writing for their clients. How do you go above and beyond to offer them a 7-star service to help them achieve their goals? What else could they possibly need or want to achieve their goals faster and easier? That’s what you want to start thinking about if you want to start innovating your offer. 3. Ultimate customer experience. Do clients feel like they matter the most to you? Do they feel valued and respected while working with you, or do they feel frustrated, misunderstood, and feel like you and your team don’t really care about them? Genius Offers™ takes their clients on a journey that leaves them feeling amazed and asking, “Why didn’t I meet you sooner?” When you don’t create the ultimate customer experience, you are harming your business. If clients had an average experience, they are more likely to remember the negative parts of the experience they had with you. Negative feelings are far more powerful than positive ones, and they certainly provoke feelings with long-lasting effects. Clients that experience a positive experience with you might not tell others about their experience working with you, but clients that had a less than good experience will go on to tell an average of 9-15 people about their experience (White House Office of Consumer Affairs). 4. Employees. The key factor to creating the ultimate experience for your clients is your employees. They are the main point of contact that clients engage with the most. In most cases, it includes the team providing the core services to your clients, e.g., coaching or consulting. And even if they aren’t responsible for providing the core services, they still play a major role in how your clients feel about your business. In order to deliver a high-touch, high-quality service for your clients, recruiting and maintaining top talent and highly self-aware individuals is vital. You could have invested millions into building your brand and have it destroyed by a single employee who wasn’t doing the best job they should have been doing. Maybe it was because an employee cared more about making more sales rather than serving the client. This highly depends on the organizational culture and company goals. As business owners, if you view sales as more important than the quality of work, your team will do everything to drive more sales rather than focus on quality, and that will be destructive for your business in the long term. Instead of doing everything to drive more sales, build a culture of excellence. Because in the long-term, that is exactly what will get you more sales and allow you to make more impact. Recruit and maintain top talent employees that are also amazing human beings. Also, make sure your employees are engaged and passionate with their work because an unhappy employee equals unhappy clients. When employees are unhappy, it will definitely affect your clients. 5. Speed. The longer your clients’ problems continue, the more pain and the more opportunity cost occurs. You want to minimize your clients' pain by delivering the best solution in the fastest and simplest way possible. Time is the most valuable resource we have. Delivering the solution to your clients in the fastest way possible is a win-win for everyone. 6. Utilizes genius. When we get to do what we are great at, we feel fulfilled and alive. Work becomes more like a hobby you enjoy rather than a task you have to complete. Your offer has to utilize your genius and your team’s geniuses. This gives you the opportunity to show the world something that only you can provide, only you can do better than anyone else. 7. Brings joy. There’s no use if what you offer to your clients doesn’t bring joy to you and your team. When your work and what you do makes you happy, it means you are providing your best work, and you are genuinely passionate about what you do. Now start getting on this checklis t and evaluate your offers from an objective point of view. Start gathering data and insights from all your stakeholders and start brainstorming for creative and innovative ideas that will wow your clients! Send me a message if you have any questions. If you’d like to find out about your entrepreneurial edge and what sets you up for success, I’ve created a quiz for purpose-driven coaches, consultants, and experts that are ready to build a legacy business and take their income to new heights. You can complete the quiz here and get your own blueprint for success! Follow Nida on Instagram, Facebook, Clubhouse, Linkedin, and visit her website for more info! Get business and mindset tips from her podcast show — The One to Millions Entrepreneur here ( iTunes , Spotify ) Nida Leardprasopsuk, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Nida is a top-tier business consultant, mindset coach, and former Fortune 500 executive with more than two decades of experience in marketing, business, and human psychology. Her consulting and coaching business centers around exceptionality, a key factor in her own success. She helps high achieving and purpose driven coaches, consultants, experts, thought leaders, and service-providers become a category of one by: 1.) Discovering and utilizing their ultra-geniuses 2.) Creating groundbreaking offers that solve clients’ problems in an innovative way and 3.) Using a short and long-term marketing strategy that magnifies their thought leadership overtime. She is the author of the One to Millions Entrepreneur and host of the One to Millions Entrepreneur Podcast show . She also has a master’s and bachelor’s degree in Business and Marketing and is currently completing her research for a Ph.D. in Social Psychology. With her proprietary system, the Genius Offers™, Nida helps entrepreneurs discover the X-factor that sets their business apart from the rest. She helps her clients uncover their clients’ hidden problems and creatively and strategically works with them to find better solutions. Having an exceptional offer is foundational to the success and growth of your business. It’s what elevates companies like Apple, Google, Netflix, and Amazon above their competition. Nida knows you can’t just do what everyone else is doing and expect spectacular results. She believes in unique, meaningful innovations as a way to stay ahead of the curve and become a top player and leader in the industry. With the right offer, you can turn your genius into a truly exceptional business that delivers incomparable results and makes a lasting impact. Nida offers 1:1 consulting and coaching services that help entrepreneurs build a world-class legacy brand and hyper-grow their businesses through innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.