Written by: Leticia DeSuze, 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. “Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.”– Norman Vincent Peale. As a mindset and business coach, one of the biggest barriers I see with my clients is the lack of confidence, and it’s usually when they are embarking on something new. The lack of confidence and fear can be so real that it’s paralyzing. This has also been one of the greatest challenges I have overcome. Below I have shared these 10 steps to develop ‘unstoppable confidence.’ I used these in my work, and I have learned to put them into practice in my own life over time. 1. Start with courage. Many people believe they can’t accomplish something because they lack confidence. Confidence usually comes through mastery. Mastery comes through repeated practice. It is very normal to lack confidence -- especially when you’re doing something new. Courage is a great substitute. You simply take action repeatedly until your confidence is developed. 2. Understand that ‘done beats perfect.’ If you find yourself procrastinating, you're simply afraid. The greatest fear in the beginning is usually tied to other people’s opinions which is a fear of judgment. People will always have opinions. However, their opinions aren’t necessarily true. It’s more important to remain laser-focused on your vision and not on other people, or you will quickly get derailed. Discipline yourself to get things done – not perfect - by only focusing on the next step. Do the best with what you have right now. 3. Prioritize your self-care. Self-care should be a top priority. When you’re doing anything new, your subconscious mind will kick into overdrive, and all of your fears may surface While this is perfectly normal, having a self-care routine in place to manage it will be largely helpful. Self-care consists of giving yourself what you need on a regular and consistent basis. This includes eating well, exercising, nurturing and supportive relationships, spiritual practices, and protecting your time and energy. It also includes giving yourself breaks when you need them. When you have a self-care routine, it’ll help you develop the resilience necessary to pursue your goals. 4. Get help to accelerate your growth. Personal growth precedes all other growth. So many people downplay it, but your mindset matters most and needs to be regularly developed. Whether you’re doing that with a coach, via books and podcasts, a support group, or even through something as rigorous as strength training – getting help outside of yourself will strengthen you for the journey and create the mindset necessary for sustainable success. You don’t have to go it alone. 5. Celebrate every win. When you’re someone who lacks confidence, you will typically see what’s wrong with yourself instead of what’s right. You will also tend to minimize your accomplishments as if they’re not a big deal. So even though celebrating your wins might feel cringeworthy - do it anyway! Celebrating your wins will show other people what’s possible. It will also get you into the habit of thinking and speaking well about yourself. 6. Reframe how you see failure. Failure to meet our goals does not make us personal failures. Because we often tie failure to our self-worth, we internalize it and make it mean something about us personally. It does not. It means you have an opportunity to learn, grow and pivot. It’s actually a great way to get feedback and make needed changes. Fail as often as you can and see it as a shortened path to success. 7. Never compare yourself to others. Comparison leads to despair. We tend to compare our worst to others’ best. You are in your own lane. Your only competition is you. Focus on becoming a better version of yourself each day and be unconcerned with others’ journeys. You are uniquely designed to do what you do in the way that you do it – even if there are a gazillion other people who do the exact same thing. They are not you, and therein lies your advantage. 8. Finish what you start. It’s easy to start. However, it takes mental stamina and endurance to finish. Most of what we call failure is actually us stopping. Stop stopping yourself and keep going until you reach your goals — no matter the difficulty. Conversely, learn to quit when it’s time. Although it might seem like the opposite of finishing what you start – it’s not. There is a difference between not finishing something because you stopped and quitting when you are going in a direction that no longer serves you. How will you know the difference? Trust that when it no longer feels right, it isn’t right. 9. Repair self-trust. It’s been said that the most successful people make decisions quickly. However, many of us don’t trust ourselves to make the decisions necessary or handle the responsibility that comes with success. Perhaps you’ve made a ton of decisions that wreaked havoc in your life in some way, and you’re afraid to try again. Making decisions is the only way to repair self-trust. If you make a wrong decision, simply make another one. Eventually, you will gain the wisdom and insight necessary to make good decisions from the beginning, but it takes practice. 10. Commit to getting better. Every version of a product eventually gets outdated, and what was once all the rave becomes a distant memory. This is also what happens to people when they don’t continually hone their skills. You are your biggest and best investment. Continue to get better. Continue to learn. Continue to grow. Never settle for what’s comfortable or convenient, and you will always have a competitive edge. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Leticia! Leticia DeSuze, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Leticia DeSuze is a holistic mindset coach and business strategist who works with C-level executives and established entrepreneurs who desire to break the 7-figure barrier. Having coached more than 1200 senior leaders and entrepreneurs across multiple industries, Leticia believes that every problem is a mindset problem and that mindset matters most. Leticia has developed a 'laser-like' ability to pierce the facades and identify the deeply engrained thought patterns that have limited her clients' potential, and identify opportunities for accelerated growth. She helps them clearly define what they want and designs the roadmap to get there - while holding them accountable. The result is a life and business they've intentionally created vs. one they've settled for.

Written by: Chuck Bean, 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. I like to say that the ups and downs of business are like swimming in the ocean. If you want to survive and perform, you have to stay above the water during the wavy times and understand the chop. Sometimes you are up, sometimes you are down, and you are always being pummelled. Learning to stay above during the high and low times and being able to match and overtake the cadence of the chop is key. Coming out of the COVID19 pandemic (a low for many and a high for some) will be no different than any other revitalization event, and the same rules will apply. It will be important to have visibility into your people, processes, business environment, and the technology you need to keep them all optimally operational. It goes like this… People. Your people will need goals long-term (3 to 5 years), mid-term (annual), and short-term (quarterly) to focus on. Overload them to keep them absorbed and achieving. Determine what training is required and get it for them. Be fair and be strategic. Trust and verify to ensure that they are resolute regarding delivery. Processes. Innovation is rampant during difficult times. Review your key processes and match them to the new realities that are coming. You will have top-line processes such as sales, marketing, operations, finance, innovation, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and you will have sub-processes inside of these key processes. Remember that a strategy is tactics in the right order. Make sure your processes flow effectively, and your people can oversee or apply them correctly. Business Environment. You can’t control your environment, but you can predict and prepare for environmental changes. Be clear about what your competitors, customers, and vendors are up to. Be aware of the socioeconomic situation present and future. Use this information to craft your corporate innovation to stay ahead of the waves. Don’t debate the past… debate the future. Technology. Technological improvements should only be implemented when you have your processes aligned and operating with good results. Technology is an enhancer… it should be implemented to speed things up. If your processes suck, bringing a technology accelerator will only get you to suck quicker. I have seen many trends and many movements throughout my career, and there is a big difference. Trends are generally feigning, like fashion trends: slim pants this year, baggy pants next year. Movements are more foundational such as the movement from leather-soled shoes to rubber-soled shoes. Movements can change a market and be very disruptive. Returning to the “new normal” with COVID-19 is a movement. It will require a full relook at your business to ensure that you can stay above the water, master the waves, and outperform the chop. Connect with me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Chuck! Chuck Bean, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Chuck (Charlie) Bean started his business career at age 6, collecting golf balls at the local driving range for pennies. “I would spend every Saturday and Sunday making enough money to buy a bottle of pop or a candy bar in the concession,” tells Chuck soon after he was selling golf balls to players on the local course and even beer! Fast forward, and Chuck was an award-winning sales professional. Management followed. Moving into the paper industry, Chuck carried on with regional and then national turnarounds, eventually named VP Sales and Service, overseeing a team of 180 inside and outside salespeople, managers, and directors. Following his dream, he opened a consulting and training advisory. Chuck will tell you he has had a great ride. Besides having worked with over 400 companies and over 18,000 individuals, Chuck has consulted and guided some of Canada's biggest stars, including working as COO for one of the world's largest specialty energy service companies. Today Chuck specializes in developing strategies and delivering training and coaching in leadership, sales, communication, business value building, and teamwork. He is no-nonsense and pragmatic and has helped people and corporations succeed for over 40 years. He will call a spade a spade and work quickly to understand, address, and help fix problems, identify opportunities and identify challenges. He has developed business strategies for almost every geo-market. He has worked extensively in oil and gas, general industry, IT, electronics, dental, paper, chemical, wood products, and consumer packaged goods. He specializes in B2B and channel-type organizations. He has authored/contributed to books with Dr. Stephen Covey, Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Ken Blanchard. Chuck also owns 6 tech start-ups currently in different levels of commercialization.

Written by: Leslie Gaudet , 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. I've asked myself that question many times over throughout my lifetime. I thought this would be a great place to start leaning into that by letting all of you in on who I am because I believe that when you know your author a little bit and where he or she comes from, we've met each other where we're at. We can then start having honest conversations and build a closer connection. I believe now, more than ever, in this new world we call home, that we need connection, and a solid community can change the world. So, who am I? Well, for starters, I'm a wife of 25 years and a fur-baby mom to my little boy Jackson (my 14-year-old Papillon). I'm a friend, a daughter, and an Auntie to some of the most amazing young men and women that I get to call family. I've been a Legal Assistant/Paralegal for almost 4 decades, and for the last 2 years, I've been a Life Coach for women, teaching them how little mindset shifts can empower us to lean into living our lives with more joy gratitude, and love. But how did I get to be a Life Coach? Where/How/When? And most importantly, Why? Let’s start with 'Why' because that is the most important piece to this puzzle called my life that I had to wrap my head around to be living my life on my terms and have the mindset that I do to show up and serve every day. So, my 'Why' began 20 years ago in 2000. My husband and I were living in Florida at the time, and we were living a life disconnected from each other. He had his interests to keep him happy, and I filled in the dots to keep me from feeling my emotions. I didn’t want to feel because that would mean that I would have to face that I was truly and utterly miserable with the life I was leading. My husband was an avid golfer, or shall I say he was addicted to the game of skins, which is a game within the game that you bet on each hole, and you either come out even, ahead or behind. He played every weekend and sometimes more, which left me on my own quite a lot, and I had to fill in my time with something, anything, that would distract me from my emotional pain of feeling abandoned. I termed my existence as being a golf widow, and I laughed at it sometimes, but the truth was, it really hurt not to have that connection that I craved with my husband of 4 years at that time. I didn’t understand that for me, I had a love connection that wasn’t being fulfilled, and that connection was quality time. I felt like he was more interested in chasing golf balls than spending time with his wife. Bleak picture, I know. Fast forward 5 years , and we were dealt a very harsh blow. My husband was in a horrible car accident and was off work for a few months and ended up losing almost all of his pool cleaning business as he was self-employed and he was the only employee. When he couldn’t show up for work, his clients found someone else and dropped him, which put him into a depression, and I was not far behind. When 2008 rolled around, we were finally ready to make some changes, and that meant moving back up to Canada (where we both grew up), and still, we weren’t happy. It took another 10 years to finally start moving the needle to where we needed to get to, and that needle led us to Las Vegas. That’s where I started my coaching business, and that’s where my love for self began. I learned so much about myself in the first 6 months of living a new and freer lifestyle in Las Vegas. I was working from home for a law firm in California, and I was finally able to breathe a little bit more and start figuring out what I really wanted to do with my life. My story could go on for pages but let’s just say that that was the beginning of finding my voice and really living my life. So, why do I tell you this about me? My Why. That’s my Why. I had to find a way to really live my life for me, and it began in Vegas and me going on a self-discovery journey to self-awareness and self-love, and along the way, I found my joy for coaching. I picked up some amazing tools that I have been able to share and use in my coaching practice that have really transformed lives, including my own. And so, in essence, my Why is I want to be able to help the woman, who like me way back when, feels truly and utterly alone and miserable. I want that woman to know that she matters and that she can make a change, especially if she hates her current 9 to 5 situation because she’s dissatisfied, overworked, overwhelmed, and possibly underpaid. I want her to know that she has a voice and a right to speak up for herself and that her self-worth does not live in the land of what she can do for others because she is worthy of being loved, appreciated, and valued. In essence, teaching her that the best love she can give herself is loving herself wholly, without judgment or criticism, and being able to face the reflection staring back at her as being enough, worthy and deserving. My journey to self-love and self-awareness was a long journey, and if I can shorten that journey for another woman who is feeling stuck in the muck and uncertain of how and where to start, that is truly priceless and that is my mission. I want to leave you with a short meditation that I created to focus on gratitude. I believe that when you focus on all that you have and all that you are given, that you realize that you are truly blessed and that that can help you navigate those tough days. Here’s the LINK . I hope you enjoy it, and I am looking forward to serving you, my new community, and building a lasting relationship with you. Sending you lots of love and gratitude. xoxo Leslie Gaudet Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Leslie Gaudet, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Leslie Gaudet is a Mindset and Emotional Awareness Coach for women. She helps her clients achieve self-awareness around their emotional triggers through shifting their mindset so that they can make better decisions when they respond, which allows them to bring more balance, peace, and harmony into their life. Almost 4 decades working as a Legal Assistant and Paralegal in the corporate world left her feeling emotionally and physically drained and that’s when she decided that in order for her to live a life she loves, she had to make some changes and those changes involved learning to love herself (without judgment or criticism), and that mindset is the key to everything because our mindset influences our thoughts and in turn our thoughts dictate our words and actions. Thru her journey to self-love and self-acceptance, Leslie went on to become certified as a Life Coach and attained further certifications in Group Coaching, and Emotional Intelligence. She works closely with her clients starting with mindset because that is the foundational piece to self-love and self-acceptance. She teaches her clients about triggers and how they affect us emotionally by helping her clients tune into, spot and understand their own so that they can become more self-aware of their trigger moments and emotional responses. With proven tools and techniques, and with her guidance, her clients tap into and discover their true potential to living their life and loving the life they are living. Leslie believes that when you Change Your Brain (the way you think), You will Transform Your Life.

Written by: Rosalynn Robb, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. My mom often would say, “Communication is the key to your marriage.” In so many ways, that is true in your business as well. Over the past seven years, I have learned five key principles that help make communication with clients smoother. 1. Listen with empathy and a heart to understand. When a client is upset, we can respond with defensiveness, but that rarely resolves the situation. It is better to deescalate the situation by intentionally listening with empathy. Amid their frustration, can you hear what fears they have? Is it a lack of trust in your service? If so, how? Is it a fear of wasting hard-earned money on your service? Is it a fear you don’t care and only are out to make big bucks? 2. Establish concrete expectations and boundaries. Who likes the word “boundaries”? No one does. As kids, we believe they are a kill-joy to what we want and cannot have. It’s vital in a service-based industry to have boundaries about which services your company offers and which services are not included. A frequent mistake I see when businesses are starting out is that they try to be all things to all people in hopes they can pick up more business or make clients happier. It’s the reverse that ensures client satisfaction. They know what you are offering, your specialty, and believe you will not waste your time doing something outside your niche. Remember, every time you say yes to provide your service to someone, you’re saying no to someone else. I remember one home my first year of cleaning where the client asked if we would fold laundry. “Sure, why not? I enjoy folding laundry.” So I said yes, only to realize I would not include laundry in the services moving forward. The client had left six loads of laundry, and two loads were still wet and needed to be dried. We had already finished cleaning her home and had to wait over an extra hour and a half. Being upfront with a client at the home estimate by using an agreement form helps prospective clients have a better idea if they want to do business with you or if another service is a better fit for them. Included in the agreement form needs to be the clients’ responsibilities. Kindly expressing what you expect from your clients will also help make sure your frustration doesn’t sour the relationship. After multiple times being locked out of clients’ homes, I established a $100 lock-out fee. 3. Communicate in a way that your tone and meaning can be read. In this fast-paced world, we often place speed over quality. We prefer texting and emailing over taking the time to meet by phone or in person. Writing can often be taken the wrong way because a client cannot hear your tone or see your body language. When a client is concerned, I make it a habit to resolve it either by phone or in-person rather than by email or texting! You can listen better and ask questions when vocally communicating. Tip: After your phone call or in-person meeting, I would suggest you follow up by email with a brief overview of the conversation and the solutions you offered, so you both have a reference. Similarly, if you have to leave a voicemail, I would still send an email reaching out in case a voicemail gets missed. 4. Speak with confidence but with underlying humility. Be firm but gentle when you need to address an issue. Be confident that you are not surprising your client (this is why a client agreement is so important!) Sometimes you and your client may not be able to come to a manageable solution for you and satisfying to a client. It is okay to let go of a client, but be kind about it and be careful what you say because you never want to burn bridges completely. I have had clients come back after trying multiple companies who now agree our expectations were not too high in pricing because of the quality of work we produce and the incredible team we have behind it. 5. Relay information rather than remain silent. If your client seems to be confused about something, it’s better to speak up rather than remain silent. A lack of clarity can increase frustration on both sides. It is essential to make any concerns known and allow your client to share their side perspective. One area that can become confusing to a client is when your price of services is based on a flat fee rather than an hourly rate. There were times that I put three cleaners on a home, which caused them to finish more quickly than a team of two would have finished. A client might be concerned about why they’re paying the same amount for a two-hour cleaning as they would for a three-hour cleaning. Explaining that the extra person helped them cut down the time needed to clean the same amount could reduce confusion. Communication takes a lot of work! Yet, the buildup of confusion and dissatisfaction can permeate the experience your clients have with your services. A game plan of having continual communication can ensure you are offering quality service and building the ongoing trust you ultimately desire to gain with your business. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rosalynn ! Rosalynn Robb, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Rosalynn Robb is a passionate small business cleaning owner and consultant with the sole aim of helping others. Rosalynn caught a vision after engaging in several Louisville Human Trafficking Task Force meetings. She decided to create a business that would elevate domestic work and advocate for human trafficking victims while giving back to organizations helping the most vulnerable. She believes to whom much has been given, much is expected. She has never forgotten her humble beginnings as an orphan in the Philippines, and how her forever family brought her home to Rhode Island at three and a half years of age. Rosalynn believes what touches the heart reaches the heart, and the best way to build a business is to be authentic and focus on relationships over money. Rosalynn created CleanStart Consulting to help other small cleaning business owners worldwide become organically organized with practical tools and authentic understanding. In 2021, Rosalynn plans to launch the S.H.E Foundation (Seen. Heard. Embraced.). The foundation will provide mentoring and financial support to empower human trafficking survivors. S.H.E. grants will support women seeking a CleanStart with the counsel and tools they need to help launch their own successful businesses. Rosalynn married Andrew in 2018 and they have lived in Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas while serving in the United States Air Force.

Written by: Michelle Gauthier, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. The pandemic has shaken our world and turned it upside down. The way you used to handle situations doesn't work right now, you may have been let go from a job and there are no concrete answers as to when the last 'reopening' of your city/state or province/country will be. There is a lot of uncertainty. Working as a confidence coach during the pandemic, I have noticed a trend in my clients. They have shown up lost about the direction of life they want to take, believing they aren't good enough to make their dreams happen, and afraid to be authentic, as fear of judgment and being socially outcast dawns on them. I designed six tips to boost that confidence in yourself and your abilities to shift, adapt, and thrive. 1. Start your day with gratitude. Say, write, or think of 3 things you are grateful for. This sets your brain to focus on the good things and sets you up mentally for the day ahead. It also helps you to see the things that are working well in your life, already starting to shift your perspective and mindset. 2. Look at yourself in the mirror and compliment yourself. Celebrate the beauty and strength within you. If you do not believe there is any beauty or strength at this point in your life, think of the times you have accomplished something. The times you have felt unstoppable. Doing this regularly will bring your focus to the good things about yourself and you will see the strength and beauty. If you are unsure of what to say at first, ask someone you trust about what they see in you and use those examples. 3. Start small. Pick an area in your life that you would like to improve your confidence in and start small. For example, you are looking for a new job, but you would rather run naked in the snow than to have an interview. Start in a situation or with people you feel comfortable with. These could be friends asking you questions. It could be a video interview because you feel most comfortable in fuzzy pajama pants, and the interviewers won't be able to see your bottoms. Once you start small, you get to slowly push those scenarios. Maybe move to applying for jobs you have no interest in, to practice interviewing with less pressure on how you answer the questions. 4. Switch up your routine. Confidence comes from doing something repeatedly. The more we do it, the more comfortable and confident we become with it. These changes to your routine can be anything. Putting the other shoe on first, driving a different way to/from work, getting out of bed on the first alarm instead of after hitting snooze three times, and so on. Doing small changes regularly will create confidence in change and get you out of your own head. 5. Reconnect with your heart. When you decide to take a step into your confidence, there will be many thoughts telling you not to. Where you are currently in life is safe, comfortable, and okay. Take a breath, and connect with the feelings of accomplishing the task. Why do you want to bring confidence to that area in your life? How would that feel? What would you be able to do in your life having that confidence? 6. Give yourself an allotted time to try. When being met with a new situation, or a confidence-testing situation, give yourself a set time frame to be uncomfortable before you allow yourself to leave that situation. Personally, I choose 5 minutes. This usually comes up for me when it's time to do a workout. I tell myself I only have to do 5 minutes, and if I still do not want to do it after that, I give myself the permission and acceptance to stop. Only once have I actually stopped at that time. Some of these tips may resonate with you more than the others. You can pick and choose which ones to try, but I suggest trying them all for at least a week to see how they fit with your life and to gain momentum. The best way to confident is to get out of your comfort zone. The easiest way to do that is to do something you've never done o think won't work. Believe in your abilities and be patient with yourself. It is an ongoing process, and the more you engage with it, the more your confidence will improve. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Michelle Gauthier, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Michelle Gauthier, an honors graduate of Psychology and an international life and confidence coach, who writes about fitness, self-love, and boosting confidence. She has overcome a toxic workplace that left her with anxiety, depression, and low self-worth. Michelle is now a thriving founder of Phoenix Coaching, following her passion to teach and coach millennials to regain control of their lives, build their inner power and to live in possibility.

Written by: Michelle Greene Rhodes, 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. February is the perfect time to reflect on all types of love - from romantic love, to family love, to self-love – all forms are important to living a full and connected life. It’s also amazing to see how important these forms of love are when it comes to our health. Everything is interconnected after all, do you agree? It seems how we love ourselves affects how we love others. When we love our bodies through self-care, our bodies function better and allow us to share even more love with those around us. When we share love with our family members and friends, it inspires them to treat themselves better and pass the love. Once love is given away, it tends to blossom and grow more than when it was initially given. It makes sense that our most important organ, the heart, is the universal symbol of love. The heart, after all, is a sort of caregiver or provider to the rest of the body’s organs. But it couldn’t accomplish this tough job without a little love from us. That means feeding our bodies healthy foods to make the heart’s job a bit easier. It is Heart Health Awareness month. Have you assessed your risk factors for heart disease? Let’s get physical. Ladies, when it comes to the heart, we know one major culprit is stress. Not just physical, but emotional stress as well. Increasing your stress awareness and stressing less can mean right now, we have to find ways to be patient with ourselves, even more so in these tumultuous times. Studies have found that women actually experience more stress than men. Especially when women experience heart disease at a profoundly higher rate than men, we must be more cognizant about our heart plan. Did you know that love is often more powerful than any medicine? Let's talk social wellness for a moment. Why not approach our lives heart-first by spreading love before we stop to scold, or judge, or blame. Do an act of kindness, say an encouraging word, or offer a hand when you can. One thing we can’t do right now is smile at each other while we are out in our day, but don’t let that compulsion disappear into thin air. Instead, let the people around you know somehow that no matter what the world throws at us, we are all still connected in spirit and through our ability to relate and to love. How do you communicate your love to your circle? Love is and always will be the greatest power. Who do you know that could withstand the fortification of wellness and love right now? Visit our website for more info and connect with us on LinkedIn! Read more from Michelle! Michelle Greene Rhodes, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Michelle G. Rhodes is a Corporate Wellness Consultant and is Certified in Managed Care and Licensed as a Registered Nurse. By combining her love for Managed Care/Population Health background with her innate ability to create educational programs and cost savings solutions uniquely designed for each employer, Michelle is sought after for her multiple successes in cost-saving and exceeding targets. She has helped corporations craft wellness programs that offer definite returns on investments and assists them to meet and exceed their annual performance measures and goals. Michelle creates various wellness initiatives for awareness campaigns all the way to the creation of wellness culture transformations. Michelle Rhodes Media LLC is also a continuing education provider for Nurses by the California Board of Nurses and provides workshops for Nurses to learn continuously.

Written by: Marika Nikkinen , 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. So, what's the fuzz around values? Values are the foundation of our life, the fundamental beliefs that guide and motivate our actions and influence our emotions. Working with values is something that I do as a Life Coach with each of my clients. Whether you are at the starting point or longer on your path, please put on your beginner's mind glasses and tune in to what's about to come. How Working With My Values Changed My Life You know the unforgettable turning points in life. I want to share one of mine with you, which actually brought me here. It was a Values In Action workshop I facilitated for a group of employees in my previous workplace in November 2016. I was standing in the front of the room. The participants were sitting in a horseshoe layout, bare and vulnerable, without a place to hide. We had kicked off, and I watched them share their intimate stories behind their personal values, some laughing, some crying, some being serious, and some very bothered. I felt a deep sense of pride enabling that to happen, creating that safe space. I admired their courage and willingness to openly share intimate stories of their lives, to fully show up. Simultaneously I felt pain in my chest. They made me realize I didn't live my own values. For over a year, I had been fighting with my physical and mental health. I was burnout and exhausted, struggling in all the areas of my life. I felt like being a stranger in my skin, losing my flair and turning into a cynical old spinster. Returning to the moment, I felt inadequate to continue running the workshop, an impostor. How could I pretend to show them how to discover what really matters in life when I wasn't doing the work myself? That moment changed everything. I decided to let go of the self-pity and roll up my sleeves. For the next weeks and months, I concentrated on living my core values, balance, well-being, and personal growth . Taking small steps forward to feel more fulfilled in my life, getting back in the driver's seat of my life. I followed precisely the same 3 steps I am introducing to you later in this article. What keeps us going when all else fails in life? It is the knowledge of who we are deep down. What really matters to you in life? Why are you doing what you're doing? Your core values. Values are our unique fingerprints in the world, whether we are conscious about them or not. They are the deeply held principles that make us think, feel, and act the way we do. Values help us to determine what is essential for us and ground our decision-making. When we live by our values, our life has balance, meaning, and direction, and when not, we drift away from ourselves and our inner needs. It might cause mental and physical sickness because we are not listening to what is essential for us, and we are bypassing our natural way of being and the needs we have. We are born with a set of values, which work as our compasses throughout our lives. Values have a different emphasis when being a small kid when growing to teens and becoming an adult. As long as we live, our thinking and consciousness develop. When we are young, our values are more about "I," our personal needs, and when we grow up, we start thinking about the impact we have on the world around us, and our values become more about "US." We might live most of our lives relatively unconscious about our values even though they are always guiding us forward. It is somewhat normal to start thinking about what really matters for us when facing hardship and misfortune in life. It is a starting point in life, a zero ground, where we get to choose our future direction, and values are the guideposts taking us forward. My actions to respect and live more of my core values were simple, I emptied our family calendar, no more fully booked weekends, so that we had time to recover and just stay home and have space for spontaneity. I ordered a cleaning service, subscribed to a receipt box. I quit all the hard workouts, which made me feel worse, and continued with energizing nature walks and gentle yoga. I worked with my personal growth plan that was something more complicated. I knew deep down that there was something else in the world waiting for me, outside the company I was working for, but when you have to build a life along with the norms, expectations, and outer values, it isn't easy to hop off a running train. To make sure I would go for my inner calling, the universe had its own way of creating urgency. My mother was diagnosed with an incurable disease, and I felt I had no option than to follow my flaming guideposts. I started my coaching certification journey and resigned. I took the steps towards my future I am living now. As a leadership and life coach, I have used plenty of different tools to help my clients work with their values, value lists, assessments, visualizations, storytelling, etc. Whatever the style, values are just words if we do not work with them, I mean, life-long deep work. Looking at the world and listening to people talk, I often feel we have lost our belief in ourselves and life. Each of us has a unique path in life to follow and can be kicked off with the following 3 steps. Do not excuse yourself for not following them because you don't have time; it is all worth it. The funny thing with the value work is that it is simple to start with, and when you continue further, you need to start making decisions that might feel hard. We want to resist the path our soul is showing us. 3 Steps To Master Your Life Before we go for the actual practice, let's ground ourselves to the present moment by breathing and scanning our inner landscape. It is essential to connect with ourselves on a deeper level before diving into this life-changing work. Close your eyes, have a relaxed posture, and inhale and exhale deeply. On the inhale, sense how the air travels through your nostrils and lunges to the bottom of your stomach, expanding it. On the exhale, feel how the air goes all the way out from your nostrils, squeezing your stomach towards the spine. Repeat for 5-10 times and sense how your body feels from top to toes, how your heart, soul, and mind feel. Listen to yourself, what are you aware of now? If you ask yourself, what really matters to you in life, what are the sensations, visuals, or words coming to you? What are they telling or guiding you for? Stay here for a while, and when you are ready to go forward, open your eyes, make notes on what came up, and continue with the next questions. 1. What Are Your Core Values? What makes you feel great? Why? Make a list of words. What makes you angry? Why? Add on to your list. Think about the things you can't live without. Why? Add on to your list. Think about a peak moment in your life. What made you feel fulfilled? Add on to your list. You should now have 10-20 words on your list. Go through the list. Do these words have anything in common with what came up in the orientating visualization? Choose the maximum 10 most important values for you in life right now. The ones that make you feel happy, fulfilled, and forward taking. 2. Ground With Your Core Values Now it is the time to dive deeper and really understand what your core values mean for you. Take your list of 10 values and think about what these words mean for you; write down all the info coming up to you. Think about the stories behind the values. For example, "I lived in a small village when I was young, and because of the culture of knowing, greeting, and respecting everyone, Respect is an important value for me." Or "I was an invisible child in my family, and that's why Connection is an important value for me. It means to be seen, heard, and have connection in my relationships." Go through your values list, write down the stories, and also the meaning of each value. Notice that there might be other value words coming up to you that actually replace the original word. Working with values is at the same time working with your emotions. Let them help you on your way. Every emotion has a meaning to take you forward on your path. 3. Values You Need The Most Now Now that you have refined your list and you might feel rooted in your core values, look at the list and choose 1-3 values you need the most now. They should describe your resonant place, where you feel happy, connected, and fulfilled. If these values guide your next hour, day, and week, how would it look like? What will you do to respect these values and live them? For the next weeks and months, pay attention to how living your values impact your life. Notice how you feel and how people around you respond to it. Not everyone might approve, but don't let them turn you down. Let values guide you through your life. When we consciously engage in our values, it's an incredibly empowering and liberating experience. There is a lot of power in recognizing that our direction in life is in our own hands, and you may let your values guide you. All in all, life is way too short to wander around without direction. If you are ready to explore the wonders of your life, values are THE place to start. My next article will be about Life Purpose, so tune into your values work to be prepared for the next step. Thank you for reading. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Marika Nikkinen, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Marika Nikkinen is a leader in inner guidance, self-leadership, and spiritual activation. After a series of hardships left her with poor mental and physical health, she decided to recover and find her own way in life. Connecting with her inner guidance, she found her strategies and she has since dedicated her career to helping her clients to unleash their inner power and to trust their inner guidance in life. With her company Conscious Leadership Coaching, she has been coaching organizations and leaders on value and purpose-based, conscious leadership in Europe and in Africa. Currently, she is focusing on working with her private clients worldwide and writing her first book on her journey and its learnings. Her mission: Every life matters.

Written by: Stephanie Kable, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. When learning with a teacher, a coach, a trainer, individual lessons are precious and are ideal for helping you work on specific custom-made topics, issues, and questions. But today, I want to talk about a complementary approach to this: the power of learning together. I want to reflect on new learning initiatives that we have developed over the last couple of years and share with you some insights. You are not alone When joining a group, motivation simply increases. You are not alone anymore. You create a routine in your schedule that includes the group you are part of. People who learn in groups are therefore more enthusiastic about their learning activity. At Live-English.net, we have experimented with different formats to expose our members to a rich and diverse community of English learners with similar goals. With the Live-English Club, an English conversation meet-up via Zoom, our members discuss different topics in English (English is not their mother-tongue), facilitated by one of our teachers. Even though we had a slow start, our members now tell us how much they enjoy the possibility to practice their English in this format because they meet up with their regular peers in the group, get to know them, and share a good time together. Developing A New Energy The group pulls everyone’s level upwards. There is so much collective energy generated through the group: people learn how to support each other, they are accountable for each other, and they overcome shyness. Also, seeing how others perform in one particular area gives them an idea of where they stand. They can get rid of complexes they may have and feel more confident. With the Live-English Workshop, a short but intense course that goes deep on a specific topic, I’ve really enjoyed seeing how the groups develop. We’ve had a workshop on English writing skills and another one on English presentation skills. Both groups proved to be a supportive environment for the participants. They got them exposed to a diversity of ideas that they would not have experienced on their own or even in their private lessons. Amazing Results The feedback we’ve been getting on the groups we’ve organized is very positive. The learning experience is richer. Collaborative learning gives results! They have progressed tremendously and got out of their comfort zone. In one word, people feel more confident. Even if they are a bit reluctant at first to commit to a group, when they give it a try, they are hooked and would not miss that for anything. Learning in a group is not always a first choice. There is this misconception that learning in a group is of lower quality than private lessons. Even though we are great advocates of 1-on-1 lessons, we know, from experience, that learning with peers brings a new dimension to the learning experience. So jump in the water, find a group to support your personal growth. You won’t be disappointed. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Stephanie! Stephanie Kable, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Stephanie Kable is the CEO of Live-English.net, an English online school that helps professionals worldwide feel more confident with their English as a second language. Through online one-to-one and group lessons via Zoom, the team of native-English teachers provides an efficient, convenient, and fun way to improve English speaking skills. Stephanie holds a B.A. in Management from the University of Paris-Dauphine (France) and an M.A. in Information Systems from Institut Mines-Telecom - Business School (Paris, France). Fond of languages, technology, business, and personal development, Stephanie combines all these knowledge fields to offer unique English courses focused on each learner's needs.

Written by: Alina Machita, 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. I'm going to talk to you today about your money story. I will focus, in particular, on the abundance of money and the free-flowing energy. I'll talk about how trapped emotions skew your money story by showing up as scarcity in life! Trapped emotions cause us so many problems, but in the case of money, they make us see our lives as being full of poverty even if it isn't true. If you do nothing about it, you'll find it undermines and sabotages your ability to manifest abundance and the life you deserve. You might be feeling frustrated because you've tried to access the vibration of abundance before, but it didn't work. Something seemed to be blocking you from reaching it and left you feeling frustrated. Don't worry, though; I have all the answers for you! Believe it or not, the thing that's stopping you from reaching abundance is the vibration of luck. The reason is because both your programming and trapped emotions are causing it. If you haven't heard of them before, trapped emotions are like background apps that run behind the scenes and drain your batteries. They are sucking up and soaking up all the free-flowing energy leaving none left for you to use to achieve your goals. What makes it even worse is that they're also filling up all the space you have, meaning there's no space for creation, manifesting, or letting more things in. If you've been struggling for a long time and feeling hopeless, then please believe me when I tell you it's not you! I remember times when I could not make myself do things no matter how hard I tried. I kept thinking to myself, "Other people are doing this. Why can't I just do it?" I began to judge myself, and I'm sure you do this too. Luckily for me, I grew into healing and started doing the work. I moved towards a place of spirituality and began to understand what energy is. That's when I realized that no, I was not crazy. There were problems I needed to fix. There was an energy block inside me that kept me from the clarity I needed to manifest the life that I wanted. This is what is happing to you too. These trapped emotions distort your viewpoint and cause you to see life as something completely different from what it actually is. They are hiding the truth that you need to see. Trapped emotions have a huge impact on your money story. They create a state of being that says: "There's not enough" or "that's for rich people" or "I'll never get ahead." These thought patterns come from your subconscious mind as a result of the trapped emotions. It creates a program that runs in your brain on a loop, continually forming negative thoughts and scarcity filters. So when you go out into the world, you see all experiences from the perspective of poverty and scarcity. You become blocked by an illusion of shortage rather than the clarity of the truth. That means as long as this block is there, you'll see the truth it wants you to see. It will mean that you're accessing and storing low-quality energy, and your subconscious programming is working with it to leave you feeling powerless. What happens if you feel powerless? You start painting a picture that your life is a place of scarcity. Have you ever wondered why you truly believe you can get ahead, change your life, and manifest wealth, but nothing happens? Your bank account stays empty, and your life is the same? This isn't just your subconscious programming holding you back. Your trapped emotions are taking these negative "not enough" feelings and literally walling them into place, holding them down like a huge paperweight that stops paper (or your thoughts) from being free to move. What makes it even worse is that these trapped emotions don't just affect your finances and success in life; they can affect your body too! I once worked with a client who came to see me because of pain in her left shoulder blade, back, and into her neck. She wanted to know if this pain was related to trapped emotions, and we determined that it was. The pain was related to trapped emotions due to financial stress, so her financial state was literally a pain in the neck for her! I dug deeper to find more about her problems, and we discovered a total of seven trapped emotions that manifested this pain. We worked together, and with grace, we released each trapped emotion one by one. The next day she reported back and said that the pain was completely gone. This is one example, but financial stresses caused by trapped emotions are responsible for many of our body pains and issues. By releasing the blocks in our body that have a negative financial effect, we open up space in our mind to create thought patterns in our subconscious that support the abundance before us, rather than holding us back and keeping us from what is rightfully ours. In some cases, after releasing the trapped emotions affecting our finances, abundance flows right in. This is because we have created a space for it by removing everything that was blocking it. We can then create space for new manifestations, and we can create space for new things to come in. Releasing trapped emotions doesn't mean the job is done, though. The next step I always encourage clients to take is to check in with, and work on, their programming. Now that you have released your trapped emotions, what does your money story look like? Do you still have negative programs running in the background that you need to change? If there are, I find the best way to tackle them is to use Afformations. If you don't know what Afformations are you can read all about them and why they work here . Another great tool is to use subliminal message videos. These videos help you tap into the subconscious mind and reprogram the stories and negative thought patterns that are in there. If you feel trapped emotions or any other subconscious blocks and programming blocks your financial situation, feel free to book your FREE session today. Together we can start releasing these trapped emotions and unleash your manifesting capabilities to help you attract the life you've always wanted. Expect miracles! Book your free session today ! For more info, visit my website & follow me on Instagram ! Read more from Alina ! Alina MaChita, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Hi, I’m Alina. I’m an empath, a transformational healer, and a Subconscious mind Specialist. I have an unshakable passion and gift to help women stop self-sabotage, unlock their subconscious mind, release trapped emotions and subconscious blocks, keeping them from living in love, accomplishments, and balance. Most of my work is done directly within your Subconscious Mind where your Power is; utilizing muscle testing is a way to communicate with the subconscious mind and sophisticated systems like Emotion and Body Code and Raising levels of consciousness, removing physical and emotional blocks and stored trapped imbalances that can keep you from abundance, creativity, emotional balance and lightness of being.

Written by: Moniek James, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. When it comes to content marketing, I believe that confidence is an essential ingredient for success. Our audiences borrow from the confidence level that we show up with, so our job is to give them something to hold on to. Most marketers want to use various online networks and channels to grow their businesses, but the challenge is that many don’t feel confident enough to share their messages regularly. This lack of confidence is stifling the growth of their business. I have a few tips to help boost your confidence, so you can make sure your content gets you the results you want. Tip No.1 - The content you create isn’t for you; you publish content for the people you believe your offers will help. The information, expertise, and experience you have is for the benefit of the customers you intend to sell to, and those people are experiencing challenges that frustrate them. They’re looking for solutions to their problems, and your content creates an opportunity for them to learn that you have the answer. When you’re able to step into your responsibility as a problem solver, you’re emboldened to show up consistently. Tip No.2 - Practice when the stakes are low. Confidence is rooted in a willingness to try, so use everyday situations as opportunities to practice your speaking, writing, video presence, etc. The more you practice, the more comfortable you’ll feel, and you’ll be able to collect small victories along the way. When I decided that live streaming would be one of my primary outlets for content distribution, I did a live broadcast every day for about 9 months. I wanted to improve my presentation style and train myself to actually look at the camera lens while I was speaking. Tip No.3 - How often do you study your industry or invest in your learning? One of the reasons business owners give for not leveraging content is a fear of giving it all away for free. Here’s the thing: when you’re consistently growing your own knowledge, and you recognize that your intended customers will need to know that you can help them before they buy, you’ll have the capacity to share and still have room to sell. If you’re not showing up for your business, don’t expect your customers to show up. Activate your confidence and publish the content that supports their decision to buy from you. For mindset, marketing, and business ownership tips, connect with Moniek on Instagram or her website! Read more from Moniek! Moniek James, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Moniek James is a Master Content Strategist, veteran, military spouse, speaker, author, columnist, and online entrepreneur. Her passion is teaching purpose-driven business and brand owners how to leverage strategic content marketing to build awareness, establish credibility and create their profitable digital footprints. Moniek has been featured in the Huffington Post, Fit Small Business, VoyagePhoenix, and the Association of Military Spouse Entrepreneurs and believes that entrepreneurship is a building block to economic empowerment.

Written by: Rachel Paling, 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. From a very early age, I stood out like a sore thumb. I couldn’t quite understand why until much later in life when I looked back and realized it. You see, as a child, I had light blonde hair, and as we often visited Spain two to three times a year, my hair got even lighter in the sun. In fact, you could say that between the years of two to twelve, I really had “white” blonde hair. I will never forget how puzzled I used to be that teachers always realized when I was not present at morning assembly or if I missed a class at any time. Now, if you connect bright white blonde hair with an extremely expressive face and an instant frown when I couldn’t understand anything, you might be able to understand the reason that teachers could always instantly spot me. In addition, they would even ask me, “Rachel, what’s wrong?” when I had strategically chosen to sit at the back of the class to be unseen and inconspicuous. No matter what I did as a child to try to blend in, it just was not possible. Looking back, there were advantages. Firstly, I was sorely missed when I wasn’t there. Secondly, I instantly got people’s attention if my face portrayed distress. However, the great disadvantage was that I couldn’t get away with things easily or ever be allowed to be just one of the crowd. From a brain perspective, how we live those first seven years of our lives really impacts and shapes the brain. We are subconsciously picking up patterns and behaviors relating to our environment. In this respect, I believe that I developed a very individualistic personality from an early age, not so much by choice but by circumstance. In fact, through my teenage years, there were times that it was so frustrating to stand out so much that I even took it to the extreme and became quite rebellious with the philosophy “if I can’t blend in, then I will do my utmost to stand out even more.” For example, at school, instead of wearing my blue uniform jumper, I would always wear a white or cream jumper and was constantly getting into trouble for this. Looking back, I can understand that my teenage brain had a constantly triggered amygdala due to this “odd man out” fact. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I really started to understand that “standing out” could be an asset. One summer, as a law undergraduate, I worked as an intern for an NGO, attending and reporting on some of the General Assembly meetings of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In hindsight, it was my greatest awareness trigger. I used to slip in quietly and slip out of those UN meetings at the Palais des Nations, eyes down, trying not to raise heads, unassumingly taking my notes. On one of the final days that I was there, after the assembly meeting, I went to say goodbye to one of my colleagues. The representative from Argentina heard me and came over to wish me goodbye. He was a complete stranger to me, but his final comment was, “I always saw when you came in, your presence was always noted, every time you came into this meeting, you brightened up the room.” That was the moment I realized that, in essence, I could bring a positive impact to any environment and that even in a crowd, there will always be someone somewhere noticing. When I reflect on my own experience, I cannot help but wonder how we could help children, teenagers, or even adults understand how to accept standing out of the crowd and even encourage it. Also, how to really understand that sometimes a physical or nonphysical trait may make us more memorable. How can we embrace that, accept and acknowledge it, learning not only how to deal with it but also to turn it around into something positive. Parents and teachers could be encouraged to help talk more about differences and individuality with groups of children, encouraging them to talk about these and how it makes them feel. Some children, like me, may not realize that they stand out for whatever reason. In retrospect, I see how it could have helped me realize why I was always remembered and instantly recognized, as many times I do believe we are left thinking that there is something wrong with us. This could greatly affect self-esteem, self-confidence and even impact us into feeling that we don’t belong. We know that our brains are wired to be social, and we were not designed to be solitary. The need to interact and be accepted by others is deeply ingrained in our psyche. When children grow up feeling individualized and marginalized, it could lead to a pattern of solitude and loneliness, unless teachers and parents can comfort and guide children through this. The understanding of inclusion and uniqueness could be the key for us throughout our lives. Interestingly, research by Catalyst (https://bit.ly/37q7HJc ) across 250 organizations in six different countries (Australia, China, Germany, India, Mexico, and the United States) discovered that “inclusion really does hinge between a feeling of belonging and the feeling of being unique.” Surely then, the art will lie in feeling similar to others but at the same time to be acknowledged as unique individuals, echoing our human dichotomy of wanting to belong while wanting to be distinct. Recently, I have founded the Neuroheart Education foundation. One of the focus points of this will be to train teachers to embrace a coaching approach to not only embrace the differences of learners but also neurodiversity, using professional coaching skills armed with emotional intelligence. Understanding cognitive functions and neuroscience will really bring more awareness at all times and more sensitivity to be able to intuit what children, teenagers, and even adult learners are experiencing and perceiving at all times. In this way, when we are in educational environments with groups of children, we will be able to really help them preserve their individuality but at the same time feel part of the group and deeply feel their sense of belonging. For more information, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and visit our website! Read more from Rachel! Rachel Paling, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Rachel Marie Paling is an International Game Changer in Education, in particular, the education of languages. She has created the method and approach Neurolanguage Coaching, which incorporates professional coaching and neuroscience principles into the learning process. She coaches and trains teachers worldwide, transforming them into certified and ICF accredited Neurolanguage coaches and has created the Neurolanguage Coach network with over 700 NL Coaches in just over 70 countries worldwide and is now bringing the approach to schools and institutions over the world through her licensed trainers and in nine languages. Rachel started teaching language at 17 and has a BA Honours in Law and Spanish, MA in Human Rights. She is a qualified UK lawyer, MA in Applied Neuroscience, and a PCC ICF Life Coach. She is the author of the books Neurolanguage Coaching and Brain-friendly Grammar and has written numerous blog articles about learning, coaching, and neuroscience. She has spoken at many international conferences, and her company was awarded the Bronze Award at the Reimagine Education Awards 2019 in the Science in Education category. She is dedicated to the shift in education and is currently establishing an educational foundation to bring coaching, neuroscience, and heart science into educational processes.

Written by: Susan Watson, 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. I recently fell in love. I fell in love with color and how it just has this powerful influence on our lives. Yet, most of the time, we do not use its benefits to help us make the changes we wish for. As a therapist who works with all life situations such as emotions, pain, and trauma, color has been such a simple way to share with others that they can use at home or enjoy the benefits in a therapy setting. Take emotions, we all have them, and they can bring to the dizzy heights of poor joy or drag to what feels like the pits of despair. Yet color can influence our emotions too. Warm colors, such as orange, yellow, and reds, can initiate a range of emotions such as comfort and peace to rage and anger, and then we have cool colors, which are the greens, purple’s, and blues. They can be a sense of peace and calm. However, they can also be a feeling of sadness. Think about how you feel on long dark winter days when many people go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. How does that impact your mood and how you feel and connect with the world? Now think of early bright sunshine mornings, the summer, late evening sun, and long days of spending as much time outside as you can. How does this influence your emotions? Remembering that all color is light, light that passes through our eyes through a prism. This is how we see color. Light and color are really a part of our natural balanced of well-being. We can use this to help us live our best life. As a therapist, I use colors with clients when working with emotional and physical pain. When I ask for a color of their pain, it is mostly either red or black. The color recognized for pain and inflammation as well as being irritated is red. Pink and blue can be very calming for pain, and green balances the body. Try looking at color or sit in a room with a colored light and see how you feel and if you can feel any changes, try red, blue, and green and see what happens, you are likely to feel more drawn to a color that it touches you more positively, this is because you need for this. An example is red can increase energy, and you may be needing an energy boost, or if you feel drawn to the blue, perhaps you need time to slow down and relax. I work with color using color acupuncture, on the face and hands, Colour Puncture is a holistic method of healing and uses colored lights instead of needles, and many have been surprised to hear that science has proven that light is a way in which our cells communicate. Therefore color puncture can make a positive change at a cellular level. As I mentioned previously, color is made from light; as the light travels into our body, cell communication is stimulated. The healing process is activated, and the body can then move into a more balanced state. This therapy can help joints and inflammation, sleep issues, depression, and anxiety and even help with fine facial lines. A typical first session would include taking a history and note of symptoms, then there would be a facial diagnosis, and then we would make a treatment plan for the color light therapy, and I always include a lovely facial light relaxation therapy to finish off the session, so every client can leave feeling refreshed and fully relaxed. Think and see how you can bring more color into your life, perhaps in the home, workplace, or the clothes that you wear. Look and see what colors you start to feel drawn to and the emotions and feelings you have around them. You can buy color-changing bulbs for an extremely low cost, and perhaps you could try them out in different rooms in your house. Even the color of our plate and the food we eat influences our body and mind. Recent research has shown that you will eat less if you a high contrast in color between the food color and the plate's color and, if you eat of a blue plate, this reduces your appetite. This is only such a tiny taster of a life with conscious color. You can now go and have an adventure discovering all the wonderful changes color can bring to your life, and If you would like to try this later, you can visit a color therapist near you or contact me for an experience of color. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , connect with me on LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Susan! Susan Watson, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Susan Watson specializes in working worldwide with all ages experiencing Anxiety, Emotions, and Trauma in a content freestyle, so that no talking really needs to occur unless wanted. Working with feelings and emotions within the body, Susan releases the emotional connection of past experiences. She teaches self-help tools to help others live their best life, the life that is deserved. Susan supports individuals, groups, and the workplace with her Be Your Own Empowered Hero workshops, which were introduced as a measure to reduce the risk of future issues with mental and emotional health.