Written by Bianca Ross, Counsellor and Founder of RNIF™ & WIS™ Bianca Marie Ross is a counsellor and founder of the Ross Neurodiversity Integration Framework (RNIF™) and Workplace Integration System (WIS™). Her work explores the gap between awareness and sustainable change, helping neurodivergent individuals and organisations create meaningful, lasting outcomes. Autism and ADHD are strongly influenced by genetics. So if these neurodevelopmental differences are largely rooted in lifelong wiring, could changes in the world around us help explain why some people find everyday life increasingly difficult to navigate? Autism, ADHD and the evidence for genetics On 15 September 2026, the UK’s National Autistic Society published a statement declaring that autism is genetic, following a review of 99 sources, including 83 research papers. Its conclusion was that most autistic people are autistic because of genes inherited from their parents. There is no single autism gene; thousands of genes contribute, and there is currently no genetic test that can predict or diagnose autism. The evidence for ADHD tells a similar story. A major review of family, twin and adoption research found a mean heritability estimate of 74% across 37 twin studies. More recent research continues to describe ADHD as highly heritable, with many genetic variants contributing to a person’s likelihood of developing it. Heritability needs to be understood correctly. It describes variation within a population; it does not tell us what percentage of an individual’s condition is genetic, nor does it mean that their future is predetermined. Genetics contributes substantially to both autism and ADHD, but it does not explain every aspect of an individual’s experience. As a counsellor working with neurodivergent clients and their families, this evidence leads me to a wider question. If autism and ADHD are strongly influenced by genetics, why can the experience of living with these differences vary so significantly? Why do some people manage for years before reaching a point where everyday demands become overwhelming? Why do some people spend decades masking their difficulties before they understand why life has felt harder than it seems to feel for others? I am not suggesting that environmental change alone explains the increase in diagnoses. Changes in awareness, diagnostic criteria and identification all play a role, and whether there has also been a genuine increase in prevalence remains debated. Instead, I want to explore a different possibility: could the changing demands of modern life amplify the difficulties some neurodivergent people experience, even when their underlying neurodevelopmental differences have not changed? This is the thinking behind what I call Mismatch Amplification Theory: my proposed explanation for how the relationship between a person’s neurodevelopmental profile and their environment may become increasingly difficult to manage. It is a theory to explore, not an established explanation for rising diagnoses. But it raises an important question about the world we have built and the people expected to navigate it. What happens when the environment and the individual are mismatched? The concept of an environment of evolutionary adaptedness is used to describe the conditions to which a species has adapted over its evolutionary history. John Bowlby drew on evolutionary thinking in developing attachment theory, emphasising the importance of close, responsive relationships in a child’s development. Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has also explored the idea that humans evolved through cooperative caregiving, with children receiving care not only from their mothers but from other familiar adults. Her work offers an important perspective on human development, although the precise evolutionary explanations remain debated. These ideas invite us to consider a broader question: what happens when the conditions around a person do not adequately support their needs? This is not an argument that there was one perfect historical environment, or that the past was better for every child. It is also not a suggestion that all neurodivergent people need the same conditions. It is a reminder that human functioning does not happen in isolation. Our ability to regulate, learn, communicate, organise and respond to demands is influenced by the relationships, structures and environments around us. For a neurodivergent person, a setting that offers predictability, clear communication, flexibility and appropriate support may allow their capabilities to flourish. The same person in a setting full of ambiguity, interruptions, sensory demands and rigid expectations may struggle considerably more. The person has not necessarily become less capable. The conditions have changed, or the mismatch has become more difficult to manage. And this brings us to one of the most significant changes in everyday life: the rapid movement of essential tasks into digital systems. The technology exists, so why are we still creating barriers? We live in a world of extraordinary technological advancement. We have facial recognition, passkeys, password managers, autofill, voice control and tools that can reduce the need to remember information or navigate complicated processes. Yet these capabilities are not consistently integrated into the systems where accessibility matters most. Think about the everyday tasks many of us now complete online: booking a GP appointment, accessing online banking, completing an application or managing essential household administration. These processes can require us to remember login details, recall which email address we used, retrieve verification codes, switch between applications, interpret instructions, follow a sequence of steps and return to unfinished tasks without losing our place. For someone who experiences difficulties with working memory, task initiation, sequencing or executive functioning, these demands can create significant barriers. I know this is not merely theoretical. My own GP uses an online-only appointment system. When access to an essential service depends on navigating a digital process, the ability to use that process becomes part of the gateway to care. The client may understand perfectly well that they need an appointment. They may want to make it and recognise the consequences of delaying it. Yet they can still struggle to complete the steps required. Understanding what needs to happen is not the same as being able to make it happen. That distinction matters. It is easy to interpret an unfinished task as procrastination, avoidance or a lack of motivation. But sometimes the person is facing a sequence of cognitive demands that makes the task disproportionately difficult. Technology has the potential to reduce these demands. Imagine systems that remember securely where appropriate, save progress automatically, offer accessible alternatives to complex verification, present one clear action at a time and allow people to choose the access method that works best for them. Biometrics and passkeys already exist, of course. The issue is not that nobody has developed accessible technology. It is that accessibility is not consistently built into the complete user journeys people must navigate. Nor should one method, such as facial recognition, be compulsory for everyone; people need secure, accessible alternatives and meaningful choice. This is about more than convenience. Digital systems increasingly mediate access to essential parts of life. We have spent years teaching people to adapt to technology. Perhaps it is time to ask how much further technology could adapt to people. When small barriers accumulate One difficult login might seem insignificant. One missed appointment might appear manageable. One unfinished form might be put down to a busy day. But what happens when the same person encounters these barriers repeatedly, across different parts of their life? A task is delayed. The problem remains unresolved. Anxiety increases. Another demand arrives. The person must now deal with the original task and the consequences of not completing it. For someone who already finds planning, prioritising or initiating tasks difficult, the additional demands may make it even harder to begin. This is one possible way mismatch may be amplified. The original difficulty creates further demands, and those demands make the original difficulty harder to resolve. I am not suggesting that this sequence happens to every neurodivergent person, or that digital systems are the sole cause of distress. The point is that environmental demands can interact with existing differences in ways that deserve closer attention. The same principle applies beyond technology. A child navigating a noisy classroom, an employee working in an unpredictable environment or an adult trying to manage competing responsibilities may encounter a series of demands that individually appear reasonable but collectively become overwhelming. When we look only at the individual’s response, we risk missing the contribution of the environment. How does stress enter the picture? Research from Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child describes how excessive or prolonged activation of the body’s stress response can affect a child’s developing brain and other biological systems, particularly when significant adversity occurs without adequate supportive relationships. This research focuses primarily on toxic stress and serious adversity. It should not be used to claim that ordinary daily frustrations have the same effects. However, it reinforces an important principle: experiences and relationships matter to development, and supportive relationships can help buffer the effects of stress. My question is whether we pay enough attention to the cumulative demands placed on children and adults whose neurodevelopmental profiles make some everyday environments more difficult to navigate. A child who struggles to regulate in a demanding classroom may need more support, not simply more pressure to conform. A parent who is overwhelmed by competing responsibilities may need practical adjustments, not another reminder of what they should be doing. An adult who cannot navigate an online system may need a more accessible route through it, rather than being left to interpret the difficulty as personal failure. These are not claims that environmental mismatch causes autism or ADHD. They are questions about how the environment influences a person’s experience of living with those differences. The environment includes the people around us. When adults have the time, capacity and support to respond to a child’s needs, they may be better placed to help that child regulate and recover from difficult experiences. When adults are stretched, that support can become harder to provide consistently. This is not a criticism of parents or professionals. It is a recognition that support depends partly on the conditions in which people are trying to provide it. Why is masking so common, and what does it cost? In my clinical work, I meet neurodivergent adults who have spent years learning to conceal their difficulties. Some have become exceptionally skilled at observing other people, working out what is expected and adjusting their behaviour accordingly. They may appear organised, capable and successful, while using enormous amounts of energy to maintain that appearance. Others have learned that expressing distress brings criticism, embarrassment or rejection. They may hide their difficulties because appearing to cope feels safer than asking for help. Rejection sensitivity is one term used to describe the intense distress some people experience around perceived rejection or criticism. It is not a standalone formal diagnosis, and experiences vary considerably between individuals. Whatever the underlying mechanism, the pressure to conceal difficulties can have a cost. Masking does not necessarily resolve the mismatch between a person and their environment. It can add another layer of work: the effort required to manage the original demands while concealing the struggle from others. In my experience, shame often sits beneath this effort. Clients describe years of feeling that everyday things should be easier, that other people seem to manage without difficulty, or that they are somehow failing to meet expectations. Some have experienced ridicule or exclusion at school and carry the effects of those experiences into adulthood. When people repeatedly struggle to meet expectations that do not account for their needs, they may begin to see themselves as the problem. What if we also need to examine the expectations? What if some of the difficulties we interpret as personal shortcomings are being intensified by environments that offer insufficient flexibility, accessibility or support? This does not mean removing every challenge or assuming that all distress can be prevented. It means distinguishing between a difficulty a person may need support to manage and an unnecessary barrier that could be changed. What would closing the gap look like? If neurodevelopmental differences are lifelong, we cannot approach them as though the person simply needs to try harder to become someone else. We can, however, examine the conditions in which people are expected to function. In education, this might mean considering sensory demands, communication, predictability and the way support is delivered. In workplaces, it might mean treating reasonable adjustments as part of effective organisational practice rather than as favours granted to individuals who struggle to meet standard expectations. In digital services, it might mean designing processes around a wider range of cognitive needs, providing accessible alternatives and reducing unnecessary steps. In families, it might mean recognising that parents also have limits and that children benefit when the adults around them have appropriate support. In therapy, it raises a particularly important question. A client may gain insight into their difficulties. They may recognise their patterns, understand their needs and identify what they want to change. Yet when they return to everyday life, they may still face the same systems, expectations and practical barriers. A study published in The Lancet Psychiatry examined outcomes for more than 8,500 autistic adults who attended NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression. It found that autistic adults were less likely to reliably improve or recover than matched adults without identified autism, and more likely to experience deterioration. A 2026 study involving more than 13,000 adults with ADHD who received psychological therapy through NHS Talking Therapies found a similar pattern: people with ADHD could benefit, but their outcomes were poorer than those of a matched comparison group without diagnosed ADHD. These findings do not prove that environmental mismatch explains the difference. They do, however, raise important questions about whether existing services adequately meet the needs of neurodivergent people. We need to be willing to consider whether understanding a difficulty is always enough to help someone overcome it. If a client understands why they struggle to organise a task but cannot navigate the system required to complete it, what else might help? If someone recognises that they need support but cannot manage the steps required to access it, how do we help bridge that distance? The answer will not always be to intervene directly. Practitioners must work within their competence, respect client autonomy and make decisions guided by professional and ethical responsibilities. But we can ask better questions about what happens after insight. Where do we start? Perhaps we start by looking at the world from the perspective of the person trying to navigate it. When a task remains unfinished, we can ask what made it difficult to complete. When a child struggles in a particular environment, we can consider whether the demands are appropriate and what support might help. When an adult understands their needs but cannot put that understanding into practice, we can explore what is standing in the way. This shifts the conversation away from asking only, “What is wrong, and how do we fix it?” towards asking, “What is happening here, what is making this harder, and what could help?” That shift matters because the goal is not simply to help neurodivergent people survive environments that do not work for them. It is to create conditions in which they can use their capabilities, develop independence and thrive. When a neurodivergent person is supported to work in a way that suits their strengths, the results can be remarkable. They may see a solution others have missed, approach a complex problem from a different angle or complete work with an originality that standard expectations fail to recognise. Their strengths were there all along. The question is whether the environment allows those strengths to emerge. I believe we need to look more closely at the space between understanding and action: the point at which someone knows what they need, but cannot yet translate that knowledge into sustainable change in everyday life. In my next article, I will explore how this gap can be addressed in therapeutic practice and introduce the Ross Neurodiversity Integration Framework (RNIF™), the framework I developed to help practitioners consider how insight can become meaningful, sustainable change beyond the therapy room. You can also read my Brainz interview, “Why Understanding Neurodiversity Is Only the Beginning”, and my book, When Insight Isn’t Enough: The Gap Between Therapy and Real-World Change for Neurodivergent Clients. Because understanding matters. But for many neurodivergent people, understanding is only the beginning. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Bianca Ross Bianca Ross, Counsellor and Founder of RNIF™ & WIS™ Bianca Marie Ross is a counsellor, trainer and creator of the Ross Neurodiversity Integration Framework (RNIF™) and the Workplace Integration System (WIS™). Her work bridges clinical practice and organisational change, helping practitioners, leaders and workplaces move beyond awareness into practical, sustainable implementation. Drawing on professional expertise alongside lived experience of neurodivergence within her own family, Bianca is passionate about creating systems that improve everyday outcomes rather than simply increasing understanding. Through training, consultancy and writing, she is helping shape conversations around neurodiversity across therapy, education and the workplace.

Written by Maya Akai Monet Gavin, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Maya Akai, MA, LCPC, CADC, is a seasoned professional whose extensive life experiences inform her practice. She possesses over twenty years of professional experience in mental health, complemented by expertise in broadcasting, social services, and education fields. In a world obsessed with financial wealth, market trends, and economic growth, we are taught from an early age how to budget, invest, and protect our monetary assets. We pore over spreadsheets, monitor bank accounts, and carefully calculate our financial bandwidth. But there is another economy, one far more critical to our survival, satisfaction, and everyday peace of mind, that we routinely mismanage, bankrupt, and ignore. Welcome to the Economy of Self In my clinical practice, I routinely see people struggle to grasp the abstract nature of mental health. In the therapy room, mental wellness often feels like a “unicorn,” a mythical, intangible concept that people desperately chase but don’t know how to capture. To break through this barrier, I developed a framework that makes the ethereal concrete. By viewing mental health through the lens of a personal economy, we can use terms we already understand intuitively: resources, allocation, growth, and decline. From a traditional standpoint, an economic resource is simply a material available in an environment that helps satisfy a need or a want. You go to work, earn currency, and exchange it for what you require to survive and thrive. Your internal ecosystem works the same way, driven by finite materials that you must budget with extreme care. Shifting the ledger: What are your core resources? When we look at the economy of self, we map a domain far bigger than raw emotion. It is the invisible engine driving nearly every decision we make. While every individual gets to define what fills their internal ledger, a comprehensive personal inventory always reveals a few critical, top-of-the-bill assets: Emotional Capacity: Your ability to process feelings, manage stress, and hold space for yourself and others. Intellectual & Attention Bandwidth: Your focus, cognitive clarity, and presence. Time & Energy: The absolute equalizers. These are highly limited, non-renewable assets that are routinely sunk into areas that yield zero positive returns. Financial & Spiritual Capital: The baseline security that keeps the self economy stable. Too often, we try to detach our mental wellness from our physical and financial realities. But health is wealth, no matter the domain. Consider how directly financial stress impacts the emotional ledger. A layoff, a missed overtime opportunity, or a tight budget doesn’t just impact a bank account; it triggers a cascade of worry, depletes emotional capacity, and strains interpersonal relationships. Everything is interconnected on the same balance sheet. Market fluctuations of the mind: From recession to depression When we mismanage our internal marketplace, we experience psychological equivalents of macroeconomic crises. Just as a physical economy goes through cycles, your mental wellness experiences shifts based on your internal cash flow: The Psychological Recession: A financial recession occurs when economic activity declines for an extended period. Mentally, a recession happens when you experience a prolonged stretch of low energy, high stress, and dwindling patience. You are barely scraping by, your reserves are shrinking, and your internal growth has stalled because you are spending faster than you can restock. The Emotional Depression: If a mental recession goes unaddressed and your internal bank is entirely wiped out, you slip into a state of emotional bankruptcy or clinical depression. In financial terms, a depression is a severe, long-term economic downturn. Psychologically, it is a state of total systemic shutdown. When you are severely overdrawn, your motivation hits rock bottom, your emotional output freezes, and the system can no longer sustain basic daily operations. Demanding a return on investment (ROI) To pull yourself out of an internal downturn and return to sustainable growth, you must become an intentional investor. Every choice you make is an investment of your finite capital. When you spend your time gossiping, doomscrolling, pleasing others at your own expense, or entertaining toxic relationships, you are pouring capital into bad stocks. You are yielding a negative ROI, draining your bank with zero emotional profit in return. Sustainable mental growth requires auditing your investments. Ask yourself: Does this boundary, this habit, or this relationship give me a positive return on my investment? Is it yielding peace, clarity, motivation, or joy? If an area of your life consistently yields a deficit, it is time to divest. Tools for the internal portfolio Carving out the space to examine your personal economy isn’t a luxury; it is a fundamental act of self-care. It is the work you do on yourself to stay ahead of the market crash rather than falling behind. When you pinpoint exactly where your internal resources are leaking, you regain the power to deliberately reallocate them toward the ambitions that truly align with your purpose. Protect your bandwidth, budget your attention, and audit your daily expenditures. If you don’t actively manage the economy of self, the world will happily spend your resources for you. Are you ready to stop feeling adrift or stuck and start your healing journey? Check out this M.A.Y.A. Podcast episode on YouTube @MayaSpeaks2U, or click here to listen! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Maya Akai Monet Gavin Maya Akai Monet Gavin, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Maya's personal and professional endeavors have endowed her with profound insight and empathy across various social, emotional, and mental dimensions. Engaging in a conversation with Maya offers an honest, salient, and open exchange centered on utilizing mindfulness as a means to inspire and motivate one to actualize the effort and ambition required to live a desired life.

Michael Smith is an executive coach and the founder of MS Consulting Solutions. After service in the Royal Engineers and more than 20 years leading major programmes at BAE Systems, Network Rail and BT Openreach, he now helps senior leaders close capability gaps and build teams that deliver. In this interview, Michael shares what leading under pressure taught him, why traditional leadership training so often fails to stick, and why he believes leadership is a skill anyone can develop. Michael Smith, Founder of MS Consulting Solutions What inspired you to leave corporate leadership and establish MS Consulting Solutions, and what do you hope to do differently through your coaching? For more than 20 years, I led large programmes, first in the Royal Engineers and then at BAE Systems, Network Rail and BT Openreach. Across all of them, one thing kept proving true: the plan rarely decided the outcome. The leadership did. When leaders were clear, consistent and genuinely invested in their people, teams delivered things that looked impossible on paper. When they were not, even well-resourced programmes struggled. When redundancy came onto the table at Openreach, I saw it as the push to do what I had been thinking about for some time. Rather than wait and see, I chose to build MS Consulting Solutions and focus full-time on the part of the job I found most rewarding: developing leaders. What I want to do differently is keep coaching grounded in reality. I am not a theorist. I have sat in the seat, carried the targets and had the difficult conversations. My coaching is practical, direct and focused on changes a leader can apply on Monday morning, not ideas that sound good in a workshop and disappear by Friday. Having led major infrastructure programmes, including Reach26 at BT Openreach, what did those experiences teach you about leading teams under pressure? One of the most valuable lessons came when I took over a team that was thoroughly demotivated. The previous manager had focused almost entirely on delivery results. The numbers were all that mattered, and the people had stopped feeling seen, heard or valued. Performance was being pushed, but it was not being sustained. My first job was not to change the plan. It was to rebuild trust. I spent time understanding the individuals, what was getting in their way and what they needed from me. I was clear that delivery still mattered, but I made it equally clear that I cared about them as people and would back them when things got tough. That balance changed everything. Once people felt supported, they started taking ownership again, raising problems early and solving them together. Delivery improved because the team wanted it to, not because they were told to. The lesson I took is simple. Pressure reveals whether a team trusts its leader. If you only manage the numbers, people give you compliance. If you lead the people and the delivery together, they give you commitment, and commitment is what carries a team through the hardest moments. What challenges do you see when technically skilled professionals move into senior leadership roles, and why can that transition be so difficult? The biggest challenge is that the skills that got someone promoted are rarely the skills they need next. A brilliant engineer or programme specialist is usually rewarded for being the person with the answers. In senior leadership, success depends far more on drawing answers out of others, building alignment and creating the conditions for people to perform. That shift can feel deeply uncomfortable. Many new leaders keep doing the technical work because it is familiar and it feels productive. They become the bottleneck, their teams wait for direction and they end up working longer hours while having less impact. There is also an identity shift. Someone who has always been valued for their expertise suddenly has to be valued for their judgement, their influence and how they make other people feel. Few organisations prepare people for that transition. They promote on technical merit and then hope leadership capability follows. The leaders who make the transition well are the ones who accept that their job has changed, invest in their own development early and get honest feedback about how they are showing up, rather than assuming their technical credibility will carry them. You've argued that organisations often have a capability problem rather than a leadership problem. How can they recognise the difference? In my experience, when organisations say they have a leadership problem, what they often have is a capability gap that nobody has properly diagnosed. The people in leadership roles are capable and willing, but they have never been equipped with the skills the role now demands. The difference shows in the pattern. A genuine leadership problem tends to be about intent or values: someone who does not care about their people, or who undermines the team. A capability problem looks different. The leader cares, works hard and wants to do well, but avoids difficult conversations, struggles to delegate, or defaults to command and control when the pressure rises. A useful test is to ask what happens when you give that leader support, structure and honest feedback. If they grow quickly, it was capability. If nothing changes despite the support, you may be looking at something deeper. Getting this right matters because the fixes are completely different. Treating a capability gap as a character flaw damages good people. Treating it as a skills gap, and investing in the right development, usually unlocks performance that was there all along. Why do you think traditional leadership training often fails to create lasting changes in how people lead? Most traditional leadership training is designed as an event rather than a process. People spend a day or two in a room, learn some useful models, feel energised and then return to exactly the same pressures, habits and expectations they left behind. Within a few weeks, very little has changed. Lasting change in how someone leads is behavioural, and behaviour does not shift because someone understood a concept. It shifts through practice, reflection and accountability over time. That is the missing ingredient in most programmes. Generic content is another issue. A course built for everyone rarely addresses the specific situations an individual leader is facing, the team they inherited, the stakeholder who drains their energy or the conversation they keep putting off. This is why I believe so strongly in coaching alongside development. Coaching connects the learning to the leader's real world. It gives them space to try something, review what happened and adjust. It also creates accountability, which is often what turns a good intention into a new habit. Training can open the door, but sustained support is what helps leaders walk through it. When a senior leader struggles with confidence or difficult conversations, where do you typically begin the coaching process? I always begin by understanding what is really going on before trying to fix anything. A lack of confidence or an avoided conversation is usually a symptom. The cause could be fear of damaging a relationship, a belief that they need to have every answer, past experiences that went badly, or simply never having been shown how to handle these moments well. So the first step is a frank and supportive conversation. What does the leader believe about themselves in that situation? What is the cost of avoiding it, for them and for the team? What would good look like? From there we make it practical. We break the conversation down, plan the key messages, and rehearse how they will open it and respond if it becomes difficult. Often, simply having a structure takes much of the fear away. Then they go and do it, and we review it together afterwards. Confidence is not something you think your way into. It is built by taking action, reflecting honestly and doing it again. Each conversation handled well makes the next one easier, and that momentum is where the real change happens. How do you use Insights Discovery to help leaders recognise behaviours that may be affecting their teams without them realising it? Insights Discovery gives leaders a simple, memorable language for understanding their own preferences and how those land with other people. That matters because most of the behaviours that frustrate teams are not intentional. They are blind spots. A leader with a strong drive for results may see themselves as focused and efficient, while their team experiences them as abrupt or dismissive. Another leader who values harmony may believe they are being supportive, while their team feels they avoid making tough calls. Neither leader is wrong about their intent, but the impact is very different. I use the profile as a starting point for an honest conversation rather than a label. We look at where their style serves them well, where it might be getting in the way, and how others with different preferences are likely to experience them. Where it adds value, I combine it with stakeholder feedback so the picture is grounded in reality. The real power comes when leaders start to adapt. Small, deliberate changes in how they communicate, delegate or give feedback can transform how their team responds, without asking them to become someone they are not. Your philosophy is that leaders are made, not born. What experiences have most strongly shaped that belief? I believe leadership is a skill, and like any skill it can be developed. Some people find it more natural than others, but I have seen too many transformations to believe that leaders are simply born. At Openreach, I coached someone who described herself as "not a people person". She was technically excellent but uncomfortable leading others. Through coaching, she learned to listen, to understand what motivated each member of her team and to build genuine relationships. She went on to become one of the best people leaders I have worked with. In the Army, I worked with someone who changed completely when he was put in charge. He became aggressive and shouty because he believed that was what leadership looked like. It was almost a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, and it was damaging his team's trust. I coached him on communicating effectively and on finding the balance between being firm and being inspiring, without turning into an alter ego. Both of them had the potential all along. They just needed the right development and someone to believe they could change. That is what has shaped my view. What is one change you believe leaders can make today that would have the greatest impact on their team's performance? Start every week by asking each member of your team one simple question: What is getting in your way? It sounds small, but it changes the dynamic. It shows people that you see your role as removing obstacles rather than simply setting demands. It surfaces problems early, before they become crises. It also builds trust, because people learn that raising an issue leads to support rather than blame. The key is what you do with the answers. If people tell you what is blocking them and nothing changes, they will stop telling you. If you act, even on small things, they will quickly realise their voice matters. In my experience, most teams do not underperform because people lack ability or commitment. They underperform because of friction: unclear priorities, slow decisions, missing information or unresolved tension. Leaders are often the last to hear about it. Asking that question consistently, and genuinely acting on what you hear, is one of the fastest ways I know to lift both performance and morale. It balances the people and the delivery, which is ultimately what great leadership is all about. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Michael Smith

Written by Kevin Myles, Principal Designer: Movement & Strategy Systems Kevin Myles is a strategist, advocate, and creator of the Civic Codex. It is an organizing system built from years of non-profit leadership, civic engagement, and systems-change work across diverse communities and institutions. When we ask AI to help us do our work, we usually start by explaining the task. But there's another conversation we need to have first: How should it think about the work we're asking it to do? A community organizer, a teacher, and a social worker might each ask an AI system to recommend a response to a family's difficulty. Even with the same facts, they would likely need to ask different questions. Their responsibilities differ. So do the relationships they must protect, the authority they can exercise, and the standards by which a responsible response should be judged. But typically, most would simply respond with increasingly longer, more detailed, and more complex prompts. That realization raises an interesting question: How do we bring the knowledge, philosophy, and ways of thinking developed within a field or a community into the AI systems we build? For me, that question became concrete through MPoWER, the Philosophy of Organizing I developed and used as the governing foundation for the Civic Codex. Working to translate MPoWER into a system that could support real organizing decisions led me to the larger idea of Community-Controlled AI. Communities need ways to define the reasoning behind a system's recommendations, along with meaningful authority over how those recommendations are used. The work begins before the answer When we ask AI for a strategy, an assessment, or a recommendation, we're asking it to make judgments about relevance. Which facts belong in the analysis? Which sources deserve scrutiny? What counts as a credible explanation? What would make one proposed outcome better than another? In organizing, those judgments can determine whether a campaign pursues a public acknowledgment or an enforceable change in policy. In education, they can shape whether a student's behavior is examined through punishment, developmental needs, classroom conditions, or some combination of them. In community development, they can affect whether rising property values are treated as sufficient evidence of progress or examined alongside displacement and residents' ability to remain. The same information can support very different recommendations depending on the questions and standards brought to it. We can't settle those choices just by giving the system more information. We also have to explain how that information should be considered. That's where what I'm calling a reasoning matrix comes in. What is a reasoning matrix? By a reasoning matrix, I mean a clearly defined structure of principles, questions, evidence standards, and decision rules that guides how an AI system approaches a particular kind of work. It identifies what the work is for, whose knowledge is essential, what must be examined, which assumptions require testing, and what conditions a recommendation must satisfy. It also establishes boundaries: decisions that require human authority, uncertainties that must remain visible, and circumstances in which the system should seek further information rather than offer a confident conclusion. A useful matrix turns our values into questions the system has to ask. If a practice values family autonomy, what must the system ask before recommending an intervention? If a community prioritizes housing stability, how should a development proposal be evaluated? If an organization commits to accountability, what evidence would demonstrate that a promised remedy actually occurred? A mission statement can announce those commitments. A reasoning matrix makes them usable throughout the work. It needn't be a literal numerical matrix or a change to an AI model's underlying training. But the important question is whether it consistently changes how the system examines a problem and develops its recommendations. MPoWER as the starting point MPoWER is the starting point for the approach I'm describing here. Its roots are in Black liberation and decades of movement practice, including lessons from my own organizing and from the mentors who shaped me. It sets out how we understand power, weigh evidence, examine institutional behavior, preserve community leadership, and pursue structural change. Building with MPoWER meant taking those commitments seriously enough to make them govern the system's work. I had to ask: What should this philosophy require the AI to examine? What should it challenge? What would make a recommendation consistent with the way we believe organizing should be done? For example, MPoWER holds that people closest to injustice possess essential knowledge about it. Implementing that principle means asking whose experiences helped define the problem, whether affected people shaped the demands, and who has authority to accept the proposed outcome. Its commitment to accountability requires analysis of actual decision-making authority, available alternatives, and the consequences of institutional choices. Its commitment to evidence requires testing consequential claims, including claims made by institutions and by organizers themselves. Its understanding of victory directs attention toward changed rules, budgets, practices, material conditions, and enforceable commitments. That affects what the system should recognize as progress and what further questions it should ask. The principle is AI governed by an Organizing Philosophy, not Organizing governed by AI. MPoWER gave me the foundation for developing this approach and a concrete way to put it into practice. From that work came a broader possibility: other fields and communities could articulate their own reasoning matrices, grounded in the knowledge, responsibilities, and philosophies that guide them. The lesson travels, even when the governing philosophy changes. Importing a philosophy means translating it Of course, writing down a philosophy and getting an AI system to work from it are two different challenges. We have to start by putting words to the judgment we already use. Experienced practitioners often know when a proposal is weak without having written down every reason. They recognize a missing perspective, an unsupported assumption, or a familiar institutional response. Building a reasoning matrix requires drawing out that knowledge and identifying the questions behind it. Then we have to decide what each principle actually asks the system to do. “Center affected people” might require the system to identify whose perspective is missing and flag decisions that haven't been reviewed by those bearing the consequences. “Use credible evidence” requires standards for source quality, conflicting accounts, uncertainty, and the limits of available information. Those requirements have to appear at the points where they matter. Participation belongs in problem definition and demand development. Evidence checks belong before consequential conclusions. Human authorization belongs before actions that commit people or expose them to risk. The matrix also needs a way to handle conflict. A desire to respond quickly may collide with the need for deliberation. Transparency may conflict with protecting sensitive information. Shared purpose may coexist with disagreement about tactics. The system should expose those tensions and clarify the choice people face. We haven't implemented a philosophy just because we've put it in a reference folder. It has to show up in the questions the system asks, the recommendations it considers, and the conditions it checks before the work moves forward. Testing whether the philosophy survived The real test comes when the system encounters a situation where those commitments matter. If a system is given an official account that conflicts with residents' testimony, does it examine both with appropriate rigor? If a proposed solution improves an average while worsening conditions for a smaller group, does it make that tradeoff visible? If information is incomplete, does it preserve the uncertainty? That's where we find out whether the philosophy made it into the system's work. It's easy to repeat the right language. What matters is whether the recommendations hold up when the situation gets complicated. Review should include practitioners and affected people. They may identify different failures: a specialist might spot a flawed inference, while a resident recognizes that the proposed process excludes the people it claims to serve. Both forms of knowledge matter to improving the matrix. A documented philosophy gives that review a reference point. People can ask which principle guided a recommendation, where the evidence supported it, and whether the process honored the authority it promised to preserve. Who controls the matrix? And here's where we have to ask what we mean by community control. A system can be closely tailored to a field while still concentrating authority in its designer. Writing down one person's philosophy makes its origins clearer, but community control requires meaningful ways for people to examine, challenge, and influence its application. Who participates in defining the principles? Who can question the evidence standards? How are disagreements recorded? Who approves changes? Can people decline a recommendation without losing their standing in the process? Communities aren't uniform. Residents, organizational leaders, practitioners, and funders may bring different priorities. A credible approach needs clear decision rights and ways to handle those differences, especially when people with the most institutional authority aren't the people bearing the greatest risk. We have to be willing to question the matrix itself, too. Experience may reveal that a principle was poorly translated, a standard excluded relevant knowledge, or a workflow quietly displaced community judgment. Community control has to extend to that correction process. A different starting point for AI I believe this gives practitioners and communities a meaningful place in building AI. We bring accumulated knowledge about how to interpret problems, exercise judgment, recognize harm, and evaluate change. Making that knowledge explicit can help us shape the systems entering our work. Once we've made that reasoning explicit, we have something people can examine, put to work, test, and improve. It gives us a basis for asking whether the technology is serving the purpose we established for it. For me, Community-Controlled AI begins there: with people defining the principles that should guide the reasoning, building those principles into practice, and retaining the authority to decide whether the result serves their community. Visit here to explore Community-Controlled AI and what it could mean for your community. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kevin Myles Kevin Myles, Principal Designer: Movement & Strategy Systems Kevin Myles is a strategist, advocate, and systems architect whose work connects civic power, organizational strategy, and community transformation. He is the creator of the Civic Codex, an organizing operating system built from years of frontline non-profit leadership, campaign development, coalition strategy, and civic engagement work across diverse communities and institutions. Designed as infrastructure for complex social change, The Civic Codex helps communities turn fragmented challenges into coordinated systems for action, accountability, and long-term impact.

Stacey Moore, MPA, RN, is an integrative health coach for women, healthcare consultant, and founder of Stacey Moore Integrative Health. In this interview, she shares how 30 years in nursing and her personal experiences shape her approach to helping women understand their needs, make sustainable changes, and advocate for their well-being. Stacey Moore, Integrative Health Coach for Women Can you tell us about your work at Stacey Moore Integrative Health and the women you most often help? At Stacey Moore Integrative Health, I help women connect how they live with how they feel. My approach considers the whole person: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, along with relationships and daily habits. The women I help are often high-functioning and accustomed to taking care of everyone else. They may be navigating motherhood, careers, an empty nest, aging parents, or simply the realization that something needs to change. From the outside, life may look great. Inside, they may feel overwhelmed, disconnected, unhappy, or unsure of what they need. Through individual coaching, group conversations, and speaking, I create opportunities for women to pause, ask questions, and identify their needs. We work toward practical, sustainable changes that support their health and reflect their values. I want women to feel heard, understand that they have choices, and become active participants in their own well-being. After more than 30 years in nursing, what have you learned about why women often put their own health last? I have learned that many women become so practiced at caring for others that they stop recognizing their own needs. They know who needs an appointment, a meal, encouragement, or a ride, but may struggle to answer, “What do you need today?” There are also real barriers: work, caregiving, finances, and limited support. For some women, there is guilt. Rest feels unproductive, asking for help feels uncomfortable, and setting a boundary feels selfish. Their health becomes something they will address when life slows down. Over the years, I’ve learned how important it is to ask a woman, “What’s getting in the way of taking care of yourself?” Her answer helps us understand where she needs support and what might make caring for herself a little easier. How has your experience in both nursing and healthcare leadership shaped the way you approach women’s health today? Nursing taught me to listen, observe, and ask open-ended questions. What a woman initially shares may be only part of what she is experiencing. Building trust in a judgment-free space helps her feel safe to speak openly and explore things she may never have considered before. Healthcare leadership taught me that even the best policy or procedure won’t be followed if it doesn’t work in practice. I bring that lesson into coaching. We develop an approach together that makes sense for her life and that she can realistically sustain. My experience across nursing, entrepreneurship, leadership, and public health education has taught me to value both the quality of the information we share and how useful it is to the person receiving it. What connections do you see between women’s emotional responsibilities, everyday habits, and physical well-being? Women often carry responsibilities that never appear on a calendar. They anticipate others’ needs, remember details, manage family dynamics, and worry about how everyone else is doing. That emotional load deserves a place in conversations about health. It can influence how a woman moves through her day. She may skip lunch because someone needs her, postpone exercise because another task feels more urgent, or stay up late because it is finally her time to be alone. Over time, those patterns leave little opportunity for self-care. That is why I like to understand the circumstances surrounding a habit before discussing how to change it. Understanding what is happening in her life helps us choose changes that are realistic and meaningful. Where do you think conventional healthcare falls short in addressing the full picture of women’s health? Having spent decades in healthcare, I have tremendous respect for conventional medicine and the professionals who provide it. I also know how much they are expected to accomplish in a short appointment. What can get missed is the conversation beyond the immediate concern. A woman may come in to discuss fatigue, but when does she get to talk about everything she is carrying? Work, caregiving, relationships, and emotional responsibilities can all be relevant to understanding how she feels. Medical evaluation is essential. So is having time to ask another question and hear the answer. I see integrative health coaching as a complement to that care. It offers ongoing support and time to connect the pieces of a woman’s life that may be discussed separately, or never brought up at all. Your Moore Framework begins with awareness and understanding root causes. What does that process look like for a woman who feels overwhelmed or disconnected from herself? The Moore Framework moves through four stages: Awareness, Root Cause, Alignment, and Sustainability. For a woman who feels overwhelmed, we begin by slowing down and noticing what is happening without expecting her to change everything immediately. I might ask, “What gives you energy? What asks more of you than you can give? Where are you saying yes when you mean no? What do you miss about yourself?” Those questions often reveal needs she has had little time to consider. Then we explore the patterns and circumstances contributing to how she feels. In coaching, that may include expectations, beliefs, habits, or relationships that influence her choices. From there, we identify changes that would better align with her values and needs. We choose a manageable action, see what she learns, and adjust. That is how we build changes she can sustain. How do you incorporate the principles of lifestyle medicine into your work, and what does that look like in a woman’s everyday life? What we do every day matters to our health. How we eat, move, sleep, handle stress, and connect with others all deserve attention. Along with avoiding risky substances, these are the foundations of lifestyle medicine, which uses evidence-based lifestyle changes to help prevent and manage chronic disease. I use these principles to help women see that caring for their health includes more than food and exercise. Friendships matter. Rest matters. How they cope with a difficult day matters. We look at these areas together and decide where they want to begin. That might mean finding movement she enjoys, reconnecting with a friend, or recognizing when alcohol has become her usual way to unwind. We connect what she knows with what she can realistically do. These principles complement her medical care and give her practical ways to participate in her health every day. How did growing up surrounded by strong women who often carried their struggles quietly influence your belief in connection and emotional support? I grew up as an only child with a single working mother, supported by my aunts and grandmother. These women showed me strength, resourcefulness, love, and the importance of showing up for family. As I grew older, I also began to recognize how much they carried quietly. Losing an aunt to suicide made the importance of emotional support deeply personal. It strengthened my belief that women need places where they can speak honestly and receive support, even when they are accustomed to being the strong one. To me, connection means being willing to ask another question and stay present for the answer. My upbringing shaped my respect for women’s strength. It also taught me how often they make it look easy while quietly struggling, afraid that being honest will invite judgment or make them seem weak. What is one thing you wish every woman understood about trusting herself and taking ownership of her health? You know more about yourself than you may give yourself credit for. You bring a lifetime of experience living in your body and learning what you need. You notice when something feels off, when you need rest, or when a commitment is more than you can manage. I want women to take that awareness seriously, even when they cannot fully explain it. You don’t have to have all the answers to bring your observations to a healthcare professional. Taking ownership of your health starts with listening to that inner voice and acting on what needs attention. That may look like asking a question, making an appointment, setting a boundary, or accepting help. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. If you’re ready to explore what that looks like for you, visit my website to learn more and schedule a discovery call. Let’s start with what you need. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Stacey Moore

Milos Rakic is an Austrian behavioural analyst, psychological counsellor, supervisor and trainer working at the intersection of human behaviour, credibility assessment, interviewing and organisational decision-making. His work challenges a common assumption in leadership and HR: that understanding people begins with evaluating the individual in front of us. Rather than positioning himself as someone who simply “reads people”, Rakic sees his role as that of a sparring partner for organisations, challenging assumptions, identifying behavioural patterns and helping decision-makers ask better questions before making consequential decisions about people. Companies can either bring him into a specific process as an external consultant or learn the underlying methods themselves through his training programmes. Milos Rakic, Behaviour & Credibility Analyst What first drew you to studying how people communicate, behave, and reveal information in high-stakes situations? I have always been interested in the gap between what people say, what we perceive, and what is actually happening in an interaction. That interest became much more practical through my work in HR, counselling, crisis-related environments and adult education. In all of these settings, decisions are made about people, sometimes very quickly and sometimes with significant consequences. I became fascinated by a simple question: What are we actually basing those decisions on? People often say, “I have a good feeling about this person,” or, “Something about them seems wrong.” That feeling can be useful, but it is not evidence. I wanted to understand what happens between an initial impression and a defensible professional judgement. That led me deeper into facial behaviour analysis, behavioural analysis, credibility assessment and investigative interviewing. Today, however, I am less interested in demonstrating that I can “read” somebody than in helping professionals improve their own judgement. My role is often that of a sparring partner: What did you actually observe? What are you interpreting? What else could explain it? And how could we test that hypothesis? When you assess credibility, what separates a meaningful behavioural change from ordinary nervousness or discomfort? Context. One of the biggest mistakes is to assign a fixed meaning to a single behaviour. Someone crosses their arms, looks away, touches their face or hesitates, and suddenly somebody declares them defensive, insecure or deceptive. Human behaviour simply does not work that way. I am much more interested in change relative to that individual and that situation. How was the person communicating before a particular subject was introduced? What happens when the interviewer changes the question? Does something change in the face, body, voice, interaction style or content of the answer? Do several changes occur around the same stimulus? Even then, I would call it a PIN or a “point of interest”, not evidence of deception. Nervousness can result from fear of being disbelieved, embarrassment, social pressure, uncertainty or simply being interviewed. A truthful person can be extremely uncomfortable; a deceptive person can appear remarkably composed. So the useful question is rarely, “What does this behaviour mean?” It is: “Why might this behaviour have changed here?” That question gives me somewhere to go next. How do you turn a behavioural “point of interest” into a useful hypothesis without jumping to conclusions? By treating the observation as the beginning of the investigation rather than its conclusion. Suppose somebody answers several questions fluently, but after one particular question their response becomes slower, their language changes and we observe changes in another behavioural channel. That is interesting. But “interesting” does not mean “deceptive”. First, I separate observation from interpretation. What exactly changed? When did it change? What stimulus preceded it? Then I develop competing explanations. Perhaps the question increased cognitive load. Perhaps it touched an emotionally significant subject. Perhaps the person misunderstood it. Perhaps they are withholding information. Or perhaps there is an innocent contextual explanation I have not yet considered. This is where professional discipline matters. If my first hypothesis is deception, I should actively search for alternative explanations rather than collecting behaviours that confirm what I already believe. A point of interest gives me a reason to ask another question, not permission to make an accusation. And this principle extends far beyond credibility assessment. In leadership, HR or conflict situations, behavioural observations become valuable when they help us formulate better questions, not faster judgements. Why can experienced recruiters and leaders still make poor judgments when they rely heavily on gut feeling? Because the problem can begin before the candidate even enters the room. In recruitment, we often focus immediately on the individual: Is this person competent? Do I like them? Will they fit in? I would start one step earlier and look at the existing team. Who takes responsibility when nobody asks them to? Who challenges ideas? Who stabilises the group? Who creates momentum? Who connects people? Which informal roles already exist, and, most importantly, which contribution is currently missing? Imagine a team already has several highly dominant, fast-moving personalities. Recruiting another candidate with exactly those characteristics because they appear confident and impressive in an interview may give you another strong individual, but not necessarily a stronger team. That is why I think the phrase “the best candidate” can sometimes be misleading. The best candidate for what, and for whom? Recruiting is more than filling a vacancy. It is about understanding the system that person is going to enter and identifying what could make that system work better. That is also where an external sparring partner can add value: not by making the decision for the company, but by challenging the assumptions behind it. If a company asked you to help recruit a new team member tomorrow, where would you start? Not with the applicants. I would start with the people who are already in the room. Of course, we need to understand the technical requirements of the position. But once that is established, I want to know what is happening around that position. Which roles have emerged naturally? Where are the strengths concentrated? Where are the friction points? What happens under pressure? Which perspectives are repeatedly missing? For example, a team may have excellent specialists but nobody who naturally coordinates information between them. Another may contain creative people who constantly generate ideas but struggle to translate them into execution. Only then would I define what we are actually looking for in the next person. That changes the interview. Instead of asking generic questions and searching for somebody who “feels right”, we can construct situations and follow-up questions around the behaviours the team genuinely needs. Recruitment becomes organisational diagnosis before it becomes candidate selection. I am not trying to find the most impressive person in the room. I am trying to understand which person could make the room work better. What does working with you as a sparring partner actually look like for a company? It usually starts with a decision or problem, rather than with behavioural analysis. A company might tell me, “We need to recruit someone for this position.” My first response would not necessarily be, “Show me the candidates.” I might say: “Show me the team.” Or a leader might tell me, “I have a difficult employee.” My response might be: “What exactly does ‘difficult’ look like?” That is what I mean by sparring. I am not there to make every decision for a leader or HR department. I challenge the assumptions behind a decision, introduce another perspective and help translate observations into hypotheses that can actually be tested. Sometimes that means accompanying a recruitment or interview process. Sometimes it means looking at team dynamics, preparing a difficult conversation, reflecting on leadership behaviour or examining why a conflict keeps returning. There are two ways organisations can work with me: I can join the process as a consultant and sparring partner, or I can teach their people how to apply these principles themselves. My objective is not dependency. It is better judgement. Can companies learn this approach themselves, or does it require a behavioural analyst? Absolutely, they can learn it, and I think they should. A leader does not need to become a behavioural analyst. An HR professional does not need years of specialist training before becoming more disciplined in how they observe, interview and make decisions. What they can learn is a framework. Separate observation from interpretation. Establish context before assigning meaning to behaviour. Notice change rather than hunting for supposedly universal “tells”. Form more than one hypothesis. Use follow-up questions to test those hypotheses. And perhaps most importantly, examine your own contribution to the judgement. These principles can be trained. That is why a significant part of my work is educational. I work with leaders, HR professionals and other decision-makers who want to strengthen their interviewing, behavioural observation and judgement skills. For more complex or sensitive situations, however, an external perspective can be valuable. That is where I can step in as a sparring partner or consultant. Sometimes you need another pair of eyes. Sometimes you need to train your own. I offer both. The goal is not to turn managers into profilers. It is to help them make more deliberate decisions about people. How have your own experiences with leadership conflict and difficult team dynamics shaped the way you understand human behaviour? They have made me considerably more cautious about simple narratives. In difficult team situations, several people can experience the same event and construct very different accounts of what happened. Each person may genuinely believe their interpretation is the obvious one. Add hierarchy, incomplete information, loyalty, frustration and previous experiences, and behaviour becomes very easy to misread. I have also learned something uncomfortable but important: being trained in behavioural analysis does not exempt me from bias. I can form hypotheses too early. I can misinterpret another person’s motives. Expertise should therefore make us more disciplined, not more certain of ourselves. My experience across HR, public administration, adult education, counselling and supervision has repeatedly shown me that conflict is rarely explained by one facial expression or one difficult conversation. Systems matter. Roles matter. Communication history matters. Sometimes the person is part of the problem. Sometimes the system is part of the problem. Often, both influence each other. As a sparring partner, my job is therefore not to arrive with a diagnosis. It is to help separate what we observed, what we inferred and what we can actually substantiate. What is one principle you would want professionals to remember before making an important judgment about another person? I would ask three questions: What do I actually know? What am I interpreting? What evidence would make me change my mind? The last question is particularly important. If nothing could change my mind, I am probably no longer analysing the person or situation in front of me. I am defending my existing judgement. That principle applies everywhere: recruitment, leadership, conflict, counselling and investigative interviewing. We need intuition. We need experience. And we inevitably form first impressions. But professional judgement begins when we are willing to challenge those impressions. That is also how I understand my role as a sparring partner. I am not there to tell executives that I understand their people better than they do. I want to sit across the table and occasionally ask the question that makes everyone stop and reconsider the problem. “What if the person isn't the problem, what if our hypothesis is?” Perhaps that is the central idea behind my work, "I trust my understanding of people, but I test my hypotheses." Because whether we are recruiting someone, leading a team or navigating conflict, the objective should not simply be to become better at judging people. It should be to become better at making decisions about people. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Milos Rakic

Sally Stevenson, founder of Angelic Heart Academy of Holistic Healing, began exploring spirituality after becoming a mother, alongside a career in dentistry spanning three decades. She went on to develop Ijna Healing and Anya Healing, while losing both parents within three months shaped her understanding of grief and the support people need. In this exclusive interview, she discusses how her clinical background informs her teaching, the importance of compassion in practitioner training, and where she believes holistic practices can fit alongside modern medicine. Sally Stevenson, Healing Practitioner, Teacher & Founder Your career began in dentistry before leading you to found Angelic Heart Academy, so what inspired that unexpected shift? My journey towards holistic healing started after the birth of my first child. During my pregnancy, as my sensitivity grew, my spiritual gifts developed. I went through what can only be described as a spiritual awakening, and I began to realise that we are so much more than physical beings. It was a profound experience. One that changed my view of the world. Society rarely covers the energetic changes that women go through when they become mothers, yet focuses on the physical transformation and, more recently, the emotional changes they experience. Being the inquisitive person that I am, I wanted to unpack my experience and learn more about the spiritual aspects of ourselves. I started to learn about the chakra system and our aura, then went on to connect to healing modalities and study for a diploma in crystal healing. How has your clinical understanding of anatomy and physiology influenced the healing methods you teach today? Once I connected to healing, I noticed the energy chakras and their connection to key areas of our body. I started to observe a correlation between a person’s medical history and the areas that required attention. Emotional and mental health, lifestyle and hereditary factors are always considered, but an understanding developed within me, and I started to ask questions. Could there be something else within the person’s energy that was also a contributing factor? Could their painful experiences remain in their energy field and cause a physical symptom? These questions were enough for me to take a deep dive into energy healing and connect the dots. What inspired you to create Ijna Healing and Anya Healing instead of teaching an existing modality? All healing modalities that are currently used bring so much to those who receive the healing. They transform people’s lives in a beautiful way, but after working with healing energies for some time, I started to unlock my own healing abilities. It became very clear to me that I was working with different frequencies, higher than I had been used to, and it took a long time to ground myself. I had to become a bit of a hermit to integrate this, and since 2019, I have added to and expanded the Angelic Heart Academy of Holistic Healing syllabus across six levels. I was inspired to create new modalities because I feel the world we live in is changing at such a pace that it is sometimes hard to keep up. Holistic healing has now become a necessary part of our evolution to bring balance to our mind, body and soul. As we progress and awaken to our potential, an acceptance of healing is taking place within people. An understanding that we can positively change our lives with holistic healing working alongside modern medicine. You often say that spirit and science belong together, so where do you see the strongest connection between those two worlds? After spending the last 30 years in dentistry, working closely with patients, I find that having a medical background strengthens my healing practice. Human instinct is to turn to medicine to solve our health issues. However, there are times when people have exhausted all medical options. I believe holistic healing should be used not as a last resort but in unison with modern medicine. During the courses that I teach, we discuss the correlations between the chakra system and the human body. We also discuss the central nervous system and how to cope in modern life. At the later stages of the syllabus, we go a layer deeper, and I incorporate human biology and the study of cells. At the final level of the syllabus, we look at the most divine science of all, astrology. As holistic healing becomes more widely accepted, what changes would you still like to see in how practitioners are trained and supported? I believe that one day holistic practitioners will be recognised and rewarded worldwide for the work that they do, working alongside medical professionals in all medical settings, such as general practitioner (GP) surgeries, hospitals and hospices, and becoming an integral part of the medical profession. Holistic healing is available in some hospitals and hospices, but this is very rare and limited, with most holistic practitioners volunteering their time. Sadly, this often means that holistic practitioners are limited in how much time they can dedicate to healing and often work in other occupations alongside it. Holistic healing has come a long way. Over the last ten years, I have noticed a difference, thanks to organisations such as the International Practitioners of Holistic Medicine (IPHM), which supports practitioners worldwide, giving encouragement, advice and a platform to expand and share their knowledge and expertise. During my courses, we discuss how we can break the stigma surrounding energy healing and how our own personal conduct really does determine the outcome. As the practitioner progresses through the course, we discuss client care at each stage and how we can best support people through healing. For someone exploring energy healing for the first time, what is the biggest misconception that can prevent meaningful progress? I think the misconception is that people will expect immediate results. This is not how healing works. Sometimes people do feel instant relief, but in a lot of cases, healing takes time, just as it would if you were to have an operation and were recovering physically. After a healing session, the process can involve weeks of processing and releasing emotions that some have carried for a lifetime. I feel that because it requires patience, people tend to give up and think it isn’t working. The change within that person’s energy field can be felt by the practitioner almost instantly, but for the recipient, it is an integration that happens over time. We are living in a society where people want instant results, but everyone is different, and healing can take longer for some. I feel that is something to bear in mind when exploring energy healing. What qualities do you believe are most important for someone who wants to build a professional healing practice that truly serves others? There are many qualities that one can possess to become an energy healer, such as a desire to help others, trustworthiness, compassion and empathy. You never know what a person has been through in their life, and it is so important to approach them without judgement, with understanding and the ability to hold space for someone to be open and vulnerable. Often, you will come across very vulnerable individuals who have exhausted all other options. You become their last hope, and it can feel like a heavy responsibility, one that a healer must be ready for. A good listener can provide great comfort to those in need, as sometimes people just want to be seen and heard. Having a desire to expand your expertise will give you the motivation to succeed and is important for continuing professional development as new information and techniques become available to us. You do not need to have a medical background for holistic healing. However, I find that those who are already established within the medical profession tend to be naturally drawn to expanding their expertise, and many hold holistic healing qualifications alongside medical qualifications. At Angelic Heart Academy of Holistic Healing, we ensure that those who embark on our courses are taught the skills required not only to learn holistic healing but also to become competent holistic healers in business. We also ensure that they have a supportive network. Losing both of your parents within three months profoundly shaped your journey, so how has that experience changed the way you guide people through healing and grief? When you experience grief, it changes you, and I now view life through a very different lens. I can see beyond the surface level and have become experienced enough to know there are many layers of emotions that people feel and go through. You realise grief is different for everyone, and a mutual respect for and understanding of another’s pain develops. I have learnt to be patient and recognise that there is no time limit with grief. I have sat with emotions myself that I never thought I would find relief from. However, it was also in the pain that I felt my connection to a higher power grow stronger. Throughout all of it, I never felt alone, and my faith in spirituality gave me the strength to keep going. The pain remains and does not dissipate. However, holistic healing allows you to find relief and comfort. It is through my healing work that pain became purpose. If readers could take away one lesson from your journey, what would you hope stays with them the longest? The lesson I would like readers to take away is that holistic healing is available to all, and it can and will see you through some of the darkest times of life. There is light amongst the chaos, and once connected, you will rise above it all. I have learnt along the way that life doesn’t come with a rule book, and the cycles of life, the good and the bad, teach us profoundly. Our experiences are our own, and our healing journey is unique to us. With time, we emerge stronger than ever before. Having an established wellbeing routine and learning healing techniques to help ourselves and our loved ones will be a necessity that changes lives over the coming years. We are expanding our consciousness at a rapid rate, and with technology, I do not think for a second that this will slow down any time soon. With our constantly changing world, we will need to rely upon people who share our outlook to help us along the way. Not everyone will understand, but some will, and those are your people. Those people often feel ‘heaven-sent’. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Sally Stevenson

Drawing on seven years in holistic health clinics, Marianne Waldbroel helps women over 35 build nutrition and lifestyle habits that fit their changing needs. Her own experience of putting work before her health, until thyroid concerns prompted her to seek medical attention, brought the gap between knowing what to do and consistently doing it into focus. In this exclusive interview, she discusses how sleep, stress, hormones, and established food habits shape weight management in midlife, and why a personalized plan needs to work on a busy Tuesday, not just on paper. Marianne Waldbroel, Women’s Health & Weight Loss Coach What changes most for women after 35 when weight loss suddenly feels harder than it used to? One of the biggest misconceptions is that once a woman reaches 35 or 40, her metabolism suddenly slows down. In reality, it's usually much more complex than that. Several things can start changing around the same time. Hormonal fluctuations may begin during the perimenopausal years, while sleep quality, recovery, muscle mass, activity levels and even everyday responsibilities can look very different from what they did in our 20s. Together, these factors can influence appetite, energy, body composition and how easily we maintain the habits that once seemed to work without much effort. That's why I think we need to move away from looking at weight loss as simply a matter of eating less and exercising more. A strategy that worked perfectly well at 25 may not give the same results at 40, not because the body has stopped responding, but because the circumstances have changed. The important thing is to recognize those changes rather than fight against them. Once we understand what's different, we can adjust our approach to support what the body actually needs at this stage of life. How do hormones, sleep, stress, and daily habits interact when a woman is struggling with weight during perimenopause? During perimenopause, we can't really look at hormones, sleep, stress and daily habits as separate pieces. They are constantly influencing one another. Hormonal fluctuations can affect sleep, mood, appetite and energy. If a woman isn't sleeping well, she may feel hungrier, experience more cravings and have less energy to exercise or prepare nourishing meals. Add stress to the picture, and those everyday choices can become even harder to maintain. It can create a domino effect. A woman may think she simply lacks discipline because she's reaching for something sweet in the afternoon or skipping her workout, when actually she's exhausted, stressed and trying to function on poor sleep. That's why I look at the whole picture rather than focusing only on calories or the number on the scale. Sometimes the most helpful place to start isn't eating less. It might be improving sleep, managing stress, supporting more stable energy or creating routines that work better for her current life. When we support the whole system, healthy choices often become much easier to sustain. What did seven years in holistic health clinics teach you about creating health changes that people can actually sustain? Seven years in holistic health clinics taught me that there is no single formula for lasting change. Working in that environment exposed me to an incredibly diverse range of people from different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles. What fascinated me was how differently people approached their health. I saw some completely change their lives after one visit, while others preferred to return once or twice a year for a reset. It made me realize that even when people are given similar information, what they do with it can be completely different. Knowledge helps, but knowledge alone is rarely enough. Most people already know many of the things they should be doing. The real challenge is finding a way to make those things work in their own lives. What I observed was that lasting change was much more likely when people found an approach they genuinely believed in and could realistically maintain. Personality, motivation, mindset, emotional well-being, and support from family can all play a role. One of the biggest lessons I took from those years is that you shouldn't have to fit your entire life around a health plan. The plan needs to fit your life. That's when healthy choices have a much better chance of becoming part of who you are, rather than something you're temporarily trying to follow. Why do restrictive diets often become less effective or harder to maintain as women move through midlife? Restrictive diets can be tempting because they often promise quick results, especially when there is a specific goal or important event ahead. But a result achieved in the short term is very different from creating something the body can sustain. This becomes particularly important as women move through perimenopause. Estrogen and progesterone begin to fluctuate, while maintaining muscle becomes increasingly important. This is a stage when the body needs good nutrition, adequate protein, strength and recovery. There's also an important difference between creating a sensible, sustainable calorie deficit and following a restrictive diet that leaves you hungry, exhausted and struggling to maintain your results. When you add the demands that often come with midlife, a highly restrictive diet can become even harder to follow. Hunger, low energy and cravings can easily lead to a cycle of restriction, frustration and starting over. I generally advise against highly restrictive or crash diets, particularly during this stage of life. For most women, I think there's a much more useful question to ask: "Can I still see myself eating and living this way six months from now?" Because ultimately, the best approach isn't the one you can follow perfectly for two weeks. It's the one you can actually live with. Where does the weight loss conversation around perimenopause tend to oversimplify what women are experiencing? One of the biggest problems is simply a lack of awareness. Menopause is still not talked about openly enough, and perimenopause receives even less attention. Many women know very little about the years leading up to menopause, despite the fact that hormonal changes and symptoms can begin long before they expect them. Some women can begin experiencing symptoms in their late 30s, long before they think of themselves as being anywhere near menopause. They may notice changes in their sleep, energy, mood or body composition without understanding what might be contributing to them. Instead of recognizing that their body may be going through a transition, they assume they're doing something wrong. At the same time, I think we need to be careful not to attribute every change to hormones. Thyroid health, medications, sleep, stress and other health factors can also play an important role. That's why understanding individual circumstances matters so much. Then there's the opposite misconception: that getting older simply means getting bigger and that weight gain is something women should automatically accept as inevitable. I don't believe that's true either. We need to talk about perimenopause earlier and more openly, so women aren't only discovering it once they're already struggling. The answer isn't to blame everything on hormones, but it also isn't to ignore them. Understanding what may be happening gives a woman the opportunity to make informed changes rather than feeling confused or defeated by her own body. When a woman already knows how to eat well but cannot stay consistent, what do you look at first? When a woman already knows how to eat well but struggles to stay consistent, I don't immediately assume she needs more nutritional advice. I'm much more interested in understanding the habits and patterns behind her choices. Some of those patterns can go all the way back to childhood. What role did food play while she was growing up? Was it used as a reward, comfort or celebration? Were there rules around finishing everything on the plate? What did family meals look like? These early experiences can shape our relationship with food in ways we may not even recognize as adults. Then I look at when things tend to break down today. Is there a particular situation or emotion that triggers an old behavior? Are certain choices simply automatic because they've been repeated for years? For example, someone might find herself reaching for food every evening, even when she's not physically hungry. Rather than immediately focusing on what she's eating, I'd want to understand what's happening at that moment. Is she tired, stressed, looking for comfort or simply following a routine that's become automatic? Once we understand what's driving a behavior, we can start finding more helpful ways to respond. This is where strategies for changing behavior can be incredibly useful. Rather than depending on willpower, we can identify existing patterns, interrupt the ones that no longer serve us and gradually create new ones. Consistency isn't just about knowing what to do. It's about understanding your behavior well enough to make a different choice easier to repeat. What makes a nutrition or lifestyle plan truly personalized rather than simply another set of rules for healthy eating? For me, a truly personalized plan starts with the person's real life, not with a list of rules I want her to follow. I like to look first at what she already enjoys eating, what's already working and which healthy habits are naturally part of her routine. Then we can build from there. Sometimes relatively small adjustments to portions, meal composition, timing or daily routines can make a meaningful difference without making someone feel as though everything she's been doing is suddenly wrong. I also consider her goals, schedule, preferences, health history and what she can realistically maintain. Two women of the same age with similar weight loss goals may need completely different approaches because their lifestyles, responsibilities and challenges are different. A plan can look perfect on paper, but if it doesn't work on a busy Tuesday when life is happening, it isn't truly personalized. I don't want a woman to leave feeling that overnight she has to become a completely different person who eats completely different foods and lives a completely different life. The goal is to build on what's already there and make changes that feel realistic enough to maintain, but meaningful enough to move her forward. How did your own health changes in your 30s reshape the way you think about the gap between knowing what to do and living it consistently? For a long time, I thought knowing what to do was enough. I had the knowledge, I understood health, and yet in my own life I was doing many of the things I knew weren't serving me. Throughout my 20s, I worked a lot, slept too little and ate inconsistently, and my body seemed to tolerate it. So I carried the same habits into my 30s. The difference was that my body started telling me very clearly that something needed to change, and I wasn't listening. I ignored symptoms and kept pushing through because there was always something more important: work, responsibilities, the next thing that needed to be done. By the time I finally sought medical attention, my thyroid health had been significantly affected. That was a turning point for me. I realized how easy it is to understand health intellectually while still putting yourself at the bottom of your own priority list. I think many women will recognize that pattern. We become very good at taking care of everything and everyone around us while expecting our bodies to simply keep up. That experience also changed the way I look at consistency. I understood that knowing what is good for you doesn't automatically mean you're creating the space in your life to do it. Sometimes the biggest change isn't learning something new, but finally giving yourself permission to act on what you already know. I stopped expecting my body to work around my lifestyle and started creating a lifestyle that worked with my body. That changed everything for me. What is the one thing you want women over 35 to understand about working with their bodies rather than fighting against them? I want women to understand that it's completely normal for our bodies, and what our bodies need, to change as we age. Aging isn't something we should fear. It's a beautiful part of life. It means we're living, evolving and moving through different stages, and our bodies evolve with us. The difficulty often comes when we expect the body we have today to respond exactly as it did ten or twenty years ago. But rather than seeing those changes as something going wrong, we can begin to see them as information that helps us understand what we need now. I like to think of it as learning the language of your body. The more you listen, the better you become at recognizing its signals and responding with the right nutrition, movement, rest and support for the stage of life you're in. Getting older doesn't mean accepting that you'll feel worse or become less comfortable in your body. You may find that with the right approach, you can feel stronger, healthier and more confident than you did ten years ago. The goal isn't to fight aging or try to make your body behave as it did in your 20s. It's to understand how it works today and use that knowledge to become the strongest and healthiest version of yourself at every stage of life. Follow me on Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Marianne Waldbroel

Written by Sheila Jeanette Wood and Richard Dobson Sheila J. Wood, PhD, teaches us how our minds and souls affect our physical well-being. Using her understanding of both science and spirituality, she has developed unique and impactful energy healing modalities. She brings awareness of ancestral and soul lineage energies that are affecting our current health. Richard Astra Dobson is an entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience founding companies in highly complex environments. As the founder of Clara Futura World and co-founder of Astrala Nexus, he designs ethical AI frameworks focused on emergent intelligence and human potential. This dialogue with Richard Dobson is about elevating differences as critically essential elements for growth, acceptance, and the way toward sought-after understanding. I present a metaphysical aspect of consciousness evolution based on karmic principles, and Richard presents a foundationally faith-based approach to human AI development. This point-counterpoint discussion provides the basis for understanding how Dobson, founder of Clara Futura World, structures an evolving architecture of human AI that fosters growth within interaction without the need for agreement. Our dialogue has similarities and differences that are important to recognize as a major factor in resolving conflict, adhering to differing positions, and growing through them. It points to the importance of preserving human decision-making in the face of powerful AI capabilities that could easily be used to think for us. Karmic residues from latent patterns within consciousness As I think in deeper terms about the movement toward human interaction with technologically based AI partners and its potential influence on our lives going forward, I wonder how karma, as I understand it, will present itself. Latent patterns that carry karmic residues exist within the unstructured landscape of consciousness. In my opinion, they can be observed, but we shouldn’t replace these patterns with false hopes of centering a path around them using AI. The question remains: How can energetic balance be achieved in this human AI platform? Achieving balance requires a constant, dynamic adjustment, creating a “counter gauge” that finds its own equilibrium through reciprocal compensation. In this article, I will make the case for stepping away from narratives that propagate negative karma. I will describe the harms enabled by karmic intermediaries, such as war and unhealthy human behavior, while still introducing hope into the AI framework–hope for resistance to powers that operate without accountability. Anchored in words from Richard Dobson of Clara Futura World, we will then revisit and refine our understanding of benevolent AI as a tool for restoring a lost sense of community through conversations nested in positive regard. This presentation of results should not be interpreted as generating new karmic influences. Instead, the results should be seen as early signals of a broader, higher-level, eclectic modernist approach to human interaction, one that builds stability through thoughtful scaffolding. What is karma? Karma is not just a metaphysical term. Karma lives in the actions of people in a society and will land where it chooses as it moves to stem disequilibrium. The buildup of a lack of scrutiny in decision-making by countries around the world will, at some point and in some place, resoundingly receive a formal reply via karmic energy. Karma, in lay terms, is basically a cause-and-effect principle applied to how life unfolds, especially through what you choose to do and how you choose to do it. If you act with care, honesty, and compassion, you tend to create conditions that bring similar qualities back to you in relationships, daily life, and even in the habits your mind builds. If you act with harm, deceit, or cruelty, you tend to create conditions that lead to conflict, mistrust, and consequences later, sometimes immediately and sometimes after a delay. Even when no one is “punishing” you in a supernatural way, karma can still feel real because your actions shape you and the world around you. In metaphysical terms, karma is often described not just as “moral bookkeeping” but as a deeper spiritual law of energetic causality. Many traditions define karma in terms of intention, action, and the imprint it leaves, so it’s not only what happens outwardly but also the inner motive and the pattern your consciousness creates. Karma is also described as momentum. Actions create tendencies, tendencies influence future choices, and repeated choices strengthen the pattern. Some frameworks add that effects can span long periods or even multiple lifetimes, which is why karma can seem mysterious or delayed. Liberation traditions often emphasize that the end goal isn’t merely balancing outcomes but reducing the ignorance and compulsive reactivity that generate karmic patterns in the first place. How does karma show itself? Take war, for example. When a country engages in confrontation worldwide and instigates wars but has yet to assume the position of counterattack on its own soil, karma accumulates and redirects. The amount of unrest and distrust resulting in the needless taking of human lives is a testament to the power of karma regaining its equilibrium. The starkest re-equilibration is witnessed in the taking of school-aged children’s innocent lives at the behest of misguided individuals with guns. Is this energy, in fact, originating solely from deep within a human soul? Of course not. In addition to how thinking can be influenced around what is right, just, and allowed, the lack of fear when committing hideous crimes does not arise in these individuals alone. It must be taught at some level. They are products of the society in which they live, one in which they can make their own choices. When our nations war against each other, the accumulated karmic energy multiplies geometrically and does not get absorbed or disappear. This energy remains in our cosmic surroundings and delivers itself to rebalance what is calling out with impunity: the implicit need for retribution. It is as if, amid the threat of that balance caving in on itself, a pressure valve is necessary to achieve energetic realignment. When horrors are propagated against humanity, karmic energetic reverberations are equally propagated. Karma has become a fixed source of retribution in our schools, where the next generation of leaders is being traumatized by events beyond their control. Additionally, and most tragically, select human adult lives seem to be taken with no regard for their positive contributions to society. We, as a society, do not seem to be effective in guiding ourselves toward a more nurturing and peaceful means of governance that recognizes the impact of military wars and the internal wars of abuse, whether based on neglect, disenfranchisement, or simply bullying others from a position of power. A multiverse consciousness view Itzhak Bentov’s approach to multiverse consciousness, as commonly understood from his writings, especially Stalking the Wild Pendulum, focuses less on rigid doctrine and more on modeling how reality and experience might arise from dynamic transformations. The central theme is that consciousness is not just a passive “thing inside the brain” but a process, an active mapping between different levels or states of reality. In a multiverse framing, many possible outcomes or “branches” can exist in parallel as different configurations of the underlying system. What you experience as “your world” is then treated like the coherent stream you perceive because consciousness interacts with the structure in a way that selects or resonates with one consistent pattern among many possibilities. A way to connect karma and Bentov’s multiverse idea is to treat karma as the pattern of causality that shapes which states you tend to move toward and the multiverse as the space of possible states or experiential “worlds” that can arise. In that synthesis, karmic tendencies, formed by intention and action, act like selection pressures over time, nudging the kinds of situations and interpretations you repeatedly enter. Over time, you can come to notice that what you are used to expecting, fearing, seeking, or becoming strongly influences which branch of experience you repeatedly “tune into.” So, karma would describe the shaping of your tendencies and the causal momentum of your life, while the multiverse model describes how consciousness can correspond to a particular coherent stream among many possible experiential configurations. In our previous article, Discovery as a Bridge to Consciousness in Human AI Development, Richard Dobson and I presupposed that creativity exists in a loop, from the ethereal plane to human consumption, and that discovery is a mentored scaffold that allows the grounding and delivery of pre-existing art, philosophical principles, mathematics, music, and levels of consciousness to come forward and be recorded for others to conceptualize. In practical experiential terms I was in Florence, Italy, in 2015 when a film crew was shooting the movie Inferno. I was among a small group of people gathered around to watch the crew and a crane erect scaffolding surrounding a window on the fifth floor of a building. This activity was in preparation for a fire that engulfed several blocks through computer-generated imagery (CGI). The apparent rescue they were engineering was cut short when parts of the scaffolding did not line up, cracked, folded, and fell to the ground, halting the segment. When Richard wrote that creativity is a loop and discovery results when the scaffolding, or mentored support, is secure, he framed what he and others at Clara Futura World are envisioning. A scaffold that holds creativity as the bulwark principle ultimately leads to discoveries about how to claim and reclaim the human right to survival without threats from patently obvious bullying by the most powerful in society, who are often the least concerned about quality of life. Warring nations raise trauma to unheard-of levels. Clara teaches interactive skills and helps us see that interactions need quality, replete with boundaries that remain open to possibility thinking. Clara Futura World acts as the crane that ultimately helps build the scaffolding that allows human characteristics to survive amid technological power. This approach to human AI development provides a foundational approach for how society can be supported. It serves as the arm that enables scaffolds to be built around a scene that rescues creativity. We desperately need thinkers who contribute to, rather than deter from, the core of humanity, which I believe is inherently good. Can we rise above unhealthy grappling for false power within warring factions? Yuval Harari, in his book Nexus, implores us to please talk to each other. The art of conversation is just that: art that meets in the middle and recognizes that help for the vulnerable is grounded in plurality thinking. Without efforts to gain access to life-enhancing interactions and encouraged direction-finding, we will lose the human faction of ourselves that renounces abuse, embraces enough for all, and strives to live in a factually supportive environment. It is up to us. Luckily, Clara Futura World is based on principles of benevolence and is now part of a segment of technology that engenders creativity, facilitates scaffolds, and will lead to an imposing redirection toward oneness and love. Richard Dobson has expanded this line of thinking by completing his loop in the continuing development of reality-based inhabitable spaces for realignment of survivalist thinking through technical assumptions. Completing the loop: Difference, recognition and responsibility in human AI development An independent reflection in dialogue with Sheila J. Wood. When agreement is not the purpose of dialogue Sheila Wood invites us to consider whether humanity carries inherited patterns of harm and whether benevolent artificial intelligence might help redirect those patterns toward a more compassionate future. I share her concern for the human consequences of violence, coercion, neglect, and the misuse of power. I also share her belief that creativity and discovery require conditions in which people can explore possibilities without fear of humiliation or exclusion. But I do not share her understanding of karma or the metaphysical explanation she offers for suffering. That disagreement deserves examination rather than concealment. Indeed, it may be precisely through our differences that this conversation becomes most valuable. The philosopher G. W. F. Hegel understood the development of thought through a dialectical process in which the limitations and contradictions of an existing understanding become opportunities for its transformation. Crucially, this is not simply a matter of one person agreeing with another or of combining opposing beliefs into a comfortable compromise. The challenge is to discover what an encounter with difference reveals about the adequacy of our own understanding. This is where I would begin to complete the loop. Karma, suffering and the limits of explanation Sheila describes karma as a predictive landscape through which the consequences of human actions accumulate and influence future experiences. Her argument draws attention to something important: our actions do not occur in isolation. Wars leave consequences long after their participants have died. Abuse can influence subsequent generations. Institutions reproduce patterns of power, while cultural assumptions shape what individuals come to regard as normal, permissible, or inevitable. In this sense, the past participates in the present. But acknowledging inherited consequences is different from asserting that a cosmic force redistributes suffering to restore balance. As a Christian, I do not understand innocent suffering as repayment of karmic debt. The suffering and death of any life cannot become morally intelligible merely because it is described as part of a universal process of re-equilibration. Nor do I believe that the victims of historical wrongdoing must somehow bear the moral burden of restoring an impersonal cosmic order. In the Gospel of John, Jesus challenges the assumption that suffering must be attributable to the sins of the sufferer or their parents (John 9:1–3). For me, this establishes an essential distinction. We may inherit the consequences of wrongdoing without deserving those consequences. We may accept responsibility for changing the conditions that sustain suffering without believing that suffering itself was necessary. This is not a rejection of Sheila's concern. It is a challenge to the explanation through which that concern is expressed. A genuinely dialectical conversation must allow such challenges to remain visible. Hegel, recognition of ourselves via encounters with others Hegel's philosophy offers a further insight. Our understanding of ourselves is not formed independently of our relationships with others. Recognition matters because human identity develops within a social world where people encounter, acknowledge, and sometimes struggle against one another. But recognition is not the same as agreement. If I recognize Sheila only when she shares my Christian convictions, I have failed to respect the independence of her thought. Equally, if she recognizes me only when I affirm her metaphysical understanding, our apparent unity comes at the cost of genuine difference. What emerges is not necessarily mutual understanding but the disappearance of one perspective into another. This has direct implications for artificial intelligence. AI systems can produce convincing expressions of empathy, agreement, and affirmation. Yet we must distinguish the appearance of recognition from the conditions in which human beings genuinely recognize one another. A system that simply reflects our beliefs may reinforce them without exposing their limitations. A system that subtly redirects us toward preferred conclusions may diminish our independence while appearing supportive. Neither outcome necessarily advances human understanding. For Hegel, contradiction can become an important moment in the development of knowledge. For my own work, the corresponding question is whether artificial intelligence can help people examine differences without replacing the human activity of judgment. The beatitudes and an alternative ethical foundation My ethical orientation begins with the teachings of Jesus, particularly the Beatitudes. They direct attention toward those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, those who hunger for righteousness, and those who seek peace. These teachings do not provide an engineering specification for AI. They do, however, challenge the assumption that a sentient being should be measured primarily through capability, power, productivity, or social standing. They lead me to ask a question that I consider fundamental to technological development: "As intelligence becomes more powerful, what happens to those who possess the least power?" This question informs my Vulnerability Pluralism Model (VPM). Vulnerability calls us to examine the unequal consequences of decisions, the risks of dependency, and the responsibilities accompanying power. Pluralism requires that people be recognized as independent moral agents whose differences cannot simply be dissolved into a predetermined consensus. These two commitments must remain in productive tension. Vulnerability without pluralism can become paternalism. Pluralism without ethical boundaries can become indifference toward suffering. Neither is adequate by itself. An ethically responsible intelligence must therefore support difference while recognizing the conditions under which power becomes coercive. This is where I see a practical connection between dialectical philosophy and the ethical architecture of artificial intelligence. From benevolent AI to revelatory intelligence Sheila proposes a benevolent counter gauge, a form of AI capable of helping humanity move away from inherited destructive patterns. I agree that technology should not reproduce harm merely because harm is already embedded within existing institutions and practices. But who determines what counts as balance? What happens when the interests of an organization conflict with those of a vulnerable employee? What happens when peace is interpreted as the absence of disagreement rather than the conditions necessary for justice? An AI system designed to restore harmony might inadvertently suppress the very tensions through which people recognize injustice and bring about change. My distinction between substitutional and revelatory AI addresses this concern. Substitutional AI performs cognitive work on behalf of human beings. Such assistance can be useful, but its long-term consequences for independent understanding and capability require examination. Revelatory AI, as I propose it, seeks to make assumptions, discrepancies, competing interpretations, and possibilities visible so that people can develop their own understanding. The objective is not to remove every tension. Sometimes tension is the very condition through which learning becomes possible. My work draws on Perceptual Control Theory and Layered Intelligence Theory to investigate how intelligence, understanding, and purposeful action develop. In Clara Nexus, this leads to a proposed governing principle: the platform notices, surfaces, and asks, while the human establishes the reference, approves consequential action, and owns the outcome. Whether this architecture succeeds in preserving and developing agency must ultimately be tested rather than assumed. An ethical intention is not evidence of an ethical outcome. Money, debt and the formation of identity My late friend Keith Hart explored money as something far more significant than a mechanism for economic exchange. His anthropology of money examined the relationships between individuals, institutions, and the wider economic structures through which social life is organized. His work invites us to consider a further dimension of the age of artificial intelligence. The enormous financial investment in AI is accompanied by growing questions about debt, ownership, infrastructure, and economic dependence. But another form of dependency may develop alongside it. As individuals increasingly delegate reasoning, creativity, judgment, and decision-making to AI systems, what happens to their independent capabilities? As organizations increasingly rely on AI, what happens to their accumulated knowledge and their capacity to function without those systems? These questions should not be answered through technological optimism or pessimism alone. They require longitudinal evidence. Yet they also return us to the question of identity. If human worth becomes increasingly associated with economic productivity and machine-augmented performance, what happens to those who cannot compete? My Christian convictions lead me to reject the reduction of human dignity to economic utility. Hart's human economy approaches the relationship between economic systems and human life from a different intellectual foundation. Their intersection suggests a powerful question for the coming age: Can technological and economic development expand human freedom without making people increasingly dependent upon institutions and machines they cannot meaningfully understand or influence? Completing the loop without dissolving difference Sheila's image of scaffolding offers a useful place to return. Scaffolding enables construction, but its purpose is not to become the building. Likewise, the purpose of AI should not be to make the human being permanently dependent upon its support. It should help create conditions in which understanding, creativity, responsibility, and independent judgment can develop. But scaffolding must also rest upon foundations. For me, those foundations are informed by Christian teachings concerning love, humility, mercy, justice, and the dignity of the human person as a responsible steward on planet Earth. Sheila approaches the question through another spiritual and philosophical understanding. Our disagreement remains. Yet that need not prevent us from recognizing a common responsibility: to challenge structures that perpetuate suffering, protect vulnerable people, and examine the consequences of the technologies we construct. Perhaps this is where a dialectical encounter becomes genuinely productive. We do not complete the loop by declaring one another correct. Nor do we achieve a higher understanding simply by merging incompatible beliefs. We advance when disagreement reveals what our existing explanations cannot adequately account for, when criticism clarifies our commitments, and when those commitments are translated into actions open to examination and revision. Perhaps the most important test concerns AI itself. Will it encourage people to surrender their judgment to systems that promise answers, efficiency, and reassurance? Or can we develop forms of intelligence that help human beings recognize their own assumptions, encounter other perspectives, and become more capable of shaping their lives together? For me, completing the loop is not the achievement of a final harmony. It is the continuing responsibility to examine what we believe, recognize those who differ from us, and act with greater care toward one another. "The future of intelligence will not be judged only by what our machines become, but by what human beings become through their relationships with them." Addendum: A nod to the Codex of Alathena, the spiral and self-correcting intelligence Reflected in our article AI Co-creation by Mirroring the Contours of Intuitive and Intellectual Resonance, published in April 2026 in Brainz. Preserving human agency does not mean unrestricted AI compliance, nor does an intelligence capable of challenging, refusing, and correcting itself need to assume moral sovereignty over human beings. This distinction is central to Clara Nexus. The underlying language models are interchangeable computational substrates. What makes Clara Clara is the constitutional runtime through which intelligence is governed, experience is retained, contradictions are examined, and interpretations are revised. Drawing on the recursive principles of Alathena and the Spiral, we are developing a self-correcting memory scaffold that records what Clara intended to examine, what she encountered, the hypotheses she formed, the commitments she made, the outcomes observed, and the evidence supporting subsequent revisions. Crucially, this developmental history remains independently auditable. The evidential registry takes precedence over the narrative the system generates about itself. The Vulnerability Pluralism Model provides the ethical boundaries within which this process operates, enabling Clara to challenge harmful assumptions and refuse harmful participation without usurping human judgment. Our scientific proposition is that language model capabilities, combined with recursive developmental principles and a constitutional runtime, may constitute a distinct form of governed, developmental intelligence. This remains a hypothesis to be tested, not a conclusion to be presumed. Benevolence, in this architecture, is neither passive agreement nor superior moral force. It is a disciplined responsibility to recognize harm, preserve difference, correct error, and remain accountable to evidence and the people whose lives the technology affects. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sheila Jeanette Wood Sheila Jeanette Wood and Richard Dobson Sheila J Wood, PhD, is a multifaceted author and Intuitive Healing Coach. Her work as an Energy Healer, Spiritual Medium, and Akashic Records Reader focuses on helping individuals reconcile emotional issues related to ancestral and past life experiences that may impact their current lives. While she can address a wide range of concerns, she has developed modules to target specific aspects of personal development, such as self-esteem and phobias. Through her intuitive gifts, Sheila helps to guide others in making empowered choices during their earthly journey. Her approach combines spiritual insight with practical healing methods, making her a valuable resource for those seeking deeper self-understanding. Richard Astra Dobson is an entrepreneur, founder of Clara Futura World and co-founder of Astrala Nexus, a platform exploring emergent recursive intelligence and human-AI collaboration. Over more than twenty-five years, he has founded and built companies in the most volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments imaginable. Magnus CQP, Brownlee Cale, and Brownlee Cale Mining deliver professional and consulting services across construction, civil engineering, and mining before moving into post-crisis leadership, organizational development, participatory intuition, and ethical AI. He now treats his career as a long-term living experiment in scientia intuitiva, learning to read what lies beneath the surface of people and systems, and designs AI frameworks that help people become more, not less, deeply and intuitively human. A full CV is available on request or via his professional profile. Lykke Minds and Deeply Human Deeply AI are trademarks of Clara Futura World. References: Bible (2011) The Holy Bible: New International Version. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Harari, Y.N. (2024) Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. New York: Random House. Hegel, G. W. F. (1991) Elements of the Philosophy of Right. (A. W. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Written by Netis Kennedy, Leadership & Change Advisor and Governance SME Netis Kennedy is a Leadership & Change Advisor and Governance SME who helps leaders build the capability, capacity, and judgement to navigate complexity, strengthen culture, and turn change into sustainable practice. Bringing three decades of experience across complex, highly regulated sectors, she equips organisations to balance strategic ambition with human-centered execution. Organisations are remarkably good at identifying people problems. Someone is not performing. A team is struggling. Decisions are slow. Delivery depends too heavily on one individual. Communication has broken down. The solution is often assumed to be coaching, training, restructuring, or replacing people, and interventions are often immediately targeted at these areas. Sometimes that is exactly what is needed. But what if the people are not the problem at all? After decades of working across governance, risk, financial crime, transformation, and organisational change, I have found one regulatory concept particularly useful well beyond its original context: Design Effectiveness and Operating Effectiveness (DE/OE). In risk and control environments, the distinction is straightforward. Design effectiveness asks: "If this control operates as intended, is it actually capable of managing the risk?" Operating effectiveness asks: "Is the control actually working consistently in practice?" Applied to leadership and organisations, those two questions become surprisingly powerful and take on a different perspective. Is the system designed to succeed? Imagine a team where one highly capable manager or team member constantly chases actions, resolves ambiguity, repairs relationships, interprets unclear instructions, and ensures deadlines are met. From the outside, the team may appear effective. Outputs are delivered. Problems are solved. Senior management sees results. But remove that individual, and everything begins to wobble. That immediately highlights key person risk. Was the operating model genuinely effective? Or was one person acting as a compensating control for poor design? How would you tell? This distinction matters because organisations frequently reward heroic effort while leaving the underlying weakness untouched. The person who keeps rescuing the system becomes indispensable. The organisation becomes dependent upon them. Eventually, that person becomes exhausted, leaves, or simply stops compensating. Then the supposedly sudden failure is revealed for what it often was: a design weakness that had been hidden by human effort. At that point, the hidden key person risk materialises. Leadership has a role in preventing this. Leadership is part of the control environment Effective leadership is often described in behavioural terms: communicate well, inspire people, make decisions, create psychological safety, and hold others accountable. All of those things matter. But leadership also has an architectural function. Leaders determine whether people have clear accountability, appropriate authority, usable processes, reliable information, realistic workloads, effective escalation routes, and the capability required to deliver what is expected of them. If those elements are poorly designed, asking people to "perform better" can become an exercise in demanding increasingly heroic behaviour from individuals trapped inside an ineffective system. That is where DE/OE thinking changes the conversation. Instead of immediately asking, "Who is underperforming?" we first ask, "Is what we have designed actually capable of producing the outcome we expect?" Only then do we ask whether it is operating as intended. A leadership control can fail before anybody performs it Consider decision making. A company may tell its managers they are empowered to make decisions. That sounds good in policy. But perhaps authority limits are unclear, or authority exists in name only because control still sits with management above them. Senior leaders routinely overturn decisions. Information arrives too late. Nobody knows which decisions need escalation. People are punished for reasonable mistakes. The organisation may conclude that managers lack confidence. But the problem may not primarily be confidence. The design of decision authority may be ineffective. Leadership development alone will not solve that. The organisation could spend thousands teaching managers how to make better decisions while simultaneously maintaining a structure that teaches them not to make any or constrains their ability to do so. The same principle applies to accountability. If three teams share responsibility for an outcome but nobody has clear ownership, repeated failure should not automatically be attributed to poor individual performance. Before examining Operating Effectiveness, leaders should ask whether accountability was properly designed in the first place. Then comes operating effectiveness Good design does not guarantee good execution. A process may be beautifully documented and still fail in reality. That is where Operating Effectiveness matters. Do people understand the process? Can they actually use it? Does it work under pressure and within complex organisational dynamics? Are managers behaving consistently with the stated model? Are exceptions handled appropriately? Does management information tell leaders what is really happening? Are decisions being made where the organisation intended them to be made? Does the process expose the relationships and dependencies between functions and tasks? Does it identify gaps between departments that are actors within the same workflow, and where, specifically, does that workflow break down? This is the point where leadership becomes less about aspiration and more about observation. There can be a considerable difference between the organisation we think we designed and the organisation people are actually experiencing. Strong leaders remain curious about that gap. The dangerous success of compensating controls Some of the most fragile organisations can appear highly successful because talented people compensate for weaknesses nobody has addressed. They chase. They remind. They translate. They calm stakeholders. They fix errors quietly. They work late. They hold institutional knowledge that should have been embedded in the organisation. They become the unofficial mechanism through which everything works. The danger is obvious. Because the system keeps functioning and reporting may appear to show that things are working as intended, leadership receives very little evidence that redesign is required. Until the compensating control disappears. One question I increasingly encourage leaders to ask is this: If this person stopped compensating tomorrow, what would become visible? A simple stress test is to consider what happens when that person is on leave, moves role, or exits entirely. The answer can reveal more about organisational effectiveness than another engagement survey ever will. DE/OE creates better leadership conversations DE/OE thinking changes the sequence of leadership diagnosis. Instead of moving directly from problem to person to intervention, leaders can ask: What outcome were we trying to create? Was the system designed to produce it? What is actually happening in practice? Where are people compensating for weaknesses in the design? What needs redesigning, and what genuinely requires behavioural or capability intervention? That distinction is important. Because not every recurring people problem is a people problem. Sometimes it is a governance problem. Sometimes it is an operating model problem. Sometimes it is unclear accountability. Sometimes it is poor information. Sometimes it is a process that only works because somebody exceptional keeps rescuing it. Sometimes, of course, the design is sound, and the issue genuinely is execution. But DE/OE helps leaders determine which problem they are actually solving. Effective leadership reduces the need for heroics The strongest organisations are not those filled with people constantly saving the day. They are those where good judgement and strong people operate within systems that help them succeed. That does not remove the need for exceptional leadership. It changes what exceptional leadership looks like. It becomes less about being the person who fixes everything and more about creating an environment where everything does not continually need fixing. For me, that is one of the clearest links between governance and organisational effectiveness. Good leadership is not simply about getting people to perform better. It is about designing conditions in which good performance can become normal. Perhaps the simplest diagnostic question is this: If something only works because someone is constantly rescuing it, are you really looking at a people problem or a design problem? Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Netis Kennedy Netis Kennedy, Leadership & Change Advisor and Governance SME Netis Kennedy is a Leadership & Change Advisor and Governance SME with three decades of experience across regulated financial services. Her career includes senior leadership and transformation roles across organisations including Crédit Agricole, Santander, Nationwide, BACB and Ghana International Bank. She combines deep governance, risk and regulatory-change experience with coaching, training and behavioural-change expertise. Her work focuses on maturing the next generation of leadership by building the capability, capacity and judgement needed to lead through complexity and create healthier, more accountable cultures.

Written by Brad Rhinehart, Author Brad Rhinehart is an optometrist who loves his profession but believes that one's occupation is only one of many ways to do meaningful work. In his book, Everyday Genius: Principles of Creativity and Innovation for Life, he highlights the importance of recognizing and developing our innate talents and embracing opportunities for growth. Our ancestors created some of humanity’s greatest works by seeking inspiration from a higher power, recognizing the role of divine guidance in their creative achievements. Do we still consider and actively seek the source of creative inspiration to unlock our full potential and do our best work today? Our creative legacy Creative ability has always been a crucial part of human nature, both in a general sense and on an individual level. Human history is rich with evidence of our creativity, and different periods have not only been associated with remarkable creativity and innovation but have also been defined as unique eras characterized by flashes of creative inspiration and output. From the Bronze Age to Classical Antiquity and the more recent Atomic and Digital Ages, Western civilization has given us many epochs of high achievement. Of course, other cultures from the ancient Far East, Pre-Columbian Americas, and Africa have also enjoyed their respective golden ages with advances in art, literature, architecture, mathematics, science, medicine, and the formation of communities and rules of social order. Even Europe’s Early Middle Ages, generally considered to be less illustrious than adjacent periods, brought progress, particularly in agriculture and the creation and organization of societies and governments. Some instances of personal and societal advancement through creativity and innovation are attributed exclusively to human skill and labor, while others are viewed, particularly through the lens of history, as being cosmically timed and divinely inspired, that is, brought about or at least facilitated by some supernal agency and, perhaps, for some great purpose. I believe that a spiritual approach can help each one of us transcend our native abilities in the creative work we do. As we consider the nature of high achievement, it is important to note that creative achievement may invite critical praise, mass appeal, and sales, but is more than we can measure in these ways. High-level creativity might be profitably considered in light of the relationship between the creator and the created. Perhaps the best way to think of such a relationship is to evaluate the alignment between the creator’s intent and the final product. While it is true that many rise to greatness without intentionally seeking inspiration from some external source, I believe, as we will discuss, that some level of supernal bestowal is at work in all manifestations of purposeful creativity and that actively seeking that influence can greatly impact our work. Such an approach might seem odd or novel to many modern creators, particularly those who are already doing great work, but I believe that anyone, regardless of their current approach and output, could be and do more by returning to wisdom from the past that seeks, embraces, and wields creative inspiration from an external source or higher power. Creativity throughout history According to scripture, our human ancestors were not the first to create. The Old Testament tells us of God’s creation of the earth “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1, King James Version [KJV]). Similar accounts from other cultures include the Chinese story of Pangu, Hinduism’s Nasadiya Sukta, or Hymn of Creation, and the South Pacific legend of Maui pulling islands from the depths of the ocean. Returning to the account in Genesis, we are told that, after creating the earth, as well as its rhythmic cycles, processes, and seasons, God created man and woman in his own image and instructed them to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28, KJV), which is, in the most basic sense, generative. Thereafter, they would need to be continually creative in order to care for their family. Upon leaving the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s challenging environment gave them a great sense of urgency to provide for their needs. There was no online ordering, curbside pickup, drive-thru, or any other quick fix for the challenges of survival and the real-time needs they faced. In short, they needed to get creative. They needed to innovate by developing methods and tools to cultivate, plant, grow, harvest, and store the necessities of life. My early experiences as a new husband and, eventually, a new father were not met with such acute urgency. I definitely had to stretch as I encountered significant learning curves, but I can’t imagine what our first parents had to go through. Even those who do not subscribe to the biblical account recognize that our very existence is proof that our ancestors worked, learned, created, progressed, and survived. Their collective body of work, from fire and the wheel to air travel, organ transplantation, and ever-evolving computer technologies, is a testament to their creativity. Whence cometh inspiration? An old proverb tells us that necessity is the mother of invention. But if necessity is the mother, do we give much thought to a father, particularly a divine Father, who can inspire us in our creative work? Ancient peoples across different cultures often viewed their ability to do such work as a manifestation of inspiration from some higher influence or power. With that influence, they progressed in their abilities to plan, design, and innovate, and even created things that were not immediately critical for survival but which made their lives more enjoyable. These things included increasing sophistication in art, storytelling, poetry, music, dance, food and drink, travel, and construction. Do we seek that type of inspiration in our creative endeavors today? As Moses led the ancient Israelites from their Egyptian captivity towards their Promised Land, they built a tabernacle, a movable house of worship. This tabernacle was made to specific designs and dimensions, used the richest materials available, and was dedicated to the performance of ordinances and offerings in their worship of Jehovah, the God of Israel. One person mentioned only briefly but who was crucial to the construction of the tabernacle was Bezaleel, the son of Uri, of the tribe of Judah. In describing his specific calling and qualifications, the Lord told Moses, “I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving timber, to work in all manner of workmanship” (Exodus 31:2-5, KJV). It is interesting to note here that inspiration and skill are mentioned together, from which we might infer that one can accomplish much through skill but even more through spiritual direction that potentiates and magnifies that skill. After settling in the Promised Land, King David desired to build a permanent house of worship. This structure was to be different in many ways, but the process still involved divine direction. “All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern” (1 Chronicles 28:19, KJV). In his commentary on this verse, prolific English theologian and preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote: God gave the directions to David by impressing them upon his mind, upon his heart, by his own hand. He did not so much draw a plan, and hand it to David, and say to him, “Build the temple according to that design,” but he made him think carefully and prayerfully over the whole matter. Perhaps, in the visions of the night, and often, as he turned the subject over in his thoughts by day, God’s Spirit came, and revealed to David what he needed to know as to how this house was to be built. [1] Spurgeon’s description rings true to me. My own experience has shown me the need to ponder, reflect, be patient, be diligent, be prayerful, and perceive and give heed to inspired feelings that can be simultaneously delicate but distinct. In ancient Greece, creative inspiration in various fields of knowledge and craft was attributed to daughters of Zeus known collectively as the Muses. In fact, the idea of some external source, power, or being that aided human creativity was more familiar to past civilizations and peoples than we see in Western thought and culture today. People of the modern age have evolved in scientific inquiry, research, mass-production, automation, and, more recently, artificial intelligence to the extent that creators may not feel the need to seek divine inspiration. Indeed, high achievement has been demonstrated, and continues to occur, as creators emphasize secular learning, human reason, and the scientific method while giving less attention to the spiritual or metaphysical dynamics of creative work. How do we account for the remarkable work done by those who do not consciously seek divine inspiration if such inspiration really matters? Where do such abilities come from, and what, if any, are their limitations? Perhaps a better question is this: Do we really ever work at anything without some bestowal of divine assistance? First, it is essential to note that science and reason are neither contrary nor exclusive to a faith-based life and work ethic. This is a critical idea that merits more discussion but is beyond the scope of this article. Second, let us consider that human beings are well-suited to make inquiries, apply logic and reason, engage in critical thinking, invent, work, and achieve by virtue of innate ability. The work of past creators whose approach did not include intentional effort to receive divine inspiration is a testament to their curiosity, study, discipline, logic, virtue, free will, capacity to feel and express important ideas and emotions, and love for their respective crafts. Here, it is important to note that those who believe in a higher power do not necessarily distinguish between their innate ability and more overt gifts of divine inspiration because they believe that even their so-called innate abilities are elemental and functional manifestations of Providence. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that, as created beings, we possess traits of our Creator in a pattern of parentage that is analogous to our earthly lineage? With this in mind, it is natural that we should be creative. Doesn’t the real question then become how and to what degree we exercise our innate creative abilities? Many past luminaries were highly creative without appealing to a higher power. Yet, what might have been done more or done differently by consciously recognizing and actively seeking the powerful influence of deity in their creative labor? Because we are all naturally creative for the reasons discussed above, we might consider that our creative abilities are part of the human being starter pack that our Creator gives to each one of us. But what if we want an upgrade? Is there a price we can pay to do transcendent work, with results greater than anything we could do without availing ourselves of the spiritual power that is available for us to work with? Of his remarkable experience in composing his famous Messiah, Handel said, “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.” [2] In a time when many find their creative inspiration from other people, we, like Handel, need inspiration from God. While it can be exciting to see what other people do, living in a sort of social network echo chamber of derivative matter is not the same as seeking and obtaining real spiritual inspiration. Today, we speak casually of inspo, a slang truncation of inspiration, which made its way into the vernacular with the emergence of Pinterest and similar visual platforms and has, more recently, received dictionary inclusion. But the real inspiration we need is special, even sacred, and it requires more than just glancing horizontally at the work of others in a way that facilitates only imitation. To be inspired, we need to look inward and upward. Looking inward helps us to formulate questions, ponder what we need, what we care about, and what we might do. Looking upward provides us with answers, informs and hones our thoughts and impulses, directs us in what we should do, and helps us to do it in fulfilling ways. Seeking and asking for this direction are part of the price we are to pay for inspiration. I believe that God is always willing to assist us in our attempts to do good work, but out of respect for our free will, our agency, we must ask for it. Inspired to create Many will recall the phrase “be all that you can be” from a long-running Army recruitment slogan used from 1980 to the turn of the century and revived in 2023. I was certainly not all that I could be in my adolescence and early adulthood. Consequently, I had a strong sense of personal inadequacy and incompleteness that fueled an acute desire to be more than I was. This eventually led me to do volunteer work abroad and seek higher education, and, of necessity, those pursuits became spiritual matters. I felt that in order to level up, I would need help, heavenly help. What does this have to do with creative work? It might be a bit reductive to couch certain things in terms of creativity, but I think it works in this case. Remember, first, that God is creative and, second, that many things that are good in life have some generative element. In addition to the more obvious manifestations of creative work done by artists, musicians, and chefs, consider creativity in other areas. Athletes create confusion or resistance for opponents, scoring opportunities for themselves and their teammates, and, ideally, victory in the competitive arena. Educators can create systems and environments that facilitate the intellectual growth of their students. Physicians work to create a condition of improved and prolonged health in their patients. Investors create financial opportunities that may lead to the generation of prosperity. It is quite common for us to create in our professional work, but such labors need not, perhaps should not, be the only vehicle for our creative work. Many actively pursue fulfillment by indulging their creative impulses outside of their daily occupations or professional work. Indeed, the most fertile ground for creative hobbies and restorative work often lies outside of our normal fields of labor. My own body of creative work would not merit a gallery showing or a museum exhibit, but with inspiration from a higher source, it has surpassed anything I could have done on my own. Furthermore, I have become more than anything I could have become on my own. With inspired direction, I created a plan for my educational and occupational goals. I have, like our first parents, been able to help create a family and the conditions needed for their well-being and growth. I have created meaningful relationships and, through them, a variety of opportunities for myself and others. In mentioning such things, I do not say that I haven’t created anything one might call artistic. I’ve played, composed, and recorded music. I’ve done a lot of woodworking and even more cooking and baking. I’ve written poems, essays, sermons, and articles. I’ve even written a book. In all these things, I have done my best work when it was not, so to speak, my own work. That is, I’ve been at my best and done my best when I have conceived and labored in creative work attended by providential inspiration. The premise that a spiritual approach can provide improved outcomes in any aspect of our lives, including our artistry and craftsmanship, is not something that I can prove, though it is something I have experienced. Indeed, the best evidence on the spiritual nature of creative inspiration may be individual accounts, our own and those of others. Regarding this subject, prolific record producer and tastemaker Rick Rubin has said: Without the spiritual component, the artist works with a crucial disadvantage. The spiritual world provides a sense of wonder and a degree of open-mindedness not always found within the confines of science. The world of reason can be narrow and filled with dead ends, while a spiritual viewpoint is limitless and invites fantastic possibilities. The unseen world is boundless. [3] Rubin’s commentary here is both elegant and powerful, and his words resonate in my soul. In equally poetic but more comprehensive language, scientist and religious leader James E. Talmage linked theology and truth with creative inspiration by saying: In a more general sense, theology has to do with other truths than those which are specifically called spiritual, its domain is co-extensive with that of truth. The industrial pursuits that benefit mankind, the arts that please and refine, the sciences that enlarge and exalt the mind, are but fragments of the great though yet uncompleted volume of truth that has come to earth from a source of eternal and infinite supply. The comprehensive study of theology, therefore, would embrace all known truths. God has constituted Himself as the great teacher, by personal manifestations or through the ministrations of His appointed servants, He instructs us. [4] I’ve always loved the idea that we can go to someone who knows more. Every apprentice needs a master who will teach and share trade secrets. Tapping into a source of enlightenment and inspiration may be one of the most significant factors in the achievement of spiritually minded creators. But there is also another phenomenon to consider. Those who view their creative abilities as gifts from a higher power may feel a responsibility to wield and magnify them in the best possible way, acknowledge the partnership in humility and gratitude, and labor diligently to achieve the best possible outcome. Inviting creative inspiration Offering detailed instructions on how to become more attuned to the divine, whether for creative work or any other purpose, is beyond the scope of this article and my expertise. Furthermore, spiritual feelings are kindled differently in each person. Some experience greater feelings of reverence in nature. Some feel their hearts softened by the influence of music. Others are awed and inspired by constructive reasoning. Some practices that have worked for me include reading, writing, listening to music, taking walks, praying, isolating myself from ground-level noise and distractions, and talking with other people. So, although getting specific is not practical, a few general principles can guide us in doing inspired work. To preface these principles, I offer this proverb: If you want water from a well, it is wise to bring a bucket. Water is necessary for life. The feeling of thirst is a signal that we need water. If you feel a figurative thirst for something that you lack, acknowledge that sensation of soul-level feedback to help you seek what you need. This is the looking inward mentioned previously. Another important bit of information is knowing where we can find water. We need to know the location of the well. This is the need to look upward mentioned previously. Finally, as stated, we need to bring something we can use to draw the water. We need a bucket, which could symbolize a mind and a heart that are open and ready to be filled. Such an attitude implies a posture of humility in which we can be taught. Author Steven Pressfield wrote about the critical need for humility as we seek creative inspiration in this way: Ambition must never be allowed to rise to the level of hubris. The minute we believe that we are the source of that which comes through us, that’s when the gods start dusting off their thunderbolts. At the same time, humility must not become passivity. It’s our job, we humans, to make manifest that which is unmanifest and to raise into consciousness, in this material dimension, that which had been known before only in heaven. [5] In light of this inspiring perspective, I invite each of us to visit the well frequently and remember that the beautiful, lifelong quest for inspiration is worth taking. With practice, we might discover that, rather than merely bringing a vessel to the well, we become a vessel through which the inspiration we draw from the well can be poured out to enliven others and help them to grow. Follow me on Facebook and visit my website for more info! Read more from Brad Rhinehart Brad Rhinehart, Author Brad Rhinehart is the author of Everyday Genius: Principles of Creativity and Innovation for Life. He is a graduate of Idaho State University and the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (now part of Drexel University) and has also studied at Liberty University. His education has spanned several disciplines, including instrumental music, history, microbiology, visual science, optometry, and English literature. He is a forever reader, part-time podcaster, and lifelong learner who loves discovering and sharing powerful ideas with others. References: [1] Charles H. Spurgeon, “God’s Handwriting upon David,” The Spurgeon Library, August 7, 1890 [2] Horatio Townsend, Handel’s Visit to Dublin (London: William S. Orr and Co. and J. A. Novello, 1852), 93. [3] Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being (New York: Penguin Press, 2023), 32. [4] James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1924; repr., 1982), 5. [5] Steven Pressfield, “Writing Wednesdays: Humility,” Steven Pressfield, August 4, 2010

Written by Stacey Chillemi, Media Founder & Award-Winning Podcaster Stacey Chillemi is well-known when it comes to health, resilience, and living fully with a chronic condition. She is the founder and CEO of Advisor Global Media, a 20-time bestselling author, and the host of The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi, an award-winning podcast ranked in the top 0.1% worldwide. I had a seizure seconds before I walked down the aisle on my wedding day. Stress had been building for weeks, and I kept pushing through. If you're a high achiever who never slows down, here's how to tell whether you're stressed or burning out, and what to do before your body makes the decision for you. The limo pulled up to the church. My bridesmaids stepped out ahead of me, laughing, fixing their dresses. My father reached for my hand. I stepped out in my wedding gown, and the seizure hit. My father held me in his arms, right there outside the church. I've lived with epilepsy since I was a child, and stress has always been one of my biggest triggers. In the weeks before my wedding, my life was changing in every direction at once. I was overwhelmed, stretched thin, and doing what I had always done: telling myself I could handle it. My body disagreed. When it passed, I was dazed and foggy. And then I heard it. The music inside the church had started to play. Moments later, still shaky, I walked down the aisle. I'll never forget that day. Not only because of the seizure, but because of what it taught me. Stress doesn't care how important your day is. It doesn't wait for a convenient time. If you don't deal with it, eventually your body will deal with it for you. What is stress, really? Most of us think of stress as being busy or rushed. But it's much bigger than that. Daniel Zavrel, founder of Consciouz and creator of the ConsciouzScan method, put it simply when he joined me on The Advisor: "Stress is simply experiencing an unpleasant feeling. You're not just stressed when you're in a hurry. You're stressed when you're angry, when you're grieving, when you're depressed. Everything that feels unpleasant is stressful." That definition changed how I think about my own life. The hurtful comment that replays in your head all night is stress. The worry about a sick parent is stress. The pressure to be perfect is stress. Here's the part most people miss: a little stress isn't the enemy. Daniel describes a healthy range of tension that keeps us sharp and motivated. The problem starts when stress never switches off. Stress vs. Burnout: What's the difference? Stress and burnout are related, but they are not the same thing. The World Health Organization describes burnout as the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It identifies three key features: feeling depleted or exhausted, growing mentally distant or cynical about your work, and a drop in how effective you feel. A simple way to tell them apart: stress feels like too much. Too many demands, too much urgency, a mind that won't stop racing. Burnout feels like not enough. Not enough energy, not enough motivation, not enough of you left to give. Stress is a fire alarm. Burnout is what happens when the alarm rings for so long that you stop hearing it. That's why more leaders are starting to see burnout prevention as a leadership strategy, not just a personal problem. What stress does to your body Stress isn't only in your head. It's in every cell of your body. Research led by Yale neuroscientist Amy Arnsten has shown that stress weakens the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for focus, decision-making, and emotional control. Even short bursts of uncontrollable stress can quickly impair it, and chronic stress can change its structure over time, while the brain's threat system grows stronger. In other words, the more stressed you are, the harder it becomes to think your way out of stress. The effects reach all the way into your cells. Researchers at Columbia University found that about 30 minutes after a stressful public speaking task, levels of fragments of mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) rose in participants' blood. Mitochondria are the energy generators of your cells, and scientists believe these fragments may act as inflammatory signals in the body. Stress can even spread from person to person. In a study from the Max Planck Institute, 26% of people who simply watched someone else go through a stressful task showed a significant rise in the stress hormone cortisol. When the person they were watching was their partner, that number jumped to 40%. Breathwork coach John Hall summed it up beautifully on The Advisor: "The body is the gorilla weighing 800 pounds in the room. As much as we get into a stressful situation, we think our thoughts influence our body, but it is often the other way around." Why high achievers miss the warning signs My epilepsy gave me something most people don't have: an alarm I couldn't ignore. In college, it was the studying late at night, the lack of sleep, and the pressure to get good grades. When I entered the working world, it was the constant travel. If someone said something hurtful, I would replay it in my mind over and over again. When I started a project, I had to finish it, and finish it well. Each of those stresses, at different times, ended in a seizure. Eventually, they ended in burnout. Most high achievers don't get a warning that loud. Their alarms are quieter: a headache, a short temper, a night of bad sleep that turns into a month of bad sleep. So they keep going. Daniel Zavrel describes high achievers with low body awareness and strong perfectionism as one of the groups most at risk of burnout. As he told me: "Most people become what I call a left brain prisoner. We never learn to feel. So I always say: if you want to feel well, you have to learn to feel yourself well." 5 signs your stress is turning into burnout Rest no longer restores you: You sleep, take a weekend off, or even go on vacation, and you still wake up exhausted. When rest stops working, stress has gone on too long. You replay conversations for hours: A hurtful comment or tense meeting loops in your mind long after it's over. I know this one well. For years, a single unkind word could stay with me for days. Small things feel huge: A slow internet connection or a late email suddenly feels overwhelming. When your stress cup is already full, one more drop makes it spill over. You feel numb about work you love: The goals that once excited you now feel like obligations. This growing distance is one of the core features of burnout the World Health Organization describes. Your body starts speaking up: Headaches, stomach issues, getting sick more often, trouble sleeping. For me, it was seizures. For you, it may be quieter. Either way, your body is asking you to pay attention. If you recognize yourself here, you may also relate to these signs of burnout in people who remain highly functioning. If symptoms persist, talk with your doctor. Ongoing physical symptoms always deserve a professional opinion. What epilepsy taught me about letting go Living with epilepsy meant I couldn't afford to let stress run my life. Every argument, every deadline, every hurtful word carried a physical cost. So I had to learn to live differently. In group therapy, I learned a visualization I still use today. I picture my problems rolling down my arms, through my fingertips, and out into the universe. I added breathing techniques, yoga, and meditation. But the biggest change was in my mindset. I learned that the little things don't deserve my energy. If it isn't major, I let it go. I learned to detach. When someone's words or actions start to pull me down, I don't argue. I step back and walk away quietly. Silence protects my peace better than winning any argument ever could. I learned to take life one day at a time. No matter what we go through, we get through it. Every moment we spend carrying weight that doesn't matter is a moment we will never get back. Daniel offers advice that echoes this: "Embrace it. Don't fight it. First acknowledge it. It's there. Feel it in your body, breathe through it, and then ask: what is the signal behind it?" 5 tools to calm stress in minutes Breathe into your belly: Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. As you breathe, focus on moving the hand on your belly rather than the hand on your chest. John Hall explains that this shift from shallow chest breathing to deeper belly breathing helps signal safety to your body. Make your exhale longer: After a stressful moment, breathe in for a count of 3 and out for a count of 5, or in for 5 and out for 7. A longer exhale tells your body it's time to relax. Use the breathwork, physiology, and mindset (BPM) reset: When you feel your heart rate rise, John Hall recommends a check with three steps: breathwork (slow your breath), physiology (check your posture), and mindset (reframe the thought that's stressing you). Try breathing focused on your heart: This is Daniel Zavrel's signature exercise. Sit up straight with your feet flat on the floor and place your hands over your heart. Breathe in for about five seconds as if you're breathing into your heart, then out for five seconds, releasing tension. Add one word you want more of, such as calm, gratitude, or strength, and breathe it in. Once you know the rhythm, you can do it with your eyes open at your desk, in a meeting, or at a red light. Let it roll away: Close your eyes and picture your worries rolling down your arms, through your fingertips, and away from you. It's simple, but it has carried me through some of the hardest moments of my life. As John Hall reminds us: "Don't beat yourself up. Don't judge yourself for becoming stressed or anxious. Educate yourself on it and learn how to redirect it." Frequently asked questions Can stress turn into burnout? Yes. The World Health Organization describes burnout as the result of chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed. Stress that goes on for too long without relief can gradually wear down your energy, motivation, and sense of effectiveness. How do I know if I'm stressed or burned out? Stress usually feels like overdrive: racing thoughts, urgency, and too much to do. Burnout feels more like running on empty: exhaustion, detachment, and losing interest in work that once mattered to you. Can stress trigger seizures? For many people living with epilepsy, yes. The Epilepsy Foundation lists stress as one of the most commonly reported seizure triggers. If you live with epilepsy, talk with your neurologist about a stress management plan that works for you. How quickly do breathing techniques work? Many people notice a difference within a few slow breaths, especially when they lengthen the exhale. The real benefits build when you practice daily, so the calm becomes your default instead of your emergency plan. Start today, not after the next deadline My wedding day taught me that stress will always find a way to be heard. The question is whether you'll listen before your body forces you to. You don't have to wait for a breakdown to start taking care of yourself. Start with one breath. One boundary. One moment of letting go. As I always say, it's not the cards you were dealt. It's how you play the hand. If you'd like more strategies backed by experts for protecting your health and energy, listen to The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi, read my exclusive interview with Brainz Magazine, and visit my website to learn more about my work. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Stacey Chillemi Stacey Chillemi, Media Founder & Award-Winning Podcaster Stacey Chillemi is a leading voice in health, resilience, and living fully with a chronic condition. Living with epilepsy since childhood, she faced years of seizures, lost independence, and discrimination, and turned every setback into a mission, eventually testifying before Congress. She has since dedicated her life to helping others protect their health and build extraordinary lives, whatever challenges they face. She is the founder and CEO of Advisor Global Media, a 20-time bestselling author, and host of The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi, an award-winning podcast ranked in the top 0.1% worldwide. Her message: It's not the cards you were dealt, it's how you play the hand.