Written by Veronika Monteith, Certified Therapeutic Coach Veronika Monteith is the founder of Mindflow Coaching and a certified therapeutic coach specialising in subconscious belief work with ambitious women. She works with clients internationally to help them overcome self-doubt, break self-sabotage patterns and finally feel as confident on the inside as they appear on the outside. Do you say yes when you mean no? Find yourself responsible for how everyone else feels, smoothing things over, keeping the peace, putting your own needs at the bottom of the list? On the rare occasion you do put yourself first, does the guilt show up almost instantly? If this sounds like you, there's nothing wrong with you. There is a way out that doesn't involve becoming someone you're not. What people-pleasing really is People-pleasing isn't a personality trait and it isn't a flaw. It's a protective pattern, a way of staying safe, staying liked and staying connected that you most likely learned a long time ago. At its heart, people-pleasing is about keeping others comfortable, often at your own expense. It's the automatic yes before you've even checked in with yourself. It's saying "I don't mind" when you do. It's reading the room, sensing what everyone else needs, and shaping yourself to meet those needs. From the outside, it can look like kindness, or being easygoing, or simply being nice. Some of it genuinely is. But when it's a pattern you can't switch off, when your own needs consistently come last, it's usually not kindness at all. It's protection. Where does it come from? Like most patterns that run deep, people-pleasing usually has early roots. Perhaps you learned, young, that keeping others happy was how you stayed safe or loved. Maybe there was someone whose moods you had to manage, so you became finely tuned to what everyone around you needed. Maybe you were praised for being good, helpful, no trouble, and learned that being agreeable was how you belonged. However it formed, the underlying lesson was usually the same: other people's needs matter more than mine and keeping them happy is how I stay safe. You became attuned to everyone else and, over time, disconnected from yourself. Why saying no makes you feel guilty Here's the part that keeps the whole pattern locked in place: the guilt. When you've spent your life believing that your job is to keep others happy, saying no doesn't feel neutral. It feels like a betrayal. Like you've done something wrong. That flood of guilt, when you disappoint someone or even just risk disappointing them, isn't a sign you've made a mistake. It's the old belief talking. It's the part of you that learned, long ago, that other people's comfort was your responsibility. This is why simply "setting boundaries" so often fails. You can know, logically, that you're allowed to say no. But if saying no triggers a wave of guilt, you'll cave every time, not because you're weak, but because the guilt feels unbearable. You can't just push through it. You have to understand it. The guilt isn't proof you've done something wrong. It's proof the old pattern is being challenged. The hidden cost of keeping everyone happy Keeping everyone else happy comes at a price, and it's you who pays it. When you're responsible for everyone else's feelings, you're carrying a weight that was never yours. You're exhausted from the constant monitoring, the anticipating, the smoothing over. You say yes to things you don't want, then secretly resent them. Slowly, something else happens: you lose touch with what you actually want and need, because you've spent so long focused outward that your own voice has gone quiet. That's the deepest cost of people-pleasing. Not just the tiredness or the resentment, but the slow disappearance of you, your preferences, your needs, your sense of what matters to you. You can become so good at being what everyone else needs that you genuinely no longer know what you need. How to start setting boundaries without the guilt You don't undo years of people-pleasing overnight. But you can begin, gently, to shift the pattern. Here are a few places to start. Pause before the automatic yes. When someone asks something of you, buy yourself a moment before answering. "Let me check and get back to you" is a complete sentence. That small pause breaks the automatic yes and gives you space to notice what you actually want. Expect the guilt and let it be there. When you do say no, the guilt will probably come. That's normal. It doesn't mean you've done something wrong. Instead of caving to make the guilt go away, try letting it be there without acting on it. Each time you do, it loses a little of its grip. Ask whose feelings are actually yours. When you feel responsible for someone else's reaction, gently ask: Is this genuinely mine to manage? Other adults are allowed to have their feelings. You're not responsible for protecting everyone from every moment of disappointment. Reconnect with what you want. Start small. In moments where little is at stake, such as where to eat or how to spend an evening, practise noticing what you would like before you consider anyone else. It sounds tiny, but it rebuilds the connection to yourself you lost along the way. You're allowed to matter too Learning to stop people-pleasing isn't about becoming selfish or hard. It's about understanding that your needs matter just as much as everyone else's and that you're allowed to honour them without guilt. You can be kind and have boundaries. You can care about others and still care for yourself. The guilt may show up for a while as you change, but it's not the truth. It's just the echo of an old belief that it's finally safe to outgrow. If people-pleasing is a pattern you recognise, you don't have to untangle it alone. The guilt that keeps it in place can ease and the connection to yourself can be rebuilt. If you'd like to explore what that could look like for you, I'd love to invite you to book a Belief Breakthrough call with me. Together we can begin to loosen the belief that's had you putting yourself last and help you find a way of living where you matter just as much as everyone else. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronika Monteith Veronika Monteith, Certified Therapeutic Coach Veronika Monteith is the founder of Mindflow Coaching and a certified Rapid Transformational Coach®, Positive Intelligence Coach® and Mindvalley Certified Hypnotherapist working with ambitious women across the world. Her work draws on subconscious belief work and nervous system awareness. She developed the Triple A Shift™, a methodology built around Awareness, Acceptance and Action after recognising that Acceptance, the step most commonly skipped in coaching, is the one that changes everything. Veronika works with women who appear to have it all together on the outside, yet feel quietly held back by patterns they cannot seem to think their way out of. Her approach gets to the root of those patterns and shifts them.

Written by Christian Dounis, Psychotherapist, Hypnotherapist & Counselor Christian Dounis combines strategic psychotherapy and clinical hypnotherapy with proven entrepreneurial experience to guide individuals toward personal and professional success. Through a focus on mindset transformation and clear, actionable goal-setting, he helps clients build resilient pathways to achieve lasting fulfillment. Many people enter therapy believing change will occur simply by talking about their problems repeatedly until they eventually feel better. While insight and self-awareness are incredibly valuable, many clients eventually reach a frustrating point where they understand their patterns intellectually but still feel emotionally stuck. They know why they overthink, understand where their anxiety began, recognise unhealthy relationship patterns, and can explain their fears logically. Yet despite this awareness, they continue reacting emotionally in the same ways. This is where strategic psychotherapy offers something different. Strategic psychotherapy focuses not only on understanding problems, but on understanding the patterns that keep those problems alive in the present. Rather than endlessly analysing why a problem exists, strategic approaches aim to identify what is maintaining the problem now and how those cycles can be interrupted effectively. Problems often continue because patterns continue One of the core ideas within strategic psychotherapy is that many emotional struggles are maintained by repetitive patterns rather than a lack of insight. For example, a person with anxiety may constantly seek reassurance in order to feel temporarily safe. While reassurance reduces anxiety briefly, it can unintentionally teach the nervous system, “You cannot cope without certainty.” Similarly, someone struggling with overthinking may believe constant mental analysis will eventually create emotional relief or control. In reality, the overthinking itself often keeps the nervous system activated and emotionally trapped. This ongoing cycle of mental analysis and emotional exhaustion is explored further in Amanda Dounis’ article, Strategic Psychotherapy for Overthinking, Break the Cycle and Build Mental Flexibility, which discusses how overthinking itself often becomes part of the very problem people are trying to solve. Many people unknowingly become stuck in cycles involving avoidance, reassurance seeking, perfectionism, emotional suppression, overanalysis, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, and excessive control strategies. The challenge is that these behaviours often provide short-term emotional relief while reinforcing long-term emotional distress. Strategic psychotherapy aims to identify these loops and create interventions that interrupt them. Strategic psychotherapy focuses on change, not just discussion Traditional therapy conversations can sometimes unintentionally remain heavily focused on insight without enough movement toward behavioural or emotional change. Strategic psychotherapy tends to be more active, experiential, and pattern-focused. The goal is not simply, “Why are you like this?” The goal becomes, “What is happening right now that keeps this pattern repeating?” This subtle shift changes the direction of therapy significantly. Instead of remaining trapped inside endless discussion, therapy begins focusing on behavioural patterns, emotional responses, nervous system reactions, coping strategies, relationship dynamics, and repetitive cycles that may be unintentionally maintaining distress. Often the very things people do to feel safer emotionally are the exact things unintentionally keeping the problem alive. Pattern interruption creates new emotional possibilities One of the most powerful elements of strategic psychotherapy is pattern interruption. When emotional patterns repeat long enough, they begin feeling automatic. People react before consciously thinking. The nervous system predicts: “This is what we do.” “This is how we stay safe.” “This is who we are.” These repetitive emotional loops are explored further in Why We Repeat the Same Emotional Patterns Even When We Know Better, which examines how emotional conditioning and subconscious behavioural patterns often continue long after people intellectually understand their struggles. Strategic interventions aim to interrupt these automatic cycles. Sometimes this occurs behaviourally. Sometimes emotionally, cognitively, and experientially. For example, a person trapped in perfectionism may be strategically encouraged to tolerate imperfection in manageable ways rather than continually trying to eliminate discomfort through overperformance. Someone stuck in avoidance may gradually learn to remain emotionally present during discomfort instead of escaping it automatically. A person who constantly seeks reassurance may begin practising uncertainty tolerance rather than chasing endless certainty. These interventions may appear simple on the surface, but they often create profound nervous system shifts over time. Reframing changes emotional meaning Another important aspect of strategic psychotherapy is reframing. Reframing involves helping people view experiences, emotions, or behaviours through a different lens that creates greater flexibility and emotional movement. For example, anxiety may shift from being viewed as “proof something is wrong” to a nervous system attempting to create safety. Perfectionism may shift from being viewed as “high standards” to fear-driven self-protection. Overthinking may be reframed as an attempt to emotionally control uncertainty rather than genuine problem-solving. These shifts matter because emotional responses are heavily influenced by meaning. When meaning changes, emotional reactions often begin shifting as well. Experiential change often creates deeper transformation One of the reasons strategic psychotherapy can feel powerful for many clients is because it moves beyond intellectual discussion alone. Many emotional patterns are not maintained purely through logic. They are maintained through nervous system conditioning, emotional rehearsal, subconscious associations, and repeated behavioural loops. This is why experiential approaches are often integrated into strategic psychotherapy. Clients may engage in behavioural experiments, emotional regulation strategies, visualisation, grounding techniques, symbolic exercises, hypnosis, exposure-based tasks, reflective exercises, and strategic pattern interruption techniques. These experiences help clients emotionally experience themselves differently rather than simply understanding themselves differently. Emotional experience often changes people more deeply than insight alone. Strategic psychotherapy is not about “fixing” people One misconception about strategic approaches is the idea that they are cold, mechanical, or focused only on symptom reduction. In reality, strategic psychotherapy often involves deep emotional understanding alongside practical change. The difference is that therapy does not remain trapped in helplessness, endless analysis, or passive reflection. Strategic psychotherapy recognises that many people already possess significant insight. What they often need is support in interrupting the patterns that keep reinforcing emotional suffering. The work becomes less about “What is wrong with you?” and more about “What is happening in this system that keeps this problem alive?” That shift alone can feel incredibly empowering for clients. Lasting change often requires different experiences People rarely change simply because someone gives them advice or insight. They change through new emotional experiences, new behavioural patterns, nervous system regulation, and repeated experiences of coping differently. Strategic psychotherapy aims to create these experiences intentionally. Because once people begin experiencing themselves differently, they often begin viewing themselves differently too. Sometimes the most powerful breakthroughs occur not when people endlessly analyse their problems, but when they finally interrupt the patterns that have been quietly keeping those problems alive. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Christian Dounis Christian Dounis, Psychotherapist, Hypnotherapist, and Counselor Christian is known for blending strategic psychotherapy, hypnosis, EMDR, and neuroscience-informed techniques to help clients understand their patterns, regulate their emotions, and build long-term resilience. Christian has a particular passion for supporting adolescents as they navigate identity, anxiety, and the pressures of modern life, and he strives to make therapy engaging, empowering, and genuinely transformative.

Written by Rasha Oudeh, Entrepreneur & International Expansion Expert Rasha Oudeh is a serial entrepreneur working across Switzerland and Germany, a board director, and an international expansion expert with over 25 years of experience across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She is CEO of Global Match AG and Chairwoman of CEDEM AG. She holds an Executive MBA from Frankfurt School and the IMD Board Director Diploma. With more health information, vitamins, and supplements available than ever before, why is it still so difficult for people to know what they actually need and whom they can trust? Preventive health has always been a personal passion of mine. After living and working in Germany and Switzerland, I noticed how much importance these countries place on prevention, from healthy lifestyles and nutrition to vitamins, minerals, and dietary supplements. The objective extends beyond individual well-being. Helping people stay healthier may also reduce the long-term burden on healthcare systems and insurance providers. However, through my work across the Middle East and Africa, I observed a different reality. Although interest in health and wellness was growing, access to structured, reliable preventive health education was not always keeping pace. Some people paid little attention to nutritional supplements, while others wanted to make healthier choices but struggled to understand which information or products were relevant to their needs. Social media, influencers, and conflicting health claims made these decisions even more confusing. After more than 20 years in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industry, building supplement businesses and expanding across international markets, I had witnessed these challenges firsthand. When the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated public interest in vitamins, immunity, and preventive health, the gap between growing consumer curiosity and trustworthy scientific information became impossible for me to ignore. That was when I decided to create Vitaminati, a Swiss Arabic-English preventive health and wellness platform dedicated to making science-based information accessible, understandable, and relevant to people across the Middle East and Africa. Even the name reflects this personal vision. Vitaminati (فيتاميناتي) means "my vitamins" in Arabic. I wanted a name that would make health feel personal, approachable, and part of everyday life. But my ambition went beyond creating another health website. I wanted to build something that would become part of my legacy, helping establish a stronger culture of preventive health across the region. At the same time, I recognized an opportunity to connect European supplement and nutraceutical companies with Middle Eastern and African audiences through trustworthy, localized health education. For me, Vitaminati is about bridging the gap between scientific knowledge, responsible health innovation, and the people who need to understand them. The challenge was never just access to health products Throughout my career, I have seen how easily people can become overwhelmed by health information. One source recommends a particular vitamin. Another questions its benefits. An influencer promotes a supplement without explaining the scientific evidence, while consumers are left wondering whom to trust. I came to believe that access to health products means very little without access to reliable information about them. That belief shaped everything we built. We launched with more than 2,000 educational pieces and over 30 healthcare contributors, with pharmacists playing a central role in developing and reviewing content. Our healthcare authors and specialists bring professional expertise to the platform. Our topics range from vitamins, minerals, nutrition, and herbs to beauty, supplements, and women's health. Our editorial approach draws on recognized scientific authorities, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Dietary Supplements, the European Food Safety Authority, and the World Health Organization, alongside relevant scientific research. But making scientific information available is only half the challenge. Making it understandable is equally important. Consumers need to know not only what a supplement may offer but also when the scientific evidence is limited, when safety concerns exist, and when professional medical advice is necessary. A product such as Jamjoom Pharma’s Hemadid, an iron product, illustrates why this matters. Seeing a product name or an advertisement does not answer a consumer’s practical questions. What does it contain? Who is it intended for? What precautions apply, and when should I speak to a pharmacist or doctor? Clear Arabic-English education can help people understand this information and ask better questions before making a decision. This is the kind of understanding I want Vitaminati to support. Supplements are not substitutes for medical treatment, and preventive health does not mean that everyone needs to take vitamins. For me, responsible health education means helping people make better decisions, even when that decision is not to buy a product. That is the kind of trust I want Vitaminati to earn. Why good health products do not always reach the right consumers My work with European pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies has also shown me another side of the same challenge. Europe has many small and medium-sized health companies investing in scientific research, product development, and quality. Yet I have seen promising products struggle to gain recognition in the Middle East and Africa, not necessarily because they lack value, but because the people they are intended for know very little about them. For European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), entering these markets can be particularly demanding. They may have excellent scientific expertise but limited local presence, Arabic-language capabilities, or marketing resources. Over the years, I have learned that international expansion is not simply about placing products in a new country. It is about helping people understand why those products exist, what makes them relevant, and whether they meet a genuine need. That experience revealed a second opportunity for Vitaminati. Beyond consumer education, my vision is to position Vitaminati as a platform that helps European supplement and nutraceutical SMEs expand their visibility across the Middle East and Africa. Through Arabic-English health content, localized digital marketing, and responsible brand collaborations, we aim to help European supplement companies build brand awareness, reach relevant consumers, and communicate the scientific value of their products in markets such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt. Of course, there is an important responsibility here. Commercial partnerships must not compromise scientific credibility. Independent education and sponsored communication should remain clearly distinguishable, and product information should reflect the available evidence rather than marketing promises. The same rules apply to any company I am personally connected with. A good product deserves more than distribution. It deserves to be understood. Why localization matters more than translation One of the most valuable lessons from my years in international business is that markets do not respond to products, information, or brands in exactly the same way. What makes sense to a consumer in Switzerland may not resonate with someone in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or Egypt. Health literacy, cultural expectations, purchasing behavior, and levels of trust can vary significantly. I have discussed this principle in my work on international expansion. Entering a new market requires understanding people before expecting them to understand your offering. For Vitaminati, this means localization must go beyond translating scientific articles from English into Arabic. Information needs to be communicated in a way that feels clear, relevant, and accessible to the people reading it, without compromising scientific accuracy. This is also why I value the combination of our Swiss foundation and our operational team in Jordan. We bring together European scientific perspectives, regional market understanding, and bilingual communication. Our wider team combines expertise in business development, digital content, search engine optimization (SEO), and design. Our board also brings experience from different disciplines, including technology and artificial intelligence (AI) through Raquel M. Katigbak, and pharmaceutical science and nutraceutical entrepreneurship through Dr. Sybille Buchwald-Werner. Building Vitaminati has reinforced something I learned long before starting the platform. International success depends not only on what you offer but also on how well you understand the people you want to reach. From health information to everyday guidance When I first imagined Vitaminati, education was the starting point, not the final destination. Knowing about healthy choices is one thing. Finding ways to apply that knowledge consistently in everyday life is another. That distinction is guiding our next stage of development. Our mobile app, available on Google Play, allows users to explore wellness goals such as sleep, energy, stress, gut health, weight management, and women's wellness. Alongside educational content, the platform offers practical tools, including an ovulation calculator, personalized content, and daily wellness check-ins. Women's health is particularly meaningful to me. As a woman from the Middle East, I understand the importance of making reliable, respectful information available across different stages of life, including fertility, pregnancy, hormonal changes, and menopause. I believe women should have better access to information that helps them understand their changing nutritional and wellness needs without being overwhelmed by contradictory advice. Technology and AI can play an important role in making this kind of information more relevant to individual needs. But I also believe that personalization brings greater responsibility. The more personally relevant health information becomes, the more important it is to communicate its limitations and avoid presenting general wellness guidance as individualized medical advice. My ambition is to develop Vitaminati into a personalized wellness ecosystem that combines scientific knowledge, accessible tools, and practical guidance while keeping trust at its center. Building a bridge between science, business, and people Since launch, Vitaminati has attracted more than 235,000 website visitors in its first quarter, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan among our key focus markets. These figures encourage me, but I do not see website traffic alone as a measure of success. What matters more is whether we can help people develop the confidence to ask better questions about their health, understand the information available to them, and make more informed choices. At the same time, I believe there is an opportunity to help European health SMEs communicate the science and purpose behind their innovations to new audiences. These two ambitions share one principle. People need understanding before they can make informed decisions. Experience has taught me that building something meaningful requires more than identifying a commercial opportunity. It requires recognizing a genuine need, earning trust, and remaining committed to the purpose behind the business. With Vitaminati, I want to contribute to a future in which preventive health becomes a more natural part of everyday life across the Middle East and Africa, while responsible European health companies have better opportunities to be discovered and understood. Because preventive health should not begin with a product. It should begin with understanding, and that is why I built Vitaminati. Discover the book Explore Leadership Without Sugarcoating: The Decision, the Price, and What Remains through Rasha Oudeh’s book page, or order from Orell Füssli, Ex Libris, Amazon USA, or Thalia. For speaking engagements, interviews, or enquiries, contact me here. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rasha Oudeh Rasha Oudeh, Entrepreneur & International Expansion Expert Rasha Oudeh is a serial entrepreneur and international expansion expert who has built, grown, and successfully exited businesses. As CEO of Global Match AG, she supports companies with market entry, cross-border execution, strategic partnerships, and introductions to investment opportunities between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She is also Chairwoman of CEDEM AG, where she pursues her passion for women’s health and preventive healthcare. Beyond business, she leads Amali Switzerland, a nonprofit entrepreneurship initiative. She is the author of the forthcoming book Leadership Without Sugarcoating and holds an Executive MBA from Frankfurt School and the IMD Board Director Diploma.

Written by LaShall Marie Dodson, Business Strategist & Meta Ads Specialist LaShall Dodson is a Strategic Business Strategist and Certified Meta Ads Strategist with over 25 years of Fortune 500 experience. As founder of DedicatedVirtual Professional Services LLC, she helps established business owners build the operational infrastructure and marketing systems needed to scale. There is something incredibly satisfying about having a strategy. You finally know where you're going. The priorities are clear. The ideas make sense. You have a roadmap, a list of goals, and perhaps even a beautifully organized document explaining exactly what needs to happen next. Then Monday arrives. The strategy sits in a folder while you answer emails, put out fires, manage your team, respond to customers, and handle the hundred other things competing for your attention. Weeks pass. The plan still hasn't been implemented. This is one of the most common gaps in business growth, the distance between knowing what needs to happen and actually making it happen. A good strategy can provide clarity. But strategy alone doesn't change a business. Implementation does. Strategy is only the starting point Strategy and implementation are closely connected, but they aren't the same thing. A plan needs action: A strategy defines direction. It helps a business determine where it wants to go, what it needs to prioritize, and how it intends to compete or grow. Implementation turns those decisions into action. Harvard Business Review has written extensively about the challenge of translating strategy into results, noting that many organizations struggle when they move from defining a strategy to actually applying it. For a small business, the same principle applies. You can know that you need better lead follow-up, clearer team roles, improved systems, stronger marketing, or more efficient operations. Knowing isn't the same as doing. Information isn't transformation: This is where strategic consulting can sometimes fall short. A business owner receives a list of recommendations and feels energized. The possibilities are exciting. The roadmap makes sense. But then the consultant leaves, and the owner is responsible for figuring out how to implement everything while continuing to run the business. The strategy wasn't necessarily wrong. The problem is that there was no bridge between the plan and execution. Why implementation gets stuck Understanding why strategies stall can help business owners address the problem before investing in another plan. Too many priorities: One of the fastest ways to derail implementation is to make everything a priority. If your strategy contains 25 initiatives, your team may struggle to determine what actually needs to happen first. A useful implementation plan creates hierarchy, "What needs to happen now? What can wait? What depends on another project being completed? What can be eliminated altogether?" Prioritization turns a strategy from a wish list into a manageable sequence of actions. No clear ownership: A task without an owner is often a task that doesn't get completed. If a strategic plan says "improve client onboarding," several questions need to be answered. Who is responsible? Who documents the process? Who updates the systems? Who communicates the changes to the team? Who measures whether the new process is working? Implementation requires more than assigning responsibilities. It requires making ownership visible. Turn goals into projects The next step is translating broad objectives into specific work. Define the outcome: Start with the result you want. "Improve operations" is a strategic objective. "Create and implement a standardized client onboarding workflow by November 15" is an actionable project. The second statement gives the team something they can actually execute. A strong implementation plan connects every major strategic goal to a specific outcome. Break it into milestones: Large projects can become overwhelming when the finish line feels too far away. Break them into milestones. For example, a client onboarding overhaul might involve: Auditing the current process Identifying gaps Designing the new workflow Building the necessary templates and systems Training the team Launching the new process Reviewing the results Now, "improve onboarding" has become a sequence of manageable actions. That is the difference between strategy and implementation. Build accountability Implementation doesn't happen simply because everyone agrees that something is important. Create deadlines: A strategy without deadlines can remain perpetually "in progress." Every significant initiative should have a target completion date, along with milestones that make progress visible along the way. Deadlines create urgency and provide a point of reference for accountability. Review progress: Accountability shouldn't mean constantly checking whether someone completed a task. It means creating a regular rhythm for reviewing progress, identifying obstacles, and adjusting priorities. Weekly or biweekly implementation check-ins can answer 3 essential questions. What was completed? What's next? What's getting in the way? This creates momentum without requiring the business owner to micromanage every detail. Give your team context Implementation becomes much easier when employees understand why the work matters. Explain the why: If a team is told to change a process without understanding the reason, resistance is natural. People may wonder why the existing system isn't good enough or whether the change is simply another temporary initiative. Explain the connection between the project and the larger business goal. If you're changing your onboarding process because inconsistent onboarding is creating customer complaints, say so. If you're restructuring responsibilities because growth has created communication gaps, explain that connection. People are more likely to take ownership when they understand the purpose behind the work. Give people authority: You cannot ask a team to take ownership while requiring the owner to approve every decision. Implementation requires appropriate decision-making authority. Define what team members can decide independently, what requires collaboration, and what genuinely needs leadership approval. The goal is to create accountability without creating bottlenecks. Make systems support strategy Even the best team can struggle when the underlying systems don't support the plan. Connect the workflows: Suppose your strategy calls for increasing sales. That strategy affects marketing, lead management, sales follow-up, onboarding, customer delivery, staffing, and reporting. Those aren't separate problems. They're connected parts of the same business system. If marketing generates more leads but the sales team can't follow up quickly, the strategy breaks down. If sales closes more customers but onboarding is inefficient, growth creates operational problems. If delivery expands without adequate staffing, customer experience suffers. Implementation requires looking at how these pieces interact. Automate where it helps: Automation can make implementation more sustainable, but it shouldn't replace thoughtful process design. First determine what should happen. Then determine who should own it. Then identify where technology can make the process faster, easier, or more consistent. Automation is most effective when it supports a well-designed workflow, not when it's used to compensate for a confusing one. Measure the results Implementation without measurement can become activity for activity's sake. Choose meaningful metrics: Every strategic initiative should have some way to determine whether it's working. The appropriate metrics depend on the goal. A sales strategy might measure qualified leads, conversion rates, average deal value, and revenue. An operations initiative might track turnaround time, productivity, errors, or customer satisfaction. A team initiative might monitor retention, performance, or completion rates. The goal isn't to measure everything. It's to measure what tells you whether the strategy is producing the intended result. Adjust as you learn: Implementation is not a straight line. New information will emerge. Customers will respond differently than expected. A process may create an unexpected bottleneck. A team member may identify a better approach. That doesn't mean the strategy failed. It means implementation is generating information that can improve the strategy. Harvard Business Review's research on strategy execution emphasizes the importance of adapting to changing conditions and coordinating execution across an organization. A strong strategy should provide direction without becoming so rigid that the business can't respond to reality. Protect the implementation time Perhaps the biggest implementation challenge for entrepreneurs is simple, they don't have enough time. Stop adding more: Business owners often respond to an implementation problem by adding another solution. Another consultant. Another software platform. Another course. Another strategy. But if the existing plan isn't being implemented, adding more information rarely solves the problem. Sometimes the business doesn't need another idea. It needs dedicated capacity to execute the ideas it already has. Move from reactive to proactive: When an owner spends every day responding to immediate problems, strategic implementation gets pushed to the bottom of the list. Eventually, the business becomes trapped in a cycle. The owner creates a strategy, daily operations take over, the strategy isn't implemented, the business struggles, and the owner creates another strategy. Breaking that cycle requires creating protected time, ownership, and operational support for implementation. When to seek expert help There is a point when trying to execute everything yourself becomes counterproductive. Recognize the gap: You may need implementation support if you have a clear strategy but consistently struggle to execute it. Other warning signs include projects that remain unfinished, recurring operational problems, unclear team responsibilities, inconsistent processes, or a business owner who remains involved in every decision. These aren't necessarily signs that you need a better strategy. You may need someone to help turn the strategy you already have into coordinated action. Choose execution support: This is one of the areas where DedicatedVirtual Professional Services has a distinctive position. DedicatedVirtual doesn't simply provide strategic recommendations and leave the business owner to implement them. Its current services combine strategic planning with hands-on operational support, including Online Business Management, project and team management, systems creation, workflow automation, and KPI tracking. Its Strategic Growth Plan is similarly structured around action. The service includes a customized roadmap, a 90-day action plan, recommendations for tools and systems, and an implementation and accountability component. DedicatedVirtual also states that its team can assist with implementation when clients need additional support following the strategy work. That distinction matters. The value isn't simply having someone tell you what to do. It's having the strategic direction, operational structure, accountability, and implementation support needed to actually do it. Final thoughts A strategy can tell you where to go. Implementation is what gets you there. If you've invested in strategic planning but still find yourself overwhelmed, stuck, or constantly pulled back into day-to-day operations, the answer may not be another strategy session. It may be time to execute the strategy you already have. Start by choosing your priorities. Turn goals into specific projects. Assign ownership. Establish deadlines. Create accountability. Build the systems that support the work. Measure the results. Then adjust based on what you learn. Remember that implementation doesn't mean blindly following a plan. It means creating enough structure to move forward while remaining flexible enough to respond to what you discover along the way. At DedicatedVirtual Professional Services, the focus is on helping business owners move from scattered operations and unfinished initiatives toward structured, sustainable growth. Through strategic growth planning, Online Business Management, project and team management, systems and workflow support, and performance tracking, DedicatedVirtual helps bridge the gap between knowing what needs to happen and actually getting it done. Because a strategy sitting in a document isn't a growth strategy. It's a possibility. The real value begins when someone takes the plan, puts it into motion, measures what happens, and keeps moving forward. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from LaShall Marie Dodson LaShall Marie Dodson, Business Strategist & Meta Ads Specialist LaShall Dodson is a Business Strategist, Certified Meta Ads Specialist, and founder of DedicatedVirtual Professional Services LLC. With over 25 years of experience at Fortune 500 companies, including S&P Global, she brings enterprise-level strategy to established business owners ready to grow.Her unique approach combines operational systems thinking with data-driven advertising. She doesn't just run campaigns; she builds the backend that makes them profitable. LaShall specializes in identifying the gaps in process, systems, and strategy that others miss, then implementing the solutions. Her clients consistently move from overwhelmed and stalled to organized, staffed, and scaling.

Written by Aravind Sakthivel, Author & Technology Leader Aravind Sakthivel is a global IT technology leader and author of The Leadership Trap: Why Smart Leaders Fail and How to Break Free. He spent 18 years within the Danaher ecosystem, leading technology portfolios and enterprise transformations. His work focuses on aligning technology with business outcomes Disconnected systems slow decisions, create rework and weaken customer service. A focused 120-day programme can begin restoring control by improving the processes and data behind them. The starting point is to understand where value gets stuck. During my Master of Business Administration (MBA), I had the opportunity to learn from a former IKEA chief information officer (CIO). One lesson stayed with me. Global scale does not require technological uniformity everywhere. Disciplined process design and clarity about where standardisation creates value matter more. Enterprise Architecture should simplify the business, not merely standardise the technology. Begin with the value stream. Identify the process and data problems, remove unnecessary steps, standardise where it adds value, connect the information, then automate what remains. There is little value in automating waste. The phases below provide a working sequence rather than fixed deadlines. Their pace depends on scope, system access and the business’s capacity to deliver change. Follow the customer journey Across technology transformations, I have seen businesses invest in integration and reporting while leaving the causes of fragmentation untouched. Sales knows the customer, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) holds the order, operations manages production, and finance tracks margin. Each team can be busy and competent while the overall customer journey remains slow. My Enterprise Architecture training at Carnegie Mellon reinforced a lesson from practical delivery, begin with business capabilities and the flow of value. Follow an order from quotation through pricing, credit, production, delivery and payment. Look at the whole journey before deciding which platform needs replacing. Lean calls activity that consumes resources without creating customer value muda. In transactional work, it often appears as duplicate entry, spreadsheet reconciliation, avoidable approvals and queues between teams. A task might require ten minutes of work but spend two days waiting. Automating those ten minutes leaves the main constraint in place. Find the biggest constraint During days 1 to 30, choose one priority value stream, such as order to cash, and walk it with the people doing the work. Follow real transactions rather than relying only on process diagrams. Identify where information is entered twice, approvals stall or teams correct data received from elsewhere. Assess the master data supporting that journey. Who owns customer and product records? Which system is authoritative? Where do duplicates originate? Do business units use the same definitions? An apparent ERP problem may be a customer data problem, unreliable reporting may begin with inconsistent product hierarchies. Agree a baseline for a few useful measures, such as order lead time, rework, on time delivery and cash collection. By day 30, aim to have a current state map, named process and data owners, and a ranked list of constraints. Keep the scope manageable, understanding one important value stream properly is more useful than documenting every process superficially. Include the cost of waiting in the assessment. An order delayed by missing customer information may affect delivery commitments and cash collection, even if correcting the record takes only minutes. Separate processing time from elapsed time, and examine where errors first enter the journey. Ask frontline colleagues which workarounds they rely on and why. Those answers often reveal dependencies that system inventories miss. Agree who can resolve issues crossing departmental boundaries, because a process owner without decision authority will struggle to change them. Simplify before adding technology During days 31 to 60, bring business owners and technology teams together to remove the largest source of waste. A focused Kaizen, or continuous improvement exercise, can test whether each approval, handoff and correction still serves a purpose. Some steps exist because an old system once required them. In order to cash, repeated credit checks and pricing exceptions passing through several managers may delay an otherwise straightforward order. Clear approval thresholds, cleaner customer records and agreed standard work can improve flow before any new software is introduced. Retain controls that manage real financial or regulatory risk, and remove duplication with the responsible owner’s agreement. Commercial excellence needs the same attention. Customer, pricing, order and service information should help sales make informed decisions. Identify the information needed for pricing discipline or customer prioritisation, then clarify its ownership and quality. By day 60, the priority process should have fewer avoidable handoffs and a clearer route for exceptions. Test the revised process with a small group before extending it. Make the new approval thresholds and responsibilities easy to follow, and check whether staff understand when an exception requires escalation. Standard work should capture the best agreed method while leaving room for legitimate local requirements. A regulatory obligation, customer contract or manufacturing constraint may justify variation. The important distinction is whether that variation serves a current business need or simply survives from an earlier arrangement. Record the reason so the next improvement team does not have to rediscover it. Build a trusted view During days 61 to 90, use Enterprise Architecture to connect the improved process across existing systems. A business does not have to replace every enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and warehouse platform before it can gain useful visibility. Governed interfaces and a shared information model can support a focused operational view while those systems continue running. Common definitions matter more than an attractive dashboard. If business units calculate backlog differently, placing their figures together simply makes the disagreement visible. Agree on what customer, order, margin and on time delivery mean, how they are calculated, and who maintains each definition. Start with information that supports a specific decision. Operations may need demand, stock and delivery constraints, commercial leaders may need pricing and customer profitability. Show when data was refreshed and where gaps remain. By day 90, aim for a tested view of the selected value stream, with fewer manual reconciliations and clearer accountability for data quality. Data quality needs an operating routine behind the dashboard. Define checks for missing fields, duplicates and failed interfaces, with named owners and a route for correction. Trace important measures back to their source so teams can investigate discrepancies. Access should reflect the sensitivity of the information and the decisions people need to make. Avoid creating another uncontrolled reporting layer that depends on one specialist. Document the essential mappings and calculations, and ensure business owners can explain what each measure represents before leadership begins relying on it. Automate what still matters During days 91 to 120, automate repetitive work that remains after the process has been simplified. Use rules for predictable cases and workflows to route exceptions to a named owner. AI can assist where interpretation adds value, such as summarising an operational issue across several sources, subject to appropriate access controls and human review. If delivery performance deteriorates at a plant, bring production status, inventory, supplier constraints and affected orders into one view. The manager can investigate with context rather than begin by requesting separate reports. For a margin exception, assemble price, discount and cost information so the responsible team can assess the cause. Keep the technology proportionate. A simple rule may be enough, an unnecessary process step can be removed entirely. Test automation on a limited scope, monitor incorrect exceptions and assign someone to maintain it. By day 120, aim for a small number of working improvements with measurable outcomes rather than a large collection of unfinished experiments. For AI, agree on what a useful answer looks like before testing the tool. A summary should distinguish confirmed facts from possible explanations and allow the reader to inspect the underlying information. Missing or outdated records should be visible. Where recommendations could affect customers, pricing or production, retain accountable human judgement. Track whether the tool reduces investigation time without increasing errors or rework. This gives the business evidence about where AI helps and where a simpler approach remains more dependable. Choose the next investment A single global enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may eventually be the right choice, but it should follow evidence about business value, cost and risk. One platform can still contain inconsistent processes. Assess whether each application should be retained, integrated, migrated, replaced or retired after understanding the value stream. The first 120 days will not erase years of fragmentation. They can establish a baseline, simplify a priority process, create trusted visibility and test useful automation. Review results against the original measures and use what you learn to choose the next constraint. Continue reviewing the selected value stream after the initial programme. Compare results with the baseline, investigate deterioration and update standard work. Discuss persistent exceptions with the people performing the work and agree on who will resolve each cause. Before expanding, confirm that the first improvement has an owner, reliable measures and enough support to continue. Start by tracing a customer order this week. Where does it wait? Who owns that delay, and what would remove it. Follow me on LinkedIn, visit my website for more info, and get my book on Amazon! Read more from Aravind Sakthivel Aravind Sakthivel, Author & Technology Leader Aravind Sakthivel is a global IT technology leader and the author of the book The Leadership Trap: Why Smart Leaders Fail and How to Break Free. He is a former Chief Information Officer (CIO) across Danaher Operating Companies, where he spent 18 years leading multi-million-dollar technology portfolios. He previously worked at market-leading organizations including Oracle, KPMG. Also provided services to General Electric and Toyota in consulting. Aravind holds an MBA from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, completed leadership programmes at Harvard Business School, and is a Certified Enterprise Architect from Carnegie Mellon University. Alongside his book, he has published research on autonomous AI for enterprises in the Well Testing Journal. He is currently based in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Written by Gayle Wilson, Business Coach for Female Leaders Gayle Wilson is the author of Where the Waves Break and founder of Confidence Reclaimed. Through her mentorship, she helps high-functioning women reconnect with their success and develop sustainable self-leadership. What happens when success is built on borrowed expectations instead of self-knowledge? There is a moment that arrives quietly in many leadership journeys, so quietly that we can easily mistake it for something else. Nothing outwardly has necessarily gone wrong. The business may be growing, your reputation may be well established, and the team may be looking to you for direction. By every external measure, you may have become the leader you once imagined you would be Yet beneath all that success, another conversation can begin to emerge, one that is considerably harder to articulate than a staffing issue or a strategic decision. It's the rather uncomfortable awareness that the person turning up to lead each day is becoming increasingly unfamiliar. Is it fatigue? A shift in priorities? Perhaps a little boredom? All are possible. But through the leaders I work alongside, I have become increasingly curious about another possibility. Somewhere between becoming successful and becoming responsible for maintaining that success, have we begun living a version of leadership that was never entirely ours? The leader you imagined becoming is rarely the leader you were asked to become None of us enters leadership as a blank page. Long before we hold the title, employ the team or carry significant responsibility, we have been collecting little pieces of information about what authority looks like. We watched our parents, teachers, managers, mentors and people we admired. We noticed who was listened to, who appeared powerful, who commanded a room and who seemed to have all the answers. Without necessarily realising it, we began collecting ideas about the kind of person we might need to become if we ever found ourselves in charge. Some of those lessons serve us beautifully. Others can become remarkably expensive. I have worked with naturally collaborative people who believed leadership required them to become harder, warm people who deliberately created distance because they feared familiarity might weaken their authority, and thoughtful leaders who felt enormous pressure to have an immediate answer simply because everybody else was looking towards them. Rarely do I believe this is conscious pretending. More often, it is a very human response to uncertainty. When we haven't accumulated enough experience to completely trust our own judgement, borrowing somebody else's certainty can feel safer than standing inside our own incompleteness. And here's the tricky part. Sometimes it works extraordinarily well. We achieve things. People respect us. The business grows. So naturally, we assume the version of ourselves producing those results must be the right one. But I wonder whether there comes a point when the leadership character we originally created to help us find our feet becomes something we forget to take off. Perhaps we need to become more accurate, rather than more impressive I have been thinking a great deal about what I call Identity Accuracy, which I describe as the alignment between who you know yourself to be and who your life requires you to become each day. It's slightly different from the familiar encouragement to simply be authentic. Of course, leadership will ask us to grow beyond what feels natural. There will be times when we must be firmer than we feel, calmer than the circumstances warrant and courageous enough to make decisions without knowing exactly how they will turn out. I hope leadership continues asking us to stretch ourselves throughout our lives. But there is a difference between rising to an occasion and living permanently inside the version of ourselves we created to meet it. Identity Accuracy invites us to become curious about whether the way we lead genuinely reflects how we think, communicate, make decisions and relate to others, or whether we have become extraordinarily good at maintaining somebody else's interpretation of a successful leader. And the clues that something isn't quite fitting can be surprisingly ordinary. The little clues that something doesn't quite fit Sometimes it's the highly capable business owner who is brilliant with people, creative in their thinking and exceptional at solving complex problems, yet continually forgets appointments or loses track of the smaller details. They begin questioning their own competence when perhaps they've simply never created systems that support the way their mind naturally works. Sometimes it's the leader who cannot delegate. Every decision needs their approval, every problem finds its way back to their desk, and eventually they become frustrated that nobody seems capable of operating independently. Yet underneath it all might sit a long-held belief that a good leader should be across absolutely everything. I find that one particularly interesting. Is it genuinely about maintaining standards, or have we quietly attached our sense of worth to being indispensable? Then there's the naturally thoughtful person who needs a little space to process information but has filled their diary with meetings because being constantly available looks like commitment. By the end of the week, they're exhausted, irritated and wondering why they no longer enjoy a job they once loved. Perhaps the most revealing clue is when somebody says, "I just don't feel like myself anymore." Whenever I hear that, I become curious about what myself actually means. Were they more patient? More playful? Did they laugh more easily? Were they somebody who enjoyed conversation rather than rushing through it? Did they once have the mental space to imagine possibilities instead of spending every day responding to problems? Of course, forgetfulness, exhaustion and frustration can have many causes. They are not proof that somebody is living outside their Identity Accuracy. But they are information worth becoming curious about, particularly when the way we have structured our leadership is continually working against our natural strengths. I sometimes wonder whether what we call burnout can also contain a little grief for a version of ourselves we haven't visited in a very long time. Success has an extraordinary ability to hide misalignment Perhaps one of the reasons these patterns are difficult to recognise is that external success can continue long after our internal experience has begun to change. We naturally assume that growth means things are working. And financially, operationally or reputationally, they may well be. But success measures outcomes, it doesn't necessarily tell us whether the life required to maintain those outcomes still reflects what matters to us. Our values are not fixed. What mattered at thirty may look very different at fifty. The appetite for risk, the desire to be involved in everything, the hours we once happily worked or the personal sacrifices we were willing to make may have been entirely appropriate for the season we were in. But businesses don't automatically reorganise themselves when the human being at the centre of them changes. The wheels keep turning, people continue relying on us, and we can find ourselves maintaining a leadership identity that was built around priorities we no longer hold. This is where I become interested in the distinction between being successful and feeling genuinely connected to the success we've created. You can have an impressive business and feel strangely absent from your own life. You can be respected by everybody around you while privately questioning whether you even like the person you've become at work. And you can be extraordinarily good at something without necessarily wanting to keep doing it in the same way. None of this means the success was wrong. It may simply mean that the person maintaining it deserves the same consideration as the business itself. The freedom of no longer having to play the part The leaders I find most compelling are rarely the ones who appear invulnerable or who have carefully perfected the art of looking like they're in control. They are often the people who have become comfortable knowing what is theirs to hold and what is not. They can admit when they don't understand something, invite another person's intelligence into the room and make difficult decisions without needing everybody to agree with them. They are not less authoritative for doing so. In fact, I think there is a lovely maturity in leadership that no longer requires constant protection of an identity. A naturally warm person can be warm and still maintain boundaries. A thoughtful person can take time to consider a decision without appearing weak. A leader can delegate responsibility without becoming less valuable, and someone can acknowledge their limitations without those limitations becoming the measure of their competence. The way we relate to ourselves also has a habit of travelling downstream. When we believe authority requires certainty, our teams may become reluctant to ask questions. When we believe being indispensable makes us valuable, we can unintentionally prevent capable people from growing. But when we are comfortable enough to remain curious, others are given permission to contribute, challenge and think. Perhaps the greatest benefit of Identity Accuracy isn't simply that leadership becomes more comfortable for us. It's that the people around us get to experience a leader who is no longer spending quite so much energy trying to be somebody else. A little reflection for your next drive The longer I work with leaders, the less interested I become in helping people manufacture a more impressive version of themselves. I am far more interested in helping them understand themselves accurately enough that their ambition, natural strengths, values and responsibilities begin working together rather than continually pulling in different directions. So perhaps on your next drive, when the noise of the day has settled and you have a little time alone with your thoughts, you might ask yourself which parts of your leadership genuinely feel like you, which expectations you have carried simply because you believed you should, and whether the person you are becoming still feels like somebody you know and enjoy being. Perhaps the most interesting question of all is this, if you no longer needed to prove that you belonged in your leadership role, what kind of leader would you give yourself permission to be? Because sustainable leadership will always ask us to rise when the moment requires it. The beautiful part is discovering that we can rise to those occasions without losing the ability to return to ourselves afterwards. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Gayle Wilson Gayle Wilson, Business Coach for Female Leaders Gayle Wilson is an Australian confidence and wellbeing mentor, author of Where the Waves Break, and founder of Confidence Reclaimed, a mentorship for high-functioning women reconnecting with their success. Known for cutting to the chase, she is authentic, sincere, and highly relatable. Gayle delivers signature talks, hosts a podcast on confidence and resilience, and leads workshops that help businesses prevent burnout and build empowered, high-performing teams. Her mission is to help individuals and organisations reconnect to purpose, cultivate sustainable self-leadership, and thrive without compromise.

Written by Christophe Zoghbi, CEO & Founder of ZAKA Christophe Zoghbi is an AI entrepreneur, strategist, CEO and founder of ZAKA, an AI transformation company advancing adoption across the MENA region. He helps organizations move from AI awareness to practical capabilities, intelligent workflows, and scalable solutions. What if the biggest opportunity in AI isn't building the technology, but knowing what to do with it? For years, professionals have been told to learn AI or risk falling behind. But after working with companies on AI adoption, I've noticed a different problem emerging, businesses have access to more AI than ever, yet many still don't know where to start. McKinsey's 2025 State of AI report found that 80% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function. Yet only about one-third have started scaling AI across the enterprise. The technology isn't the bottleneck anymore. Knowing how to apply it is. So, who helps companies figure that out? This is where the AI consultant comes in. An AI consultant helps businesses understand where AI can create real value, which problems are worth solving, what solutions make sense, and how to turn those decisions into an actionable roadmap. It requires more than knowing the latest AI tools. It requires understanding how a business works, how to identify opportunities, and how to connect technology to business outcomes. Importantly, it doesn't necessarily require a technical background. What if your existing career is your advantage? A marketer understands customers, an operations professional understands processes, and a product manager understands problems and priorities. A consultant understands how to diagnose a business and advise decision-makers. Add AI expertise to those skills, and you have a combination that is becoming increasingly valuable. PwC's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found that jobs requiring AI skills have grown 69% since 2019, compared with 9% growth across the overall jobs market, while workers with AI skills command an average 62% wage premium. The opportunity may not be to start your career over for AI. It may be to bring AI into the career you already have. We saw the gap, so we built for it Through our work with companies, we kept seeing the same gap, organizations needed people who could bridge business and technology, identify AI opportunities, and turn them into practical solutions. Plenty of courses covered using AI tools and technical programs for building AI systems. But no structured path existed for business professionals to learn how to consult companies on AI. We saw this gap and decided to build it. ZAKA launched the Certified AI Consultant (CAC) Program, the first program of its kind worldwide, designed to help professionals from different backgrounds enter AI consulting without requiring coding or technical experience. Throughout the program, participants learn how to identify AI opportunities inside businesses, conduct AI discovery, design practical AI roadmaps, develop consulting proposals, and guide organizations through AI adoption and implementation. Since its launch, 100+ professionals have joined the CAC Program, and graduates have already started working with clients and offering AI consulting services themselves. Now, we’re preparing for our next batch of consultants, equipping them with the knowledge, frameworks, tools, and practical experience they need to build real careers in AI consulting and deliver measurable value to businesses. About the program The Certified AI Consultant Program combines flexible self-paced learning with live, hands-on guidance to give you both the knowledge and practical experience needed to become an AI consultant. The program includes 12 pre-recorded modules that you can complete at your own pace, alongside 12 live, interactive workshops where you’ll apply what you learn through real-world scenarios, guided activities, discussions, and practical exercises. Throughout the program, you’ll work through incremental project milestones, building your project step by step while staying on track and receiving guidance along the way. You’ll also have access to weekly office hours, giving you regular opportunities to ask the instructor questions, get feedback, troubleshoot challenges, and receive guidance on your progress. Rather than simply watching lectures, the live component is designed around judgment building, real-world application, problem-solving, and active participation. You’ll have lifetime access to all self-paced course materials, while live workshops and office hours will remain available to you for up to 6 months, giving you plenty of time to learn, build, and put your skills into practice. If you’re interested in exploring this career path, learn more about the Certified AI Consultant Program here. Follow me on LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Christophe Zoghbi Christophe Zoghbi, CEO and Founder of ZAKA Christophe Zoghbi is an AI entrepreneur, strategist, CEO and founder of ZAKA. He works with organizations across the MENA region to transform AI ambition into practical capabilities, intelligent workflows, and scalable solutions. Through ZAKA, he has helped build a growing AI community spanning more than 18 countries while supporting corporations, governments, universities, and professionals in adopting AI effectively. His work sits at the intersection of business strategy, technology, talent development, and ecosystem building. Christophe’s mission is to make AI accessible, actionable, and impactful while helping the region shape its own AI future.

Written by Tiffanae Dawn Luke, Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist Tiffanae is a Clinical Ayurveda Specialist dedicated to restoring balance, vitality, and resilience through personalized Ayurvedic care. Working with clients worldwide, she combines ancient wisdom with modern insight to support sustainable energy and long-term well-being. You walk into a room and forget why you went there. You reread the same paragraph and realize you haven't absorbed a word. A familiar name takes longer than usual to come to you. You sit down to work, but your mind feels cloudy, scattered, or simply tired. We often laugh these moments off. I'm getting older. I'm just busy. I need more coffee. I didn't sleep well. Sometimes, that may be all it is. But when mental fog becomes a pattern, I believe it deserves our attention. Not our fear, our attention. Because one of the most valuable things Ayurveda teaches us is that the body and mind are always communicating. The question is whether we're listening. Mental clarity doesn't exist in isolation We tend to think about brain health as something separate from the rest of the body. Ayurveda does not. Your mental clarity exists within an entire system. How are you sleeping? How well are you digesting your food? Are you eating regularly? How much stress are you carrying? Are you moving your body? Do you have opportunities to recover? Are you constantly stimulated from the moment you wake until the moment you fall asleep? All of these factors matter. When someone tells me they don't feel mentally sharp, I don't want to look only at the fog. I want to understand the person experiencing it. Stop asking only, “How do I get rid of this?” When something doesn't feel right, our first instinct is often to make it disappear. We search online. We buy a supplement. We change our diet. We try what worked for a friend. They try what worked for a friend. They follow the latest health trend. They eliminate foods and add new routines. Yet often, they still don't feel their best. Ayurveda encourages us to ask a different question, "What may be contributing to this pattern?" That shift, from chasing an effect to becoming curious about the larger pattern, is important. Mental fog may coexist with poor sleep for one person. For another, it may appear during periods of intense stress. Someone else may notice it when their daily routine becomes chaotic or when they aren't eating well. These situations aren't identical. Why would we expect the solution to be? Your brain needs rhythm The brain is often expected to perform on demand regardless of how we treat the rest of the body. We stay up late and expect concentration the next morning. We skip lunch and expect steady energy all afternoon. We move from screen to screen without a pause and wonder why our minds feel overstimulated. We work through exhaustion and call it discipline. Ayurveda places tremendous value on rhythm because the body functions through rhythm, sleeping and waking, eating and digesting, activity and recovery, engagement and rest. When these rhythms become chronically disrupted, we may begin to feel the effects throughout the body and mind. Sometimes supporting mental clarity begins with surprisingly basic questions, "When are you sleeping? When are you eating? When are you resting? And when does your mind ever get to be quiet?" Digestion and mental well-being are connected Ayurveda has long placed digestion at the center of health. We aren't nourished simply because we eat nutritious food. Our bodies must also be able to digest, absorb, and utilize what we consume. That is one reason I pay attention to digestive patterns when someone comes to me concerned about energy or mental clarity. Are meals regular? Do certain foods leave you feeling heavy or sluggish? Are you eating while distracted or rushed? Do you have consistent energy after meals, or do you crash? Rather than automatically eliminating foods or following a popular diet, Ayurveda looks at the individual. What supports your digestion? That answer may not be the same as your friend's. Rest is not the same as recovery You can stop working without truly resting. Many of us finish a long day and immediately turn to our phones, television, social media, news, or another form of stimulation. The body may be sitting still, but the mind isn't. True recovery requires periods when the nervous system isn't constantly being asked to process more information. This can be particularly important for people whose lives require significant decision-making, caregiving, multitasking, or emotional labor. Sometimes the mind doesn't need another productivity strategy. It needs space. Movement matters, too Supporting the mind isn't only about becoming still. Movement can also be an important part of daily well-being. Walking outside, stretching, practicing yoga, gardening, or engaging in appropriate exercise can create a transition between periods of concentrated mental activity. Again, the appropriate amount and intensity are individual. Some people need more movement. Some are already pushing themselves too hard and need more restoration. This is why knowing yourself matters. Personalized support changes the question Generic wellness advice asks, "What should everyone do for better brain health?" Personalized wellness asks, "What does this person need right now?" That distinction is at the heart of my work. An Ayurvedic assessment considers the whole individual, their constitution, routines, sleep, digestion, energy, stress, environment, and current concerns. From there, support may include changes to daily routines, nutrition, restorative practices, movement, stress management, or targeted herbal support when appropriate. The goal isn't to overwhelm someone with a new lifestyle. It's to identify where a few intentional changes may provide the greatest support. Consistency matters more than the latest trend We live in a culture fascinated by optimization. There is always a new supplement, diet, morning routine, device, or wellness hack promising better performance. But some of the most powerful health practices are remarkably ordinary. Sleep consistently. Eat nourishing food. Move your body. Create periods of rest. Reduce unnecessary stimulation. Pay attention to what changes how you feel, and do these things often enough to notice patterns. Knowing what supports you is valuable. Doing it consistently is where that knowledge begins to become useful. This is why accountability can be such an important part of personalized wellness. Know yourself better One phrase appears again and again in my work, know yourself better. Pay attention to when you feel clear. Notice when your energy changes. Observe what happens after a poor night's sleep. Notice which routines help you feel grounded and which leave you scattered. Your body provides information every day. Learning to recognize those patterns helps you ask better questions and make more informed decisions about your well-being. When a new or persistent cognitive change concerns you, bring it to a qualified medical professional rather than assuming it is simply stress, aging, or something you should manage on your own. Self-awareness includes knowing when to seek additional care. Final thought Mental clarity isn't something we can demand from the brain while ignoring the rest of ourselves. The mind is part of the whole. Support your sleep. Support your digestion. Support your nervous system. Move your body. Make room for recovery, and pay attention. You don't need to chase every new wellness trend. You need to become more familiar with the person you live with every day, you. The more you understand your unique needs, the more empowered you become to create lasting health and vitality. Health is not a destination. It is a relationship, and learning to listen is part of that relationship. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tiffanae Dawn Luke Tiffanae Dawn Luke, Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist Tiffanae is a Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist specializing in personalized Ayurvedic wellness programs that support nervous system regulation, detoxification, and long-term vitality. She works with clients worldwide through private and virtual consultations, helping individuals understand their unique constitution and restore balance from the inside out. Her approach blends ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with modern lifestyle realities, offering practical, sustainable strategies for lasting health. She believes true prosperity begins with a regulated nervous system and a body that functions efficiently for decades to come.

Written by Susan F. Moody, Intuitive Business, Life & Success Coach As a Life Mastery Certified Coach®, Susan integrates spirituality with practicality, guiding women to discover their unique Soul Goal™ and chart a personal path to success and happiness. Unlock your inner wisdom, align your heart with your mind, and uncover actionable steps that resonate with your authentic self. I have a good friend whom I truly admire. Not because her life is perfect. Not because she never has a bad day. Certainly not because nothing ever gets to her. What I admire is what she does after something gets to her. She may take a moment to vent. She may talk it out. She may get frustrated, disappointed, or downright annoyed. You know what? I think that's healthy. Sometimes you just need to say, “This stinks!” and give yourself permission to feel it. But then something happens. She turns the corner. She finds something good in her life to smile about. She shifts her attention. She reminds herself that whatever is happening right now isn't the entirety of her life. I have watched her do this enough times that I've started paying attention to her secret. I think it comes down to this, she doesn't deny the difficult moments. She simply refuses to let them have the final word. So, with her permission, here are a few of her lessons for getting through the darkest of days. 1. Give yourself permission to vent One of the things I admire most about my friend is that she doesn't pretend everything is wonderful when it isn't. If she's frustrated, she says so. Sometimes you need to get something off your chest. Keeping every disappointment bottled up doesn't magically make it disappear. Talking with someone you trust can help you process what you're feeling and put things into perspective. Action step: The next time something is really bothering you, give yourself a little time to vent. Talk to someone you trust, write it down, or simply say out loud what you're feeling. Then give yourself permission to move on. The goal isn't to live in the frustration. It's to acknowledge it and then turn the corner. 2. Look for one good thing When we're having a difficult day, our attention naturally gravitates toward what's wrong. That's understandable. But if we stay focused there, it can begin to feel as though everything is wrong. My friend has a knack for finding one little thing that makes her smile. It might be a funny conversation, a good cup of coffee, a beautiful sunset, a favorite song, or simply something she is grateful to have in her life. It doesn't erase the problem. It simply reminds her that the problem isn't the whole story. Action step: When your day feels dark, stop and ask, “What is one good thing in my life right now?” Don't overthink it. Find one thing. Then find another. 3. Don't let one moment become your whole day We've all done it. Something goes wrong first thing in the morning, and suddenly the entire day feels ruined. A difficult conversation happens, and we carry it with us for hours. One disappointment becomes evidence that nothing is going right. But one moment is just one moment. Action step: When something goes wrong, try saying, “This is a difficult moment. It doesn't have to become a difficult day.” Then consciously choose what you want to do with the next moment. You don't have to let the last five minutes determine the next five hours. 4. Find something that makes you smile Sometimes we wait until we feel better before we do something that makes us feel better. Why not reverse that? Put on the music that always lifts your spirits. Call the friend who makes you laugh. Take a walk. Watch something funny. Sit outside. Do something that reconnects you with a lighter part of yourself. Action step: Create your own personal “mood-lifting list.” Write down five things that reliably make you smile. Keep the list handy for those days when you need a little help turning the corner. 5. Remember that this, too, will pass Perhaps the greatest lesson I've learned from watching my friend is that she doesn't expect every day to be a good one. She simply trusts that a bad day is not forever. Life moves. Circumstances change. Feelings change. Problems get solved. New opportunities appear. Sometimes, something wonderful shows up when you least expect it. Action step: When you're going through a particularly difficult moment, remind yourself, “This is where I am today. It isn't necessarily where I'll be tomorrow.” Give yourself permission to believe that things can change. The Wise Woman says We are all going to have dark days. There will be disappointments, frustrations, losses, unexpected challenges, and moments when we wonder how we're going to get through whatever is in front of us. You don't have to pretend those moments don't hurt. Vent. Cry. Talk it out. Feel what you need to feel. Then, when you're ready, turn the corner. Look for something good. Find something to smile about. Remember what is still right in your life. My friend has reminded me that resilience doesn't necessarily mean bouncing back with a smile immediately. Sometimes resilience is simply knowing when it's time to stop looking at what's wrong and start looking for what's right. So on your darkest days, don't ask yourself to have the perfect attitude. Just ask yourself, “What good can I find here?” It might be something small. But sometimes, one small spark is all you need to begin finding your way back to the light. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Susan F. Moody Susan F. Moody, Intuitive Business, Life & Success Coach Susan F. Moody, Wise Woman, is dedicated to empowering women to tap into their own inner wisdom and discover the power of intentional living. Along her personal journey, Susan became a wisdom seeker looking for ways to connect with the divine for inspiration and guidance. She started working with the I Ching, angel cards, wisdom cards, runes, and pendulum work over 20 years ago and now offers these spiritual insight tools as an option to her clients. She has also developed a tangible technique, the Soul Goal™ finder, to help clients answer the contemplative question “Why am I here?”

Written by Bronwen Sciortino, International Author & Simplicity Expert Bronwen Sciortino is an International Author and Simplicity Expert who spent almost two decades as an award-winning executive before experiencing a life-changing event that forced her to stop and ask the question, ‘What if there’s a better way to live? Something fascinating happens online when somebody shares that something has gone really well for them. They might have won an award, landed an opportunity they have been working towards, reached a milestone in their business, published a book or finally achieved something that has mattered to them for a very long time. The congratulations start to show up in the comments, but then somebody feels the need to add a little perspective. You might see a comment suggesting they were lucky or had opportunities other people didn’t have, while someone else might point out that plenty of people have achieved much more. Before long, a moment that started with somebody simply sharing something they’re proud of becomes a conversation about whether they really deserve to be quite so pleased with themselves. It’s as if seeing another person say, “Something wonderful happened to me and I’m proud of it,” can make us remarkably uncomfortable. I think there’s something in that worth talking about, because our reaction to another person’s success can sometimes tell us far more about what is happening in our own life than it tells us about theirs. What exactly are we trying to correct? When somebody shares good news, there can be this strange urge to correct the size of their celebration. It’s almost as though we have collectively decided there is an acceptable amount of pride a person is allowed to show, and if they cross that invisible line, somebody takes it upon themselves to make sure they remember their place. What interests me isn’t really the comment itself. I’m much more curious about what happens in the few seconds before somebody types it and why another person’s happiness can suddenly feel like something we need to temper. After all, their award hasn’t taken our successful moments away, and their promotion hasn’t changed our job. Someone else publishing a book doesn’t stop us writing one, just as another person’s business doing well doesn’t alter what might be possible for ours. None of these things has actually changed our life, yet sometimes another person’s success lands as though it has something to do with us. When someone else’s success becomes a mirror This is where things get uncomfortable, because another person’s success can show us things about our own lives that we weren’t expecting to look at. There you are, perfectly happy scrolling through your feed when you see someone announce the opportunity you secretly wanted, or you watch someone take a leap you have been talking yourself out of taking for years. Perhaps they are being recognised for their work at exactly the moment you have started wondering whether anybody notices yours, and suddenly a post that had absolutely nothing to do with you has touched something tender. Their post hasn’t created those feelings. It has simply bumped into something that was already there. I’ve experienced this myself. I’ve watched someone receive something I would have loved to receive and felt that uncomfortable little reaction somewhere inside me. There have also been moments when somebody else’s progress has made me question my own, even though the two had absolutely nothing to do with each other. I don’t think having that reaction makes us terrible people because uncomfortable feelings are part of being human. What matters is what happens next. We can use that discomfort as a reason to make someone else’s achievement smaller, or we can become curious about what it might be showing us. Their success might remind us that we are unhappy with something in our own life or bring us face-to-face with something we keep saying we want but haven’t done anything about. It is much easier to examine their success than become curious about our reaction to it, but perhaps the latter has much more to offer us. We have a complicated relationship with people being proud I wonder whether part of the problem is that many of us have grown up with some fairly complicated messages about pride. We are encouraged to believe in ourselves and acknowledge our achievements, but there can be a surprisingly narrow window between being seen as confident and being accused of thinking too highly of yourself. We want people to succeed, provided they remain suitably humble about it, which means openly saying, “I worked incredibly hard for this and I’m proud of myself,” can make people surprisingly uncomfortable. So, we learn to soften our good news by making sure everybody knows how lucky we were or finding some way to make the achievement sound a little smaller. There is nothing wrong with gratitude, and very few of us achieve anything entirely on our own, but gratitude and pride are allowed to exist together. Perhaps seeing someone being openly proud of themselves feels confronting because so many of us have learned not to be. Apparently, you can be successful too often There seems to be another invisible rule around success that I find particularly interesting. We might be genuinely happy to celebrate someone the first time they share good news, but when that same person starts sharing success after success, the tone can change surprisingly quickly. An award might attract warm congratulations, and another achievement a few weeks later may do the same. But when someone seems to keep doing well, you can almost feel patience starting to wear thin. Instead of simply celebrating with them, people start questioning whether they are showing off or trying to make their life look perfect. This is often where the meanness starts to creep in. It might appear in an openly nasty comment, but it can just as easily arrive disguised as sarcasm, a backhanded compliment or a joke that conveniently takes some of the shine off the moment. I find this fascinating because their fifth success hasn’t actually taken anything more away from us than their first one did. What has usually changed is the story their success has started telling us about our own life. One achievement can feel like a moment in time, whereas repeated success can begin to feel like evidence that someone else is moving forward while we feel stuck. If they keep being recognised while we feel unseen, each new announcement can press a little harder against whatever we are already feeling about where we are and where we thought we would be by now. Yet seeing someone share several successes doesn’t mean we are seeing everything happening in their life. We are looking at individual moments they have chosen to share without knowing what happened between them or what it took to get there. Perhaps they aren’t showing off at all. They might simply have decided that when something good happens after all the work it took to get there, they are going to let themselves enjoy it. If we were comfortable applauding their first success but find ourselves irritated by their fifth, that change in our reaction might be worth becoming curious about. There shouldn’t be a quota on how many good things another person is allowed to experience before we stop being happy for them. We never see the whole story Social media gives us a tiny window into somebody else’s life and then encourages us to believe we have seen the whole house. We haven’t. We don’t see the years of work that came before the achievement, and we may know nothing about the rejection, doubt, setbacks, bullying, harassment or sacrifices that were part of getting there. We weren’t in the room when they wondered whether they should keep going, which means we have very little idea what the moment of the win might actually represent to them. What looks effortless from the outside may have required far more resilience than we know, which makes me wonder why we can be so confident that we know exactly how much celebration somebody else’s achievement deserves. What if we just let people have their moment? What if, instead of pretending jealousy or envy never show up, we became curious when they did? There is a big difference between noticing that someone else’s success has stirred something uncomfortable in you and deciding that making a nasty, sarcastic or minimising comment will make that discomfort go away. Sometimes that feeling might simply be showing us that there is something we want more of in our own life. Seen that way, someone else’s success might show us where we have been settling or remind us of something we still care about enough to pursue. None of that requires the other person to become smaller. Maybe we don’t need to decide whether we would have posted about their achievement or whether we think it is important enough to celebrate. We don’t need to compare what they have done with somebody else’s accomplishments before deciding whether they have earned the right to feel proud. Maybe it’s OK for us to be disappointed for ourselves and happy for the other person at the same time. If it matters to them, perhaps that can simply be enough. There will always be people who achieve things we would love to achieve, just as there will be moments when we have something another person desperately wants. Turning every one of those moments into a comparison means somebody will always appear to be ahead and somebody else will always appear to be behind, and I can’t imagine anything more exhausting than constantly keeping score. I would much rather live in a world where people are allowed to say, “I did this, and I’m really proud of myself,” without immediately feeling the need to make themselves smaller so everybody else can stay comfortable. When somebody else’s success hits a tender spot in us, perhaps we can resist the urge to do something that hands that feeling on to them. We can sit with it for long enough to wonder why it landed where it did and whether it is trying to show us something about our own life. Because somebody else having their moment doesn’t take anything away from ours. Perhaps the bigger question is whether we can let them enjoy theirs while we work out what we want to do with our own. Bronwen Sciortino is a Simplicity Expert, Professional Speaker, and internationally renowned author. You can follow her on her website, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Read more from Bronwen Sciortino Bronwen Sciortino, International Author & Simplicity Expert Bronwen Sciortino is an International Author and Simplicity Expert who spent almost two decades as an award-winning executive before experiencing a life-changing event that forced her to stop and ask the question, ‘What if there’s a better way to live?’ Embarking on a journey to answer this question, Bronwen developed a whole new way of living, one that teaches you to challenge the status quo and include the power of questions in everyday life. Gaining international critical acclaim and 5-star awards for her books and online programs. Bronwen spends every day teaching people that there is an easy, practical, and simple pathway to creating a healthy, happy, and highly successful life. Sought globally for media comment as an expert and working with corporate programs, conference platforms, retreats, professional mentoring, and in the online environment, Bronwen teaches people how easy it is to live life very differently.

Written by Daryl Henderson, Transformational Facilitator & Creative Visionary Daryl Henderson is a master coach, facilitator, and artist known for blending spiritual traditions, shadow work, and leadership training. He is the co-founder of Odyssey of Man, the creator of True North Coaching, and the founder of One11, a health & wellness brand. Every culture that lasted had a way of marking a man's crossings. We got rid of ours, and now most of us go through the biggest changes of our lives with nobody waiting on the other side. There's a fork in the road in front of me, and I've been pacing in front of it long enough to wear a groove in the dirt. It feels like years. Maybe it has been. Down one road, I can actually see where it goes. It's not perfectly clear, but I can see well enough to know where it's headed. It's the known road, it's survivable, maybe even has some fun adventures along the way, and I could describe the next ten years of it to you in reasonable detail if you asked. The other one leads off into a haze about forty feet ahead, and then I can't see a damn thing. No visibility at all. I can't shake the feeling that it's the one I'm supposed to take, even though it goes straight into a foggy mess of blank white with no idea where it's going to take me. For me, it's the choiceless choice: go into the predictable future that I'm almost certain will leave me in lack and wanting, or choose the road that I have zero clue where it will take me but know deep down is the one I'm meant to follow. I'm 46 years old, and I've stood at this crossroads more times than I can count. Each time it arrives, it's a bit of a surprise. Each time I end up with the same conclusion: I can't not choose the unknown road once I hear the call echoing from far away. Some part of my soul needs to know what will happen. So I choose the unknown road, time and again, to whatever end. So I'm not writing this because I don't know how to cross. I've crossed plenty. I'm writing it because of what happens after. I go into the fog, something in me gets rearranged out there, and then I come back and walk into a coffee meeting on Monday. Most of the time, nobody knows I went through something, much less that I somehow came back different. There's no one waiting, no one to tell me what I am now on the other side of it. And at some point, it occurred to me that if I were a young teenager in an older culture standing at that same fork, somebody would have already come and gotten me. There'd be a fire waiting for us somewhere, and a person whose actual responsibility was to walk me into a process that would change me and help me choose the path ahead. I would not be sorting it out alone in my own head at two in the morning. Now the ceremonies have mostly been replaced with self reliance, a few mildly encouraging words from our fathers if we're lucky, and a heaping dose of ways to numb our pain so that we forget there ever was a crossroads. Initiation isn't a one-time event I never even knew initiation was really a thing until I was in my early thirties. When I finally did learn about it, I filed it under something that happens to boys. A ceremony you get once, somewhere around thirteen or sixteen, that turns you from a kid into a man, and then you're done. That's the part I had completely backwards. Because the thresholds don't stop when you stop being a teenager. A man will cross a dozen of them before he dies. It happens at his first real loss. When he gets married or becomes a father. It happens with the marriage ending, or the marriage deepening in a way that requires him to become somebody else and to grow into a new version of himself. It most definitely happens when burying a parent. Or when the business we committed years to building has to fold. Or when he turns fifty and understands in his body, not his head, that there is less road behind him than ahead. Every one of those moments is a threshold. Every one asks him to leave a version of himself behind and come back as somebody who has been changed. There is not one single structure in modern Western life that marks any of them. Nothing that helps us reflect on those moments and see what we've learned, who we've become, and lets us consciously enter into a new phase after going through a great transformation. Yes, there are parties. We have milestones and awards. We have a card and a cake and somebody's brother-in-law making a speech. What we don't have is anybody standing on the far side of the threshold whose job it is to receive you and help you understand who you are now and where you are going. We don't have elders or guides that we respect who are there to honor the crossing and bless it. I believe this is a great loss, and it's something that we can remedy. What the old cultures actually did Every culture that lasted long enough to be studied had a process for this, and the anthropologists who compared hundreds of them across every continent kept finding the same three part structure. Separation. You get taken out. Away from the familiar, away from whoever has been comforting you. A real leaving, and it usually hurts in some way. It's meant to be uncomfortable and to rattle your cage a bit. The ordeal. Something genuinely hard happens, and nobody rescues you from it. That's the entire design. You find out what you're made of by being put somewhere you can't talk your way out of. The return. You come back, and the community receives you as something other than what left. Oftentimes, you're bestowed with a name, a role, or a responsibility. Everybody who watched you go now treats you differently. Look at how completely the Lakota built all three into a single practice. Haŋbléčeyapi, which translates roughly as "crying for a vision," is one of their seven sacred rites. A young man of around thirteen would go up on an isolated hill for one to four days with a blanket and a pipe, and no food and no water. Bear Butte in South Dakota is one of the traditional sites. But he doesn't just wander off into nature by himself. A holy man, a wičháša wakáŋ, prepares him and takes him to the place. When it's over, helpers come back for him, walk him to the sweat lodge, and he tells the holy man everything he saw and heard... and the holy man interprets it for him. That last part is the piece we lost. He isn't left to make sense of his own vision alone. Someone sits with him and helps him discover what it means and what he now carries. The research on traditional rites of passage found something I didn't expect when I went looking. The thing that determined whether an initiation actually worked was not the severity of the ordeal. It was whether the initiate came back and was given an actual task, a real way to contribute, or something to uphold on behalf of everybody else. We kept the ordeal. We are, in fact, obsessed with the ordeal in the Western world. Just look at our movies, stories, and reality TV shows. It's alllll about the drama. We got rid of the wise elders and their processes, and now we wonder why we feel lacking and lost. Why nobody is standing there Anywho, before I go further, I want to say something about our fathers, because this is where these conversations usually curdle into blaming our dads or families for not initiating us, and I'm not interested in that. Most of our fathers weren't initiated either. Mine was angry and volatile, and I've done a lot of work on what that cost me. But he was also a man handed nothing, by a man who was handed nothing, going back however many generations to wherever this tradition actually broke off. You can't transmit what you never received. He was improvising too, and he was doing the best he could without any of the language I've had the luxury of learning. None of which is absolution, and it doesn't shrink the damage that was done by him, his father, or me, for that matter, by an inch. It does mean the thing worth being angry at is much bigger than any one man, and staying angry at our fathers is a very effective way of never looking at the size of this issue. The chain broke, and everyone since has been making it up. The homemade version The strange thing is that somewhere deep down, the process of initiation is built into us. Especially males. So instead of being guided into it, now we improvise... badly. A boy does something dangerous in front of other boys and gets a rush that fades in a week. It looks like hazing to get into a fraternity or a football team. Or maybe he does it alone because being with other boys was too scary or intimidating, so he becomes a man who runs an ultramarathon, or trains for a year for a fight, or takes a job that pays well but eats his soul, or goes to a plant medicine ceremony every four months for a decade. Separation, yes. Ordeal, absolutely. Return? Nobody there. No community waiting. No one whose standing in the group entitles them to say, "We saw what you did. Here's what you are now. Here's what you're carrying for us from here. Here's how we're going to help you integrate this into your life." Generally, what happens when the rush of completion or success wears off is that nothing about his actual place in the world has changed. So he does it again, and bigger, or better. Don't get me wrong, there's actually nothing wrong with this. It's predominantly how the Western world works these days. It's just that we're often missing the final step that might actually bring some peace of mind and belonging that so many of us spend our lives seeking. Personally, I spent about 15 years on that loop, and I was very good at it, and it nearly cost me everything. So what does a modern-day initiation look like? I'm glad you asked because it's a great question. Does a proper initiation always have three stages? In short, I'd say yes. You need separation from ordinary life, even if it's just for a few days. Otherwise, you can't gain enough new perspective. That can be travelling, camping, or a weekend seminar. Next, there needs to be a genuine ordeal. If you're staying in your comfort zone, you're not growing and being forced to change. This is 100 percent necessary. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but you do need to get out of your normal way of doing things to effect real change. If you want to change things in your life, you have to change things in your life. Lastly, nature abhors a vacuum. So you need a community that receives you afterward and helps you find a way to carry your life forward. Even if it's just one person, you have to share these moments with someone other than yourself. Otherwise, you'll just end up in the same loop. We are social creatures, and therefore we need one another. This isn't a weakness. It's how we're designed and how we've survived as long as we have. Here are some examples of places to start looking if you want to start down this path. Recovery communities. This is the one almost nobody notices, and it is the most structurally intact initiation left in the Western world. You separate, publicly, by naming it in a room. The ordeal is early sobriety, which is genuinely brutal and which nobody can do for you. Then... and this is the part most people don't notice that does the real work... you get received by everyone there. You stand up in front of the room, you get handed a physical object, and people who watched you do it applaud. Then you're given a responsibility to carry it forward because eventually you sponsor somebody else. That's all three, running weekly, for free, in church basements in every town in America. Purpose-built men's initiations. The ManKind Project's New Warrior Training Adventure has been running weekend initiations for men for around forty years, explicitly built on this structure, and they're clear that it isn't a retreat or a workshop. Sacred Sons has been around for over 8 years now and has done a great job initiating thousands of men of all ages. Cliff Barry's Shadow Work seminars are grounded, safe, and rooted in decades of practice. There are plenty of others out there. You just have to go looking and see which one resonates. The reason these work is not the intensity of the weekend. It's that you go home into an ongoing group afterward. The weekend without the group is just another ordeal. Wilderness fasting, done properly. Not a hiking trip. Days alone with no food, with a guide who prepared you beforehand and a circle that receives your story when you walk back in. The reception is the part many people skip, and it's a major piece of the work. Fatherhood, if you consciously build it. Right now, there's a baby shower for her and nothing whatsoever for him. Some men are starting to change that. A night before the birth with the men who know him. Something asked of him. Something said out loud to him afterward about what he is now. It's not traditional, and it doesn't have to be. Build your own, in 3 steps If none of the above is available to you, the minimum viable version is smaller than you think, and you can construct it this year. Name the threshold you want to cross to specific people. Not a journal, not an Instagram post. Choose one or two men who know you and whom you trust, and meet with them. Make sure these are men who you respect and who respect you. Don't choose your friend who is cynical about the world and jokes about everything. Set a time to meet and stick to it. Preferably in person, but Zoom works, and tell them what you're leaving behind and what you're moving toward. Tell them why you're doing it and why this really matters. That's the separation, and saying it out loud is what makes it real rather than just a thought you had that you'll forget in a couple of weeks. Set an ordeal with a deadline and no exit. Something genuinely hard that you have not done, that you cannot buy your way out of, with a date attached. It doesn't have to be physical. Making the apology you've avoided for nine years is an ordeal. Ending the relationship or closing the business, when either should have been done two years ago, is an ordeal. Telling the truth in a room where it costs you is an ordeal. Paying off the debt you've accrued is an ordeal. Choose one and set a date. Arrange the return before you go. This is the step everybody skips, and it is arguably the most important. Ask those men you first met with to be there on a specific date. Ask one of them to say, out loud, in front of the others, what he saw you do and what he thinks has changed in you. It might feel uncomfortable, staged, and mildly ridiculous, but it will likely land in your body in a way that no other achievement ever has. There's something about being witnessed and seen in your return that really changes the way you see yourself. Three steps. No plane ticket, no plant medicine, no gurus... and no permission required from anybody. I've watched men run some version of that and come out walking differently, and I've watched men do a $15,000 retreat with no way to integrate it once they got home and end up being exactly the same guy six weeks later. Long story short. Integration is everything. The question Time for the harsh truth. Nobody is coming to save you or me. That's not self pity or nihilism. It's just the accurate situation for a grown man in our Western culture, and the grief in that is worth actually feeling for a minute rather than skipping past. So I've started doing the only thing I can think to do about it, which is asking the men around me to stand on the far side of things and receive me, and letting me do the same for them. It's awkward. We're all making it up, and it's still one of the most useful things I've discovered. Which brings me back to my fork in the road. I'm still going to choose the fog. I always do, and that part was never in question. What's different this time is that three men know I'm standing here, they know why, and they know roughly when I'm going in. One of them is going to be waiting on the other side to tell me what he saw. That's the only thing I've changed, and it has changed everything about how the crossing feels. So here's what I'd like to leave you with. You're going to cross a threshold this year whether you mark it or not. Something is going to end, or begin, or ask you to become somebody you currently aren't. The only question is whether you choose to go through it alone in your own head, or whether you consciously choose to have somebody waiting on the other side who knows what you went in for. Who would you ask? Whose threshold are you supposed to be standing on the far side of, right now, without having noticed? See you on the other side. P.S. I'd like to hear about this one. What threshold have you crossed that nobody marked? Most men have several and have never counted them as anything. Leave a comment below, or reply to this email. I read everything. P.P.S. Daryl here. Men's coach, facilitator, entrepreneur and creative director with twenty years of helping people and brands find, share and live their potential. Cofounder of Odyssey of Man, creator of True North Coaching. If you're a man looking for the room, drop me a message here. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Daryl Henderson Daryl Henderson, Transformational Facilitator & Creative Visionary Daryl Henderson is a master coach, facilitator, and artist with over two decades of experience blending creativity, men’s work, and spiritual practices. He has photographed top brands and artists worldwide, including Nike and Michael Kors, and documented indigenous and peace gatherings across the globe. Drawing on this experience, Daryl guides high performers, artists, and businesses to express their stories through soul-aligned photography, branding, and personal transformation. He is the co-founder of Odyssey of Man, the creator of True North Coaching, and the founder of One11, a health and wellness brand. His work is playful, transformative, and designed to unlock authentic expression.

Written by Ladys Patino, Book Reviewer & Writer Ladys Patino is a distinguished writer and book critic specializing in organizational behavior, management, leadership, and community dynamics. Through her insightful reviews and analysis, she explores how literature reveals the complexities of leadership, business structures, and social interactions. Sooner or later, life interrupts the plan. A diagnosis arrives, a marriage ends, a career stalls, a storm hits, and suddenly the path we were sure of disappears beneath us. What separates the people who are destroyed by these moments from the people who are somehow deepened by them isn't luck or toughness; it's how they respond. The six books on this list, from bestselling classics to powerful new voices, are field guides for exactly those moments. Drawn from philosophy, memoir, medicine, and grief counseling, they share a hard-won conviction: that our obstacles, as painful as they are, can become the very ground on which we rebuild. Whether you're facing a setback at work, a crisis at home, or a threat to your health, these books offer both comfort and a way forward. The Obstacle Is the Way The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday. This modern bestseller took an ancient philosophy and turned it into a practical playbook for adversity. Drawing on Stoicism, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, Ryan Holiday argues that the very thing standing in our way can become the way forward, if we learn to see it differently. The obstacle that blocks us also points us toward the strength, patience, and creativity we didn't know we had. Holiday illustrates the idea with vivid stories of people from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart who turned disadvantage into opportunity, and distills their example into three disciplines: how we perceive a problem, how we act on it, and the will we summon to endure. Clear, bracing, and endlessly quotable, the book has become a touchstone for athletes, entrepreneurs, and anyone staring down a hard season. It's the ideal starting point for this list, a reminder that what blocks the path can become the path itself. Get it on Amazon. Pivoting From Blue One Year of Death, Divorce & Discovery by Skip Van Gardner. In the span of a single year, Skip Van Gardner faced the kind of trials that would flatten most people, and lived to call it the hardest but greatest year of his life. At the heart of this raw, propulsive memoir is a genuine brush with death: his 41-foot sailboat, Boatyard Blue, caught between two colliding squall lines some thirty miles off the Bahama Banks, with Van Gardner and a friend fighting to survive the open sea. Around that harrowing centerpiece, he writes candidly about the collapse of his marriage and the slow, stubborn work of putting a life back together. What keeps the book buoyant is its texture, music as a lifeline, walking and faith as daily medicine, humor as a life raft. Honest about despair but ultimately a story of reinvention, Pivoting From Blue shows how a person can be knocked down by loss on every side and still choose, day by day, to discover who they are becoming. Buy it on Amazon. White Coats and Black Swans A Doctor's Descent Into Misdiagnosis and Madness by Scott Standage, MD. Scott Standage spent more than two decades as a physician, until he became a patient inside his own healthcare network and watched the system fail him. In this gripping first-person account, the Stanford-trained doctor chronicles how a cascade of misdiagnosis sent his health, his career, and his reputation into free fall, and how he fought his way back, ultimately prevailing in a malpractice arbitration. The title's “black swan”, the European assumption that all swans were white until black ones turned up in Australia, becomes his metaphor for the diagnoses doctors dismiss as impossible until they happen. But this is more than one man's ordeal: Standage turns his story into a clear-eyed argument for diagnostic reform and the lost art of differential diagnosis. Equal parts medical thriller, personal reckoning, and call to action, it's an unsettling and important read for anyone who has ever had to trust a doctor, which is to say, everyone. Buy it on Amazon. Better at Life Negotiating Finite Time and Infinite Choices by Chris Mullen, PhD. Dr. Chris Mullen opens his book at the foot of Mount Rainier, in a state of physiological shock, dehydrated and depleted after nearly twenty hours of climbing on less than four hours of sleep, his body shutting down and his mind slipping into autopilot just to keep him alive. It's a harrowing scene, and he uses it to name a quieter crisis many of us know too well: the feeling of drowning in the combined demands of work and life. Mullen, a former Fortune 500 executive, longtime HR leader, and workplace strategist whose work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, argues that the familiar goal of “work-life balance” sets us up to fail, because it assumes a fixed equilibrium that real life never delivers. His alternative is negotiation: weighing trade-offs, honoring the season you're in, and choosing among competing priorities rather than chasing an impossible ideal. He returns to that mountain as his guiding metaphor, the months of training, the commitment, the summit you can't yet see, to show that a better life, like a hard climb, isn't achieved in a day but built one deliberate step at a time. For anyone stretched thin and tired of feeling like they're failing at an impossible standard, Better at Life reframes the whole problem and hands you a saner way through. Buy it on Amazon. Option B Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive and author of Lean In, found herself in the depths of grief, certain joy was gone for good. Option B is the bestselling book that grew out of that loss, written with psychologist Adam Grant, and it braids Sandberg's intimate story together with Grant's research on how people recover from hardship. Their core insight is that resilience isn't a fixed trait you're born with but a muscle anyone can build. The authors tackle the thoughts that deepen suffering, the sense that pain is permanent and all-consuming, and offer concrete ways to regain footing, support others in crisis, and rediscover gratitude and even happiness. Honest about despair yet ultimately hopeful, the book speaks to anyone facing adversity of any kind: the loss of a loved one, a job, a relationship, or a dream. It's a tender, research-backed companion for building strength in the aftermath of life's hardest blows. Buy it on Amazon. An Invitation to Thrive Cultivating Resilience and Purpose After Bereavement, Life Transitions and Multiple Loss by Claudia Coenen. Claudia Coenen is a thanatologist and grief counselor who has spent her career helping people rebuild after their lives are cracked open, and she has done the same in her own. In this warm, unhurried book, she reframes grief not as a problem to be solved but as an invitation: to feel what we feel, honor what we've lost, and slowly cultivate a new sense of purpose on the far side of loss. Weaving together her clients' stories, her own experience of multiple losses, and research on resilience and post-traumatic growth, Coenen gently guides readers through the “life-quakes” that upend us, death, divorce, illness, the transitions of aging. Rather than rushing toward recovery, she invites us to wander, reflect, and tend to ourselves with patience and creativity. Part companion, part toolkit, An Invitation to Thrive is a hopeful, deeply humane guide for anyone standing in the rubble of a shattered plan and wondering how to not just survive, but genuinely flourish again. Buy it on Amazon. What unites these six books, across philosophy and memoir and medicine, is a refusal to look away from life's hardest moments, and a stubborn faith that we can grow through them. Whether you turn to ancient Stoicism, a sailor's reckoning with disaster, a doctor's fight for the truth, a strategist's rethinking of our overloaded lives, or two counselors' wisdom on grief and resilience, the message rhymes: obstacles are not the end of the story. They are, often, where the most important part of the story begins. For anyone in the middle of a hard chapter, these books offer the same quiet promise, that it is possible to be broken open and, in time, to come back whole. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Ladys Patino Ladys Patino, Book Reviewer & Writer Ladys Patino is a distinguished writer and book critic with a specialization in organizational behavior, management, leadership, and community dynamics. Her expertise lies in dissecting and evaluating literature that delves into the intricacies of organizational structures, the nuances of leadership styles, and the complexities of community interactions. Patino's reviews and writings offer insightful perspectives on how these themes play out in various settings, providing valuable analysis for those interested in understanding and improving the functioning of groups, businesses, and societies.