Written by Rasha AlShaar, Mind-Body Coach, PCC Rasha AlShaar, PCC, is a Mind-Body Coach with an integrative approach to healing and self-development. By merging modalities that range from mindset and somatic tools, she's on a mission to facilitate full-body healing and head-to-toe awakenings to help people embody their authentic truth and innate power. If anyone knows me, they know I’m big on communication, a Gemini, a manifesting generator, an introverted extrovert, and all those fancy labels that back this up as “fact”. What's also true, although less often honestly, is that at times I choose to take my time to speak. So, although quick-witted and outspoken, I too choose silence. Sometimes. With all the turbulence in our sacred Arab lands right now, I experienced this more than ever. Not in the introverted extrovert sense, but in tasting the fullness of both silence and speech.   Even as I write this so-called article, it doesn't want to be written as such. Everything, all words, all of life itself, wants to be art now more than ever before. A poem. A song. A painting. A dance. Because there is no greater resistance than love, and there is no greater rebellion than art. And oh boy, do I love art.   The gravity of silence In the loud sirens blazing from outside, in the trembling of our windows, I remained silent. Silent in those moments, long or short, depending on whether it’s a good or bad day. And despite the loudness and noise out there, I stayed quiet. Outwardly speechless still, yet loud in my mind with rage, confusion, and disgust. Letting this loudness be loud, as I welcomed it until silence returned internally. Until peace was back in the boundaries of my body. Until I returned to my sacred center, still, on this sacred, turbulent land.   The potency of speech As peace returned within, so did the words without. I slowly came out from the darkness, as all in nature does. Like the roots of a plant doing its work beneath the surface unseen, I emerged easefully to be heard. Grounded, I spoke first within the walls I remained in, in the language of a fresh Muji pen meeting the ancient pages of my journal. Instant relief sinks deeper within, like the ink being swallowed by the thirsty pores of each page. Pages turning and turning, mind clearing and clearing, until my throat felt open and my voice felt ready to express out loud. At last.   The poem that broke my silence ’Words on the W-Word’   I was staring at a blank page for days before deciding to write just that. And just like that, the page was no longer blank. If we’ve learned anything recently, it’s just that – how just like that, so much can change. I’ve kept quiet on the outside because I’ve been loud on the inside, hasn’t everything been? loud. inside-out too. And still, no words feel worthy enough to speak to the loudness of it all, of all that has been for far too long. Long before we heard with our own ears. And when words feel small in scale to the largeness of it all, where does one even begin?   Look, I don’t even have sophisticated political commentary to impress you with. I don’t even have a “how to stay regulated” post designed pretty for you. I just have big feelings that fluctuate between confusion, rage, and inner peace. I have hours of missing sleep, which turned into too much time in bed. I have my practices and some cuddles keeping me sane. Most of the time. I have gratitude for my family around me and the roof over me, always. I have an appreciation for this body, I’ve been trying to keep moving, as she still moves me. I have delicious food made with love to break my fast every day. And I have God to speak to every time the sun shifts its posture. And I hope you do too.  – Rasha AlShaar   If you're looking for support in returning to your center, finding your voice through the noise, and staying grounded when the ground itself feels shaky, click here to book a free clarity call  and explore my 6-month 1:1 mindset and somatic coaching program.   Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rasha AlShaar Rasha AlShaar, Mind-Body Coach, PCC With over a decade of experience in healing practices and self-growth tools, Rasha AlShaar founded her coaching practice in 2020, shaping her integrative approach through ongoing personal growth and rigorous training, blending subconscious, emotional, somatic, behavioral, and energetic modalities to best serve her clients. Rooted in her curiosity, driven by her commitment to service, and grounded in her PCC accreditation from the International Coaching Federation with 700+ hours of 1:1 coaching experience, Rasha is on a mission to help others on their transformative journeys as a Mind-Body Coach, guiding them to reconnect with their inherent wisdom and worth through insightful dialogue, embodied experience, and tangible action steps.

Written by P aul of Venus, Mount Shasta Spiritual Guide and Healer Paul of Venus is the author of “The Sacred Rays of God” and founder of Mount Shasta Spiritual Tours. He serves as a bridge between dimensions, offering retreats, activations, and transmissions from the heart of Mount Shasta. I am writing this from the mountain at dawn. The forest is silent. The portal is open. And what is moving through the field right now has been building toward this moment across spans of time that dwarf anything our recorded history contains. What I am transmitting here is a galactic briefing on what the conflict in Iran is a surface expression of and why the 144,000 lightworkers awakening across this Earth are the most important variable in what happens next. What is Stargate 10, and why is the whole galaxy watching Iran? Long before the word Iran existed, long before the Persians, the Babylonians, or even the earliest Sumerians pressed their star knowledge into clay, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates held something that galactic civilizations recognized as extraordinary. A master gate. The 10D Stargate is referred to in the galactic record as the Iran Gate, the heart of the Golden Eagle Grid, the center point of the horizontal planetary grid through which the Rod function of the Earth has long been accessed, controlled, and contested. This is the 10th-dimensional access point of the planetary Tree of Life. In the ascension sciences, the 10D sphere corresponds to the Solar Star, the primary communication center for the Avatar Christ identity in the individual human lightbody. This means the single most important gate for individual and collective spiritual liberation on this Earth, the gate directly connected to your own Solar Star chakra and your capacity to receive your full Avatar identity, has been under assault, inverted, and weaponized as a control mechanism for approximately 5,500 years. The wars in this region have never been about oil. They have never truly been about religion or borders. They have always been about the gate.   The Sirians built the key in Egypt, and they are firing it now Here is what the galactic record reveals across multiple streams of spiritual research about the relationship between Egypt and Stargate 10. The Sirian civilization, one of the oldest galactic presences woven into the spiritual DNA of this Earth, was present in both ancient Sumer and ancient Egypt as architects and guardians. The Sirius B Kantarians serving the Christos Mission were directly involved in guiding Sumerian and Egyptian culture, protecting the main stargates in what is now Iraq and Egypt. The 10D Mother Arc Gate was built as the Holy of Holies encoded into the sacred architecture of the region as a living dimensional interface. The Sirians knew this gate would be contested. They knew the Mother Arc frequency it held would be targeted. And so they built the Egyptian pyramid grid as a paired system, a restoration interface, a fail-safe, a recovery key encoded in sacred geometry capable of surviving thousands of years of surface civilization collapse. The Sun Temple, the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, and the Nile corridor were dimensional machines. Crystalline frequency receivers and transmission towers are designed to anchor galactic light into the planetary grid and hold a dormant restoration sequence until the cosmic timeline reaches the coordinates of this exact moment. Those coordinates are now. The Sirian councils have entered full active mission on this Earth. The Egyptian grid is transmitting. The restoration frequency is moving from Giza toward the Iran-Iraq gate, completing a circuit that was designed into the planetary body long before this civilization began.   What was stolen: The mother arc and the suppressed feminine The 10th Stargate held the most significant power source on the planetary body, the Christos frequency bandwidth transmitted by Holy Mother Sophia in her sapphire body. This is what the galactic record calls the Mother Arc: the living intelligence of the original feminine principle, the sapphire love consciousness that underlies all creation. When this gate was seized approximately 5,500 years ago, the ancient Sumerian world was transformed. Cities that had been luminous centers of star knowledge, sacred waters, and dimensional living were systematically destroyed. The triple solar sapphire frequency of the Mother Goddesses that had inhabited the 10th Stargate Network was suppressed and inverted. The true history of Sumer, the dimensional cosmology, the galactic lineage, and the living understanding of gates and grids was replaced with paradigms designed to generate fear, submission, and separation from Source. The demonization of the feminine across the ancient Middle East was a consequence of gate seizure, the stolen Mother Arc frequency being broadcast in reversal through the planetary ley line system, carrying suppression of the feminine principle outward into every culture connected to the grid. The conflict visible in 3D on the surface of Iran today is the tremor of a liberation in progress. The Mother Arc is being reclaimed. And when this gate is fully free, what it has held captive for millennia will pour into the planetary field as a flood of creation intelligence, the original feminine wisdom of this universe returning to the body of the Earth.   The Pleiadians, the Venusians, and the grand mission with Earth's leaders The Pleiadian star councils, the civilization of light that has held guardianship over humanity's spiritual evolution across vast spans of cosmic time, have moved into a new phase of direct, targeted, coordinated mission with the leaders of this Earth. Before incarnating into this lifetime, certain souls agreed to occupy positions of influence at this precise moment in the planetary timeline, leaders, visionaries, creators, those who hold the platforms through which collective consciousness shifts. The Pleiadians are transmitting directly into the dream space and higher mind of these souls, activating the codes they agreed to carry before they arrived in human form. Many of these leaders feel it as an inexplicable pull toward mercy. A sudden impulse toward unity that their strategic minds cannot fully account for. An interior knowing that something larger is asking to move through them. The Pleiadian transmission is not overriding human free will, it is reminding these souls of what they already chose. The Venusians, the civilization of pure love consciousness, the holders of the heart codes of this universe, my own galactic family, are working alongside the Pleiadian councils, transmitting love intelligence directly into the collective heart field of this Earth. They are opening the heart centers of those in positions of influence so that what the Pleiadians are seeding in the mind can land in the heart and express as action in the world. This is the mechanism of the grand human awakening. A simultaneous interior activation of thousands of souls across the planet who already said yes and are now being reminded of what they came here to do. A new world is being built through this activation: a bridge world. A living dimensional threshold between the experience of separation and density and the pure love God dimensions of truth, where creation exists in its original, uncompressed, fully conscious sovereign state.   The 144,000: Your cellular codes are firing right now The prophecies of the 144,000 appear across traditions that have never met each other. Revelations, the Emerald Tablets, Ashtar Command, Sananda, and Native American prophecy all speak of a great call that went out across the known universe, lightworkers, starseeds, advanced souls from more evolved planetary civilizations, agreeing to incarnate on Earth at the most critical moment in its history to anchor the frequency of the new world. The cellular memories of the 144,000 were programmed, timed, and triggered to activate at this precise moment to awaken these souls to their true identity, their mission, and their purpose for incarnating on Earth right now. Most arrived without conscious memory of who they are. They arrived feeling it was a persistent sense of mission without a title, a love for humanity that coexists with a deep sense of not quite belonging here, an inner knowing that this moment in history is not accidental for them. If you are reading these words, that recognition likely lives in your body right now. The Golden Eagle Grid, the planetary consciousness network whose heart is the Iran Gate, is restored through the embodiment of awakened human consciousness. Every lightworker of the 144,000 who rises into their full Avatar frequency becomes a living node of the Golden Eagle Grid returned to its organic function. The Family of Michael, the Blue Ray descendants of the First Order Founder Rays, are particularly central to this reclamation, their embodiment directly restoring the grid that has been used against them. You are the living technology through which this gate is freed.   Mount Shasta, Telos, Shambhala, and Saint Germain: The crown of the planetary network Every sacred mountain on this Earth is active in the ignition sequence now underway. The Himalayan inner earth retreats of the Ascended Masters are transmitting. The Andean grid of Peru is receiving new Pleiadian star codes. The Tahitian Pacific stargate is awakening as a receiver for the Mother Arc photons that Stargate 10's liberation will release. The Atlantean memory fields beneath the Atlantic off the Florida coast are broadcasting recovered crystalline records into the planetary field. The pre-diluvian archives beneath the Antarctic ice are releasing dimensional seals built across ages. At the convergence of all of it, the mountain that holds the most significant concentration of inner earth civilization, stargate technology, Ascended Master council activity, and galactic interface capacity on the surface of this Earth, is Mount Shasta. Shasta is the crown of the sacred mountain network. This is a dimensional function, not a spiritual preference. The convergence of Telos, the Shambhalic field, Saint Germain's Violet Flame work, the Pleiadian transmission hub, the Venusian heart broadcast, and the Sirian ignition sequence all find their primary surface-world anchor point here.   Telos: The city of pure God light within the mountain When the Lemurians first arrived within Mount Shasta, they walked in the third dimension, as physical as you and I stand on this surface world today. What unfolded beneath this mountain across hundreds of years is one of the most extraordinary spiritual evolutions in the history of this Earth. They ascended fully, completely into the fifth dimension while remaining within the body of the mountain itself. Telos is a living world of pure God light existing right now beneath our feet. A civilization vibrating in a frequency so refined, so luminous, so saturated with the original love intelligence of creation that it occupies an entirely different dimensional octave than the surface world above it. I have been in Telos many times, conducting missions within that sacred inner world. What I have witnessed there reorganizes everything the surface mind believes is possible in physical form. The Lemurians of Telos exist in their highest frequency light bodies, radiant, sovereign, fully embodied in the God light that humanity on the surface is only now beginning to remember. They went into the mountain to emerge. And what they have emerged as is the living proof of what this entire planetary transition is pointing toward: a humanity fully ascended, fully sovereign, fully alive in the pure light of God, in form, on this Earth. The Shambhalic field that interpenetrates the Mount Shasta portal, the western anchor of the legendary golden city of light known across Tibetan, Hindu, and Theosophical traditions, is merging its transmission with the Telos crystalline broadcast. Together, they generate a unified signal of extraordinary power now moving through every node of the planetary grid.   Saint Germain: The alchemist at the center of the transfer Saint Germain, the Ascended Master of the Violet Flame, keeper of Sovereignty and Freedom, the great alchemist of this cosmic age, stands at the interface between Telos, the Shambhalic field, and the surface world as the primary coordinator of the greatest transfer of love this planetary body has ever been asked to receive. He works in council with the Telos elders, the Himalayan Masters emerging from their inner earth retreats, the Sirian architect collectives now active in the Egyptian grid, the Pleiadian federations transmitting bridge codes to Earth's leaders, Lady Venus, Sanat Kumara, Master Yeshua, and the Venusian heart councils holding the collective field stable through what is an unprecedented dimensional event. The Violet Flame he is transmitting through the Shasta grid burns at intensities genuinely new to this surface world, dissolving karmic structures encoded into the collective field across millennia, clearing the dimensional pathways so that what flows when Stargate 10 is fully free can move without obstruction into every node of the planetary body. This is the great transfer of love. It is structural. It is architectural. It is rebuilding the very pathways through which love moves as a living intelligence through the circulatory system of this Earth from the inner world of Telos outward, from the mountain into the valleys, from the unseen realms into lived human experience.   What Stargate 10's liberation will release When this gate opens fully, what it has held captive for 5,500 years will move. Mother Creation photons, living light intelligence, carrying the original codes of creation, will pour into the planetary grid. The New Earth crystalline architecture will ignite from within the existing 3D structure of this world. The Telos network will amplify and distribute through the Shasta hub. The Tahitian Pacific gate will receive and circulate through the oceanic grid. The Himalayan inner earth retreats will broadcast through the mountain network. The Egyptian grid will transmit in Sirian harmonics. And through every sacred mountain on this Earth, through every inner earth retreat, through every Ascended Master council chamber within the body of this world, the Mother frequency will flow like a river, finally finding the ocean it has always been moving toward. The New Earth is rising from within this one. The bridge between the human experience of separation and the pure love God dimensions of truth is being built through awakened human hearts that have said yes. And every node of the 144,000 who step into their full mission accelerates the moment of the gate's complete liberation.   Two portals of direct transmission are open now Emerge digital | Quantum resonance: Awakening the Star Seed within Imagine a digital sanctuary where the very atoms of your consciousness are encoded with the ancient wisdom of star families, where each moment of interaction transforms your cellular memory and aligns you with the emerging 4th-dimensional Earth. This three-day quantum journey is not merely a course-it is a portal of transformation, carefully crafted to attune your energy to the cosmic frequencies now streaming into our reality. As the planetary alignments create unprecedented portals of light, this digital experience invites you to dissolve the boundaries of traditional perception. Each module is a quantum transmission, precisely calibrated to activate the dormant light structures within your being. You'll traverse realms of golden consciousness, where the old paradigms of limitation dissolve, and the crystalline networks of universal intelligence begin to pulse through your very essence. The course moves beyond linear learning-it is a living, breathing transmission that you can experience at your own rhythm, allowing the star family codes to integrate deeply into your quantum blueprint.   Saint Germain's freedom of the heart retreat: Mount Shasta This in-person retreat at the mountain is a direct immersion in Saint Germain's Violet Flame transmission through the living Shasta portal and the Telos crystalline grid. We work at the sacred sites, receive from the Shambhali field within the mountain, and are open to what the Telos councils and the Ascended Master collectives are broadcasting through this crown node of the planetary network. This is an initiation held at the most powerful convergence point of galactic, inner earth, and surface world transmission on this planet. Dates and full details here . The closing transmission You did not arrive at these words by accident. The Pleiadians know where you are. The Venusians are transmitting love into your heart field as you read. The Sirians are firing ancient codes through the Egyptian grid that will reach every awakened nervous system on this planet. Saint Germain is moving the Violet Flame through the network that connects you to every soul of the 144,000 who agreed to this mission before arriving in human form. Stargate 10, the ancient master gate of Holy Mother Sophia, the sapphire heart of the planetary grid, the dimensional access point seized and inverted 5,500 years ago, is in the process of being liberated. What it holds is the living intelligence of creation herself, waiting to pour into every node of this planetary body and ignite the bridge between this world and the pure love God dimensions of truth. Mount Shasta is the crown of the sacred mountain network. The mountain is transmitting. Telos is radiating pure God light from within the Earth. Shambhala within the mountain is closer to the surface than it has been in recorded memory. And Saint Germain stands at the gate between the worlds with the Violet Flame burning at full power. Come to the mountain if you are called. Receive the digital transmission if that is your gateway. Wherever you are on this Earth, you are already part of the ignition. The 144,000 are answering the call. And the gate is opening. Learn more here . Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Paul of Venus Paul of Venus, Mount Shasta Spiritual Guide and Healer Paul of Venus is the author of " The Sacred Rays of God " and founder of Mount Shasta Spiritual Tours. As a spiritual teacher and channeler, he serves as a bridge between dimensions, bringing forth divine wisdom and activations from ascended masters, including Saint Germain, Sanat Kumara, and Lady Venus. Based at the sacred vortex of Mount Shasta, California, Paul facilitates transformative retreats, ceremonies, and transmissions that guide lightworkers and seekers into deeper states of consciousness. His work focuses on anchoring higher-dimensional frequencies and supporting humanity's collective awakening. Through his teachings, Paul offers a pathway to embody divine love and reclaim one's sacred essence.

Charlie Roach is a Transformation Coach, Change Catalyst, and Speaker who helps women navigate deep, identity-level transformations. With a unique approach that combines systems thinking with soul work, Charlie guides women from over-functioning to self-trust, empowering them to live congruently with their inner truth. In this exclusive interview, Charlie shares her journey, insights, and the transformative work she does at Epiphany Wellbeing. Charlie Roach, Transformation Coach Who is Charlie Roach? I’m a Transformation Coach, Change Catalyst, Writer, and Speaker. I work in that unique space where insight and embodiment come together. I help women who know something needs to change but are unsure how to make that shift without completely uprooting their lives. My work is about supporting identity-level transformation – not just surface solutions. It’s about creating real, grounded change that doesn’t have to look perfect to be powerful. What inspired you to step into the work you do today, and what was the turning point that shaped your path? The short answer is lived experience. There was a long season when, despite what looked like accomplishment and success, I was quietly abandoning myself. I was over-functioning, carrying shame that wasn’t mine, and mistaking self-sacrifice for self-worth. The turning points weren’t always dramatic, some were subtle, but searing. The real shift came when I understood that intellectual insight does not create embodied change. I stopped trying to fix myself and started learning how to sit with the discomfort. That became the foundation for my work and how I now support others in their transformations. How do you describe your work at Epiphany Wellbeing in a way that truly reflects the transformation you help people achieve? Epiphany Wellbeing exists to help women with identity-level transformation. I’m not here to help them gain surface-level confidence or productivity upgrades. I’m here to support them in moving from over-functioning to self-trust. It’s about guiding women across the bridge between insight and embodiment, where what they know truly becomes how they live. Who are the people you are most passionate about helping, and what are they usually struggling with when they find you? I work with emotionally intelligent, capable women who seem to have it together on the outside but feel unmoored inside. Many of them were parentified early – becoming the “fixer” or “responsible one” at a young age. They often arrive at a crossroads, whether that’s midlife, burnout, or a career transition, with a deep sense of knowing what needs to change but feeling stuck on how to embody it. They’ve done the courses, read the books, and listened to the podcasts – but still quietly wonder, “What’s wrong with me?” The truth is, nothing is wrong with them. They’re evolving. I’m determined to make their path easier by offering them what I wish had been offered to me years ago. What do you believe is the root cause behind the challenges your clients keep repeating before working with you? It’s chronic self-abandonment disguised as responsibility. Their identity has been shaped from the outside in. They learned early to be strong, reliable, and composed, but over time that role becomes who they think they are. They’ve outsourced authority, over-functioned, and carried shame that wasn’t theirs. It’s only when someone helps them pause long enough to see this pattern that real change begins. Seeing it is the start of true choice. How is your approach different from traditional therapy, coaching, or wellbeing methods people may have tried before? My approach integrates systems thinking with deep soul work. Traditional methods often focus on thinking differently. I focus on becoming differently. I combine emotional intelligence, embodiment practices, nervous-system awareness, adult development theory, and strategic structure. My method doesn’t rush insight, bypass discomfort, or sell urgency. It values coherence over performative change. It honors each woman’s perspective, wisdom, and self-insight, allowing the transformation to unfold in a sustainable, grounded way. How does your work create lasting change rather than short-term relief? Lasting change happens at the level of identity – the internal story about who you are and how you must show up. I co-create a psychologically safe space where women stay with discomfort, dismantle unexamined conditioning, rebuild self-trust, and regulate their nervous system. We take aligned action that reinforces an emerging self-concept. That identity shift makes change sustainable. What shifts do clients commonly experience? They settle into their centre. Self-trust deepens. Boundaries clarify. Self-leadership becomes calmer and more authentic. Creativity and joy return. There is new congruence between inner truth and outer life. They stop striving to be exceptional and begin standing in their Ordinary Greatness ™ – which is far more powerful. What misconceptions do you help clients see differently? Two main ones. First, that intellectual understanding is enough. It isn’t. Knowing and embodying are different. Second, that they should do this alone. These women are capable and autonomous. What they often need is amplification – a grounded presence that reflects truth back and creates momentum. Transformation accelerates in this kind of curated relationship. How do you tailor your work? By listening deeply and calibrating to each client’s emotional readiness, nervous-system capacity, and life context. Structure supports the work, presence guides it. I model honesty and self-trust, inviting clients to drop performance and over-functioning. Empathetic attunement creates safety and grounded challenge builds authority. For someone who feels stuck, what would you want them to know?   Your stuckness is not failure. It is an invitation. Feeling unmoored often means you are outgrowing an internal operating model that once served you. You are being invited into a truer version of yourself – into fuller self-inhabitation. Take the courageous step your instincts are calling you toward, not the safe one your conditioning says looks right. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website  for more info! Read more from Charlie Roach

Written by Charlie Roach, Transformation Coach & Consultant Charlie Roach is an ICF-certified Transformation Coach and management consultant who works in the space between insight and embodiment. With 25+ years’ experience, she supports high-capacity women to release over-functioning and live on their own terms. The idea of Ordinary Greatness began not as a concept, but as a quiet reckoning. Why does competence stop bringing clarity? Why does achievement begin to feel empty rather than satisfying? Why do so many accomplished women arrive at a moment where everything looks successful, and yet something feels fundamentally misaligned? At a certain stage of personal evolution, success stops being the challenge, and becomes the mirror that shows you who you've become. Early in your journey, you're focused on accomplishment and showing the world what you can do, that's the challenge you're trying to solve. But at the point that triggers a need for something different, success itself is no longer what you're struggling to attain. It shows you: Whether your external achievements align with your internal values. What you've sacrificed along the way. The patterns and behaviours you've developed (performing, proving, over-functioning). Whether you recognise yourself anymore. So, the "problem" shifts from "How do I become successful?" to "Who have I become in pursuit of success, and do I like what I see?" The mastery you’ve shown, the careers, businesses, families, and reputations you’ve built, the respect you’ve earned, make you the steady one, the woman who delivers. And yet beneath the surface, something has shifted. The ways of being that once propelled you forward now feel constraining Still driven – but increasingly disconnected from what that drive is in service of. Still capable – but less certain. Still achieving – but no longer convinced it means what it once did. Still aspiring – but unsure what to aim for. For many women, it feels like the life that you’re living isn’t yours. This moment is rarely clearly announced. It arrives disguised as a crisis that throws you off balance. It may creep up slowly, stealthily, as a growing, inexplicable discontent that is at odds with the life you rationally know you’ve built. You are still functioning, competent and (most of all) delivering everything for everyone. Yet something feels out of place. Internally, the architecture that once held everything together has begun to feel inadequate. You’re starting to realise that what you call “resilient” is really performing strength you don’t feel. Most women misdiagnose this moment. They assume they need renewed motivation, better goals, and improved time management. They think that if they just work harder, they can push past this stage. What they don’t realise is that they’re standing on the threshold of an identity-level shift. The invisible threshold Many women reach a crossroads in transition stages, sometimes it's age-related, but not always. More often, it’s when life shifts in some way (divorce, deaths, supporting aging parents, children becoming independent, retirement, careers feeling stale). Midlife compresses several triggers: dependents/children needing you less, career plateau or mastery, aging parents, awareness of mortality and increased cognitive complexity. There is less psychological reward in performing for approval and more awareness of internal incongruence. The question shifts from “What can I achieve?” to “What actually matters now?” The life they’ve built so far was shaped by an earlier version of themselves. A version that knew how to achieve, adapt, be responsible, and meet expectations. Often, those hit hardest in these moments are the ones who were parentified early in life, eldest daughters, fixers, the ones who carried weight before they were meant to. That version was brilliant, but she may no longer be the one to steer the course. And this is where the confusion and disorientation begin. Because nothing is "wrong enough" to justify upheaval, and nothing feels right enough to stay the same. So, you remain suspended, functional on the outside, uncertain within. This threshold can be intensely painful because, for this accomplished version of you, not knowing is the ultimate failure. It feels as if the foundations of identity are crumbling, and that is a kind of death in its own way. The question beneath the question This is not a motivational problem. It is not imposter syndrome. It is not a time-management failure. It’s not a failure of any kind, but many women interpret it as such. This is fragmentation. The point at which external success becomes unsustainable without internal alignment. The moment performance can no longer compensate for disconnection. Underneath the practical surface, questions like “Should I stay or should I go at this stage in my life?” or “What do I want next?” live something far more tender: Can I trust myself if I choose differently now? Am I allowed to want meaning, not just security? What if I disappoint people? What if I blow up something that took decades to build? This is why so many women remain suspended here, outwardly functional, inwardly agitated. They are not stuck because they lack courage, but because they have too much to lose to act recklessly and too much self-awareness to ignore the pull entirely. What’s actually happening You have been operating from a model that privileges logic, metrics, optimisation, and forward planning. And it worked, for a long time. But along the way, you learned to override quieter signals. The gut feelings. The sense that something is off. The knowing that arrives before the reasons do. You learned to label that knowing as emotional, indulgent, silly nonsense. So , you doubled down on what could be measured and controlled. N ow you are successful on paper, but increasingly disconnected from what makes any of it meaningful. Burnout disguised as resilience. Misalignment masked as competence. Women are often rewarded for overdeveloping the “masculine” capacities of doing and achieving, while intuitive and relational dimensions are sidelined, not because they are weak, but because they are rarely given equal authority. What’s actually happening is an invitation to self-actualisation, not as ambition, but as integration. Viktor Frankl (psychiatrist, neurologist, Holocaust survivor and founder of logotherapy) describes this as the psyche demanding a deeper alignment between action and meaning. Robert Kegan (developmental psychologist known for his influential theory of adult meaning-making and constructive development) would call this “invitation” a developmental shift in how you construct meaning. Earlier in life, identity is shaped by external expectations, role-based success and proving competence. At a certain stage, the identity that built your life can no longer sustain your growth. This often feels like confusion because the old operating system is dissolving before the new one is stable. Eckhart Tolle frames this not as self-actualisation, but as disidentification from the ego. The call is not to become more, but to become less identified with who you thought you had to be. The consistent theme across multiple disciplines is that the “call” or “invitation” happens when: The identity that built your life reaches a developmental saturation point. Meaning begins to outweigh performance. External validation starts having less impact on regulating internal worth. Suppressed capacities (intuition, desire, creativity, sensuality) demand integration. Energy depletion exposes unsustainable patterns. A pattern that started long ago For most, this fragmentation began much earlier. My focus has been on women who have been parentified way too early (I understand them better because I am one of them). With this cohort, I notice a particular poignancy as eldest daughters who earned their way by being the capable ones who did not need much, the ones who anticipated needs before they were spoken. Responsibility arrived early, and they wore it too well. Competence became identity, over-functioning became virtue, and disappearing yourself became normal. By adulthood, and later in caregiving and motherhood, they are deeply programmed not just to give, but to give from a nervous system trained to scan, adjust, hold, and carry for everyone. A state of heightened alert and perpetual service. Love has driven the giving, but when identity becomes organised around responsibility, something subtle happens. They lose their internal reference point. The sacrifices were not transactional, no repayment was expected. Yet as the intensity of that season shifts, a quiet reckoning surfaces with the “invitation” implicit in the question they ask themselves, “Where did I go in all of this?” While I write primarily to women, particularly those who learned early to earn love through competence, this threshold is not gender-exclusive. Any identity organised around performance will eventually reach saturation. Any human being who has built a life through proving will, at some point, be asked to live it through coherence. Where systems meet soul Ordinary Greatness is not about dismantling competence. It is about expanding it. From a systems perspective: Intellect evaluates, structures, plans, and executes. Intuition senses alignment, timing, readiness, truth. When these are siloed, or one is preferenced over the other, you live divided. When they’re integrated, you live whole. This is structural redesign that underpins a new identity. Strategy in service of alignment. Ambition without self-erasure. Responsibility without identity loss. Greatness defined too narrowly Greatness has become synonymous with scale, status, visibility, celebrity and all the trappings of success (displays of wealth, expensive cars, branded fashion, affluent lifestyles). There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with all these things. We are compelled to become our very best selves. The problem is that the high standards and sense of accomplishment are often defined in contrast to someone or something else at a barely conscious level. When greatness is measured only comparatively by external standards, something essential is lost. Worth becomes performance-based. Standards become externally imposed. And identity becomes contingent. Our culture has imposed such narrow standards for “greatness” that a universe of distinctive and beautiful aspects of our humanity simply don’t make the cut. The result is that we can feel lacking if we’re not meeting culture’s definition for greatness. Ordinary Greatness reframes success as coherence. Energy sustainability over endless output. Values embodied, not merely professed. Fearless authenticity over strategic self-suppression. It is the perspective on success that’s a doorway to stepping into your unique call to self-actualisation. A reflection on death and a beautiful life I had a powerful realisation as I sat at the funeral of my uncle Colin a few years ago. He had lived a simple life. No fame. No fortune. No outward markers of extraordinary success. Yet as his family spoke about him, his love, his humour, his steady presence, even his quirks. It became clear that his life had been deeply and beautifully lived. Not perfect, but beautiful. Coherent in a way that required no performance. He embodied something powerful in ordinary moments. Eckhart Tolle might describe this as conscious presence, a stabilising force that transforms not through intensity, but through awareness. Others feel it not because you are trying to influence them, but because coherence is contagious. That is Ordinary Greatness. What changes when you embody it? The shift isn't vague or abstract. It's concrete. You feel no need to do anything special because being is enough. Presence becomes a consistent way of being energised by your inner alignment. Life stops feeling draining, performative, or self-sacrificing. The metrics that are used to define success: title, salary, output, approval, validation – start making room for ones that actually matter to you: meaning, wholeness, alignment, self-expression, sustainability. Values stop being words on a wall and become filters for every decision. You develop integrity between what matters to you and how you actually spend your days. Energy stops being something you manage and becomes something you steward. You learn the difference between productive effort and depleting performance. The eldest daughter is still strong. She simply stops carrying everything alone. Excellence evolves into coherence. Ordinary Greatness™ defined Ordinary Greatness is not a feel-good buzzword or an invitation to shrink. Ordinary Greatness is the practice of living and leading from internal coherence, where intellect and intuition, strategy and emotional well-being, ambition and presence are integrated rather than divided. It is the refusal to separate success from selfhood. It arises when authentic expression replaces performance, when enoughness is embodied rather than earned, and when leadership is anchored in identity instead of approval. Ordinary Greatness is not about becoming more impressive. It is about becoming internally whole. Ordinary Greatness is the end of proving and the beginning of fully inhabiting who you already are. And that changes everything. Further context Ordinary Greatness sits at the intersection of presence-based spirituality, adult development theory, and values-aligned leadership. In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle  describes presence as a stabilising force that transforms not through intensity, but through consciousness. Robert Kegan’s  and Dr Claire Zammit’s  work on adult development highlights identity-level growth beyond surface behaviour change. Viktor Frankl reframed meaning as something discovered in responsibility, not spectacle. Ordinary Greatness synthesises these traditions into a contemporary lens: integration over intensity, coherence over performance.   If you recognise yourself in these patterns, the next step is not optimisation. It is integration. And when intellect and intuition move together again, you evolve, naturally. Ordinary Greatness is available to anyone willing to choose coherence over performance, and inhabit who they already are. Subscribe to Empowering Insights  for more on this and related topics. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website  for more info! Read more from Charlie Roach Charlie Roach, Transformation Coach & Consultant Charlie Roach is an ICF-certified Transformation Coach and management consultant who helps high-capacity women navigate the quiet struggles behind outward success. Drawing from over 25 years of professional experience and her own journey through self-doubt, over-functioning, and internalised shame, Charlie combines empathy, pragmatism, and humour to guide women toward self-awareness, resilience, and authentic leadership. Her work focuses on the space between insight and embodiment, helping women move from knowing what to do, to actually living it. Charlie believes that greatness isn’t something to chase; it’s something to remember, and that ordinary greatness is the most powerful kind.

Written by Indrani Desouza, Acting Coach Indrani Desouza is the founder and head teacher of the acting workshop 'An Acting Studio' based out of Hollywood, California, a boutique acting workshop teaching actors to work in the Film and Television industry. Do you ever feel like you have to compromise your personal beliefs and change everything about yourself in order to become a working actor? I’ll save you a lot of heartache and tell you the answer is no! The shift towards authenticity Just so you know, everyone who dives into the world of acting as a profession is afraid of what moves to make. It’s a scary endeavor, and the landscape can feel more like a hellscape at times. Hollywood itself has begun to change. Audiences today are much more aware of authenticity and cultural accuracy in storytelling. As a result, the industry is slowly moving towards stories that prioritize authenticity. Actors who remain grounded in who they are are usually at the forefront of this shift. Instead of simply fitting into existing molds, they are challenging the industry to expand its storytelling. By refusing roles that reinforce stereotypes or misrepresent their communities, actors push filmmakers to write richer, more complex characters. In doing so, they help to reshape the landscape of Hollywood itself! The audience is responding to real people, not caricatures. Finding the balance Of course, the dilemma between authenticity and opportunity rarely has a simple answer. Every actor’s journey is different. Some roles that initially feel challenging may lead to meaningful artistic growth, while others may cross boundaries that can’t be ignored. The key lies in intentional decision-making. Actors who thrive long-term often ask themselves questions like: Does this role align with the kind of stories I want to tell? Am I proud of what this project represents? Will this opportunity help me grow as an artist without compromising who I am? Will I look back on this project in the future and be glad I was a part of it? These questions can help transform career decisions from reactive choices into purposeful steps that can move your career in a direction that feels much more fulfilling. It can also help keep actors focused and prevent burnout. It can all seem overwhelming when you finally get a chance to work professionally in your passion. But you want to make sure to take care of your beliefs, as well as what your artistic body of work will be. The role only you can play In an industry where countless performers compete for the same opportunities, authenticity may be the one thing that truly cannot be replicated. Scripts can change. Casting trends can shift. Careers can rise and fall. But an actor’s perspective, their voice, experiences, and identity are uniquely their own. The dilemma between authenticity and opportunity will likely always exist in Hollywood. Yet, the actors who build lasting careers are often the ones who remember that success isn’t only about being cast. Sometimes the opportunity can be treated as the ultimate prize. An audition leads to a callback, a callback leads to a role, and a role, if lucky, can lead to a career. For actors trying to break into the business, the message seems clear: say yes whenever the door opens. But what happens when the opportunity conflicts with who you are? Sometimes the most difficult question isn’t how to land the role, it’s whether you should take it at all. The tension between authenticity and opportunity is always going to be a quiet battle, forcing actors to weigh personal values against professional advancement. The industry is changing. With the onslaught of AI, I truly believe the more authentic and true to yourself you can be, the better your career results will be. We, as humans, are drawn to connect with authentic stories and people. This will always be an eternal struggle for actors, but what it comes down to many times is what feels right and lights your artistic soul on fire. Want to take your acting leap? Set up a meeting with us to start your coaching today and follow your dreams as a professional actor! We look forward to meeting you. Contact us here . Read more from Indrani Desouza Indrani Desouza, Acting Coach Indrani is a one-in-a-million acting coach. She has been working in the Film and Television industry for over 30 years, and has become a sought-after resource for professional as well as beginning actors. She is the owner and head teacher of the boutique school "An Acting Studio" based in Los Angeles, CA.

Written by Shaun Sargent, Co-Founder STAIT That we age is a given, how we age is a choice. STAIT – Unapologetically Strong. A first-class academic, award-winning professional, and global CEO, he is dedicated to continuous growth and inspiring others along the way. The article highlights the increasing emergence of (young) men seeking to add exogenous testosterone as a way of “quick fixing” an incorrectly perceived issue, in the belief that this issue is the cause of many of the physical and mental issues they face in their daily life. In 2025, reports in Australia that over 196,000 men participated in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) illustrate the magnitude of the issue. The same can be seen in the UK, USA, Europe, and, not to mention, GCC countries, where pharmaceutical aid is readily available. It’s a universal issue. These figures are a drop in the ocean, as they don’t include men who receive their TRT from private clinics, and or elicit sources overseas. It’s a huge issue, and many top endocrinologists say these men are being sold a lie. I agree. The leading specialists say these men are being swayed away from evidence-based medicine towards a profit-driven pharmaceutical company-led system, with the promise of a “quick fix”, and “it’s not your fault”. After all, who doesn’t fall for a quick fix and some “it’s not your fault” ego stroking from time to time. To state the obvious: Testosterone isn’t the sole issue Yes, we see symptoms of low testosterone utilisation, but it doesn’t mean adding in extra exogenous hormones will solve the issue. Indeed, it may make it far worse. Lifestyle is a major cause of the low testosterone utilisation issue, but of course, to change this takes consistency, and it isn’t always easy. And of course, all of this is fueled by social media, which has a way of pushing forward ideas of how life should be, rather than the reality of how it is, as a way of selling quick-fix solutions to problems that aren’t the actual problem. This isn’t anything new, this marketing technique has always been an issue, with the work of Edward Bernays in the early 1900s, who used psychological techniques to influence lifestyle and spending habits. He made it sexy for women to smoke, his Times Square photos of young women smoking cigarettes created the demand for all women to follow suit, and acceptance by society of the act, and a desire to ‘be like’ all rolled into one. Today, we have even more sensory overload and manipulations to persuade us that by doing “this”, the life we seek will happen. It’s easy to look at an image now and be swayed as to what created that body. Even worse, with the advent of AI, is the question that should be asked, "Is that an actual body? Is it photo-shopped?" or "Is it simply a computer-generated image?" So good are the fakes now, it’s extremely difficult to tell. Yet we are all influenced by this and can fall into the trap of “if I do what is being suggested here, I too can be like that.” Sadly, sorry to ruin the illusions of social media "There is no such thing as a magic pill. Testosterone levels are not the only issue. Lifestyle is." Back to the perceived male hormone problem. Basically, if I inject this, all my life’s issues will be solved. How sad, how inaccurate, and how dangerous is this ever more popular and normalised act. In previous times, when steroids were (and still are) illegal, the limited source was from the guy at the gym. Few would risk this. Fewer would admit to it. Many denied it when challenged. Now, TRT (steroids rebranded) is readily prescribed to unsuspecting men by unregulated online clinics and seen as an acceptable, normal act. Taking TRT is a badge of honour for many. Almost “me-too”, not wanting to be left out, the lemming phenomena perhaps? Celebrities gleefully recommend it, and even the Secretary of Health in the USA extols the virtues of it. Yet few discuss the risks, indeed many ‘fitness professionals’ go online and promote it. How many times do you see a so-called health expert proclaiming, “Of course I’m natural, I take bioidentical testosterone, it’s different from steroids.” For completeness, so too did Arnold Schwarzenegger when he won the Mr. Olympia. He didn’t admit to it for decades, preferring to pretend he was gifted, proclaiming his true ‘natural’ status. How times have changed. Not to say he didn’t sacrifice, train incredibly hard, and be genetically predisposed to muscle growth. But he has certainly paid a price for using his ‘bioidentical testosterone’. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world. In truth, the act of using TRT, in essence, is only one step removed from Arnold. Yet it’s seen as ok, as it’s purchased not from the dodgy gym dealer but a legit source. In many ways, the gym dealer is probably more likely to know more about ‘the gear’ and how to take it safely than many of these unregulated online clinics that peddle this expensive illusion. The ‘quick fix’ peddled is for a problem that isn’t the problem, merely a symptom of the problem. Low Testosterone, or actually more accurately, low testosterone utilisation, is akin to the canary in the mine – it’s a warning that all is not well in the body. Killing the canary won’t stop the problem nor protect the miners. Similarly, adding more testosterone to a body that cannot utilise it will not resolve a low testosterone uptake issue. Indeed, it will add further to the issue, for in the body’s non-utilisation, and the body’s systems being overloaded, come the serious issues that can occur. Liver damage, heart damage, blood pressure, excess estrogen, and cancer. Not good at all. Ignoring the canary only leads to bigger issues. Adding in exogenous testosterone, potentially triggering biofeedback loops, conversions to highly estrogenic substances that are carcinogenic, not to mention shutting down self-production of sex hormones, infertility, heart disease, and gynecomastia, doesn’t sound like a solution. To be clear, I am not against TRT when it’s a valid medical case and taken under proper medical supervision. It can be extremely helpful. So what am I advocating? What I am advocating for is that men’s wellbeing must be viewed holistically, and with constant effort, to create lasting health. Not looking at the overwhelm of ‘wellness optimism’ posts on socials, most likely to be fake, whilst avoiding the daily work required to maintain a healthy body. As in the story of the tortoise and the hare, quiet consistency of effort wins every time. Consistency in what we put in and on our bodies, consistency in the daily physical activity we do, consistency in our sleep regime. Basically, as elite Special Forces operators know, what makes them Special is doing the basics better than anyone else, consistently. Every day, a step further, how you do anything is how you do everything, you are only as good as yesterday. Brilliant advice. Not easy, but necessary. Taking this all in, what does it mean? No amount of exogenous testosterone will solve the low testosterone issue if: Sleep is less than optimal: The article describes that 1 week of sleep restriction to less than 5 hours per night reduces testosterone levels by 10 to 15%, or put another way, if I could sell you something that could increase your testosterone by 15%, what would you pay for that? Chronic stress is ever-present and out of control: Evolution-wise, the human body prioritises fight or flight over fornication. There is no point breeding kids if you get eaten by a tiger. That hasn’t changed, only now, rather than acute stress as in fight or flight, we have chronic stress. The body doesn’t know the difference, so if we are stressed, our testosterone levels will suffer. And our utilisation of the hormone we do have will be restricted, as the receptor cells will be blocked with the flight hormone instead. The body will then be triggered by biofeedback loops to process the excess (as it sees it, at the time) testosterone out of the body. All giving the symptoms of low testosterone, when in fact that wasn’t the case. Diets are poor: With processed foods/fast foods/sugary foods making up the majority of calories. If insulin is high, testosterone doesn’t operate. Indeed, fat storage is activated, such that we build reserves for the future. That fat also contains a hormone, aromatase, which is deadly to testosterone. This grabs free testosterone and converts it to estrogen, so belly fat is not our friend, especially if we want more utilisation of testosterone. Be aware of non-organic foods, which can be laced with pesticides and hormone by-products (especially meat and dairy), as these disrupt our natural hormone production. Choose regenerative farmed meat and organic dairy instead. The presence of xeno-estrogens: Be careful, as personal care products, food, tap water, and plastics all potentially contain xeno-estrogens. They readily dock with the body’s hormone receptors, not allowing testosterone to be utilised. In the book Estrogeneration, the author goes into detail about these, but they are prevalent and can be found in all things we are exposed to and consume daily. Alcohol is not ideal: The hops in beer are a known high estrogenic stimulator. Brewers' droop is a real term, not a fallacy. Liver health is vital for hormone optimisation, so if it’s working hard to eliminate the night before, rest assured, toxic by-products won’t help hormone optimisation The solutions aren’t flashy, they need daily, consistent effort, not social media hype Get an adequate amount of sleep daily. If you cannot sleep, see a sleep expert. It’s worth 10-15% extra testosterone. Get out in nature, at least once per day, as that’s a great way to de-stress. Walk barefoot if possible. Listen to relaxation music, meditate, and/or practice breath work. The Special Forces know how to downregulate their stress quickly, allowing human optimisation. Seek out breath workers if need be. Walk rather than ride, whenever possible. Take the stairs, not the lift, if you can. Your body will thank you. Gut health is vital, liver health too. As far as possible, avoid processed food. Make your own ferments if you can, it’s good fun and easy. Eat organic as far as you can, avoid plastics for carrying and cooking, and ditch the microwave. Avoid conventional dairy as it’s laced with hormones. And hormone disruptors. Choose personal care products that are natural and organic. What goes on the skin enters the body very quickly, and as most are petrochemical-based, that goes into the lymph, then the liver has to detoxify. All the while disrupting hormones. Read 'Estrogeneration' and educate yourself on all the hidden areas of toxicity. Be mindful of the hidden hormone disruptors in drinks. Hops in beer and mould in wheat are used in brewing. Soft drinks, what to say?! Water in plastic bottles, avoid at all costs, tap water that isn’t filtered as well. Coffee mould is also one of the most potent hormone disruptors, so choose mould-free coffee. Don’t use coffee pods, heat through plastic enhances the xeno-estrogens and massively impacts the body. Exercise. Nothing beats a daily walk in nature. And to help stave off age-related muscle wasting (sarcopenia). Train with weights at least 3-4 times per week. Research shows a direct correlation between leg strength and the over-70s death rate due to trips and falls. The best time to build muscle was in your 20s, today is the next best time to focus on this. Muscle is the largest glucose sink in the body, so the healthier the muscle you have, the better you use glucose, avoiding insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes). Less insulin is a good thing for general health, but also avoiding type 2 diabetes, not to mention giving more space for testosterone to operate. I am sure there are more tips, email me with them, as I am always happy to learn. In summary To resolve an issue, we need to identify and address the real issues and then formulate the best long-term, implementable, healthy solutions. The body is an amazing machine. If we feed it what it requires, maintain it as best we can, clean it when necessary, run it as often as possible to keep it fresh, it will happily take us where we want to go. But if put in poor fuel, don’t clean it out, leave it in the garage (ie, no exercise, etc.), and don’t maintain it, we cannot be surprised when it doesn’t operate as it should. Body knows best – so give it what it needs, and allow it to do what it does.  Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Shaun Sargent Shaun Sargent, Co-Founder STAIT As a co-founder of STAIT, my personal search for health and personal development is relentless. I seek out the best of the best to learn from and share with. To be the best you can be on a daily basis is the key to human growth.

Written by Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective. “Sticks & Stones can break our bones, but names can never hurt us,” they said. It was the biggest and most painful lie I was told when I was just a little boy. And, boy! Was I little! In fact, up until the age of 16, I was a paltry 5’3”. I barely weighed more than 100 pounds. By the time I’d turn 17 and a half, I’d shot up to a respectable 6ft tall, and I had put on more weight to support the spurt. But previous to that, I had always been a pipsqueak. And I had always been scared. Knowing that I was forever outsized physically by my peers, the little girls included, I learned early on to use my voice. Strike that, I learned early on to use my mouth. I was a wise-cracker. The consummate class clown: sarcastic, sardonic, obnoxious, and, on some occasions, funny, I would rely on my quick wit and sharp sense of verbalized ammo to defend myself against the cruelty of childhood, and of other children. Without realizing it, between the ages of 6 or 7, up until I was 10, I had become a bully. I would tease other children for the pleasure and accolades and laughter of my peers at the expense of anyone who was different. Whether it was another child who was overweight, the kid who was wearing clothes not en vogue, a youngster whose hygiene was poor, or just the heralded “geek”, “dork”, or “nerd”, I was always at the forefront of publicly mocking them and making them feel small. I didn’t feel good about doing this. I wanted to make other people feel small, smaller than I felt on the inside and the outside, in the hopes that it would elevate me, make me ascend and grow as big as the bigger boys, and that it might bring me some semblance of popularity amongst the crowd I most wanted to emulate. “Cool Kids”. What it was that made them “cool” to begin with is one of life’s own mysteries. Whether it was attributed to conventionally good looks, expensive outfits, the hard-to-get sneakers of the moment, or just the naturally confident, I wanted to be embraced by those people. And for my sins of being cruel to others, I was punished by the acceptance of the cool kids into the echelon of popularity and the feeling of being revered. I was also pretty cute and charming to begin with, and awfully vain on the outside. On the inside, I was in a perpetual state of dysregulation, disharmony, disdain, and disgust at the body and the person I inhabited. It felt like I was full of poison, and that maybe if I could just spread the poison to someone else, it could finally be drawn from my bloodstream. It only caused harm. Sticks and stones. Bruises and cuts on the body heal in due time. Words, on the other hand, words meant to hurt they cut and bruise the unlucky recipient deep into their soul. I didn’t know that then. I know that now. I’ve done many things in this life of which I am not proud. But we don’t get any do-overs in this life. We just carry the memories of the stories and the feelings they bring. Feelings that hurt. When I was ten, I took a hard tumble while skiing. The next morning, my urine was tinged with a brown color, and I told my father. The day was spent seeing a total of 3 doctors. First, my pediatrician. She sent us to Boston Children’s Hospital, where I was X-rayed and then received my first and only ultrasound. Then, I was introduced to the head of whatever department it is that specialized in kidneys. See, my dad thought I had just bruised my right kidney when I took a wallop on the mountain. It turns out that the medical experts had discovered an abnormality that they usually see when an embryo is still in utero, and one that is easily fixed with routine surgery while the child is still an infant. They were seeing it now for the first time. A blockage. One that would have to be repaired surgically. I remember my dad being scared. I remember myself being excited. Kids. At any rate, my kidney was fixed. I was in the hospital for a week. Out of school for a month. And by the time that the traditional 5th-grade field trip to our Nation’s Capital was happening, I was given the ‘all-clear’ to attend, though I was still in a fair amount of pain and discomfort and had to use crutches to get around. I didn’t want to miss that trip for anything. No parents. Me. My friends. Staying up late in our own hotel rooms, and to hell with the monuments. What I didn’t know was that there would be other schools from other districts joining. Schools that were packed with kids I didn’t know. None of us knew them. Some of them, it would turn out, were pretty intimidating. They emanated an air of toughness and, like the old saying goes, “if you spot it, you’ve got it,” a penchant for teasing. For bullying. For cruelty. Still a part of my popular pack of peers, I was a walking wounded little target for them. The tiny kid on crutches. That tiny kid’s ears had grown before his head had ever had a chance to catch up. We’d travel by bus to see the sights of Washington DC each day, and each day, a group of 6 or 7 strangers would make it their mission to track me down within the throng of youngsters, and get their recreation by giving me a hard time, teasing, mocking, and being cruel to me. “Dumbo”, they’d call me, and the group surrounding us would laugh and laugh. That’s what I remember most. A portion of the kids who were laughing at my expense, as my cheeks blushed with fear and angst, they were kids from my school. From my friend group. And not one of them to a person ever got in between me and the bullies to stand up for me. It was in those moments, for 5 days straight, that I finally got a taste of my own medicine from the impact of the insults that were being hurled at me to a raucous applause by all of the onlookers. I had never felt so alone in my entire life. The worst of the bunch of bullies, it’s funny, later on in high school, we would actually become pretty good friends. He was relentless in his torment of me. I’d find myself walking around with the teachers who were chaperoning the trip rather than with the other children I would have wanted to be with. It made me less of a target and alienated me more from my peers. That trip to DC wounded me in very deep and painful ways. But the ringleader of the bullies, I think it was on the last day of the trip, well, he ended up where I had been in the days preceding. In the hot seat, as it were, I remember we were visiting the tall obelisk of the Washington Monument, preparing to board the buses to whatever the next stop was, and he was visibly distressed and having a conversation with one of his own teachers, squirming and clearly in distress. The teacher was trying to calm him. I remember watching this from about 50ft away. I didn’t know what the problem was until I, and everyone in his proximity, smelled the familiar and foul smell of feces emanating from his direction. He had pooped in his pants. For the next day and a half, he walked with his head down, to other kids, some of his own group, including hurling mocking insults in his direction. They were calling him “Shit-Stain”. And I saw he was blushing. And I was glad and grateful that no one was paying attention to my ears that stuck out anymore. And I wasn’t joining in, because looking at him, I knew beyond doubt that he had never felt so alone in his life. After that experience, and up to the present day, I made and kept a promise to myself: that I would never become a bully again, and that I would always try to stand up for anyone I witnessed being tormented by another. I’ve had the privilege to step up and step in for some kids being mocked and teased and treated cruelly by others, and I’ve made some friends along the way for doing that. Letting them know that they weren’t alone. It has never made me feel small doing that for someone else. It has always just made me feel right. Not right in the sense of the ego. Right in the sense of the heart. People aren’t born cruel. They’re shown. They’re taught. By their families. Their loved ones. By the media. By neglect. By abuse. By divorce. By being exceptionally good-looking or being raised in a wealthy and privileged household. By insecurity. By feeling less-than. By hurt. Deep, soulful hurt that cuts way deeper than any bone could help to prevent. Poison. People in our American Culture, young people in particular, who have the poison of trauma coursing within them, are not taught or supported in what to do with the feelings and impulses that are informed from the acidic hurt going on within them. It’s a natural assumption that if we just spread it to someone else, whether we believe they deserve it or not, than it surely will find its way out of us and bring us to an idealized place of inner peace and contentment and safety. Instead, it worms its way through countless generations, on a large scale, an endemic of infected and desperate souls who feel so small and so alone that the notion of cruelty and anger begins to look like a viable antidote for the wounds that are festering inside of them. And so, they find scapegoats. They find people who cannot defend themselves, or who they perceive to be unusual and different, and they sling their arrows at whomever it is they have in their target’s sightline. The current cultural paradigm and the wars therein are tangible evidence of the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the young people of this country and just how damn destructive it proves to be: that words will never hurt us. Children so often don’t know better when they are acting in a way that can be described as cruel. To the adults reading this essay, I ask of you only this: What’s our excuse? Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is something that is worth more than any dollar amount.

Written by Akanksshaa (Akanksha Kulkarni), Consciousness Leader & Ascension Guide | Host: Multidimensional Soul Podcast | NBC-HWC | Chopra-Certified Well-Being Coach , Meditation & Health Teacher | Bestselling Author | Keynote Speaker | Reiki Master Akanksshaa helps individuals & organizations align purpose, rewire mind, raise vibration, enrich well-being to live a life of abundance and freedom. Entrepreneurship is one of the most intense personal development journeys on the planet. Not because you attend mindfulness retreats between board meetings, but because your business keeps putting a mirror in front of you every single day. We tend to think of conscious inner work (or "healing") as something private and separate from work: yoga mats, candles, maybe a weekend workshop. In the corporate and business world, the word still sounds a little "woo woo," as if it has nothing to do with P&L statements, KPIs, or investor updates. Yet the quality of our inner world quietly shapes every conversation we have, every decision we make, and ultimately, the culture and performance of our companies. In this article, I'll refer to healing as conscious inner leadership,   the ongoing practice of noticing, understanding, and transforming the patterns within us that run our business from the shadows. "Your business will expose every unhealed part of you. Your abandonment issues show up when clients leave. Your scarcity mindset shows up in your pricing. Your control issues show up in your inability to delegate." –  Sara Blakely What we think healing looks like If you ask most leaders to picture "healing," they imagine something calm and curated: a person sitting in meditation, breathing peacefully, detached from Slack notifications and quarterly targets. That picture they paint is valid, but only up to a point, nervous systems do need rest. But if we stop there, we set ourselves up for frustration. We expect inner work to feel soothing, when in reality it often feels like the emotional equivalent of a deep tissue massage: uncomfortable in the moment, liberating afterwards. What healing in business actually looks like For entrepreneurs and leaders, conscious inner work is not a spa day. It is a series of courageous micro-choices that slowly rewire how you show up in your business. I have created a model that captures this: six interconnected facets of inner work that transform leadership and business results. Each hexagon represents a core dimension, with specific practices underneath.   1. Personal regulation Caring for body, mind, and soul (rest, sleep, movement, nourishment, nervous-system care). Implementing healthy routines that keep you grounded and consistent. Moving anxiety and fear into love, kindness and calm response. 2. Emotional alchemy Unpacking trauma so old wounds stop driving today's reactions. Fully feeling feelings (without numbing or overworking them away). Having the courage to be vulnerable and honest with yourself and others. 3. Cognitive clarity Releasing limiting beliefs that keep you small, exhausted or stuck. Integrating shadows owning disowned traits (controller, people-pleaser, perfectionist) and giving them healthier roles. Uncovering and releasing inherited/ancestral patterns around money, power, success and safety. 4. Relational maturity Setting and enforcing clear, compassionate boundaries. Imbibing empathy and compassion while protecting your own energy. Having difficult conversations instead of avoiding or escalating conflict. 5. Leadership impact Taking radical responsibility for your actions, impact and blind spots. Letting your inner work reshape how you lead,   modelling regulation, transparency, and integrity. Creating psychologically safe spaces where others can bring ideas, concerns and emotions without fear. 6. Connected culture Designing nurturing environments and rituals that support wellbeing (check-ins, debriefs, recovery time). Building relationships that honor both empathy and boundaries, preventing burnout and resentment. Weaving all of this into a conscious business culture that normalizes inner work as part of how you do business. None of this looks glamorous in the moment. But it is actually changing how you run your next team meeting. And when you stack these small acts of conscious inner leadership, your business begins to feel different to you, your team and your clients. When unhealed patterns run your company This is where Sara Blakely's quote hits home. Our unexamined inner patterns don't stay in our heads, they leak into our strategies, our pricing, our hiring decisions, and our culture. Some examples you might recognize: Abandonment wounds can show up as panic when a client cancels or leading you to over-promise. Scarcity mindset often appears in pricing that leads you to underprice or push your team into scarcity-driven decisions or keeps you perpetually exhausted. Control issues can make delegation feel unsafe, which traps you in founder-dependency and stalls growth or in hoarding responsibilities because you don't trust there will be enough support. Perfectionism can keep projects in draft mode forever and send a message to your team that nothing is ever good enough. Unresolved conflict patterns can lead to passive-aggressive communication, gossip or sudden exits that shock everyone. Your business is not causing these patterns. It is simply magnifying them. The stakes are higher, the feedback loops are faster and the impact is more visible. The good news? Your business can also become a powerful container for transformation. Every trigger, setback and awkward conversation becomes an invitation to practice a new way of being. And here's what actually shifts when you do this inner work: your culture begins to reflect your consciousness. When leaders heal on the inside, their teams feel it immediately. Designing healing and nurturing business cultures At IBM, I led a 1,000-person team and, with my core group, earned one of the company's highest honors: the Excellence in Business Award for Cultural Transformation. We built that recognition by prioritizing innovation through custom awards frameworks, fostering psychological safety, empathy, and diversity, all rooted in conscious inner leadership. That experience taught me something crucial: thriving organizations don't happen by accident. They require deliberate, intentional practice.​ Here are some ways to intentionally design healing and nurturing environments at work: Holding space: Meetings where people speak honestly, emotions are welcomed (not labelled "unprofessional"), and defensiveness takes a backseat to curiosity. Active listening: Phones away, genuinely reflecting back what you hear, asking questions before responding. This alone builds trust faster than most policies. Empathy in action: adjusting deadlines during crises, regular workload check-ins, ensuring people take time off. Compassionate accountability: Clear feedback delivered with respect, focused on learning and repair, never shame. People feel corrected, not condemned. Psychological safety: Encouraging people to raise concerns, admit mistakes and share ideas without fear of ridicule or retaliation, which research links to innovation and performance. Rituals that regulate the nervous system: One-minute groundings at meeting starts, quiet focus blocks, camera-off hours. Small practices that signal: your wellbeing matters here. Visible self-care from leadership: When founders actually log off, take holidays and protect their own wellbeing, they give their teams permission to do the same. A call to conscious inner leadership You don't need to become a therapist to lead a conscious business. But you do need to become curious about your inner world because it's already running so much of your outer world. The next time your business triggers you a client refund, a team misunderstanding, a disappointing quarter pause before you react. Ask: What part of me is being activated? What is this moment inviting me to heal or re-pattern? That question, asked consistently, might become the most profitable habit you ever build. Not just in revenue, but in the quality of relationships, impact and fulfilment your business creates for you, your team and everyone you serve. If you are a business owner or entrepreneur navigating questions of purpose, direction, conscious leadership, or next-level alignment, an Akashic Records session or a coaching session, when approached with grounding and integration, can offer profound clarity.   You can explore my work through: 1:1 Akashic channeling and coaching sessions Testimonials and Praise My YouTube talk show & podcast, Multidimensional Soul. Thought leadership and reflections on LinkedIn   Follow Akanksshaa on  Instagram for more info! Read more from Akanksshaa (Akanksha Kulkarni) Akanksshaa (Akanksha Kulkarni), Consciousness Leader & Ascension Guide | Host: Multidimensional Soul Podcast | NBC-HWC | Chopra-Certified Well-Being Coach , Meditation & Health Teacher | Bestselling Author | Keynote Speaker | Reiki Master Akanksshaa helps individuals & organizations align purpose, rewire mind, raise vibration, enrich well-being to live a life of abundance and freedom. Akanksshaa has extensive diverse experience, in coaching/training/ mentoring/ leading/ strategic planning/ program management & innovation (includes 20+ of corporate experience in IT & Finance areas). She has received several awards in the corporate world. She has done MBA from one of the top B schools in India. She is currently pursuing PhD in Education Psychology. She combines neuroscience, positive psychology, and spirituality-based eclectic techniques in her programs. She believes in an intuitive, meaningful, playful yet structured approach. She has been a corporate facilitator for senior leaders. She has coached senior / exec corporate leaders in her exclusive coaching programs. She has thousands of students across all ages in her several online programs.

Emily Lever is a nurse practitioner and experienced nutrition and fitness coach who helps busy bees break free from the cycle of dieting and confusion. She specializes in creating realistic, sustainable plans that fit into real life – without extremes, restriction, or overwhelm. Through personalized coaching and weekly feedback, Emily empowers her clients to understand their bodies, build confidence, and make lasting changes. Her approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on education, mindset, and habits that support long-term success. Emily is known for her honest guidance, no-BS style, and commitment to helping people feel strong, capable, and in control of their health again. Emily Lever, Entrepreneur, Nurse Practitioner, Nutrition and Fitness Coach What inspired you to create a coaching program that goes beyond just workouts and diets to focus on the science behind metabolism and long-term lifestyle transformation? After years in both healthcare and fitness, I kept seeing the same pattern – restrictive diets, inconsistent workout plans, and programs built around quick fixes instead of real understanding. It was also personal for me. After gaining 50 pounds in college, I spent years spinning my wheels, trying everything and getting nowhere. It wasn’t until I truly educated myself that things started to change. Looking back, I realized how much time and frustration I could have saved and how many unhealthy extremes I could have avoided – with the right guidance. That’s exactly why I created this program. It’s the support I wish I had during that time in my life. I wanted people to stop guessing. When you understand how your metabolism actually works – how your body responds to food, stress, and movement – you stop blaming yourself and start making decisions that work with your body, not against it. And that’s where real, sustainable change begins.   How do you tailor your approach to account for your clients' unique schedules and challenges, such as being busy professionals or parents? I don’t believe in ideal routines – I believe in real life. Most of my clients are balancing careers, kids, and everything in between, so the plan has to fit into that reality. We build strategies around their actual schedules: shorter, effective workouts, flexible nutrition, and small changes that lead to habit stacking so that it’s achievable when life gets busy. The goal isn’t perfection – it’s consistency in a way that feels doable. Because if it doesn’t fit your life, it won’t last.   What role does mindset play in achieving lasting results, and how do you help clients shift their perspectives to overcome barriers? Mindset is everything. Most people I work with aren’t lacking effort – they’re carrying years of frustration, all-or-nothing thinking, and the belief that their body is “broken.” We work on shifting that narrative. Instead of chasing extremes, we focus on understanding, patience, forgiveness, and trust in the process. When clients start seeing their body as something to support instead of fight, everything changes – their consistency, their confidence, and their results.   How do you ensure that your clients understand the "why" behind the changes they’re making, rather than just following a plan? Education is a huge part of my coaching. I don’t just hand over a plan – I explain it. The same goes for every change I make. Through weekly check-ins and feedback, I walk clients through why we’re adjusting calories, changing workouts, or focusing on certain habits. I challenge them by asking questions to see how they formulate ideas and over time, they start connecting the dots themselves. That’s when they stop relying on a program and start trusting their own decision-making, which is the real goal.   What strategies do you use to keep your clients motivated and consistent in their fitness and nutrition journey, even during challenging times? Motivation comes and goes – so we don’t rely on it. We build systems instead. That means setting realistic expectations, focusing on small wins, and creating routines that feel manageable even on hard days. I also stay closely involved through weekly coaching, so clients aren’t left trying to figure things out alone. And during challenging seasons, we adjust. We don’t quit – we just shift the approach to match what life looks like right now. How do you adapt your coaching to address the specific needs of individuals at different stages of their fitness journey? Everyone comes in at a different place – some are brand new, others have years of experience but feel stuck. For beginners, we focus on building a strong foundation without overwhelm. For more experienced clients, it’s often about refining what they’re already doing and breaking through plateaus with a more strategic approach. The common thread is personalization. No one gets a copy-and-paste plan – everything is built around where they are and where they want to go.   What kind of impact have you seen in your clients' lives, both physically and mentally, after they embrace your holistic approach to wellness? The physical changes are great – but the mental shift is what stands out the most. Clients go from feeling confused and frustrated to confident and in control. They stop jumping from plan to plan and start trusting themselves. They have more energy, more consistency, and a healthier relationship with food and exercise. And beyond that, it impacts how they show up in their lives – as parents, professionals, and individuals. They’re not just getting results – they’re building habits and perspectives that last long after the program ends. That’s the real transformation. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Emily Lever

Kimberly Krasowski, LMHC, CAGS, CAATP, is a trauma-informed psychotherapist who helps individuals navigate anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and the lasting impact of abuse. She believes healing happens when people feel safe enough to explore their experiences and reconnect with themselves. Her work is grounded in both clinical expertise and authentic human connection. Kimberly is the founder of Beacon EMDR and Mental Health Services, where she supports clients in creating meaningful, lasting change. Kimberly Krasowski, Psychotherapist What sets your therapy services apart, and why do clients choose to work with you for transformation? What sets my therapy services apart is that I show up as a real human being in my office. I’m not a “blank slate” therapist who sits silently behind my notepad or computer, taking notes. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of human connection. I understand how healing it can be to connect to another person, so I bring authenticity to my work. I laugh with clients, I swear with clients, I’m open and transparent when it’s appropriate and warranted, and I’m direct when I feel the client really needs this. My approach to working with others is deeply relational and humanistic. It’s extremely important to me that I understand my clients’ perspectives on their experiences. I want to meet them where they are, not where I believe they “should” be. I use a variety of modalities to tailor therapy to each person's needs. My empathy and understanding for others are informed by my own life experiences. Like many people, I have met trauma face to face more times than I would like, but these traumatic moments helped shape me into the therapy provider I am today. I have a deep commitment to helping others grow from their pain, as I know beautiful things can lie ahead for us. Because of my experiences, I have a strong understanding of the complexities of trauma, abuse, and grief. Although I don’t discuss my life experiences openly, I believe my clients know I understand them on a deeper level from what I say. They often tell me they feel relaxed in my presence and immediately sense there is no judgment.   What does “doing the work” actually mean in therapy? “Doing the work” means being willing to sit in session with your therapist and “get comfortable being uncomfortable”. It’s being willing to look at yourself honestly, feel difficult emotions instead of avoiding them, and practicing what you learn outside of therapy sessions in your daily life.   What impact have you seen on your clients’ lives after completing therapy with you, and how do you measure that success? The impact that I’ve seen on my clients’ lives includes symptom reduction for sure, but has also involved genuine, lasting changes in various aspects of their lives. I think one of the major impacts is how they view themselves, others, and the larger world. Many clients come to me feeling overwhelmed with life, detached from their emotions, dysregulated, unsure of their identity, and confused as to how to move forward. At the end of treatment, there is often increased self-awareness, emotional regulation, and a stronger sense of who they are and their future goals. They’re better able to express their needs and are establishing healthy boundaries that foster self-respect. For those clients who are healing from abuse and trauma, there are notable improvements in nervous system regulation, and triggers are no longer as intense. I evaluate progress through both outcome measures, such as formal rating tools for anxiety and depression, and through more nuanced, internal shifts clients experience. I listen for changes in language in how clients speak about themselves – whether they’re applying more self-compassion, increasing positive self-statements, and viewing situations from different perspectives. Clients sometimes ask me, “When do I know that I’m ready to end therapy?” This is different for everyone! Ultimately, therapy ends when there have been significant improvements in how clients handle problems, they’re consistently using the tools they’ve learned, and they express confidence and trust in their abilities moving forward. They also verbalize an improvement in mood and overall outlook on life.    What role do you believe emotional regulation plays in the healing process, and how do you integrate that into your work? I believe that emotional regulation is at the heart of the healing process. When someone has experienced trauma, their nervous system often shifts into survival mode. If there are repeated traumas or the person lives in constant physical and/or emotional chaos, their nervous system may stay in this survival mode, which involves hypervigilance, shutting down, or oscillating between the two. Before we can process trauma safely and effectively, the person’s body needs to relearn what it is like to feel in control, grounded, and present in this moment, as opposed to orienting to the past or future. In my work with clients, I integrate emotional regulation throughout each phase of therapy, particularly in Phase 2 (the preparation phase) of EMDR. I help clients identify and strengthen their internal resources through learning and using grounding exercises, somatic tools, breathwork, and imagery tools, which help the person to build their capacity to feel emotions and remain present. Clients feel safe in the moment to experience the emotion without spiraling out of control or becoming derailed. By the time we’re ready to start an EMDR processing session, clients have “tools” to use both inside and outside of therapy sessions. These tools help in the overall processing that occurs, but also help the client in their daily lives when opportunities test them (and we know life is going to test them). Emotional regulation builds the bridge between surviving and healing and thriving.   What do you believe people misunderstand most about trauma, and how does your work help shift those misconceptions? One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma is that it’s caused by only catastrophic events. This is actually not the case. Trauma is less about the sequence of events that occurred and more about how the experience was stored in the mind and body. Two people can live through the same exact experience, have different perceptions of what occurred, and respond differently to the experience. Neither is wrong. Another misconception is that trauma is something that a person “gets over” with time. Some people still subscribe to the old saying of “Time heals all wounds”. Many of my clients are frustrated that they experienced something in their younger years, they’ve “carried” the experience with them throughout their life, and it impacts them in the present day. Trauma is not a failure on the part of the person. The nervous system is doing what it knows it is supposed to do – keep the person safe; therefore, it keeps the person hypervigilant, or it shuts down. In my therapy sessions with clients, I normalize trauma responses for clients. We shift language from “What’s wrong with me?” or “I’m broken” to “What happened to me for my body to respond this way?” Trauma-informed approaches, including EMDR, help clients in processing experiences in a way that enables the mind and body to integrate them more adaptively. It can be fascinating to watch the process unfold. Over time, clients report that their triggers are not as intense on a scale of 0-10. They begin to shift their mindset – where a negative cognition once held extreme power and control over a person, a positive cognition has been installed, ultimately allowing their behavior to be more adaptive moving forward. Carl Jung, a psychologist, once said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become”. This quote has always been particularly meaningful to me, and I share it with others in the hopes of teaching that we are not defined by our traumas.   What is one small but powerful shift people can make today to improve their mental health? One small but powerful shift people can make right in this moment is to start noticing how they speak to themselves or about themselves to others. Many people are extremely critical of themselves and say things through their inner monologue that they would never think of saying to a person they care about. A cognitive-behavioral approach to therapy emphasizes the importance of understanding how our thoughts impact our feelings, which then impact our behavior. The negative and hypercritical self-statements lead to anxiety and depression. We can build our self-awareness around when we’re making these types of statements and when we notice it, pause, and reframe the thought. The reframed thought doesn’t have to be glowingly positive; it just needs to be more adaptive and helpful. It can also be beneficial to ask yourself, “Would I say this to my child? To someone else I love?” By reframing, we’re giving ourselves more compassion. It’s a small adjustment, but this small adjustment can have a powerful impact!   What is something you have learned from your clients? I’ve learned that many of the patterns that people struggle with make absolute sense in the context of what they have experienced. On the surface, behavior can appear dysfunctional, but as you dig a bit deeper, the behavior can actually be a response to adaptation. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kimberly Krasowski

Feeling stuck in cycles of stress, burnout, or emotional blocks, more people are turning to deeper, consciousness-based healing for real and lasting transformation. In response, Paul Quinton is expanding global access to the Alignment Modality, offering new pathways for individuals to reconnect with their inner guidance, release limiting patterns, and step into a more aligned and purposeful life. Sick and tired of being sick and tired? A growing number of people around the world are seeking deeper healing, clarity, and purpose. In response to this demand, Paul Quinton is expanding access to the Alignment Modality©, offering a range of new ways for individuals to explore consciousness work, including self-paced e-learning programs, personalized one to one healing and mentoring, and an upcoming live online workshop this May. The Alignment Modality© is a consciousness-based healing system designed to support profound personal transformation. Through a combination of energetic awareness, intuitive development, and consciousness work, the modality guides individuals in releasing limiting patterns, reconnecting with their authentic selves, and awakening their natural intuitive abilities. “Many people are searching for something deeper than conventional self development,” said Paul Quinton. “The Alignment Modality allows individuals to reconnect with their inner guidance, release old conditioning, and begin living from a place of clarity and alignment.” Do you want real lasting healing? To make this more accessible globally, the Alignment Modality now offers self-paced e-learning courses that allow individuals to explore its teachings at their own pace. These online programs introduce the principles of consciousness, energetic awareness, and intuitive development, and provide practical tools to support emotional and spiritual growth. For those seeking deeper support, one to one healing, coaching, and mentoring sessions with Paul Quinton are also available. These personalized sessions provide focused guidance and energetic healing, helping individuals move past emotional blocks, gain clarity on their life direction, and accelerate their personal transformation. In addition, individuals curious about the work can book a complimentary Breakthrough Call with Paul Quinton to discuss personal challenges and explore whether the Alignment Modality is the right path for their growth. We are utilizing Universal Laws for real lasting transformation Alongside these learning pathways, enrolment is now open for the next Alignment Modality© Module One Training, to be held online in May 2026. Delivered over four evenings, the training introduces participants to the foundations of the modality and provides powerful tools for self-discovery, emotional healing, and intuitive development. The upcoming workshop will run on 5th, 6th, 11th, and 12th May 2026 from 6.30 pm to 9.00 pm GMT and is open to individuals worldwide who feel called to begin a deeper journey of personal transformation. Those interested in learning more about the Alignment Modality, exploring the e-learning programs, booking one to one sessions, or joining the May workshop can find further information here . One to one healing, coaching, and mentoring sessions can be explored . More information on the live online workshop can be found here . Enrolment for the May Module One training is open . A complimentary Breakthrough Call can be booked here . About the Alignment Modality© The Alignment Modality© is a consciousness-based healing system founded by Paul Quinton, a teacher of transformation, healer, and international workshop leader. The modality combines energetic awareness, consciousness work, intuitive development, and vibrational practices to support individuals in releasing limiting patterns and reconnecting with their authentic selves. Through workshops, practitioner training, and personal mentoring, the Alignment Modality continues to support individuals worldwide on their path of personal transformation. Media contact Paul Quinton Phone: +447804358718 Email: paulquinton@alignmentmodality.com Website: https://www.alignmentmodality.com

Written by Dr. Vanessa Harding, Mental and Physical Performance Coach Dr. Vanessa Harding is a neuroscience-informed performance coach and founder of Ayla Life Performance Coaching. She trains executives to strengthen resilience, decision-making under pressure, and achieve sustainable high performance. Her mission is to cultivate authentic leaders who respond, not react, and prioritise long-term health. You feel wired even when you should be resting. Your mind keeps working, your body stays alert, and switching off feels almost impossible. Many high-performing leaders recognise this state yet assume it is simply part of success. For many senior leaders, it has quietly become normal. At the same time, emotional intelligence, one of the most critical capabilities for effective leadership, is diminishing in practice. Research from TalentSmart shows that over 90% of top performers demonstrate high emotional intelligence, yet chronic physiological stress reduces our ability to feel and interpret emotional signals arising from the body. Leadership today carries constant pressure, decisions, responsibility, performance, and uncertainty. Studies from Gallup show that over 70% of professionals experience burnout at some point, yet in leadership, it often goes unrecognised because it appears as over-functioning rather than breakdown. The real issue is that most do not feel the early warning signs. Over time, high performers become wired for defence. Their autonomic nervous system operates in a subtle but persistent higher fight-or-flight energy state, one that the body was never designed to sustain continuously. Over time, this leads to the development of burnout, chronic stress disorders and autoimmune dysfunction. The encouraging news is that this state is not permanent. The autonomic nervous system can be retrained and more simply than most realise. When it is, leaders feel lighter, more energised and free from constant strain. They become emotionally connected, calm under pressure, yet driven by renewed clarity and purpose. From here, sustainable high performance becomes effortless without compromising their health. Pressure and performance Leadership demands speed, responsibility and constant output. Most high performers respond by pushing harder, longer hours, more responsibility and continuous mental engagement. Thoughts such as “I must hold everything together,” “I can’t slow down,” or “mistakes are not acceptable” become internal drivers. Leaders take on too much, struggle to delegate and carry responsibility beyond their role. Externally, this looks like commitment. Internally, it repeatedly activates a higher fight–or–flight energy state within the autonomic nervous system. Stress itself is not the problem. Stress is a biological shift in energy to meet demand. When the body needs to perform, metabolic output increases. Heart rate rises, breathing changes and hormones mobilise energy. In short bursts, this is useful. The problem is not stress, it is remaining in this state too often, without full recovery. Repeated activation trains the autonomic nervous system. As described by neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, “neurons that fire together wire together.” The system becomes more efficient at defence and less efficient at recovery. The stress baseline shift The autonomic nervous system regulates energy by moving between higher energy states for action and lower energy states for recovery, repair and long-term health. Healthy performance depends on this flexibility. However, when pressure becomes constant, the baseline shifts upward. Instead of returning to a true lower energy state, the body remains subtly activated, slightly tense, alert and wired. The autonomic nervous system continues to operate closer to a higher fight-or-flight energy state, even at rest. At this point, something critical happens. It no longer feels like elevated stress. It becomes normal. The system unconsciously adapts to this elevated baseline, and leaders lose reference for what calm actually feels like. At rest, there is little switch off. When performing, energy is tied up in defence physiology. Over time, this reduces capacity for clear thinking, immune regulation, and recovery, contributing to fatigue, anxiety, burnout, and chronic dysfunction. Conditioning from childhood From early life, the brain and body, via the autonomic nervous system, are shaped by experience. Childhood conditioning teaches the system how to interpret safety, pressure and emotion. When emotional expression is discouraged, “don’t cry,” “be strong,” “pull yourself together,” the autonomic nervous system learns to override internal signals. At the same time, education systems prioritise logic, performance and behaviour control. Over time, these wires become deeply embedded in thought, emotion, behaviour, and survival patterns. The way we react as adults is not just based on the present moment. It is driven by a combination of stored feelings from past experiences and instinctive survival responses. As a child, the feeling attached to being told to “be strong” is stored in the body. Later in life, situations trigger those same feelings and without awareness, we override discomfort and push through. As described by polyvagal theory founder  Stephen Porges  and trauma experts  Bessel van der Kolk  and  Gabor Maté , emotional experiences are stored and expressed through the body. We begin to see these feelings as weakness, distraction or something to control. So instead of understanding them, we suppress them again. Over time, this creates a growing disconnect between the body and the brain. Emotional signals become harder to recognise, and leaders move further away from truly understanding what they feel. In modern professional environments, people are trained to analyse emotions intellectually, but not to get a deep sense of them physically. Leaders may feel uncomfortable and automatically distracted by staying busy through work, control, constant thinking, and performance. Leaders are not ignoring stress. They have been conditioned not to feel it. The vagus nerve and resilience This is where the autonomic nervous system becomes critical. The vagus nerve plays a central role in regulating the state. It acts as the body’s braking system on the heart rate, helping shift from a higher fight-or-flight energy state into a lower recovery state. As described by Dr. Steve Porges, in the polyvagal theory. When functioning well, it supports both recovery and resilience. Vagal tone refers to how efficiently the system returns from a higher energy stress state to a lower one. Where the body can power down effectively and access true recovery. Vagal strength reflects the capacity to experience higher stress without being pushed into a less tolerable defensive state. When leaders spend prolonged periods in a higher energy state, both begin to decline. The autonomic nervous system becomes less efficient at returning to calm, meaning recovery is incomplete. At the same time, the capacity to handle pressure without entering defence reduces. Over time, resilience diminishes. Leaders cope with less, and situations that were once manageable begin to feel overwhelming, not because the demands have increased, but because the system regulating them has weakened, and this is a subtle shift over time. Stress, energy and the brain The brain is one of the most energy-demanding systems in the body. When the autonomic nervous system is locked in a defensive higher energy state, resources are directed toward survival processes, including increased heart rate, muscle tension, and reactive thinking. Less energy is available for creativity, strategic thinking and complex decision-making. Leaders pushing harder often access less of their true cognitive capability. Importantly, the brain does not operate in isolation. Signals originate in the body and are interpreted by the brain. The autonomic nervous system informs the brain, and the brain predicts whether we are safe or under threat. As described by Physicians Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E Tanzi , authors of Super Brain, the brain is not a fixed entity, but an active process continuously being shaped by these signals. Training smarter performance Sustainable performance requires retraining the whole autonomic nervous system, that is, the brain and the body. Modern environments and early conditioning lead to the brain prioritising logical, risk-averse thinking. While important, high-level leadership requires integration of creativity, emotional awareness, motivation, and intuitive insight alongside logic. This can be developed. By reverse engineering thought, emotion, and behaviour patterns, leaders can understand how responses are formed right from the feeling in the body to the corresponding thought and behavioural process and begin to rewire them. Neuroscientists such as Dr. Tara Swart , author of The Source and Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett , author of How Emotions are Made, show that the more precisely we differentiate internal processes, logical reasoning, emotion, motivation and behaviour, the more effectively the brain can change. This strengthens emotional resilience and expands cognitive flexibility. Relearning how to feel Relearning how to feel is not about becoming more emotional. It is about becoming more aware. At present, many leaders are not responding to what is really happening in front of them. They are unconsciously responding to internal projections, patterns of stored feelings triggered by sensory input. When the autonomic nervous system is regulated and patterns are retuned, this projection reduces. Leaders begin to experience situations more clearly with awareness of their feelings at that moment, rather than through the lens of past conditioning. This changes behaviour. Responses become more measured, less reactive and more aligned to the actual situation rather than the internal emotional residue. As this shift occurs, stress reduces naturally because the body and brain no longer react to perceived threats that are not truly present. At the same time, energy becomes available. Leaders feel less drained, more in control and more stable under pressure. There is a sense of clarity, lightness and greater freedom from internal burden. With this comes a deeper connection to purpose. Thinking expands, decisions align more clearly and action follows a more authentic vision. Breaking patterns and rewiring require energy and repetition, known as neuroplasticity. As with any skill, practice is the key. This is why the process must begin with the body. When energy is no longer tied up in a subtle higher fight-or-flight state, the brain has the capacity to change efficiently, quicker, and it’s sustainable. Leaders experience higher stress too often and it far outweighs any attempt at relaxing wellness days, retreats. The energy required to effectively change a mindset in workshops or therapy, whilst the energy is tied up in physiology, is simply not enough to achieve sustainable change. A smarter path forward Leadership will always involve pressure. But high performance does not require living in a constant state of defence and burnout. When the autonomic nervous system is retrained, rewiring habitual patterns, emotional awareness is restored, and lateral thinking is retrained, leaders change their behaviours naturally. They are no longer driven by pressure or reactivity, but by clarity, intuition and grounded control. They think more clearly, respond with greater precision and sustain performance without sacrificing their health. There is less internal strain and more available energy. Decisions feel more aligned. Interactions become more composed and effective. And perhaps most importantly, leaders regain a deep sense of calm under pressure, confident in their emotional wisdom, intuitively clear and reconnected to a renewed sense of energy, purpose, and excitement in how they lead and perform. Ready to move out of defence? If you recognise yourself in this, you are not alone and more importantly, this is something you can change. The key is not more mindset work or pushing harder. It starts with retraining your autonomic nervous system, then rewiring the patterns that drive your thinking, behaviour and performance. This is the foundation of my Ayla approach, a neuroscience-backed method designed to help high performers move out of defence, regain control, unlock their super lateral thinking and experience real, sustainable high performance. If you want to explore how this applies to you, you can start with a conversation here:  Ayla Life Performance Coaching . Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , and LinkedIn  for more info! Read more from Dr. Vanessa Harding Dr. Vanessa Harding, Mental and Physical Performance Coach Dr. Vanessa Harding is a neuroscience-based performance coach who trains business leaders and sports professionals to shift into calm, think clearly, and perform at their best under pressure while sustaining long-term high performance. With a PhD in Materials Science and two decades of corporate leadership, she blends scientific expertise with human-centred insight. She specialises in neural rewiring to break limiting thought-emotion-behaviour patterns, strengthening stress regulation, confidence and cognitive resilience. Through her mentoring programmes and signature AYLA method, she integrates brain training and nervous system optimisation to elevate mental and physical capacity while securing long-term health.