Written by Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice Paula Rose Castronova is a sustainability leader and speaker who turns complex concepts into practical action. She champions sustainability as a human issue, uniting strategy and everyday choices to align purpose with performance and inspire systemic, real-world change. Food does more than nourish the body. It connects our health to the soil, climate, biodiversity, and communities that sustain us. This article explores how healthier food choices and more sustainable food systems can support both human wellbeing and planetary resilience. What if the food on our plate could heal more than just us? We often think of food as fuel, pleasure, culture, or sustenance, and now we are acknowledging another powerful dimension: food can be part of the medicine cabinet. The idea of ‘food as medicine’ is not new. Traditional cultures have long understood the relationship between what we eat and how we feel, function, and recover. What’s changing is the growing scientific and health system recognition that nutrition can play a significant role in preventing disease, supporting treatment, and improving wellbeing. There is also another essential connection: the food that nourishes us comes from a system that depends on soil, water, biodiversity, climate, farmers, oceans, energy, and communities. This makes the relationship between food as medicine and sustainability distinctly compelling. Food is more than calories The modern conversation around nutrition often focuses on calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, and individual nutrients. Yet food is far more complex than a collection of numbers. Whole foods contain combinations of vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and other compounds that interact with the body in powerful ways. A diverse diet built around vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and appropriate sources of protein can support health throughout life. The World Health Organization identifies healthy diets as protection against malnutrition and noncommunicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and some cancers. It recommends a varied diet centered on minimally processed and unprocessed foods while limiting excess fats, sugars, and sodium. This is where the concept of ‘food as medicine’ becomes powerful. It does not mean food should replace medical treatment or that illness will be cured through diet. It does recognize that nutrition is one of the foundations of good health. Food helps prevent illness, supports the body during treatment, improves nutritional status, and contributes to quality of life. The rise of ‘food as medicine’ The emerging ‘food as medicine’ movement takes this idea a step further by integrating nutritious food into healthcare and social support. Programs can include medically tailored meals, nutrition education, produce prescriptions, and access to healthy groceries for people experiencing food insecurity or nutrition-related health conditions. This approach is relevant because eating well is not only a matter of personal choice. Income, geography, food availability, cooking facilities, education, culture, and time all shape what people can put on the table. This shifts the conversation. Instead of asking only, ‘What is wrong with an individual’s diet?’ we can also ask, ‘What is happening within the food system that makes healthy food difficult to access?’ That is as much a sustainability question as it is a human health question. A healthy planet needs healthy people The relationship works in the other direction as well. Our health depends on the natural systems that produce our food. Soil, water, pollinators, oceans, forests, and biodiversity are not distant environmental concerns, they are fundamental parts of the food system. Agricultural systems depend on healthy soils and reliable water. Crops depend on suitable growing conditions. Fisheries depend on healthy oceans. Farmers depend on predictable climatic conditions. When these systems are degraded, food security is threatened. Climate change is putting pressure on agricultural production through shifting temperatures, rainfall patterns, droughts, floods, pests, and other disruptions. In other words, we cannot sustainably nourish ourselves by undermining the systems that nourish us. The environmental footprint of what we eat Food has a significant environmental footprint. The food system encompasses more than farming, it includes land use change, agriculture, fishing, processing, refrigeration, transportation, packaging, retail, and waste. Food choices therefore have consequences beyond the nutritional information on the label. They can affect greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, biodiversity, and waste. This does not mean there is a single perfect sustainable diet, as food systems vary across countries and regions, as do cultures, climates, agricultural practices, and nutritional needs. Instead, we need to consider both sides of the equation: Is this food good for my health? Can the system that produces it continue to nourish people into the future? Plants, diversity, and the double benefit The intersection between health and sustainability emphasizes a diet that includes diversity and plant-rich foods. Vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds can provide an impressive range of nutrients and dietary fiber. At the same time, increasing the proportion of plant-based foods in diets can have environmental benefits, particularly when it reduces reliance on resource-intensive foods. Moving towards plant-based proteins offers health benefits, and healthy diets are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions and reductions in the use of freshwater and land. Sustainability should not become another form of dietary dogma. The objective is not to create a new set of food rules, it is to encourage diverse, nutritious, and appropriately sourced diets. This might mean choosing seasonal vegetables, reducing unnecessary food waste, or simply making plants a more central part of every meal. Small changes, multiplied across millions of people, can create significant change at the systems level. The gut, the garden, and the future One of the fascinating ways nutrition, health, and sustainability intersect is through the gut microbiome. Our digestive system is home to a vast community of microorganisms that interact with the food we eat. Dietary fiber, especially from a wide variety of plant foods, provides essential fuel for beneficial gut microbes. This offers a different way to think about biodiversity, not only outside our bodies, in forests and fields, but also inside them. Just as diverse ecosystems are resilient, the same principle applies to our diets. A plate filled with a variety of whole foods is nutritionally different from one dominated by a narrow range of highly processed products. Likewise, a food system that relies on only a few crops can be vulnerable to environmental, economic, and climatic shocks. Biodiversity is a powerful principle for sustainability, from the soil to the plate to the microbiome. Food waste is a health and sustainability issue Another connection deserves far more attention: food waste. When food is wasted, so too are the resources used to produce it: land, water, energy, labor, packaging, and transportation. But food waste also represents a missed nutritional opportunity. Consider the resources involved in growing a tomato, including the resources needed for transportation, refrigeration, retail display, and storage at home. If it is discarded because it is slightly bruised or forgotten at the back of the refrigerator, all those resources have been used without nourishing anyone. Reducing food waste then becomes a simple sustainability action. Planning meals, storing food correctly, using leftovers creatively, buying only what we need, and learning to appreciate imperfect produce can all help. Sustainability asks us to value resources, and ‘food as medicine’ asks us to value nourishment. Reducing food waste brings the two together. Access as part of the prescription Perhaps the most important connection between food, health, and sustainability is equity. It is easy to tell people to eat fresh vegetables, quality protein, and whole grains. It is harder for someone living under financial pressure or with limited access to food to afford them. Research suggests there is an ongoing challenge regarding the cost and accessibility of healthy diets, with billions of people still unable to afford one. This reminds us that sustainable nutrition cannot simply be a lifestyle trend for those who can pay for it. A sustainable food system must be accessible, affordable, and culturally appropriate. That means considering farmers and food workers, local food economies, school meals, community gardens, food relief, public health policy, supermarkets, hospitality, and healthcare. It recognizes that sustainability is about people as much as it is about the planet. From farm to pharmacy and back again Perhaps the future of healthcare requires us to rethink where medicine begins. It may not begin in the pharmacy. It may begin much earlier, in the soil. A seed grows because of healthy soil, water, sunlight, and biodiversity. A farmer nurtures that crop, food systems transport and distribute it, a cook turns it into a meal, and a person eats it. That person’s body breaks it down, absorbs the nutrients, and uses those nutrients to build, repair, and sustain itself. The journey from soil to health is a sustainability story. It suggests that healthcare, agriculture, environmental policy, and food policy should not operate in isolation. It is clearly recognized that healthy diets support the environmental, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of sustainable food systems. The plate is a place of power Sustainability is generally presented as something enormous and abstract: climate targets, emissions reductions, biodiversity strategies, and global agreements. Sustainability also happens at the dinner table. Every meal is an opportunity to ask where our food came from, how it was produced, how much was wasted, and what nourishment it provides. Food as medicine reminds us that what we eat matters for the world around us. Together, health and sustainability offer a holistic vision: a food system that heals rather than harms, nourishes rather than depletes, and supports both human health and planetary resilience. The future of food may not be about choosing between health and sustainability. Perhaps the real opportunity is recognizing that they were never separate in the first place. When we support the soil, we maintain our food. When we nurture our food, we nourish our bodies. When we encourage both, we build the foundations for a healthier, more resilient future for us and our planet. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Paula Rose Castronova Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice Paula Rose Castronova is a sustainability leader, speaker, and holistic thought architect transforming how people and organizations respond to today’s defining challenges. With a career rooted in creativity, design, storytelling, and leadership, she turns complex sustainability ideas into clear, actionable pathways. She sees sustainability as fundamentally human, shaped by how we live, lead, consume, and connect. As an Active Sustainability Director, she identifies opportunities where others see obstacles, using systems thinking to link environmental, social, and economic issues. Through her writing, speaking, and strategy, she bridges policy and daily action, turning knowledge into meaningful change.

Written by Veronika Monteith, Certified Therapeutic Coach Veronika Monteith is the founder of Mindflow Coaching and a certified therapeutic coach specialising in subconscious belief work with ambitious women. She works with clients internationally to help them overcome self-doubt, break self-sabotage patterns and finally feel as confident on the inside as they appear on the outside. Have you ever been called strong, capable, or the one who has it all together, and felt a strange loneliness in it? The kind of strength that means you never ask for help, never fall apart in front of anyone, and deal with far more than people realise? If so, this is for you, because self-sufficiency isn't quite the strength we've been taught it is, and understanding why could change everything. What self-sufficiency really is From early on, most of us learn that being independent is something to be proud of. We're praised for being mature, for not making a fuss, and for managing on our own. On the surface, it is a wonderful quality. Being capable gets things done. It earns trust. It makes you the person everyone knows they can rely on. But there's a difference between healthy independence and the kind of self-sufficiency that runs your life without you noticing. One is a choice. The other is a shield. For many of the women I work with, self-sufficiency isn't really about being capable at all. It's about safety. Somewhere along the way, they learned that needing others felt risky, that it was safer to rely only on themselves because then they'd never be let down, never be a burden, and never be caught off guard. Where does it come from? This pattern rarely appears out of nowhere. It usually has roots. Maybe you were the child who learned early that the adults around you were stretched thin, so you became easy, low maintenance, and no trouble. Maybe you were praised more for what you did than for who you were, so you learned that being useful was how you earned your place. Maybe you had an experience of being let down when you did rely on someone and promised yourself never to be that vulnerable again. However it formed, the message underneath is often the same: it's not safe to need anyone. I have to be able to do this on my own. So you became the capable one, not because you were born that way, but because it kept you safe. The hidden cost of always coping alone Here's the part we don't talk about. Self-sufficiency, taken far enough, comes at a price, and it's usually paid quietly. You become the person everyone leans on, but you have no one to lean on yourself. You're exhausted, but you keep going because stopping feels like failing. You crave connection, but you struggle to let anyone close enough to actually support you because being supported means being vulnerable, and vulnerability is the exact thing you learned to avoid. Often, the weight of it doesn't just stay emotional. It shows up in the body: the tension you can't shake, the tiredness that sleep doesn't fix, and the sense of running on empty that you can't explain. Perhaps the loneliest part is that, from the outside, everything looks fine. People see someone who has it together. They don't see how much it takes to hold it all. The belief underneath At the root of all of this is usually a single, quiet belief: my worth depends on how well I cope. If you can cope on your own, you're valuable. If you need help, something has gone wrong. So you keep proving, through doing, achieving, and managing, that you're strong enough to deserve your place. But a worth that has to be constantly earned is exhausting to maintain, and it's built on a belief that was never true to begin with. You were never valuable because you could cope alone. You were always valuable, full stop. How to begin loosening the pattern Shifting something this deep doesn't happen overnight, but it does begin with small, honest moments. Here are a few places to start. Notice the automatic "I'm fine." The next time someone asks if you need help and you hear yourself say, "No, I've got it," before you've even thought about it, pause. Ask yourself whether that's actually true or just the reflex. You don't have to change your answer. Just start noticing the reflex. Ask where you learned it. When the feeling of "I have to do this myself" shows up, get curious rather than critical. Where did you first learn that needing others wasn't safe? Understanding the origin takes the shame out of the pattern and makes it easier to change. Let someone in, in a small way. You don't have to dismantle your independence all at once. Start small. Accept the help that's offered. Say yes to the coffee. Tell one trusted person one honest thing. Let yourself experience that being supported doesn't cost you your strength. Separate rest from failure. Notice if stopping makes you feel like you're falling behind or letting people down. That feeling isn't the truth. It's the old belief talking. Rest isn't a reward you earn by collapsing. It's something you're allowed simply because you're human. You were never meant to manage it all alone Being self-sufficient can look like strength from the outside. But real strength isn't needing anyone. It's being secure enough to let people in. It's knowing your worth doesn't depend on how much you can handle without help. You are allowed to be supported. You are allowed to need, and you are allowed to put something down. If any of this feels familiar, you don't have to work it out on your own, which, if you've read this far, is rather the point. This pattern runs deep, but it can shift, and it often shifts most easily with support. If you'd like to explore what that could look like for you, I'd love to invite you to book a Belief Breakthrough call with me. Together, we can start gently loosening the belief that's had you doing everything alone and help you discover what life feels like when your worth isn't something you have to earn. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronika Monteith Veronika Monteith, Certified Therapeutic Coach Veronika Monteith is the founder of Mindflow Coaching and a certified Rapid Transformational Coach®, Positive Intelligence Coach® and Mindvalley Certified Hypnotherapist working with ambitious women across the world. Her work draws on subconscious belief work and nervous system awareness. She developed the Triple A Shift™, a methodology built around Awareness, Acceptance and Action after recognising that Acceptance, the step most commonly skipped in coaching, is the one that changes everything. Veronika works with women who appear to have it all together on the outside, yet feel quietly held back by patterns they cannot seem to think their way out of. Her approach gets to the root of those patterns and shifts them.

Written by Bobby Goodman, Principal and CEO of Goodman Tolbert Running a small business often means being the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), marketer, accountant, and customer service team all at once. But trying to do everything alone can lead to burnout, stalled growth, and missed opportunities. We spend a lot of time talking about getting to the next level. The next level in business. The next level financially. The next level in our careers, relationships, leadership, and lives. We set bigger goals. We create new plans. We ask for greater opportunities. But lately, I’ve been thinking about a different question: What if the next level doesn’t just require you to do something different? What if it requires you to become someone different? That realization hits differently because becoming great requires more than adding something new to your life. Sometimes it requires leaving something behind. That part of growth doesn’t get talked about enough. Some people are meant for a season One of the hardest things about growth is realizing that everyone who started the journey with you may not finish it with you. Facts. That doesn't necessarily mean someone did something wrong. Some friendships are connected to a particular season of our lives. They were exactly what we needed at the time. We laughed together, struggled together, dreamed together, and created memories that will always mean something. But then something changes. Your priorities change. Your conversations change. Your vision gets bigger. The things you once accepted no longer feel acceptable. Sometimes you realize you're trying to maintain a relationship based more on history than alignment. I've learned that you can appreciate what someone meant to your life without requiring them to be part of every chapter. Growth changes proximity. That doesn't make either person bad. It simply means you're moving. Old ideas can become new limitations People aren't the only things we outgrow. We outgrow ideas about ourselves. "I've never been good at that." "I'm not a risk taker." "That's just the way I am." "People like me don't do things like that." Be careful with those statements. Say something about yourself long enough, and eventually it stops being an observation and becomes a boundary. There are things I once believed about myself that made perfect sense for the person I was then. But if I'm going somewhere I've never been, I can't continue using my past as evidence of what I'm capable of in my future. At some point, you have to give yourself permission to contradict your old story. You can become more confident. You can become more disciplined. You can become a stronger leader. You can learn to speak up. You can change your mind. You can want more. Every version of you was necessary, but not every version of you is meant to come with you. Your next level may require taking risks I've also had to rethink what it means to take risks. When we hear the word "risk," we often think about everything that could go wrong. What if I fail? What if I lose money? What if people don't understand? What if I'm not ready? Those are legitimate questions. But there's another question we don't ask nearly enough: What could happen if I never try? There is risk in moving forward, but there is also risk in standing still. There's a risk in staying in the same position because it's familiar. There's a risk in never making the call, never starting the business, never asking for the opportunity, never entering the room, and never betting on yourself. I'm not talking about being reckless. There's a difference between reckless behavior and intentional risk. I'm talking about recognizing that there will be moments when you have done the research, prepared yourself, considered the consequences, and you're still afraid. Sometimes courage isn't the absence of fear. Sometimes courage is deciding that what could be on the other side is worth finding out. Comfort can become a ceiling This one may be the most uncomfortable. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable. We work hard to create stability. We want peace. We want security. We want to reach a place where everything doesn't feel like a struggle. But comfort deserves an occasional inspection because sometimes what feels like peace is actually familiarity. Sometimes what feels like security is fear wearing better clothes. I've started asking myself: Am I comfortable because I've created the life I want, or because I've stopped challenging myself? There's a difference. The next version of you may require walking into rooms where you aren't the smartest person. It may require having conversations you've been avoiding. It may require asking for more. It may require hearing "no." It may require starting over in an area where you were once comfortable being the expert. Growth has a way of making you a beginner again, and that can be humbling. But maybe that's exactly where we're supposed to be. You may have to stop needing everyone to understand When you begin changing, something interesting happens. People notice. Sometimes they'll encourage you. Sometimes they'll question you. Occasionally, they'll remind you of who you used to be. "You've changed." "You never used to do that." "Why are you doing all of this?" For a long time, being told that you've changed can feel like an accusation. But maybe it shouldn't. Maybe the answer is simply: You're right. I have changed. That's the point. If I'm asking for something I've never had, building something I've never built, and going somewhere I've never been, why would I expect to remain the same person? Not everyone is going to understand your evolution, and they don't have to. You can listen to wise counsel without requiring universal approval. You can love people without allowing their comfort with the old you to determine the future you. You can move forward without writing a dissertation explaining why you've changed. I'm still becoming great I didn't write this as someone who has figured everything out. I'm living it. I'm learning what to hold onto and what to release. I'm learning when fear is warning me and when fear is simply telling me I'm outside my comfort zone. I'm learning that growth can be exciting and uncomfortable at the same time. Most importantly, I'm learning that the next level isn't only asking more from me. It's asking something different of me. A different level of discipline. A different relationship with risk. Different boundaries. Different conversations. Different decisions. A willingness to walk away from some things I once thought I needed, and the courage to walk toward things I can't fully see yet. Maybe you're in that season too. Maybe something that once fit doesn't anymore. Maybe you're feeling uncomfortable in places that used to feel comfortable. Maybe you're questioning relationships, habits, beliefs, or boundaries you never questioned before. Before assuming something is wrong, consider another possibility: Maybe you're outgrowing the version of yourself that was built for where you've been. Your next level may not need a better plan from the current you. It may be waiting for the next version of you. So I'll leave you with the same question I'm asking myself: If the next level of your life requires a different version of you, what are you finally willing to leave behind? Follow him on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Bobby Goodman Bobby Goodman, Principal and CEO of Goodman Tolbert Bobby Goodman is an entrepreneur and advocate for small business growth who understands the realities of business from the ground up. Through firsthand experience, he shares insights on leadership, burnout, and the importance of delegation in entrepreneurship. In Wearing Every Hat: Why Small Business Owners Can't Do It All, Goodman explores the challenges many business owners face while trying to balance every role on their own.

Written by Paul Grainger, Founder of Unlock Dynamic As founder of Unlock Dynamic, Paul Grainger is a trusted strategic partner to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Operating Officers (COOs), and senior leadership teams navigating pressure, change, and complexity. With over 25 years of experience across startups and multinationals, he helps ambitious organisations thrive by addressing the behavioural realities most leadership programs overlook. In fast-moving organisations, responsiveness is usually seen as a sign of good leadership. Leaders are expected to act quickly, respond to new information, and keep pace with change. Yet in recent conversations with leadership teams, I’ve started to notice something interesting. What happens when one of an organisation’s greatest strengths begins working against it? The moment “Anything new, we’re on it straight away.” This comment came during a recent leadership session as a group of senior leaders explored what most often hijacked their attention. They had identified several familiar culprits: recency bias, ‘quick questions’, the crowd effect, and what they described as the “shiny new thing.” It was this last example that prompted a particularly interesting observation. One participant described how readily the group responded whenever something new appeared: “Anything new, we’re on it straight away, and we kind of push away other things that we’re prepping for.” There was a brief pause as the recognition seemed to spread around the room. What’s really happening? At first glance, there was nothing particularly unusual about what the group had described. Leaders respond to requests, adapt to new information, and pay attention when something urgent arises. In a fast-moving organisation, we would probably be more concerned if they didn't. What made the conversation interesting was that none of these individual responses appeared to be the problem. Each made sense on its own. The pattern only became visible when they were considered together: something new arrived, attention shifted, and what had already been prioritised became surprisingly easy to displace. This is where responsiveness can quietly become reactivity. Not because leaders are responding to the wrong things, but because responding itself can become the default. Over time, the organisation becomes increasingly good at reacting to what arrives while becoming less deliberate about deciding what genuinely deserves its attention. Nothing looks wrong The difficulty is that an organisation operating this way may still appear to be performing well. Leaders respond quickly, teams stay busy, and new ideas turn into action. From the outside, it can look like exactly the kind of pace and adaptability that fast-moving organisations need. Yet underneath that activity, priorities can become increasingly fragile. Work that was deliberately agreed upon gets displaced by what has just arrived, attention keeps moving, and energy is repeatedly redirected before existing priorities have had time to deliver. Everything seems to be moving at full speed, but movement can easily be mistaken for progress. The wrong diagnosis The problem often becomes visible somewhere else: competing priorities, unfinished initiatives, slower execution, or teams struggling to create space for bigger picture thinking. When it does, organisations naturally try to fix what they can see. Competing priorities become a prioritisation problem. Overstretched teams suggest a lack of capacity. Initiatives that keep losing momentum point to an execution problem. Each diagnosis may contain some truth. But sometimes the deeper problem is simpler: the organisation has become too quick to give new things priority in the first place. What deserves a response? If responding faster isn’t always the answer, slowing everything down isn’t either. Fast-moving organisations need to respond quickly when the situation demands it. The challenge is knowing when. That requires a better filter for responsiveness: distinguishing between what needs attention now, what can wait, and what doesn't need attention at all. The real leadership challenge, therefore, is not simply knowing when to move quickly. It’s knowing what deserves speed in the first place. How effective organisations respond Effective organisations don’t try to eliminate the constant flow of requests, ideas, and opportunities. In a fast-moving environment, that would be neither realistic nor desirable. Instead, they become better at filtering what deserves attention before allowing it to redirect existing priorities. This doesn't mean resisting new ideas or refusing to change direction. During the leadership session, one participant captured the balance well. The “shiny new thing,” he observed, has a place “as long as it is considered strategically, and we implement it carefully.” Genuine emergencies and unexpected opportunities still require a fast response. The difference is that something new arriving isn't, by itself, enough reason to change direction. The goal isn't to respond less or move more slowly. It's to create enough space between what arrives and what happens next so the response becomes intentional rather than automatic. In essence, effective organisations aren't necessarily less responsive. They are more selective about what they respond to. The evidence When organisations want better results, the natural response is often to add something: another priority, another measure, another initiative to move things forward. It feels productive. But the evidence suggests that more can actually make success less likely. Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s 2024 research into transformation initiatives found that those using a lower, more manageable number of milestones achieved success rates 15% to 40% higher than those perceived as having too many. With fewer things competing for attention, teams were better able to focus on the actions that mattered most. That's the danger of the “shiny new thing.” Each addition can seem useful on its own. Yet collectively, they can dilute the very focus needed to deliver. The organisations that keep moving forward may not be those doing the most, but those staying focused on what matters most. Building a culture of focus Every time leaders respond to something, they are doing more than making a decision. They are also signalling what deserves attention. If every new idea immediately creates activity, teams quickly learn that generating movement is valuable, even when the idea itself has had little time to develop. The opposite isn't a culture where teams stop bringing ideas forward. It's one where ideas are expected to earn attention. Teams learn to think them through, involve the right stakeholders, and consider how they fit with what already matters. This improves the quality of ideas being raised while reducing the time and energy spent exploring those that add little value. Over time, this creates an organisation that is more selective about where it directs its attention. A culture that regularly questions where its time and attention are going becomes much harder to distract from what matters most. The one question Once a week, step back from the individual decisions and demands that have filled your team's attention and ask yourself and your team one question: What took more time than it deserved? The value isn't in identifying one bad decision or wasted hours. It's in noticing the organisational patterns that are difficult to see while you're caught up in them. Over time, those conversations can help teams strengthen their filter for what genuinely deserves attention and what doesn't. The quality of that filter may be what separates focused organisations from merely busy ones. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Paul Grainger Paul Grainger, Founder of Unlock Dynamic Paul Grainger focuses on helping capable leaders and teams sustain strong performance over time, beyond conventional approaches that frequently fail to hold under daily pressure. Drawing on decades of experience, he blends human insight and modern science to offer a practical alternative to conventional leadership thinking. A consistent theme in his work is identifying the invisible performance drains that quietly cost organizations time, energy, and focus.

Written by Liz Bell, Career and Positive Intelligence® Coach Liz Bell is a Career and Positive Intelligence® Coach who helps purpose-driven women overcome burnout and self-doubt so they can build fulfilling, impactful careers. Combining career development, behavioural change, and mental fitness, she empowers clients to create sustainable transformation that lasts far beyond coaching. Feeling stuck in your career isn’t always a sign that you lack direction or ambition. Sometimes fear is quietly driving your overthinking, perfectionism, and need for certainty. Here is how to recognise what is really keeping you stuck and begin to move forward—without having all the answers first. Do I need to retrain? Should I take a career quiz? Study for a master’s degree? Search for another job? Start again completely? Perhaps you’ve asked yourself some of these questions. You’ve read articles, explored courses, and scrolled through job descriptions, hoping something will suddenly feel like the answer. Instead, you feel overloaded with information and no closer to knowing what to do. If that sounds familiar, I want you to know this: you may not have a motivation problem. You may have a protection problem. You know something needs to change. At the same time, part of you is working very hard to protect you from uncertainty, regret, financial loss, judgement or the possibility of getting it wrong. That protective response is fear. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, incapable or lacking in confidence. It means you’re human. The answer isn’t to eliminate fear before you act. It is to recognise when fear is making your decisions for you, and learn how to choose your response with more awareness and agency. Why do capable women feel stuck in their careers? There are many valid reasons why you might feel stuck at work. Perhaps there is no room to grow. You are bored, underused, or no longer learning. You may be carrying an unmanageable workload, working in an unhealthy culture or receiving too little recognition and support. Your life, values or priorities may have changed while your career has stayed the same. Women can also face very real external constraints, including financial commitments, caring responsibilities, discrimination and uncertainty in the job market. These realities should never be dismissed as a mindset problem. However, even when you recognise that something isn’t working, fear can keep you frozen. This can be especially confusing when your career looks successful from the outside. You may have a respectable role, a reliable income and years of hard-earned experience. Other people might think you are doing well. Inside, you feel bored, frustrated or increasingly disconnected from any sense of purpose. You might tell yourself you should be grateful. You might worry that leaving would mean wasting everything you’ve built. So, you remain “comfortably uncomfortable”, unhappy enough to want something different, but afraid of the consequences of moving. Careershifters describes this bind as being caught between two fears: the fear of making a change and the fear of staying where you are. When both options feel dangerous, it is easy to remain in the middle, using enormous amounts of energy without going anywhere. Fear doesn’t always look like fear. We tend to imagine fear as panic or a racing heart. In career change, it is often far less obvious. It may sound like: “I just need to do more research.” “Perhaps I need another qualification first.” “I can’t waste all the years I’ve invested in this career.” “I need to know the change will work before I commit.” “Other people have it worse. I should be grateful.” “I’ll do it when I feel more confident.” “I don’t want to make a mistake.” Each statement may contain a sensible concern. Research, qualifications and financial planning can all be valuable. The question is whether they are helping you create evidence, or helping you postpone the discomfort of not knowing. I often see capable women become trapped in a cycle of researching careers, taking quizzes and comparing courses. It feels productive, but every new option creates more questions. They unconsciously expect information to give them something it cannot–a guarantee. No career quiz can promise that you will never regret a decision. No course can remove all risk. No amount of thinking can show you exactly how an untested career will feel. Eventually, the search for certainty becomes the very thing keeping you stuck. When your strengths are hijacked by fear One of the most powerful things you can recognise is that fear often works through your strengths. There is nothing wrong with being caring, responsible, thoughtful or committed. These qualities may have helped you build a successful career. But when fear takes charge, those same strengths can start working against you. Care can become people-pleasing. You make career decisions based on who might be disappointed rather than what matters to you. Responsibility can become carrying too much. You say yes when you need to say no and continue compensating for an unsustainable workplace until you burn out. High standards can become perfectionism. You reject every possible next step because none of them comes with complete certainty. Thoughtfulness can become overthinking. You analyse every path but gain no real-world experience of any of them. Loyalty can keep you in a role long after it has stopped being right for you because leaving feels like letting people down. This doesn’t mean you need to “fix” yourself or abandon your strengths. It means learning to notice whether a strength is being used freely, or driven by fear. Are you burned out, or is it time for a career change? When you are exhausted, it can be difficult to tell whether you need a new career, a different workplace or time and support to recover. The Mental Health Foundation describes burnout as physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, often connected to workplace stress. Common features include depleted energy, feeling negative or detached from work and reduced professional performance. It also identifies causes such as unmanageable workloads, constant pressure, low pay and inadequate mental health support. In other words, burnout is not simply a failure to think positively. Sometimes the environment is the problem. As another Brainz Magazine article examining the well-being illusion at work highlights, the effects of prolonged workplace pressure do not remain confined to the individual. Before making a major career decision, I invite you to consider: When you get meaningful rest, does any interest in your work return? Is it the profession itself, or this role, manager, workload or organisation, that is draining you? What changes when you have more control, clearer expectations or better support? Does the work conflict with your values, even on a better day? Have patterns such as overworking, perfectionism or weak boundaries followed you from one role to another? You may discover that the environment needs to change. You may realise that your career no longer fits who you are. You may also recognise an internal pattern that could follow you into a new role if it remains unexamined. More than one of these things can be true. If exhaustion, low mood, sleep problems or physical symptoms are persistent or severe, please seek support from an appropriate healthcare or mental health professional. You do not have to diagnose or push through this alone. Stop asking for certainty and start building evidence When fear is in charge, it asks, “What is the perfect career, and how can I be certain it will work?” A more helpful question is, “What is one thing I can learn safely?” This moves you away from making an enormous, irreversible decision and towards small experiments that create useful evidence. For example, you could speak to one person doing work that interests you, test a skill through a small project before investing in a master’s degree, shadow someone or volunteer in a different environment, explore whether your existing role could offer greater flexibility or development, calculate what you genuinely need financially, rather than responding to a vague fear of losing everything, and notice which activities give you energy, absorb your attention or create a sense of contribution. These aren’t lifetime commitments. They are experiments. An exploratory conversation does not mean you have to resign. Trying a short course does not mean you must retrain. Testing an idea does not make it your final answer. You are simply replacing assumptions with experience. What to do when fear is keeping you stuck If you recognise yourself in this article, I recommend starting with four steps. Name the fear: Ask yourself, “What am I afraid to lose?” Is it income, status, security, belonging, approval, or your identity as a competent person? A specific fear is much easier to work with than a general sense that change is impossible. Try meeting the answer with compassion rather than judgement. Your fear is trying to protect something important. Listening to it does not mean obeying it. Separate genuine risk from unfamiliarity: Some fears point to practical risks that need a plan. If you have financial or caring responsibilities, for example, you may need a savings target, salary threshold or longer transition period. Other fears arise because an action is unfamiliar. Contacting somebody, requesting flexibility or testing a new skill may feel uncomfortable without placing your security in serious danger. Ask, “What here needs a plan, and what simply needs practice?” Choose the smallest useful action: Don’t ask yourself to solve your entire career. Choose an action small enough to feel manageable and meaningful enough to teach you something. The goal isn’t to prove that an idea will work. It is to find out a little more than you know today. Confidence grows after we act, not before. As this Brainz Magazine article on how one small step can change your career trajectory explores, each action gives you evidence that you are capable. Your own experiments can also show you that you can handle uncertainty, learn and adjust. Do it with support: Career change can become very lonely inside your own head. A trusted friend, mentor, coach or supportive peer can help you hear your assumptions, recognise familiar patterns and remain accountable without putting you under more pressure. The right support will not tell you what your answer should be. It will help you trust yourself enough to explore it. You don’t need to eliminate fear to move forward Feeling stuck in your career doesn’t mean you are indecisive, ungrateful, or failing. You may be a capable woman caught between a life that no longer fits and a mind that wants to protect you from the uncertainty of something different. Fear may still come with you. The aim is not to silence it forever. It is to stop allowing fear to make every decision. You don’t need to discover your perfect career in one moment of clarity. You can build clarity through compassionate self-awareness, practical planning, and small real-world experiments. Remember, your next step does not have to be a leap. It simply needs to help you learn. So, what is one career question you could stop trying to answer perfectly, and start exploring safely? Ready to move beyond fear in your career? If you recognise that fear, perfectionism, people-pleasing or overthinking may be keeping you stuck, I invite you to join my free, interactive 90-minute online workshop, Move Beyond Fear in Your Career. Together, we’ll explore the patterns that may be holding you back, how fear can hijack your strengths, and a simple mental fitness technique you can use when facing difficult situations. You don’t need to arrive fearless, just curious and willing to take one small step forward. Join me online on 14 September 2026, from 7:00 to 8:30 pm. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Liz Bell Liz Bell, Career and Positive Intelligence® Coach Liz Bell is a Career and Positive Intelligence® Coach who helps purpose-driven women overcome burnout, self-doubt, and unhelpful mental habits to create fulfilling, impactful careers. After experiencing career burnout herself, she realised that lasting change requires more than a new job - it requires a new relationship with ourselves. Combining career coaching, mental fitness, and personal development, Liz helps clients build self-awareness, confidence, and sustainable habits for long-term success. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Social Sciences and is a licensed Firework™ Career Coach and Positive Intelligence® Coach Member, working with individuals and organisations across the UK and beyond.

Written by Daniele Forni, Executive Coach and Tech Founder Daniele Forni is an executive coach for non-standard and neurodivergent leaders and the founder of The Human Spikes Labs. A former Director at HSBC with fifteen years in banking across Europe and Asia, he is a University of Cambridge alumnus and the author of books on leadership, neurodiversity, strategy, and meditation. It is the question I am asked most often by ambitious leaders, and the honest answer runs against almost everything the annual review has taught us. Every appraisal I have ever watched follows the same script. A manager works down a list of competencies, ticks the boxes where you are strong, circles the two where you are not, and then spends the rest of the hour on the circles. You walk out with a development plan built almost entirely around your weakest points and a gentle instruction to become a little more well-rounded by the end of the year. However well-meant, I have come to believe this ritual is close to the worst advice a genuinely talented person can be given. It quietly assumes that the fastest way to grow is to hunt down your lowest scores and drag them up to the middle. In my experience coaching senior leaders, the opposite is usually true. Why do we pour our effort into the weakest boxes? Because a balanced scorecard feels safe, fair, and easy to defend. A visible gap looks like a risk, so we rush to close it. Being even across the board reads as professionalism, while a jagged profile reads as a liability waiting to be managed. The trouble is that the strategy optimises for the absence of obvious faults rather than the presence of rare strength, and markets do not pay for the absence of faults. Every leader I assess is really facing one decision about where their next hundred hours of effort should go. They can lift the low points up towards the average, or they can push the high points higher still. Both raise the overall number. Only one of them produces something a competitor cannot easily copy. What is a spiky profile? A spiky profile is a simple picture. A few tall peaks, a few deep valleys, and a line through the middle we call the average. Everyone has one, but some run sharper than others. Between 15 and 20 percent of people are autistic, have ADHD, are dyslexic, or otherwise wired differently, and those minds tend to run taller peaks and deeper valleys still. I count myself among them. For years, I tried to file my own edges down to look more even, until I realised the edges were the entire career. The shape showed up early. I was quick over sixty metres and hopeless over twenty-six miles, which I also loathed. I could read a spreadsheet like a story yet never once made sense of a physics equation. I could hold a room with a sharp question and then fumble the answer entirely. As a teenager, I lost whole weekends to painting tiny Warhammer figures, and years later, that same capacity for narrow, obsessive focus was exactly what let me hold a two-year regulatory programme in my head without dropping a thread. The pattern never really changed, startlingly good at a thin band of things, and stubbornly poor at most of the rest. For a long time, I read that as a defect to correct. It was actually the whole map. The flat, evenly rounded professional that so many competency frameworks reward is largely a fiction. The high performers I have worked with in banking and technology were never even. They were a little unusual and remarkable at two or three specific things. Specialisation, not symmetry, is what made them valuable. Is it harder to fix a weakness or build a strength? This is where the appraisal logic quietly falls apart, because closing a weakness and extending a strength are not the same task and do not pay the same return. Lifting a skill from poor to passable is slow, effortful, and subject to sharply diminishing returns, and the reward at the end is that you are now unremarkable at it. Lifting a skill from strong to exceptional is frequently cheaper per hour, because you are moving along the grain of how your mind already works, and the reward is a capability that is genuinely scarce. Two decades of strengths research point the same way, motivation, output, and wellbeing all climb faster when people are built up from what they do well rather than repaired at what they do badly. The applied numbers are striking. When JPMorgan Chase matched neurodivergent hires to roles that fit their cognitive peaks, those employees ran up to 48 percent faster on certain technical work, simply because the task finally suited the wiring. Pull in the other direction and the cost shows up just as clearly. Masking, the constant effort of hiding how your mind works to seem more conventional, is reported by around 81 percent of neurodivergent employees and carries a threefold rise in burnout risk. A valley, remember, is a difference, not a deficit. The 2025 Princeton SPARK study, mapping over 230 traits, found neurodivergence is not a single dial from mild to severe but a set of distinct clusters, each with its own peaks and its own needs. You do not get the pattern recognition without the patchy admin. They are one and the same architecture. What does the arithmetic actually show? Here is the part that undoes the well-rounded ideal in a single picture. Take three versions of the same person and let each one land on almost precisely the same average score. The average is a magician's cloth. It conceals the shape, and the shape is where the whole story lives. The version that fixes its weaknesses fills the valleys but bleeds the peaks, because effort is finite and every hour aimed at your worst skill is stolen from your best. The result is a smooth, dependable, thoroughly forgettable line. The version that doubles down keeps its valleys, but manages them, and drives its peaks upward until they are visible from across the market. Identical averages. Completely different careers. In practice, feeding the peaks looks like three disciplined moves: Take the one or two valleys that could genuinely harm others, raise them to a safe, functional level, and then leave them alone. Delegate, automate, or partner around the remaining valleys, deliberately building a team whose shape is the mirror image of yours. Aim the effort you have left at the two or three peaks that already make people request you by name. Does specialising pay off beyond the individual? It does, and this is not a fringe position. Harvard Business Review has described neurodiversity as a competitive advantage, and the organisational numbers back it: Teams that deliberately include neurodivergent talent report roughly a 15 percent lift in innovation output (HLB Global, 2025). Those same programmes retain close to 90 percent of that talent, a rare edge when specialists are scarce. At the specialist firm Auticon, 82 percent of staff say they can be themselves at work, and that authenticity travels with markedly higher engagement. Given the right conditions, the very traits a rigid process treats as defects are exactly what let leaders with ADHD thrive in the boardroom. Strength, properly resourced, compounds. The average does not. So should you ignore your weaknesses? No. A reframing without limits is just flattery, so here are two honest boundaries. First, not every weakness is safe to leave alone. Some valleys are thresholds rather than preferences. If a gap is actively harming your team, your clients, or your own health, that is a floor you have to reach, not an inconvenience to route around. Bring it up to safe, and then stop. You are aiming for a functional valley, not a filled one. Second, doubling down is not the same as hiding in a niche. Building on a strength still means growing, but growing along the line of your own design rather than fighting it, and accepting that careers are made on what you are exceptional at, not on the absence of anything you are poor at. Ready to find your peaks? If you have spent years being told to shore up your weak spots, treat this as permission to change tack. It is the same shift driving so many founders and neurodivergent leaders to seek coaching that begins from strength rather than from gaps. You can map your own spiky profile with my free assessment, or book a conversation about where to aim your effort this year. The instruction is the same either way, stop sanding and start sharpening. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Daniele Forni Daniele Forni, Executive Coach and Tech Founder Daniele Forni, known as "The Data Shaman," is not your average executive coach. He helps senior professionals leverage their unconventional traits into tangible ROI using rigorous science, AI tools, and strategic wit. As the founder of the SquirrelCoach platform, he champions the "Spiky Profile" concept, exceptional leaders are defined by their peaks. An alumnus of the University of Cambridge and a 6x author on leadership, neurodiversity, and meditation, Daniele previously spent 15 years driving technology and risk management as an Investment Banking Director across Europe and Asia.

Written by Chameleon Skills Coaching, Ecosystemic Team and Organisational Coaches Real organisational change isn't just about strategy, it's about people. Chameleon Skills Coaching partners with organisations to help individuals and teams perform and thrive. Most organisations spend enormous energy pursuing growth. More customers. More revenue. More efficiency. But growth alone doesn't guarantee long-term success. Without evolution, organisations often become bigger versions of the same challenges they already have. The organisations that thrive over time are those that continually evolve, strengthening leadership, culture and capability alongside performance. In this article, we explore the difference between growth and evolution, why it matters more than ever in today's changing world, and five practical ways leaders can create organisations that continue to learn, adapt and flourish. The difference between growing and becoming In our previous Brainz article, we suggested that Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn't replacing the human element, it is making it more important than ever. As technology accelerates, organisations naturally focus on growth: more customers more products more efficiency more automation Yet one question is often overlooked. Is your organisation evolving as quickly as it is growing? Growth and evolution aren't the same. Growth means becoming bigger. Evolution means becoming different. An organisation can double its turnover while still communicating badly, developing poor leaders and carrying outdated assumptions. Growth often magnifies problems that were already present. Evolution addresses them. Why we chose to evolve Recently, we evolved from Chameleon Skills (CS) to Chameleon Skills Coaching (CSC). It wasn't because we wanted to narrow what we do. Quite the opposite. We wanted to reflect how our own understanding of developing organisations, teams and people has evolved, and how coaching enables that evolution. We wanted organisations to understand that coaching is not simply something that happens between two people. Used well, coaching becomes a catalyst for healthier conversations, stronger relationships, better leadership and more adaptive organisational ecosystems. The ecosystem Every organisation operates as an ecosystem. Leadership influences culture, culture influences behaviour, behaviour influences performance, and performance shapes customer experience. Every part affects every other part. When one area changes, everything else adjusts too. Without conscious attention, those changes can create a negative spiral. Evolution requires leaders to notice what is emerging and intentionally create conditions that are positive. Five ways to tell whether your organisation is evolving 1. Observe yourself first: If leaders aren't evolving, neither is the organisation. The team generally reflects the leader. Are you aware of your own strengths and development areas? When did you last do a personal Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis? Use it as an opportunity to recognise how far you've come as a leader, celebrate that progress and identify the capabilities you'll need for the future. 2. Measure awareness, not performance: Ask team members to complete their own SWOT. Notice: where people underestimate themselves where they overestimate themselves where opportunities keep appearing where blind spots are being ignored The purpose isn't criticism. It's to provide constructive feedforward that increases awareness and creates the conditions for growth. 3. Think future back: One of our favourite concepts. Imagine your organisation three years from now. What capabilities will people need that they don't have today? How will they bridge those gaps? What is your plan to close those gaps before they become tomorrow's constraints? 4. Make learning visible: Not training. There is nothing wrong with training. Learning is where training becomes capability. New learning is a challenge. Without support, it is easier to revert to the familiar and comfortable. Coaching and support are essential to speed up implementation. People copy what leaders celebrate. Make sharing and celebrating learning a part of your team culture. A great way to learn something is to teach someone else. Is there another member of the team who would benefit from the shared learning? Growth spreads. One person's learning can accelerate the evolution of an entire team. 5. Replace blame with curiosity: Instead of "What went wrong?" ask "What is the system trying to tell us?" This shifts the conversation from finding scapegoats to understanding the system and creating solutions. Evolution is a leadership choice Technology will continue to evolve. Markets will continue to evolve. Expectations will continue to evolve. The real question is whether our organisations are evolving too. Sustainable success rarely comes from growing faster alone. It comes from creating ecosystems where people continue to learn, adapt and develop together. In the words of Sonali Bendre: "The point of human evolution is adapting to circumstance. Not letting go of the old, but adapting it, is necessary." If this article has prompted you to think differently about growth and evolution, we'd be delighted to send you a complimentary copy of our EAGER for Managers eBook, which explores practical ways leaders can create cultures where growth and evolution happen together. At Chameleon Skills Coaching, we work with the whole organisational ecosystem because lasting evolution never happens in isolation. Follow me on LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Chameleon Skills Coaching Chameleon Skills Coaching, Ecosystemic Team and Organisational Coaches At Chameleon Skills Coaching, we believe that organisations change when people do. Since 2006, we've partnered with leaders and teams to navigate complexity, strengthen relationships, and build workplace cultures where people and performance can thrive. Our ecosystemic approach combines coaching, leadership development, and practical insight into the human dynamics that shape every organisation.

Written by KeKe Chanel, Author, Host, and Certified Life and Book Coach KeKe Chanel is an award-winning author, certified life and book coach, and host of Kickin' It With KeKe Podcast. KeKe is also the owner of KeKe Chanel LLC and Nineteen Lifestyle Magazine. Life has a way of reminding us that no matter how carefully we plan, we cannot predict every turn in the road. One day everything seems to be moving exactly as we imagined, and the next, we're faced with unexpected challenges that force us to rethink our plans, reevaluate our priorities, and redefine what success looks like. While these moments can feel overwhelming, they often become the very experiences that shape us into stronger, wiser, and more resilient individuals. The truth is, pivoting is a part of life. Whether it's a career change, the end of a relationship, an unexpected financial hardship, a health challenge, or simply realizing that the path you've been pursuing no longer aligns with who you're becoming, change is inevitable. What separates those who remain stuck from those who continue to grow isn't the absence of adversity. It's their mindset. When life doesn't go according to plan, our natural response is often to focus on what we've lost. We grieve the opportunities that didn't materialize, the expectations that weren't met, and the future we imagined for ourselves. While those feelings are valid, staying in that place for too long can prevent us from recognizing the opportunities that difficult seasons often create. A mindset shift begins when we stop asking, "Why is this happening to me?" and start asking, "What can I learn from this experience?" That simple change in perspective doesn't erase the difficulty of the situation, but it changes how we move through it. Instead of allowing disappointment to define us, we begin looking for lessons that can strengthen us. We become more intentional about our decisions, more aware of our strengths, and more willing to embrace growth, even when it feels uncomfortable. One of the greatest misconceptions about pivoting is that it signals failure. Society often celebrates consistency, making it easy to believe that changing direction means we've somehow fallen behind. In reality, the ability to pivot demonstrates self-awareness, adaptability, and courage. It takes strength to acknowledge when something is no longer working and even greater strength to pursue a different path despite uncertainty. Many of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, leaders, and creatives didn't arrive at success by following a straight line. They encountered setbacks, changed careers, reinvented themselves, and adjusted their goals along the way. Their willingness to pivot didn't diminish their purpose. It brought them closer to it. The same can be true for each of us. Our mindset also influences how we define progress. Too often, we measure growth by visible accomplishments such as promotions, awards, financial success, or public recognition. While those milestones are worth celebrating, they aren't the only indicators of progress. Sometimes growth looks like choosing peace over chaos, setting healthy boundaries, asking for help, or simply finding the strength to begin again after disappointment. These quieter victories may not receive applause, but they often represent the deepest transformation. They build resilience, increase emotional intelligence, and prepare us for opportunities we may not yet see. Every challenge we overcome adds another layer to our character, reminding us that personal growth often happens long before external success becomes visible. Another important mindset shift involves separating our identity from our circumstances. It's easy to internalize setbacks and begin believing they define who we are. Losing a job does not make someone a failure. Experiencing rejection does not diminish a person's value. Encountering obstacles does not mean we've lost our purpose. Our circumstances are temporary experiences. They are not permanent definitions of our identity. When we recognize this distinction, we become better equipped to navigate life's uncertainties with confidence rather than fear. We begin to understand that our worth isn't determined by the obstacles we face, but by the resilience we demonstrate in overcoming them. Of course, embracing a pivot doesn't mean pretending the journey is easy. Change often requires letting go of familiar routines, comfortable environments, and expectations we've held for years. There is often grief in releasing what once felt certain. However, growth rarely occurs within the boundaries of comfort. Every meaningful transformation requires us to leave something behind in order to make room for something new. As difficult as these seasons can be, they also provide an opportunity to discover strengths we may never have recognized otherwise. They teach patience when answers don't come quickly. They develop perseverance when progress feels slow. They cultivate humility, compassion, and wisdom that can only be gained through lived experience. Looking back, many people realize that the seasons they once wished away ultimately became the moments that redirected their lives for the better. What initially felt like an ending became the beginning of something greater than they had imagined. While it's difficult to recognize that truth in the middle of hardship, hindsight often reveals that every pivot served a purpose. Life isn't about avoiding change. It's about learning how to navigate it with confidence, resilience, and hope. The path forward may not always look like the one we envisioned, but that doesn't mean it's any less meaningful. Sometimes the greatest opportunities emerge only after we've had the courage to release our original plans and embrace new possibilities. If you find yourself in a season of uncertainty, remember that a pivot doesn't erase your purpose. It simply changes the route you take to reach it. Your circumstances may have shifted, but your potential has not. Every challenge carries the possibility of growth, every setback offers an opportunity to learn, and every difficult season has the power to prepare you for what comes next. Rather than resisting the pivot, embrace it. Allow it to teach you, strengthen you, and shape the person you're becoming. Your story isn't ending because life has changed direction. In many ways, it's just beginning. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from KeKe Chanel KeKe Chanel, Author, Host, and Certified Life and Book Coach KeKe Chanel is an award-winning author, certified life and book coach, and host of Kickin’ It With KeKe: Life, Love, and All That Other SH&T Podcast. KeKe is the proud owner and CEO of P.U.S.H. Life Coaching & KeKe Chanel LLC. At PUSH, KeKe helps individuals unpack their mental packages to create a new mindset through positive personal growth. Her hobbies include reading, watching horror movies, and spending time with people who recharge her in a positive way. KeKe recently founded Kickin’ It With KeKe Media and launched her lifestyle magazine, Nineteen, in January of 2024. KeKe resides in Louisiana with her family.

Written by Karmen Fairall, Speech Pathologist & Reflective Practitioner Karmen Fairall is a Speech Pathologist and reflective practitioner exploring sustainable leadership, boundaries, and wellbeing in helping professions. Drawing on lived experience, faith-informed values, and professional insight, she writes to support people who serve others in demanding roles. At the beginning of this writing journey, I thought I was writing about burnout. I thought I was exploring why I felt overwhelmed, why I struggled to slow down, and why serving others sometimes felt heavier than it should. But as I have reflected, researched, and written through these articles, I have realised the deeper question underneath all of it: What kind of life am I intentionally building? Because burnout is rarely just about being busy. Often, it is about misalignment, a life where our actions slowly drift away from what matters most. The quiet drift Most people do not wake up one day and decide they want to build a life that leaves them exhausted. The drift usually happens gradually. A responsibility here. An opportunity there. A commitment that feels too important to decline. A season where pushing harder feels necessary. Before long, we can become very skilled at responding to what is urgent while losing sight of what is important. We become productive. We become dependable. We become needed. But we may also become disconnected from ourselves. Redefining success For much of my life, I have measured success through achievement. Goals reached. Problems solved. People helped. Things completed. There is nothing wrong with these things. Achievement can be meaningful. Contribution matters. Excellence is valuable. But I am learning that achievement alone is too small a definition of success. A successful life is not only measured by what we accomplish. It is also measured by how we show up, how we love, how we lead, and how we make people feel. One of the reflections that has shaped me deeply is the idea that people may not remember everything we said or everything we gave them, but they remember how we made them feel. This has changed the way I think about leadership, motherhood, business, and service. Living from values, not just responsibilities One of the challenges for people who care deeply is that responsibility can become louder than values. Responsibilities tell us what needs to happen. Values remind us why it matters. Research into values-based living suggests that when our behaviours align with our personal values, we experience greater wellbeing, motivation, and life satisfaction. Self-determination theory highlights that people flourish when their lives support core psychological needs, including autonomy, competence, and connection.[1] In simple terms, we thrive when our lives reflect what matters most. Not what we feel pressured to prove. Not what we think will make us acceptable. Not what everyone else appears to be doing. What genuinely matters to us. The legacy we build every day When I think about legacy now, I think differently. I do not only think about professional achievements or milestones. I think about my husband, my children, the people I have supported, the teams I have been part of, and the communities I have served. I want my family to remember that they were more important than my productivity. I want the people I work with to feel seen, supported, and valued. I want my leadership to create space for others to grow. These things may not always appear on a traditional measure of success, but I believe they matter. Faith, purpose, and stewardship My faith continues to shape how I understand purpose. I do not believe we are called simply to achieve more. I believe we are called to steward what we have been given: our time, our relationships, our gifts, and our influence. Stewardship requires intention. It asks questions like, “What am I called to do?” “What am I uniquely able to contribute?” Perhaps just as importantly, “What am I called to release?” Because sometimes the most faithful decision is not taking on more. Sometimes it is creating space for what matters most. Creating a life that holds together The greatest lesson from this season has been that sustainability is not about lowering expectations. It is about alignment. It is about building a life where our work reflects our values, our relationships receive our presence, our strengths are used wisely, and our commitments reflect our capacity. A life that holds together. Not a perfect life. Not a perfectly balanced life. A life that is intentionally built. Two practices for this season 1. Baseline practice: Clarify what matters most. Take time to write down the values that you want your life to reflect. Not your job title. Not your achievements. Not what others expect from you. Your values. Then ask: Does the way I spend my time reflect these values? Where have I drifted away from what matters most? What is one small adjustment I can make? 2. Reaching practice: Make one courageous alignment decision. Identify one area where your current actions and your values are no longer aligned. It may be a commitment you have outgrown, an expectation you have placed on yourself, or a habit that is taking more than it gives. Then ask, “What would change if I trusted my values more than my fears?” A final reflection This series began with recognising that I was carrying too much. It has ended with a different question: What am I choosing to carry? Because not everything important is urgent. Not everything valuable is measurable. Not every meaningful contribution requires exhaustion as proof. The life I want to build is not one where I am remembered for how much I accomplished. It is one where the people closest to me knew they were loved, where those I served felt valued, where my work reflected my purpose, and where I had the courage to live intentionally. Because ultimately, success is not just about what we build. It is about who we become while building it. Continue the conversation Throughout this series, I have been exploring how faith, frameworks, and reflective practice can support more sustainable leadership and service, particularly in helping professions. As I continue writing and developing these ideas, I’d love to stay connected with others who are passionate about sustainable leadership, meaningful service, and creating environments where people can flourish. If these reflections resonate with you, I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn and continue the conversation there. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Karmen Fairall Karmen Fairall, Speech Pathologist & Reflective Practitioner Karmen Fairall is a Speech Pathologist and business owner with experience across allied health, service-based leadership, and caregiving roles. Her writing explores burnout, cognitive load, boundaries, and sustainable leadership in helping professions. In this season, she is intentionally slowing down to reflect on how faith, frameworks, and systems can support healthier ways of serving others. Through her work, she seeks to help people lead and live with clarity, compassion, and care. References: [1] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. [2] Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal wellbeing: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497.

Written by Janice Elsley, Leadership Expert, International Author, and Podcast Host Janice Elsley is a leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker who helps Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and leaders elevate their impact. As founder of Harissa Business Partners, she blends neuroscience, change management, and human design to drive success. Self-care is often reduced to pampering, but protecting your health and energy requires much more. This article reframes self-care as self-preservation and explores the practical choices, boundaries, and habits that make a sustainable life possible. Let's talk about self-care for a second. You know, that thing you're supposed to be doing more of? The bubble baths, the face masks, the Sunday morning yoga classes that you squeeze in between everything else on your to-do list? Yeah, that. Here's my problem with it: we've turned self-care into another task. Another thing to check off the list. Another way to feel like we're failing is if we're not doing it right. Worse, we've made it about pampering instead of what it actually is: survival. So let's stop calling it self-care. Let's start calling it what it really is: self-preservation. The problem with "self-care" The term "self-care" has been co-opted by an industry that wants to sell you products. It's been reduced to candles, bath bombs, and expensive skincare routines. Don't get me wrong, those things are nice. But they're not going to fix the fact that you're running on empty, operating in a constant state of stress, and ignoring every signal your body is sending you that something needs to change. A face mask isn't going to regulate your nervous system. A manicure isn't going to address the fact that you haven't had a full night's sleep in months. A weekend spa day isn't going to solve the deeper issue: you're living in a way that's not sustainable. We've been sold the idea that self-care is something you do when you have time. A luxury. A reward for working hard enough. But that's backward. Self-care, real self-care, isn't a luxury. It's a requirement. It's the foundation that allows you to function at all. What self-preservation actually looks like Self-preservation isn't pretty. It's not Instagram-worthy. It doesn't come with a hashtag. It's saying no to the dinner you don't want to go to because you need to sleep. It's leaving work on time, even when there's more to do, because you know staying late is going to cost you tomorrow. It's having the hard conversation instead of avoiding it because the stress of not addressing it is eating you alive. It's putting your phone on Do Not Disturb and actually resting instead of scrolling until midnight. It's choosing the salad over the takeout, not because you're trying to be "good," but because you know how you feel after eating food that doesn't serve you. It's going to therapy. Setting boundaries. Walking away from relationships that drain you. Asking for help when you need it. Self-preservation is doing the unsexy, uncomfortable things that protect your energy, your health, and your sanity. It's not about feeling good in the moment. It's about making choices that allow you to keep going. Why women struggle with this Here's the truth: women have been conditioned to believe that taking care of themselves is selfish. We're taught that our worth is tied to how much we give. How much we sacrifice. How little we need. So we run ourselves into the ground trying to be everything for everyone, and then we feel guilty for needing a break. We apologize for resting. We justify taking time for ourselves. We wait until we're completely burned out before we even consider slowing down. Even then, we frame it as "self-care" instead of what it actually is: an emergency intervention to keep ourselves from completely falling apart. But here's what no one tells you: you can't pour from an empty cup. You've been running on fumes for way too long. Self-preservation isn't selfish. It's smart. It's strategic. It's the only way you're going to be able to sustain the life you're trying to build. Permission to prioritize yourself So here's what I want you to hear: you don't need to earn the right to take care of yourself. You don't need to wait until you've done enough, given enough, or sacrificed enough. You don't need to justify it, apologize for it, or make it look pretty. You just need to do it. Because the alternative is burning out. Burnout doesn't just mean you're tired. It means your body starts shutting down. Your immune system weakens. Your mental health suffers. Your relationships strain. Your work suffers. Burnout is your body's way of forcing you to stop because you refused to do it voluntarily. So stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for the "right time." Stop waiting until things calm down, because they won't. Start now. Start small. But start. What self-preservation looks like in practice Here's how to begin: Identify what's draining you. Not just the big things, but the small, everyday things that are quietly siphoning your energy. The toxic relationship. The overcommitted schedule. The lack of boundaries. Make one change. You don't have to overhaul your entire life. Just pick one thing and change it. Say no to one commitment. Set one boundary. Protect one evening for rest. Stop apologizing for it. You don't owe anyone an explanation for taking care of yourself. "No" is a complete sentence. Regulate your nervous system. Learn how to down-regulate. Deep breathing. Time in nature. Movement. Silence. These aren't luxuries. They're tools that keep your body functioning. Make it nonnegotiable. Self-preservation isn't something you do when you have time. It's something you build your life around. The truth about sustainability You can't sustain a life that's built on depletion. You can't keep giving from an empty tank and expect to keep going. At some point, something has to give. It's either going to be the unsustainable pace you're keeping, or it's going to be you. So stop calling it self-care. Stop treating it like something that's nice to have. Start calling it what it is: self-preservation. Start treating it like your life depends on it. Because it does. Let's reframe this together I'm Janice Elsley, an international author, host of the Legacy Leaders podcast, keynote speaker, and award-winning leadership expert. I help women stop running on empty and start building lives that are sustainable, energizing, and aligned with who they actually are. If you're tired of treating self-care like a luxury and are ready to make self-preservation a priority, subscribe to my podcast, Legacy Leaders, and follow me on YouTube at @JaniceElsleyLeadership. If you're ready to build a life that doesn't require you to burn out to be successful, explore my programs here. Self-preservation isn't selfish. It's survival. Let's make it nonnegotiable. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Janice Elsley Janice Elsley, Leadership Expert, International Author, and Podcast Host Janice Elsley is a leadership expert, author, and keynote speaker helping CEOs and executives future-proof their leadership with neuroscience-driven strategies. As founder of Harissa Business Partners, she drives performance, inclusivity, and talent retention. Her book, Leadership Legacy, and programs, Leading Edge Women, The Leading Edge, and First 100 Days of Leadership, equip leaders with the confidence and strategies to make an impact. Whether coaching executives or delivering transformational keynotes, Janice creates real results.

Written by Kicki Katarina Hjortmarker, Holistic Bodyworker Kicki Hjortmarker is known for her broad knowledge and extensive experience working with the human body and mind to heal injuries and chronic pain conditions. She is the founder of Swedish Balance, dedicated to helping people live a balanced life pain-free. Neuromuscular massage therapy involves working on trigger points and assessing alignment and posture. Your posture and movement patterns can contribute to the formation of trigger points and may need to be addressed. Tight muscles can pull you out of proper alignment, so we want your body back in alignment and balance to help prevent trigger points from forming. When you come in for neuromuscular therapy, a look at your posture can give the therapist a lot of information and a quick idea of what to address first. I will always begin treatment by warming up the tissues, which will feel like a regular massage to the recipient. If there appear to be many trigger points that need to be addressed for immediate pain relief, I will begin as soon as possible to palpate the tissues and work the trigger points one by one. Trigger points don’t always react the same way Trigger points don’t always react the same way to manipulation, and they don’t build up in the exact same place in each person. Therefore, it is a bit of detective work to find them and determine which ones actively contribute to the pain. When your therapist palpates the tissues, you might feel a buzzy, shooting, pounding, or electric sensation. Shooting pain can be a good sign As your therapist palpates your tissues, shooting or referred pain can occur from a trigger point. This can indicate that the trigger point is contributing to your symptoms and needs to be addressed. Sometimes palpation causes a brief jump or twitch in the tissues. This is called the “twitch response.” To the therapist, it can feel like hot areas, stringy or ropey muscle lines, a buzz, stickiness, small hard rocks, or massive lumps. Lighter pressure can be just as effective as harder pressure Some trigger points require firmer pressure, while others require gentler pressure to let go. When the therapist releases pressure, fresh blood flows back into the area, bringing oxygen and nutrients, and the trigger point deactivates. However, to address a trigger point, it often needs to be manipulated several times and from different angles, so a series of treatments may be necessary. Is it painful? This is a very common question, and the answer is that it doesn’t have to be painful, though it can be. It should never be more painful than you can tolerate. Deep pressure isn’t always better. If the trigger points are very tender, you can always ask your therapist to back off and apply gentler pressure. Most trigger points respond best to firm, sustained pressure, but others release more effectively when the pressure is lighter and the nervous system feels safe enough to relax. As the therapist manipulates your tissues and breaks up adhesions, low-grade inflammation can be produced, so there is a fine balance in how much a therapist should work on at once. It is really up to you! Some people want to feel the pain, so they say, “The harder, the better. Do what you need to do.” Jokingly, others say, “Maybe you have an ice pick or a sledgehammer?” These are the people who are convinced they won’t improve unless the pressure is extremely intense. I don’t blame them. I’ve been there, too. Due to adhesions and metabolic waste, you can expect to feel sore for a day or two after a treatment. Make sure to speak up Sometimes the therapist needs to apply considerable pressure to break up adhesions, but it should never exceed what you are willing to tolerate, so make sure to speak up! It’s better to speak up than to tense up and signal to the nervous system that you’re not safe enough. If you are able to breathe through the heavy pressure because you like it, and you and your therapist feel progress, then it’s all good. But no matter what type of person you are or what kind of pressure you prefer, you will almost always get beneficial results. However, there are exceptions to the rule, and some people won’t be significantly helped by trigger point work alone. That’s why I personally integrate different modalities and techniques into most treatments. What does it feel like when a trigger point is released? You might feel some discomfort when a trigger point is manipulated, but it is soon replaced by relief as the knot loosens. Depending on what you’re working on with your therapist, manipulating the tissues might change how bones, vertebrae, and joints relate to one another. This can lead to a sense of instability for the next few days until the body has adjusted to the new situation and reached homeostasis. Be aware that when tissues are broken up, low-grade inflammation symptoms can occur, and you might feel sore. This is normal. Neuromuscular therapy vs. Deep tissue massage If you have never had a neuromuscular treatment, also known as trigger point therapy, but would like to get better results from your massages, neuromuscular therapy (NMT) may be worth considering. Neuromuscular therapy is a form of deeper work, but it is not necessarily deeper than deep tissue massage. The difference lies in its precision. Rather than working broadly across areas, the therapist identifies specific muscles, trigger points, movement patterns, and postural imbalances that contribute to pain. A skilled NMT therapist is adept at sensing and feeling where trigger points are located, which ones need to be released so other areas can let go of tension for better mobility, which ones are active, and which ones need to be released for pain relief. Should I get a follow-up treatment? If it’s been a week or two since your initial neuromuscular treatment and you still feel discomfort, you should consider a follow-up treatment. Likewise, if you’ve been in pain for a long time, weeks, months, or even years, you will likely need to accept that the longer you’ve been in pain, the longer it may take to recover fully. If you’re working to restore your posture and are determined to reduce pain patterns as much as possible to feel pain-free, follow-up treatments may be beneficial. Take care of your trigger point pain now – call or text Kicki at 323-404-6613, email KickiHjortmarker@gmail.com, or visit my website today. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Kicki Katarina Hjortmarker Kicki Katarina Hjortmarker, Holistic Bodyworker Kicki Hjortmarker has a solid background in the hands-on healing field, treating people with injuries and chronic pain conditions. With a holistic approach, she integrates Neuromuscular Massage Therapy, Craniosacral Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Reiki, Pilates, and more. To practice the artistry of mind/bodywork and massage therapy has been Kicki's lifelong passion. It started with the awareness of her own body as a child and ballet dancer, and, later, as a gymnast who developed chronic lower back pain whilst on the Swedish National Team in Rhythmic Sports Gymnastics. Decades later, she overcame nerve damage and temporary paralysis in one hand. This taught her to trust the healing power of body and mind, and that the body prefers holistic healing methods over conventional treatments. Her mission is to encourage and inspire others to do the same. To trust the healing power of body, mind, and spirit!

Written by Daryl Henderson, Transformational Facilitator & Creative Visionary Daryl Henderson is a master coach, facilitator, and artist known for blending spiritual traditions, shadow work, and leadership training. He is the co-founder of Odyssey of Man, the creator of True North Coaching, and the founder of One11, a health & wellness brand. There are seventeen men in the room and every single one of them is looking at me. We had been building toward this weekend for months, through the calls and the planning and the logistics and the endless back and forth about what it was going to be and who exactly it was for. Now it's here, and everyone is sitting on the floor in a circle, and the phones are in a box somewhere in another building. We're doing the usual logistics you do at the start of these weekends, going around, saying who we are, and laying out what we're going to cover over the next two days. I'm nervous. It's the kind of nervousness that sits somewhere behind my sternum and makes my voice come out a half step higher and a little shakier than it should. You've probably felt it before. It's when you can hear yourself being nervous and sounding off while you're doing it and still can't stop. Here's what's running in the back of my mind the whole time I'm talking as one of the leaders of this experience. "Oh shit. Here we go. Now they'll get to see that I have no idea what I'm doing." "What if I piss one of them off and I don't know what to do? Then what?" "This was a bad idea... Oh well. I guess we'll see what happens now." There's more, but those are the ones I remember the most. I have been in transformational work since I was twenty-five, and by then I'd sat in more circles than I could count, done trainings galore, put in years of my own inner work through self-inquiry and meditation, and been broken open and put back together enough times that none of what was about to happen in that room should have felt unfamiliar to me. By every measure that matters, I had earned the right to be standing where I was standing. I was certain, right up until the moment that circle opened, that I was about to be found out as a phony. So what gives? Everybody has a fix for this feeling, and I've tried a metric ton of them. Just do a quick search for "imposter syndrome," and you can spend the next five years watching YouTube videos and reading articles about how to solve for it. Fake it till you make it. Stand up straighter. Stick your chest out just "2 mm". Remember your credentials, write down your wins, and notice all the evidence that contradicts the story you're telling yourself. There is an entire industry built on the premise that if you could just believe in yourself a little more, everything would shift and you'd walk into rooms looking and feeling like a man who belongs in them. Someone who's strong, confident, and in control. If you haven't realized this already, then I'm going to break it to you. The world does not need that. It needs you! Anywho, I digress. The simple fact is that some of these techniques do work, for a while or maybe just for an afternoon, and they are not wholly unuseful. But rarely does one of them touch the thing underneath that is causing the issue in the first place. As can happen in modern Western medicine, we've become exceedingly good at finding the symptom and treating it without ever getting to the root cause. The advice and remedies aren't necessarily bad, they just aren't asking the right questions. I've learned that if you want to improve the quality of your life, improve the quality of your questions. In my experience, the imposter feeling many men experience isn't actually a confidence problem, as we've been told over and over again. It's a "not knowing who you are" problem. So instead of asking, "How can I fit in and be accepted more?" the question becomes, "Who am I really, and where do I actually want to be?" Those two things are not the same, and understanding the difference between them matters more than just about anything else I could tell you here. Imagine you're a gray wolf who was raised among gray foxes You look similar. You're in the same family, with roughly the same silhouette, four legs, a tail, and a decent set of teeth. From any distance at all, nobody can tell the difference, aside from your size. But so what?! You're fluffy and enjoy the same foods, and you get along great with your brothers and sisters. But your nature is totally different. You don't look or sound like everyone else around you. The way you hunt and eat is different, and your coat looks different too. Yet you're trying to pretend that it isn't, so you put on a fox costume just to fit in and be more like everyone else. What almost nobody tells you is that the costumes actually work. So you learn to make yourself smaller in a room, because that's what foxes do. You learn to be clever instead of saying the direct thing that's sitting right there in your chest. You go quiet in the exact moment something in you wants to howl, and you learn to move alone and call it independence, because a fox doesn't need a pack and you are supposed to be a fox now. You get good at it too. Good enough that they take you in and accept you. That last point is worthy of stopping and looking at for a second, because a wolf pretending to be a fox will spend his whole life telling everyone he doesn't need anybody. He'll be proud of it. He'll build an entire identity out of not needing anybody, and then wonder at forty-five why there's nobody to call. Nobody has ever caught you at any of this, which most of us read as proof that we're pulling it off and that we've finally arrived, when really all it proves is how much work we've put into the disguise and how convincing we've gotten with it. The whole time, every hour you spend inside the pack, you are translating. Running everything through a conversion layer, checking your output against what a fox would do here, carrying a load nobody else in the room can see you carrying. That is exactly why nobody has ever been able to reassure you out of it. It becomes so automatic that at some point you don't even know you're doing it. But you know, deep down you know, there's something "not quite right" here. You often get great reassurance that the costume you're wearing looks good, and therefore you now have the validation that you're doing a good job and you belong here. The costume doesn't need reassurance... The costume is doing great. The problem is that no matter how hard you try, it's just not you, and you know it. Until you do something about it, it'll eat away at you. What the costume is usually made of I can tell you what mine was made of, because I've had a long time to sit and look at it. For me, it was mostly borrowed vocabulary, language I picked up from teachers I admired and delivered in a cadence that was never actually mine, along with a set of frameworks I'd been taught early in my personal growth journey and never once questioned because questioning them would have meant admitting I had no idea what I'd put in their place. Coupled with the belief systems I grew up with around "being a good boy" and not wanting to disappoint anyone, this was a tricky mix. In high school, I just wanted to be "one of the boys," play football, and go out with the hot cheerleaders. But that wasn't me. I was weird, awkward, and not that good-looking. I liked metal and electronic music and wearing tie-dye T-shirts with Grateful Dead bears on them. I was a walking contradiction, a rebel, and so I went the total opposite direction and got in with the freaks and geeks. Then I got really good at that game. All the while, I was still hiding parts of me that I didn't want anyone to see. Then, in my mid-twenties, I found the "holy grail"... insert angel sounds and trumpeting... I found transformational work. Lo and behold, this was my way to be special. Now I knew something everyone else didn't. So the courses and breakthroughs stacked up, and whilst I learned more and had powerful healing experiences that truly changed my life, I also gained more and more tools that showed me how to be a better person. At least for a few weeks. Then the high of the breakthrough wore off and became more of an ego trip than a lasting change. Fast forward ten years and, underneath all of it, I still had an impression of the man I thought was supposed to be leading from the front of a room like that one. I thought that man needed to be calm, composed, and certain, someone holding the answers, someone who had done the work and come out the other side clear and was now generously handing down what he'd found. I wrote about a version of this once, in a different context, and one of the lines from that piece still stands true. I was a new age conscious man who had it figured out, or so I thought. The trouble is that I was good at all of it. Wear the costume long enough and people start to believe you, and that is the problem This is the source of fake it till you make it. It isn't all bad and actually makes sense some of the time, but only if what you're pursuing is really coming from your heart in the first place. If this feeling were really about competence, then competence would cure it. Get good enough for long enough and the mind would quiet down, and the feeling would eventually go away. That's the promise anyway. Work hard, get results, and one morning you'll wake up and finally feel like the guy everyone already thinks you are. Watch what usually happens instead. A man gets the promotion and often the imposter feeling gets louder. He gets the clients and the room and the platform he's been gunning for, and now there's a great deal more to lose, so the bracing gets worse rather than better. I have sat across from men running entire companies who still had that low static running underneath everything, and it had not moved an inch in twenty years of achievement, awards, and the kind of outside evidence that was supposed to settle it. Despite all their accomplishments, there was still an emptiness, a striving that ran deep in their veins, and a voice that quietly said, "It's not enough. You need to be the best. Then they'll see who you really are." Except no one can see who you really are because you're not showing anyone who you really are. You're still wearing the fox costume, hoping they will finally notice you're a wolf, but they simply can't see past what you're showing them. Because every success you have in the costume becomes evidence that the costume is the thing holding you up. Just look at some of the biggest names in Hollywood and music and you'll see what I'm talking about. These people have made it to the very pinnacle of success, yet they are so chewed up from the inside out that they turn to drugs, or worse, suicide. They're aching to be seen for who they really are, but all they can do is continue to show the facade. It's an all too familiar story. Taking the costume off doesn't get easier as you climb, either. It gets harder, because now the stakes of being wrong about who you are include every single thing you built while you were pretending to be something you're not. That is how a man ends up in his mid-forties, accomplished by any measure somebody on the outside would use, and he's still braced for failure. Not because he failed at anything, but because he succeeded at the wrong thing over and over again, and the succeeding is exactly what kept him from ever having to find out who he actually was underneath it all. This can be one source of what we call a "midlife crisis" in men. I prefer to call it a midlife awakening, but that's a different story. What happened in that circle So there I am, seventeen pairs of eyes, voice half a step high, waiting for someone to notice and call me out. Then something turned, and it was not that I suddenly found my confidence. It was the eye contact. I went around that circle and actually looked at each man one at a time, understanding somewhere in my body that we had all come this far together, that these men had rearranged their lives and driven a long way and put their phones in a box when they arrived, and that they were counting on me to show up. I was on the hook to show up even if it was messy, and even if I had no idea what to say. That got me out of my own way. It wasn't about believing in myself more. It was about looking at who was counting on me. Then I said something I won't forget. "If you came here looking for answers, you came to the wrong place. I don't have them. I'm simply here to help you find your own answers." That line might read like it was coming from wisdom or humility, but it wasn't. It was my costume coming off in front of everyone there. It was me deciding to allow myself to be imperfect and state the one thing I actually knew to be true in that moment. Because I'm no guru, nor do I want to be. I'm just a man who's been through things and is here to help other people get through their things. It's really that simple. My entire facade had been built out of a single unspoken claim, which was that I was the guy with the answers, because that is what a man standing at the front of a room is supposed to be. The moment I said out loud that I wasn't, there was nothing left to protect and the feeling of being a fraud had nothing underneath it to stand on. So it just collapsed. What I noticed after that, which I did not expect at all, was that the room got closer rather than further away. It turns out seventeen men do not actually want a leader at the front of the room who has it all handled. They want somebody with the courage to go first and let them know we're in this together. If you do much research at all, you'll find that some of the greatest and most respected leaders and teachers throughout history have had this same quality, the courage and willingness to step first and say, "We're going to figure this out. I have an idea of where to go, but I need your help to get there." So what do you do with this? I'm not going to hand you a practice list. A practice list is just one more framework to borrow, and if you're anything like me, you've got plenty of those already. But there are a few things I know to be true. You have to be willing to be wrong. Over and over again. I've said this a hundred times and I'll keep saying it until somebody makes me stop, because the most intelligent people I know are the ones who question things and ask what else might be going on here, and a man who cannot be wrong is a man who has to keep wearing his costume permanently. A man who cannot be wrong is a small and weak man. Period. So be willing to look bad, to say the wrong thing, and to take a risk where everyone else is just standing by the wayside. It takes courage to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to be like everyone else. You have to meet your shadows instead of just trying to get rid of them. I know my shadows, I accept my shadows, and every so often I still turn up a new one. But I meet them, and meeting them is a different act than fixing them, and it's a very different act than pretending they were never there in the first place. They have become my friends and allies because my shadows are my greatest teachers. They show me where my work still is and remind me that I'm still an imperfect human in an imperfect world. It takes repetition rather than intensity. My men's group has been running for over four years now, and four years of the same men in the same room watching each other week after week is worth more than any breakthrough weekend I have ever been part of, including the ones I've led myself. You cannot perform a costume for four years in front of people who are actually paying attention. It gets too heavy. Eventually you set it down just to rest your arms, and in my experience, that is usually the moment the real thing finally shows up. The part that took me the longest to understand is that you do not need anyone else to tell you what you are. I don't need other people to call me a leader or teacher or writer, for that matter, and I don't need to call myself any of those things. But underneath it all, I do need to know that this is who and what I am. Nobody hands that to you, and nobody can take it back either, which is the whole point. It's also why no amount of applause or acknowledgement ever settled it for me. It isn't a thing you settle once, either. I choose it in the parking lot before I walk in. I choose it again when somebody in the room asks a question I can't answer, and again when the easy move would be to reach for the voice of a teacher I admired twenty years ago instead of my own voice. Some days I choose wrong and catch it an hour or two later. I'm not perfect. I'm a work in progress, and I always will be, just like everyone else on this planet. Honestly, that is one of the most comforting things ever if you let it be. We're all here trying to figure it out, pretending like we're the ones who figured it out, and hoping everyone else doesn't see that we're trying to figure it out, when in fact they can't because they're too worried about themselves. That's a slice of peace right there. I hope this all makes sense. The question I still get nervous before I open a circle or speak in front of groups. That never fully goes away for me, and somewhere along the line, I stopped waiting for it to. What changed is what I do with it now. I don't try to talk myself into feeling like a fox anymore. I just check whether I'm about to tell these men the truth about what I am, and when the answer is yes, the nervousness turns out to be nothing more than nervousness. It's not a warning or evidence of anything. So here's what I want to leave you with. All those years I spent trying to feel like I deserved the costume were years I could have spent finding out what was under it, and I don't get those back. I'd rather you didn't spend yours the same way. Because the question was never whether you're good enough for the room you're standing in. You already know you can do the work, or you wouldn't be braced about the possibility of losing it, right? The question is who you'd be in that room if you weren't managing everyone's impression of you, what you'd say, what you'd stop pretending not to need, and whether the people around you might actually come closer instead of further away, which is the part I got wrong for twenty years and the part I'd want you to test for yourself before you take my word for it. Nobody is coming to take the costume off of you. It's yours, and you've earned it over your lifetime. Just know that each day you wake and put it on is a choice. Take the costume off and find out what you actually are. I'd love to know what you find. See you on the other side. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Daryl Henderson Daryl Henderson, Transformational Facilitator & Creative Visionary Daryl Henderson is a master coach, facilitator, and artist with over two decades of experience blending creativity, men’s work, and spiritual practices. He has photographed top brands and artists worldwide, including Nike and Michael Kors, and documented indigenous and peace gatherings across the globe. Drawing on this experience, Daryl guides high performers, artists, and businesses to express their stories through soul-aligned photography, branding, and personal transformation. He is the co-founder of Odyssey of Man, the creator of True North Coaching, and the founder of One11, a health and wellness brand. His work is playful, transformative, and designed to unlock authentic expression.