Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview Case Kenny is a writer, podcast host, and thought leader known for his practical, language-driven approach to self-development. Through his podcast, books, and daily reflections, he has built a loyal audience by helping people rethink optimism, self-respect, dating, identity, and the words they use to shape their lives. In this interview, Case shares why optimism is not blind positivity but a trainable method, how language quietly shapes identity, and why small daily shifts often create more lasting change than dramatic reinventions. He also opens up about self-respect, relationships, emotional ownership, and the mindset he believes helps people move forward with more clarity and confidence. Case Kenny You have said before that optimism is not a mood, but a method. What does that actually look like in practice when someone is going through a difficult moment? I think the best way to explain that is by first defining what optimism really is. A lot of people think optimism just means thinking positive thoughts or assuming everything is going to work out. I hope that is where optimism leads, but that is not a practice. That is more of a wish. To me, optimism is the belief that things can change. That is the foundation. If your brain believes something is in progress, that emotions are not permanent, that circumstances are not static, then it becomes much easier to access resilience, motivation, and better decision-making. So when someone is going through something difficult, the method starts with a very simple idea: this can change. This is not permanent. From there, it becomes about using words and language that support movement rather than stuckness. The more you believe things can change, the more your brain starts asking how they can change. Then belief becomes behavior, behavior becomes evidence, and evidence becomes identity. You encourage people to live more boldly. What actually makes someone choose boldness instead of playing it safe? Boldness only makes sense when you believe change is possible. If you do not believe your effort can influence the outcome, then why would you take the risk? There is an order to it. First, you have to believe that things can change. Then you have to believe there is a future version of your life that is better and different from the one you have now. Once those beliefs are in place, action becomes more natural. Without them, boldness feels irrational. What first sparked your interest in self-inquiry, mindset, and understanding how the mind works? I worked in corporate sales for 12 years, and somewhere along the way, I felt disconnected from myself. I was good at my job, ambitious, and driven, but I did not feel like the same person at work and outside of work. The podcast began as a personal effort to understand myself better. I wanted more self-awareness, more perspective, and more consistency in who I was. Through episode after episode of introspection, I realized I was practicing mindfulness, but specifically through words, language, and self-expression. That is really where it all started. I never set out to become a podcaster. It was a personal project that grew into something much bigger. You speak a lot about dating, relationships, and emotional alignment. Why do so many people stay in situations that are clearly no longer right for them? A lot of it comes down to fear and scarcity. Scarcity is practical. We find something that feels right, or that once felt right, and then we look at the dating world and think, I do not want to let this go because I may never find it again. That mindset makes people hold on far longer than they should. Then there is fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of not being loved. Fear of thinking that romantic love is the only meaningful form of love. I think that is a big one. Sometimes the answer is expanding our definition of love. Romantic love is powerful, but it is not the only form of love that matters. There is love in friendship, art, music, community, and even in the way we move through the world. When you expand your relationship to love itself, you stop making one relationship responsible for your entire sense of worth. “Optimism is the belief that things can change.” Your work often focuses on small, practical mindset shifts instead of dramatic reinventions. Why do those smaller changes tend to create more impact? As humans, we love before-and-after moments. We like big transformations because they feel significant and easy to define. But identity does not really work that way. There is a concept called self-perception theory, which says we decide who we are by observing our own behavior, almost as if we are watching someone else. Your brain looks for evidence. If you consistently speak up, take small risks, and act with intention, your brain starts to say, this is the kind of person I am. That is why small, repeated behaviors matter so much. One big moment can be meaningful, but it is the smaller, consistent actions that actually build identity. Those small actions create evidence, and evidence is what changes how you see yourself. What is one narrative people tell themselves that quietly damages self-worth or confidence? A big one is how people describe their emotions. Most people say things like, “I am anxious,” or “I feel broken,” and over time that kind of language becomes identity-level. You are no longer describing an experience. You are describing who you are. A healthier shift is saying, “A part of me feels anxious,” or “A part of me feels unlovable.” It sounds subtle, but it is powerful. It creates distance between you and the emotion. The feeling is real and valid, but it is not the totality of who you are. That self-distancing is one of the most effective tools we have. Otherwise, we take temporary emotional states and turn them into permanent identities. You and I spoke about how some languages separate the person from the emotion more naturally than English does. Why is that so important? It matters because language shapes identity more than people realize. In English, we often fuse ourselves with emotion. We say, “I am sad,” instead of something more spacious like, “I have sadness,” or “Sadness is passing through me.” Other languages do this much more naturally, and I think there is wisdom in that. The way we speak can either make an emotion feel temporary and manageable or make it feel central to who we are. That is why I pay so much attention to language. It is not just semantics. It affects how we process experience. Self-respect is another major theme in your work. Stripped back to everyday life, what does self-respect actually look like? The simplest definition is this: self-respect is keeping the promises you made to yourself in the past. We all go through experiences that teach us something. At some point, we look at ourselves and say, I am not doing that again. Or, this is my new standard. Or, this is the boundary I need moving forward. Self-respect is honoring those lessons in the present. It is not about knowing everything. It is about remembering what you already learned and refusing to abandon yourself in moments that test that clarity. As your audience has grown, how have you stayed grounded in your message and avoided getting pulled too far into trends or platform pressure? It has definitely been a challenge, but I think what helps is that I do not see myself as a content creator first. I see myself as someone who studies language and optimism, and I use platforms to share that work. That framing matters because if your goal is only to get attention, you are constantly competing in an exhausting game. Algorithms change. Trends change. It gets chaotic quickly. For me, the real focus now is on learning, teaching, writing books, doing workshops, and speaking in person. That is where the depth is. I still post online every day, but I have tried to remove some of the emotional dependency from it. “Self-respect is keeping the promises you made to yourself in the past.” Your work often feels more like notes to self than traditional expert advice. Why do you think that more personal, direct tone resonates so strongly right now? I think people are drawn to humility. There are a lot of experts online, and expertise is important, but I think people connect most deeply when someone is speaking from lived experience with honesty and nuance. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you still do not know. That is always a good sign in a teacher. Are they willing to admit what is unclear? Are they speaking with nuance, or pretending everything is binary and simple? I think people are craving more humanity, more honesty, and less performance. For people who constantly feel like they are not “there yet,” how do you help them stop chasing perfection and actually begin? I am a very impatient person, so I understand that mindset well. And honestly, I do not think telling yourself to “just be patient” is very effective, especially if you are ambitious. What has helped me is rebranding patience. Patience is not passivity. Patience is faith in yourself. If you genuinely trust yourself, then you do not need to rush. You can let the process unfold because you know the outcome is being built through your actions. That framing makes patience feel more empowering and less frustrating. The other part is recognizing that people consistently underestimate how much they will change in the future. We can easily look back and see how much we have changed in the past, but we tend to assume we are almost done evolving. That is simply not true. Change continues throughout life. Once you accept that, it becomes easier to trust where you are. A big part of your message is that language does not just describe life, it shapes it. When someone starts becoming more intentional with self-talk, what shifts do they usually notice first? One of the most powerful shifts is moving from the future tense to the present tense. A lot of people say, “I will find love,” or “I will become successful.” There is value in naming what you want, but the brain responds more powerfully when it feels like progress is already underway. So instead of only saying, “I will,” say, “It is happening now.” Or, “I am becoming.” Or, “My person and I are on our way to meeting each other right now.” That grounds the vision in the present. The brain loves progress. It loves movement. When you speak as if something is already in motion, your behavior tends to align with that belief much more effectively. One of the surprising ideas you shared is replacing “I will” with “Will I?” Why does that matter? Because “I will” often comes from pressure, while “Will I?” invites honesty and intrinsic motivation. When you ask yourself, “Will I do this?” the brain does not like to leave the question unanswered. If you are doing the work, your mind starts surfacing the real reasons why the answer is yes. It reminds you of your effort, your values, your discipline, and your progress. So instead of just making a bold declaration, you are creating a dialogue that deepens commitment. It is a small language shift, but it can create a much more grounded kind of motivation. A lot of people misunderstand optimism as denial or avoidance. How do you practice optimism while still being honest about what is difficult? That misunderstanding is really important to address because optimism is not pretending everything is fine. Real optimism lives in the space between reality and vision. It is being honest about what is hard while also believing in movement. You need both. You need to name the future you want, but you also need to name the current reality and the negative emotion clearly. I often say negative emotion is like the wall of a swimming pool. If you want to move forward, you have to kick off something. The negative feeling becomes that surface. But to use it well, you need to describe it accurately. Instead of using broad words like “anxious,” get more specific. Are you overstimulated? Overcommitted? Rushing? Once you name the actual thing, you can work with it. That is where optimism becomes practical. “The most effective optimists live in the balance between reality and the future they want to create.” What belief or mindset do you think helps people create the biggest shift in their lives? That things can change. It sounds simple, but I really believe everything starts there. If you believe that emotions are not fixed, that your identity is not frozen, and that your effort matters, then you begin to act differently. And once you act differently, your life starts to change. That belief is the beginning of everything. Case Kenny’s perspective is a reminder that optimism is not about ignoring life’s difficulties. It is about learning how to name them, move through them, and speak to yourself in a way that creates possibility instead of permanence. Through language, self-respect, and consistent small actions, his work offers a grounded path toward confidence, clarity, and change. For more info, follow Case Kenny on social media and explore his podcast and book.

Written by Michael Donaldson, Nutrition Researcher & Health Coach Dr. Michael Donaldson is a nutrition researcher and health coach specializing in reversing type 2 diabetes. As founder of End Diabetes Now and Research Director at Hallelujah Diet, he empowers people to transform their health through evidence-based, plant-centered nutrition. High blood pressure affects 1.3 billion people worldwide and is known as the "silent killer." It's the single leading risk factor for early death across the globe. The standard answer for high blood pressure is medication for as long as you live, along with the side effects. But three randomized controlled trials show that 30 grams of ground flaxseeds a day produced blood pressure reductions that rival the best pharmaceutical combinations on the market. But flaxseeds come with side benefits, not side effects. Your choice. High blood pressure is not inevitable, even if it feels that way In Western populations, blood pressure increases with chronological age, and nearly everyone develops high blood pressure in their later years. The Framingham Heart Study started with people aged 55 to 65 who had normal blood pressure and found that 90% of them eventually developed hypertension. It seems inevitable. Except that high blood pressure isn't inevitable. A 1929 survey of men from four African tribes in Kenya found no rise in blood pressure with age. Men estimated to be over 60 years old averaged 106/67. A 2012 study of Tsimane forage farmers in Bolivia found that among women over 70 years old, fewer than 30% had hypertension. Among the men, it was less than 10%. Their traditional diet and lifestyle protected them from a condition we think of as inevitable. You probably aren't interested in becoming a hunter-forager, but you can make specific dietary choices that shift your physiology in the same direction. Eating real foods is a great first step. Flaxseeds are one of those real foods with substantial evidence supporting their role in helping keep blood pressure within the normal range. What makes flaxseeds different from every other seed Flaxseeds are not a trend. They've been cultivated for over 6,000 years and have been studied seriously for decades. They have a combination of three active components that set them apart from other seeds such as chia, hemp, and pumpkin seeds. First, there is a high concentration of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) in flaxseeds. This omega-3 fat accounts for about 57% of flaxseed oil. ALA is anti-inflammatory, promotes vasodilation via nitric oxide production, reduces platelet aggregation, and has been shown to inhibit the enzyme soluble epoxide hydrolase. That enzyme normally breaks down beneficial oxylipins into proinflammatory compounds. When ALA blocks its action, more oxylipins remain intact, supporting healthy blood pressure. ALA is also converted into EPA, which provides the same cardiovascular benefits. Second, there are lignans. Flaxseeds contain more lignans than any other food, about 800 times more than the next closest food source. So flaxseeds are unique in this. Lignans are phytoestrogen compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. A six-month randomized trial of adults aged 60 to 80, published in Nutrition Research (2017), tested a flaxseed lignan-enriched complex containing 600 mg of secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG) daily, the same amount found in a 30-gram serving of ground flaxseeds. In participants with hypertension, systolic blood pressure dropped from 155 to 140 mm Hg. The lignan effect is independent of omega-3 fat or fiber. The third is the whole-food fiber-and-mineral package. A 30-gram serving of ground flaxseeds provides 8.6 grams of fiber, 123 mg of magnesium, and 256 mg of potassium. Magnesium works through several mechanisms to relax vascular smooth muscle. One prospective study found that an additional 120 mg of dietary magnesium per day reduced the risk of cerebral infarction in women with hypertension by 37%. Flaxseeds provide that amount in a single daily serving. No other common food delivers all three of these mechanisms simultaneously. That's what makes flaxseeds structurally different from a fish oil capsule, a magnesium supplement, or a high-fiber cereal. What three clinical trials actually found The headline claim of a 13 to 15-point drop in blood pressure deserves scrutiny. Here's what the evidence actually says. The strongest trial is the FLAX-PAD study, a randomized controlled trial published by Rodriguez-Leyva and colleagues in Hypertension (2013). Participants had peripheral artery disease (PAD). One group consumed 30 grams of ground flaxseeds daily, embedded in bagels, muffins, biscuits, and pasta. The control group ate identical-looking foods without flaxseed. After six months, participants who began the trial with a systolic blood pressure above 140 mm Hg, the clinical threshold for hypertension, had reduced their systolic pressure by 15 points and their diastolic pressure by 7 points. This degree of reduction from a dietary intervention alone is, as the researchers noted, unprecedented. The second major trial, published in Explore (NY) by Toulabi and colleagues in 2021, randomized participants to 30 grams per day of ground flaxseed, 10 grams per day, or placebo for 12 weeks. The 30-gram group dropped systolic pressure by 13 points. The 10-gram group dropped it by about 10 points. The placebo group's pressure rose by 1.7 points. A baseline imbalance between groups limits the strength of the between-group comparison, but the within-group change in the 30-gram arm is clinically significant and has never been replicated in a placebo group. The lignan trial described above adds a third data point, a 15-point reduction in systolic blood pressure from the lignan fraction alone, suggesting that the full flaxseed delivers benefits through multiple pathways simultaneously. Across all three trials, 30 grams of ground flaxseeds consumed daily for at least 12 weeks produced a 13 to 15-point drop in systolic blood pressure in people with hypertension. How does that compare to drugs? I wanted to know how flaxseeds compare with a pharmaceutical approach for hypertension. What I found was that the most effective pharmaceutical approach for hypertension with the fewest side effects is a combination of three or four drug classes at low doses. A 2023 analysis published in Hypertension found that this polypill strategy produces an 18 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure compared to placebo. Flaxseeds produce 13 to 15 points. The difference between those numbers is statistically small and may not be clinically meaningful for many people. While you can't really say flaxseeds are better than the polypill approach, they certainly do rival it. But each approach comes with more than just a drop in blood pressure. The polypill approach also brings fatigue, dizziness, electrolyte imbalances, impaired kidney function in some patients, and the logistical burden of lifelong daily medication. The flaxseed approach brings reduced inflammation, improved gut health, better cholesterol ratios, and evidence of reduced cancer risk. Those are side benefits, not side effects. If flaxseed were a drug, it would be among the most effective single-agent interventions for hypertension on the market. But it isn't a drug, so you don't need a prescription or a pharmacy. But there's no big marketing campaign either. How to get 30 grams a day without thinking about it When you first look at a quarter cup of flaxseeds (30 grams) and wonder how you are going to eat that every day, you might initially be a bit overwhelmed, but it's not that hard. First, grind the flaxseeds. If you don't grind them up, they will pass through your digestive tract largely intact. A simple coffee grinder works very well. Once ground, you can store them in the refrigerator or freezer for up to a week. The FLAX-PAD participants consumed their 30 grams through everyday baked goods such as bagels, muffins, biscuits, and pasta. They couldn't distinguish the flaxseed-containing versions from the control versions. That's good to know. You can blend them into baked goods already. Flaxseeds have a mild nutty flavor that doesn't dominate the other flavors in foods. The flaxseed oil doesn't go rancid just because you bake it. It's very easy to blend two tablespoons of flaxseeds into a morning smoothie or stir them into your morning oatmeal. Then, two tablespoons later, you can bake them into a muffin or mix them into salad dressing. Make sure you drink adequate water because of your increased fiber load. Just drink an extra glass or two every day. You should see some results within the first few weeks. In the clinical trials, they began seeing results within the first month and continued to improve over six months. If you are already taking blood pressure medication, take note. Flaxseeds can amplify the effects of your medication. So monitor your blood pressure carefully, especially during the first few weeks. Blood pressure is a symptom, do you know what's driving it? As a real food, flaxseeds help with some of the root causes of high blood pressure, but maybe not all of them. When blood pressure is elevated, it's likely that other parts of your metabolism are also out of kilter. Measuring high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) makes sense, so you know if inflammation is part of what you're dealing with. Measuring your omega-3 index will tell you whether you're getting the ALA converted into EPA in amounts that help you, or if you need additional fish oil as well. If you're interested in taking a deeper look at your metabolic health, inflammation, omega-3 status, thyroid function, insulin resistance, and more, you can learn about comprehensive metabolic lab testing and schedule a personal consultation here. A standard annual physical doesn't measure all of these things. It's designed to catch diseases that are already serious, but it won't tell you all the metabolic drivers that lead to the diagnosis, while prevention is fairly simple. Final word High blood pressure is not inevitable, and it is reversible. It's a signal that something in your metabolism needs attention. Three randomized controlled trials show that a daily serving of ground flaxseeds produces blood pressure reductions that rival the best drug combinations available today. Flaxseed comes with additional side benefits rather than side effects. It's real food. Clinical trials show how much you need to take and what results you can expect: 30 grams, ground up, taken consistently every day, yields substantial improvements in blood pressure. The next move is yours. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Michael Donaldson Michael Donaldson, Nutrition Researcher & Health Coach Dr. Michael Donaldson, Ph.D., is a leading voice in plant-based nutrition and lifestyle transformation. With a doctorate from Cornell University and more than two decades of research at Hallelujah Diet, he has helped thousands understand how food can restore health and vitality. Through his coaching platform End Diabetes Now, he guides clients in reversing type 2 diabetes naturally and sustainably. A scientist, entrepreneur, and educator, Dr. Donaldson also founded True Wealth Health Products and formulated Ora-Shield, an organic oral-care blend. His work bridges science, faith, and practical wisdom to help people achieve lasting wellness and purpose.

Written by Ruth Hutchins, Career Awakening Coach Ruth Hutchins is more than a career coach with 30 years of career experience and a unique holistic approach, helping people find clarity and direction. She is the founder of Creating Healthy Careers, author of Career Awakening: How to Align Your Career With Your Soul Purpose, and creator of the Career Awakening methodology. People search for their life path like it’s this hidden path that they need to find, when the truth is, they’re already walking it. The expectation that we should somehow find our life path can be paralysing. Which way should I go? What am I meant to be doing? What if I choose the wrong thing? It creates the belief that the answer is somewhere ahead of us, and that we need complete clarity before we can take the next step. But if you’re looking forward to finding that elusive path, you may be looking in the wrong direction. Life leaves us clues, and often those clues are behind us. So that’s where we need to look, back through our lives. Steve Jobs famously said we can only connect the dots of our lives by looking backward. I’ll give you an example of how I joined the dots in my own life, moving from a 20+ year recruitment career, where I couldn’t imagine what else I could do, to eventually stepping into my coaching business. Life nudges you onto your path I enjoyed being in the recruitment industry, but the time came when I knew I needed to do more, and I felt something was missing. I was applying for jobs but not getting anywhere, and wondered what I was meant to be doing with my life. I always had a feeling that I wanted to start my own business, but not in recruitment, which led me to wonder, what’s next? I’d played around with a business concept for seven years and even developed a website back in the day, when you had to pay a significant amount for one. But I never commercialised the business or fully committed to it. However, when you are not on your path in life, you will get little nudges to help you onto it. The nudges start off small, but if you ignore them, they become a push and then a powerful kick, which is not pleasant. I knew something needed to change, but I repeatedly chose the ‘safer’ option. The pattern kept repeating, and eventually I recognised that life was trying to redirect me. But the fact that I wasn’t taking action to transition my career into the business I had been thinking about was also a sign that my heart wasn’t in it. So I immersed myself in the world of personal development to start getting some clarity. The bus stop conversation In a few of the courses I did, we spent time looking at the key influencers and influential experiences in our lives to see how they’d shaped us, which I’ll run you through shortly. Years later, I read Sue Morter’s book The Energy Codes and was fascinated by her ‘bus stop conversation’ theory, which I’ll briefly touch on here. You don’t need to share the spiritual premise behind it, simply take on the insightful perspective it provides. Imagine that before you entered this world, you were sitting at a bus stop, waiting for your journey to begin. You were thinking about what you’d like to learn or develop this time around and started saying to the others at the bus stop, “This time I want a level 10 experience in acceptance and forgiveness. Who’s going to help me?” Then someone at the bus stop says, “I will.” Off you both go on your journey without knowing how it’s going to happen. Then one day, you experience a challenge in your life, and it’s the person from the bus stop who has come to give you an experience to help you learn how to accept and forgive. Wow, how’s that for a reframe! We can use the bus stop conversation to explore why we might have invited a particular experience into our lives, and what we were being asked to learn or develop through it. This was a profound exercise that helped me see my father, and what he’d brought into my life, from a whole new perspective. How your early experiences can reveal your life path Let me paint a picture of how Creating Healthy Careers came to be. My dad used to be quite high up in the police force in England, and when our family moved to Australia, he couldn’t move across within the force at the same level. He couldn’t afford to support a family of five on a starting salary, so he had to look for a new job. As he was good at accounting, he took a position in an accounts department, which greatly impacted his happiness and our home life. As a young child, I simply used to ask, “Why can’t he be happy at work?” Dad would suppress his frustration at work, but inevitably some of it came home with him. We all experienced that side of him, which ultimately affected our family. So I grew up with a constant reminder of how important it is to be happy in your career. My first dot was Dad's lesson that you need to be happy in your career, no matter what you’re doing. Otherwise, it can negatively affect you, your happiness, your relationships, your family, your health, and your self-worth. All of a sudden, I realised that a person I had always seen through a negative lens had been in my life as a key influencer in shaping my life path and purpose. In that moment, I was able to let go of years of anger towards my father and develop a sense of gratitude for him, understanding that he’d sacrificed having a loving relationship with his daughter in order to provide me with such a strong pathway in life. Reflecting on your life’s experiences and challenges through the lens of “What is the learning that I need to gain from this?” or “Why would I have asked for or invited this experience into my life?” can not only give you a newfound appreciation and sense of gratitude for what you have experienced and help you stop the blame game, but also help you start to paint a picture of the skills, knowledge and wisdom you have to share with the world. When you stop and consider how life has orchestrated all the people and experiences to bring you what you need, you can no longer ignore your path. After all, who are you to get in the way of what you are here to bring into the world? The questions to ask yourself The questions are simple, but finding the answers may take you some time. Reflect on these: Who were the three biggest influencers early in your life, and what did they teach you? What experiences, both painful and positive, shaped the person you became? What patterns or themes have kept repeating throughout your life? What have people consistently come to you for help, advice, or perspective on? What have your hardest experiences taught you that could now be valuable to someone else? Then stand back and look at all of your answers together. Don’t analyse each clue in isolation. Look for the threads running through them. Your life path may not reveal itself as one dramatic moment of clarity. More often, it emerges as you begin recognising the patterns that have been there all along. If you’re at a point in life where you know there’s more for you, but you’re struggling to see what comes next, my Life Path Program helps you uncover the clues, patterns and experiences that can help you understand what life may be showing you about your path. Brainz readers can get 50% off the Self-Paced Life Path Program using the code "Brainz" at checkout. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ruth Hutchins Ruth Hutchins, Career Awakening Coach Ruth Hutchins is a Career and Life Path Coach with 30 years' experience spanning recruitment, career development and coaching. She helps people make sense of the experiences, turning points and challenges that have shaped them, uncovering the clues that reveal who they are and where they're called next. Ruth believes even our hardest chapters contain gold, pointing us toward our values, strengths and direction. Through her holistic approach, she helps clients reconnect with themselves and build a career and life that feels genuinely their own.

Written by Connie Ng, Holistic Practitioner, Quantum Healing Facilitator, & Transformational Coach Connie Ng is an international speaker helping people overcome chronic pain, mobility issues, and complex health challenges, especially when conventional approaches fall short. Integrating Five Elements philosophy, vibrational medicine, and mind-body coaching, she empowers clients to reclaim their health, reconnect with who they truly are, and create lasting transformation. Biohacking fascinates me. Sleep trackers, glucose monitors, supplements, peptides, fasting protocols, cold plunges, HRV scores and recovery data have given us more ways than ever to measure and optimise ourselves. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting more energy, sharper cognition, better performance or a longer life. But I keep coming back to one slightly inconvenient question, "Do you actually understand the body you are trying to optimise?" The distinction matters, being fit and being healthy are not necessarily the same thing. Someone can lift impressive weights, run marathons and maintain enviable body composition while still being exhausted, inflamed, anxious, hormonally out of balance or sleeping terribly. I see the same pattern outside the gym. High-performing people often get very good at overriding themselves. Fatigue gets pushed through, stress becomes normal, and rest somehow turns into something that has to be earned. Then, when the body starts protesting, we add something else. At some point, I have to wonder, "Are we optimising the body, or simply becoming more efficient at ignoring it?" Before the hack, understand the human No two bodies arrive with exactly the same story. Genetics matter, as do diet, sleep, lifestyle, injuries, environment, emotional patterns, stress load and constitution. What invigorates one person may exhaust another. The latest protocol may look brilliant on paper and be completely wrong for the person trying it. This is where body awareness deserves a seat at the biohacking table. If I wake up already depleted or under the weather, do I really need to prove my resilience with a cold plunge simply because cold exposure is supposed to be good for me? If my body is asking for rest, is another supplement, peptide, or performance protocol genuinely optimisation, or am I overriding the message because somebody told me I should be doing it? Biohacking without body awareness can become just another sophisticated way of overriding ourselves. So I find this question far more useful than “What is the latest hack?”, What does this particular person actually need? That philosophy sits behind my earlier Brainz article, Why I Look Beyond Symptoms to Understand Chronic and Complex Health Conditions. Before I optimise a system, I want to understand the system. This particular “system” happens to have a pulse, a history, emotions, relationships and a personality. If longevity matters, the cells matter Without healthy cellular function, our conversation about longevity becomes rather theoretical. Our tissues and organs depend on cells functioning well, which means the decidedly unsexy basics still matter, nutritious food, adequate sleep, appropriate movement, rest, time in nature and even something as ordinary as dressing sensibly for the climate rather than expecting the body to tolerate everything we throw at it. One framework I use is Biochemic Therapy, commonly known as Tissue Salts. The system traces back to the 19th-century work of German physician Wilhelm Heinrich Schüssler and centres on twelve mineral salts within a therapeutic model of cellular balance. What interests me just as much is the older principle of dose. The historical Arndt–Schulz concept, often discussed today alongside the broader idea of hormesis, reminds us that biological responses can change dramatically depending on dose. A commonly cited historical formulation is that small doses stimulate, moderate doses inhibit, and large doses can be lethal. Modern science would not treat this as a universal law, but the underlying lesson still challenges a very modern assumption, that more must automatically mean better. That is the part I find especially relevant to biohacking. That idea makes me smile when I look at modern health culture. We have developed a curious habit of equating optimisation with addition, another supplement, another measurement, another intervention. Yet the body is already an extraordinarily intelligent regulatory system. Sometimes the wiser question is simply, "What does this body actually need?" The body does not live in separate departments A cell belongs to a tissue. The tissue belongs to an organ. The organ belongs to a body and that body belongs to a human being. This is where Traditional Chinese Medicine and other ancient healing systems continue to influence the way I think. They do not treat mind, body and spirit as though they occupy separate office cubicles. Physical imbalance can affect emotional wellbeing. Emotional distress can influence how we experience the physical body. Our thoughts, memories, relationships and stress patterns are not happening in some completely separate universe from our physiology. I explored this more deeply in When the Body Speaks, Decoding Mental Health with the Five Elements, where I looked at how emotional patterns, organ systems and physical symptoms can influence one another through the Five Elements framework. Modern biohacking can occasionally develop tunnel vision here. We become so busy measuring ourselves that we forget to meet ourselves and feel into what is actually happening within us. Your wearable may accurately tell you that your HRV dropped. Useful information, but it cannot necessarily tell you why one relationship unsettles you for three days, why you keep proving your worth through overwork, or why your mind insists on replaying the same fear at two o’clock in the morning. The number matters, but so does the person generating it. Sometimes, going back to basics also means questioning the latest “super” ingredient. Reishi, lion’s mane and ginseng now appear everywhere in performance and wellness culture, yet these aren’t new discoveries. They come from much older traditions that never assumed one herb or mushroom suited everybody. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, constitution matters. Even ginseng, often marketed as a universal energy booster, is traditionally used with discernment because its warming nature may not suit every person. The better question is not simply, “Is this good for performance?” It is, “Is this actually right for my body?” Don’t biohack harder. Biohack wiser. I respect what biohacking offers, but I think one of its biggest blind spots is that we may be optimising the measurable parts of health while missing half the human being. We are not robots with supplement stacks. A human being is an integrated physical, emotional, mental and, from my perspective, spiritual system. If one aspect is chronically out of balance, I find it difficult to pretend the others are completely unaffected. That is why I prefer to widen the field of enquiry. Sometimes that means returning to basics, spending time in nature, eating fresh food, learning how your constitution responds to stress, seasons and lifestyle, and paying attention to sleep, digestion, energy and the signals your body keeps repeating. In my own practice, Plant Essences offer one way of working with emotional and vibrational patterns, while Biochemic Tissue Salts provide a mineral-oriented lens on the physical side. Then there are approaches further outside the conventional biohacking conversation. My work with Star Magic Healing and 0'Ishiki Healing invites me to consider health through a quantum and energetic lens, including the possibility that there are forms of information and intelligence in the human system that are not captured through ordinary biochemical measurements alone. I explored some of that territory in The Ancient Elixir Powering Quantum Performance, But No One’s Talking About It. I am not suggesting we abandon medicine, throw away technology or romanticise the past. I am suggesting that human intelligence did not begin with the invention of an app. Our ancestors observed plants, seasons, constitutions, emotions and the natural world because they had to. There may be wisdom in bringing some of that older curiosity into conversation with everything modern science and technology can now offer. For me, biohacking wiser means resisting the urge to automatically add more, asking better questions and widening the field of enquiry. Your brain is part of the equation too Purely physical optimisation also feels incomplete because the brain itself remains capable of change. In What Future Has Your Diagnosis Quietly Persuaded You to Stop Imagining?, I explored neuroplasticity alongside repeated thoughts, emotional states and the future we believe is still possible. Someone can build an immaculate supplement stack, collect beautiful biometric data and still wake every morning believing their body is broken or living in chronic fear. At that point, I have to ask whether we are optimising health, or simply optimising the measurable parts of it. True health asks us to look at the human being as a whole. The physical body matters enormously, but so do the psychological, emotional and spiritual experiences moving through it. Otherwise, we risk treating a deeply interconnected person like a collection of separate components. We are far more interesting than that. Longevity is useful. But longevity for what? Of course I want vitality, mobility, mental clarity and a body capable of carrying me well into later life. But I do not want another twenty years merely to become extraordinarily efficient at collecting health data. I want those years because I want the life. I want to love people, travel, create, laugh until my stomach hurts, remain curious and occasionally eat something delicious without asking an app whether I performed well afterwards. There should still be room for mystery, heart and soul. Life is for living. Perhaps true optimisation begins there, knowing your constitution, tending to your cells, understanding your body, noticing your emotional patterns and becoming curious about what repeatedly pulls you away from balance. Use technology when it serves you, choose supplements thoughtfully and stay open to new ideas. By all means, experiment. But do it wisely, because wisdom also means knowing when not to intervene. Before you biohack harder, perhaps it is time to biohack wiser. The body you are trying to optimise is not a machine, it is carrying an entire human life. Surely that life, not the score on the dashboard, is what we were trying to improve in the first place. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Connie Ng Connie Ng, Holistic Practitioner, Quantum Healing Facilitator, & Transformational Coach Connie Ng is a Multi-Disciplined Holistic Practitioner and Quantum Healing Facilitator who specialises in helping clients overcome chronic physical and emotional conditions by addressing their root cause at the energetic level. Blending Five Elements wisdom with Star Magic Healing, vibrational medicine, and holistic counselling, she facilitates deep transformation for those who feel stuck despite trying everything. Connie is the founder of The Salt Therapy Clinic & Sanctuary and works with clients both in-person and remotely.

Tamsin Ward is a former music teacher and headteacher, a qualified Personal Trainer, and holds a Master’s in Education. She founded Drums4Health to harness the combined power of movement and rhythm in supporting physical and brain health. With regular classes growing rapidly in popularity, Drums4Health is now expanding across the UK as an innovative and inclusive approach to wellbeing. Tamsin Ward, Founder of Drums4Health What first convinced you that combining rhythm and movement could become something bigger than a fitness class? I came to this from quite an unusual combination of backgrounds. I was a Director of Music in schools for many years before moving into senior leadership roles, including specialist education. Music and the way people respond to rhythm had therefore been part of my professional life for a very long time. Later, I trained as a personal trainer and completed an Exercise Referral Diploma. That was when I really started looking at my experience of music, education and movement together and wondering what could happen if we stopped treating them as completely separate things. Very quickly, I realised I wasn't really just teaching a fitness class. People were moving, but they were also learning, concentrating, laughing and connecting with each other. I started hearing people say, “My brain has had a workout!” Others were surprised by how much they'd moved because they'd been concentrating on getting the rhythm rather than thinking about exercise. Seeing similar responses across very different groups made me realise there was something much bigger to explore. That's now led to working with research partners so that, as Drums4Health grows, we can gather meaningful evidence and impact data alongside the experiences people are sharing with us. How do structured rhythmic patterns make Drums4Health different from conventional cardio drumming? For me, the drum isn't simply a prop to exercise around. The rhythm itself is really important. My background is in music and education, so I actually teach rhythmic patterns. We might work with singles and doubles, alternate hands, repeat and remember patterns, change direction or gradually increase the complexity. As confidence develops, there is always something else we can introduce. That means the brain has a job to do as well as the body. And you absolutely don't have to be a musician! Getting a pattern wrong, laughing and trying it again is all part of it. Nobody is being assessed on their drumming ability. That's what fascinates me about combining the two. Someone might be moving their arms, using their core, gripping and controlling their sticks and raising their heart rate, but at the same time they're listening, processing, remembering and coordinating. It's much more than simply hitting a drum along to music. What did working in specialist education teach you about the connection between movement, regulation and engagement? Probably more than I realised at the time! Working in education for so many years, including specialist education, taught me that people don't all engage or learn in the same way. It also taught me that forcing participation rarely creates meaningful engagement. You have to meet somebody where they are. Regulation, movement, rhythm, repetition and predictable structures can all be incredibly important. I also learned to look beyond what somebody was doing and think about why they might be doing it. That thinking is very much part of Drums4Health today. For me, inclusion isn't simply saying, “Everybody is welcome.” It's designing something so that when people arrive, they can actually participate and feel successful. Somebody might need to sit. Someone else might want a huge amount of movement. Another person may struggle to follow the rhythm but can still drum along and be completely part of the group. They don't all need to do exactly the same thing to belong. Where do you think traditional fitness approaches fall short when it comes to making movement genuinely inclusive? Traditional fitness has enormous value, but it doesn't work for everybody. Some people simply don't identify as someone who “does exercise”. Gyms can feel intimidating and traditional classes aren't always accessible to somebody with reduced mobility, low confidence or a health condition. I wanted to remove some of those barriers. In Drums4Health, one person can be standing and using big movements while the person next to them is seated and doing something much smaller. Neither is doing the lesser version. I think that's really important. People are also distracted from the fact that they're exercising, in a good way! Instead of thinking, “I've got another 15 repetitions to do”, they're thinking, “Can I get this rhythm?” The exercise is still happening. I'm increasingly interested in how we create movement that people actually want to return to. Because we can design the perfect exercise programme on paper, but if somebody doesn't enjoy it and won't come back, how useful is it really? What have your sessions with people living with dementia taught you about rhythm, memory and human connection? These have been some of the sessions that have stayed with me the most. I've seen how familiar music can create an immediate response. People might not necessarily follow every rhythm, but suddenly they're moving, smiling, drumming or connecting with the person beside them. At one Memory Café, retired occupational therapist Heather Manktelow, who has over 16 years' experience and has worked extensively with older adults and people living with dementia, observed the session. She described seeing people moving as well as drumming and said, “The smiles on people's faces, were fantastic.” One participant simply said, “It made me feel good.” Heather also told me about five residents from a neighbouring care home who rarely participated in organised activities. Four engaged with the drumming for the whole session. Sometimes connection matters more than whether somebody remembers the pattern. These observations are incredibly powerful, but I'm conscious of not turning observations into scientific claims. That's why working with research partners is so important. I want to capture what is happening properly and build evidence around where Drums4Health can genuinely make a difference. What changes do participants tend to notice first when they begin Drums4Health? Usually it's how they feel. People talk about feeling happier, energised or surprised by how much they've moved. Others immediately mention the mental challenge and tell me their brain has had as much of a workout as their body. We are beginning to capture some of this more systematically too. At Heather's Memory Café, she used a simple 0–10 mood scale before and after one session. One gentleman living with memory loss had experienced a difficult morning and rated his mood as 4/10 beforehand. Afterwards, it was 10/10. His wife moved from 7/10 to 10/10 and talked about how much she loved seeing him enjoying himself. It's important to say that this was a small real-world evaluation, not a clinical research study. But those experiences give us questions worth investigating. The next stage is measuring impact more formally. I'm working with research partners to look beyond “people enjoyed it” and begin gathering evidence-backed data around physical, cognitive and wellbeing outcomes. How do you adapt a session so people with very different ages, abilities and confidence levels can participate together? My aim isn't for everyone in the room to do exactly the same thing. My aim is for everyone in the room to feel they're part of the same thing. That's probably the simplest way I can describe it. Everything can be adapted. People can participate seated or standing. Our drums are height-adjustable, movement range and intensity can change, rhythms can be simplified and nobody needs previous musical experience. If somebody can't follow a pattern, they can keep drumming. They're still part of the music. This means I can have somebody doing a really energetic standing session alongside someone who needs to remain seated, and both can have a meaningful experience. I've also designed our own Drums4Health equipment to support this. It needed to be robust, portable and adaptable because if we genuinely want activities to be inclusive, the equipment has to work in real community, care and wellbeing settings too. Inclusion has to be built into the activity rather than added afterwards. What does meaningful movement mean to you personally? I've become much less interested in how movement looks and much more interested in what it allows somebody to keep doing in their life. For one person, that might mean maintaining enough strength and mobility to remain independent. For somebody else, meaningful movement might be discovering an activity they can participate in from a chair. For another, it might simply be finding exercise they actually enjoy. I'm particularly interested now in healthy ageing and things like hand and grip strength. During drumming, we're continually holding and controlling sticks and using our hands, wrists and forearms. Grip strength is recognised in wider research as a useful marker associated with physical capability and healthy ageing, and it's an area I'd really like us to investigate properly. But meaningful movement is also about how somebody feels. If you're moving, learning, laughing and connecting with other people at the same time, there is something really powerful in that. Movement should add something to life, not simply tick an exercise box. As Drums4Health grows, what do you hope people will ultimately understand about the relationship between rhythm, movement and wellbeing? I want Drums4Health to sit in that really interesting space between physical activity, creative health and preventative wellbeing. We tend to separate physical health, brain health and social wellbeing into different boxes. What excites me about rhythm and movement is the possibility of bringing those things together. I want Drums4Health to remain joyful and accessible, but I also want substance behind it. Working with research partners and gathering meaningful impact data is a huge part of where we're going. I'm also now training teams within organisations to deliver Drums4Health themselves. That means schools, care and dementia organisations, community services, gyms and wellbeing teams can potentially embed it into what they already do, delivered by people their participants know and trust. Ultimately, I'd love Drums4Health to help change the way we think about exercise. It doesn't always have to look like exercise. Sometimes it can look like people of completely different ages and abilities moving, learning, laughing and drumming together. Move. Drum. Connect. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tamsin Ward

A brand-new platform built to make starting and growing a UK business easier, more affordable and considerably less lonely has launched nationwide, and for a limited time, new business owners can join completely free. Just Starting Out (JSO) has officially launched across the UK, bringing together the tools, visibility, support and community new business owners need in one affordable platform. Built following years of consumer research and conversations with hundreds of entrepreneurs, Just Starting Out was created around a simple question, "What do people actually need when they’re just starting out?" “Finding those first customers is incredibly difficult when you're competing against businesses with years of reviews, established reputations and much bigger marketing budgets,” says Abi Hill, founder and CEO of Just Starting Out. “We wanted to create somewhere that gives new businesses a genuine chance to be seen, while providing the practical tools and support they need behind the scenes too.” Business owners can create a professional profile and be discovered by consumers searching for local services, while also accessing features including a quote generator, invoice manager, diary and job tracker, digital business card, community forum, business resources, partner discounts, reviews, galleries and opportunities for promotion and recognition. Just Starting Out has deliberately kept affordability at the heart of the platform. Even its highest-level ‘Trailblazer’ plan costs less than the price of a latte per week! For a limited time, however, businesses can sign up completely 'free' as Just Starting Out builds its founding nationwide community. Starting a business? Grab Just Starting Out’s Trailblazer plan now for 'free' (normally £99), including 12 months’ exposure on the platform, sign up here! Co-founder and CTO Richard Windley says the platform has changed significantly during development because of the people it was built for. “We haven't built Just Starting Out and then asked people whether they like it,” says Windley. “Feedback has been part of the development process from the beginning. Features have been added, changed and refined because new business owners have told us what would genuinely make their lives easier. That will continue now that we're live. Our members will have a real voice in what Just Starting Out becomes.” But Just Starting Out isn't only about helping entrepreneurs. The platform has also been designed to help UK households navigate the continuing cost-of-living pressures by making it easier to discover emerging local businesses offering competitive services. “For me, that's where Just Starting Out becomes really exciting,” Hill adds. “On one side you've got talented people who desperately need those first customers. On the other, you've got households looking for good local services at prices they can afford. We're bringing the two together. A consumer could save money while helping somebody else build their business. That's a pretty powerful exchange.” Just Starting Out is also actively looking for new businesses to showcase as its community grows. Want the opportunity for your business to be featured on Just Starting Out’s social media channels, or to be considered for a future blog or member spotlight? Get in touch with your story! Whether you're turning a side hustle into something bigger, have recently taken the leap into self-employment or simply need help finding those all-important first customers, Just Starting Out has been built for you! Head over to Just Starting Out’s website, Facebook and Instagram pages. Media contact Amanda Grant Communications Manager 0203 633 0286 amanda.grant@juststartingout.co.uk

Written by Sarah Veall, Transformational Coach Sarah Veall is a transformational coach, inner child practitioner, and Reiki practitioner. She is the author of "Trust", a story of how she reconnected with her true essence and a state of wholeness and healed holistically, following a cancer diagnosis in 2020. 20 August 2020. It is a date that will forever be etched into my memory. In the morning, my eldest son received his General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) results. It was a moment of pride, celebration and excitement as we watched him take another step into his future. That afternoon, my world changed. I was diagnosed with cancer. I could never have imagined, sitting with that diagnosis six years ago, where the journey would take me. Now, six years on, I find myself looking back at those years and feeling something I hadn't anticipated, closure. My life is almost unrecognisable from the life I was living in 2020. Six years of transformation My cancer diagnosis became the beginning of a profound journey of questioning, listening and learning. Rather than simply accepting that my body had somehow betrayed me, I became curious about what it might be trying to tell me. I began exploring healing differently. I became fascinated by the wisdom of the body and by the connection between our mental, emotional, physical and energetic selves. Most importantly, I began learning to listen to the whispers of my intuition. The journey took me into places I might never have explored without that diagnosis. It challenged beliefs I had held about health, healing and myself. It encouraged me to slow down, become more aware of what was happening within me and start trusting my own inner knowing. Eventually, that journey became my first book, "Trust", my story of learning to trust myself, my body and my intuition as I explored my own holistic healing journey. And now, six years later, I am more well than I've ever been. I've let go of versions of myself that were built around coping, pleasing, performing and trying to be who I thought I needed to be. I've learned to question, I've learned to listen inwardly, and I've learned that sometimes our bodies communicate what our conscious minds haven't yet been willing to acknowledge. I've also learned that healing can be about coming home to yourself. Then there is the date There is something rather extraordinary about the fact that this six-year anniversary coincides with another family milestone. On 20 August 2020, my eldest son received his GCSE results in the morning, and I received my cancer diagnosis in the afternoon. Six years later, my youngest son has just received his GCSE results. Same date, different son, completely different me. It feels almost as though life has brought me back to the same point on the calendar so that I can look at it from an entirely different perspective. What felt like an ending in 2020 now feels like the completion of a chapter. Is there a six-year eclipse cycle in astrology? Technically, there isn't a formal six-year eclipse cycle. But there is a fascinating cyclical quality to eclipses, and when I look at my own life through that lens, the timing feels incredibly significant. From 2020 to 2021, we experienced the Gemini and Sagittarius eclipse cycle, beginning in June 2020 and continuing through December 2021. The current 2026 to 2028 Leo and Aquarius eclipse cycle carries very different symbolism, but perhaps that is precisely what makes it so interesting. Eclipses are often viewed astrologically as accelerators and turning points. They can bring something into consciousness, initiate change or expose something that then takes years to unfold. They don't necessarily create an event that begins and ends at the time of the eclipse. Sometimes they open a door, and then we spend years walking through it. So perhaps what I'm feeling isn't the literal completion of a six-year eclipse cycle, but rather the completion of a chapter that began around 2020. It began with a cancer diagnosis and took me through fear, questioning, healing, awakening and, ultimately, a much deeper relationship with myself. From trust to the heart The current Leo and Aquarius axis feels particularly poignant to me. Leo is associated symbolically with self-expression, heart, identity, creativity and being seen. Aquarius is associated with authenticity, freedom, community and our relationship with the collective. And suddenly, the question feels very different from the one I was asking six years ago. Back then, perhaps the question was, "How am I going to get through this?" Now it feels more like, "Who have I become, and what am I now ready to step into?" That feels like a very different question because I believe growth is about shedding the versions that were never really us in the first place. There's something else coming As I look back at the woman who received that diagnosis six years ago, I feel enormous compassion for her. She couldn't possibly have known what was waiting for her on the other side, and she didn't know that her experience would become Trust. She didn't know that she would discover new ways of understanding healing and that she would learn to trust her intuition in ways she never had before. She certainly didn't know that six years later, she would be preparing to launch another book. Paddy Apollo and Me. A very different book, but one that has emerged from the same journey. It is a book about love, loss, connection and the extraordinary relationship we can have with our animals, and for me, my precious cats. In many ways, it feels like the next expression of everything I've learned about listening, connection and the wisdom that exists beyond what we can rationally explain. Trust came from the beginning of my healing journey. Paddy Apollo and Me feels like it is coming from the other side of it, and maybe that's why this moment feels so significant. Look at that for closure Six years ago, my eldest son received his GCSE results, and I received a cancer diagnosis. Six years later, my youngest son receives his GCSE results, and I am living a life I couldn't have imagined then. I have written and published a book, I am preparing to launch another, I am more well than I've ever been, and I have become much more deeply connected to myself. So I don't know whether the universe works in neat six-year cycles. But I do believe there is something powerful about recognising patterns, thresholds and moments of completion. Sometimes we need to stop and look back to realise just how far we've travelled, and maybe that's what this eclipse energy is inviting me to do, to honour the chapter that began in 2020 and acknowledge everything it taught me, to release the version of myself that belonged to that chapter and to step into what comes next with an open heart. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Veall Sarah Veall, Transformational Coach Sarah Veall is a transformational coach, inner child practitioner, and Reiki practitioner. She is the author of "Trust", a story of how she reconnected with her true essence and a state of wholeness and healed holistically, following a cancer diagnosis in 2020. Sarah is passionate about empowering others to love their whole 'self' in order to access a state of wellness where the body can heal itself.

Written by Thomas Patrick McNulty, CEO of Success Stories, Inc. Tom McNulty, M.S., is a healthcare consultant with a vast array of experiences in behavioral health, neurology, healthcare hospitality, and health talk podcasting-"MindSet with Tom McNulty, M.S." He is a professional photographer, screenwriter, and public speaker. In 2014, one of our partners, Tom McNulty, Master of Science (M.S.), president of Success Stories, Inc., a healthcare consulting firm created in 1990, was noticing an increase in disgruntled patients, families, employees, physicians, and referral sources. At the time, Tom was also teaching graduate students in the nursing management track and undergraduate students majoring in the healthcare field at D'Youville University. His dean at D’Youville took a position at Hilbert College, and he asked Tom to join him. Tom joined the faculty involved in the healthcare track in the Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) division. While at Hilbert College, Tom taught many classes on marketing, grant writing, and not-for-profit financial management. During his teaching, Tom would routinely ask students to share the good and bad of their last healthcare encounter, be it their own experience or as they accompanied a family member. Sadly, most chose their bad experiences, and the stories were appalling. He’d ask the students, “What experience should you have had?” The answers pointed to a repeated lack of basic hospitality that led to poor outcomes, lawsuits, and a decision to go elsewhere in the future. That’s when his ideas about healthcare hospitality started to percolate. Tom contacted Peter Hertsgaard, Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.), a dear friend and co-creator of The Episodes Project. Peter is an accomplished writer, actor, director, and producer, and the two were very comfortable with each other’s creative energy. Peter has developed a successful company, Invizion, that utilizes “interactive learning” through the presentation of “interactive theater” to Fortune 100 companies coast to coast. Tom believed Peter’s skills and experience would be a perfect fit for a consulting project Tom was envisioning to creatively infuse healthcare hospitality into progressive-thinking health and medical organizations. Being at Hilbert College, Tom brought the dean into the discussion and introduced Peter to see if we could get Hilbert College to host an “interactive theater” presentation, develop a panel of local experts, and invite a full auditorium of interested parties. They did exactly that, to an audience of 150 individuals from a multitude of diverse healthcare providers and managed care organizations. The showcase was a tremendous validation of the need for formal healthcare hospitality training and educational offerings. In 2015, Tom and Peter connected with a fellow consultant in Nashville and planned a similar “interactive theater” showcase for Vanderbilt University’s Medical School administration and senior faculty. Once again, the response was very encouraging. This led to the idea of bringing healthcare hospitality “interactive learning” to medical schools and also to developing a formal Master’s program at Hilbert College. We engaged the CEO of the Health Foundation of Western and Central New York with an initial grant request of $500,000. Internal discussions were gaining genuine interest but were thwarted as the college was in financial distress, and our dean took a big promotion at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. Without the dean’s support, Tom and Peter decided to put advancing the project on indefinite hold. Hope springs eternal. In early 2022, Tom reconnected with several friends, colleagues, and former co-workers who were living in different parts of the United States. While chatting and catching up, Tom mentioned to them that he and Peter had developed an “interactive theater” play about healthcare hospitality. They were intrigued and interested in learning more. After two years of COVID-19 and its variants, healthcare organizations were hurting in every way. While heroic work was being done daily, death was omnipresent, and medical and support staff were physically and emotionally burning out. Service was strained, quality was slipping, staff were quitting, wearing a mask became political, and patients were dying every single hour of every shift. The emotional toll was enormous, but was often put “on hold” to take care of the next influx of patients. Could healthcare hospitality be part of an effective turnaround strategy? The resounding answer was yes! Welcome, Zoom! Using Zoom, one by one, we brought together potential partners with unique yet critical skills to build the best healthcare hospitality program in the country. The program is proprietary and copyright-protected. Tom recruited the partners, and Peter brought Connie Schoyer, Ph.D. (Baltimore, Maryland), an organizational psychologist, to a Zoom meeting. Connie and Peter had worked together for years through Invizion and Connie’s connections at Korn Ferry. They had the “interactive theater” and facilitation experience they effectively used with major corporations, Fortune 100 and 500 companies, including healthcare. The beginnings of an impressive group of complementary partners were coming together. Tom McNulty, M.S., has known Nancy Sheehan, R.N., J.D., for 25+ years. They worked together at BryLin Hospitals, a private psychiatric hospital in Buffalo, New York. Tom was Vice President of Marketing, and Nancy, after many years as a nurse, became a healthcare attorney and was BryLin’s in-house Chief Legal Counsel. She moved on in the same capacity to the large Catholic Health System until she retired in 2022. She was there for 20+ years. Tom introduced Nancy to the growing team, and Nancy accepted an offer to join our partnership in 2022. Dr. Cynthia Ambres (Los Angeles, California) is an entrepreneurial physician and forever friend of Tom’s. While they live in opposite parts of the country, they’ve stayed in touch and exchanged “chats” on various social media sites. Dr. Ambres has witnessed the benefits of “interactive theater” and knows of Peter and Connie’s success with creative solutions to complex situations. For a time, Dr. Ambres lived in Buffalo and held C-level positions in managed care and hospital administration. After several phone calls about our project and an introduction to the team, Dr. Ambres joined the team in March 2023 as Medical Advisor. With a full team in place, the partners began crafting the healthcare hospitality structure and the “pain points” healthcare organizations are facing. Tom and Peter examined the 2025 and 2026 priorities of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Hospital Association (AHA) and found a lot of common ground where healthcare hospitality could make a significant impact that would endure without heavy lifting for staff. With a strong cast of partners in place, we aligned our skill sets with areas of need identified by AMA and AHA, plus the daily healthcare headlines that can arise without warning. From a point of expertise and skills, we focused on our strengths, including behavioral health, organizational behavior, legal issues and lawsuit prevention, practical and targeted marketing, finance, managed care, recruitment and retention, sales, emotional intelligence, data collection and interpretation, communication, artificial intelligence (AI), and administrative leadership, including staff and team active participation. Hospitality is not a new concept, but in healthcare it can be defined differently based on how its components are perceived. For instance, some hospital executives viewed valet parking, a gift shop, a coffee café, and even a McDonald’s as a genuine hospitality offering. We do not. The goal of healthcare hospitality is to create a culture that is on autopilot and becomes inculcated in the mindset of everyone from the board of directors to all employees at every level, everyone takes personal ownership of practicing the mantra daily, thus new employees enter a culture of hospitality and quickly get oriented to the expectations. There are no binders to read, classes to attend, videos to watch, or those “flavor of the week” management mandates like Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, 360 Evaluations, and dozens of forgettable Leadership Training programs. HHPartners’ focus is on inclusion, active listening, de-escalation techniques, emotional intelligence, creating team champions, new recruitment strategies, facility appearance, and critical communication. Compassion for patients, families, and each other is a given, it’s inside of all of us. Just imagine how many lawsuits could be averted with meaningful communication. When a hospital CEO seems hesitant to move forward, we often ask these questions: What happens to your organization if you do not embrace healthcare hospitality? What is the current perception of your hospital amongst providers, managed care, and the general population? Did you know that avoiding just one lawsuit could probably pay for HHPartners’ services? Are doctors and nurses likely to leave a hospital that is full of positive energy? Is generational loyalty important to your organization? How was your last healthcare experience? Interested in learning more? Please contact Tom McNulty, M.S., here. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Thomas Patrick McNulty Thomas Patrick McNulty, CEO of Success Stories, Inc. Tom McNulty, M.S., developed his interest in psychology and the brain in high school while attending college at the same time. His interests grew, and he received his master's degree. After graduation, he worked in a psychiatric hospital as a family therapist, and then he was offered a management position to work with troubled adolescents. Tom took his passion to the airwaves and hosted a weekly health talk radio program for 18 years. He is the founding partner of HHPartners (healthcare hospitality consulting) and co-creator of The Episodes Project (behavioral health). His mission: "Creating Enduring Impact".

Written by David Asselstine, Behavioral Insight Specialist David Asselstine is the inventive mind behind the paradigm-shifting psychosocial framework, the 7 Dimensions of Self. He has studied Life Coaching, Psychology, and Neurolinguistic Programming and has 5 years of experience working with mental health firsthand in the medical field. For the past several years, I have been developing a framework called the Seven Dimensions of Self (7DS). What began as an attempt to understand my own experiences gradually became something much larger: a way of organizing the internal factors that influence how we perceive ourselves, interpret the world, make decisions, and respond to challenges. Today, that work is evolving again. The Seven Dimensions of Self provided the structure. The next stage is understanding what happens when those dimensions interact. This is where Forward Positive Momentum (FPM) enters. Increasingly, I believe the future of this work isn’t simply about identifying the different parts of ourselves. It is about understanding how those parts work together and whether we can use that understanding to create measurable, meaningful movement in people’s lives. From experience to framework The origins of 7DS are deeply personal. As I have described in my autobiographical work, Still Here, the framework did not begin as an academic exercise. It emerged through lived experience, adaptation, relationships, instability, observation, education, and eventually the recognition that many of the problems we experience as individuals may not be isolated events. They can be patterns, and that realization became central to my work. Instead of asking only, “Why did this happen to me?” I began asking, “What is happening within me that influences how I respond to what happens?” That question changed the direction of the work. Over time, what had initially been a smaller model expanded into the Seven Dimensions of Self. The current framework identifies self-confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy, motivation, ambition, metacognition, and situational awareness as distinct but interacting dimensions of human functioning. The important word here is interacting because identifying seven dimensions is only the beginning. A map is not a journey Imagine having an incredibly detailed map of a landscape. You know where everything is. You can identify the mountains, valleys, roads, rivers, and obstacles. But having the map doesn’t mean you have moved anywhere. That distinction has become increasingly important in the development of 7DS. The framework helps us ask: Where am I? What is influencing me? What patterns am I repeating? Which internal capacities appear strong? Which appear constrained? What relationships exist between them? But eventually, we have to ask a different question: What happens next? That is the question FPM was developed to address. From the Seven Dimensions to Forward Positive Momentum I define Forward Positive Momentum as movement toward a more constructive state of functioning despite obstacles, setbacks, or uncertainty. It isn’t simply movement. We move all the time. We can move toward something that ultimately makes our lives worse. We can become extremely productive at avoiding the things that matter. We can repeat the same relationship patterns, career patterns, behavioral patterns, or emotional patterns for years. Movement alone isn’t necessarily progress. FPM is concerned with direction, development, and the quality of movement. This is also where the concept connects with existing psychological research on momentum. Research on psychological momentum has found that perceived success can increase confidence, expectations of success, effort, and subsequent performance, creating an upward feedback process. FPM takes a broader developmental perspective. The question becomes: What internal conditions make forward movement more likely, and what causes that movement to stall or reverse? The dimensions don’t operate in isolation Consider self-esteem. A person can have a relatively strong sense of personal worth and still lack confidence in a particular situation. Someone can be highly confident socially while having low confidence in their professional abilities. Someone can possess considerable actual ability but have poor self-efficacy, the belief that they can successfully execute a task. This is one reason I have become increasingly interested in the Self Perception Triad. Self-esteem reflects, “I have value.” Self-confidence reflects, “I can trust myself.” Self-efficacy reflects, “I can do this.” Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from David Asselstine David Asselstine, Behavioral Insight Specialist David Asselstine's model has redefined for many what terms like Motivation, Ambition, and Self-Esteem mean on a relational and personal level. David's life story built the 7 Dimensions of Self through his own experiential learning, adaptation, and resilience. His passion for helping others build their mental fortitude and comprehensive understanding of themselves has been the fuel for his own Forward Positive Momentum. Psychological research and references: Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. Oney, E., & Oksuzoglu-Guven, G. (2015). Confidence: A critical review of the literature and an alternative perspective for general and specific self-confidence. Psychological Reports, 116(1), 149–163. Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2014). The development of self-esteem. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(5), 381–387. Orth, U., Erol, R. Y., & Luciano, E. C. (2018). Development of self-esteem from age 4 to 94 years: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 144(10), 1045–1080. Orth, U., Robins, R. W., & Widaman, K. F. (2012). Life span development of self-esteem and its effects on important life outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(6), 1271–1288. Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2013). Understanding the link between low self-esteem and depression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(6), 455–460. Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized Self-efficacy Scale. In J. Weinman, S. Wright, & M. Johnston (Eds.), Measures in Health Psychology: A User's Portfolio. Causal and Control Beliefs (pp. 35–37). Windsor, UK: NFER NELSON. Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE). The instrument assesses a general sense of perceived self-efficacy and has been translated into numerous languages.

Written by Lisa Gaines, Leadership Wellbeing Coach Lisa Gaines is a leadership and wellbeing coach, empowering mid-life women leaders to redefine success, break through barriers, and thrive. Drawing on her expertise in neuroscience and emotional intelligence, Lisa supports her clients with navigating change, finding renewed purpose, and creating sustainable growth in both work and life. I was speaking with a client who has spent years thriving in a high-pressure, senior leadership role. She told me she feels guilty for operating at less than full throttle lately, compared to how she has always shown up, even though she and her team keep delivering great results. I asked her a question I ask many of my clients in midlife: ‘How would it be to leverage what you have built up to this point in your career and park the guilt?’ I shared my understanding, drawn from years of reading and research on perimenopause and menopause, that we actually need to make our lives more menopause friendly by slowing down. I could see this idea landing for her, and I was reminded of how I’ve been practising parking my own guilt about slowing down and allowing myself to listen more to my body instead of constantly overriding my needs, as I have done for most of my adult life. The cost of operating at full speed Like many women in midlife, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been operating at a pace that doesn’t quite work for me. I’ve been intentionally creating space to bring more calm and spaciousness into my life, and it’s a work in progress. I don’t always get the balance right. For years, I’ve been fuelled by adrenaline and hormones. I’ve worked hard and travelled extensively for work, and as an Irish Aussie, I visit my family in Ireland every year. I’ve come to realise that if I keep pushing as I have always done, and to some extent gotten away with, there’s a cost, and it’s more expensive than it was in my twenties, thirties, and even early forties. The impact on my physical and mental health is more challenging, and it affects my energy levels and output. This is happening to millions of women in midlife everywhere. In Australia, the Jean Hailes 2023 National Women's Health Survey found that one in four Australian women in midlife say menopause symptoms make it hard to get through daily life, including performing at work. Then, if that’s not enough to be dealing with, there’s the existential identity crisis: ‘If I’m not this hormone-fuelled, adrenaline-driven person, then who am I?’ For some of us, that reckoning goes even deeper: the midlife attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses we didn’t see coming. In a 2022 ADDitude magazine survey of over 1,500 women with ADHD, 83% said they experienced ADHD symptoms for the first time during perimenopause or menopause, precisely when we have spent decades working hard to keep those traits and coping strategies hidden. Then there are the many women who have diagnosed themselves, who don't want medication, and who soldier on regardless. It’s a lot to process. Why slowing down feels like a reckoning I know I’m not alone in this. I see midlife women everywhere speaking about these challenges and considerations. So here I am, going through my midlife inquiry, shall we call it? Slowing down is not something I find easy, and I know this is true for so many of us. Operating at a hectic pace has become a societal norm, and when we pause, slow down, and feel our nervous system and how unregulated it is, it can be a bit of a reckoning. Another reason we might avoid creating more space in our lives is that we get a chance to feel feelings we may have been avoiding and running from. Often, sitting with and acknowledging these feelings isn’t as bad as avoiding them. Sometimes it is, and we may need the support of a wise partner, friend, colleague, coach, or counsellor with our bigger feelings. The book Wise Power by Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, which I think is essential reading for midlife women, gave me the understanding that this is a time when we tend to review our past and need to come to terms with our choices up to this point. It is like a midlife inventory. It can be confronting and can be a time when our inner critic becomes very loud and accusatory. It has to be managed, and recognising that some women in midlife aren't well resourced to support their mental health through this is important. Through awareness of how challenging this time can be for a woman, we can be more compassionate and perhaps normalise reaching out and getting the help we need. Permission, not just productivity If the idea of slowing down comes our way at all, usually the message is that it’s only okay to slow down so we can ultimately speed up and be more productive. This is a tricky message: “Are we only allowed to rest if it ultimately fuels productivity?” But what if slowing down is the priority, and we can trust that when we need to be productive, that energy will be there on the other side of deep rest and stillness? This is what I have found to be true again and again. Perhaps this change in pace and in how we operate is exactly what is needed, without needing to push ourselves to be more, do more, and have more. The irony is that when we slow down, we get a chance to feel how much we have and how much we are. Using perimenopause as permission So here I am today, tapping into my inner wisdom and using perimenopause as permission to slow down so I can continue to connect to this wisdom. From here, I’m feeling a sense of awareness that I am enough. It’s the antidote to “I’m not enough, good enough, young enough, clever enough, experienced enough,” and so on. When I slow down, I have access to more compassion and kindness toward myself, and honestly, it feels like a panacea that helps overcome many of the challenges of midlife. I hope this inspires you and gives you permission to slow down, too. I’m curious to hear from you: what does slowing down even look like for you? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Lisa Gaines Lisa Gaines, Leadership Wellbeing Coach Lisa Gaines is a leadership and wellbeing coach devoted to helping mid-life women leaders reconnect with themselves, overcome roadblocks or burnout, and thrive. With over 15 years of experience and drawing on her expertise in neuroscience and emotional intelligence, Lisa supports her clients through meaningful transitions in work and life. Her coaching style is nurturing, insightful, and practical, and empowers clients to overcome their barriers and step into new chapters with clarity, courage, and balance. Lisa is passionate about supporting women to step up, stand tall, and create sustainable success on their own terms.

Written by Esther Christopher, Trauma Pain Support Esther Christopher is the founder of Trauma Pain Support Ltd, a speaker, writer, and trauma-informed systems thinker whose work explores the overlooked spaces between crisis, recovery, leadership, and long-term human resilience. Through her writing and framework development, she examines how lived experience can reveal what formal systems often miss. For decades, the glass ceiling has given us a useful way of talking about women and ambition. You can see the next level. You know you are capable of reaching it. Yet somewhere between where you are and where you want to be sits an invisible barrier that is difficult to name and even harder to prove. The response, understandably, has been to focus on breaking through it. The climb has changed Women have been encouraged to become more visible, put themselves forward, negotiate harder, seek sponsorship, take the seat at the table, and keep climbing. Much of that work has mattered. In the United Kingdom (UK), women now occupy more senior and influential positions than they did a generation ago. By the end of 2025, 88% of Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 350 companies had achieved, or were close to achieving, the target of 40% women on their boards. That progress deserves recognition, but I have begun to wonder whether the glass ceiling has also kept our attention fixed in one direction, up. We have become particularly good at asking how many women reach senior management, how many sit on boards, and how many become chief executives. These are important measures of progress, particularly when women were excluded from those positions for so long. They are not, however, the only measures available to us. There comes a point when another question becomes interesting: not simply how far women are progressing within existing organisations, but what women are building and owning themselves. That distinction has become increasingly important to me as a founder. When the direction of success begins to change For most of my working life, success was easy to recognise. There was an established organisation, a role, a structure, and usually another level somewhere above the one you occupied. Even when the route upwards was complicated, you broadly understood the architecture. Starting something of your own is different. There is no floor above you to aim for because, at least in the beginning, there may barely be a floor beneath you. You are no longer navigating a structure. You are deciding what the structure will be. That sounds liberating, and in many ways it is, but “freedom” is probably too simple a word for it. What changes most profoundly is authorship. You decide how decisions will be made and where authority will sit. You decide what the organisation will stand for and then discover whether you are prepared to live by those values when doing so becomes inconvenient. You decide what growth means rather than assuming bigger must automatically mean better. Even the definition of success begins to shift. For years, many of us have worked with somebody else’s scoreboard without necessarily realising it: the next promotion, the larger remit, the more senior title, another step up a hierarchy whose shape was established long before we arrived. When you build something yourself, you are forced to decide what winning actually looks like. Perhaps you want scale. Perhaps you want influence. Perhaps you want a business that can eventually operate without you. Perhaps you want to create something that changes a particular part of the world and makes enough money to sustain doing it. There is no universal answer. The conversation we have less often: Ownership There is another part of this discussion that I think deserves far more attention. When you build an organisation, you are not only creating a job for yourself. If you build it well, you may be creating an asset. The intellectual property, systems, relationships, reputation, and knowledge you develop can accumulate into something with value beyond the work you personally perform each day. For a founder, that changes the nature of the work. You are no longer contributing solely to the value of an organisation that already exists, you are creating value in something you own. That makes me wonder whether our discussion about women’s advancement has sometimes been too narrow. We have rightly asked whether women have access to opportunity and whether they are represented where important decisions are made. Perhaps we should also be asking who owns the value they create. The numbers suggest there is still quite a difference between the two. The UK government’s latest Longitudinal Small Business Survey found that around 14% of Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) employers were women-led. That sits alongside the considerable progress women have made in corporate leadership and tells us something interesting: representation within existing organisations and ownership of businesses are not the same journey. Building your own does not remove the barriers Becoming a founder does not somehow remove the structural barriers women have experienced elsewhere. Money makes that particularly visible. The British Business Bank has reported that only 2p in every £1 of UK venture capital investment goes to female-founded businesses. Now, there is something almost brutally simple about that figure. A woman may decide she wants to create the organisation rather than climb within one, but deciding to build is not the same as being given the resources to build it. There are signs of improvement. Among organisations participating in the Investing in Women Code, the proportion of venture capital investment going to teams with at least one female founder increased from 27% in 2024 to 32% in 2025. That is encouraging, although it also shows why the wider financing conversation remains necessary. Entrepreneurship, then, is not an uncomplicated escape from organisational life. It would be easy to write that version of the story. Leave the job, become your own boss, control your time, and finally do things your way. Anyone who has actually built a business knows how incomplete that picture is. You exchange one set of constraints for another. The uncertainty belongs to you. The financial responsibility belongs to you. So do the decisions that turn out to be wrong. If something stops working inside a large organisation, there is usually an infrastructure around the problem. When you own the organisation, the infrastructure may also be something you are responsible for creating. The freedom is real, but so is the weight. Two distinct kinds of power Perhaps that is why I find the founder story more interesting when we stop presenting it as an alternative fairy tale to the corporate ladder. Some women will continue to rise through established organisations, and I hope they do. We need women running major companies, sitting around board tables, and changing institutions from within. Others will create businesses, organisations, intellectual property, and new models of working. Neither path is inherently more ambitious than the other, but they represent distinct kinds of power. One is the ability to rise within a structure and influence what happens there, while the other is the ability to create the structure in the first place. For a long time, we have measured women’s progress vertically. How high did she go? What title did she reach? Did she finally get into the room? Perhaps the next stage of that conversation needs to become wider. What did she create? What does she control? What assets did she build? How much of the value she generates does she own, and what might happen if more women had access to the capital, confidence, networks, and support required to answer those questions for themselves? The glass ceiling was never the whole story The glass ceiling remains a useful metaphor. There are still barriers above women that need to be identified and removed, and progress should not depend on women simply working harder to overcome them. But the ceiling was never the whole story. Sometimes progress is about reaching the next floor. Sometimes it is about realising that there are other things you could build. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Esther Christopher Esther Christopher, Trauma Pain Support Esther Christopher is the founder of Trauma Pain Support Ltd. (TPS), a trauma-informed recovery program helping road traffic accident (RTA) survivors rebuild physically, emotionally, and mentally. After overcoming her own life-changing road traffic accident, Esther developed the TPS framework to bridge the gap between medical recovery and long-term healing. A certified Total Breakthrough Coach, author, and nutritionist, she combines professional expertise with lived experience to guide others toward sustainable transformation. Her memoir, Triumph Over Tragedy, chronicles her journey from survival to purpose, inspiring others to reclaim their strength and identity.

Written by Bronwen Sciortino, International Author & Simplicity Expert Bronwen Sciortino is an International Author and Simplicity Expert who spent almost two decades as an award-winning executive before experiencing a life-changing event that forced her to stop and ask the question, ‘What if there’s a better way to live? I've been wondering when we became so comfortable telling other people how to live. Everywhere we turn, someone is ready with an opinion about what we should be doing, thinking, or striving for. Eat this. Don't eat that. Work harder. Slow down. Speak up. Stay quiet. Set boundaries. Be more resilient. The advice comes thick and fast, often delivered with absolute certainty, yet very little of it begins with curiosity. Almost nobody stops to ask who we are, what matters to us, or what kind of life we're trying to build before telling us what we should do next. We've become a society that's remarkably good at giving answers before we've taken the time to understand the person standing in front of us. But maybe that's not so surprising. Most of us have spent our entire lives learning how to meet other people's expectations. From the time we're young, we're taught what it means to be a good student, a good employee, a good partner, or a good parent. We learn which behaviours are rewarded, which opinions are accepted, and which versions of ourselves are most likely to belong. Over time, it becomes second nature to look outside ourselves for cues about how to behave, what to value, and who we should become. We become so practised at meeting expectations that we rarely stop to ask a much more important question: Is this actually who I want to be? When everyone else has your answers Even well-meaning advice reflects the person giving it. It carries their experiences, their values, their priorities, and their beliefs about what makes a good life. That's not a criticism. It's simply how human beings work. The problem begins when we forget that someone else's answer is always shaped by their perspective. That puts us in the position of following advice that was designed for a life that isn't ours, measured against values we may not share, and guided by priorities we never consciously chose. Over time, it's easy to lose sight of a simple truth: no one else has lived your life, carries your responsibilities, or sees the world through your eyes. So how could they possibly know what the right answer is for you? The longer we rely on other people's answers, the easier it becomes to doubt our own judgement. We second-guess the decisions that once felt obvious. We look for reassurance before we take the next step. We start believing that someone else must know something we don't. It's a subtle shift, but an important one. Instead of becoming more confident in who we are, we become more dependent on someone else to tell us whether we're getting it right. Before long, we find ourselves living by borrowed certainty instead of personal conviction, and that's a difficult place from which to build a life that genuinely feels like our own. The power in choosing for yourself Choosing your own direction sounds wonderfully empowering until you have to do it for the first time. That's the moment most people discover that self-direction isn't really about making decisions. It's about becoming comfortable with the fact that not everyone will understand them. The first time you say ‘no’ when everyone expects you to say ‘yes’, it can feel uncomfortable. The first time you choose rest instead of pushing through, step away from a role that no longer fits, or decide that someone else's definition of success isn't yours, you'll probably wonder whether you're making a mistake. You're not. You're simply experiencing what it feels like to stop living by expectation and start living by intention. Those are very different things, and they require a different kind of courage. The good news is that choosing for yourself doesn’t require you to have your whole life mapped out. It simply asks you to become more curious before you become more certain. This is where making questions your ally can give you power in moments when decisions are required. The next time you’re faced with a decision, resist the urge to immediately ask, "What should I do?" Instead, pause long enough to ask yourself a different set of questions. Why does this matter to me? What feels true for me right now? Am I making this choice because it reflects my values, or because it meets someone else's expectations? Those questions won't always make your decisions easier, but they will make them more honest. Over time, every honest decision becomes another quiet vote of confidence in your ability to lead your own life. Becoming the one who decides So, what do you do when you're tired of being told who to be? You don't stop learning. You don't shut out new ideas or decide that no one has anything valuable to teach you. Wisdom has always come from listening, observing, and remaining open to perspectives that challenge our own. The difference is that you stop treating those perspectives as instructions and start treating them as invitations to think. You allow them to inform your decisions instead of making your decisions for you. Perhaps that's what self-direction really is. It's not about having all the answers or getting every decision right. It's about knowing that no one else can define a life that is meaningful for you because no one else has lived it. The questions that shape your future belong to you, but so do the answers. Maybe that's the quiet shift we're being invited to make. Not to become someone different, but to become someone who trusts themselves enough to decide. Because when you're tired of being told who to be, the answer isn't to find another voice to follow. It's to finally hear your own. Bronwen Sciortino is a Simplicity Expert, Professional Speaker, and internationally renowned author. You can follow her on her website, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Read more from Bronwen Sciortino Bronwen Sciortino, International Author & Simplicity Expert Bronwen Sciortino is an International Author and Simplicity Expert who spent almost two decades as an award-winning executive before experiencing a life-changing event that forced her to stop and ask the question, ‘What if there’s a better way to live?’ Embarking on a journey to answer this question, Bronwen developed a whole new way of living, one that teaches you to challenge the status quo and include the power of questions in everyday life. Gaining international critical acclaim and 5-star awards for her books and online programs. Bronwen spends every day teaching people that there is an easy, practical, and simple pathway to creating a healthy, happy, and highly successful life. Sourced globally for media comment as an expert and working with corporate programs, conference platforms, retreats, professional mentoring, and in the online environment, Bronwen teaches people how easy it is to live life very differently.