Written by Bill Bloom, Founder & Retirement Purpose Coach Bill is the founder of Bloom Financial and Diane Money, where he helps people prepare for a confident and meaningful retirement. Drawing on decades of experience in financial planning and retirement education, he empowers individuals to align their finances with the life they want to live. Take a quick and simple snapshot of your last year. What changed? What improved? What’s going wrong? What’s your North Star? Most people on the planet cannot answer these questions. They are so stuck in stress, poor habits, and repetitive behavior, hoping things will change. The funniest part is that they do not even realize they are doing this external work. You see, you need to go inside, not outside, for your validation. We all look at the cars, clothes, and body shapes of others and give them labels. Labels are ridiculous. Humans gave meaning to these words, and we are so obsessed with them. Over the past year, have you been able to make your life better and do the things you want to do? Or are you still stuck in the safety of repeating your bad behavior? It is easier to stay stuck because you do not have to change, rather than try something new. Staying where you are may feel safe, even when it is making you unhappy. At least you know what to expect. The unknown feels uncomfortable because it asks you to let go of control and trust that something better may be waiting for you. This is your path forward. Go for something new and try something that truly scares you. It does not need to be a huge life-changing decision. It could be one honest conversation, one new routine, one boundary, or one step toward something you have been avoiding. Breaking your behavior patterns requires just a few small actions that may scare you because they can lead to a different outcome. That outcome will set you free. So, what are you going to do today to get things moving in a better direction? What excuses are you allowing to keep you stuck? You are not stuck, but you will need to be willing to go into the unknown to make it happen. The life you want will not appear simply because you keep thinking about it. You have to participate in creating it. Final thoughts: A year from now, you will look back at the decisions you are making today. You may realize that one small choice changed the direction of your life. It might be the moment you stopped waiting for permission, stopped comparing yourself to others, or finally admitted that your current situation was no longer working. Progress does not always look impressive from the outside. Sometimes it means getting out of bed when you would rather hide. Sometimes it means saying no when you usually say yes. It can mean walking away from something familiar or returning to a dream you abandoned years ago. You do not need to have the entire journey figured out. You only need to know what your next step is. Once you take it, the next one will become clearer. Ask yourself what you would do if you were not afraid of failing, disappointing someone, or being judged. Your answer may reveal the direction you already know you need to take. You will never feel completely ready for change. Confidence often comes after you act, not before. The first step may feel uncertain, but every step you take builds evidence that you are capable of moving forward. Do not wait for another year to pass before asking yourself these questions again. Check in with yourself regularly. Notice what is working, what is draining you, and what needs to change. Your future is being shaped by what you choose today. Take the leap of faith, trust yourself, and start moving toward the life you truly want. It is worth it. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Bill Bloom Bill Bloom, Founder& Retirement Purpose Coach Bill is the founder of Bloom Financial and Diane Money, where he has spent decades helping individuals and families prepare for retirement with confidence. His work extends beyond financial planning, focusing on helping people navigate the emotional and lifestyle transition into retirement with purpose and clarity. Through his writing, speaking, and educational programs, Bill equips readers with practical strategies to make informed financial decisions and build a fulfilling life after work. His mission is to help people retire with confidence, purpose, and peace of mind.

Written by Hella Rader, Podcast Host and Somatic Coach Hella Rader is the host of Stories That Sparkle, long-form conversations with women navigating some of the hardest chapters of their lives. As a somatic coach, she helps women build what comes next, from the inside out. It was just another Monday. With the sun setting behind the tall canopy of trees along the fence line, I decided to go out into the garden. The blazing heat of the day had faded, but the air, thick with humidity, clung against my skin. Undeterred by the sweat forming at my hairline, I knelt next to one of the flower beds. Mindlessly, I wielded the small clipper and trimmed back the spent shoots of the lavender bush. I had spent the day procrastinating on my to-do list. On purpose. After feeling off for at least a week and waking up tired and distracted no matter how much deep sleep I got, I did not search for an explanation. I let the work on my desk pile up and stayed at home, by myself. I knew, eventually, I would discover why I just felt off. No sooner had I finished cutting back the last stem of lavender than my phone rang. It was one of my best friends. So, of course, I picked up. The first thing she said was, “So, how are you doing today?” “Ok, a little tired,” I said. “Yeah, I'm really feeling it today too. I mean, today is the second anniversary. It has hit me hard.” The anniversary I forgot The minute she said that, the fog lifted and everything became crystal clear. Two years ago, to the day, Barbara, my spiritual mom, my mentor of twenty years, and the person who taught me what it looked like to be witnessed instead of fixed, passed away. I was with her, at her bedside, the moment she took her last breath. Today was the anniversary. I had missed it. But not completely. My mind may not have registered the date, but some part of me had been keeping track. Because my body hadn't forgotten. After more than a week of feeling off with no clear sense of why, I had my why. It was Barbara's anniversary. My friend and I chatted for a few more minutes and said our goodbyes. As soon as I hung up the phone, I did not get up or go inside. I sat down right in the dirt. I cried, not the tears I'd been holding back for a week without knowing it, but something much looser than that. It was a release. My body finally had permission to let go and express what it already knew. What the body remembers The mind keeps a calendar to which it routinely refers. Schedules. Appointments. Due dates. It keeps track of things concretely. The body keeps one too. It holds anniversaries, losses, and grief on a timeline that has nothing to do with what we've consciously decided to remember or move beyond. That's not malfunction. That's memory working through the body and in the nervous system. This is where the work begins: not with changing or fixing what the body is doing, but with getting curious about why. That's the noticing. Once my friend brought up the anniversary of Barbara’s passing, I could see the grief. I could feel it. I could release it. In that space, I could feel what was actually there instead of the low, unspoken wondering of “what's wrong with me.” What helped Even before I had a clear sense of what was happening, I didn't push through it, and I didn't try to explain it before I understood it myself. A few things I did made room for what my body already knew: I rested, without needing a reason. Not the productive kind of rest that's just recovery for the next push, but the kind of rest that has no agenda attached to it. Lying down for ten minutes in the middle of the day. Taking things off my to-do list. Watching the birds on the bird feeder. I let myself be not okay. Not the performance of fine, not rushing to reassure anyone, including myself. Even though my mind tried to figure it out, I focused on doing something else, something tactile, with my hands, like gardening. I trusted that my body knew what it needed. I didn't need a full explanation to listen to it. I kept it simple. No elaborate ritual, no process with five steps, just noticing and letting that be enough. I let myself skip the social plans. Not every year, not forever. I was not isolating. I was giving myself the space I needed without guilt or shame attached to spending time alone. I wrote about it as I noticed it. Every morning, before the day got going, I wrote down what I noticed and noted one thing I could do that would feel good, a walk, a chat with a friend, or an ice cream cone. The writing was part of how I made sense of it. None of this fixed anything, because there was nothing to fix. Some anniversaries I feel coming; others still arrive sideways. Sometimes they are disguised as fatigue, frustration, or an unexplainable need to be alone, and I don’t always have a word for what’s going on. But I trust that my body knows. I don't need a date on the calendar to believe what my body is telling me. If you've ever felt “off” without knowing why, it might be nothing. Or it might be something. It might be your body speaking to you in a language you haven't yet learned. If you're curious about learning it, that’s the work I do with women through somatic coaching. You can find me at hellarader.com. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Hella Rader Hella Rader, Podcast Host and Somatic Coach Hella Rader built Stories That Sparkle, long-form intimate conversations with women navigating grief, starting over, reclaiming their voices, inhabiting their bodies and building community, because she had spent more than twenty years doing exactly that herself. As a somatic coach at Embody & Create, she brings the same kind of witnessing to her one-on-one work with women and helps them build lives they love from the inside out. A roving interviewer and host whose recording studio is fully mobile by design, Hella has recorded conversations in living rooms, sunrooms, kitchens, conference rooms, and even a park. She goes where the story is. Find her at hellarader.com.

Why do two people experience the same situation in completely different ways? It is a question that has shaped the work of Pratiqk Jaani, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and creator of The Dhrasti Method. Through years of exploring perception, conditioning, emotional patterns, and human behaviour, Pratiqk Jaani has developed an approach that looks at how the beliefs and meanings we carry can influence the way we see ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us. His book, Dhrasti! The Perception, and The Dhrasti Method bring these ideas into everyday life, helping people recognise the patterns behind stress, fear, self doubt, emotional reactions, and repeated behaviours. In this interview, Pratiqk shares the experiences that shaped his work, the principles behind The Dhrasti Method, and his vision for helping individuals and organisations create greater clarity, awareness, and lasting inner change. Pratiqk Jaani, Creator of The Dhrasti Method For readers who may be discovering you for the first time, can you share a bit about your journey and what led you to create The Dhrasti Method? My journey began with a simple but profound question: Why do people experience the same situation so differently? For many years, I pursued success through business, achievement, and personal growth, believing that external circumstances would ultimately determine how fulfilled, confident, or happy I felt. Yet the more I observed myself and others, the more I realised that life was not being experienced directly. We were all experiencing life through a lens. That lens is what I call Dhrasti, which means perception. It is shaped by everything we have learned, absorbed, believed, associated with, and identified with throughout our lives. Over time, I became fascinated not only by how our beliefs are formed, but also by how our emotional experiences become conditioned. Most people assume that emotions such as anxiety, insecurity, rejection, inadequacy, guilt, grief, or fear simply happen to them. My exploration suggested something different. These experiences are often connected to patterns that were learned through previous experiences and reinforced over time. The challenge is that our conditioning feels normal. We grow up surrounded by people experiencing life through their own conditioned lenses, so we naturally assume that our experience is simply reality. Rarely do we stop and ask whether there may be another way of seeing ourselves, others, relationships, success, failure, emotions, or the world. My search for answers led me through years of personal inquiry, transformational coaching, RTT, spiritual traditions, meditation practices, human behaviour studies, and explorations into quantum mechanics, quantum physics, the quantum field, and the nature of reality. Each contributed a piece of the puzzle, but eventually I recognised a deeper principle running through them all. The Dhrasti Method emerged from that understanding, but the method itself is not just about understanding. It is an experience. It is not about fixing people or teaching them what to think. It is about guiding them to see, within themselves, the lens through which they have been experiencing themselves and the world. When that lens becomes visible through direct experience, transformation becomes possible. Every meaningful mission begins with a challenge. What personal experiences shaped your understanding of transformation and human potential? My understanding of transformation did not come from books alone. It was shaped by life itself. Before I was diagnosed with tuberculosis, I was in a phase where I felt pulled in every direction. I was giving my best to my work, my family, and everyone around me, yet internally I felt deeply lonely, insecure, and unseen. I felt I had to keep proving myself, yet no matter how much I gave, I still did not feel worthy of peace, recognition, success, or emotional safety. At work, I often felt intimidated and insecure. In my personal life, I was also carrying a deep sense of pressure, responsibility, and emotional conflict. I had two wonderful daughters, and because of family expectations, society, culture, and the beliefs I had absorbed over the years, I could not even imagine choosing a different path for myself. I was living within rules I had never consciously chosen. When tuberculosis came into my life, it forced me to stop. During that illness, I had a very powerful realisation. I asked myself, “If my life ended here, would the world stop? Would everyone else’s life stop?” The answer was no. That moment changed something in me. I realised that I had spent so much of my life following what I had been taught, trying to meet expectations, and giving myself away in search of approval, security, and belonging. I began to see that if I did not take responsibility for my own happiness, fulfilment, and freedom, my life could pass by without me ever truly living it. Slowly, I started taking a stand for myself. I handed in my notice at work. I began making decisions that felt frightening but honest. I stopped asking only, “What will people think?” and started asking, “What is the worst that can happen, and can I make peace with that?” Once I could face that fear, I found the courage to move forward. Looking back, I can see that this was not only my story. Many people live this way to some degree. They give, adjust, compromise, and carry invisible pressure for years, believing that this is simply how life is. They rarely question whether the life they are living is truly theirs, or whether it has been shaped by conditioning. That experience became one of the foundations of The Dhrasti Method. I began to see that transformation is not only about changing circumstances or intellectually understanding our patterns. It is about directly seeing the conditioned lens through which we interpret ourselves, our responsibilities, our fears, our relationships, and our possibilities. The Dhrasti Method has impacted many lives. What core principles lie at the heart of your work, and why do you believe they resonate so deeply with people today? At the heart of The Dhrasti Method is a simple principle: we do not experience life directly, we experience life through a conditioned lens. That lens influences how we interpret events, how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, what we believe is possible, and even how we experience emotions. Most people believe they are experiencing reality exactly as it is. What they are actually experiencing is reality filtered through conditioning. Because that conditioning feels normal, we rarely question it. The Dhrasti Method explores how experiences create meaning, how meaning creates beliefs, how beliefs shape perception, and how perception influences future experiences. This cycle becomes self reinforcing, often without us realising it. What makes this work deeply powerful is the understanding that conditioning does not only shape thoughts. It also shapes emotional experiences. Many people carry anxiety, guilt, rejection, grief, insecurity, resentment, or fear without realising how those experiences may have been learned, associated, and reinforced over time. Most approaches focus on managing thoughts, changing behaviours, or developing coping strategies. While these can be valuable, The Dhrasti Method works differently. It is not simply a method to understand conditioning. It is an experiential process where people are guided to see how their conditioning was formed and how it continues to shape their experience in the present moment. Participants do not simply learn concepts. They are guided to observe how specific experiences created meanings, how those meanings became beliefs, and how those beliefs now influence perception, behaviour, and emotional responses. When people see this process within themselves, something shifts. They often realise that experiences they considered fixed parts of their identity are actually conditioned patterns that were learned over time. I believe this resonates so strongly today because many people are overwhelmed with information. They have read the books, listened to the podcasts, attended the seminars, and learned countless techniques. Yet many still feel stuck. The Dhrasti Method offers something different. Rather than adding more information, it invites people into an experience where they can see the mechanism through which their experience is being created. Looking back, was there a particular breakthrough or success story that made you realise your work was creating a lasting impact? The most powerful moments are rarely dramatic breakthroughs. They are often the moments when someone sees something about themselves that they have never seen before. I have witnessed individuals arrive carrying years of anxiety, self criticism, guilt, grief, resentment, fear, feelings of rejection, emotional pain, or grudges they have carried for years. Many have spent a significant part of their lives trying to overcome these experiences through willpower, positive thinking, self improvement strategies, or external achievements. Then, during The Dhrasti Method experience, they begin to see how certain experiences in their lives created meanings, how those meanings became beliefs, and how those beliefs shaped the lens through which they viewed themselves and the world. What moves me most is that the change does not come because I give them an answer. It comes because they see the process for themselves. In that moment, they often stop seeing themselves as broken or flawed. Instead, they recognise that much of what they have been experiencing has been shaped by conditioning. That shift from self judgement to understanding, and then from understanding to direct experience, is incredibly powerful. It creates space for greater freedom, clarity, compassion, and possibility. Those moments continually remind me that lasting transformation happens when people see the source of their experience, rather than simply learning new ways to manage it. You recently authored a book that expands on many of these ideas. What inspired you to write it, and what message do you hope readers carry with them after turning the final page? I wrote Dhrasti! The Perception because I wanted to create an invitation for people to question what they often take for granted. Most of us spend our lives trying to change circumstances, improve ourselves, or fix aspects of our experience without ever examining the lens through which that experience is being created. The book explores how conditioning influences our perception of ourselves, our relationships, our emotions, our decisions, and the world around us. It encourages readers to look beyond surface level experiences and begin exploring the deeper mechanisms that shape how they experience life. For me, the book is about deeper understanding. It gives readers the language, foundation, and insight to begin recognising the role of perception in their lives. It opens the door to a deeper inquiry. If there is one message I hope readers carry with them, it is this: your experience of life is not fixed. Many of the beliefs, emotional responses, and identities we assume are permanent were learned through conditioning. When we begin to see that process clearly, new possibilities emerge. The book does not seek to give readers new beliefs to adopt. It invites them to explore the lens through which their current beliefs and experiences have been created. The book creates understanding. The Dhrasti Method brings that understanding into lived experience. Beyond the book, you’re also bringing your work to audiences through live events. For someone who has never attended one before, what can they expect to experience and gain? The live events are designed as immersive experiences rather than traditional seminars, workshops, or training programmes. The book helps people understand the principles of Dhrasti, but the live method allows them to experience it within themselves. People do not attend simply to learn concepts. They are guided through an experiential process that allows them to see how their conditioning was formed, how it shapes their emotions, beliefs, behaviours, and relationships today, and how much of what they experience as reality is being filtered through a conditioned lens. At the heart of the experience, participants are guided into a deeply relaxed, semi hypnotic reflective state where they can observe how past experiences created meanings, how those meanings became beliefs, how beliefs influenced perception, and how perception began shaping their emotional world. This allows them to see how the experience was created within them as they were growing up, through childhood, adulthood, relationships, environments, expectations, and life events. They begin to see what was happening externally, how they felt internally, and how those feelings became associated with identity, safety, love, success, rejection, confidence, or worth. What makes the experience unique is that it is not based on lifelong techniques, routines, rituals, or practices that participants must continue indefinitely. Instead, the focus is on seeing. When people genuinely see how their conditioning has been shaping their experience, a profound shift often occurs naturally. They begin to recognise the pattern, the belief, the emotional association, and the lens through which they have been living. Participants frequently leave with greater clarity, emotional freedom, self awareness, compassion, and a deeper understanding of themselves and others. More importantly, they leave having experienced something rather than simply learned something. What upcoming events or projects are you most excited about right now, and why do you feel they are especially important at this stage of your mission? I am particularly excited about expanding the reach of The Dhrasti Method through immersive retreats, community talks, corporate programmes, podcasts, and international events. I believe we are living in a time when people are searching for something deeper than information. There is no shortage of knowledge available today, yet many people still struggle with stress, burnout, anxiety, disconnection, and a sense that something is missing. The Dhrasti Method offers an opportunity to experience the foundations of human perception in a way that is practical, relatable, and deeply transformative. I am especially excited about the three day immersive experiences because they give people the space to step away from the noise of everyday life and truly observe what has been shaping their inner world. In that environment, people can begin to see the patterns, meanings, beliefs, and emotional conditioning that often remain hidden in daily life. I am also excited about bringing this work into organisations. Many workplace challenges, including leadership struggles, communication breakdowns, stress, burnout, and team conflict, are influenced by perception and conditioning. Understanding these mechanisms is valuable, but experiencing them directly can create a much deeper shift, not only for individuals but also for entire teams and cultures. At this stage of the mission, expanding accessibility is incredibly important. My goal is to make these experiences available to as many people as possible across different communities, cultures, professions, and countries. As you look toward the future, what vision do you have for The Dhrasti Method, and what kind of legacy do you hope your work will leave for generations to come? My vision is for The Dhrasti Method to become a globally recognised experiential framework for human transformation. I believe there is an opportunity to create a common language around perception, conditioning, emotional experience, self awareness, and transformation that can benefit individuals, families, communities, educational institutions, and organisations around the world. For generations, people have been taught how to acquire knowledge, build careers, and navigate the external world. Yet very few are taught how their internal experience is being created. If future generations grow up understanding how conditioning shapes perception, and also have opportunities to experience this within themselves, they may approach themselves and others with greater awareness, compassion, responsibility, and wisdom. The legacy I hope to leave is not centred on my name. It is centred on a simple insight that has the potential to change lives. We do not experience life directly. We experience life through a lens. When we learn to see that lens, not only as an idea but as a direct experience, we gain the freedom to experience ourselves and the world in a profoundly different way. Follow Pratiqk on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, or visit his website for more information! Read more from Pratiqk Jaani

Written by Dr. Omosefe Christina, Medical Doctor, CEO and Founder Dr. Omosefe Christina is a Medical Doctor, Entrepreneur, and Founder of Elite Exams. She blends frontline clinical practice with medical education and community programmes to help International Medical Graduates (IMG) and African families flourish in their careers and communities in the UK. Data is often treated as the foundation of fairness in health and social care. But data systems don't just record reality, they shape it. When measurement frameworks are poorly designed, they don't simply miss inequity. They embed it. This article uses Black families and, in particular, those navigating systems with a migration background as a lens through which to examine a wider structural problem: the way broad, poorly disaggregated data actively sustains the disparities it claims to measure. From aggregation to invisibility Institutions such as the Office for National Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consistently document racial health disparities. Yet their datasets rarely distinguish between a recently arrived migrant, a second-generation professional, and an internationally trained clinician navigating credential recognition. These groups share a racial category. They do not share the same barriers. Aggregating them produces a statistic. It does not produce understanding. The consequences are concrete. The 2020 MBRRACE-UK report, Mothers and Babies Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Inquiries across the UK, found that Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than their white counterparts, a finding that rightly drew attention. What the data doesn't capture is why. Immigration status, language barriers, experiences of systemic bias, and gaps in culturally competent care remain absent from the quantitative record. Without that granularity, policy responds to the outcome while the cause goes unmeasured, and therefore unchanged. The consequences beyond healthcare The same logic plays out in child welfare and education. Black children are disproportionately represented in statutory interventions, as documented in public health literature, yet reporting frameworks rarely distinguish between families new to a system and those with long-standing engagement. Recently arrived families often delay accessing services out of fear or unfamiliarity, entering systems only when needs have escalated. That delay never appears in the data. The Marmot Review 10 Years On confirms the pattern. Structural factors shape not just access to care, but the quality of experience within it. What communities live through and what systems record remain two different stories. Mental health provision illustrates the resource consequence most clearly. The Mental Health Foundation has consistently found that stigma and mistrust reduce formal engagement among Black communities. Lower recorded usage gets read as lower need, and funding follows the data, not the reality. Blind spots in measurement don't stay abstract. They become gaps in provision. Technology locks in what data gets wrong Digital health records and integrated platforms are often presented as the fix for fragmented data. But technology isn't neutral, and this is where the categorisation problem stops being incidental and becomes structural. When a digital system is built on the same broad racial categories it was meant to improve on, it doesn't correct the blind spot. It institutionalises it at scale. The NHS Race and Health Observatory has highlighted how algorithmic tools trained on historically skewed data can reproduce and amplify the same disparities embedded in their source material. The challenge isn't digitisation. It's whether what gets digitised reflects diverse realities in the first place. What redesign actually looks like The World Health Organization has called for health equity data that captures variables beyond racial category alone, migration history, language of healthcare access, country of birth, and socioeconomic context. In practice, that means recording ethnicity alongside birthplace and primary language in health records. It means linking administrative datasets with community-level data to surface patterns invisible in either source alone. It means disaggregating by immigration status where relevant, to separate barriers of access from barriers of experience. Canada's Disaggregated Data Action Plan offers a working model, a government-wide commitment to breaking down data by race, gender, disability, and identity intersections to expose what aggregated figures conceal. But data redesign alone isn't sufficient. Communities engage when systems demonstrate cultural competence and accountability. Without trust, even well-designed infrastructure will fail to capture what it most needs to see. Measurement as a design choice What systems choose to measure is not a neutral technical decision. It states whose experience counts as evidence. Until measurement frameworks are intentionally redesigned to capture the full complexity of Black families' lives, inequities will not simply persist. They will be quietly reinforced by the very tools meant to address them. The shift required is not incremental. It is a fundamental redesign, from systems that observe inequality to systems built to understand it. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Omosefe Christina Dr. Omosefe Christina, Medical Doctor, CEO and Founder Dr. Omosefe Christina creates digital learning platforms that turn frontline experience into practical support for international doctors in the UK. She is the CEO of Elite Exams, which supports the medical education of internationally trained doctors aspiring to become independent GPs. She builds digital systems, courses, platforms, and automated learning pathways to support doctors who migrate to the UK. References: Office for National Statistics – Ethnicity Facts and Figures Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Health Equity MBRRACE-UK – Saving Lives, Improving Mothers' Care (2020) Journal of Public Health (Oxford Academic) Marmot Review 10 Years On – Institute of Health Equity Mental Health Foundation – Race and Mental Health World Health Organization – Health Equity NHS Race and Health Observatory Statistics Canada – Disaggregated Data Action Plan

Written by Matijas Slivnik, Naturopath, Therapist, Musician Matijas Slivnik is a naturopath specializing in burnout, hormonal balance, and chronic fatigue. He combines natural medicine, energy healing, and healing sounds to help clients restore body and mind, delivering lasting results with over 12 years of experience. Back pain, joint problems, bloating, fatigue, exhaustion, and the feeling that your body simply cannot keep up the way it used to. These are challenges that an increasing number of people experience today. We often try to address these problems separately: one approach for the spine, another for digestion, and a third for stress. Yet the human body is not made up of isolated, unrelated parts. This is precisely why PraNaturas Naturopathy (PraNaturas Naturopatija) has emphasised a holistic view of the individual in its therapeutic work for many years. Within the PraNaturas naturopathic approach, different complementary therapeutic methods may be incorporated, including manual therapy based on the VITO Natural Healing Method (VITO terapija/Naravno Zdravljenje Vito). The PraNaturas team received intensive training in this manual method more than a decade ago. When pain becomes part of everyday life When you get out of bed in the morning, are you already experiencing pain in your knees, joints or spine during your first few steps? Perhaps you have become so accustomed to discomfort that you barely notice it anymore. One characteristic of long-term musculoskeletal problems is this gradual adaptation to pain. Over time, a person may change the way they move, their posture, the amount of physical load they place on their body, and even their everyday habits. A similar pattern can occur with digestion. After eating, you may experience bloating, heaviness, discomfort, irregular bowel movements, or other digestive issues. When chronic fatigue and poor sleep are added to the picture, it can become easy to find yourself caught in a vicious cycle. The body does not work in separate compartments. For this reason, PraNaturas does not focus solely on an individual symptom during its therapeutic work. Instead, the aim is to understand the broader picture of a person's wellbeing, lifestyle and overall physical and emotional load. This holistic perspective is also characteristic of their naturopathic work, where different areas of knowledge and complementary therapeutic techniques can be combined according to the individual. VITO therapy: A manual approach with a different perspective Among the therapeutic approaches known and used at PraNaturas is the VITO Natural Healing Method (Naravno zdravljenje Vito), a specific form of manual therapy. Matijas Slivnik, naturopath and founder of PraNaturas, received intensive training in the VITO method more than ten years ago and also worked as a therapist using this approach. According to PraNaturas, this manual therapeutic approach involves working with the musculoskeletal system, muscles, fascia, and connective tissue. It also considers the nervous system, acupressure points, and other connections within the body. The purpose of this approach is to support the body's balance and function, with nervous system regulation considered an important part of the process. An important principle of the method is looking for the broader context behind a problem. During a manual therapy session, the practitioner therefore does not necessarily focus only on the area where a person feels pain. Instead, they may also consider broader bodily relationships that could be relevant to the individual's overall wellbeing. This is one reason the approach may interest people dealing with long-term or recurring difficulties and looking for a complementary therapeutic approach. Many people seek therapy after struggling to find an approach that works for them. Some report having been referred from one specialist to another without finding a satisfactory solution. At PraNaturas, however, the team emphasises that there is no magic wand. Every doctor and therapist does what they can within their knowledge, professional scope and the healthcare system in which they work. At the same time, they believe continued learning, investigation, and a deeper understanding of an individual's health challenges can sometimes reveal connections and possible contributing factors that may otherwise be overlooked. From spinal and joint problems to digestive issues: Chronic fatigue and burnout At PraNaturas, practitioners encounter a wide variety of health-related challenges. Among the more common concerns are chronic musculoskeletal pain, spinal and joint problems, digestive difficulties, chronic fatigue, exhaustion and burnout. For some people, pain is the primary concern. For others, the greatest challenge is low energy. A person may, for example, wake up feeling exhausted despite having spent enough hours in bed. During the day, they may struggle to maintain concentration, while in the evening they are too depleted to engage in activities that once felt effortless. Others describe shallow breathing, internal tension or disrupted sleep. Then there are digestive problems, which can be particularly frustrating because they may affect everyday comfort, energy levels and mood. In situations like these, it can be valuable to look beyond a single complaint. A holistic approach also asks a broader question. "What is happening in this person's life as a whole?" This is where a naturopathic assessment can provide a different perspective by considering multiple aspects of an individual's lifestyle, habits and wellbeing rather than viewing every symptom in isolation. A story that connected sport, life experience and manual therapy According to Matijas Slivnik, founder of PraNaturas, Vitomir Ravnikar developed the VITO Natural Healing Method by drawing on his own life and health experiences. His life journey was diverse, ranging from sport and entrepreneurship to exploring different approaches related to health and wellbeing. His personal experience with serious cardiovascular health challenges also had an important influence on the direction of his life and on the development of his method. Slivnik also emphasises how meaningful it was for him to have been part of the VITO Natural Healing team, where he had the opportunity to work as a therapist using this proprietary manual therapy method and to learn directly from its creator, Vitomir Ravnikar. That experience of working and learning within the method became an important foundation for his subsequent professional and therapeutic development at PraNaturas. Thirteen years of therapeutic work are, above all, about people's stories Today, PraNaturas Naturopathy is entering its 13th year of therapeutic work. Over that time, thousands of different stories, life circumstances, and health-related challenges have crossed its path. Every person arrives with a different story. One person may come with back pain that has persisted for years. Another may struggle with recurring digestive problems. Someone else may feel that after years of maintaining a relentless pace of life, they simply have no energy left. That is why it is difficult to speak about one universal therapy or a single path to better wellbeing. “Throughout all these years, I have learned above all that it is important to truly listen to a person. The problem they come to therapy with is often only one part of a much broader story.” – Matijas Slivnik Manual therapy as part of a broader naturopathic approach At PraNaturas, the VITO method is not presented as a standalone miracle solution. Rather, it is regarded as one of several complementary therapeutic approaches that may be incorporated into a broader individual assessment and treatment plan. This is important because different people may benefit from different approaches. One person may primarily need support with musculoskeletal concerns. Another may be dealing with long-term exhaustion. Someone else may need to better understand the relationship between lifestyle, stress, sleep, nutrition and overall wellbeing. PraNaturas therefore builds its work around a combination of traditional and clinical naturopathy, incorporating complementary approaches such as manual techniques, including myofascial therapy and deep tissue massage, breathing techniques, ear acupuncture with seed application (auriculotherapy), therapeutic conversation, frequency-based approaches, nutritional guidance, healthy lifestyle counselling and other complementary methods. The specific approach is adapted to the individual and their needs. This individualised philosophy is at the heart of the PraNaturas naturopathic method. Rather than looking at the body as a collection of separate symptoms, practitioners aim to consider the person as a whole. When the body speaks, it is worth listening Perhaps this is the most important message behind a holistic approach. Pain, fatigue, digestive problems or poor sleep are not necessarily something we should simply learn to endure. At the same time, it is not always necessary to search for one single solution to every problem. Sometimes the first step is simply to stop, take a step back, look at the bigger picture and begin paying closer attention to the signals the body is sending. At PraNaturas, this means an individualised, gradual and non-invasive approach, combined with knowledge gathered through more than a decade of therapeutic practice. Perhaps this is where experience has its greatest value–not in promising one solution for everyone, but in understanding that every person has a unique story. Manual therapy based on the VITO Natural Healing Method can be one part of that story. It is a complementary therapeutic approach that, over the years, has become part of PraNaturas' broader philosophy. At its core, that philosophy is simple. To understand the individual as a whole and to support them in finding their own path toward better wellbeing and health. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Matijas Slivnik Matijas Slivnik, Naturopath, Therapist, Musician Matijas Slivnik is a naturopath specializing in burnout, hormonal balance, and chronic fatigue. With over 12 years of experience, he combines natural medicine, energy healing, and psychotherapeutic modalities to support holistic health. As an experienced musician, he uses music and healing sounds to enhance healing. Matijas is the founder of PraNaturas and helps clients restore energy and balance naturally.

Devin McMenamy runs his priorities in reverse order from most business profiles. Personal comes before professional. Family comes first. Without the personal, the professional stuff isn't worth it. That conviction shapes how he operates as an Account Executive at Team Logic IT and as owner of Demand Wireless LLC, a small business connectivity consultancy based in Branchburg, New Jersey. It also explains how he thinks about setbacks, goal-setting, and the moments when the pressure builds. Growing up in Florham Park McMenamy grew up in Florham Park, New Jersey, where he played travel soccer and hockey. By his senior year, he was assistant captain of his high school hockey team. His mother served as a senior director of the Colonials Hockey organization. His father worked as an attorney at Bressler Amery and Ross. He graduated from Hanover Park High School in 2004, made the honor roll twice, and went on to earn an associate degree in liberal arts from County College of Morris in 2009. In 2011, he completed a Bachelor of Science in marketing from Rutgers Business School. A career built on B2B technology sales McMenamy has spent his career in business-to-business sales for technology companies. He worked at PCs Wireless, Verizon Wireless, and NICE Systems before joining Team Logic IT. Alongside that role, he owns Demand Wireless LLC, a local consultancy that offers small and mid-sized businesses mobile device strategy, carrier plan optimization, device procurement, network setup, troubleshooting, support, and contract negotiation. His approach to both roles is rooted in a simple philosophy: take the long view. What happens in the moment is usually irrelevant long-term. Turning a shipping error into a save That mindset played out in a situation where a customer device order had been shipped to an old legacy address still sitting in the system. McMenamy personally tracked down the order, located the device, and got it where it needed to go. The fix was tactical, but the lesson was bigger. Problems that feel urgent in the moment rarely matter a year later. The way you respond does. How he measures growth McMenamy defines success as growth. Not revenue, not title, not territory. Growth. He tries to be the best in the entire group at something whenever possible, and he asks for more responsibilities to add to his skill toolbox. He stays disciplined in the moment and practices mindfulness. When self-doubt surfaces, he applies that same long-term filter. The noise usually clears. The influence that grounds it all When asked about his biggest influence, McMenamy points to his wife. She is the person who helps him hold the line between what matters and what doesn't. He has volunteered at soup kitchens in Morristown, donated to various charities over the years, and always contributes to friends' GoFundMe campaigns. He follows financial news, sports, politics, and science. He writes songs and watches cinema. But the core remains the same: family first. Without that foundation, the business side loses its meaning. Why personal anchors professional McMenamy's model is straightforward. Put the people you care about ahead of the metrics you chase. Build skills, stay open to feedback, listen well, and measure yourself against the version of you from last quarter, not the person in the next cubicle. That clarity makes it easier to recover when something goes wrong. It also makes it easier to decide what to pursue next. If it doesn't serve the life you're building at home, it probably doesn't belong on the roadmap at work. For McMenamy, that balance isn't a luxury. It's the entire strategy.

Some careers follow a clear plan. Joseph Gradante’s did not. Growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, he first imagined becoming a meteorologist, not working in finance. But being surrounded by New York’s financial world made Wall Street feel like a practical place to begin. Today, Joseph Gradante, Oregon-based entrepreneur and CEO of Allio Capital, works at the intersection of finance, technology, and sales. His path to that role was shaped by several unexpected turns, including a trading career that never happened and a growing realization that sales was one of his strongest skills. Rather than seeing those changes as setbacks, he used them to build a broader understanding of business and eventually help launch a fintech company from the ground up. How did Joseph Gradante get started in finance? Gradante attended The Beekman School on New York City’s Upper East Side before studying at Hunter College. After school, he worked at several financial institutions, including Hennessee Group LLC, Sidoti, and Merrill Lynch. At the time, his long-term plan looked very different from where he eventually ended up. “When I first left school, I was planning to go back to law school, but I wanted to first get some experience being a trader,” he says. His idea was to build a strong financial base first, then return to school without taking on major debt. That opportunity in trading never materialized, but another strength became clear. “I never got the opportunity to trade, but I learned that I was a great salesperson while selling for trading desks,” he says. That discovery became an important turning point because it gave him a skill that could be applied across several areas of finance and business. Why did Joseph Gradante build Allio Capital? As Gradante gained more experience, he became increasingly interested in the way finance was changing. He saw technology becoming more important across the industry and decided that staying on a traditional career path was not the only option. That thinking eventually led to Allio Capital, a wealth management platform built around artificial intelligence and technology. Building the company required him to combine what he had learned from finance, sales, markets, and relationship building. “There isn’t anything harder than building an AI fintech company from the bottom up just out of thin air,” Gradante says. For him, the process became proof that large ideas could become real when they were paired with persistence and the willingness to learn new skills. He continued his professional education along the way, completing the Wharton Fintech Executive Program, participating in the WTIA accelerator, and taking additional sales and coding bootcamps. That pattern fits closely with how he describes his mindset. Gradante considers himself autodidactic and believes people should continue teaching themselves long after formal education ends. “Never stop asking questions,” he says. That simple principle has shaped how he approaches both business and learning. How did sales shape Joseph Gradante’s career? One of the most important lessons in Gradante’s career came from recognizing that the job he originally wanted was not necessarily where his strongest ability was. Sales became that ability. Years spent working around trading desks helped him learn how to explain complex ideas, understand what people care about, and communicate under pressure. Those skills became especially useful later when he moved into entrepreneurship. Gradante says that experience helped him raise $30 million for Allio. Doing that required more than presenting a product. It required explaining a vision clearly enough for other people to understand the opportunity and believe in the direction of the company. He also came to see entrepreneurship as something that depends heavily on collaboration. “Startups are a team sport,” he says, referencing an idea often associated with Reid Hoffman. In Gradante’s view, a founder may have the initial idea, but building a company requires people who can challenge assumptions, solve problems, and bring different strengths to the table. What productivity habits does Joseph Gradante use? Gradante keeps his productivity system straightforward. He maintains separate daily, short-term, and long-term goal lists so he can see how smaller tasks connect to larger objectives. “I keep both a short- and long-term goals list, as well as a daily goal list that I use to track my progress,” he says. That structure helps him avoid confusing activity with progress and gives him a clearer sense of what deserves his attention. He also makes time for meditation, positive affirmations, and yoga. These habits are not separate from his work in his view. They support it by helping him stay focused and avoid burnout. “Putting time into self-care actually makes you happier and therefore much more productive,” he says. For Gradante, productivity is not about filling every hour. It is about staying clear enough to make better decisions with the time available. What has Joseph Gradante learned from failure? Gradante does not define success only by whether a plan works exactly as expected. He believes there is value in the lessons that come from trying, adjusting, and sometimes failing. “Success is defined by the individual’s goals and what they hoped to learn from the experience, even if those set goals don’t manifest,” he says. His own career reflects that idea. He did not become the trader he first expected to be, and his original plan to return to law school changed as new opportunities appeared. Instead, those turns led him toward sales, entrepreneurship, and building a fintech company. Each change gave him a new skill or perspective that became useful later. For Gradante, progress has come from staying curious, adapting when plans change, and continuing to ask questions. His career shows how big ideas are often built through a series of smaller decisions, unexpected lessons, and the willingness to keep moving when the original path changes.

From No. 7 to No. 1 in two years, Victor Ray Natera took over a regional operations role at CLR Builders when the company ranked seventh out of fifteen builders approved for government contracts across Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Two years later, the company held the number one spot. Sales jumped 32% in year one, then climbed to a consistent 42% increase every year after that. The work is technical: architectural plans, sketches, commercial and residential building projects tied to Veterans Affairs contracts. But the turnaround was about people and process. Natera oversees seven supervisors in different areas, manages day-to-day operations, handles profit and loss, and coordinates the bulk of the company's government contracts. Ninety percent of CLR's work comes from those government agreements, building homes and facilities for veterans. That track record earned him Regional Director of Operations of the Year five years running, a recognition that spans three states and every builder competing in that contract space. The path that built the skill set Natera started working in restaurants at sixteen. He moved up to assistant manager with Wendy's, then took a general manager offer at Flying J. Two years later, he became an area director for the restaurant division at Flying J, running multiple locations and learning how to scale operations without losing quality. When he got introduced to CLR Builders, the role was different but the mechanics were familiar: supervising teams, tracking performance, solving problems before they cost time or money. He joined as an area director, then moved to regional director of operations two years later. The scope expanded to include inspections, contractor oversight, and the coordination of large-scale government projects. The early restaurant years taught him how to manage tight margins and high turnover. The construction work added complexity: longer timelines, stricter regulations, and clients who depend on precision. Both required the same discipline: follow up relentlessly, train people to own their part, and make decisions quickly when something goes wrong. What changed when the numbers started moving Natera credits the shift to structure and accountability. He built a system where supervisors knew their metrics, where inspections flagged issues early, and where follow-up happened the same day instead of the same week. Training became a priority, not something squeezed in when schedules allowed. Decision-making sped up because the team knew what they could handle and when to escalate. The government contract work demands consistency. A missed deadline or a failed inspection can pull a company out of contention for future projects. Natera's approach was to make the routine parts predictable so the surprises could be managed without panic. That meant tighter communication loops, more frequent check-ins, and a culture where problems got surfaced instead of buried. As the rankings climbed, so did the workload. More contracts meant more simultaneous projects, more coordination with VA offices, and more pressure to deliver on time. The operational foundation had to hold under that weight, and it did. What keeps the momentum going Natera sees his role as equal parts supervision and problem-solving. He spends time in the field, on inspections, and in meetings with supervisors who run their own crews. The day-to-day work is less about grand strategy and more about catching friction points before they slow the whole machine down. He also values the mission behind the contracts. Building homes and facilities for veterans gives the work a purpose beyond the numbers. Once a month, his team sets up tables and chairs and helps serve food at a breakfast for veterans. It's a small gesture, but it connects the office work to the people the projects are meant to serve. Outside of work, Natera follows the NFL and roots for the Washington Commanders. He plays football with friends when schedules align. The downtime helps, but most of his energy still goes into operations, training, and the push to keep the company at the top of the rankings. The view from the top Holding the number one spot means every other builder in the region is looking for an edge. Natera's focus is on consistency: hitting deadlines, passing inspections, and keeping the team trained and accountable. The company's growth came from discipline, not luck, and keeping that growth means not letting the discipline slip. He's spent enough time in operations to know that success is never locked in. The rankings can shift. A bad quarter can cost contracts. The work is about showing up every day with the same intensity that turned seventh place into first, and keeping that intensity even when the pressure eases. For Natera, the job is the career. He's mastered the role and doesn't see himself doing anything else. The government contracts, the VA work, the team he's built, it all adds up to a system that works. And as long as it works, he's staying put.

From Skopje to the United Nations – that's the arc of Karunamaya Vesna Blazhevska's career. She grew up in Yugoslavia, in what is now North Macedonia. She attended High School Josip Broz Tito in Skopje, then studied economics at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje, part of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University. As a student, she played tennis and did gymnastics. Those activities gave way over time to step aerobics and Pilates, a shift she describes as part of a broader interest in balance and well-being that has stayed with her. That early grounding in economics turned out to matter more than she expected. Since 2008, Vesna has worked as a Communications Assistant with the United Nations Department of Global Communications. The role sits at the intersection of two things she cares about: making complicated ideas easier to understand, and staying close to conversations about how the world's resources and opportunities get shared. Why the goals became personal, not just professional Vesna's list of interests reads like a working map of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: climate action, clean energy, quality education, gender equality, responsible consumption, sustainable cities, life below water, and peace. It would be easy to treat that list as a job description. For Vesna, it functions more like a personal checklist. She has said that setting goals does not need to look like corporate planning. In her view, the real long-term goal is inner peace, and short-term goals are the daily steps that get a person there. Applied to her work, that means the SDGs are not abstractions to communicate on behalf of an institution. They are targets she has already adopted for her own life, which makes translating them for others feel less like messaging and more like sharing something she already believes. That distinction shows up in how she talks about progress versus success. She separates the two directly: success, to her, involves ambition, external validation, and material things. Progress is different. It is soulful aspiration and self-transcendence, measured by the person doing the work rather than by anyone watching. A communications career built around global development goals gives her a daily test of that idea, since the work rarely produces applause but does, in her account, produce the kind of quiet satisfaction she is after. A habit that started in 1991 One of the clearest examples of Vesna turning a big idea into a lasting practice is her diet. She became a vegetarian in 1991 and has kept it up for more than three decades. She does not eat meat or fish, though she still eats cheese, eggs, and yogurt. Three decades is long enough that the choice has stopped being a decision and become simply how she lives. She points to it as an example of responsible consumption applied at the smallest possible scale: not a policy position, just a plate. It lines up with the same SDG themes she engages with professionally, but she arrived at it years before those goals existed in their current form, which suggests the values came first and the framework came later. Competing with no one but yourself Asked how she keeps growing after decades in the same kind of work, Vesna points to a simple rule: compete only with your previous self. She treats challenges as something closer to friends than obstacles, and she tries to hold onto what she calls beginner's humility, the idea that her own capacity has no fixed ceiling. That framing also shapes how she describes handling doubt. Her answer is not a five-step method. It is staying calm and not losing her inner peace, even when the details of a given day get difficult. She applies the same logic to setbacks, treating them as the start of an experience rather than a final verdict on the work. Where spirituality fits in Spirituality runs through nearly all of this. Vesna is drawn to the idea of harmony and unity across faiths, the belief that people with very different backgrounds can still find shared values. She names spirituality as the biggest influence on how she works and thinks, more than any single teacher, employer, or credential. It is a quiet thread rather than a loud one. It shows up in how she frames goals, how she responds to setbacks, and how she has chosen to eat for more than thirty years. None of it depends on titles or recognition. For Vesna, that seems to be the point: the work that counts is the work done consistently, whether or not anyone else is measuring it.

Before Leor Zlotnik left Goldman Sachs to run LZ Interiors full time, she spent years building the design business alongside her finance career – testing it with real projects, real clients, and no safety net – until the evidence, not a leap of faith, made the decision for her. A different kind of career pivot Most people who leave a stable finance job for a creative business talk about it as a leap of faith. Leor Zlotnik talks about it more like a decision that had been building for years, one that finally had enough evidence behind it to act on. Before LZ Interiors existed, Zlotnik worked at Goldman Sachs. The design work started alongside that job, not instead of it. Early projects were built in whatever hours were left after a demanding finance schedule, and as a single mom, that meant the margins of the day were thin. There was no long runway, no outside investment, no built-in client base. There was a firm belief that the work was good enough to stand on its own, tested in real time against a full-time job that left little room for error. Why the business came first, then the exit Zlotnik did not quit finance to try interior design. Design was already working before the exit happened. That order matters. It meant the decision to leave Goldman Sachs was made from evidence, not hope: a growing body of projects, a visual identity that was starting to resonate, and enough client interest to suggest the demand was real. This is a different story than the one usually told about creative founders. There was no single dramatic moment of quitting to chase a dream. Instead, there were years of building two things at once, until one of them was strong enough to carry the weight on its own. Building an eye for design while working in finance Spending years inside institutional finance, before founding LZ Interiors, shaped how Zlotnik approaches design projects now. Finance rewards precision, documentation, and the ability to explain exactly why a decision was made. That habit carried over directly. LZ Interiors is not built around mood boards and vague inspiration. It is built around specific decisions: which material, which finish, which vendor, and why. Homeowners come to LZ Interiors with a vision they found on Instagram or Pinterest. What they often lack is the ability to execute it: the sourcing knowledge, the sequencing, the understanding of what a material actually costs and how it actually performs once it is installed. That gap between an inspiration photo and a finished room is where the firm's work concentrates. Building a business through visual identity Long before LZ Interiors became known through word-of-mouth referrals, its Instagram presence was doing quiet work in the background. Zlotnik treated the platform less as marketing and more as a portfolio, a place to show finished work in enough detail that a prospective client could see the actual decisions behind a room, not just the final photo. That approach built a following inside the high-end design community over time, not through a single viral moment but through consistency. Every project posted was another data point proving the same thing: that the aesthetic was real, repeatable, and grounded in craft rather than trend. What the transition actually required Leaving a Goldman Sachs career to run a design studio full time was not simply a matter of confidence. It required the business to already be functioning as a business: a portfolio, a reputation, and enough demand to replace a finance salary. Zlotnik built that foundation first, then made the change. As a single parent, the calculation could not be purely emotional. It had to work financially and practically before it could work personally. That constraint shaped the discipline behind the eventual transition. There was less room for a slow build once the leap was made, so the leap only happened once the earlier work had already proven itself. Alignment as the real measure Zlotnik does not describe the move from Goldman Sachs to LZ Interiors as a story about escaping one industry for another. It reads more like a story about closing the gap between the work and the person doing it. Finance built the discipline. Design became the outlet for something more personal. The two years spent doing both at once were less a transition than a test, one that had to pass before the rest of the story could happen at all.

Written by Julie Zdravkovski, Spiritual Advisor & Medium Julie Zdravkovski is a spiritual advisor and thought leader redefining how we engage with intuition, transformation, and personal power. Known for her direct, no-bypass approach, she challenges spiritual narratives and guides people back to grounded, embodied truth. There is a particular kind of avoidance that has become so seamlessly integrated into the modern spiritual world that almost no one recognises it as avoidance anymore. If I am being honest, that is what makes it more dangerous than any of the more obvious forms of denial we tend to talk about. It hides within the very practices meant to bring us home to ourselves. It disguises itself as growth, elevation, consciousness, and being on the path. Because it uses the language of the work, it becomes almost impossible to see, even for the person doing it, and often especially for the person doing it. Spiritual bypassing is not what most people think it is. It is not the person who refuses to do the inner work, nor the person who denies they have wounds. It is not the person outside the spiritual world at all. It is almost always someone deeply inside the work, someone dedicated, sincere, articulate, and highly evolved in the language of the path, who has quietly built a way of moving through their life that uses spiritual concepts, practices, and identities to sidestep the exact places where real transformation was being asked of them. This is why it is so difficult to name, because naming it would require the person doing it to look honestly at the possibility that some of what they thought was healing has actually been a very sophisticated form of running away. This article is not written to accuse anyone. It is written for the reader who has already been suspecting, quietly, that something in their spiritual life has not been fully honest with them, and for those who are ready to look at what has been sitting just underneath the practices, the vocabulary, and the version of themselves they have been so committed to becoming. What spiritual bypassing actually is In its simplest terms, spiritual bypassing is when someone uses spiritual language, practices, or beliefs to avoid feeling something they don't want to feel, or to sidestep an aspect of their humanity that hasn't been properly acknowledged. It looks like healing on the surface, but it functions as avoidance beneath the surface. It sounds like wisdom in conversation, but it feels hollow when you look closely at what it is actually doing in the person's life. The reason it is so difficult to detect is that it wears the same face as genuine spiritual work, which means the person doing it can hold entire conversations, teach entire workshops, and post entire pieces of content about the very thing they are quietly not living, without ever recognising that they are the case in point. The truth is that spirituality was never meant to be a way out of the human experience. It was meant to be a way through it. Genuine spiritual work brings you deeper into your body, deeper into your relationships, deeper into the ordinary and messy fabric of your daily life, and deeper into the parts of yourself you would rather not look at. It does not lift you above them. The moment you notice that the work you are doing consistently helps you rise above things rather than move through them is often the moment you have quietly stopped doing the work and started doing something that looks a lot like it, but functions as its opposite. That noticing, when it comes, is usually very quiet. It is the small, private recognition that a practice you have been leaning on for years is not actually changing anything in your life, or that the language you use to describe your growth no longer matches what is actually happening underneath it, or that you have been performing a version of yourself for so long you can no longer remember who you were before the vocabulary arrived. The most common forms it takes The most familiar version of spiritual bypassing is what is often called toxic positivity, which is when someone insists on staying in a high vibrational state at all times, refuses to acknowledge anything that is not aligned with light, love, or the highest good, and quietly weaponises optimism against anyone who is trying to express something honest and difficult. It looks spiritual, but what it actually does is shut down real feeling, both in the person doing it and in the people around them, and it teaches an entire community that grief, anger, disappointment, and pain are somehow less enlightened than gratitude, joy, and manifestation. There is also the version that uses detachment as an excuse not to feel. Detachment, when it is real, is the natural result of fully feeling something and releasing the need to control its outcome. But when it is used as a bypass, detachment becomes the reason never to feel it in the first place, and the person becomes floaty, distant, disconnected from their own life, and unable to meet the people around them in any way that requires presence. Then there is the very common phrase, everything happens for a reason, which can be true in a broad cosmic sense, but is almost always dropped into a conversation to dismiss someone else's grief, rage, or lived experience of loss. Real spiritual work does not skip over what is painful to arrive at meaning. It sits inside the pain for as long as the pain needs to be sat with, and it lets meaning emerge in its own time, or not at all. Forgiveness that skips the anger is another one. Someone is hurt, someone violates a boundary, someone causes real damage, and the spiritual response becomes an immediate leap into forgiving them, releasing them, wishing them well, and moving on, without ever allowing the anger to be fully felt. That is not forgiveness. That is bypass, because real forgiveness only becomes possible on the other side of honestly feeling what was done to you, the anger that came with it, and the grief underneath the anger. Gratitude is often used the same way. It becomes a tool to silence a legitimate need, a legitimate longing, or a legitimate frustration by reframing the situation as something to be grateful for rather than what you are actually feeling. Gratitude in its true form is expansive and honest, and it can hold the reality of what is difficult alongside what is beautiful. Gratitude as a bypass is used to close the door on anything that is not immediately acceptable. The phrase ‘raise your frequency’ has been quietly weaponised against difficult conversations in a similar way, because it implies that if you are struggling, if you are in conflict, if you are needing to address something hard, the answer is to elevate yourself out of it, rather than actually to address it. Meditation, breathwork, ceremony, and ritual, all of which are powerful and legitimate when used well, can become the equivalent of emotional numbing when used to soothe yourself out of the discomfort of your own life rather than to help you integrate what you are moving through. Why it is so hard to see in yourself Spiritual bypassing is almost impossible to detect from the inside because a whole identity gets built around it, and once that identity is in place, honestly questioning it feels like a threat to your entire sense of self. You become the person who is doing the work. You become the person who is evolved, awakened, conscious, elevated, or intuitive. That identity, over time, becomes so wrapped up in your sense of who you are that admitting the work may not be doing what you thought it was, or that some of your practices may be functioning as avoidance rather than integration, feels like losing yourself entirely. The spiritual community itself often rewards the bypass. There is real social currency in appearing evolved, using the correct vocabulary, posting the right kind of content, and being seen as someone who has done a lot of inner work. The people most invested in that identity are often the ones who receive the most affirmation for holding it, which makes honestly questioning it that much more costly. Nobody in your circle is going to gently point out that your gratitude practice looks like avoidance, or that your endless retreats might be functioning as escape, or that your polished spiritual persona might be sitting on top of something quieter and more unresolved. If anything, the environment around you will keep affirming that you are doing beautifully, which is precisely what makes the pattern so difficult to break. A subtle superiority also builds over time, and it is one of the hardest things to name honestly. You start to see yourself as further along than the people around you. You start to feel a quiet distance from those who are still angry, still messy, still struggling with the ordinary human things you believe you have moved beyond. That distance, however unspoken, is one of the clearest signs that a bypass has taken hold, because real spiritual work does not create separation between you and the humanity of others. It deepens your capacity to be present with all of it, including the parts of yourself you thought you had transcended. The smartest, most articulate seekers are often the most hidden inside this pattern, because their intelligence makes it easy to construct sophisticated explanations for why every practice they are doing is genuinely serving them, why every uncomfortable feeling they are not feeling has been legitimately released, and why their spiritual life is genuinely as advanced as they present it to be. The capacity to think and speak fluently about the work becomes the very thing that keeps them from actually doing it, and this is one of the great, quiet ironies of the spiritual path. What the bypass is actually protecting Underneath every bypass is something ordinary, human, and painful, and this is the part almost no one is prepared to name. The bypass is rarely protecting the person from something dramatic. It is protecting them from something quiet and unresolved that they have not yet allowed themselves to feel fully. It is often protecting grief that was never fully felt, a loss that was moved through too quickly because the spiritual framing arrived before the pain had a chance to be honoured. Someone dies, and the person goes immediately into their soul completed its journey, or their soul is with me now, or everything happens for a reason. The honest devastation of losing another person is quietly bypassed in favour of a spiritual explanation that soothes rather than heals. It is often protecting anger that was never allowed to surface. Anger is one of the most spiritually inconvenient emotions in the modern spiritual world, because it does not fit into the aesthetic of high vibrations and elevated consciousness. So many people who have done significant inner work have quietly exiled their own anger entirely, without realising that the anger itself was pointing them toward something that needed to be honoured, corrected, or protected. It is often protecting the fear of being ordinary, needy, or messy. There is a version of the self that most seekers on the spiritual path are terrified of returning to, which is the version that has needs, that gets jealous, that feels petty, that wants things it does not want to admit it wants, that is not always graceful, not always kind, not always evolved. Spirituality can become a very sophisticated way of never having to acknowledge that this version of yourself still exists, still has something to say, and still deserves the same care you extend to the more presentable parts of yourself. Most of all, the bypass is protecting the parts of the self that were exiled long before spirituality entered the picture. The parts of you that were told they were too much, parts that were shamed, that were not welcomed, and were not safe to be. Spirituality, when it is being used as a bypass, becomes a very elegant way to keep those parts exiled, because now you have a language, a framework, and a community that all reinforce the idea that those parts of you should have been transcended by now, which means they must continue to remain hidden, only now under a much more spiritually acceptable disguise. The cost of continuing to bypass The cost of continuing to bypass is not always dramatic, which is part of why it is so easy to keep doing it. The cost shows up quietly, over time, in the parts of your life you may not immediately associate with your spiritual practice. Relationships stay shallow, because you cannot go where the other person needs you to. If your friend, partner, family member, or colleague is in genuine grief, genuine rage, genuine confusion, and you can only meet them with spiritual reframes and elevated language, you are not actually with them. You are performing spirituality at them, and they can feel the difference, even if they cannot name it. Over time, the people closest to you begin to withhold what is most honest in them, because they have learned that you cannot receive it. The relationships flatten into something that looks connected on the surface but is quietly starving underneath. Creativity dries up similarly, because real creativity requires access to the full range of your humanity, including the parts you have been quietly refusing to let surface. When your inner life is curated to include only the elevated and the acceptable, your creative output begins to reflect that same narrow band. It becomes polished, sometimes even beautiful, but rarely alive, because aliveness requires access to everything, including the parts that do not fit the persona. Your spiritual life itself begins to feel performative rather than alive. The practices stop moving anything, the insights stop landing, rituals stop transmitting anything real, and underneath it all, a quiet exhaustion sets in from constantly maintaining the elevated version of yourself, because performance is exhausting, no matter how sincerely it began. Perhaps most importantly, your intuition begins to dull, because intuition depends entirely on your honesty with yourself. When you have stopped being able to name what you are actually feeling, what you actually want, what you actually think, and what you actually know, your intuition has nothing to work with, and it slowly quiets. The very capacity you have been trying to develop through your spiritual practice begins to fade, precisely because the practice has drifted into being a way of not knowing yourself rather than a way of knowing yourself more deeply. What honest spiritual work actually asks of you Honest spiritual work asks for the one thing the bypass has been protecting you from: the willingness to feel the very thing you have been rising above. It asks you to come back down, back into the body, the mess, the ordinary unresolved parts, and back into the ordinary humanity you have been trying to transcend. It asks you to drop the vocabulary when the vocabulary has become armour. There is nothing wrong with spiritual language when it is genuinely describing your experience. Still, when language becomes a way of avoiding the experience, the practice is to speak plainly, in ordinary words, about what is actually happening inside you, without reaching for terminology that keeps things at a comfortable spiritual distance. Real transformation, when it is genuine, is almost always unglamorous, uncomfortable, and quiet. It rarely arrives through a peak experience, a breakthrough moment, or a dramatic release. It arrives through the small, honest choices to feel what you have been avoiding, to say what you have been withholding, and to be with what you have been rising above. Once the bypass begins to loosen, the work itself changes. It becomes slower, less performative, less articulate, and far more real. Your relationships deepen, because you can finally meet the people around you in the fullness of what they are actually experiencing. Your creativity returns, because you have access to the whole of yourself again. Your practices start to move things again, because they are no longer functioning as avoidance. Your intuition, which had been quietly dulling for years, sharpens, because you have stopped lying to yourself about what you are feeling, wanting, and knowing. The work does not disappear. It simply becomes honest, and honesty, in the end, is the only thing spirituality was ever really asking of you. What you already know You already know whether some part of what you have been calling your spiritual work has been quietly functioning as avoidance, and you know it in the moments when a piece of your life is asking to be genuinely felt, and you find yourself reaching for a practice, a phrase, a reframe, or a ritual that soothes the discomfort rather than allowing you actually to meet it. The invitation is not to abandon the work. It is to allow the work to become honest. To let the parts of you that have been quietly exiled under spiritual language come back home, allowing the human to be on a spiritual path, rather than a spiritual person trying to escape the human experience. Being human is the work, and the moment you stop trying to bypass it, everything you have been building finally becomes real. A note from me, and an invitation If something in this piece raised a question you have been carrying, about a practice that is no longer moving anything, a feeling you have been quietly rising above, or a version of yourself you have been performing for longer than you would like to admit, send it to me. Each month, I choose questions from readers and channel a response in this column. You will not be named. You will be heard, and through you, others sitting with the same thing will be heard too. Send your question here. If at some point you want to work with me more directly, you can find ways to do so here, where spiritual advisory sessions, classes, books, and more are available when you are ready, not before. I am Julie. I am a medium. I am genuinely interested in what you already know but have not yet trusted. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Julie Zdravkovski Julie Zdravkovski, Spiritual Advisor & Medium Julie Zdravkovski is an international spiritual advisor, teacher, and thought leader known for challenging the norms of the spiritual and self-development space. With over 30 years of experience, she cuts through surface-level spirituality to deliver grounded, direct insight that prioritizes truth over comfort. Beginning as a child medium, Julie has spent decades refining her intuitive abilities while also building a corporate career in leadership and human behavior. This dual lens has allowed her to bridge spirituality with real-world application in a way that is both practical and transformative, propelling her in building a professional, spiritually-led business, Modern Day Medium.

Written by Dr. Omosefe Christina, Medical Doctor, CEO and Founder Dr. Omosefe Christina is a Medical Doctor, Entrepreneur, and Founder of Elite Exams. She blends frontline clinical practice with medical education and community programmes to help International Medical Graduates (IMG) and African families flourish in their careers and communities in the UK. The National Health Service (NHS) could not open its doors on Monday morning without internationally trained doctors. That is not a metaphor. Internationally qualified clinicians now make up 42% of the UK's licensed medical workforce, and in general practice, half of all first-year trainees in 2024 qualified outside the UK. Yet the dominant public narrative about these clinicians is not one of contribution. It is one of crisis, or competition, and that narrative directly costs the careers of the people it claims to describe. Two framings, one profession diminished In the UK, media coverage of international medical graduates (IMGs) has settled into two recurring frames. The first is the emergency frame, overseas doctors presented as filling gaps a chronically underfunded domestic training pipeline failed to produce, useful, necessary, but reactive. The second, hardening since 2023, is the competition frame, that the growing number of IMGs is blocking UK graduates from securing training posts. Both framings dominated coverage of the GMC's 2024 Workforce Report. Neither paused to ask what was happening to the IMGs themselves. The answer, buried in the same report, is stark. Of the IMGs who passed their Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) Part 2 examination in 2024, only 2.4% secured formal training posts, and nearly 80% were not connected to a designated NHS employer, meaning thousands of qualified, GMC-registered doctors were left without stable employment in the system that recruited them. The emergency frame explains why the NHS needs them. It does not explain why, once here, so many are left without a clear pathway forward. How language becomes policy The connection between media language and career outcomes is not abstract. It runs through a specific chain. The words used in public debate shape how hiring managers and training committees perceive internationally trained clinicians. Those perceptions inform selection decisions. Those decisions determine whose career advances and whose stalls. Terms like "foreign trained," "reliance on overseas doctors," and "filling gaps" appear so routinely in NHS workforce commentary that they've become invisible. But each one positions internationally trained clinicians as contingency rather than profession, as a response to a problem rather than a core part of the workforce. When institutions that control training applications and consultant appointments absorb that framing, it produces measurable results. The GMC's own data shows that in 2024, internationally trained doctors applying for specialty training in England had a 23% success rate, against 69% for UK-trained doctors. Research into differential attainment in UK medical careers confirms the pattern: career outcomes for doctors in the UK are consistently shaped by ethnicity, country of training, and immigration status, not by clinical ability alone. The narrative creates the permission structure. The data shows what that permission produces. What internationally trained clinicians actually experience A mixed-methods study of IMG experiences found that more than 75% of those reporting workplace discrimination in the preceding five years described subtle, interpersonal forms, being overlooked for opportunities, second-guessed on clinical decisions, and held to standards their UK-trained colleagues were not. Institutions and senior staff were the primary sources. These are not random acts of bias. They are the predictable consequence of working inside an institution that has absorbed a public narrative positioning you as secondary. For Nigerian-trained GPs working in England, many of whom completed rigorous training in Nigeria before passing PLAB, International English Language Testing System (IELTS), and further UK licensing requirements, this reality is well known. The credentials are recognised. The contribution is relied upon. The professional standing, too often, is not. What solidarity looks like in a GP surgery Acknowledging this is not about blame. It is about accuracy. The internationally trained clinician working in a GP surgery in Bradford, Birmingham, or Bristol is not a stopgap. She is a GP, with the same registration, patient responsibilities, and professional standards as anyone else on that rota. The question is whether her colleagues, her practice managers, and her training supervisors treat her as one. In practical terms, solidarity looks like this–introducing a colleague by their specialty rather than their country of training. Reading a job application for what a candidate demonstrates, not where they qualified. Noticing when a clinician is consistently talked over in a practice meeting, and recognising it as a pattern worth interrupting. The internationally trained clinicians sustaining NHS general practice, from Nigeria, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Egypt, and across the world, arrived with qualifications, with commitment, and with a reasonable expectation of professional respect. The stories being told about them in public shape what they encounter in private. It's time those stories were more honest and more human. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Omosefe Christina Dr. Omosefe Christina, Medical Doctor, CEO and Founder Dr. Omosefe Christina creates digital learning platforms that turn frontline experience into practical support for international doctors in the UK. She is the CEO of Elite Exams, which supports the medical education of internationally trained doctors aspiring to become independent GPs. She builds digital systems, courses, platforms, and automated learning pathways to support doctors who migrate to the UK. References: GMC – The State of Medical Education and Practice in the UK: Workforce Report 2024 Employment and Access to Training for IMGs in the UK (2022–2024) Differential Attainment in Career Progression for Doctors in the UK – Sushruta Journal Inequitable Treatment Among IMGs: Mixed Methods Study – PMC Discrimination Against IMGs in Residency Selection – BMC Medical Education Reliance on Migrant Healthcare Workers: Critical Discourse Analysis – PMC