Elena Howarth is a Swiss private banker who advises ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families. She is also a brain-health advocate, connecting insights from academia with preventive public health. Through science-based community initiatives, speaking engagements and creative workshops, she explores the neuroscience of creativity and the role of art in brain health, while advancing the concept of brain capital. Elena was named Best Female Private Banker 2025 by Citywire Switzerland. She is the founder of Creative Brain Academy, a Swiss-based initiative that brings the science of the mind into everyday human experience, and a co-creator of the Geneva Longevity Summit 2025, developed within the Science for All concept. In this interview, Elena explores why brain health belongs in wealth planning, what neuroscience reveals about financial decision-making, and how we can build wealth that supports creative, purposeful and balanced lives. Elena Howarth, Wealth Manager & Founder of Creative Brain Academy You have spent decades working with some of the world’s wealthiest families. What led you to connect wealth management with neuroscience and brain health? Private banking gave me the opportunity to work closely with all kinds of brilliant people who had one common trait: substantial wealth. I witnessed them navigating some of their most important financial decisions: generational transfers, the sale of a business, periods of profound uncertainty, volatile markets, complex family situations, and decisions with consequences for both business and philanthropy. I began paying attention to how those decisions were made. Some people demonstrated a quality of attention that I had rarely seen elsewhere. They were able to filter noise almost instinctively. Others had developed habits of reflection that helped them navigate uncertainty. I became interested in the resource beyond the numbers, and the next step was to understand the mechanisms behind it. Another important factor was that the next generation in many of these families thinks about health and prevention differently. They are more deliberate about it, more open in discussing mental health topics, and increasingly expect the people advising them to be able to understand and hold those conversations. I wanted to have the tools to meet that need. I started reading the behavioural finance literature, and one course followed another. Curiosity gradually became expertise through formal education: an MSc in Applied Neuroscience at King’s College London, followed by a CAS in Brain Health at the University of Bern. What did neuroscience help you understand about financial decision-making that finance alone could not explain? First, emotions are not the opposite of clear thinking. They are part of how thinking works. For someone trained to treat feelings as noise to be filtered out of a decision, that is an important reframing. Emotion influences what we notice, how we assess risk and what we consider important. We cannot simply subtract emotion to produce a purer result. We may end up with a poorer one. Second, neuroscience led me towards prevention. Sleep, nutrition, movement and social connection may sound like unusual topics in a private-banking conversation. However, they are among the well-evidenced factors associated with maintaining brain function across a long life. This matters because every financial plan quietly assumes that the decision-maker will remain able to understand information, assess options, express preferences and change their mind as circumstances evolve. We model market, currency and liquidity risks, but we rarely model the possible loss of the decision-maker’s cognitive capacity as a risk in the same way. This is not an abstract concern. The World Health Organization reports nearly 10 million new cases of dementia each year, with 57 million people living with dementia worldwide in 2021. Global estimates suggest that the number could rise to approximately 153 million by 2050. What does your idea of “Attention Under Management” reveal about how investors make decisions during uncertainty? On my blog, Brain, Behaviour, Billions, I connect financial and neuroscience concepts in a playful way to raise awareness of how the mind influences our daily and financial lives. One example is “Attention Under Management”, or AUM, a play on the familiar financial term “Assets Under Management”. It asks not how much money someone has, but how their attention is distributed, particularly during periods of uncertainty. Two clients can start with the same portfolio, the same strategy and the same adviser, yet end up somewhere completely different. During volatility, some clients devote enormous amounts of attention to their investments. They check their portfolios several times a day, read every headline and react to every movement. Others deliberately narrow their focus to a few meaningful signals and remain anchored to their long-term strategy. The market and information may be the same, but their Attention Under Management is completely different. The key issue is not how much attention you dedicate, but how focused and stable it remains under pressure. Attention does not behave like capital. More capital is generally beneficial; by contrast, more unstructured attention can produce noise. That noise can become self-reinforcing: uncertainty makes you check your positions, checking provides brief relief, and that relief encourages you to check again. The loop tightens precisely when the stakes are highest and stress narrows your capacity for sound financial choices. What is traditional wealth management still missing about how people actually make financial decisions? Finance does not ignore human behaviour. Behavioural finance has been questioned and refined over the years, but I remain convinced that biases such as confirmation bias or loss aversion, along with stress and pressure, significantly influence our choices. It would be helpful to see more advisers paying attention to these factors in a systematic way. As life expectancy increases, advisers are more likely to work with clients experiencing cognitive change. People with cognitive decline may be more vulnerable to fraud and exploitation, sometimes by someone close to them. Missing the warning signs can harm the client and expose the institution to reputational risk. Institutions therefore need clear policies that guide advisers while protecting clients in vulnerable circumstances. This is not about taking control away from clients, but about protecting their dignity, autonomy and the wealth they have built over a lifetime. Advisers do not have to diagnose dementia, but they may be expected to notice warning signs, document concerns and adapt how they support the client, bearing in mind that a person may not notice their own decline. In private banking, where relationships with clients and their families often span many years, should we not be paying more attention to this? If brain capital matters economically, what should institutions start doing differently? Brain capital is a framework that treats brain health and brain skills, such as focus, emotional regulation, creativity and adaptability, as assets that serve social and economic goals. In an organisation, it shapes the quality of decisions, innovation and resilience. We deliberately manage financial capital, but rarely brain capital with the same level of intention. The groundwork already exists. In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority asks firms to consider customer vulnerability, including cognitive impairment. Switzerland relies mainly on adult protection law, which offers the lasting power of attorney (mandat pour cause d'inaptitude) and allows banks to alert the adult protection authority. However, the focus is on responding once a difficulty has emerged. Prevention receives far less attention. Banks cannot give medical advice, but they can create the conditions for prevention: brain-health education at client events and family meetings, next-generation programmes, retirement transition support and planning that treats health as part of wealth. Equally important are workplace brain health for employees and support for brain-health initiatives. What I believe is needed is more shared research on how cognitive change affects financial decisions in practice. We need training that covers the foundations of cognition, not only investing. We need accessible educational material produced by qualified professionals, without it becoming financial or medical advice. And we need clinicians, advisers, lawyers and regulators to work together. What are some practical ways people can strengthen their cognitive resilience before problems appear? The Lancet Commission's 2024 report identified 14 potentially modifiable risk factors, including high blood pressure, hearing loss, physical inactivity and social isolation, and concluded that addressing them could theoretically prevent or delay nearly half of dementia cases. This is a population-level estimate, not an individual guarantee, but a strong reason to start early. Beyond those factors, a good first step is sleep. Before trying to fix it, just observe it. Notice what six hours costs you the next day and what seven and a half gives you. Many people have never made that connection explicitly. Second, build in something cognitively, physically or socially engaging that you enjoy. A brain-training app alone is unlikely to be enough. Choose a challenge that ideally involves other people, such as learning a language, playing an instrument or dancing. With colleagues at the University of Bern, we run a public brain-health initiative built around dancing: simple, joyful and social. Third, the step people often skip: decide in advance what you will do under pressure. Write it down or tell someone. Stress impairs the brain's planning functions, so a plan made in calm protects your decisions when it matters. Nothing guarantees we will avoid dementia, but every small step is better than doing nothing and hoping for a good outcome. Why does Creative Brain Academy use music, movement and other creative practices alongside neuroscience education? Creative engagement is demanding in a useful way. It asks for flexibility, novelty and sustained attention, and it is often social, which matters more than many people realise. During my studies, I explored depression and dementia risk reduction and the effects of creative activity, including music, art and movement, on well-being. Prevention advice often fails not because people disagree with it, but because they stop following it. Almost nobody sustains an activity they find joyless. Would you? Creative practice is one of the few approaches that people may continue in the long term because they want to, not simply because a professional told them to. This is also personal for me. I write, paint and play the piano, although none of these activities is professional. I was doing them long before I could explain why they mattered. How has studying the brain changed your own definition of a successful or prosperous life? I still believe that money is one of the most useful tools we have. It can buy time and security, and it can help us care for the people we love or support the projects we believe in. But experiencing and enjoying anything requires a mind that is functioning well. So do decision-making and communication with others, including the ability to tell your family what you actually want. Having wealth and being able to enjoy it are two different accomplishments. Wealth planning has concentrated almost entirely on the former. That is where the concept of the Life Portfolio came from. It treats financial well-being, brain health, emotional resilience and purpose as one system rather than four separate projects. It leads us to ask some less conventional questions. Does my money support the life I actually want? What am I doing this year that my brain will still benefit from in the long term? Does my money have the impact I want it to have? This idea relates to all of us, regardless of how much money we have. I run free financial-literacy masterclasses because I believe that understanding wealth should not be a privilege. Access to that knowledge should be available to everybody. What is one idea you hope readers will reconsider after this conversation? If I could ask only one question, it would be this, "How do you want your wealth to make you feel in ten years?" Not, "What do you want your wealth to be worth in ten years?" But, "What do you want it to feel like?" It may sound like a soft question, but it is a powerful instrument for uncovering deeply held values and priorities. Once someone starts answering it honestly, it quickly stops being a question about money. Everything that follows, such as the strategy, the habits and the succession plan, becomes easier to design and put into practice because it is connected to what that person genuinely wants and values. I am aware of how this sounds coming from a banker. But my experience so far has been encouraging. This approach is not yet standard, and it is not something one person can build alone. It requires researchers, institutions, companies and individuals who are willing to test the ideas in their own lives. Stay connected with Elena through Instagram, LinkedIn, or her website. Read more from Elena Howarth

Written by Uchechukwu Onwughalu, Sports Media Entrepreneur Uchechukwu Onwughalu is a sports media entrepreneur, journalist and founder of Blaqsport, a Pan-African sports media platform connecting audiences with stories, people and opportunities across African sport. With a background in Computer Science and experience in football media, Uchechukwu combines technology, journalism and storytelling to explore the people, businesses and ideas shaping African sport. The greatest difficulty when I set up Blaqsport was getting people to listen to my vision: the importance of sharing new stories about African sport, filling information gaps, and building a more complete picture of the game. I expected that if I communicated these ideas, people would understand and respond immediately. I was mistaken. I quickly understood that while telling stories about African sport is part of the task, the harder part is usually securing the information needed to tell those stories correctly. The more I talked to players, coaches, scouts, and journalists, the more questions I ended up with. At what point did a player start his career? Which academy shaped his development? For which clubs has he played? What is the true record of his playing career? Which details can actually be verified? Eventually, the questions took me beyond the podcast and into something I hadn't originally intended: building a player-data project focused on Nigerian football. This project involves gathering and verifying key player information, including biographical details, career histories, club affiliations, academy backgrounds, match statistics, and performance records. The aim is to create a structured, reliable database that helps journalists, scouts, clubs, and other professionals access accurate, useful information about Nigerian football talent. What happens when the story is present but the information is not? When I set up Blaqsport, my objective was to tell more stories about African sports and increase the visibility of players, coaches, clubs, and competitions. However, over time, I came across a more serious question, "What happens when someone wants to learn more about the person behind the story, but reliable information is hard to find?" Even if a player manages to score goals, move from one academy to another and to a different club, and draw international attention, they may still lack a solid and well-organised record of that career. That presents a research problem for a journalist, an information problem for a scout, a recruitment problem for a club, and a visibility problem for a player. It is an infrastructure problem for the rest of the industry. Stories need infrastructure Media is usually regarded as the result: an article, an interview, a podcast, a video, or a social-media post. Yet good sports stories rely on information, for example, who the player is, where they came from, which clubs they have been associated with, how their career has developed, and what is verifiable. Data should not replace journalism; it should complement it. A journalist can show a player's human side; data can record the player's journey; video can serve as evidence of their performance; and interviews can provide context. Together, they produce something more useful than any single element. Why verification always matters A recent moment in Nigerian football made me think again about why reliable data matters so much in this football data ecosystem. At the Mobolaji Johnson Arena in Lagos on 27 September 2026, Ikorodu City beat Enugu Rangers 2–0. Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State, attended the game and later commented on the small crowd and the broader role sport can play in creating opportunities for young people and supporting employment. He said the stadium's capacity was around 10,000, but fewer than 2,000 people attended. The subsequent discussion focused on the stadium's capacity, and online comments questioned the 10,000 figure, with some suggesting the capacity is actually less than 5,000. This suggests a lack of confidence in the available data, points to a questionable verification process during data collection, and creates widespread misinformation and doubt about which data to trust. The problem isn't always about coming up with a figure; sometimes it's about deciding which figure to trust. A number cannot be verified simply because it appears on several different websites. A player's date of birth may be listed differently across platforms, and club and stadium records can also differ from one source to another. Repetition is not verification. When we collect information at Blaqsport, I increasingly think about three questions, "What was the source of this information? When was it last verified? Could anyone else check it?" We don't want to pretend that every number will be perfect. Instead, we wish to be clear about what we know, where this knowledge comes from, and where uncertainty still exists. The opportunity exceeds the statistics When people hear “football data,” they usually consider goals, assists, possession, and passing percentages. The opportunity is even greater. Picture following a young player's career from his time in the football academy through to domestic competition and on to international football. Picture having reliable information on where players trained, who coached them, the positions they played, and their progress and performance. Picture clubs and scouts identifying talent using the information available in African football, instead of relying mainly on dispersed sources. The way I am carrying out the player-data work at Blaqsport is in this direction. Our aim is not to produce yet another list of statistics, but to investigate how structured, verified information can make African football easier to understand, discover, and connect. For example, last season we worked with a local academy that was struggling to promote its best players to professional clubs. By pulling together verified data on each player's match performances, training history, and club affiliations, we created clear profiles scouts could trust. As a result, two previously overlooked players were invited to trials with top-tier Nigerian clubs and are now playing at a higher level. This experience showed just how much difference reliable information can make, not only for players and clubs but for everyone invested in developing African football. Technology can help, since structured databases, digital forms, cloud storage, and AI-assisted video analysis can organise large quantities of information; however, it does not eliminate the need for human verification. Although AI can process information, it should not treat unverified information as true. Building the ecosystem together Improving sports data in Africa should not be left to a single media organisation. The system works when clubs supply player information, coaches comment on development, and journalists conduct interviews and produce match reports. It can then add real value by tracking all-round player development through scouts' observations, which standard statistics don't capture. The value comes from combining these viewpoints, checking sources, verifying information, and keeping records up to date. That means trust is also needed. Clubs have to know how the information will be used, and platforms have to be clear about what has been verified. Setting up this type of infrastructure also demands personnel on the ground, technology, time, and money; it is advisable to begin with a small, manageable group, set up a verification procedure, draw lessons from it, and then expand. For anyone working in African sport, a first step could be as simple as tracking basic player data, such as appearances, goals, and clubs, locally within your team or academy. Coaches can create a shared spreadsheet, scouts can keep more detailed notes, or clubs can agree on a few key details to document more rigorously. Even small actions, like routinely recording match results and basic player info, help lay the foundation for a stronger information ecosystem. The process does not have to be complicated to make a difference, and every contribution brings us closer to addressing the broader challenges together. What building Blaqsport has taught me about entrepreneurship Blaqsport began by focusing on storytelling. The more I got involved, the more opportunities I saw to link media with data, technology, talent development, and the wider sports economy. This has changed how I think about entrepreneurship: you don't need to know a business's final shape before you start; the problem itself can show you the next opportunity. My experience has taught me one principle: "To understand the problem better, you need to get close to it." My interest in sports data grew because, during my work in sports media, I kept running into information gaps. From stories to infrastructure I began with stories; they led to questions; the questions revealed information gaps; and those gaps showed the need for better systems to collect, verify, and organise sports information. Blaqsport's aim goes beyond telling more stories about African sports and how they interact with the wider sports world, because it also wants to create a situation where those stories are supported by accurate information and linked to the people who can act on them. That is the direction I want Blaqsport to keep exploring. The bigger opportunity African sports have remarkable stories and enormous talent. Sustainable growth requires stronger connections between storytelling, data, and tech. That's where sports media entrepreneurship becomes interesting. The question is no longer only, "What story should I choose to tell?" It is also, "What problem does this story show, and what might we be able to construct from it?" I am still on this journey with Blaqsport. What might we construct together? I want your input if you work in sport in Africa as a player, coach, club official, academy member, scout, journalist, technology professional, or sports-business leader. If you are interested in sharing your perspective, contributing information, or joining a pilot group, you can get in touch by sending an email here or filling out the contact form on our website. Please reach out so we can start a conversation about the challenges you face and work toward solutions together. What information do you believe is missing from African sport, and what could we build together to improve it? No single organisation will build the future of African sport. Collaboration, better information, and collective knowledge will build it. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Uchechukwu Onwughalu Uchechukwu Onwughalu, Sports Media Entrepreneur Uchechukwu Onwughalu is a sports media entrepreneur, journalist and founder of Blaqsport, a Pan-African sports media and storytelling platform. Through Blaqsport, he has developed coverage across football and other sports, connecting African sporting stories with audiences in Africa and internationally. He has covered major African football competitions and built relationships with athletes, coaches, journalists, clubs and sports professionals. His work focuses on African sports storytelling, sports business, talent development, data and the evolving role of technology in sport.

Written by Trish Calhoun, Systemic Completion Coach & Founder of Put It Down Trish Calhoun is a Systemic Completion Coach and founder of Put It Down, a practice that helps high-achieving professionals identify and finish the patterns keeping them stuck. Her work draws on systemic constellation methodology and nearly two decades of enterprise transformation experience. When the same problem survives new processes, reorganizations, technology and capable people, another solution may not be what is missing. Sometimes the better move is to change how you are looking at the system long enough to see what keeps recreating the problem. How many times can you solve the same problem before you have to admit you might be solving the wrong one? I keep seeing this. In companies, in product teams, in careers, honestly, in my own life too. We identify the thing that hurts, fix it, feel better for a minute and then somehow end up back in almost the exact same place. New process. New manager. New tool. New job. Same problem. At some point, that has to mean something. We tend to be pretty good at fixing what is obvious. A project keeps missing dates, so we tighten the planning process. Priorities are unclear, so we create a new prioritization framework. Employees are not adopting a change, so we add more communication and training. We hate our job, so we start looking for another one. None of those are ridiculous responses. Most of them make perfect sense, which is probably why we keep doing them. But if the same issue survives several competent people, reorganizations, process changes, new tools and a whole lot of effort, I am not sure the answer is always that we need to get better at solving it. Maybe we have defined the problem wrong. Or maybe we are looking at it from an angle that makes the real problem almost impossible to see. Why solving the visible problem can make things worse One of the harder lessons I learned in product development came from an organization that kept identifying collaboration as a challenge. Teams needed to collaborate better. Functions needed more alignment. People needed to engage earlier and work across boundaries more effectively. There was truth in that. Large product organizations need collaboration, and highly specialized work falls apart when functions retreat into their own corners. But over time, I started seeing something else. In some areas, we did not have too little collaboration. We had so much poorly bounded collaboration that it was getting in the way of the work. People were pulled into decisions because their function touched the work, because they had useful history, because they might eventually be affected or because leaving someone out felt riskier than bringing them in. The meetings grew, decisions traveled sideways through the organization and the distinction between giving input and owning the decision became increasingly hard to see. I came to think of it as “ruinous collaboration.” Parallel work around career ladders and role expectations helped make the pattern more visible. Once accountabilities were written down, overlaps that had been relatively easy to tolerate became much harder to ignore. Different functions sometimes believed they owned pieces of the same outcome. What had been described as a collaboration problem began to look, at least in some places, like a role and decision rights problem. The answer was not universally “less collaboration.” Some teams needed more. Some needed clearer boundaries. Some agile teams worked perfectly well without a formal matrix defining who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed (RACI) until conflict across roles exposed an ambiguity worth resolving. In those cases, a RACI matrix became useful not as another process artifact everyone was required to maintain, but as a way to settle a very practical question: who owns what here? There was no single answer because there rarely is one in a large organization. Several reorganizations followed without reductions attached to them, and I was there long enough to see some groups become more efficient as accountabilities became clearer. In a few areas, I also advocated with leadership for reducing overlap where I believed the organization had created more complexity than the work itself required. I generally believe smaller groups have an advantage when the work allows for them. As groups grow, coordination becomes work of its own. More relationships have to be managed, more boundaries negotiated and more people involved in decisions that may not require all of them. That does not mean smaller is always better, and it certainly does not give us a magic number. It means scale has a cost that needs to earn its keep. Later, the organization went through a broader reduction, and I was part of its first wave. I appreciate the irony. I had advocated for simplification in parts of the system, and eventually my own role was simplified out of it. I still believe the underlying observation was sound. What I took from the experience was not that collaboration is bad, RACI matrices are good, small teams are always superior or reductions make organizations faster. Any one of those conclusions would be another version of the same mistake. What I took from it was the importance of seeing what is really happening before deciding what kind of solution belongs there. Why seeing the real problem is harder than fixing it I think we underestimate this part. Once a problem has a name, the name starts organizing everything we see around it. Call something a collaboration problem and suddenly meetings, communication, cross-functional behavior and stakeholder engagement become the evidence we collect. Call it a productivity problem and we start measuring output. Call it resistance to change and we start looking at the people who have not adopted the change. The diagnosis creates a frame, and then the frame becomes very good at finding evidence that supports the diagnosis. This is why I am increasingly skeptical of relying on any one way of understanding a system. Organizational charts can tell me something. A RACI matrix can tell me something else. Interviews, process maps, customer data, operating metrics and organizational history all add pieces. None of them gets to be the whole truth. Sometimes the missing piece is visible in what people have learned to work around. The unofficial approval before the official approval. The spreadsheet someone created because two systems never worked together properly. The executive everyone knows has to be consulted even though the role technically owns nothing. The person carrying three responsibilities because they were capable enough to absorb them and nobody ever gave the work back. Organizations get very good at compensating for themselves. Then someone leaves, the company grows, a merger happens, costs get cut or the volume becomes too large for the workaround to survive. Everyone starts asking what broke when the more useful question may be what had been quietly holding the broken thing together. A lot of my work starts there. Not immediately solving, but seeing. What systemic constellations can reveal There is another way I look at systems that is less conventional. My systemic coaching work is informed by the Hellinger lineage of constellation work, adult development perspectives and organizational systemic practices, including training with Michael Spayd through Systems Within. Most of the time, I am not taking a client through a formal constellation. With consent, I may work with the system privately and then test what surfaces through questions, observation and the more traditional evidence available to us. Sometimes a system tells you something before you can explain why you know it. I have had constellation work surface a role that seemed to have a legitimate place in an organization while the person occupying it did not. I have seen merger dynamics show up less as tension between individual leaders and more as tension between two operating systems and the people carrying them. I have seen a leader who deeply wanted to lead an organization appear so far removed from it that the distance itself became something worth exploring. None of those observations becomes fact because it emerged in a constellation. What surfaces gives me another place to look. I want to know whether the hypothesis explains something that has been difficult to explain, what happens when I ask about it, whether the client recognizes something in it and what evidence in the structure, behavior or history supports or contradicts what I sensed. Sometimes nothing comes of it. Other times, one question opens a part of the system nobody had been looking at because there had been no obvious reason to look there. Clients do not always know where the question came from. Some simply think I am unusually intuitive, which is fair. The point is not whether an insight came from an organizational chart, a pattern in the data, twenty years of experience or something I noticed while reading the field. The point is whether it helps us see more of the system than we could see before. When a system has already been through three rounds of solutions without changing much, seeing something different may be considerably more valuable than generating solution number four. How artificial intelligence is exposing problems that were already there Artificial intelligence (AI) belongs in this conversation, although not because every organization is suddenly operating in an AI-first world. AI adoption is highly uneven across industries and functions. In many organizations, AI is still a pilot, an isolated use case or something being used by pockets of individuals rather than operating across the entire business. Where AI is being used heavily, it is removing some constraints very quickly. Research, synthesis, documentation, early product concepts and parts of software development can move faster than they did before. That can be useful for reasons that have little to do with productivity. If the work gets faster and the organization does not, the constraint becomes easier to see. A team can generate six viable concepts instead of two, but someone still has to decide which one matters. Engineering can get to code faster, but someone still has to decide whether it should ship. Thousands of customer comments can be synthesized quickly, but somebody still has to know which customer matters and which problem deserves priority. AI can increase output without clarifying ownership. It can create more options without creating priorities. It can remove effort from one part of a system and make the blockage somewhere else much more visible. It can also help us compensate for bad systems more efficiently. We can automate a report nobody needs, summarize a meeting that should not exist or build around a process that needed redesigning long before anyone added AI to it. So I am less interested in whether AI makes work faster than I am in what becomes visible when it does. Sometimes a new technology solves the problem you gave it. Sometimes it exposes the problem underneath it. Before you solve the problem again, change how you look at it If a problem keeps returning, I would spend less time asking what else you can do to it and more time changing how you are looking at it. Start by looking at the history. What have you already tried? If competent people have changed the process, the technology, the structure or the person and the same pattern keeps rebuilding itself, the recurrence deserves to become part of the diagnosis. Then look for compensation. Who or what is making the current system possible despite the problem? Find the extra spreadsheet, the standing meeting, the unofficial approval, the person everyone calls, the manual reconciliation, the high performer who quietly carries responsibilities that belong in several places. Those workarounds show you where the system people describe and the system people experience have diverged. Look at ownership without assuming the organization has defined it correctly. Who supplies expertise? Who performs the work? Who feels accountable for the outcome? Who believes they own it? Who has authority to decide when those perspectives conflict? Sometimes the answers line up beautifully. Sometimes you have just found the problem. Then change lenses. Look at the structure, the relationships, the history, the incentives and what happens informally. Look at who benefits from the current arrangement and who compensates for it. If you have access to people who can see the system differently than you do, use them. Leave some space for the thing you notice before you can defend it. What do you suspect is happening that you cannot prove yet? Do not build a reorganization around the hunch. Go look for evidence. Ask the strange question. Test the hypothesis. Let it fail if it is wrong. Seeing more does not guarantee an easy answer. Quite often, it makes the answer less comfortable because the real problem is harder than the presenting one. The collaboration problem may require redesigning accountabilities. The productivity problem may require leadership to make choices it has avoided. The problem of resistance to change may require acknowledging that employees have perfectly rational reasons not to trust another transformation. The career problem may not be solved by finding another version of the same job. There is no one magical answer hiding underneath every complicated problem. Large organizations in particular should make us suspicious of anyone selling one. The same symptom can come from entirely different systems, and the same intervention can be brilliant in one part of an organization and destructive in another. That is why I care so much about the seeing. If you have solved the same problem three different ways and it keeps coming back, I would stop before solution number four. Look at what survived the first three. Look at what people are compensating for, where the accountabilities overlap, what everyone assumes to be true and what does not quite fit the story you have been telling yourselves. Then look again from somewhere else. Sometimes you will discover that the original diagnosis was right and you simply need a better solution. Sometimes you will find something nobody had named. Sometimes you will realize you have spent years becoming exceptionally good at solving a problem the system keeps manufacturing. If the problem refuses to stay solved If your organization or career keeps returning to the same problem despite competent attempts to fix it, I work with leaders, professionals and organizations to look at the system from more than one angle, identify what may be keeping the pattern in place and decide what is worth changing. If you want another set of eyes on something that refuses to stay solved, reach out. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Trish Calhoun Trish Calhoun, Systemic Completion Coach & Founder of Put It Down Trish Calhoun is a Systemic Completion Coach and the founder of Put It Down, a practice built on one premise: the pattern made sense once it just never got an ending. Drawing on systemic constellation work and a career spanning the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Fortune 500 R&D strategy, and enterprise transformation, she works with professionals who have done everything right and are still circling the same ground. Her method doesn't work on the individual, it works on what the individual is carrying. She writes about professional patterns, organizational systems, and the gap between self-awareness and actual change.

Written by Miss K, Founder & Host of Uncaged Mind Miss K is the founder and host of Uncaged Mind, a platform for fearless conversations that challenge conventional thinking and question what we are taught to accept. Guided by "Where Curiosity Leads", she is creating a space where no topic is off-limits, no question is too bold, and curiosity refuses to be caged. We are often told to “find ourselves,” as though somewhere underneath the noise there is a finished version of us waiting to be discovered. But what if identity is not only something we uncover? What if it is also something we build? The Becoming Audit is an invitation to stop treating your future self as a mystery and start paying attention to the choices, experiments, failures and repeated actions that are already creating who you are becoming. What is the Becoming Audit? The Becoming Audit started with a question I kept returning to: how much of becoming ourselves actually happens through discovery, and how much happens through participation? We often talk about identity as though there is one true version of us hidden somewhere inside. We say we need to find ourselves, discover our purpose or figure out who we really are. There can be value in that kind of reflection, but I think it tells only half the story. We also learn who we are by living. You learn that you are capable by doing something before you feel capable. You discover what matters to you by experiencing what does not. You develop standards after seeing what happens when you abandon them. You find new interests by entering rooms you never thought belonged to you. Sometimes you discover an entirely different version of yourself simply because you finally gave that person something new to respond to. That is what I mean by becoming. The Becoming Audit is not about inventing a fake, perfect future version of yourself. It is about becoming more intentional about the relationship between who you are today and who your current choices are creating. Instead of endlessly asking, “Who am I?”, it introduces another question, “Who am I becoming?” Then, importantly, “What am I doing to participate in that?” 1. Meet them first: Create your highest self clearly Before you can intentionally become someone, it helps to know who you are actually trying to become. When I talk about your “highest self,” I don’t mean imagining a flawless person who wakes up at 5 a.m., never procrastinates, always feels confident and somehow has every area of life perfectly organised. That kind of ideal can quickly become another impossible standard. Your highest self is better understood through qualities. How does this person respond when something does not go according to plan? What standards do they have? What do they tolerate and what do they no longer tolerate? How do they speak to themselves? How do they handle money, relationships, ambition, rejection, uncertainty and rest? What kind of friend are they? What kind of work do they want to create? What do they do when nobody is watching? The clearer that person becomes, the more useful the idea becomes in real life. This matters because old patterns rarely announce themselves as old patterns. They usually arrive disguised as comfort. “Do it tomorrow.” “Don’t say anything.” “You aren’t ready.” “Stay where you already know how things work.” In those moments, having a clear picture of the person you are becoming gives you another reference point. Instead of only asking what feels easiest today, you can ask what the person you are trying to become would practise here. Create your highest self so clearly that you have someone to become when your old patterns ask you to stay the same. 2. Put it to the test: You cannot think your way into knowing yourself There is only so much you can learn about yourself through introspection. At some point, you have to test the theory. Try something. Fail at it. Become unexpectedly good at something else. Change direction. Enter a room where you feel completely inexperienced. Have a conversation you normally would avoid. Take an opportunity before you have managed to convince yourself that you are ready. We sometimes wait for certainty before acting because we assume we should know exactly who we are before making decisions. But many parts of identity become visible only after action. You may think you dislike leadership until someone gives you responsibility for something you genuinely care about. You may think you are not creative because you have only experienced creativity in forms that do not interest you. You may believe you are shy until you enter an environment where you finally feel like you belong. Even failure gives you information that thinking alone cannot provide. This is something I have learned through my own journey as well. Some of the things that have taught me the most about myself came from saying yes before I had a complete picture of where that yes would lead. Not everything worked. Not everything needed to. Because the point of trying is not always succeeding. Sometimes the point is finding out. You cannot learn who you are by only doing what you already know. 3. Nothing is wasted: Treat experience as evidence One of the easiest ways to become afraid of experimentation is to believe every decision has to work. If success is the only outcome we consider valuable, every wrong turn starts looking like wasted time. I don’t see it that way. A decision can be wrong for your future and still teach you something useful about it. A relationship can end and clarify what you need from the next one. A career path can disappoint you and reveal the kind of work that actually energises you. A project can fail and show you a skill you need to develop. Even achieving something you thought you wanted can teach you that wanting it and enjoying the reality of it are two different things. Experience leaves evidence. Every win, mistake and wrong turn gives you information about what fits you, what does not, what matters more than you realised and what deserves another attempt. The important part is actually collecting that evidence. Without reflection, we can repeat the same experience without learning very much from it. We call ourselves unlucky, blame ourselves entirely or rush immediately into the next thing without asking what the previous experience revealed. A Becoming Audit changes the question from “Did this work?” to “What did this teach me?” Sometimes the answer will be that you need to try again differently. Sometimes it will be that you need more practice. Sometimes the lesson will simply be that this path is not yours. Knowing what is not for you is still knowledge. 4. Comfort can’t choose for you: Familiar does not always mean right Comfort is not the enemy. We need familiarity, stability and rest. A life lived in constant discomfort would not automatically be a meaningful one. The problem begins when comfort becomes the person making all of our decisions. Human beings naturally gravitate towards what we know. Even an unsatisfying situation can feel strangely safe when it is predictable. A familiar identity can be difficult to leave because we already understand the rules of being that person. Growth often interrupts that familiarity. Maybe an opportunity appears that requires you to become more visible. Maybe a relationship requires stronger boundaries. Maybe you realise that the career you have spent years preparing for no longer excites you. Maybe your ambitions become larger than the environment around you understands. The familiar option will often ask less of you. That does not automatically make the difficult option correct. We should not romanticise discomfort or make reckless decisions simply to prove that we are growing. But once something genuinely shows you who you could become, fear should not be the only voice allowed to vote. There is a difference between choosing something because it is right for you and choosing it because you already know how to survive there. Part of becoming is learning to recognise that difference. 5. Leave evidence: Make one choice your future self would make A future identity becomes useful only when it enters the present. It is easy to imagine a more disciplined, confident, courageous or self-respecting version of ourselves. It is much harder to make the small choices that would give that person somewhere to begin. This is where becoming becomes practical. If the person you want to become has stronger boundaries, there needs to be a moment when you actually say no. If they take their work seriously, there needs to be a day when you work even though nobody is checking. If they trust themselves, there needs to be a decision you stop outsourcing to everyone else’s opinion. If they take care of their health, manage money differently, communicate more honestly or protect their time, eventually one of those ideas has to become behaviour. The action does not need to be dramatic. In fact, dramatic decisions can sometimes distract us from the ordinary repetition that changes us much more. Think of each aligned choice as evidence. Every time you behave in accordance with the person you say you want to become, you leave yourself a small piece of proof: this is something I can do. This is a standard I can keep. This is how I respond now. One action will not create an identity. Repeated actions begin to. That is why I think one of the most useful questions in a Becoming Audit is incredibly simple: what is one choice I can make today that the person I am becoming would make? Then make it. 6. Becoming is participation This is the idea underneath everything else. You do not simply discover who you are becoming. You participate in creating them. Of course, we do not control everything that shapes us. Our childhood, circumstances, culture, relationships, opportunities, losses and environments all influence who we become. Some people have significantly more freedom and resources to change their circumstances than others. Any serious conversation about personal growth has to acknowledge that. But within the areas where we do have agency, participation matters. We participate through what we practise. Through what we tolerate. Through the environments we repeatedly enter. Through what we walk away from. Through what we attempt after failure. Through the standards we keep when they become inconvenient. Through the stories about ourselves that we continue repeating and the ones we finally decide have expired. This is why I have never been completely satisfied with the instruction to “find yourself.” Finding sounds passive, almost as though the finished person already exists somewhere and our only responsibility is to locate them. Becoming is more alive than that. You will discover parts of yourself, certainly. But you will also create parts of yourself through experiences you have not had yet. The person you become five years from now may have interests you cannot currently imagine, confidence you have not earned yet, opinions you have not encountered enough evidence to form and abilities you have never been placed in a situation to test. You cannot completely know that person yet. You can participate in meeting them. How to do your own Becoming Audit You don’t need an elaborate journal, a perfect morning routine or hours of free time to do a Becoming Audit. You need enough honesty to look at the direction of your life rather than only the destination you hope to reach. Start by describing the person you are becoming as clearly as you can. Focus less on what they own or have achieved and more on how they live. Think about their standards, habits, relationships, mindset, boundaries and the way they respond when life becomes difficult. Then compare that picture with the way you are currently living, without turning the difference into a reason to attack yourself. Look at what you have tried recently and what those experiences taught you. Pay attention to the things that worked, but spend equal time with the things that did not. Ask what each experience revealed about what fits you, what drains you and what you might approach differently next time. Then look for familiarity. Where are you repeatedly choosing what is known simply because it asks less of you? Again, this does not mean every comfortable part of your life needs disrupting. The question is whether comfort is protecting something valuable or preventing something necessary. Finally, choose one piece of evidence to leave today. Not ten resolutions for the next six months. One decision. One conversation. One boundary. One attempt. One hour of work. One application. One honest no or courageous yes that is consistent with the person you say you want to become. Then repeat the audit later. Because the answers should change as you do. Stop waiting to find yourself There is something comforting about the idea that one day we will finally “figure ourselves out.” We will know exactly who we are, what we want and where we are going, and all the uncertainty will disappear. I am not sure that day exists. We are constantly encountering new experiences, new people, new information and new versions of ourselves. The person who answers these questions today may answer them differently several years from now. That does not mean you failed to find yourself the first time. It means you kept living. Maybe the goal is not to arrive at one final version of yourself. Maybe it is to become increasingly conscious of the role you play in creating the next one. Meet them first. Put yourself to the test. Let nothing be wasted. Do not let comfort make every decision. Leave evidence through what you repeatedly do. Remember that becoming is participation. Stop waiting to find yourself. Start creating yourself. Continue the Becoming Audit The Becoming Audit is a conversation I plan to keep returning to because becoming does not happen once. As our lives change, the questions worth asking change with them. It also reflects the larger curiosity behind my work and Uncaged Mind. I explore a wide range of ideas, people, experiences and questions, particularly the things we often live with, believe or accept without stopping long enough to examine them. The subjects may change, but the curiosity remains. If you take one thing from this Becoming Audit, let it be this: do not wait until you feel like the person you want to become before you start living like them. Give that person some evidence to work with. Then see who you become. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Miss K Miss K, Founder & Host of Uncaged Mind Miss K is the founder and host of Uncaged Mind, a platform built to challenge conventional thinking through fearless, curiosity-led conversations. When questioning is often replaced by simply accepting, she is promoting critical thinking and bringing voices from vastly different fields into conversations that dare to go deeper. Beyond the microphone, Miss K stands for something deeply personal, encouraging women to own their voices and question the narratives handed to them. Through Uncaged Mind, she is building a space where curiosity is power, bold thinking is celebrated, and no meaningful question is off-limits.

Written by Dr. Randall J. Dunn, Metaphysician, Teacher, and Author Dr. Dunn is a profound metaphysician, speaker, teacher, and author. He is a former law school trial practice professor and former adjunct professor. He has an educational background with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Metaphysics, a background in Nuclear Medicine Technology (nuclear physics & radiation biology), Cybersecurity, and a Juris Doctor in Law. There are people who have spent their entire lives feeling like they arrived on Earth carrying a question they couldn’t quite put into words. They may love this world and still feel strangely foreign to it. They may look at the night sky and experience something deeper than wonder, a peculiar sense of recognition. Certain stars seem to pull at them. Ancient civilizations feel strangely familiar. Particular symbols, cultures, languages, or places awaken emotions they cannot easily explain. Sometimes the feeling is even more unsettling: “I don’t know where I belong, but I know this isn’t the whole story.” Perhaps you’ve felt it yourself. You walk into a room and immediately sense that you’ve been there before. You encounter the story of an ancient civilization and feel an inexplicable connection. You become fascinated with Sirius, the Pleiades, Orion, Arcturus, or Lyra without knowing exactly why. You experience dreams of places you’ve never visited or develop a persistent feeling that your purpose extends beyond the ordinary boundaries of your earthly life. Coincidence? Psychology? Symbolism? Spiritual awakening? Or something we don’t yet have the language to describe? This is where the mystery of cosmic lineage begins. The modern concept of a starseed proposes that some souls may have connections to other worlds, star systems, or dimensions of consciousness. For some, it is a literal spiritual belief. For others, it is an archetype, a language for describing an extraordinary sense of identity, purpose, and connection to the cosmos. There is no definitive scientific consensus establishing that human souls originate from other star systems. But there is something science cannot take away from the question: the experience of wondering. Humanity has been looking upward for thousands of years. Before telescopes, satellites, and space probes, ancient civilizations studied the heavens with remarkable attention. They tracked the movements of celestial bodies, aligned sacred structures with astronomical events, and incorporated the stars into their mythology, calendars, agriculture, religion, and understanding of existence. We have always searched the sky for clues about ourselves. Perhaps the modern fascination with starseeds is another chapter in that ancient human impulse. But there is a deeper question beneath “Which star system am I connected to?” What if the real purpose of cosmic lineage isn’t to discover where you came from, but to understand why you are here? That question changes everything. Because the starseed journey, approached with curiosity and discernment, is not ultimately about escaping Earth. It is about awakening to your relationship with the universe, and discovering what that relationship might be asking you to embody here, now, in this lifetime. Perhaps the greatest cosmic mystery isn’t somewhere millions of light-years away. Perhaps it is a mystery to you. The journey beyond the stars begins within Before we can explore where a soul may have originated, we must first explore something more fundamental: What is a soul? And what do we mean when we speak of lineage? Cosmic lineage is not simply a celestial family tree. Within metaphysical traditions, it represents a deeper idea: that consciousness may carry an identity, energetic imprint, or connection that extends beyond our earthly ancestry and the boundaries of a single lifetime. This opens an entirely different way of looking at ourselves. Your earthly lineage tells the story of the people whose lives eventually led to yours. Your genetic ancestry tells you something about where your physical body came from. But your cosmic lineage, as understood through the starseed framework, asks an entirely different question: Where does your sense of consciousness, purpose, and spiritual identity come from? That question cannot be answered simply by looking at a family tree. It requires looking inward. It requires examining the patterns that have followed you throughout your life, the mysteries that repeatedly call your attention, and the experiences that seem to awaken something deeper than ordinary curiosity. Perhaps the stars are not calling you to discover an address in the universe. Perhaps they are calling you to discover a dimension of yourself you have not yet fully remembered. The call of the stars: Why some people feel different One of the most common experiences described by people who identify with the starseed concept is a feeling of not quite belonging. They may function normally within society while simultaneously feeling that something about ordinary life is incomplete. They may ask questions other people don’t seem interested in asking. Why are we here? What is consciousness? Is humanity evolving? Why are ancient civilizations so fascinating? Could intelligent life exist elsewhere? Is Earth the only place where consciousness exists? These questions can sometimes create a sense of isolation. But they can also become catalysts for awakening. A person may discover spirituality, meditation, ancient civilizations, astronomy, metaphysics, or consciousness studies and suddenly feel as though they have encountered something they were searching for without realizing it. This experience is sometimes described as remembering rather than learning. You encounter an idea, and something inside you responds: “I already knew this.” However, that sensation should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of extraterrestrial ancestry. Human beings are exceptionally good at creating associations and finding meaning in experiences. Yet the experience itself is worth examining. Instead of immediately asking, “Am I a starseed?”, ask: “What is this fascination revealing about me?” Perhaps it reveals a longing for exploration. Perhaps it reflects a spiritual worldview. Perhaps it represents a desire to understand humanity’s future. Or perhaps, within your own spiritual framework, it feels like something deeper is awakening. The purpose of exploration is not to force an answer. It is to become conscious enough to recognize what resonates, and discerning enough to question what does not. Cosmic lineage: Beyond the idea of being “from somewhere else” The concept of cosmic lineage takes the starseed idea one step further. It asks whether our spiritual identity might extend beyond our earthly biography. Your earthly lineage can be traced through parents, grandparents, ancestors, cultures, and civilizations. But what about your cosmic lineage? In metaphysical traditions, different star systems have been associated with particular archetypal qualities. Sirius is often associated with wisdom, spiritual awakening, initiation, and ancient knowledge. Pleiades is frequently associated within starseed traditions with compassion, healing, creativity, and heart-centered consciousness. Arcturus is often connected with advanced consciousness, healing, technology, and multidimensional awareness. Orion is sometimes associated with knowledge, polarity, intellectual development, and the exploration of power and consciousness. Lyra is frequently described within modern starseed traditions as an ancient ancestral point connected with creativity, exploration, and the origins of several later starseed lineages. These associations belong to spiritual and metaphysical systems rather than established astronomy or astrophysics. Yet they can function as powerful archetypal maps. Perhaps that is one of the most useful ways to approach cosmic lineage. Rather than asking only: “Which star system am I from?” ask: “Which cosmic archetype reflects the qualities I am being called to develop?” That question transforms cosmic lineage from a label into a journey. Sirius can become an archetype of wisdom. The Pleiades can represent compassion. Arcturus can represent higher intelligence. Orion can represent the integration of polarity. Lyra can represent exploration and creative origins. In this sense, cosmic lineage becomes less about proving where a soul physically came from and more about understanding the qualities of consciousness that an individual feels called to embody. Sirius and the ancient memory of the stars Among the many celestial bodies associated with modern spiritual traditions, Sirius occupies a particularly fascinating position. Sirius is the brightest star in Earth’s night sky and has been observed and revered by civilizations for thousands of years. In ancient Kemet, Sirius was associated with Sopdet, the star goddess whose heliacal rising was connected with the annual Nile inundation and the agricultural cycle. This celestial event held enormous importance because the Nile’s flooding brought fertile soil and supported the continuation of Kemetic civilization. The appearance of Sirius, therefore, was not merely an astronomical observation. It was connected with renewal, timing, fertility, and the continuation of life. Modern starseed spirituality has developed a different interpretation, associating Sirius with spiritual lineage and cosmic consciousness. These modern interpretations should not be confused with ancient Kemetic beliefs themselves. But the symbolic connection is fascinating. Human beings have repeatedly looked toward the same star and attached profound meaning to its appearance. That raises an intriguing question: Could the stars function as mirrors for consciousness? Perhaps we project meaning onto the heavens. Perhaps the heavens inspire something already dormant within us. Or perhaps, from a spiritual perspective, celestial symbolism serves as a language through which consciousness recognizes itself. The important thing is not to confuse symbolism with scientific evidence. It is to recognize the extraordinary relationship humanity has always maintained with the cosmos. We are creatures who look upward. When we look upward, we inevitably begin looking inward. Awakening the starseed within If someone feels drawn toward the concept of cosmic lineage, how should they begin exploring it? Not by trying to convince themselves that they are extraterrestrial. Begin with self-observation. Notice what repeatedly calls your attention. Which stars or constellations fascinate you? Which ancient civilizations draw you in? What kinds of spiritual teachings repeatedly appear in your life? What dreams return? What themes seem to follow you? What qualities do you feel compelled to develop? And perhaps most importantly: What does your intuition tell you about your purpose? Create a cosmic lineage journal. Write down recurring dreams, synchronicities, symbols, intuitive impressions, and subjects that generate an unusually powerful emotional response. Then step back and look for patterns. Don’t immediately interpret every coincidence as a cosmic message. Discernment is essential. A meaningful spiritual practice should make you more grounded, not less. More compassionate. More responsible. More self-aware. More capable of contributing something meaningful to the world. If an interpretation makes you feel superior to other people, disconnected from reality, or exempt from ordinary human responsibilities, it deserves serious questioning. A genuine spiritual awakening should expand consciousness, not inflate the ego. This may be one of the most important principles in exploring starseed consciousness: The purpose isn’t to prove that you are special. The purpose is to discover how you can serve. The cosmic question Perhaps humanity is entering a period in which our relationship with consciousness is changing. We are beginning to ask questions that previous generations could barely articulate. Could consciousness exist independently of the brain? Could intelligent life exist elsewhere? Are we alone? What is the nature of reality? What happens to consciousness after death? And what does it mean to be human in an expanding universe? We don’t have complete answers. But we have the ability to ask better questions. That may be the beginning of awakening. Cosmic lineage, therefore, doesn’t have to mean abandoning Earth in search of another home. It can mean discovering a deeper relationship with the universe while becoming more fully present on Earth. Perhaps your fascination with the stars is not telling you to escape this world. Perhaps it is reminding you to participate more consciously in it. Perhaps the starseed journey isn’t about proving that you came from Sirius, the Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, Lyra, or another celestial realm. Perhaps it is about discovering what those cosmic symbols awaken within you. Wisdom. Compassion. Courage. Creativity. Service. Awareness. Evolution. These qualities don’t require extraterrestrial proof to be transformative. They require embodiment. You are made of stardust, and perhaps more There is a beautiful irony at the heart of the cosmic lineage question. Science already tells us that the elements composing our physical bodies were forged through cosmic processes and stellar evolution. We are, quite literally, connected to the universe. The spiritual question goes further: Could our consciousness also possess a cosmic dimension? Science has not definitively established that human souls originate from other star systems. But humanity has never stopped searching for its cosmic origins. Perhaps the starseed concept is one expression of that ancient search. Perhaps it is a literal spiritual reality. Perhaps it is an archetypal language. Perhaps it is a psychological framework through which people explore identity and purpose. Perhaps the truth is more complex than any single explanation. We do not have to pretend certainty where certainty does not exist. But we can remain curious. We can explore. We can question. We can meditate. We can study ancient wisdom. We can examine our experiences. We can keep our feet firmly planted on Earth while allowing our consciousness to reach toward the stars. Maybe the deepest meaning of cosmic lineage isn’t discovering where you came from. Maybe it is discovering what you came here to become. The stars may be millions or billions of miles away. Yet every night, they remind us of something profound: We are part of something vastly larger than ourselves. Perhaps the awakening begins when we stop looking at the cosmos merely as something above us, and begin recognizing it as something within the story of who we are. The journey begins with a question If you’ve ever felt that there is something more to your existence… If you’ve ever looked toward the stars and wondered whether you belong to something greater… If ancient civilizations, cosmic mysteries, consciousness, or the possibility of life beyond Earth have always captured your imagination… Perhaps you are standing at the beginning of an important inquiry. Don’t rush to label yourself. Explore. Don’t surrender your discernment. Question. Don’t allow the mystery to make you feel superior. Let it make you more humble. Don’t ask only: “Where did my soul come from?” Ask the question that may ultimately matter more: “Why am I here now?” Because whether your connection to the stars is literal, symbolic, spiritual, psychological, or some combination we have not yet learned to understand, the journey can still lead somewhere extraordinary. Back to yourself. Back to purpose. Back to consciousness. Perhaps, ultimately, back to the stars. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Randall J. Dunn Dr. Randall J. Dunn, Metaphysician, Teacher, and Author Dr. Dunn is a profound metaphysician, speaker, teacher, and author. He is a former law school trial practice professor and former adjunct professor. He has an educational background with a PhD in Metaphysics, a background in Nuclear Medicine Technology (nuclear physics & radiation biology), Cybersecurity, and a Juris Doctor in Law. He has authored over 15 books ranging from topics such as cybersecurity, past life regression, consciousness, and extraterrestrial contact. References: NASA Astrobiology – “About Astrobiology: Life, Here and Beyond.” A useful scientific foundation for the article’s discussion of humanity’s search for life beyond Earth. NASA explains that astrobiology investigates the origin, evolution, and distribution of life throughout the universe, while also noting that no life beyond Earth has yet been confirmed. NASA Astrobiology – About Astrobiology. Sarah L. Symons – “Sopdet/Sothis.” This scholarly reference is particularly valuable for your discussion of Sirius and ancient Kemet. It explains that Sopdet was the Egyptian name for Sirius and that observations of the star were important to ancient Egyptian timekeeping and calendrical practices. Sopdet/Sothis – Wiley Online Library. “The Pleiades as Openings, the Milky Way as the Path of Birds…” – Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia. This academic article explores cultural interpretations of the Pleiades and other celestial phenomena across Northern Eurasia and beyond, demonstrating that humanity’s relationship with particular star groups extends deeply into mythology and cultural tradition. The Pleiades as Openings – ScienceDirect. NASA – “Finding Life Beyond Earth: What Comes Next?” This is an excellent contemporary reading for the article because it explores the accelerating scientific search for life beyond Earth and the profound implications discovering extraterrestrial life could have for humanity’s understanding of itself. NASA Science – Finding Life Beyond Earth. Beth Daviess – “A Wolf in New Age Clothing: Starseed Beliefs, Conspirituality, and a Soft Pathway to Radicalization.” This 2024 research publication from the Middlebury Institute provides a contemporary examination of starseed beliefs as a New Age spiritual phenomenon. I would include it because it gives readers an opportunity to examine the modern starseed movement from an academic and sociological perspective rather than only through spiritual literature. Middlebury Institute – Starseed Beliefs Research. Author’s recommended reading: Sirius Rising – Dr. Randall J. Dunn: An exploration of Sirius, cosmic consciousness, ancient wisdom, and humanity’s potential connection to a larger cosmic story. Sirius Risen – Dr. Randall J. Dunn: A deeper exploration of awakening, cosmic lineage, spiritual consciousness, and the implications of recognizing humanity’s place within a larger universal reality. Sirius Reconnection – Dr. Randall J. Dunn: An exploration of reconnecting with deeper consciousness, cosmic identity, and the spiritual dimensions of humanity’s relationship with the stars.

Written by Taiye Aluko, Relationship Coach Taiye Aluko helps individuals and couples find purpose in life and happiness in marriage. An excellent encourager, she is passionate about seeing people unlock their personal power and attain the best version of themselves. Some people seem to know instinctively what to do when they walk into a room full of strangers. They introduce themselves easily, join conversations already in progress, move from one person to another, exchange contact details, make introductions, and somehow leave the room having created possibilities that did not exist when they entered. I have always been fascinated by people who can do this because, for some of us, it is not that easy. I was at a women’s event recently when I became aware of this struggle again. It was one of those rooms filled with accomplished, interesting women, the kind of room where you know there are people you could learn from, connect with, collaborate with or enjoy getting to know. Yet I noticed something familiar happening in me. I began to pull back. I did not suddenly become incapable of conversation. I was still myself. But I became more of an observer than a participant. I noticed people I could introduce myself to, but I hesitated. I wondered whether I should go over, what I would say, whether I would be interrupting or whether the moment was right. Sometimes, while all of that was going on in my head, the moment passed. Later that evening, another woman said something that caught my attention. She admitted she also struggled to connect. Networking was difficult for her, but what she found particularly hard was asking people for things. I understood immediately. It made me wonder how many of us experience this and rarely say it out loud. When confidence does not always follow you into the room Part of what makes this difficult to explain is that you may not think of yourself as shy. You may lead teams, speak publicly, run a business or walk into a meeting and confidently present your ideas. You may be perfectly comfortable having a meaningful conversation. People may even describe you as confident. Then you enter a particular social environment, and something changes. Everyone seems already connected. Conversations are happening around you. People appear to know exactly who to approach and how to enter a conversation. Suddenly, the confidence that feels quite natural elsewhere is harder to find. You know you have every right to be in the room. You know you have something to contribute. But that knowledge doesn't always translate into ease. Walking into an ongoing conversation can feel surprisingly exposing. So can introducing yourself to somebody you do not know, especially when you would actually like the conversation to go somewhere. That is the part people do not always see. Wanting to connect is not the problem I think one misunderstanding about people who find networking difficult is the assumption that we don't really want to connect. Most times we do. You may see someone across the room and think, I would really like to meet her. You may hear someone speak and recognise immediately that you share similar interests. You may see the possibility of a collaboration. You may think, “She seems interesting.” You want to connect. The problem is getting yourself to make the first move. For one person, walking across the room requires almost no thought. For another, a whole conversation is going on internally. Should I go over? What will I say? What if the conversation is awkward? What if she is not interested? What if I appear too eager? What if I am interrupting? What if she thinks I only approached her because I want something? By the time you finish negotiating with yourself, somebody else has already started the conversation you were still rehearsing. From the outside, it looks like such a small thing. Inside, it can feel like a lot. Asking makes it even harder Then there is another layer. It is one thing to have a pleasant conversation. It is another thing to want something from it. You may want to explore a collaboration. You may want someone to make an introduction. You may want to invite them onto your platform, ask for advice or express interest in an opportunity. That can feel much harder. I know people who are generous with their contacts, recommendations and support but find it very difficult to ask for the same in return. They will open doors for other people without hesitation and then struggle to say, “Could you help me?” Why does asking sometimes feel like taking? I keep coming back to that question. Some of us may have become used to being self-sufficient. Some of us do not want to appear needy. Some may dislike feeling indebted to anyone. For others, it may simply be the possibility of rejection. But I also think something is exposing about admitting that another person has access to something you want. The discomfort may begin long before anyone says no. Sometimes making the request is the hardest part. “Just go and introduce yourself” The advice people who struggle with this usually get is straightforward. Go over and speak to them. Introduce yourself. Put yourself out there. Ask. The advice is not wrong. The problem is that the word “just” makes it sound much easier than it feels. Walking across a room may take only a few seconds, but getting yourself to do it can take much longer. Nobody watching you knows that you have been having an internal debate for the last five minutes. Nobody knows that you have already come up with three possible opening lines and rejected all of them. Nobody knows that you nearly walked over twice. They simply see someone standing quietly. I think this is true of many struggles. We often judge the size of a difficulty by how simple the action looks from the outside. Is this really only about introversion? My first instinct was to think of this as an introvert problem. I am not so sure anymore. Temperament clearly plays a part. Some people enjoy meeting many people quickly. They seem energised by a busy room. Others prefer smaller groups, familiar faces and conversations that go beyond the surface. But introversion does not explain why someone can be completely confident in one setting and hold back in another. That makes me curious about the rooms themselves. Which rooms make you more hesitant? Is it when you do not know anyone? When the people in the room seem more successful than you? When everyone else appears already connected? When nobody knows what you have achieved? When you feel that you need something from the people there? That tells us something. Sometimes it may be personality. Sometimes it may be comparison or fear of rejection. It may be discomfort with self-promotion. It may be an old belief that approaching people makes you intrusive. It may simply be that you have spent most of your life letting relationships happen naturally and have never become comfortable creating them deliberately. I also wonder whether some of us resist networking because of what the word itself has come to mean. Networking can sound transactional. Meet somebody because they may be useful. Exchange details because you might need something one day. Work the room. For people who value genuine connection, that can feel uncomfortable. I have had to challenge that thinking in myself. Deliberately introducing yourself to someone does not automatically make the relationship transactional. Every relationship has to begin somewhere. The fact that you chose to initiate it does not make what follows less genuine. Some people are good at relationships once they begin I recognise another kind of person in all of this. Once a relationship exists, they are very good at it. They listen. They remember things. They care. They keep in touch. They enjoy depth. They can become wonderful friends, colleagues and collaborators. Starting the relationship is the difficult part. That matters because many social and professional environments reward the person who starts. They reward the person who introduces herself first, follows up, asks the question, shares the idea, and says, “I would love for us to explore this.” So very capable people can leave important rooms without anyone really getting to know them. Not because they had nothing to offer. They simply did not find a way into the conversation. Then comes the journey home This may be the part some people will recognise most. You leave the event and suddenly become extraordinarily articulate. You remember the person you should have spoken to. The question you could have asked. The introduction you could have made. The collaboration you should have mentioned. I should have gone over. Next time I will. Sometimes next time is different. Sometimes it is not. That can be frustrating because you know the problem is not competence. You know you are capable. You know you can hold your own. You know that if somebody had walked up to you and started the conversation, you probably would have been perfectly fine. It is making that first move that seems to require something different. What are we missing by holding back? I am not ready to turn this into another piece about confidence or give a list of networking techniques. I am more interested in understanding what is actually happening. But I cannot ignore another question: what might this be costing us? How many friendships never begin because both people wait for the other to start? How many collaborations remain ideas because nobody voices them? How many opportunities pass because the person who might have helped never knew we were interested? And how often do we interpret another person’s quietness as disinterest when they may be having exactly the same conversation with themselves? That was what stayed with me after hearing the woman at the event speak so openly about her own struggle. She didn't give me an answer. She made me realise this wasn't only my thing. Something was reassuring about that. Before anyone tells us what to do about a struggle, it can help to hear somebody describe it accurately. For now, I am paying attention I want to notice what happens when I begin to hold back in certain spaces. I want to understand why asking feels ordinary to some people and so exposing to others. I want to know when I am honouring my natural temperament and when I am allowing discomfort to make decisions for me. I also do not believe the answer is that everyone who struggles with this must suddenly learn to work a room. I am not even sure that is what I want for myself. But I do wonder whether there are moments when I need to resist the instinct to hold back and go and say hello. For now, though, I want to acknowledge the reality of the struggle. Some people make connections easily. Others take longer. Some of us are very comfortable once a relationship exists but find it hard to initiate. Some will readily help other people but struggle to ask for help themselves. Some look confident in almost every other area of life and then walk into a particular room and become unexpectedly hesitant. If you recognise yourself in any of this, you may have spent years assuming everybody else finds these things easier than you do. I am beginning to think there are more of us standing quietly in those rooms than we realise. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Taiye Aluko Taiye Aluko, Relationship Coach Taiye Aluko is your guide to personal and professional transformation. With over two decades of counselling experience, she understands that our personal and professional lives are deeply intertwined. Taiye helps individuals navigate these interconnected spheres, empowering them to achieve clarity, fulfillment, and lasting success.

Written by Saaid Radwan, Behavior Analyst & Family Consultant Saaid Radwan is a Behavior Analyst, Neurodiversity and Family Consultant, and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certified trainer with 20+ years of international experience across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Europe, and Central Asia. He specializes in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), communication support, emotional regulation, and family-centered care, advocating inclusive, lifelong development. October is Mental Health Month, and the most overlooked mental health conversation in autism care is happening in the parking lot. I still remember the sound of the engine. A high-end SUV pulled into our center’s parking lot twice a week, every week, on time. The child would step out bright, dysregulated, struggling. Sessions would run. The SUV would leave. The child’s program goals did not change for seven months. When we sat with the parents to review the data, the father said the sentence I have heard in a dozen countries and a hundred consultation rooms: “We’ve been in ABA for months. We’ve tried everything. Nothing works.” I opened the attendance file. Four sessions that month. Five the month before. I turned the screen toward them gently and said what this article exists to say: Your child is not failing ABA. ABA is failing at two sessions a week. The car is real, the change isn’t After years in this field, I can tell you that the pattern behind that SUV is not about money. I have seen families with modest incomes and exhausting lives who never missed a single session, who asked for home programs, who reviewed data on their phones at night. I have seen families arrive in vehicles worth more than the entire treatment plan whose children attended therapy just often enough to keep the sentence “we’re doing everything we can” technically true. Here is a hard truth I have watched unfold, family after family: for some parents, the drop-off is emotionally expensive. Walking a child into an ABA center means walking past a sign that reads, in effect: my child needs help, and I cannot provide it alone. For a certain kind of pride, that admission hurts more than the tuition. So, attendance quietly drops, not to zero, because zero would be indefensible, but to the minimum that protects the ego. The luxury car stays in the picture. The behavior stays in the child. October’s missing conversation: The parent’s mind This is where Mental Health Month matters to this story. We speak openly now about children’s mental health, and we should. But we rarely speak about the parent’s inner world when a diagnosis arrives: the grief, the denial, the fear, the social pressure, the quiet question of “what will people say?” In the families I work with, chronic session-skipping is rarely laziness. It is avoidance, a psychological defense against a pain the parent has not yet found a safe place to process. Seen this way, the empty chair in the therapy room is a mental health symptom. The parent who declares “I’ve tried everything” after four sessions a month is not lying. They are managing an unbearable feeling the only way they know how: by building a story in which quitting is not quitting; it is a conclusion. The armor works. The ego survives. The window narrows for the child. The math nobody argues with Because I am a scientist before I am a columnist, the numbers: A child lives roughly 100 waking hours per week. Behaviors are learned and rehearsed in those hours. If a child receives two hours of structured intervention weekly, we are asking two hours to out-teach ninety-eight. No methodology survives that ratio: not ABA, not speech therapy, not anything. Dosage is not a luxury in behavior science. Dosage is the science. A gym membership visited twice a month does not change a body. Attending therapy twice a week does not change a behavior. Both give you something to talk about at dinner parties. Neither gives you results. The solution: Treat the family, not just the schedule So what actually works? After years of confronting this pattern and learning from the families who broke it, here is the protocol I now follow, and the one I would hand every center and every parent reading this: Make attendance a treatment goal, not an afterthought. From day one, dosage is written into the plan and reviewed like any other data point. Families sign an attendance agreement before the first session, not as punishment, but because consistency is a clinical variable, like medication timing. Address the parent’s acceptance as part of the program. Centers should offer structured parent support counseling, parent training, and peer groups. When a parent misses repeatedly, the correct response is not a warning letter. It is a conversation: “What is making this hard to attend?” The answer is almost never the traffic. Show data early and honestly. Progress in ABA is cumulative, like a savings account. Families who see their own data weekly stop arguing with feelings and start working with facts. Transparency converts skepticism into partnership. Treat the home as the real clinic. Skills built in sessions must live at home, or they don’t live at all. Parent-led practice, coached and reinforced by the analyst, closes the 98-hour gap that no center can close alone. Tell the truth kindly, and early. When I see the pattern now, I say it in the first month, not the seventh: “Your child needs five sessions a week to have a fair chance. If we cannot commit to that together, we are both wasting time and your child is paying the bill.” One last word to parents October asks us to take mental health seriously. So let me end with the sentence I wish someone had said to the family in that SUV: Taking your child to ABA is not an admission of failure. It is one of the bravest things a parent can do. The real failure is the story we tell to avoid the drive: we tried everything, when the calendar quietly says we attended almost nothing. ABA is not a jacket you wear to show you care. It is not a logo on your family story. It is a precision science that works at full dose or barely works at all. Your child’s behavior is waiting for a decision. This October, let that decision be made by love and data, not by ego behind the wheel. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Saaid Radwan Saaid Radwan, Behavior Analyst & Family Consultant Saaid Radwan is a Behavior Analyst, Neurodiversity and Family Consultant, and CPD Certified Trainer with over 20 years of international experience across the UAE, MENA, Europe, and Central Asia. He specializes in ABA, communication support, emotional regulation, and family-centered care across the lifespan. Saaid is passionate about inclusive education, early intervention, and empowering families and professionals through practical, compassionate strategies. His work bridges evidence-based practice with real-world impact.

Written by Kimberly Stokka Merendino, Therapist, Author & Nonprofit Founder Kimberly Stokka Merendino has spent more than two decades helping individuals and families navigate grief, trauma, relationships, caregiving, and life’s unexpected transitions. Her work explores how we can release unnecessary suffering and become more fully present, connected, and alive. Achievement can tell us what we've accomplished. It was never meant to tell us what we're worth. I have always been good at goals. Give me something to work toward, and I will make a plan. Another degree. Another credential. Another project. Another milestone. Another thing to accomplish. For a long time, I believed this was simply ambition, and some of it was. I love learning. I love creating. I love building things that matter to me. I don't want to lose any of that. But I've begun to notice something about achievement: the finish line moves. You reach the thing you were certain would make you feel accomplished, successful, secure, or perhaps finally enough, and almost immediately another finish line appears in the distance. "I'll feel better when." "I'll relax once." "I'll know I've made it when." Then we get there. For a moment, perhaps, we feel it: relief, pride, and satisfaction. Then: What's next? I have begun to wonder whether the problem isn't that we haven't reached the finish line. Maybe the problem is that we keep moving it. Why achievement never feels like enough I know this pattern because I have lived it. For years, I was very good at giving myself another finish line: finish the degree, earn the credential, build the practice, complete the next project, and reach the next professional milestone. I remember believing, more than once, that when I finished whatever I was working toward, I would finally feel settled. I did feel something when I got there. I was proud, sometimes relieved, and often grateful. But settled? Not for very long. Before I knew it, I had found another thing to work toward. It took me a long time to recognize that I wasn't only pursuing things I cared about. Sometimes I was quietly asking achievement to tell me something about myself. You did enough. You accomplished enough. You are enough. Achievement was very good at giving me evidence that I had accomplished something, but it was much less capable of telling me who I was. When achievement becomes a measure of self-worth There is a difference between pursuing something because it matters to us and pursuing it because we believe reaching it will finally prove that we matter. Achievement gives us something seductive: measurability. Enoughness doesn't have a metric. A degree does, a promotion does, a number on the scale does, an income does, a follower count does, and a finished project does. Even a child's achievement can become one. Perhaps that's part of why achievement can feel so reassuring. It gives us evidence. We can point to something and say, See? I did it. Enoughness asks something much harder of us. It asks us to believe something about ourselves that cannot be proven by a scoreboard. So when our deeper question is Am I enough?, we sometimes try to answer it with something measurable. The problem is that no external measurement can permanently answer an internal question about worth. The bargain we make with achievement Maybe the bargain sounds like: When I accomplish this, then I'll relax. When I lose the weight, then I'll feel comfortable in my body. When I earn enough, then I'll feel secure. When people recognize my work, then I'll know it matters. When my children are doing well, then I'll know I did a good job. When I finally get it right, then I'll stop being so hard on myself. But every time we arrive, the terms change. That's why moving the finish line is such a good metaphor. We aren't failing to reach it. We're reaching it and discovering that it was never capable of giving us what we were asking it to give us. Starting from enough What if enoughness was never something achievement could give me? I don't think believing I am enough means I stop growing. It doesn't mean I stop setting goals, challenging myself, or wanting to grow in the things that matter to me. Maybe it simply changes where I begin. Instead of: I need to accomplish this so I can finally be enough. It becomes: I am already enough. From that place, I can decide what I want to create, learn, build, or become. Those may look identical from the outside. Internally, they are entirely different experiences. There will always be another finish line available to us: another accomplishment, another improvement, another version of ourselves we could become. Growth is a beautiful part of being alive. But I don't want to spend my life running toward a version of myself I have decided will finally deserve my approval. I want to keep learning, keep growing, keep creating, and keep becoming. But I want to do those things from a life I already believe is worth living. We can still grow without treating the person we are today as a problem that needs to be solved. Maybe the finish line was never where enough was waiting for us. Maybe enough was where we started. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kimberly Stokka Merendino Kimberly Stokka Merendino, Therapist, Author & Nonprofit Founder Kimberly Stokka Merendino is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and nonprofit founder with more than two decades of experience helping people navigate grief, trauma, relationships, caregiving, and life’s difficult transitions. Her clinical expertise and personal experience as a caregiver inform her exploration of the difference between unavoidable pain and the unnecessary suffering we add along the way. Through her writing, Kimberly invites readers toward greater presence, connection, wonder, joy, and hope.

Written by Tiara Lijuna Christopher, The Restorative Methodologist Tiara Christopher is an author, publisher, speaker, and creator of the Restorative Writing Methodology, a faith-informed framework integrating writing, psychology, communication, and storytelling through Release, Awareness, Identity, and Restoration. Do you have trouble sleeping because of ruminating thoughts? Do certain memories return when everything around you becomes quiet? Are there experiences from your past that still affect you today, even though you thought you were over them? Sometimes pain remains present long after the experience has passed because we have learned how to carry it without ever learning how to name it. Restorative writing offers a practical place to begin. What does unnamed pain look like? We often recognize pain by what happened to us, but we do not always recognize it by what continues happening within us. You may not walk around saying, "I am still affected by what happened when I was twelve." Instead, you may say, "I overthink everything." You may not say, "I am afraid of being abandoned." You may say, "I have a hard time trusting people." You may not say, "I learned that my value comes from being useful to other people." You may simply notice that saying no makes you feel guilty. The experience has language. You just may not have discovered it yet. This is where restorative writing begins. Through my Restorative Writing Methodology, Release, Awareness, Identity, and Restoration, I teach people how to begin translating experiences they have carried internally into language they can examine externally. For this exercise, the process begins with three journals. I call them Getting It Out, Knowing, and Becoming. Do not begin by trying to write beautifully. Do not begin by trying to understand everything. Certainly do not begin by trying to become someone new. First, get it out. Getting It Out: Release what you have been carrying Purchase three separate journals. Physically label the first one Getting It Out. Put the other two away for now. This journal has one assignment, release. Write in it when you wake up and again before you go to sleep. Continue using this journal until every page is filled before moving to the next journal. This creates a rhythm of release. In the morning, write before the demands of the day have an opportunity to drown out what is already speaking within you. At night, write about what you carried throughout the day. Do not worry about grammar. Do not edit yourself. Do not ask whether something sounds intelligent, fair, spiritual, reasonable, or even important. This is not writing for publication. This is writing when the soul speaks before it has been organized, processed, or made presentable. If you do not know where to begin, begin with what is present. "I don't know why that conversation bothered me so much, but I have been thinking about it all day." "Everyone congratulated me today, but instead of feeling proud, I kept wondering when something would go wrong." "I told everyone I was fine when she mentioned my childhood, but I have replayed the conversation three times since I got home." Do not solve these statements yet. Write them. The purpose of Getting It Out is not immediate understanding. The purpose is to stop requiring your mind to be the permanent storage place for everything you have never said. Research offers an interesting parallel to this practice. In a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study on affect labeling, researchers found that putting feelings into words was associated with changes in brain activity related to emotional processing. This does not mean that writing alone resolves trauma, but it helps explain why giving an emotional experience language can matter. There is another reason I intentionally begin here, you cannot examine what you refuse to put on the page. Fill the journal. Then go back. Knowing: Identify the patterns in your writing Once Getting It Out is complete, label your second journal Knowing. Now your job changes. You are no longer only writing what hurts. You are beginning to investigate what your own writing has been trying to tell you. Go back through Getting It Out slowly. Read your words as though you were studying the story of someone who matters deeply to you. Look for repetition. Which people repeatedly appear? Which memories keep returning? Which emotions occur in situations that appear unrelated? Which sentences have you essentially written more than once? Which words keep showing up? Which situations produce a reaction that seems larger than the immediate event? Circle them. Underline them. Write them down in Knowing. Suppose you discover three entries, "My friend didn't answer me, and I immediately thought she was upset with me." "My supervisor asked to speak with me, and I spent the entire morning assuming I had done something wrong." "My partner got quiet during dinner, and I couldn't relax until I knew we were okay." Those appear to be three different situations, but Knowing asks you to look underneath them. The recurring issue may not be the unanswered message, your supervisor, or dinner. The recurring thought might be, when someone's behavior changes, I assume I am about to lose safety. Now something that once appeared random has language. Consider another example. Perhaps your first journal repeatedly contains statements such as, "I hate asking anyone for help," "I'd rather figure it out myself," and "I feel uncomfortable when someone does something for me." Knowing might lead you to ask, "When did needing someone begin to feel unsafe?" Or perhaps your entries repeatedly say, "I should be further along," "Everyone is passing me," and "Nothing I accomplish feels like enough." The question becomes, "When did achievement become connected to my worth?" This is the difference between experiencing pain and studying it. Continue writing in Knowing daily, but begin asking questions about what you write. What am I actually feeling? When have I felt this before? What does this remind me of? What did I learn about myself from that experience? Is that belief still true? You are developing language for what was previously only a feeling, reaction, memory, or pattern. That is awareness. Becoming: Separate your pain from your identity Only after Release and Awareness do we arrive at the third journal. Label it Becoming. This journal asks a fundamentally different question. Getting It Out asks, "What am I carrying?" Knowing asks, "What has it taught me to believe?" Becoming asks, "Who am I without it?" Pain does not only leave memories. Sometimes it influences identities. A child who was repeatedly ignored may grow into an adult who calls herself independent without realizing that some of her independence developed because relying on other people once felt unsafe. Someone who was repeatedly criticized may describe himself as a perfectionist without recognizing the fear underneath the perfection. Someone who experienced instability may become extraordinarily good at anticipating everyone else's needs while having difficulty identifying her own. These adaptations may have helped you navigate difficult experiences. Becoming is not about pretending they never served you. It is about examining whether they still get to define you. Perhaps Knowing revealed the belief, I have to be useful to deserve love. In Becoming, you might write, I am worthy of love even when I am resting. Perhaps Knowing uncovered that if I trust people, they will eventually leave. Becoming might answer, What happened to me taught me to expect abandonment. That expectation protected me then, but it does not have to make every decision for me now. Or perhaps you discovered, my mistakes mean I am a failure. Becoming might begin with, I can make a mistake without making the mistake my identity. This is identity work. You are learning to separate what happened to you from who you are. Why getting it out, knowing, and becoming happen in this order Do not rush to Becoming. There is a reason the journals are completed in this order. Getting It Out comes before Knowing because you need material to examine. Knowing comes before Becoming because you need awareness before you can begin questioning an identity shaped by painful experiences. Release, awareness, and identity. Through that process, restoration can begin. Think of pain like baggage from a flight you were never supposed to board but somehow found yourself on anyway. For years, you may have carried the luggage simply because no one told you that you were allowed to put it down. Restorative writing asks you to open the suitcase. First, take everything out. Then identify what is actually inside. Finally, decide what still belongs to you. That is the art of translating pain. How to begin your first journal today You do not need to understand your entire life tonight. You need three journals. Write Getting It Out on the first, Knowing on the second, and Becoming on the third. Then put Knowing and Becoming away. Tomorrow morning, open Getting It Out and answer one question, "What have I been carrying that I have never given myself permission to say?" Do not make it beautiful. Make it honest. Because sometimes the pain we struggle hardest to understand is not pain without meaning. It is pain that has been waiting for language. Continue your restorative writing journey If you are ready to continue the work beyond these three journals, The Art of Translating Pain, A Restorative Writing Workbook for Healing, Wholeness, and Transformation expands the Restorative Writing Methodology through Release, Awareness, and Identity, providing a guided process for putting language to pain and examining the story it has helped you tell about yourself. To learn more about Tiara Christopher and the Restorative Writing Methodology, visit TiarasTestimony, explore her writing on the TiarasTestimony Blog, or book a consultation with The Restorative Methodologist. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Tiara Lijuna Christopher Tiara Lijuna Christopher, The Restorative Methodologist Tiara Christopher is an author, publisher, keynote speaker, humanitarian, and pioneer known professionally as The Restorative Methodologist. She developed the Restorative Writing Methodology, a four-stage framework of Release, Awareness, Identity, and Restoration that helps people give language to unprocessed pain, reclaim their identity, and become whole in Jesus Christ. Tiara Christopher is the author of The Art of Translating Pain: A Restorative Writing Workbook for Healing, Wholeness, and Transformation, which integrates psychology, biblical theology, and communication to transform pain into purpose.

Aravind Sakthivel is a seasoned technology strategist with more than 23 years of global leadership across Europe, India, and the U.S. As Chief Information Officer turned Chief AI Officer, he has guided Fortune 500 companies through enterprise-wide digital transformation, AI deployments, M&A integrations, and compliance initiatives. Today, as the Equity Partner & Non-Executive Board Member at London AI Studio, Aravind focuses on Agentic AI, autonomous AI systems designed to reshape business strategy, operations, and leadership. In this exclusive Brainz Magazine interview, he shares his journey, insights from his published research, and why he believes executives must embrace AI literacy to future-proof their organizations. Aravind Sakthivel, Author and Technology Leader Who is Aravind Sakthivel? Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your favourites, you at home and in business. I started my career in consulting with Oracle, KPMG, and GE before moving into senior executive roles at Danaher/Veralto, where I spent nearly two decades leading global IT transformations. My professional journey has been about one thing, aligning technology with business outcomes. I focus on helping Presidents and Founders increase profitability with AI automation, ensuring that strategy and technology translate into measurable growth. Whether through AI-powered platforms, ERP modernizations, M&A integrations, or risk and compliance programs, my goal has always been to deliver growth and resilience. Outside of work, I’m passionate about mentoring, traveling, and reading history. I believe that leadership in both business and family life is ultimately about people, values, and long-term vision. I want to adopt the lifestyle (being with my family) that fulfils my passion. What first inspired you to specialise in AI, digital design, and strategy? My inspiration came from realizing that IT, while powerful, often lacked adaptability. Systems could execute transactions flawlessly, but couldn’t strategize. That gap drew me toward AI. As I explored deeper, I developed what is now my research focus, Agentic AI. Unlike traditional AI, which automates or predicts, agentic systems make autonomous decisions with purpose. My recent paper Agentic AI in the Enterprise shows how this next wave of AI can transform everything from customer personalization to executive decision-making. How do you help businesses use AI to solve real problems and grow faster? At London AI Studio, I guide leaders through a structured transformation process. First, I do an AI Assessment, assess decision-making gaps, and data readiness. Then, apply the Agentic AI Framework, which has four layers, foundation (generative AI for data), autonomy (reinforcement learning for decision-making), governance (ethics and compliance), and impact (measuring outcomes). This method has enabled enterprises to achieve 20-30% productivity gains while enhancing trust and resilience. Beyond efficiency, it creates cultural readiness, where employees see AI as a partner, not a replacement. Can you share a success story where your AI solutions or design strategies made a big difference? In one enterprise, our AI team rolled out Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for incoming customer purchase orders, enabling direct uploads into the ERP system without manual entry. This saved significant time for the operations team and accelerated order intake for customers. Building on that success, we implemented an AI-powered chatbot self-service portal that reduced inbound call volume while boosting customer satisfaction. The win wasn’t just operational. Employees were relieved from repetitive tasks, leadership gained faster insights, and customers felt empowered. This kind of impact reflects what I believe AI should do, enhance human agency while driving measurable business outcomes. Who are your ideal clients, and what challenges do they usually face before working with you? My ideal clients are enterprise leaders who see AI not just as a tool but as a strategic enabler. Typically, they face challenges such as: Fragmented legacy systems that block integration. A lack of AI literacy at the executive level. Ethical and compliance risks with early AI deployments. Cultural resistance within teams. These pain points can stall transformation. My role is to guide organizations through strategy, governance, and adoption, so AI becomes a sustainable advantage rather than a fragmented experiment. What mistakes do businesses often make when trying to adopt AI or digital transformation on their own? The common pitfalls are twofold, chasing hype and neglecting governance. Too often, companies deploy tools without connecting them to strategic goals. This leads to wasted investment and scepticism across teams. Equally dangerous is ignoring ethics and compliance. In my research, 55% of executives cited bias and job displacement as major risks. Without explainable AI (XAI) frameworks and reskilling programs, businesses face reputational and regulatory risks that can outweigh benefits. What is the biggest opportunity AI and creative strategy bring to businesses today? The biggest opportunity lies in hyper-personalization and resilience. AI can personalize customer journeys at scale, drive real-time supply chain optimization, and even predict risks before they materialize. But I believe the deeper opportunity is cultural, AI can shift organizations from rigid hierarchies to adaptive, data-driven ecosystems. Leaders who embrace this will unlock innovation cycles that are 20% faster while positioning their enterprises for long-term advantage. For a business considering working with you, what is the first step in the process? The first step is always an AI readiness assessment. We look at current systems, decision-making workflows, and cultural openness. From there, I design a roadmap, starting with pilots, scaling through ethical audits, and embedding governance at every stage. This phased approach ensures adoption is not just fast but sustainable. By the time enterprises scale, they already have the trust, skills, and safeguards needed for AI maturity. How do you stay updated and ahead in the rapidly changing world of AI and digital design? I combine research with practice. On the research side, I publish in international journals like Well Testing, where my work on Agentic AI provides empirical insights. On the practice side, I work directly with enterprises across industries, which grounds theory in real-world application. I also collaborate with global think tanks, attend executive education at institutions like Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, and actively mentor leaders stepping into AI-driven roles such as Chief AI Officer. This mix of scholarship and practice keeps me ahead of the curve. What message would you like to share with decision-makers who want to future-proof their business with AI? AI is no longer optional, it’s existential. My message is, become AI literate and agentic in your approach. Understand not just what AI can do but what it should do for your organization. Executives who master this mindset will drive growth, resilience, and trust. Those who don’t risk falling behind as AI-driven competitors capture market share. The time to act is now, with frameworks that balance innovation with ethical governance. You can view Aravind Sakthivel’s profiles on Thinkers360 here and on ResearchGate here. Follow me on LinkedIn, visit my website for more info, and get my book on Amazon! Read more from Aravind Sakthivel

Written by Tracy Ann Messore, Integrative Coach Tracy Messore is well known for trauma recovery and nervous system healing. She is a bachelor's-prepared registered nurse, certified trauma coach, and the founder of Integrative Coaching. Through her specialized courses and integrative approach, Tracy guides trauma survivors to heal and reclaim their authentic identities. Post-separation abuse does not always end when a relationship does. For some parents, co-parenting becomes another channel for control, unpredictability, and emotional pressure. This article explores how these patterns affect the nervous system, why freeze and fawn responses can emerge, and how seemingly small incidents can form part of a much larger pattern. The exchange that never feels like just an exchange There's a particular kind of dread that builds in the hours before a custody exchange. Not sadness about missing your kids, but a different feeling entirely. A low hum of bracing. Reviewing every message from the last week, wondering which one might get twisted, which sentence might be screenshotted and reframed. Rehearsing what you'll say if something is said to you, even though you already know you'll probably freeze, overexplain, or agree to something you didn't want to agree to just to make the moment end. If you've felt that hum, you already understand something most people never have to learn: when children are shared between two parents and one of those parents is still exercising control, the children themselves become the channel through which that control keeps flowing. Custody doesn't end an abusive dynamic. It gives it a new, sanctioned, court-approved doorway. How co-parenting becomes the new delivery system In my own experience, and in the patterns I hear again and again from the people I coach, post-separation abuse inside co-parenting rarely looks like anything a court would recognize as abuse on its face. That's what makes it so effective. It tends to show up in several ways. Moving goalposts. The standard shifts depending on what keeps you off balance. If you're too involved in the children's day-to-day lives, you're accused of alienating them. Give the other parent space, and you're accused of not caring. There is no version of "doing it right" because the goal was never for you to get it right. The goal is the disorientation itself. Children as messengers or informants. Kids get asked pointed questions about what happens in your home or get used to relay messages that should have gone directly from one parent to the other. This puts children in a loyalty bind that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with maintaining a line of surveillance. Weaponized delay. Decisions about therapy, schooling, or logistics get stalled, not because there's a real disagreement, but because withholding a response is its own form of control. Every day of silence is a day you're kept in limbo, waiting. Court and process as a tool, not a resolution. Filings, threats of filings, and formal channels get used less to solve an actual problem and more to keep a target inside a system that costs time, money, and peace of mind to navigate. The process becomes the punishment. Public narrative control. A version of events gets told to family, friends, or professionals that paints you as the unstable one, the difficult one, the one causing problems, often as a preemptive strike so that if you ever do raise concerns, you've already been discredited. None of these tactics require the other parent to ever raise their voice. That's exactly the point. What chronic unpredictability does to the body I want to bring the brain science back in here because this is where it gets important: your body responds most intensely not to consistent danger, but to unpredictable danger. When you never know whether an interaction will be neutral or destabilizing, your nervous system can't relax between events. It has to stay braced for whichever version shows up. This is closely related to what's known as intermittent reinforcement, the same mechanism that makes slot machines more compelling than a vending machine that pays out every time. When a reward, or in this case a threat, arrives unpredictably, the brain's dopamine and stress response systems stay locked in a heightened state of anticipation far longer than they would if the pattern were consistent. Consistent bad is, physiologically, easier for your body to adapt to than unpredictable bad. Co-parenting with someone using these tactics keeps your HPA axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal system that governs your stress response, in a near-constant loop of anticipation, activation, and incomplete recovery. Over months and years, this chronic activation shows up in the body in very real, very physical ways: disrupted sleep, digestive issues, a suppressed immune response, difficulty concentrating, and a baseline of irritability or tearfulness that feels disconnected from any single event because it isn't about any single event. It's cumulative. The freeze and fawn responses no one talks about Fight and flight get most of the attention, but in co-parenting dynamics, I see freeze and fawn far more often, and I've lived both. Freeze shows up as going blank in the moment you needed words. Standing at an exchange, unable to respond to something unfair being said to you, not because you don't have a response, but because your nervous system has redirected all its resources toward getting through the interaction, not winning it. Fawn shows up as over-accommodating. Agreeing to a last-minute change you didn't want. Softening a boundary the moment it's pushed back on. Apologizing for things that weren't your fault. Fawning isn't weakness. It's a survival strategy your body learned because, at some point, appeasement was the fastest route back to safety. The trouble is that a strategy built for survival inside the relationship doesn't just switch off once the relationship legally ends. Your body keeps reaching for the tool that used to work. Children are exquisitely attuned to their parents' nervous systems. This is called co-regulation, and it's one of the most important concepts in child development. A calm, regulated parent helps a child's nervous system settle. A parent locked in chronic sympathetic activation or dorsal shutdown, however hard they're working to hide it, is still transmitting some of that dysregulation to a child who is watching them for cues about whether the world is safe. This isn't said to add guilt to an already overloaded plate. It's said because understanding it is often what finally makes a parent prioritize their own regulation, not as self-indulgence, but as an act of protection for their kids. You're not overreacting to a small thing If you're in this, you've probably had the experience of trying to explain a specific incident to someone – a friend, a lawyer, or a therapist unfamiliar with coercive control and watching their face do the polite but unconvinced nod because, on its own, the incident sounds small. A late pickup. A pointed comment. A missed response. That's because these tactics are designed to be small in isolation and only make sense as a pattern over time. You are not failing to explain it well. You are describing a strategy that depends on looking like nothing, one incident at a time. Trust the pattern you're living, even when any single data point sounds minor to someone standing outside of it. Coming next In the final piece of this series, I want to shift from naming the pattern to talking about what actually rebuilds a nervous system that's been living this way: the concrete, physiological work of coming back to a felt sense of safety, even while co-parenting realities continue. This isn't about the abuse stopping. It's about you no longer being run entirely by your body's memory of it. Tracy Messore is a bachelor's-prepared registered nurse and certified trauma coach who combines medical expertise with lived experience to guide trauma survivors toward healing. After enduring decades of abuse, Tracy transformed her pain into purpose by integrating nursing knowledge with somatic healing and polyvagal theory. She specializes in helping survivors break free from survival mode and rediscover the authentic selves that trauma forced into hiding. Learn more at integrativecoaching.graphy.com. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tracy Ann Messore Tracy Ann Messore, Integrative Coach Tracy Messore is well known for trauma recovery and nervous system healing. She is a bachelor's-prepared registered nurse, certified trauma coach, and the founder of Integrative Coaching. After enduring decades of generational trauma and abuse, Tracy transformed her pain into purpose by combining her nursing expertise with somatic body-based healing and polyvagal theory to help trauma survivors break free from survival mode and rediscover their authentic selves. Through her specialized courses and integrative approach, which addresses the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual dimensions of healing, Tracy guides people through processing stored trauma, regulating their nervous systems, and breaking generational cycles. References: Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books. Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Holt Paperbacks. Note: This article presents these concepts through the lens of the author's nursing training, personal experience, and coaching practice. The explanations and applications are the author's own interpretations, designed to make complex concepts accessible to survivors of post-separation abuse.

Written by Tiffany Meredith Lynch, Sum Faht Meditation & Emotional Wellness Coach Meet Tiffany Meredith Lynch, a Certified Meditation Teacher, Qigong Instructor, TCM Practitioner, and Emotional Wellness Coach. With her extensive travels and deep immersion in ancient wisdom, spiritual teachings, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she brings a transformative approach to holistic healing and personal growth. Why joy can’t exist without contrast, and how embracing life’s full emotional range makes happiness more meaningful and lasting. Do you truly know what joy is? For a long time, I wasn’t sure I did. I used to think joy meant feeling happy, that it belonged to the easy moments, when life was going well. But joy doesn’t ask us to ignore the hard parts of life. It can exist alongside them. Some of the people who make us laugh the hardest have also known the deepest sorrow. After walking through grief or heartbreak, they begin to see life through different eyes. A sunrise means more. A hug lingers longer. A child’s laughter reaches somewhere deeper. Even the quietest moments can feel sacred. Maybe sadness doesn’t take away our capacity for joy. Maybe, sometimes, it expands it. When I began asking myself what truly lights me up, I kept coming back to one thing: helping someone reconnect with themselves. There’s a quiet fulfillment in watching someone soften and open up. In seeing their negative loops begin to disappear as they remember their purpose, their truth, and the parts of themselves they thought they’d lost. That is joy for me. It isn’t loud or performative. It doesn’t need applause. It’s a steady feeling that settles deep in my heart when I know I’ve helped someone. I find joy in simpler moments, too: playing with my cat or dog, laughing around the kitchen table during a family game, getting lost in a creative project, or settling in with a good book. The more I pay attention, the more I realize joy was never something I had to chase. It was there in the moments that made me feel most connected, to others, to life, and to myself. Yet, joy is often misunderstood. If you’ve ever read Power vs. Force by Dr. David Hawkins, you may remember that he describes love and joy as existing at some of the highest levels of consciousness. In his Map of Consciousness, joy is said to resonate at 540, a level associated with deep spiritual power and transformation. At that level, joy is no longer dependent on circumstances. It does not rely on success, perfect conditions, or validation from other people. It becomes something much deeper, an inner state rooted in peace, truth, and alignment. Many spiritual teachers speak of joy as a frequency that supports manifestation and higher awareness. When you are in a state of joy, you are more aligned with the natural flow of life. From that place, intuition becomes clearer. Mental resistance softens. Synchronicities appear. Doors open in ways the logical mind could never force. This also suggests that people who embody this level of consciousness naturally carry a healing presence. They uplift others without trying. Their energy alone creates space for others to feel safer, lighter, and more connected. Life begins to feel less like an endless struggle and more like an unfolding experience guided by trust, compassion, and grace. This is the kind of joy that does not deny sadness. It is the kind of joy that has made peace with it. Maybe that is the real invitation, not to avoid pain, but to allow it to deepen your capacity to love, to feel, and to recognize just how sacred it is to be alive. One of the most powerful shifts we can make is learning the difference between excitement and joy. Excitement says, “I want more.” Joy says, “This is enough.” Excitement usually depends on something external to sustain it. Joy can meet you in the stillness. Excitement often comes with intensity, stimulation, and anticipation. But when it fades, it can leave you feeling depleted. Just look at how easy it is to become hooked on stimulation, social media, achievement, entertainment, shopping, novelty, pleasure, constant activity. We can start mistaking that rush for joy, when really it is just the temporary high of feeling good. But excitement fades as quickly as it arrives. Joy leaves something deeper. It leaves you with connection. With wholeness. With peace. Maybe the goal is not to live in a constant state of joy. Maybe the goal is to become so present with ourselves that we no longer need to run from sadness. Maybe the invitation is to let it move through us, shape us, and soften us, so we can recognize the joy that has been here all along. Real joy is not the absence of pain. It is the presence of peace in the middle of it. It is the willingness to stay connected to your heart through it all. Maybe that is what joy has been trying to teach us all along. If you enjoy this article, please click here for my free ancient healing workbook. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tiffany Meredith Lynch Tiffany Meredith Lynch, Sum Faht Meditation & Emotional Wellness Coach When you meet Tiffany, you encounter someone who has tackled life's toughest challenges head-on and gained a deep, transformative insight into authentic healing. Her spiritual journey, spanning several decades, has taken her across continents. She studied under esteemed teachers in Malaysia and Thailand, where she deepened her knowledge of meditation, breathwork, qigong, and Traditional Chinese medicine. These invaluable experiences have enriched her ability to harness transformative techniques, empowering both herself and others to cultivate deep healing and rediscover the divine heart.