Written by Patricia Kaulmann, Specialist for Biological Emotional Balance Patricia Kaulmann supports the balance between body and mind. She published the book "My Little Big Transformation" in Portuguese and German in 2024 and is a co-developer of HTGMusic, a supportive, energetic method with sound/frequencies. If you've thought this way before, I invite you today to develop a new perspective. The feeling of having done everything right, only to have the pain or symptom return after a while, frustrates many people. In the brain, such experiences are stored as "I'm incapable," "I can't do it," or "I've failed again." What often happens In my practice, I often heard the phrase: "I did everything, but the pain kept coming back." As a therapist, this made me both puzzled and curious. We already know that an emotional trigger initiates a cascade of reactions in the body. Many interpret this process as "I'm getting sick" or "something bad is happening now." But the body's biological laws say exactly the opposite: The system initiates regeneration and is ready to let go. However, what you're thinking right now, at this moment, is the command your brain is sending. When you think and feel something negative, your brain produces neurotransmitters and associated hormones. This increases stress in the system and thus halts potential regeneration. Conversely, when you think and feel positively, your brain reacts accordingly. The result of a positive reaction? Self-healing powers are activated. The question that then occupied me was How could I explain the experience positively in order to change this negative reaction? That was the moment I began to access my mental files and create new connections. If we have or create the wrong information within us, we react against ourselves. When we feel frustrated, we lose the motivation to continue. But it's important to remember here: Discipline leads to success, not motivation. Okay, now we can move on. A new perspective when symptoms are coming back From now on, I want you to see things differently when a symptom reappears. Body and mind block and heal together. If we look closely, the body begins to release something. More precisely, a symptom, or even several, will arise in an emotional context. All events in our lives are stored with emotion. Let's consider an explanation from Traditional Chinese Medicine. It's based on the five elements and the five primary emotions (anger, love, worry, fear, and sadness). These are essential for survival. The system wants us to survive, and that's how it's programmed. But note the crucial point: These five "primary emotions" can blend, creating subcategories. For example, frustration can be stored under both anger and sadness. Let's think mathematically: 5 emotions x 5 = 25. These blend again, and so on. Every event in life has a specific emotion stored within it. So far, so good? Now let's think further. Every emotion is linked to at least one organ (more precisely: at least one organ and one viscera, e.g., anger-liver-gallbladder). Therefore, you can have several events stored under just one primary emotion. Now comes the revelation: When an event is triggered and needs to be resolved, where do symptoms appear? If you were already thinking, "In the area linked to the primary emotion," you've now cracked the code. Meaning The solution is right under your nose, if I may say so. If you end something and the symptom "reappears," simply end it again because another old experience has been triggered and is ready to be released. So simple. So brilliant. Let go. You're living today. Why cling to the past or drag it along? Do you enjoy suffering? I'll leave you alone, okay? It's truly your decision. It's not what happened to you that's causing you suffering and blocking you, but the feeling you're clinging to today instead of choosing differently. You'll be a victim for life if you choose and behave this way. In medicine, they say that people find "advantages" in suffering. Sounds crazy, but it's true. And that's the majority opinion. Okay, I can only speak from my own experience as a therapist, from colleagues, and from books and training courses… Honest words Albert Einstein said: "Those who believe that others are to blame for their own dissatisfaction also believe that pencils make spelling mistakes." Sometimes we go through something that is "not" our fault. The Pareto principle applies here: We have 80% control over everything. Only 20% is beyond our control, and that's the external stuff. But I'm telling you in truth: No matter what those 20% were in your life, your reaction and what you do with them is 100% up to you. No excuses. No playing the victim. It might be harsh, but it's reality. As you've probably read before: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. That's not a play on words. Everyone should do that. The answer is always within you. Out there, you'll find ways to achieve what you want. You have to take action yourself; otherwise, you won't accomplish anything. Only you can heal yourself. You, like everyone else, have received the divine spark. Let it ignite. I wish you much love, the highest frequency in the world. When you love yourself and act on your passions and desires, you'll experience a different life. Yes, it will also have pain and depth. The difference? You'll be where you want to be. And by the way, one way to act is to listen to frequencies derived from amino acids, which provide your system with what you're lacking. You can find it as an app under HTGMusic. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Facebook , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Patricia Kaulmann Patricia Kaulmann, Specialist for Biological Emotional Balance Patricia Kaulmann helps people understand how they can activate their self-healing through their thoughts and emotions and how they can get rid of blockages and beliefs through emotional intelligence and energetically supported frequencies. The right mindset plays a major role in healing. For this, it is essential to understand your own body embryologically, biologically, and emotionally. This is where Patricia brings in her expertise. Everyone should have access to this information and be able to live happily.

Use shame and control as tools for keeping power. They offer affection selectively, create confusion, and keep you on an emotional rollercoaster.

behaviour, another problem remains: seeing what we do is not necessarily the same as understanding what keeps What professional situation keeps repeating despite your awareness of it? What do you keep promising yourself you will do differently once the pressure subsides? It is, "What is this leader still unable to see that keeps making the same behaviour necessary?"

Written by Annie Paraison, Founder of Love Before ALL LLC Annie Paraison, the visionary behind Love Before ALL, is a Cultural Architect who leverages over 17 years of leadership experience to demonstrate that love is a strategic necessity. She helps leaders, businesses, and communities operationalize love to optimize personal, organizational, and communal wellness and collective success. What if the most dangerous place to work for someone who believes in justice is inside a justice organization? What if the very institutions built to resist oppression are quietly practising it on their own people? This is not an indictment. It is an honest question from someone who has sat inside those rooms, felt the urgency in those walls, and watched brilliant, devoted human beings burn themselves down to the ground in service of a cause that would have benefited more from their sustained presence than their sacrifice. This article is an invitation, not a critique. It is a gentle and courageous reckoning with how we lead, how we heal, and what becomes possible when we finally decide that exhaustion is not a requirement of meaningful work. The gap between the mission statement and Monday morning Most organizations with a powerful external mission have a framed version of that mission on the wall. They put it in their annual reports and on their websites. They lead with it in fundraising pitches and board presentations. Then, more often than people say out loud, there is a quiet, persistent gap between what the mission says and what Monday morning actually feels like. That gap is not the result of bad intentions. It is the result of inherited systems. Systems built on urgency, extraction, and the belief that the cause is more important than the person carrying it. Those systems do not disappear simply because the organization's values are oriented toward justice. In many cases, they intensify because the stakes feel too high, the resources too scarce, and the need too pressing to slow down long enough to tend to the people doing the work. The data makes this visible in ways that can no longer be quietly set aside. The Center for Effective Philanthropy's State of Nonprofits 2024 report found that 95 percent of nonprofit leaders surveyed expressed concern about staff burnout, and 75 percent shared that burnout among staff was at least slightly impacting their organization's ability to achieve its mission. The nonprofit sector's turnover rate sits at approximately 19 percent, compared to 12 percent in other sectors. Perhaps most telling, in 2022, 22 percent of nonprofit employees lived in households unable to afford necessities like housing and healthcare. These are not staffing problems. They are relational and systemic ones, and they are costing organizations the very thing missions most depend on: committed, healthy, whole human beings. The people closest to the work pay the highest price If the burden of misaligned cultures is distributed unequally across organizational life, the research is clear about who carries the most weight. The Building Movement Project's Race to Lead survey, one of the largest datasets on race, leadership, and nonprofit work in the United States, draws on responses from over 12,000 nonprofit leaders and staff across multiple years. Their findings are unambiguous. Leaders of color reported that their pay was inadequate, their workloads were too demanding, and they were frequently called upon to represent people who share their racial or ethnic identity in ways that white colleagues were not. The Black Women Thriving 2022 report found that over 50 percent of Black women felt they did not have a shared sense of purpose at work, did not feel part of the team, and did not receive care and support from others. Black women, according to the Race to Lead report, were the most likely of all demographics surveyed, at 43 percent, to say that their race had negatively impacted their career advancement inside the very sector committed to justice. This is not incidental. It is the inherited system expressing itself. An organization can have justice as its external mission and still replicate the same hierarchies of value, the same patterns of extraction, and the same silencing of the people closest to the community it serves. Dr. Janaé Bonsu Love, writing for Candid, argues that high attrition among frontline nonprofit staff is not inevitable. It is driven by organizational conditions that leaders can address. The conditions are neither accidental nor unchangeable. This is not about blame, it is about inherited systems There is something important to name before we go any further: this article is not an indictment of leaders who care. Most of the people running mission-driven organizations are carrying enormous weight with enormous heart. They did not set out to create cultures of depletion. They were absorbed into systems that normalized depletion and called it dedication. The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change teaches that the six principles of Kingian nonviolence are rooted in love and designed as humane catalysts for genuine and lasting peace. One of those principles holds that nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people. That principle is essential here. The leaders and organizations described in this article are not the enemy. The inherited systems of control and compliance that they have absorbed are the obstacle. The goal is not to blame people for behaving like systems. The goal is to interrupt the systems with enough intention, courage, and compassion that something new becomes possible. That interruption requires a particular kind of gentleness. Not the gentleness that avoids hard truths, but the kind that holds space for them without collapsing into shame. Shame produces paralysis. Compassion produces movement. It is compassion, first offered to the self and then extended outward, that Love Before ALL has always understood as the engine of genuine organizational transformation. What the research confirms about compassion and sustainability The case for compassionate leadership is not sentimental. It is structural, and the research literature has been building it for years. A 2024 peer-reviewed study published in the journal Sustainability examined the relationship between compassionate leadership and work engagement across organizations, finding that compassionate leaders who actively engaged with their followers' needs, offered emotional support, and aligned their practice with social sustainability principles produced measurably higher levels of employee wellbeing and work engagement. The study concluded that compassion is not supplemental to organizational strategy. It is a driver of the outcomes organizations need to sustain their work over time. High trust organizations, those where leaders extend genuine care to their people, report dramatically different outcomes than their low trust counterparts. Research published by the Compassionate Leaders Circle, drawing on Harvard Business Review neuroscience data, found that compared with people at low trust organizations, people at high trust organizations report 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy at work, 50 percent higher productivity, 76 percent more engagement, and 40 percent less burnout. These are not marginal gains. They are the difference between an organization that depletes its people over time and one that sustains them. Gallup's 2025 data shows that employee engagement has slipped to a ten-year low, with only 31 percent of employees engaged at work, and that closing the global engagement gap could add 9.6 trillion dollars to global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The cost of disengagement is not abstract. It is the measurable result of what happens when organizations prioritize output over the people producing it. Healing is not a detour from the work, it is the work Love Before ALL was built on a foundational conviction that lasting change must begin from the inside out. The approach, Grow the Me, Grow the We, and Grow the Collective, is sequenced this way deliberately. Not because individual healing is more important than systems change, but because a dysregulated leader cannot build a regulated culture. A team that is running on depletion cannot sustain the pace of genuine transformation. A collective that has not tended to its relational infrastructure will fracture under the pressure of the very mission it is trying to carry. Healing is not a diversion from meaningful work. It is the mechanism that makes meaningful work possible over time. This is what the King Center understands in naming love as the foundation of nonviolent social change. It is what Dr. Shawn Ginwright articulates in asking whether we can heal the world without healing ourselves. The answer is no, and the organizations that are willing to take that answer seriously are the ones that last. What this looks like in practice is not a wellness program bolted onto an unchanged culture. It is a structural decision to treat the humanity of the people inside the organization as a nonnegotiable operational value. It means building repair into the workflow rather than treating conflict as a deviation. It means measuring wellbeing alongside productivity rather than choosing between them. It means creating the conditions for leaders at every level to prioritize their own self-awareness and self-trust, because self-trust is the foundation from which genuine service to others becomes sustainable. Compassion, intention, courage, and gentleness may seem like qualities that belong in a personal journal rather than an organizational strategy. But they are precisely what sustains change over time. They are what allow changemakers to stay in the work without being consumed by it. They are what create the space for people to reimagine new ways of being, of relating, and of healing inside the institutions they are trying to transform. The reimagining prompt What if we refused to accept that exhaustion is the mandatory price of doing meaningful work? What if the pace of change could be determined not by the urgency of the crisis outside but by the capacity of the people inside? What if we built cultures where the person closest to the pain was also the person best supported to do something about it? Here is what Love Before ALL believes that refusal could make possible. An organization that honors the Me inside its culture creates the conditions for staff to know themselves deeply enough to recognize when they are depleted before they disappear. It builds structures that invite rest, reflection, and repair rather than treating those things as signs of weakness or insufficient commitment. It extends to its own people the same care and regard that it extends to the communities it serves. An organization that cultivates the We inside its culture moves from a collection of exhausted individuals pulling in the same general direction to a genuine team that trusts one another enough to share the weight. Conflict is met with curiosity rather than punishment. The leader's well-being is considered as carefully as the program outcomes. Belonging is not a marketing promise but a daily practice. An organization that builds the Collective from that kind of relational foundation stops asking its people to choose between their humanity and their mission. It discovers instead that those two things were never in opposition, and that a sustained, regulated, genuinely supported person is not a less effective change agent than an exhausted one, but a more powerful one. This is not idealism. It is what the research has been pointing toward for years. It is what Love Before ALL has been building toward since 2020. An invitation to tend the people carrying the work If you are leading or working inside a mission-driven organization and you recognize the gap this article describes, this is not a moment for shame. It is a moment for intention. You did not create the inherited systems that normalized depletion. However, you have the power to interrupt them and advocate for a new way. Not all at once, and not alone. The interruption begins with a decision: that the people inside this organization deserve the same quality of care that we are committed to extending to the world outside of it. Love Before ALL exists to help leaders and organizations build that kind of internal culture, from the inside out, one relationship at a time. There are two ways you can begin the journey with us. Join the Love Before ALL (LBA) Connection Circle: Our free, 45-minute monthly session is a curated space designed to hold leaders' humanity without agenda or pitch. No performance is required. You simply show up. Request your seat here. Join the LBA Movement: Subscribe to the LBA Care and Clarity Update, our monthly resource for leaders navigating the intersection of personal wellbeing and organizational impact. Each issue includes a reflection tied to our monthly theme, a conversation from the Talk to Me podcast, and practical tools you can begin to practise the same week. Because love is not simply an idea or a sentiment. It is a strategy we live by. The people carrying the hardest work deserve to feel that love from inside the organizations they have given their lives to sustain. Join the movement Connect with Love Before ALL: Annie's LinkedIn, YouTube Channel, LBA Blog, Talk to Me Podcast Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Annie Paraison Annie Paraison, Founder of Love Before ALL LLC Annie Paraison is the visionary behind Love Before ALL, a consultancy optimizing wellness through the power of relationships. A proud Haitian-born leader, she journeyed from New York City to Vanderbilt University, igniting a passion for harnessing human potential and building "Beloved Community." With over 17 years of leadership experience and an Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA), she challenges the status quo by proving that love is a rigorous life and business strategy. She ensures no leader has to choose between impact and well-being by supporting the transformation of unconscious patterns into conscious compassion. Grounded in faith and guided by hope, Annie is committed to a world where personal and collective success are inextricably linked. Sources referenced: Givebutter, “Nonprofit Burnout: Top Statistics and Tips to Break the Cycle”, citing Center for Effective Philanthropy State of Nonprofits 2024 and Social Impact Staff Retention Project 2025. Mission Edge, “Talent, Burnout, and Retention: The Defining Challenge of the Nonprofit Workforce”, citing Center for Effective Philanthropy and Independent Sector / United for ALICE 2024 data. Candid/Dr. Janaé Bonsu Love, “Data Shows Why Frontline Nonprofit Workers Face Burnout and Turnover”, citing the Building Movement Project Race to Lead 2022 survey, October 2025. Johnson Center, “With Crisis Comes Change: Black Women and the Glass Cliff”, citing the Black Women Thriving 2022 report by Hines and Fitts Ward and Building Movement Project Race to Lead. Race to Lead/Building Movement Project, “Race to Lead: Women of Color in the Nonprofit Sector”, 2019. The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, “The King Philosophy: Six Principles of Nonviolence”. Pansini, Buonomo, and Benevene, “Fostering Sustainable Workplace Through Leaders' Compassionate Behaviors: Understanding the Role of Employee Well-Being and Work Engagement”, Sustainability, December 2024. Compassionate Leaders Circle, “Compassion Research Resources”, citing Harvard Business Review neuroscience of trust data. Mindful Leader, “Workplace Pulse: Fall 2025”, citing Gallup 2025 engagement data and McKinsey wellness research. Shawn A. Ginwright, PhD, The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves, Penguin Random House / North Atlantic Books, 2022.

One of the most vulnerable and honest questions we can ever ask ourselves is, “Why should I keep going It is about knowing you can bend, regroup, and keep going when you need to. So why should we not keep going in other situations? You only need to keep choosing yourself in small, steady ways. Seeing yourself as powerless keeps you stuck and undermines growth.

Written by Kass James, Healthcare Business and Disability Specialist Kass James is an assistive technology specialist with a master’s in management of information systems from the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. Fully licensed in ADA compliance and environmental access, he’s a partner at The Spoonie Advocate Associates. It has become impossible to discuss the future of business or IT project roadmaps without a serious conversation about artificial intelligence. But what do people mean when they are talking about AI? Schools, governments, and businesses discuss how to manage AI systems, yet they seem to know nothing about them. They talk about AI as though it were science fiction. Every website, lawmaker, tech billionaire, and IT professional seems to have a different opinion. When we talk about the cost and value of artificial intelligence, it often seems as though many of us are talking about different things. It is deeply frustrating for those of us in the IT industry when C-suite executives discuss AI without understanding it. It is going to upset a lot of people, but we must start with the fact that artificial general intelligence, known as AGI or “true artificial intelligence,” does not exist yet. Many things seem like AGI. They mimic it and are even claimed to be close to it, but they are not. Artificial general intelligence refers to a computer’s ability to make independent decisions, draw conclusions based on feelings rather than facts, adapt and change opinions fluidly, and approach “human” thought. We do not have it, and despite the claims of some incredibly wealthy people, we are not even close to cracking it. We are limited by current technology. Anyone who is trying to sell you or your company a “replacement” for your human workforce is selling you the pipe dream of AGI. It is, however, a goal of many companies to develop the next best thing. If AGI does not exist, what do they mean when they are selling AI? There are a couple of things that fall under the umbrella of artificial intelligence, but usually, what is being discussed is a machine learning, or ML, algorithm. ML is the basis for every single AI system being pushed, and it is the only way we have to simulate intelligent decision-making. It is not actual decision-making, but rather a combination of data collection and a well-trained predictive algorithm. IT professionals train machine learning algorithms through data and repetition The system starts with data collection. The more extensive and up-to-date the data, the better. This is where many legal objections have been raised, as customer privacy remains a legal gray area. Common buzzwords such as “data mining,” “web mining,” and “scraping” all refer to the process of collecting large amounts of data. This is also what those large data centers are designed to store. The data is then sorted, categorized, and tagged with a range of characteristics. The algorithm is initially trained manually through supervised modeling and learning, allowing it to learn to “cluster,” or group, similar items. It then narrows its focus and excludes anomalies. Finally, it begins making structured predictions based on interactions with the data and users. These are not actual predictions. The algorithm uses statistical probability to produce results based on data points that often appear together. This is most often seen in systems such as YouTube and Netflix, where the algorithm makes recommendations based on the videos other users have watched. It does not, however, care whether the results are correct. AI algorithms are addicted to interaction, and you are their dealer The downside of how ML is developed and trained is that the systems only function if they focus on what drives interaction. This means the algorithm does not know or care whether the results are accurate, only that users interact with it often. This is the failure point for many of these systems. They will generate results that appear authentic based on the search terms if no results are found in the database. This is a problem for both businesses and legislators because these results are often mistaken for authentic information and have contributed to widespread misinformation. The reason for and burden of data centers Data centers are a necessary evil in this industry. The data collected and the computer infrastructure used to interpret it are massive and constantly growing. Nearly 400 terabytes are added to the internet every second, with an annual growth rate of 15 to 25%. The infrastructure used to gather and interpret the data also needs to scale accordingly. Unfortunately, the costs associated with these centers are not just monetary. They also include demands on infrastructure and natural resources. Water and power are necessary for cooling and operations. However, data centers seldom shoulder the burden of upgrading local infrastructure to meet these needs. In addition, data centers produce very few permanent jobs and contribute little to the local economy. Thus, it is understandable that communities oppose building projects in which local taxpayers shoulder the burden of infrastructure upgrades while seeing no long-term benefits. Data centers are necessary, but developers seem unaware that, if they want to build, they must budget for the necessary infrastructure. What is not AI or machine learning? Mistaking complex software for AI seems to be a common problem in education, where generative AI is understandably prohibited. Still, administrators do not realize that not all software designed to assist users is AI. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text systems may be used by AI systems to collect data and interact with users, but they are not generative AI. Similarly, basic spell-checking and grammar-checking software is not AI, but more advanced systems, such as Grammarly, may use AI to edit. Business systems such as basic chatbots, automated phone menus, and statistical analysis software are also not AI. So, where are ML systems used? The most common examples are search engines and data interpretation software systems. This is also the best use of AI. You ask a question and get results. These systems excel at the inhuman task of taking in trillions of data points, sorting them, and producing results based on statistical predictions. Brokerage firms have spent sums equivalent to the annual GDP of many first-world nations on these predictive analytics systems, and for good reason. Google has become synonymous with searching online by developing the best search algorithm money can buy. You also see the predictive side of these search engines in the recommendations from systems such as Netflix and YouTube. Targeted advertising is the second most common interaction you will have with machine learning. For better or worse, you are nothing but a dataset to a machine learning system, and the more it knows about you, the better it can try to sell you something. On the other side of that, digital marketing firms pay a premium to know what drives interaction and which advertisements are not engaging. Google’s and Facebook’s market dominance lies not in social networking but in targeted advertising and data mining. The more people interact with something, the happier that system is, and the more profitable it can be for an advertiser. Generative pretrained transformers, or GPTs, have become somewhat synonymous with AI, but they use all that data to generate a response that the algorithm believes will drive interaction. Systems such as chatbots and AI assistants can be extremely useful for providing immediate service to customers without needing to scale your customer support system. The problem with these systems is that falsehoods, errors, and “hallucinations” become more prevalent the more they are relied upon to generate new and unique data. Because they are trained to provide information based on likely interaction, these systems often create responses that look true but are incorrect assemblies of information. One of the most common examples occurs when professionals search for peer-reviewed research, and the GPT system provides the title of a paper that was never written, attributed to authors who have never worked together. Once again, the system is an addict and will do anything, including assembling bits of information to fabricate a result that looks like what you asked for, to get that interaction. Where AI really works, and we do not talk about this enough, is in making people more efficient. New video cards use AI to process data more efficiently. Data modeling and predictive systems for weather, natural resources, and healthcare reduce human error and save lives by predicting change. AI is also necessary for many programming languages, such as Python. Correctly applying AI can reduce errors and employee burnout while increasing workforce productivity. The value of AI lies in how you use it It is important to remember that AI is not inherently good or bad. It depends on how it is trusted and applied. ChatGPT is not your friend or personal assistant, but using it to gain a new perspective can make you a more effective leader. The best AI tools for programmers do not replace them, but AI-assisted development can make your team less prone to errors. Chatbots streamline your customer support system, but you will always need a human to tackle complex issues. Healthcare systems such as AlphaFold 3 allow us to fully sequence and model DNA in days rather than months or years, yet scientists are still needed to interpret and use that information. Effective use of AI can make a company more effective, but relying on these systems or using them to replace humans completely is where everything falls apart. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kass James Kass James, Healthcare Business and Disability Specialist Kass James is a forerunner in the field of disability rights, corporate responsibility, and healthcare business. Having been physically disabled for most of his life, Kass was acutely aware of the lack of accessibility in the workplace. His work focuses on restructuring healthcare to increase profitability while benefiting patients, as well as doing patient assessments for ADA compliance and assistive technology. He’s a partner with the Spoonie Advocate Associates, an organization pushing for increasing value and patient outcomes through common sense and responsible change.

He’s hauled everything from groceries to medical supplies—goods that keep daily life running smoothly

Related: 4 Ways To Heal Generational Money Wounds Keeping You From Financial Freedom A third scenario But you are not required to keep living by rules that were written for a world that no longer exists.

Written by: Roar Thun W æ gger, Executive Contributor Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise. Rationality is a myth. Instead, human behavior and circumstances are predictably irrational, especially in a conflict situation that negotiations often are. With a basic understanding of your brain negotiators can handle the human behavior significantly more efficiently. Create an atmosphere of psychological safety so it can help you in your upcoming challenging conversation or negotiation? Without consciousness, and I suggest some negotiation training, a negotiation will often be driven by a “ winner-take-it-all trench war ” approach. It could be related to closing a deal between two parties, higher salary negotiation, or asking for a promotion dialogue. The process might be like a battlefield, a trench war where we “shoot” out our arguments and withdraw back into our trenches with our supporters backing our ego . The emotions drive us, they escalate , and this is what films, theaters, newspapers, and journalists all portray’ negotiations - and it sells. It is entertainment – for those not involved. I want to suggest a different approach. In the leadership and negotiation training and through sparring sessions with my clients I emphasize that negotiations entail trust and collaboration more than pinning an opponent to the ground. I believe in a collaborative approach to negotiation and solving conflict. I not only believe in it, but I have also practiced this negotiation approach for many years and it’s amazing having clients come back very satisfied . Satisfied not only with their outcomes but also satisfied with the process – how they got there and satisfied with the relationship with the other party. One definition of a negotiation is a strategic communication process to solve an issue, a problem, to make a deal. So, we need to focus on the strategic communication process – when we prepare, and during the talks. I say we need to focus on the process, and the content, of course, because many of my clients and participants in training view negotiations as a rational conversation . Rationality is a myth. Instead, human behavior and circumstances are predictably irrational, especially in a conflict situation that negotiations often are. We need to demystify how the parties behave in negotiation and perhaps elsewhere in workplace situations, between spouses, and generally in life. Whether we are managers or negotiators with long or short experience, we make analytical reasoning, but we must not only embrace the reasoned and analytical dialogue as our prevailing model for conflict management. I believe all managers and negotiators should have a basic understanding of our brain and emotions (neuroscience) and basic negotiation frameworks . I believe that it can help them to see breakthroughs when working with the parties or working with the people they manage. With a basic understanding of our brain and emotions, I believe they can handle human behavior significantly more efficiently . When the parties engage a negotiator, or they come to their manager with a conflict between themselves they are often in crisis. They have most likely already been in this crisis for some time. They've been trying to find a solution and ended into or at a dead end. When humans are in crisis, the brain secretes cortisol. Increased cortisol levels affect what we put a spotlight on, how much information a person can hold, process, and use at any given time, our decision making, our risk assessment, our rational cognition, and our perception of "threat". The emotional and physiological response is largely the same for physical threats (a dog attacks you) as for emotional threats ("she should have full care of the children after the divorce"). Our cognitive response alternates between three basic levels of function: The F3 response - fight, fly, freeze, as well as breathing and heartbeat, is our neural network. It links us to survival - a very ancient network that is our instinctive brain . Fear, anger, and love is our social bond. It helps us make decisions and is our emotional brain . Our attention to thoughts, planning, reflection, and problem-solving is our executive ability and rational functions. This one is our thinking brain . The practice of various forms of science, accounting, auditing, engineering, law, etc. are activities of rational functions in our thinking brain, the neo-cortex brain . The challenge is that decision-making processes as we do in negotiations and management are a sub- neo-cortex activity. When one party suddenly changes position and we think they are acting " irrationally ", it is that another part of the brain (the non-executive part, our emotional brain has taken over the functionality. Anyone who is a parent knows that it is a common act to get angry at their children, and it is a relational topic that has remnants from the reptile brain ("my child is in danger, and I need to act"). If our executive brain can reconsider this, in time, then we may be able to ask ourselves (our self-reflection) whether anger is the right answer in this situation. But to be able to do this we need, in advance, to be aware, use consciousness and training a few times – to increase our odds of do the right reaction. Let me give you another example. Anyone who has been sitting around a negotiation table knows that it is a common act to react to the counterpart when they make their outreaches position, and it is a relational topic that has remnants from the instinctive brain ("my client or myself is in danger, and I need to act"). If our executive brain can reconsider this, in time, then we may be able to ask ourselves (self-reflection) whether a reaction is the right answer or the right action in this situation. Consider how useful a conscious manager or a trained negotiator can be if he/she recognizes when the other party suddenly changes position, and we think they are acting " irrationally ". Although we are "connected" to social co-operation and to connect, we are highly reactive to threats as when the other party makes their outreaches position or use threatening, ambiguous, or blurred communicate. Our brain has an attraction to the negative. Our brain has a negativity bias . This means that our sympathetic nervous system lights up on a touch of a threat experience, and that "threats, punishment, and pain" is more effective than "rewards!" This creates an internal critic who robs us of a desire for a solution, peace, and emotional well-being. Think for a moment about the instinctive brain . The system has been used for millions of years to notice negative experiences and will alarm a negative experience as prominent in memory. With threatening, ambiguous, or blurred communication between the parties in a negotiation or between a manager and a subordinate, this means that if a negative interpretation can be drawn, then it will be done, rather than a positive interpretation. Our brain’s negativity bias is so well worked out that it takes five positive actions to undo a single negative action or word. This is part of the reason parties in a negotiation will do more to avoid losses than to realize a gain, more to limit risks than to be creative and explore opportunities. The parties will more easily go to battle than be problem-solvers. The avoidance system – with threats, punishment, and pain - is routinely connected so that it hijacks the other two systems, the approaches system with rewards , and the premium system to connect with the others . The result of an experience of threat activity, such as a high demand or acting provocatively in our communication, is that the party in a dispute overestimates the threat and thus will go to battle, and they underestimate the possibility that lies in problem-solving in its initial assessments. Therefore, as a facilitator and a sparring partner, in negotiations and challenging conversations, I assist my clients in their preparation to reconsider what they experience as pain or threat. The same goes for a mediator or a manager. When colleagues come to you asking for help as their manager, they need your help to reconsider what they experience as pain or threat. Otherwise, the brain continues to pump cortisol and amplify the stress they have with the other party. Perhaps someone recognizes an argument they have had with their colleague, their partner, or their child at this point? The cost of not steering the party towards reconsidering the action or words is that actions and decisions taken while the party feels threatened will lead to overreactions, which makes the other party feel threatened, and a negative spiral will start, and the parties will slide further apart. Negative emotions limit the party's responses and alternatives to specific actions – such as the F3 response (Fight, Flight, or Freeze). The approach system is blocked, consequently limiting the brain's ability to analyze alternatives to a negotiated solution and opportunities for creative solution proposals. What can you do? My advice is to handle yourself first – it’s the same as the air stewardess says during safety instruction – “ put on your mask first before helping others ”. If I, in my priming into the negotiation process and in my preparation , will be able to handle myself, what I call the ME-phase, before WE meet, I will use my consciousness and knowledge to understand or at least try to understand the other party’s motivation. Then I can help create the fundament for a new path. A path where we will start looking at the content together. The conflicting positions, the underlying conflicting interests, but also our separate and common interests, in addition to a path on how we can create a constructive process. Let us start my negotiation with how we shall negotiate. To walk the path toward getting the influence of the other party, to create an atmosphere of psychological safety, so you later can close the deal with them, we need to use a lot more than our rationale. We need to use our whole minds – the rational, logical, and emotional minds. In this, we are using concepts from neuroscience to influence emotions as a core skill in navigating our communication with others. I train and consult clients to be aware of themselves and to combine awareness, knowledge, and experiences in neuroscience and negotiations, and conflict resolution. To be specific what we do when we prime a negotiation process and prepare to meet the other party, we prime ourselves on how we will deal with them and link them more to excitement and well-being than to the other four emotions, such as anger, regret, fear, or sadness. If we start a difficult conversation, a meeting, or a negotiation when parties feel anger, sadness or threat, their minds will be in what we might call “the stubborn state” – this is the time when our brain cannot take in information that does not fit, and thus maintains or justifies the emotion we feel. Our ability to think rationally is disconnected. For example, have you ever tried to apologize to someone while they're still mad at you? It's useless. Stubbornness condition lasts an average of 20 minutes, and the person experiencing the strong feeling simply cannot take in any new information until the stubborn state has passed. If you are not aware of this you might invite to a meeting and in a good western tradition or culture of efficiency, you go straight to the main point where you know the other party and you disagree, maybe the most. What state do you believe the other party’s mind will be in? The stubborn state, and their ability to think rationally is disconnected. Their instinctive brain used for millions of years to notice negative experiences have alarmed a negative experience. They will interpret your positive ideas and positive intentions as threatening and ambiguous, and negative interpretations most certainly have been drawn. Remember, our brain’s negativity bias is so well worked out that it takes five positive actions to undo a single negative action or word. Therefore, we prime and prepare well for the process so we can minimize or avoid losses and risks and maximize the ability to create an atmosphere to realize a gain, be creative and explore opportunities. We help avoid going to battle and more to be problem-solvers. I say to my participants in training – this is not about being avoiding, soft, nice, and being best friends with the other part. This is about avoiding walking away from the negotiation table when the communication becomes hard, positional, and difficult, and to be sitting around the table and sort them out, maximizing your deal, and create win-win solutions so you make sure the other party will fulfill the agreement after it is signed. We can't prevent thoughts and feelings, either negative or positive. We can train ourselves to become more aware and conscious on how we will react to them. Thoughts and feelings are information and not directives. Emotions in negotiations are indicators of needs, and interests – embrace them. The best decisions in the board room as well as around the negotiation tables can be improved when we focus on making the discussion more robust. That means embracing vigorous debate instead of shying away from conflict. This means, c reating an atmosphere of psychological safety. This can help managers and negotiators in their upcoming challenging conversations and negotiation. As a manager , you can do this with your team, and as a negotiator , you can do this in your preparation with your team but also during the negotiation. After being creative you need to evaluate ideas and see what elements are sustainable and what ideas are not – because you not only negotiate a deal – you also want the deal to manifest and be fulfilled. I hope you as a manager or negotiator can reflect on these advices and act on them in your upcoming work. ROAR THUN WÆGGER CEO | Facilitator Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , and LinkedIn , or visit my website for more info! Read more from Roar Thun Wægger Roar Thun W æ gger, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Roar Thun Waegger followed his passion for working with his clients to create great deals and to solve conflicts. A reformed lawyer that now is dedicated to facilitating negotiation and mediation training, and conflict resolution workshops, he is also an internationally certified mediator and a sparring partner for clients all over the world. Roar is the founder and CEO of Waegger Negotiation Institute. He facilitates and tailors negotiation processes for his clients so that they can overcome difficulties, using the intricacies of The Power of Nice® or the unique combined negotiation and neuroscience concept Negotiation with the Brain in MIND®. His years of experience have taught him that problem-solving.

Written by Annette Densham, Chief Storyteller Multi-award-winning PR specialist Annette Densham is considered the go-to for all things business storytelling, award submission writing, and assisting business leaders in establishing themselves as authorities in their field. Chantelle Ryan is no stranger to hard work. She’s a mother to nine children, and she had been pouring her heart and soul into the regional education system for two decades when she started a sideline project (which has grown into a powerful service) from her living room, with one support worker. She set out to make a difference to a few families. She never imagined this day would come, nor that things would turn out the way they did. Throughout her twenty years in the educational system in Dubbo, she watched the same trend repeat on a loop. Children in regional New South Wales were entering school significantly more vulnerable than their metropolitan peers, and the services designed to support them were concentrated far from the communities that needed them most. “Children walk out of class, refuse to participate, shut down, or fail to succeed, and like clockwork, these kids are labelled as ‘complicated’,” Chantelle said. “It’s hard to believe it’s possible for so many children with such varying challenges to all be blanketed under one term.” Driven to look more closely, Chantelle discovered that ‘complicated’ children aren’t the problem. “It’s a systemic issue,” Chantelle said. “In some regional areas, one in three children begins school developmentally vulnerable, and as they move through the system, they need therapeutic support. But the challenge is, access to this support can take months to get.” Waiting lists in many regional areas are months long. Families are told there’s no provider available locally. “This means many children slip between the cracks of this broken system. Families become isolated and overwhelmed,” Chantelle said. “It becomes a cycle, as these kids grow up with no prospects, in the middle of nowhere, with no future to strive for. It compounds, and the struggle becomes ingrained in the culture.” Chantelle’s professional life was stable. Working in education offered security and predictability, but staying comfortable while witnessing this became unconscionable. Spear and Arrow Therapeutic Support Services was born in her living room, with one contractor and a massive problem to tackle. Can two people in the middle of nowhere, with no resources, make a dent in a system that resists change? Chantelle wanted families to have one point of contact when they needed to access behaviour support, therapy, and coordination. This big dream meant everything had to exist within one framework. To create that structure was not easy; it would drastically increase administrative complexity alongside the headache of dealing with governance frameworks, compliance, supervision structures, and documentation standards. Chantelle was determined that it was possible to build something extraordinary in a sector already known for burnout. The beauty of rural communities is that news travels fast, and reputation is your biggest ally. It wasn’t long before stories of children’s lives being transformed spread, and very quickly, recruitment followed reputation. Staff numbers increased. Today, Spear & Arrow employs more than 30 team members and supports over 100 participants across the Central West, generating annual revenue exceeding $1.5 million with steady year-on-year growth. Chantelle never imagined that helping families in need, those on the outskirts with no access to help, would lead to a thriving venture and transformed lives, but here we are. The scale is significant in a regional context, but Chantelle measures impact by the number of families who previously travelled long distances for coordinated care and can now access integrated services locally. Spear & Arrow is Indigenous-owned and operates on Wiradjuri Country. Cultural safety and community accountability are embedded in policy and practice. More than half of annual profits are reinvested into workforce development and service expansion. When demand for respite services became clear, Chantelle led the development of Wiluray Gunyah, a purpose-built respite house shaped through community consultation and designed to reflect domestic rather than institutional care. The organisation continues to expand cautiously across the Central West, but even after all this success, the underlying objective stays the same: to bring access to quality disability and behaviour support, and that help should not depend on postcode. Follow me on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , and visit my website for more info! Read more from Annette Densham Annette Densham, Chief Storyteller Multi-award-winning PR specialist Annette Densham is considered the go-to for all things business storytelling, award submission writing, and assisting business leaders in establishing themselves as authorities in their field. She has shared her insights into storytelling, media, and business across Australia, the UK, and the US, speaking for the Professional Speakers Association, Stevie Awards, Queensland Government, and many more. Three-time winner of the Grand Stevie Award for Women in Business, gold Stevie International Business Award, and a finalist in Australian Small Business Champion awards, Annette audaciously challenges anyone in small business to cast aside modesty, embrace their genius, and share their stories.

Yet somehow, your carefully constructed boundaries keep crumbling.

It guards you, cleanses you, and keeps you flowing with life. It relies entirely on YOU, your movement, your breath, your posture, and your lifestyle, to keep it flowing Your body is simply asking you to open the river a little wider and let it flow. 7 joyful ways to keep Keep it flowing. Keep it clear.