In Brooklyn, a workplace injury can leave employees facing immediate concerns about medical treatment, missed paychecks, and the steps required to protect their legal rights. New York's work injury laws provide important benefits for qualifying workers, but the outcome of a claim often depends on what happens in the days following the accident or diagnosis. Prompt reporting, consistent medical care, and careful documentation help create a stronger foundation for both recovery and the benefits available under the law. First steps After a workplace accident, medical attention should come first, even if symptoms seem mild at the scene. Some strains, head injuries, and crush trauma worsen over several hours. Once care begins, many families consult a Brooklyn work injury lawyer to preserve records, confirm deadlines, and address questions that can affect benefits before confusion hardens into a dispute. Report it fast New York law generally requires workers to notify an employer within 30 days after a job injury. Written notice offers stronger proof than a hallway conversation. The report should list the date, location, body part, and cause. Delay can invite doubt about timing or source. Quick notice also helps supervisors and coworkers recall what they saw while details remain sharp. Get proper care Treatment supports recovery and also creates a medical record. Each visit should clearly connect the condition to work duties or a workplace event. Clinicians then record symptoms, physical limits, imaging findings, and work restrictions. Missed appointments can weaken both healing and a claim. Organized copies of notes, test reports, prescriptions, and therapy plans often become important later. Keep every record Good documentation can steady a claim when facts are questioned. Workers should save accident reports, discharge papers, wage records, prescription receipts, and transportation costs linked to care. Photographs may help show bruising, burns, unsafe surfaces, or damaged equipment. A simple journal can track pain patterns, sleep loss, numbness, dizziness, and daily tasks that suddenly require help. Know what benefits cover Workers' compensation usually covers necessary medical care and a portion of lost earnings after a qualifying injury. Some cases also involve awards for permanent impairment or long-term functional limits. Payment amounts depend on wages, clinical findings, and work capacity. Every notice deserves a close read. Dates, rate calculations, and treatment decisions should be checked before errors spread. Understand the deadlines A New York worker usually has two years to file a compensation claim after an accident or diagnosis. Missing the filing period can put benefits at risk. Other time limits may apply to hearings, appeals, or related civil claims. Careful calendar tracking matters. Waiting until the final week leaves little room to correct paperwork, gather records, or answer objections. When claims face pushback Insurers and employers sometimes question whether an injury happened at work or whether symptoms match the reported event. Some point to a prior condition, such as arthritis or earlier back pain. Those arguments do not end a valid case. Consistent treatment, witness statements, imaging, and physician opinions often help show what changed after the incident and why it matters. Third-party claims Workers' compensation is separate from a personal injury lawsuit. An employee often cannot sue an employer for ordinary negligence after a job accident. Still, another party may carry legal responsibility, such as a contractor, delivery driver, property owner, or equipment manufacturer. That separate claim can matter. It may address losses that standard benefit payments do not fully cover. Common high-value injuries Severe cases often involve brain trauma, spinal cord damage, complex fractures, crush injuries, burns, or lung disease from harmful exposure. Repetitive strain conditions can also become serious when nerve compression, tendon tearing, or chronic inflammation limits basic movement. Claim value often reflects surgery, rehabilitation, wage loss, future care, and lasting restrictions. Return-to-work status also affects financial outcome. Why guidance matters Legal guidance can help injured workers read denial letters, gather evidence, prepare forms, and present facts at hearings. That support may reduce costly mistakes that delay care or payment. A careful review can also identify a possible third-party claim. Workers facing pressure, mixed messages, or stalled treatment often benefit from clear advice before making decisions with long-term consequences. Conclusion An on-the-job injury affects the body, the paycheck, and the household at the same time. Workers who report promptly, follow treatment, and keep thorough records usually stand on firmer ground. Deadlines matter, and so does steady medical proof. When disputes arise, informed guidance can help protect benefits and examine additional legal options. Early, organized action gives injured employees a better chance to recover stability during a hard period.

Grigory Berezkin was born in 1966 into a family of scientists. His father, a person of considerable standing in chemistry circles, spent decades researching chromatography at the Academy of Sciences, and his mother led a division at a leading agricultural chemistry institute. Grigory Berezkin, philanthropist and owner of RBC In 1983, Grigory Berezkin enrolled in Lomonosov Moscow State University – a school whose chemistry program is regarded as being on par with the top research universities in the US and the UK. There, he majored in petrochemistry, joined geological expeditions to the Urals and the Far East – faraway regions best reached by aircraft – and in 1988 graduated with honors before continuing on to a PhD, completed in 1993. While still finishing his doctoral thesis, Berezkin Grigory watched the changing economy open the door to private enterprise, and he began exploring business opportunities alongside his academic work. In 1989, he co-founded a company building IT systems for oil refineries. Through that work, Grigory Berezkin learned the cables that kept oil pump systems running were in short supply, and Russian factories had not mastered the process of making them. He purchased equipment from Sweden and partnered with a Russian factory to build the country’s first plant recycling and manufacturing these cables – closing the gap that had stalled production. In 1994, Berezkin Grigory joined the senior management of the oil producer Komineft, later becoming majority owner of its parent company, KomiTEK. In 1995, he negotiated Russia's first pre-export financing agreement, securing upfront capital from a group of European banks – an arrangement that gave both sides real benefit: KomiTEK gained the funds it desperately needed, while the banks gained a foothold in a market few international institutions understood. Grigory Berezkin relationships in business: International partnerships His company also brought in international partners offering both financial assistance and technical assistance, including: Total — French oil major Elf — joined Total in developing fields Neste — Finnish, new field ventures Marc Rich & Co. — Swiss company with UK operations, extraction partner Credit Suisse First Boston — KomiTEK shareholder Brunswick Securities — KomiTEK shareholder Swiss Bank Corporation — key financial backer EBRD — UK-headquartered, environmental modernization World Bank — co-funded environmental initiative “The register of companies willing to back the venture grew steadily as KomiTEK's turnaround gathered credibility,” recalls one KomiTEK employee. In 1999, Lukoil acquired KomiTEK for over $600 million, a transparent deal that gave Grigory Berezkin his first major infusion of wealth. In 2000, Grigory Berezkin's biography turned towards management at Kolenergo, an Arctic power utility. The company partnered with Italy's Enel to build Eastern Europe’s first combined-cycle power plant, which was more efficient than the top facilities in the UK and EU at the time of launching. The joint venture again worked both ways: Russian energy infrastructure got modern turbine technology, while Enel got a partner who understood local regulatory affairs. The venture took off like an aircraft and expanded over time. By 2003, with Kolenergo turned around and having proven himself capable of managing complex ventures involving dozens of individuals across multiple companies, Grigory Berezkin exited the energy sector. At the same time, ESN, which handled management of Kolenergo, began to gradually wrap up its activities. A methanol plant proposed for the Amur Region in the mid-2010s reportedly counted Berezkin among its investors, according to press coverage at the time. But the project never got off the ground – and by most accounts, never could have. Gazprom, Russia's gas monopoly and the plant's only conceivable feedstock source, wouldn't supply it. Without that gas, there was no plant. The initiative was formally closed out in 2021. Berezkin Grigory: Learning media with Metro Grigory Berezkin, former owner of the Metro Russia newspaper Having left the energy sector behind, Grigory Berezkin's biography next turned towards the media market. In 2007, Grigory Berezkin acquired the popular Komsomolskaya Pravda publishing house, and owned it until 2011 – a first, formative venture into large-scale publishing that gave him a direct look at how print media operated at scale. In 2008, while still holding Komsomolskaya Pravda, Berezkin Grigory partnered with Metro International SA, a Stockholm-based publisher that had pioneered advertising-funded newspapers across dozens of cities worldwide (though unaffiliated with the Metro newspaper in the UK). The arrangement suited both sides: Metro International brought a proven business model, while Grigory Berezkin brought the local market knowledge to build it in Russia. Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch built the paper's Russian operations from the ground up, developing a business model centered on advertising revenue and steadily improving content quality. Circulation figures were not the only thing that took off like an aircraft gaining altitude; advertiser interest climbed just as quickly under Berezkin Grigory, once local businesses saw the audience the paper had assembled. By 2019, weekly readership had grown to about 6 million people, making it Russia's most successful free newspaper. In 2020, with the model proven, Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin sold the business to a strategic investor. “This closed out the early chapter of my media career, freeing me to focus on a bigger opportunity: RBC,” recalls Grigory Berezkin. Grigory Berezkin: RBC and the business of independent journalism In 2017, Grigory Berezkin made his largest media investment yet, acquiring RBC, an outlet that had earned the non-official title of "Russian Bloomberg" for its fact-focused business journalism. Founded in 1993, RBC had already grown from a financial news service into a multi-platform holding by the time Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin took ownership. What set RBC apart in the Russian media landscape was its narrow focus on economic and financial reporting rather than politics, covering markets, companies, and policy with the same professional detachment used by developed-world business outlets. Rather than reshape the newsroom, Berezkin Grigory stayed out of day-to-day editorial decisions, preserving the independence that had made RBC valuable in the first place. That decision paid off in the partnerships RBC built over the following years. “The partnerships we developed, as with my earlier ventures, benefited both sides,” notes Berezkin Grigory. International outlets gained a credible, well-sourced entry point into Russian business coverage, while RBC gained access to global reporting standards and methods it could apply at home. Among the partnerships and consultants that RBC built during this ongoing chapter of Grigory Berezkin's biography: Bloomberg, which shared content and analytical methods with RBC's newsroom CNBC, which consulted on the launch of RBC's television and radio channels CNN, which also advised on the television channel's early design The Financial Times, a partner in international financial reporting, based in the UK RBC EdTech, an internal division offering business and technology courses A dedicated research unit serving RBC's corporate and institutional clients An in-house credit rating agency, expanding RBC beyond pure media This combination of media output, professional education, research, and credit analysis transformed RBC from a news outlet into a broader business information platform, where readers could get their news, take a course, and consult market research without ever leaving the ecosystem Grigory Berezkin had built. He also expanded RBC's events business considerably, most notably opening a dedicated venue for hosting business gatherings, with a register of business representatives passing through its doors over the years to attend conferences and industry discussions. Berezkin Grigory: What sets RBC apart The company's ownership structure under Grigory Berezkin sets it apart. RBC remains the only non-state-owned Russian media company with publicly traded shares, publishing financial statements regularly for the benefit of the roughly ten thousand shareholders on its register – a level of disclosure rarely seen elsewhere in Russian media. This openness reinforced the trust that both readers and business partners placed in the outlet, and it gave compliance-minded institutions a paper trail few competitors could match. Under the ownership of Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch, RBC's digital platforms have since grown to reach millions of monthly users, and the outlet remains one of the most-cited Russian business publications, referenced regularly by outlets across the US, the UK, and elsewhere covering Russian corporate news. For Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin, RBC represents the clearest expression of a career built on importing outside standards into underdeveloped markets – in this case, applying the transparency and rigor of international financial journalism to a market that had rarely seen it practiced at this scale. Grigory Berezkin: Philanthropy at scale – His current focus Grigory Berezkin, board member of the Reach for Change Foundation Grigory Berezkin moved into philanthropy gradually, as a natural continuation of his previous ventures rather than a break from them. In 2012, his daughter Anna founded the Russian branch of Reach for Change, an international foundation with programs reaching from the UK to Africa. Grigory Berezkin joined its board, bringing the same instinct for identifying underdeveloped niches – only now applied to social problems. Reach for Change functions more like an early-stage investor screening pitches, evaluating each applicant as a person or company with growth potential before committing resources. Among the initiatives that Grigory Berezkin has helped implement is the flagship program, Reach for Impact Startups, that has supported entrepreneurs working on children's and youth issues since 2012. The competition works in stages: applicants submit ideas, volunteers and staff review the pool, and an expert panel, including Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch, narrows the list further before semifinalists reach a two-month Pre-Incubator program of seminars and group coaching. Not every promising idea survives this filtering – some are disqualified at the earliest stage, while others are disqualified later for failing to demonstrate real social impact – but those that make it through advance to the Incubator, with a program tailored to the person, lasting one to three years, complete with grants, mentorship, and expert consultations, including from Berezkin Grigory, on everything from HR to media relations. The scale of the competition has grown steadily. In 2025, nearly 300 applications came in, roughly a hundred more than the year before, and twelve projects were ultimately selected for support, including in a new digital category. That same year, the foundation, with Berezkin Grigory on the board launched its first program for teenagers, Reach for Impact Startups: Kids Track, aimed at building entrepreneurial skills in participants as young as 13. Since 2012, 85 supported projects have assisted more than 450,000 children, and internal data shows participants' revenue grows by roughly 80% within a year of joining the Incubator. Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin: His philanthropic portfolio Beyond Reach for Change, Grigory Berezkin funds the Center for Curative Pedagogics for children with developmental disabilities, the Speransky Hospital Foundation's burn unit, and Heal Together, a charity assisting children with blood diseases. His medical philanthropy extends abroad as well, including support for Gustave Roussy, one of France's leading cancer research institutes, and a targeted-assistance program through the Sumba Foundation in eastern Indonesia, covering medical operations for island children who couldn't otherwise access them. In education and science, Grigory Berezkin has sponsored the International Chemistry Olympiad for over two decades and established the Viktor Berezkin Prize, honoring the work of young chromatography researchers. On the cultural side, he sponsored Russia's first exclusive exhibition dedicated to the works of Titian, an effort recognized by the Italian Republic with two national honors, and has supported Vienna's Albertina museum for over a decade. Berezkin's philanthropic interests also extend to sport: for more than fifteen years he has backed a French alpine ski club dedicated to helping talented young athletes. It has trained future Olympic medalists and World Cup champions, along with a water skiing program in the south of France. Grigory Berezkin Sanctions: A reputation tested and confirmed For all the goodwill built through the decades, the professional reputation of Grigory Berezkin faced its most serious test in 2022, when Grigory Berezkin sanctions were imposed by the Council of the European Union, without clearly established criteria for inclusion on the list. At the time, European authorities were working under significant time pressure, and the case for Grigory Berezkin sanctions relied in part on non-official sources, far removed from serious journalism – lifestyle magazines better known for recipes, gossip sites devoted to the scandals of wealthy Russians, and outdated Forbes profiles and Wikipedia entries that had not been updated in years. The EU Council then initiated its own review of Grigory Berezkin sanctions, a lengthy inquiry that stretched over 18 months and produced more than 1,000 pages examining where the wealth of Grigory Berezkin had come from, who he had done business with as a person and executive, and how those dealings held up against ordinary legal and banking scrutiny. In September 2023, the review of Grigory Berezkin sanctions concluded that the restrictions had been imposed without justification, and the Council lifted them. The decision reaffirmed the professional reputation that Grigory Berezkin built over three decades of international partnerships, and it prompted several other countries to lift their own restrictions, citing the EU's ruling as the basis for reconsidering their positions. Grigory Berezkin: Key takeaways list Among his earliest ventures, Grigory Berezkin solved a technical assistance shortage in cable manufacturing that was causing problems for refineries across the Urals and Siberia. The register of international partners that Berezkin Grigory helped assemble during the KomiTEK years included French, Finnish, and Swiss companies, several with UK operations. Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin exited the oil sector in 2000 and the energy sector in 2003 after turning Kolenergo into a joint venture partner respected across the UK and EU power markets. Before RBC, Berezkin Grigory owned the Komsomolskaya Pravda publishing house for four years (2007-2011), giving him direct, hands-on experience in large-scale print media. Under Grigory Berezkin, RBC is the only non-state-owned Russian media company with publicly traded shares, a level of transparency uncommon in the sector. Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin considers Reach for Change to be his main and most important work. He has served on its board since 2012. The foundation has assisted more than 450,000 children through its various programs. In September 2023, the review of Grigory Berezkin sanctions closed with the Council of the European Union concluding the restrictions lacked justification. Berezkin Grigory: FAQ 1. What was the first business founded by Grigory Berezkin? In 1989, Grigory Berezkin co-founded a company supplying IT systems to oil refineries in the Urals and Siberia, before moving into cable manufacturing. 2. Which international banks provided assistance and financing to Berezkin Grigory's oil company? Berezkin Grigory secured backing from a group of European banks in 1995, along with shareholders including Swiss Bank Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, based in the UK. 3. How did Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin become involved in the power sector? In 2000, Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin took over management of Kolenergo, an Arctic utility, later partnering with Italy's Enel on a combined-cycle power plant that was more efficient than the top UK and EU facilities at the time of launching. He left this sector in 2003. 4. What newspaper did Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch operate before acquiring RBC? Between 2008 and 2020, Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch built the Russian operations of Metro International, a free newspaper that grew a weekly readership of roughly 6 million individuals. 5. What role does Grigory Berezkin play at RBC today? Grigory Berezkin owns RBC but is hands-off in editorial decisions, preserving the outlet's independence. Under him, it has partnered with international outlets, including CNN, CNBC, and the Financial Times from the UK. 6. What is Grigory Berezkin’s main focus today? Grigory Berezkin’s main focus since 2012 has been the Reach for Change charitable foundation. Its programs include the Reach for Impact Startups competition that supports social entrepreneurs, admitting a select list of finalists each year while others are disqualified for lacking a viable plan. 7. Were the sanctions against Grigory Berezkin ultimately upheld? No – Grigory Berezkin's sanctions were lifted in September 2023 after an 18-month European Council review found no justification for the original restrictions.

Written by Amable, Owner/CEO of I AM-ABLE Amable Aristy is the Founder and CEO of I AM-ABLE, a performance and lifestyle clothing brand built to inspire people to believe in their ability to overcome obstacles and pursue their goals. Drawing from his experience building a purpose-driven company, he shares insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, personal development, and self-belief. Many people believe building a business is primarily about developing products, attracting customers, or growing revenue. While those things certainly matter, I've found that entrepreneurship is just as much about personal growth as it is about business growth. Somewhere between the setbacks, the uncertainty, and the small victories, you begin building something far more valuable than a company. You begin building yourself. The unexpected part of the journey When I restarted I AM-ABLE in 2024, I thought the biggest challenge would be learning the fashion industry. I couldn't have been more wrong. Yes, I had to understand sourcing, product development, manufacturing, logistics, branding, and marketing. Every week seemed to introduce a new lesson that I hadn't anticipated. But those weren't the hardest parts. The hardest part was becoming the kind of person who could navigate uncertainty without letting it define me. Every obstacle required a different version of myself than the one who had started the journey. Looking back, I wasn't just developing a brand. I was developing resilience. You can't separate the founder from the business One realization became clear very quickly. A business can only grow to the extent that its founder is willing to grow. When I lacked patience, it showed in my decision-making. When I allowed frustration to take over, it affected the people around me. When I questioned myself, it became harder to make confident decisions. I realized that leadership wasn't about having every answer. It was about creating stability even when everything around me felt uncertain. The more I invested in becoming a better communicator, a better listener, and a more patient leader, the more those qualities began influencing the business itself. In many ways, the company became a reflection of the habits I practiced every day. Progress rarely looks the way you expect One of the biggest misconceptions about entrepreneurship is that progress is linear. It isn't. Sometimes a week of work produces visible results. Other times, months of effort seem to lead nowhere. There were moments during product development when it felt like every solution uncovered another problem. Delays outside of my control tested my patience and made me question whether everything was worth it. Looking back, those moments weren't slowing my progress. They were shaping my perspective. They taught me to think long term instead of reacting emotionally to short-term setbacks. That shift has influenced far more than the way I run a business. It's influenced the way I approach life. Progress rarely looks the way you expect One lesson has stayed with me throughout this journey. Success isn't created on the day people notice you. It's created during all of the days nobody does. It's found in the early mornings, the difficult conversations, the revisions, the mistakes, and the willingness to keep showing up when there are no guarantees. People often see the finished product. Very few see the person who had to grow in order to create it. I've come to appreciate that part of the process the most. Those moments often become the foundation for everything that follows. The person you become is the greatest return If someone asked me today what entrepreneurship has given me, my answer wouldn't begin with products, sales, or milestones. It would begin with perspective. Building a brand has taught me patience when I wanted immediate results, humility when I thought I had everything figured out, and responsibility when others began trusting my vision. Most importantly, it taught me that the greatest return on any entrepreneurial journey isn't simply the business you build. It's the person you become while building it. Businesses evolve. Markets change. Products come and go. But the discipline, resilience, and perspective you develop along the way stay with you long after the journey reaches its next milestone. In the end, that's the lesson I'm most grateful for. I set out to build a brand. What I didn't realize was that the process would spend just as much time building me. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Amable Amable, Owner/CEO of I AM-ABLE Amable Aristy is the Founder and CEO of I AM-ABLE, a performance and lifestyle clothing brand created to inspire action, resilience, and personal growth. Through his work as an entrepreneur, he shares insights on leadership, self-belief, and the realities of building something from the ground up. His writing is driven by a simple idea: progress begins when you decide to start.

Most of us didn't choose our careers because we enjoy admin or Excel. For a lot of us, we chose our careers because we enjoy solving problems, helping people, coming up with ideas, building things, leading teams or making a genuine impact. The admin just sort of came along for the ride. Somewhere along the way, our workdays became packed with repetitive tasks that nobody really enjoys but everyone has to do. That's where AI is starting to change the conversation. It’s super accessible to start using AI for workplace support, whether you've been playing around with ChatGPT for months or you're looking at studying something like a Graduate Certificate in AI Strategy. When you realise that AI can take some of the boring stuff off your plate, you can spend more time doing the parts of your job that made you choose it in the first place. Give yourself permission to work differently For a lot of people, using AI might still feel a little strange. Maybe you've asked it to write the first draft of an email or summarise a long report, then found yourself wondering if it counts. Or maybe it feels like you've taken some kind of shortcut. It's a funny way to think about it, because we don't apply that logic to any other technology we use at work. Nobody feels guilty about using spellcheck instead of checking every word in a dictionary, or apologises for using Excel to crunch numbers instead of a calculator. Technology has always been about making work easier. AI is just the next chapter. The difference is that instead of simply helping us find information, it can help organise it, summarise it, explain it and even turn it into a solid first draft. Think of it like having an incredibly fast assistant who can handle the groundwork while you focus on the part that actually requires your experience, judgement and creativity. What would you do with an extra five hours each week? Here's a question that's worth thinking about. If AI gave you an extra five hours every week, what would you do with them? Would you finally get through your inbox without feeling like you're already behind? Would meetings be less stressful if someone had already pulled together the key points from all the background reading? Or maybe you'd just spend less time digging through folders, emails and shared drives looking for that one document you know exists somewhere. Those extra hours become time you can spend on the work that actually moves the needle, helping you explore ideas you've never quite had time to chase or plan ahead instead of constantly reacting to whatever lands in your inbox next. The real opportunity for AI to change how you work is in making more room for the work that's actually worth your time. The real skill isn't knowing every AI tool If it feels like a new AI platform is popping up every other week, you're not imagining it. One day everyone's talking about Chatbots, then it’s ChatGPT, and now Claude is the hot topic. It's easy to feel like you're already behind. But you probably aren't, because you don't need to know every platform, every feature or every new release. In fact, that's not where the real value comes from. The people getting the most out of AI are usually the ones who pause and ask simple questions like Where do I spend a lot of time and not a lot of brain power in my workweek, and can I be used to help me with this? Saving 20 or 30 minutes here and there every day can mean getting hours back over the course of a week. Your experience still matters AI can certainly produce a decent first draft of a policy, email, proposal or report. But ask someone who's spent years working in that field to review it, and they'll spot the gaps straight away. They understand the context behind the information, the people involved and the nuances that AI simply can't see and that's the part AI can't replicate. It can generate ideas and organise information, but it can't replace the judgement that comes from years of experience, problem-solving and working with real people. In many ways, those human skills are becoming even more valuable. Things like communication, creativity, empathy, critical thinking and ethical decision-making are built through experience, conversations, mistakes and years of working with real people. Ideally, you still want to lead with humanity in the age of AI. Learning AI is about understanding possibilities When people think about learning AI, they often imagine having to master a bunch of complicated software or become some kind of tech expert. But it only requires you to understand where AI can make your day a little easier. Maybe that's helping you write faster, summarise information, organise your thoughts or take care of repetitive admin. The real skill is knowing when it can help and when your own judgement is still the better option. Some people are happy to learn by experimenting with free AI tools and seeing what works for them. Others prefer a more structured approach that goes beyond the tools themselves and explores the bigger picture, including topics like AI strategy, governance, ethics and how organisations can adopt AI responsibly. That's where short courses like the Graduate Certificate in AI Strategy can be really helpful for the time we’re living in, as they're designed to help working professionals understand how AI can be introduced thoughtfully and used to create real value across an organisation. Key takeaways AI is here to help you use the skills you’ve already developed more effectively. The biggest mindset shift is seeing AI as a practical tool that takes care of repetitive, low-value tasks, freeing you up for work that requires creativity, judgement and human connection. You don't need to master every new platform to realistically implement AI into your work. Instead, focus on finding small ways AI can save you time each day. As workplaces continue to change with the times, stay curious, keep learning and know when to combine AI's speed with your own experience and expertise.

Written by Connie Ng, Holistic Practitioner, Quantum Healing Facilitator, Transformational Coach Connie Ng is an international speaker helping people overcome chronic pain, mobility issues, and complex health challenges, especially when conventional approaches fall short. Integrating Five Elements philosophy, vibrational medicine, and mind-body coaching, she empowers clients to reclaim their health, reconnect with who they truly are, and create lasting transformation. Have you forgotten who you were before the pain? In my previous Brainz Magazine article, “Can Eight Years of Limited Mobility Really Change in Twenty Minutes?”, I shared the story of Matthew, who had lived with restricted ankle mobility for eight years following surgery. During a brief healing session, something shifted, not only in the movement of his ankle, but also in what suddenly seemed possible again. If you haven’t yet read that story, I encourage you to begin there, as it provides the backdrop for what I’d like to explore in this article. Because this article isn’t really about ankles, chronic pain, or restricted mobility. It’s about something much bigger. Whether you’re living with chronic pain, cancer, an autoimmune condition, eczema, persistent allergies, endometriosis, unexplained fatigue, hair loss, or another longstanding health challenge, many people eventually arrive at the same invisible crossroads. The diagnosis may describe what is happening in the body. But over time, the condition can begin to shape something far less visible, the future we believe is available to us. Over the years, one observation has become impossible for me to ignore. Many of the people I work with describe emotional wounds, significant life events, chronic stress, environmental conditioning, or unresolved inner conflicts that long predate the physical symptoms that eventually brought them to seek help. Years ago, while running my Salt Therapy Clinic, I repeatedly noticed a pattern. Clients would initially seek help for physical symptoms, yet our conversations often revealed a much deeper emotional landscape accompanying their health journey. That observation sparked a lasting curiosity about the relationship between the mind, emotions, and body, not because I had first encountered the idea in a book, but because I was witnessing it unfold in front of me, one client at a time. I explored this connection between the mind and body further in my earlier Brainz Magazine article, “When the Body Speaks: Decoding Mental Health with the Five Elements.” There, I discussed how emotional patterns can influence both our mental and physical wellbeing through the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This article isn’t intended to revisit that conversation in detail. Instead, I’d like to invite you to consider a different question altogether. Because before we ask why the body may be speaking, I believe there is another question worth asking, "What future has your condition quietly persuaded you to stop imagining?" There is a subtle shift that can happen when we live with a chronic health condition for months or years. At first, we adapt. We make small adjustments to our daily routines, our work, our relationships, and the activities we enjoy. We tell ourselves it’s temporary, and that once we feel better, life will return to normal. But when “temporary” quietly becomes years, something else often begins to change, not just our body, but our expectations. Without consciously deciding to, we begin negotiating with our own future. We stop applying for the job because we’re not sure our energy will hold up. We stop planning the overseas holiday because we don’t know how our body will cope. We stop saying yes to opportunities because managing our symptoms has become the priority. At first, these decisions are practical. Often, they’re necessary. But over time, something more subtle can begin to happen. We gradually introduce a new word into our lives, compromise. Not the healthy kind that reflects wisdom or changing priorities, but the quiet kind that slowly lowers the standard of what we believe is possible. Instead of asking, “What do I truly want?”, we begin asking, “Given my condition, what’s realistic?” Without realising it, our expectations begin adapting to our diagnosis. Then something even more profound can happen. The condition is no longer simply something we are living with. It begins to influence how we see ourselves. Listen carefully to the language we often use, “My arthritis,” “My autoimmune disease,” “My endometriosis,” or “My disability.” There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with these expressions. They are part of everyday language, and for many people, they simply describe a lived reality. Yet language also reflects identity. Over time, I’ve become curious about what happens when a condition gradually shifts from describing something a person experiences to becoming part of the story they tell themselves about who they are. That story matters. Because once we begin believing that our diagnosis defines our identity, it becomes much harder to imagine a future that extends beyond it. Not because healing is guaranteed, and certainly not because anyone chooses to be unwell, but because the boundaries of what we believe is possible often shape the questions we’re willing to ask, the opportunities we’re willing to pursue, and the future we’re willing to imagine. Eventually, thoughts such as “Maybe this is just who I am now,” “Perhaps this is as good as it’s going to get,” and “Maybe I need to stop expecting too much” begin to sound less like passing thoughts and more like the truth. This is why I believe one of the greatest consequences of a long term health condition isn’t always found in the diagnosis itself. It’s found in the future we quietly stop believing belongs to us. A chronic condition doesn’t just change how we live. Over time, it can begin to change who we believe we can become. If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is this. Healing rarely begins the moment our body changes. More often, it begins the moment we become curious enough to question the limits we have quietly accepted. Not because our diagnosis suddenly disappears. Not because we ignore medical advice or pretend our circumstances aren’t real. But because we become willing to ask a different question. What if my current reality isn’t the only future my body is capable of creating? For many years, science viewed the adult brain as relatively fixed. We now know through neuroplasticity that the brain continues to form new neural pathways throughout life, adapting to our thoughts, experiences, behaviours, and environment. This growing understanding has inspired researchers, clinicians, and thought leaders to further explore the relationship between the mind, the brain, and human potential. Among those who have helped bring this conversation to a wider audience is Dr Joe Dispenza, whose work explores how repeated thought patterns, emotional states, meditation, and mental rehearsal may influence the way we think, behave, and experience our lives. To me, however, this conversation extends beyond neuroscience. It is ultimately a conversation about possibility. If we repeatedly imagine a future constrained by our diagnosis, our decisions often begin reflecting that expectation. We stop asking certain questions, pursuing certain opportunities, or imagining a life beyond our current circumstances, not because those possibilities no longer exist, but because we’ve quietly stopped looking for them. Equally, when we allow ourselves to become genuinely curious again, not with blind optimism, but with openness, we often begin asking different questions. Different questions lead to different conversations, different conversations lead to different choices, and different choices have the potential to create different futures. One of the things that continues to fascinate me in my healing facilitation work is how often hope returns the moment someone experiences a meaningful shift, sometimes in their very first session. That shift may present as improved movement, a noticeable reduction in pain, an unexpected emotional release, or simply a feeling that something within them has changed in a way they struggle to put into words. Every healing journey is unique. Yet one pattern continues to fascinate me. Often, the greatest transformation isn’t the physical improvement itself, but what that experience awakens. For someone who has spent years believing their condition defines the limits of their future, even a small but meaningful change can quietly challenge that belief. Suddenly, the question is no longer, “Can I cope with this for the rest of my life?” Instead, it becomes, “If this much can change, what else might be possible?” That single question can become the beginning of an entirely different future. Healing and belief often reinforce one another. Sometimes belief creates the conditions for healing. Sometimes healing creates the belief that further healing is possible. Both have the capacity to strengthen one another. This is why I believe there is an important difference between accepting where we are today and assuming this is where our story must end. Acceptance can be deeply healing, while resignation quietly closes the door to possibility. The two can look remarkably similar from the outside, yet they lead us in completely different directions. Acceptance says, “This is where I am today.” Resignation whispers, “This is all I will ever be.” One creates peace, while the other quietly narrows our future. I sometimes think of this as a gentle invitation to suspend disbelief. Not to deny reality, abandon conventional medicine, or assume every condition has a simple solution, but to hold space for the possibility that our current understanding of ourselves and what may still be possible might not yet be the complete story. Because once possibility begins to expand, something remarkable often expands with it, hope. Not the fragile kind that depends on certainty, but the quieter kind that reminds us our future has not yet been fully written. In my own healing facilitation work, I’ve gradually come to realise that my role isn’t simply to help people reduce symptoms. It’s to help them reconnect with the possibility that their future may be bigger than they currently believe. Sometimes it begins with a meaningful physical shift. Sometimes it begins with an emotional breakthrough. Sometimes it begins with nothing more than a single conversation that gently challenges a belief they have carried for years. Every healing journey is different. I don’t believe there is a universal formula, nor do I believe every condition has the same outcome. What continues to inspire me, however, is witnessing what becomes possible when someone moves from asking, “How do I survive this?” to asking, “Who might I become if this no longer defined me?” That question changes something. It shifts our attention away from limitation and back towards possibility. Where our attention consistently rests, our choices often follow. Those choices begin shaping our habits, relationships, and experiences. Sometimes, they become the very beginning of a healing journey that once felt unimaginable. Perhaps one of the deepest forms of healing isn’t simply changing the body. It’s expanding the future we believe is still possible. A diagnosis may describe our current reality, but it doesn’t have to write the final chapter of our lives. So perhaps the question isn’t whether you’ve forgotten who you were before the pain. Perhaps it’s whether you’re ready to remember. If your condition no longer had the final say over the story you tell yourself about your future, who would you become? Follow me on Facebook and Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Connie Ng Connie Ng, Holistic Practitioner, Quantum Healing Facilitator, Transformational Coach Connie Ng is a Multi-Disciplined Holistic Practitioner and Quantum Healing Facilitator who specialises in helping clients overcome chronic physical and emotional conditions by addressing their root cause at the energetic level. Blending Five Elements wisdom with Star Magic Healing, vibrational medicine, and holistic counselling, she facilitates deep transformation for those who feel stuck despite trying everything. Connie is the founder of The Salt Therapy Clinic & Sanctuary and works with clients both in-person and remotely.

Hella Rader hosts Stories That Sparkle, a long-form interview podcast featuring intimate conversations with women as they navigate grief, reclaim their voices, and start over in life, love, or career. She is also a somatic coach at Embody & Create, where she helps women use the body, rather than the mind, as a guide to build a life they love. Across three decades in media and entertainment and, more recently, through her podcast and her one-on-one coaching work, Hella has spent her career shaping other people’s stories and, in time, learning to trust her own. That range gives her insight into what it takes to create a safe space in which a woman feels heard and seen. In this interview, Hella talks about what her body knew before her mind caught up, why she looks for stories in unexpected places, and the one thing she hopes every woman remembers about herself. Hella Rader, Podcast Host & Somatic Coach What inspired you to create both Embody & Create and Stories That Sparkle as spaces for women navigating life's biggest transitions? Within four years, my twenty-year marriage ended in divorce, my spiritual mom and mentor died, and my job ended. With no real sense of what was next, I leaned on the twenty-plus years I’d spent learning to live, not just get through, my own life. With the support of other women who were willing to share the messy truth about what they’d gone through, I felt safe to just be where I was. Because they did not try to fix me. They did not rush me. It was a game-changer. Then I began working with a somatic practitioner who helped me, for the first time, inhabit my own body and listen to what it was telling me. It unlocked something in me, and I got inspired to build something to give back. I launched the Stories That Sparkle podcast focused on other women’s stories and then Embody & Create, my somatic coaching practice, which focuses on the body as the entry point. Both serve the same purpose: creating a space in which women know they are not alone. You often describe the body as a guide rather than an obstacle. How did that perspective change the way you support your clients? For a long time, I treated my body as something to manage, override, or fix when it got in the way of what I was trying to accomplish. For me, that meant shutting it down, trying to escape it, controlling it with over-exercising or food deprivation. When I learned to ask it questions instead of issuing it orders, everything began to shift. The body holds information the mind hasn’t caught up to yet. It remembers anniversaries we’ve consciously forgotten. It tenses before we can name what we’re afraid of. It exhales when something true finally gets said out loud. Once I started treating that as intelligence instead of noise, my life, and what I wanted to do with it, shifted too. With clients, I don’t ask what they think they should do. I ask what they notice in their body. Where does it sit, and what does it have to say? That single shift changes the quality of the work. It slows it down and makes it more honest. Clients stop performing insight and start locating it. The body was never the obstacle. It was the guide we’d been trained to ignore. How has your own experience with grief and reinvention shaped the way you define expertise today? For most of my adult life, expertise meant credentials, the degree, the title, the years logged in an industry. My own experience with grief and reinvention rearranged that completely. I’ve spent more than twenty years navigating loss, rebuilding identity, and learning what it takes to be in my life, not effort to prove myself. That’s not a resume line. It’s lived experience. It’s the thing my clients need most from me – not just my training. They know I am someone who’s walked through something similar and can share honestly what worked and what didn’t. So for me, expertise is the ability to sit with someone in the mess without needing to rush them out of it. That’s harder to certify than a specific program, but it’s what builds trust with a woman who has been given plenty of advice and not enough company. Out of that trust, she will build the confidence to know, for herself, the best way to proceed. After years spent helping tell other people's stories, what have you learned about the power of creating space for women to tell their own? Before the podcast and the coaching practice, I spent three decades in PR, arts management, tour management, and radio. It was all about storytelling – in writing, music, or performance. I learned that whether someone is struggling or has cause to celebrate, whether they have community or feel alone, they have a story. And our stories are our greatest assets. I’ve sat with women who shared, sometimes for the first time, their story out loud. Not just with me, but on the podcast. Each one had something important to share that someone else, including me, needed to hear. I know that based on the feedback from guests and listeners alike, who often tell me they heard the one thing that made them feel less alone in the world. More importantly, she needed to hear her own voice, her own story, not just in the headphones but also out in the world. Letting someone claim that for themselves and offer it to others – that is the power of giving women this kind of space. You intentionally feature everyday women on your podcast instead of well-known names. What do those conversations reveal that often gets overlooked? It’s not that celebrities don’t have those kinds of stories. It’s that they already have a platform. The 70-year-old retired teacher next door to me does not, and, if she wants one, I want to offer it to her. Every day, women don’t have media training or a polished story. They’re just talking about their experience, often for the first time, without a filter. To make that possible, I go where they are and record most conversations in the spaces where they feel comfortable – their living rooms, sunrooms, and kitchens. And I always let them know: if you don’t want this out in the world, I will pull it. It isn’t about a gotcha moment. It’s about a real one, the one that reveals how similar we are. Like the three different women who experienced a major loss – a marriage, a child, a mother. Underneath the specifics, they had a strikingly parallel experience of grief, identity collapse, and the slow rebuilding that follows. Stories told in that kind of unguarded, conversational way carry a weight a following can’t match. For someone who feels disconnected from themselves, what is one simple way to begin listening to their body again? Many women come to me hoping for a full-body self-care practice – right out of the gate. I understand the impulse, but it’s too much. So, I start small. I ask women to notice just one sensation a day. Where do you feel tension right now? Is there one? It’s not about trying to solve, interpret, or fix anything. You’re just re-establishing contact. In the same way you’d check in with a friend you’d lost touch with, you don’t open with a life update; you just say hello and see what’s there. Over time, that noticing becomes a habit, and the habit becomes a vocabulary. Then you can ask yourself some questions. What happened before you noticed that thing? Is there a story connected to it? The body starts to feel less like a stranger and more like a source of information you can trust. It’s slow, deep work. And it begins with consistent, daily noticing that reveals what is already there. What role does curiosity play when someone is trying to move forward after loss or a major life change? Any change, good or bad, big or small, comes with loss and along with that, grief. Moving through that grief is a process. It’s not linear. It’s uncertain. And it’s messy. Curiosity creates an opening, not a five-point plan. It lets you ask, ‘what is this here to show me?’ without needing an answer right away, and without that answer needing to be inspiring. You can look at what’s happening in your body and your life without flinching away from it, which is the only way I’ve found to get real information instead of just managing symptoms. It’s also more sustainable than willpower. Willpower either runs out or runs into a wall. Either way, it only goes so far. Curiosity, accessed even a little, opens new doorways through that wall. It’s oriented toward discovery instead of performance. Or pretending everything is okay when it’s not. Curiosity allows room for all of it. You often say that stories can bring light into dark places. What does that mean to you personally? When I was in the middle of my hardest times, what helped wasn’t inspiration, but hearing another woman describe, in specific detail, something I thought only I had felt. That recognition is its own kind of light. It doesn’t erase the dark place. It tells me I’m not alone in it. And that changes what I believe is possible for me. Which is why, every time I sit down with a guest or a client, I don’t offer a rescue or a silver lining. I give them the felt experience of saying the true thing out loud and having it heard instead of being met with silence or advice. The moments people remember are the ones where someone said something true, something raw, and it was simply received. The light shines both ways – from the person speaking and within the person receiving. It doesn’t fix the dark place. It just means you can see in it. What is one message you hope every woman carries with her after hearing your story or working with you? If she takes nothing else from an hour with me, I want her to leave knowing it’s okay not to be okay. So many women come to me believing they’re too much, too sensitive, too slow to heal, too far behind. But the things she’s been calling a flaw or a failure are often the very things that kept her alive through something hard. Those things haven’t been given anywhere to go. My work, on the podcast and in coaching, is to give them somewhere to go. Not to fix. Not to shrink her back down to a size that’s easier for everyone else, but to help her recognize that what she’s carrying is worth listening to. She can trust herself. Everything else – the practices, the frameworks, the language – is just scaffolding around that one thing. If any of this resonates, start with one episode of Stories That Sparkle, or visit hellarader.com to learn more about working with Hella one-on-one. Hella Rader is the host of Stories That Sparkle, long-form conversations with women navigating some of the hardest chapters of their lives. As a somatic coach, she helps women build what comes next, from the inside out. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Hella Rader

What began as a homemade soda recipe created by Allison Ellsworth and sold alongside her husband, Stephen Ellsworth, at local farmers' markets in Texas has grown into one of the most recognizable names in the modern beverage industry. After catching the attention of a Whole Foods buyer and securing an investment from Rohan Oza on Shark Tank, Poppi continued its rapid rise before being acquired by PepsiCo in a deal valued at approximately $1.95 billion. While the acquisition marks a major milestone, Poppi's success goes far beyond the numbers. The brand built a loyal following through bold branding, creator partnerships, and a strong social media presence that helped transform a functional beverage into a lifestyle brand. Rather than competing on product alone, Poppi created an identity that resonated with a new generation of consumers. For entrepreneurs, Poppi's journey is a reminder that great businesses aren't built on innovation alone. They're built by creating brands that people remember, trust, and genuinely want to be part of. From a farmers' market in Texas to becoming part of one of the world's largest food and beverage companies, Poppi's story shows what's possible when a clear vision is matched with consistent execution. Readers interested in learning more about Poppi can visit their official website.

Written by Maya Akai Monet Gavin, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Maya Akai, MA, LCPC, CADC, is a seasoned professional whose extensive life experiences inform her practice. She possesses over twenty years of professional experience in mental health, complemented by expertise in broadcasting, social services, and education fields. Take a quick look at your phone's recent call log or your last few text messages. The people you see there shape your energy, your focus, and your future. But do you actually know why they are in your life? We often treat all relationships as if they should last forever. When they don't, we feel like we have failed. But what if people aren't meant to occupy the same space in our lives? Emotional burnout happens when we mistake a transactional person for a transformative one. Heartbreak occurs when we try to force a transitional person to stay forever. To protect your peace and intentionally choose who gets access to your life, you must understand the three distinct spaces every relationship occupies: transactional, transitional, and transformative. 1. The transactional space (the utility zone) The transactional space is built entirely on mutual reciprocity, functionality, and convenience. These are surface-level connections where the underlying rule is simple: you scratch my back, I scratch yours. The boundaried comfort While society often shames "transactional" behavior, these relationships keep the world moving. Think of your mechanic, a reliable coworker, or a business partner. There is peace in this clarity. You know exactly what is expected, and there is no emotional heavy lifting required. The danger zone Misalignment occurs when one person sees a relationship as emotional, while the other views it purely as a transaction. Are you draining yourself by trying to turn a perfectly good transactional relationship into a deep friendship? When a transaction ends, it is not a personal failure; it is simply the natural conclusion of a functional agreement. Appreciate it for what it was. 2. The transitional space (the seasonal bridge) Transitional relationships consist of people who enter your life for a specific season. They serve as catalysts for a particular chapter, helping you cross the bridge from who you were to who you are becoming. However, they are not meant to reach the other side. The contextual bond These are your college roommates, work besties from a job you left, or friends you bonded with while navigating a specific life event, such as a breakup or a fitness journey. The hardest part of transitional spaces is the natural fade. When the shared context disappears, the text messages inevitably slow down. Release without resentment Look back at your life five years ago. Who was essential to your survival then, but is no longer in your life now? Holding onto a seasonal friend out of guilt, even though your values no longer align, only creates friction. A relationship ending does not mean it failed. You can love someone deeply for the role they played in your history without needing them in your future. 3. The transformative space (the destiny shifters) Transformative connections are rare, seismic relationships that permanently alter the trajectory of your life. These individuals act as a mirror, forcing you into deep self-discovery, evolution, and growth. The high friction catalyst Transformative connections are rarely comfortable. These people do not just comfort you; they challenge your core beliefs, expose your blind spots, and trigger your evolution. Whether these people stay for a lifetime or leave abruptly, they leave a permanent mark. You will often measure your life in "before I met them" and "after I met them." The danger of obsession Because these bonds are so intense, they can easily become codependent or toxic if healthy boundaries are not maintained. Can a transformative relationship do its job and still end? Absolutely. They are not always meant to last forever, but their impact will endure. How to navigate the spaces The friction, heartbreak, and exhaustion we experience in our personal lives rarely come from the people themselves. Instead, they come from putting the wrong person in the wrong space. We get hurt when we expect transactional people to support our souls. We get heartbroken when we try to force transitional or transactional people to stay forever. We miss out on profound growth when we run away from the discomfort of transformative people. Stop grading seasonal people on a lifetime scale. Give yourself permission to let the spaces be exactly what they are, and gain total control over who you allow in your circle. Are you ready to stop feeling adrift or stuck and start your healing journey? Check out this M.A.Y.A. Podcast episode on YouTube @MayaSpeaks2U, or click here to listen! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Maya Akai Monet Gavin Maya Akai Monet Gavin, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor Maya's personal and professional endeavors have endowed her with profound insight and empathy across various social, emotional, and mental dimensions. Engaging in a conversation with Maya offers an honest, salient, and open exchange centered on utilizing mindfulness as a means to inspire and motivate one to actualize the effort and ambition required to live a desired life.

"Title: A Brothaz Love" eBook: by Julius Clark Jones is a raw, unfiltered autobiographical look into how environmental trauma, broken homes, and systemic pressures drive youth toward gang violence. What the eBook is about The narrative focuses on the real-life story of Julian Raskho, also known as "Infrared 1," a reputable figure from the Newport News, Virginia East Coast chapter of the "Naybahood Bloods". The Transformation: It details Julian’s early life as a sensitive, emotional "mama's boy". His trajectory radically shifted after his parents' divorce left his single mother struggling financially. The Descent: After moving into drug-infested and gang-occupied neighborhoods, Julian and his older brother, Joel ("Red Haze 1"), turned to gang banging and drug dealing to seek a sense of belonging. The Consequences: The book highlights the violent realities of street life. Julian was shot five times and ended up serving a federal prison sentence. Meanwhile, his older brother served a state sentence and was tragically murdered by rival gang members less than six months after his release. The Message: Julius Clark Jones uses this brutal history to shed light on complex topics like community colorism, fractured self-perception, and the hollow glorification of gang culture. The book aims to serve as a gang-prevention tool and a blueprint for youth looking to change their lives. What readers and reviewers are saying Reviews highlight the book's intense realism and its value as an educational tool for community outreach. Raw and Authentic Reality: Readers appreciate that the book strips away the glamorous Hollywood or rap-industry myths surrounding street life. It gives first-hand, heartbreaking accounts of what actually happens behind the scenes. Impactful Lessons on Belonging: Reviewers note how effectively the text outlines the step-by-step difficulties of growing up in broken environments. It explicitly illustrates how a lack of guidance forces young Black men to seek validation and protection through gang ties. A Call for Change: Audiences praise the author’s shift from the streets to community advocacy, noting that the inclusion of real community pictures and vulnerable life stories acts as a powerful deterrent for at-risk youth. Major retailers & digital ecosystems Apple Books: Available for Apple users. You can purchase and read it directly through the native Apple Books app on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Rakuten Kobo: Available globally for Kobo eReaders and the Kobo desktop/mobile reading apps. Barnes & Noble Nook: Accessible digitally for Nook devices and the B&N mobile app marketplace. Google Play Books: Available for Android users and web browsers directly through the Google Play store catalog. Smashwords: An open multi-format indie eBook catalog offering direct DRM-free file downloads (EPUB/PDF formats). Casa del Libro: If you are looking for international availability, the English eBook version is listed on major global networks like the Spanish distributor Casa del Libro. Subscription & library lending apps Scribd / Everand: A monthly subscription platform providing instant digital streaming access to independent titles without individual purchases. OverDrive / Libby: Allows readers to check out the digital version for free using a local public library card. Hoopla Digital: A library media platform offering immediate digital borrowing with no waitlists, depending on your public library's network catalog. eBook Website

Written by Ruth Rivera, Broker Associate | Coach | Author | Speaker Ruth Rivera is Your Fearless Real Estate Coach™, a broker associate, author, and speaker with thirty years of production experience who coaches real estate agents and realtors in English and Spanish across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Latin America. The lockbox codes still worked. The open house sign still fit in the trunk. Nothing about the job had changed in ten months, except the number of times I had shown up and left with nothing. Zero. Not one closing. I was licensed, trained, and coached by well-meaning people who told me to work harder. I followed up when I remembered to. I chased leads when I had time. I smiled through open houses and told myself the next one would be the one. Ten months in, I was asking myself the question every real estate agent eventually asks in one form or another: Is this ever going to work, or am I not built for this? I have heard some version of that question more times than I can count in thirty years of coaching real estate agents and REALTORS®. I have coached hundreds of them through it. And I know exactly how it feels from the inside because it was my story first. Why I do this work My name is Ruth Rivera. I am a broker associate and a coach, and I built my business, Your Fearless Real Estate Coach™, around one belief: no real estate professional should have to lose years of their career figuring out through trial and error what a system could have taught them in weeks. Behind that belief are thirty years of production, a seat on the Florida Realtors Board of Directors for District 12, recognition as an National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) 10 Certified Trainer, service as past president of NAHREP North Orlando, and a career spent coaching real estate agents and REALTORS® in both English and Spanish across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Latin America. I coach agents inside a national brokerage's conversion department, where speed and consistency decide who converts a lead and who loses it. I coach them one-to-one. Every day, I show up for real estate professionals through The Fearless Room on Instagram, a daily dose of the mindset that keeps a career going when the results are not immediate. Across all the people I have coached, the story is the same one I lived myself. Talent was never the problem. A system was. "Talent gets you licensed. A system is what gets you paid, year after year, on purpose instead of by accident." What changes when there is a system I did not quit. I learned to stop treating every lead and every client the same way and instead sort every relationship I had into one of eight distinct buckets, each one telling me exactly what that person needed next and exactly what to do about it. I learned that a Client for Life is not someone you close and forget, but someone you keep in the right bucket for as long as it takes. I stopped guessing who to call and started knowing. My business changed, not because I worked harder, but because I finally worked by design. The full framework, all eight buckets and how to work each one, is what fills the pages of the book. None of it works if you forget what a real estate agent or REALTOR® is actually selling. As fellow Brainz contributor Jessica Hastings-Lesperance put it so well, people are not really buying houses; they are buying the life they picture living inside them. A bucket only works if you remember there is a person, and a Saturday morning, on the other end of it. That framework is the 8 Bucket System, the same one I built before CRMs existed and proved in the only way that counts, through my own record-breaking year immediately after ten months of nothing. It is the system behind every real estate professional I have watched turn a dry spell into a career. Putting the system in their hands For years, that system lived only in workshops, coaching calls, and keynotes. This year, it became something any real estate professional can hold in their hands. *The Real Estate Bucket Playbook* is now published and available in both English and Spanish, so the same framework that rebuilt my career and the careers of hundreds of others is no longer limited to those who happen to be in the room. You can find it on Amazon in English here, and in Spanish here. "I did not write this book to tell my story. I wrote it because I am tired of watching good people give up ten months before their breakthrough." There is more coming. A second book, built on the same system, is already underway and will launch later this year. But that is a conversation for another day. Today is about the year I almost quit and the hundreds of real estate agents and REALTORS® I have since coached through a similar ten-month struggle. An open door If you are a real estate agent or REALTOR® reading this and some part of that story feels familiar, I want you to know two things. First, it is not a lack of talent. Second, you do not have to figure it out alone or learn it the hard way. If you want that same system in your own business, connect with me directly here. That is where I coach real estate agents and REALTORS® one-to-one and work with teams ready to build by design instead of by chance. This is the first of many conversations I will be having in these pages about what it actually takes to build a real estate career on purpose. I am glad you are here for it. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ruth Rivera Ruth Rivera, Broker Associate | Coach | Author | Speaker Ruth Rivera is Your Fearless Real Estate Coach™, a broker associate, coach, author, and speaker with thirty years of productive experience. She built her 8 Bucket System after going ten months without a single closing, then used it to produce a record-breaking year, and has since coached hundreds of real estate agents and realtors through the same turnaround. She sits on the Florida Realtors Board of Directors for District 12, is a NAHREP 10 Certified Trainer, and a past president of NAHREP North Orlando. Ruth coaches in both English and Spanish across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Latin America, and is the author of The Real Estate Bucket Playbook, now available in both languages.

Written by Ryan Campinho Valadas, Therapist, Educator & Trainer Ryan Campinho Valadas is a specialist psychotherapist, educator, and public speaker working in the areas of relational health, sexuality, identity, and organisational culture. He is based in the UK and works with a diverse range of individuals, community groups, and organisations. It was a February evening, and a client and I were having our final session after a year of working together. At the end of the session, they said, “I feel more human now,” as a summary of their therapy journey. I felt really moved, and the meaning and power of the sentiment resonated deeply with me. I mean, what a statement, right? In an age of technology and AI, here was this person telling me that they felt more human than before. I found it poetic, as well as a moment that spoke to the wider experience of those who decide to come to therapy. Finding meaning in small moments This experience reminded me of the small moments that amount to big moments in therapy and in life, and how easy it is nowadays to just keep going without stopping long enough to notice what is going on around us and inside us. One of my tutors during my second degree once shared that they had written a case study solely about the first few minutes of a therapy session, focusing on what happens when a client enters the room, says hello, and has the initial awkward chit-chat before delving into deeper topics. I always thought it was wonderful to focus on such a minute relational moment in the therapeutic journey in order to investigate wider human dynamics. To me, there is something equally insightful about a final session with someone. A final therapy session is a chance to reflect on progress and look hopefully towards the future by thinking about what has been and what might be possible moving forward. There is always a mix of feelings as we celebrate the work that has been done, think about maintaining motivation and sustainable action, and say goodbye to a meaningful connection. This mix can sometimes offer surprising moments, such as statements that are both simple and profound. “I feel more human now.” What can that mean in terms of therapeutic progress? Identifying progress in therapeutic journeys Whilst my training and career are somewhat unorthodox in their scope and variety, I trained in Dramatherapy and Psychosexual and Relationship Psychotherapy. I have worked in primary schools, sexual health clinics, community addiction centres, corporate settings, and private practice, using both long-term and brief therapy techniques and frameworks. However, there is something quintessentially psychodynamic about my approach. I like to explore the unconscious and identify the shadowy aspects of a person’s psyche as a way of making sense of their present actions. I’m fascinated by what is unsaid and unacknowledged, and I strive to help my clients make powerful connections between their reflexes and their needs. I don’t tend to measure my clients’ progress through numbers or quantitative data, but through reductions in their dysfunctional and destructive patterns, suffering, and shame, and increases in their contentment, openness, and vulnerability within their relationships. There are no overnight changes, lightbulb moments do not happen in every session, and life crises do not automatically disappear. However, there can still be progress if we look carefully and intentionally for it. I once believed that my purpose in this job was to save the world, but my first role in clinical practice quickly changed that. It showed me that humanity was both incredibly simple and complex, and there was no “saving” it. We tend to strive for and need similar things from life, but we all pursue them in widely different and individual ways. Importantly, people can be helped when they are ready, willing, and open to it, not when someone else decides they should be. So, I’ve always looked for the small ways in which I could make a difference rather than pursuing the lofty goal of saving the world. That is why I focus on the reductions and increases in certain human experiences when considering client progress. Sharing human moments in therapy When a client says they feel “more human,” what might they actually be saying? What might have shifted for them during the process? I find that the more human I am with clients, the more human they can be as well. This may show up when I admit that I’m not sure about something, that I don’t have an answer, or that I genuinely hadn’t thought of something before. It is there when I admit confusion, tension, or uncertainty; when I laugh at something funny they have shared; or when I feel deeply moved and close to tears and admit it. I feel that our shared humanity becomes more present whenever I tell clients that I understand how they feel or why they did something, and I genuinely mean it. When I normalise a response they had to something or someone, a spiralling thought, an emotional outburst, or a feeling of embarrassment, I fully believe that I’m helping clients reconnect with their humanity. Let’s face it and accept it, being human is not the same as being perfect. This is really important. Clients are often surprised when they are met with understanding and acceptance. “You get it?” Yes, yes, I do. I’m no better than my clients in that sense. I have my moments of messy humanity, and that is why I love Irvin Yalom’s approach of considering therapists and clients as “fellow travellers” (Yalom, 2002). I am interested in the relationship that develops between therapist and client, so I spend a lot of time exploring it in clinical supervision and with clients. I see this relationship as a mirror of the relationships clients have outside the therapy space and as a way of exploring how those relationships might be improved, using therapy as a rehearsal space for life. I’m also interested in the influence of social and cultural dynamics, beliefs, and values that clients have internalised, and how these, in turn, influence behavioural, cognitive, and emotional patterns. I’m passionate about deconstructing them and creating space to imagine and live out new perspectives. Finally, I’m also really interested in the existential dynamics of life and therapy, including the internal tensions and conflicts around purpose, meaning, love, life, death, freedom, and happiness. There is magic for me in holding all of this for a person and then supporting them as they explore the layers of conscious and unconscious awareness in which all of those components reside. Being human is something we can facilitate by modelling it ourselves and sharing our own process when relevant and useful. It is also something we can bear witness to by holding spaces filled with compassion, acceptance, and care. This supports someone in developing autonomy and agency, self-compassion, self-confidence, self-acceptance, tolerance for vulnerability, and emotional buoyancy. Feeling more human for everyone Additionally, because a lot of my work is with and within the LGBTQIA+ community, I also spend time thinking about who gets to feel human without consequence in our societies. There is a process of dehumanisation that is both psychological and structural, as people are told by those who are supposed to love them, as well as by society, culture, religion, and politics, that there is something wrong with them and that their lives carry less worth than other lives. To me, the process of LGBTQIA+ affirmative therapy is “simply” to affirm people’s humanity beyond any kind of identity politics. I write “simply” because this process is actually quite complex. Reducing shame, suffering, anxiety, dysfunction, and destructiveness requires hard, consistent, dedicated, and compassionate effort and perseverance. To be human is not only to connect with all the things that help us feel nurtured, nourished, or alive, but also to reduce the impact of all the things that get in the way. Relational dynamics, internal patterns, and existential feelings are always present within the individual, but they are also present within the structures surrounding the individual. Many of the challenges in contemporary therapy practice are structural and are not caused by an individual’s lack of resilience, skill, or capacity. Ultimately, that is what really surprised me about the statement of feeling more human. I had grown slightly cynical about what my work and skills could accomplish, given the onslaught of structural difficulties in today’s world, which can feel overwhelming and pervasive in people’s daily lives. These include cost-of-living crises, wars, extreme climate patterns, compulsive and impulsive use of technology and social media, and widespread human disconnection. Here lies the power and magic of therapy. Even with all of that going on, the experience of reconnecting with or deepening the feeling of one’s own humanity is still very much possible. What would it be like to consider this idea of feeling more human as a serious and essential outcome in therapeutic practice? What would it mean to hold “feeling more human” as a legitimate therapeutic goal in and of itself? What would this mean in our daily lives? P.S. This shared experience is included in the article with my client’s full permission and agreement. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Ryan Campinho Valadas Ryan Campinho Valadas, Therapist, Educator & Trainer Ryan Campinho Valadas is a specialist psychotherapist, educator, and organisational trainer based in the UK. With 10 years of experience in psychotherapy and almost 20 years in public speaking, community organizing, and advocacy, he is interested in the influence of social, cultural, and global dynamics in our daily lives. Ryan specialises in psychosexual and relationship therapy, LGBTQ+ wellbeing, male mental health, and relational health in organisations. Main intention is to facilitate people in building better connections to their identities, desires, relationships, and life journeys.

Written by Julie Zdravkovski, Spiritual Advisor & Medium Julie Zdravkovski is a spiritual advisor and thought leader redefining how we engage with intuition, transformation, and personal power. Known for her direct, no-bypass approach, she challenges spiritual narratives and guides people back to grounded, embodied truth. I want to start by saying that this piece is not a prescription, a recommendation, or a comparison. Every woman's journey through perimenopause and menopause is her own. If hormone replacement therapy has been life-changing for you, or if you have found relief through a path that looks nothing like mine, that is exactly as it should be. What I want to offer here is simply a different perspective. For a long time, the dominant conversation around this stage of life has been shaped by one particular narrative. I have quietly walked a different one, and enough women have asked me to share it that I think there is value in laying it out honestly. I began perimenopause when I was thirty-six, long before this stage of life was being widely spoken about the way it is today. I am now approaching forty-eight, and by August this year, it will have been two years since I entered postmenopause. This means I moved through the entire transition earlier than is often considered typical. When I look back on it now, what I see most clearly is not the symptoms, the phases, or the medical timeline of it all. What I see is the question I chose to ask my body during those years and the question I quietly refused to ask. I did not ask what was wrong with me. I asked what my nervous system needed. That single reframe changed everything about how I moved through this season of my life. The question that shapes everything else When perimenopause began at thirty-six, I did not know that was what was happening. What I knew was that my sleep was disrupted, I was having night sweats, and my body was quietly signalling that something in me was shifting. My grandmother on my mum's side went through menopause early. Since I began speaking about my own experience, other women in my family have shared that they did too. There is likely a family pattern there, although I would not put it all down to genetics alone. I could have interpreted every one of those signals through the lens of “What is wrong with me?” and traced everything back to the hormonal changes I now know were underway. But that was not the question that arrived for me. What arrived instead was a much quieter one: What does my body actually need right now to feel supported? Once that question became my anchor, the way I lived, moved, ate, worked, and thought began to organise itself around the answer. I look back now and recognise that this was the beginning of a decade-long practice of listening to my body rather than diagnosing it. I still went to doctors. I still had my blood tests checked every year. I still took my concerns seriously. But my primary orientation was not towards figuring out what was going wrong. It was towards figuring out what was going to help me feel well. Over ten years, the difference between those two orientations produced a very different experience of this life stage from the one I have heard many other women describe. Purpose as its own kind of medicine There is something I noticed only in hindsight: Both transitions in my hormonal life have coincided almost exactly with major periods of creative and professional growth in my work. When I entered perimenopause at thirty-six, I was leaving my corporate career and going all in on my spiritual business for the first time. I had had an Australian Business Number (ABN) since 2004 and had done phone line readings, in-person work, and work at a crystal shop. Around age thirty-six, I decided this was going to be a profession for me. While I was building the business, I worked four or five different jobs at once so I could still put food on the table, pay the mortgage, and cover the bills. I was completely immersed in what I was creating. A decade later, as I moved into menopause, the pattern repeated almost identically. I found myself in another creative surge, another elevation of my brand, another refinement of my offerings, and another wave of building the next chapter of my business. Ideas were arriving one after another. New classes were coming through. My teaching was deepening. I studied healing modalities, sacred geometry, remote viewing, trance work, and cosmic intelligence. I also built programs, circles, and offerings that my students are loving now and that I am genuinely proud of. I have come to see that this was not a coincidence. Purpose and creation became their own kind of medicine during both of those seasons. When you are actively building something meaningful and your energy is being channelled into something that matters to you, the hormonal transition happening in the background becomes one part of a much larger story about what is being asked of you, rather than the entire story. I am not suggesting that everyone who enters this stage of life needs to build a business. What I am suggesting is that having something that lights you up, pulls you forward, and gives your creative, intellectual, and spiritual energy somewhere to move changes the entire quality of how this transition lands in your body. It gives you a reason to keep showing up. It gives you a reason to look after yourself. It gives your soul a channel through which the aliveness that is still very much yours can continue to move. Spirituality as an anchor, not an escape Throughout both transitions, my spiritual practice was the ground I stood on. It was not because it made the physical experience easier, but because it kept me connected to myself rather than allowing me to become consumed by fear or uncertainty about what was happening in my body. I meditated. I worked with mentors. I studied deeply. I explored somatic practices, archetypal work, women's circles, and tantric meditation. I do want to name that this kind of tantric practice is not what most people assume it to be. It is about working with the energy of the body to regulate the nervous system and manifest what you are here to create. I moved through years of my own inner exploration during that time, including a relationship that started well and slowly became toxic, as well as the long, contained years of Melbourne's lockdowns. All of it deepened my relationship with myself in ways I could not have anticipated. The reason I mention all of that is that when a woman is going through this life stage, her nervous system can feel especially sensitive, and the hormonal shift can place it under significant pressure. The work I had already done to build a strong internal foundation meant that when the physical symptoms did arrive, my baseline was already grounded. I was not fragile going into perimenopause. I was not lost in menopause. My spirituality was not somewhere I went to escape what was happening. It was where I stayed connected to who I was underneath what was happening, which is a completely different relationship with the practice. I want to be clear that you do not need to be spiritual for this to be true. Whatever anchors you to yourself, whether that is creativity, nature, relationships, prayer, movement, art, or purpose, is what will hold you through this stage. What matters is that you have something, somewhere you can return to that reminds you who you are underneath the changes, so the changes never become bigger than you. Consistency over chasing One of the biggest lessons I took from this entire journey is that consistency is worth more than novelty. I did not chase every new trend, every miracle protocol, or every latest thing someone told me I had to try. I stayed with the foundations I knew worked for me. I cycled things in and out based on what my body intuitively told me, rather than on what an algorithm recommended that month. Movement became a foundation I stayed committed to. I started weight training at home during my menopause years. I built up gradually with a couple of dumbbells and short sessions of half an hour, three to five days a week, depending on my energy. I have not missed a training week in almost two years. That kind of consistency is what my body responded to, far more than any dramatic intervention. I would honestly say that I am now in the strongest and most defined shape of my life, more so than in my twenties or thirties, even though I have trained on and off my whole life. Something about consistent, functional strength work, at a pace my body could integrate, changed everything. Nutrition was equally steady. I focused on eating in a way that supported my body rather than following restrictive trends. My core supplements remained simple and consistent: a high-quality plant-based protein, creatine, vitamin D, and omega-3s. I cycled in other things for a few months at a time when they felt supportive, including medicinal mushrooms, nootropic greens, and similar supplements. I then paused before returning to my basics. The pattern was always the same. I stayed with what worked, cycled intentionally, and let my body tell me when something new was actually needed. I share this not as a template, but as an illustration of the principle beneath it. The boring, unglamorous foundations are what work. A life supported by consistent, honest care is far more powerful than one that keeps chasing the next thing. Trusting what you already know One of the most important moments in my whole journey came when I finally went to a doctor and said plainly, “I think I am in menopause.” More than once, I was told that I was too young, that it was probably stress, that I was probably fine, and that it was probably nothing. Interestingly, it was almost always the female general practitioners (GPs) who dismissed me, which was not what I expected. The male doctors tended to take me seriously. I want to say this clearly because I hear this story from so many other women: You know the patterns and changes in your body better than anyone else does. When you sense that something is happening, that sensing is information worth bringing to a qualified health professional. It may not always be right in the specifics, but it can be valuable in pointing towards a concern that deserves attention. There was also a moment early on when a doctor's immediate suggestion was to refer me to a gynaecologist to discuss HRT. That was not the path I wanted to take at the time. It may be right for someone else. I have friends and family members for whom it has been life-changing, and I am not against it in any way. But I am someone who has always been sensitive to medications. I had done my own research and believed that progesterone support might be more appropriate for me, which is what I asked to discuss. That was a moment when I had to advocate for myself calmly, with information, and ask to be heard. I want to name it because I know how many women are told what they need before anyone actually asks them what they know about themselves. I eventually went to a different doctor, someone who took me seriously, ran the tests I needed, and confirmed what I had been intuitively feeling for months. My uterine lining was thin. My oestrogen levels were where they would be expected to be for someone in postmenopause. The results aligned with what my body had already been telling me. At the end of that appointment, he said that the tests were confirming what I already knew. He told me that unless something changed, I should keep doing exactly what I had been doing because it was clearly working for me. That consultation felt different because he gave me control. He laid out the options. He respected what I had already learned about myself. He did not push anything on me. He did not dismiss what I was feeling, and he did not need me to fit a particular narrative before he was willing to acknowledge what was happening in my body. I want to name that experience because too many women are quietly dismissed at exactly the moment they need to be heard. If that is where you are right now, please know that the answer is not to stop trusting your knowing. The answer is to find a qualified health professional who will listen to you. The scare that sharpened my listening Somewhere in the middle of all of this, in August 2024, I had a breast cancer scare. It was actually the second one I had experienced. Everything turned out to be completely fine, but going through the ultrasounds, biopsies, mammograms, and contrast dye still messes with your head, no matter how connected you feel to your body. There were moments when I sat with the possibility that it might not be fine. I had to genuinely consider what my treatment options would be, what I would be willing to do, and how I would move forward. I share this because that experience, more than any other single event, sharpened my listening. It made me realise that being deeply in tune with my body is not a substitute for having things checked. Both matter. Trust what you feel, and also get the tests done. Shortly after that scare, my periods stopped completely. I later understood that this had been my final menstrual period and that I was moving towards postmenopause. My intuition about what was happening in my body only became more precise from that point on. The people around you matter more than you think The other thing I want to name, because I think it is often left out of these conversations, is that the people around you during this stage of life matter enormously. I was surrounded by family and close friends who lit me up, grounded me, made me laugh, were real with me, and never once treated me as though something was wrong with me because of the way my body was changing. That kind of support is not incidental. It is foundational. You are deeply influenced by the people around you. When those closest to you are steady, present, warm, and encouraging, you carry some of that steadiness into your own body. My mother is also part of this. She has always had an unshakeable constitution, hardly ever gets sick, and refuses to identify as unwell unless she genuinely has to. She would never put it in these words, but her attitude has always been that mindset affects how she experiences illness. She has little patience for identifying with being unwell. She knows when to stop and take care of herself, but her baseline is always mindset first. I grew up around that, and I am sure some of what I have carried through this transition may have come from her, both biologically and through the way she moves through her own body. If you are moving through this transition and the people around you are making you feel smaller, sicker, more fragile, or more limited than you are, that is worth paying attention to. The company you keep during this season shapes what you believe is possible for yourself on the other side of it. What this season actually asks of you When I look back at these ten years, what I understand now is that perimenopause and menopause did not ask me to fix anything. They asked me to listen. They asked me to soften my relationship with control. They asked me to trust the intelligence of my own body, the wisdom of my own intuition, and the guidance of my own spirit. They also asked me to build a life around what was actually supporting me, rather than what I thought I should be doing. This season is not the ending of anything. It is a doorway into another chapter. The chapter on the other side can be more grounded, more creative, more embodied, more purposeful, and more your own than any that came before it. But that only becomes true when you stop treating this stage of life as a problem to be solved and start treating it as a season that is asking you to come home to yourself in a deeper way than you ever have before. What you already know You already know what has been supporting you and what has been depleting you. You already know which relationships light you up and which ones are draining what little energy you have. You already know whether you are moving through this season with something to build, something to trust, and something to return to, or whether you are trying to push through it without any real support underneath you. Whatever your body has been telling you, however quietly, is worth listening to. It is worth listening to, however inconvenient, uncomfortable, or disruptive it may be to the version of your life you have been trying to keep going without adjustment. You do not need to know exactly what to do. You only need to ask a different question. Not, “What is wrong with me?” but, “What do I actually need right now to feel supported?” Once that becomes your anchor, the rest of it will begin to organise itself around the answer. A note from me, and an invitation If something in this piece raised a question you have been carrying about your own body, your own knowing, your own transition, or the version of yourself you are becoming through it, send it to me. Each month, I choose questions from readers and channel a response in this column. You will not be named. You will simply be heard, and through you, others sitting with the same thing will be heard too. Send your question here. If, at some point, you want to work with me more directly, you can find ways to do so here. Spiritual advisory sessions, classes, books, and more are available when you are ready, not before. I am Julie. I am a medium. And I am genuinely interested in what you already know but have not yet trusted. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Julie Zdravkovski Julie Zdravkovski, Spiritual Advisor & Medium Julie Zdravkovski is an international spiritual advisor, teacher, and thought leader known for challenging the norms of the spiritual and self-development space. With over 30 years of experience, she cuts through surface-level spirituality to deliver grounded, direct insight that prioritizes truth over comfort. Beginning as a child medium, Julie has spent decades refining her intuitive abilities while also building a corporate career in leadership and human behavior. This dual lens allowed her to bridge spirituality with real-world application in a way that is both practical and transformative, which propelled her in building a professional spiritually-led business, Modern Day Medium.