Anna Woolliscroft is a writing for wellbeing specialist, journalling coach, podcast host, and the founder of Writing with Purpose. A certified Journal to the Self® Instructor with a Master's in Creative Writing and Wellbeing, she helps professional midlife women navigate stress, transition, and self-doubt through the written word. In this interview, Anna explains how she moved from freewriting to structured journalling techniques, why the practice is gaining ground as a wellbeing tool, and the simple exercise she gives anyone who says they don't know where to start. Anna Woolliscroft, Journalling Coach & Wellbeing Advocate What first convinced you that journalling could become a powerful tool for wellbeing rather than simply a daily habit? It was noticing a pattern. I kept rereading my entries and realising I was ruminating over the same situation without getting anywhere. That awareness changed things. When a past experience triggered me with my partner, I journalled it first, working through the emotion on paper before we spoke. Because I'd already released the intensity of it, I could have a calm, honest conversation instead of a reactive one. That was the shift for me: journalling stopped being a diary of what happened and became a way to process what I felt before I acted on it. Once I started using proper techniques rather than just freewriting, I could pinpoint where a feeling or behaviour actually came from. It’s this kind of self-awareness that gives you the ability to regulate your emotions rather than be run by them. It's the difference between writing about your day and really understanding yourself. As a certified Journal to the Self® Instructor, what principles do you believe every effective journalling practice should include? The first is permission. There is no right way to journal, no correct handwriting, spelling or structure to aim for. The moment people feel judged by their own page, they stop writing. The second is safety, both emotional and practical. You need to feel able to write honestly, which sometimes means addressing confidentiality directly with something as simple as a locked notebook. The third is variety. A single technique won't suit every mood or every person, so having a small toolkit of approaches, whether that's a timed freewrite, a list of structured prompts, or visual cards, means you always have a way in. The fourth is honesty over performance. Journalling isn't for an audience, so it should never be written to sound impressive. Get these principles right and journalling stops being another task on the list and becomes a tool for processing your week, your relationships and your own mind. You've trained in creative writing, specialist journalling techniques, and counselling skills. How do those disciplines come together in the way you facilitate journalling today? Creative writing gives me the tools to help people express themselves in ways beyond straightforward prose. Using metaphor, imagery, or a change of perspective helps us access things a direct sentence can't quite reach. Specialist journalling training gives me the techniques themselves: structured exercises with a clear purpose, built to move someone from confusion towards clarity. Counselling skills are what hold it all together safely. They shape how I listen, how I hold space for someone's story without steering it, and how I recognise when a technique needs to be gentler or when someone needs signposting elsewhere. None of these disciplines work as well on their own. Creative writing without structure can feel aimless. Technique without emotional awareness can feel clinical. Together, they let me guide people towards writing that's both expressive and purposeful, and to do it in a way that keeps their wellbeing, not just their word count, at the centre of the process. Why do you think journalling is becoming increasingly relevant as people look for healthier ways to manage stress, uncertainty, and change? A lot of the women I work with are dealing with multiple changes: careers shifting, perimenopause, caring for children and parents at the same time. They're looking for something that fits around real life rather than adding another appointment to it. Journalling meets that need because it costs nothing, needs no equipment beyond a pen and paper, and can happen in five minutes or fifty. It also gives people back a sense of control. When everything around you feels unpredictable, writing down what you think and feel is one of the few things you can direct. I think there's also a shift happening in how people think about self-care. It's moving away from treats and towards tools, things that build resilience rather than just offering temporary relief. Journalling fits that shift well. It's not a quick fix, but a practice you build over time, and that's exactly what makes it valuable when life feels uncertain. What are the biggest misconceptions that stop people from experiencing the real benefits of therapeutic writing? The biggest one is thinking journalling means writing pages of beautiful prose every single day, like a diary from a film. That expectation puts people off before they've started. Some also believe there are rules such as correct grammar and spelling, tidy handwriting, and a certain length. But that’s not the case. A single word can be a complete practice. Another misconception is that journalling is only for processing trauma or crisis, so people wait until things go badly wrong before they pick up a pen. In reality, it's just as useful for everyday decisions, tracking energy, or simply noticing what you're grateful for. Lastly, people assume journalling is passive, that you write and nothing changes. Structured techniques ask you questions, shift your perspective, or draw connections you wouldn't have found by just thinking. Once people let go of the idea that there's a ‘correct’ way to do it, the real benefit, self-awareness, becomes far easier to reach. For someone who says, ‘I don't know what to write,’ what is the first exercise you would guide them through? I always say that's completely normal, and there's no proper way to start. An entry can be a single word, one sentence, or several pages, and none of those is more valid than another. The first thing I'd suggest is trying a guided prompt rather than a blank page, because a blank page is often what causes the block in the first place. Something as simple as ‘three things I'm grateful for today are…’ gives you a way in without pressure. If words still feel difficult, I'd suggest moving away from them altogether and using a postcard or image to respond to instead of a question. Different techniques appeal to different people, so the goal at the start isn't to find the right method. It's to experiment and stay curious about what works for you. Once you find the format that removes the pressure, the words tend to follow on their own. You often combine writing with time in nature. What happens in that environment that deepens the journalling experience? Nature slows people down before they've even picked up a pen. I use a simple framework from John Muir Laws with three prompts: I notice, I wonder, and it reminds me of. Standing outside and noticing the detail of a leaf, the sound of a robin, or the weather pulls you out of your head and into your senses, which is often where the more honest writing comes from. There's also something about being away from screens and walls that removes the usual distractions and self-consciousness people bring to a page. On a journalling walk, conversation and observation blend together, so the writing that follows tends to be less guarded than a session at a desk. Nature also offers gentle metaphors for whatever someone is working through, such as a tree bending in the wind or a concealed path leading to the unknown. Those images give people language for feelings they might otherwise struggle to name, and that combination of stillness, senses and metaphor is what makes the writing go deeper. Your mission is to help 100,000 people discover the benefits of writing for wellbeing. What impact do you hope that movement will create over the next decade? I want people, particularly women in their 40s and beyond, to see journalling as a personal tool for wellbeing rather than a nice-to-have. If I can help 100 people build that habit, the ripple effect goes well beyond the page. Someone who understands their own patterns communicates more honestly with their partner, sets clearer boundaries at work, and models that reflection with their children or the people around them. I'd also like to see journalling talked about with the same seriousness as exercise or nutrition, as a basic part of looking after your mental health rather than something reserved for a crisis. On a personal level, I want people to trust their own insight more. So much of the advice we're given tells us to look outward for answers. Journalling does the opposite. It builds the confidence to look inward first, and that's the shift I hope this movement creates. If you could leave readers with one idea about journalling that could change how they approach their own wellbeing, what would it be? There's no wrong way to do this. If you take one thing from this interview, let it be that. You don't need the perfect notebook, an hour of free time, or something dramatic to write about. You need honesty and a willingness to be curious about your own thoughts. Start small. One sentence at the end of the day is enough to begin building the habit. If you'd like a gentle way in, I've put together a free journal planner that walks you through some starting prompts, and you're welcome to use as much or as little of it as suits you. Journalling won't fix everything overnight, but it gives you a place to think clearly when everything else feels loud. That clarity is available to anyone willing to put pen to paper, regardless of whether they think of themselves as a ‘writer’ at all. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anna Woolliscroft

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. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and much of the conversation quite rightly centres on screening, diagnosis, treatment and survival. I want to take the conversation somewhere less commonly explored, into the emotional and psycho-spiritual terrain of the woman who receives the diagnosis. Through years of mind-body work, I have met many women who are extraordinarily good at looking after everybody around them. They organise, soothe, feed, fix, mediate, remember birthdays, absorb family dramas and somehow still know when somebody is running low on milk. Knowing what they need can be another matter. Care has flowed outward for so long that receiving it back can feel awkward. Help triggers guilt, rest needs justification, and kindness can immediately create an urge to repay it. I have come to think of this as the “Nurturer’s Paradox”. When being needed becomes part of who you are Breasts physically nourish, while culturally and emotionally they can also carry motherhood, femininity, sexuality, intimacy, love and our relationship with giving and receiving care. Dr. Evette Rose’s “Metaphysical Anatomy” describes the breast terrain through nurturing, mother-love, family relationships, trauma, giving and receiving. Her breast-cancer material goes deeper into the woman who feels responsible for being the foundation of the family, holding everything together and maintaining a strong façade even when life behind it has become exhausting. I have seen versions of this woman both personally and in clinic. She is capable, reliable and often the first person people call when something goes wrong. Her strength may be genuinely admired, but families can become so accustomed to benefiting from it that nobody notices what it costs her to remain “the strong one”. Sometimes the strongest woman in the family becomes strong partly because everybody around her could afford for her not to fall apart. That is where usefulness can become tangled with belonging, and being indispensable can start feeling remarkably similar to being loved. Sometimes we become the parent we wished we had Mother and father wounds frequently enter the terrain I work with. A mother may have been distant, critical or controlling. A father may have been absent physically or emotionally, or his approval always seemed slightly beyond reach. Those relationships can remain painful long after childhood has technically ended. The little girl grows into a woman, yet some part of her can still be trying to make sense of what she never received. She becomes the mother who does everything, the daughter everybody depends upon, the partner who holds the relationship together or the friend who can always be counted on. At times, she becomes precisely what she once longed for herself, the nurturing mother she never quite had, the strong and protective father she wished had made her feel safe, or simply a dependable source of love, security and reassurance. She pours those qualities outward because she knows intimately what their absence feels like. Rose’s laterality work adds another intriguing layer. Within her framework, the left breast relates more closely to self, mother, family and family responsibilities, while the right breast brings in father relationships, leadership and having to remain strong or brave when others depend on you. I use those ideas to open enquiry. One woman recognises an unresolved relationship with her mother, another realises how much of adult life has been spent chasing a father’s approval. The useful part is the recognition that comes from her own history, not trying to make everybody fit the same metaphysical map. The peacekeeper may be paying for everybody else’s peace Rose’s breast-cancer material also mirrors something I regularly encounter in holistic counselling, the woman who already knows something needs to change but fears the ripple effect if she acts on it. She knows the relationship drains her, the boundary has been crossed repeatedly or a responsibility should never have become hers. Changing it might upset a parent, disappoint a partner, start an argument or force somebody else to finally carry their own weight. So she keeps the peace, although the peacekeeper herself may not be particularly peaceful. Her authentic voice grows quieter with practice. Anger is swallowed because anger makes people uncomfortable. Grief is postponed because somebody else needs her functioning. Even an ordinary “no” can feel risky when experience has taught her that saying it comes with consequences. This emotional terrain is something I explored from another direction in When the Body Speaks – Decoding Mental Health with the Five Elements. Traditional Chinese Medicine gives me another way to interpret what may be happening underneath all that composure. Within Five Elements theory, anger and frustration are associated with the Wood element and Liver, while prolonged stagnation can generate Heat. In clinic, I often see suppressed anger, resentment and unresolved emotional pressure sitting alongside inflammatory patterns. Louise Hay and Evette Rose use different metaphysical language, yet both bring longstanding hurt, grief, resentment and suppressed emotion into conversations around illness. For someone who has never considered health through a mind-body lens, this can open a different door. I explored this more broadly in Can Your Emotions Be Causing Your Skin, Gut, and Respiratory Issues? What if the body has been trying to keep us alive all along? One of the foundations of my work is that the body is an extraordinarily intelligent unit, continually making adjustments to keep us alive and move us back towards balance, or homeostasis. I often describe it as one enormous detoxing machine. The liver processes and transforms, the kidneys filter, the gut moves waste through, the lungs exchange and eliminate, while the skin and countless other regulatory systems quietly get on with their jobs without waiting for us to supervise them. The body also happens to be a terrible conversationalist in English, Mandarin, gibberish, or whatever human language we happen to speak. Its vocabulary looks more like fatigue, pain, itching, inflammation, rashes, digestive changes and sleepless nights. Stay tone-deaf to the quieter messages long enough and sometimes the volume has to go up. From my holistic perspective, illness can therefore become biofeedback. If a woman has spent years overextending herself, swallowing emotion, overriding exhaustion and continually placing everybody else ahead of her own Mind, body and Spirit, eventually the system may struggle to keep compensating. Sometimes falling sick is the first time she is forced to stop and finally gets the opportunity to rest, receive and allow somebody else to carry some of the load. Alternative-health author Andreas Moritz took this idea further in “Cancer Is Not a Disease – It’s a Survival Mechanism”, proposing cancer as an extreme survival response by a body attempting to manage a compromised internal environment. I find the perspective thought-provoking because it asks us to consider whether the body may still, in its own way, be trying to preserve life rather than simply turning against us. That idea brings the Nurturer’s Paradox neatly back into focus, the woman may have spent years keeping everybody else going while her own body has been working relentlessly to keep her going. Giving yourself permission to become inconvenient My broader work around Authenticity and Self-Love becomes central here because women often already know what needs to change. She knows which relationship exhausts her, where stronger boundaries are overdue and which role she has outgrown. Acting on that knowledge becomes harder when everybody else has grown comfortable with the version of her who rarely rocks the boat. Deep healing can involve going much further back than the woman she was immediately before diagnosis. Who was that little girl before she learnt what pleased her caregivers, what caused approval to disappear and what she had to do to belong? Inner-child work in my clinic often takes us into exactly that territory. The aim is not to turn a grown woman back into a five-year-old. Those early years are when many of our beliefs around safety, attachment, belonging and identity begin taking shape through what we experience and how our developing minds interpret it. Reclaiming herself as an adult may look surprisingly ordinary, resting before exhaustion, accepting help without planning how to repay it, saying no without producing a supporting document, changing her mind and allowing somebody else to be disappointed without immediately rushing in to fix the discomfort. She simply needs to give herself permission to 'be'. Breast cancer can reverse the direction of care A breast cancer diagnosis can suddenly put the lifelong giver into unfamiliar territory. Treatment may require other people to cook, drive her to appointments, help with children, take over responsibilities or sit beside her when she is frightened. Medical care, practical assistance and emotional support begin flowing towards someone who may have spent decades directing most of that energy away from herself. That can expose how deeply being capable, strong and needed has become part of identity. Nourishment then becomes much more interesting than what happens to be on the dinner plate. It is also what a woman allows herself to receive from life, emotional safety, honesty, rest, intimacy, pleasure, support and sometimes the enormous relief of somebody else taking responsibility for a change. Before diagnosis, she may have been so occupied with everyone else that her body’s quieter signals hardly registered. Afterward, every ache can feel suspicious, and every follow-up scan carries emotional weight. That nervous-system terrain connects with Can You Out-Biohack a Nervous System Still Stuck in Survival Mode? Healing may include finding a middle ground where she can hear the body clearly without becoming frightened by every sensation it produces. “Getting back to normal” may not be the destination Women are often encouraged to get back to normal after illness, but I sometimes wonder whether the old normal deserves such enthusiastic restoration. If normal meant carrying too much, receiving too little and being so dependable that everyone assumed she could cope, perhaps returning there should not be the ambition. A serious diagnosis can interrupt a life that has been running on automatic for years. Inside that interruption, a woman may discover that she does not actually want to become exactly who she was before cancer. She may want to meet herself again. This connects closely with What Future Has Your Diagnosis Quietly Persuaded You to Stop Imagining? A diagnosis can begin editing somebody’s future surprisingly quickly. Part of my work is helping a person examine whether those edits truly belong there, or whether there are dreams and possibilities she is ready to reclaim. Why my deeper healing work uses more than one doorway This complexity is why my deeper client work, which I call “The Works”, brings together Mind-Body Holistic Counselling and Coaching, personalised dietary and lifestyle guidance through my Macrobiotic Health training, Plant Essences, 0 Ishiki, Star Magic quantum healing and, where appropriate, RIFE frequencies through my Qi Coil device. The coaching allows me to consider constitution, food, lifestyle and how the person is living day to day. Counselling gives us space for family roles, parental wounds, grief, suppressed emotion and boundaries. Macrobiotic Health adds another layer through the relationship between constitution, food, environment and lifestyle, while Plant Essences work with the emotional and vibrational terrain. 0 Ishiki, meaning “zero consciousness”, works with resetting accumulated conditioning and energetic patterns, and Star Magic takes the work further into the energetic and quantum terrain. An experience from my wider cancer-support work involved a man receiving conventional treatment in Shanghai for Stage III intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, a bile duct cancer arising within the liver. Around our remote healing session, I told his wife to watch for diarrhoea and an increase in his energy. I described the anticipated bowel response to her in terms of my detoxification framework and asked her to observe how he progressed over the following days. She waited about a week before reporting back because she wanted to observe him carefully. In her Mandarin voice message, she said he had experienced one day of diarrhoea and that his physical strength and energy were improving. These were the changes I had specifically asked her to watch for. She then sent a further update, his follow-up blood-test results that morning had improved compared with his previous results. Her feedback remains meaningful to me, both for the changes she described and for her gratitude for the care shown to them. He is not an isolated case. Families of other clients with late-stage cancers have reported good appetite, greater vitality and mobility, and surprisingly little pain for the type and stage of cancer involved. Some have told me they believe the healing work helped their loved one maintain a better quality of life and live longer than the prognosis had led them to expect. Frequency work forms another part of that toolkit. Through Qi Coil, I use RIFE frequency programs as a complementary layer within healing sessions. Research into frequency-specific biological effects continues as well. Dr. Anthony Holland and Novobiotronics have investigated frequency-specific oscillating pulsed electric fields, reporting reduced growth of acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells in laboratory work. Separate peer-reviewed studies have also reported inhibited proliferation in breast-cancer cell lines exposed to specific low-frequency magnetic or electromagnetic field patterns. For me, the point is not to make any one modality the hero. It is having enough skills, perspectives and resources to work with the whole person while helping her relate to the body as an intelligent ally rather than an enemy. The body may need a different relationship too Breast cancer can profoundly alter how a woman experiences her body. Surgery, scars, treatment, changes in sexuality and fear of recurrence can make the body feel unfamiliar. That is where A Love Letter to the Body That Never Gave Up on You becomes particularly relevant. A woman may understandably feel betrayed by the body in which cancer appeared. My healing philosophy invites another relationship to emerge, seeing the body as an ally that has carried her through diagnosis, treatment, fear and enormous physical and emotional change. Breast Cancer Awareness Month can widen the conversation Breast Cancer Awareness Month rightly reminds women to pay attention to their breasts. I would also invite women to look at the life surrounding them with the same honesty. Is care flowing both ways, or has over-giving become a way of seeking validation, love or proof of worth? Has strength quietly become a permanent role rather than a quality? Are unresolved mother or father wounds still shaping adult relationships, infringed boundaries and the need to be needed? Is there trauma, resentment or grief that has remained unattended because everybody else always seemed more urgent? And after years of being useful, dependable and available, what does she believe she is worth when she is simply herself? These are the sorts of questions I explore with clients because they can reveal the patterns sitting underneath self-worth, over-giving and the constant need for external validation. They also create space to work through unresolved trauma instead of continually organising life around it. Somewhere beneath those responsibilities may still be the younger self who remembers what it felt like to want something simply because it made her feel alive. The Nurturer’s Paradox is not about asking women to stop loving or showing up for the people who matter. It is about recognising that nourishment was never meant to travel in only one direction. A woman who has spent years holding everybody else together is allowed to discover what it feels like to be held too, and perhaps the most transformative permission she can eventually give herself is to ask, “Who am I when I no longer have to be everything to everybody, and who do I now give myself permission to become?” Follow me on Facebook, 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.

Written by Howaida Abdalla, Life Coach Howaida Abdalla is a survivor of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and a life coach who has experience when it comes to the trauma that a survivor goes through and the journey it takes to heal. She helps women to reconnect and love themselves again. She is the founder of The Growth Hub Coaching and Women Empowerment edition: Impact for Change Podcast. For many survivors of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), healing is not simply about what happened in the past. It is also about how they are treated in the present. Behind every statistic is a person, a woman with feelings, hopes, dreams, choices and a future. So, what do survivors want? We want to be heard Sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer a survivor is the opportunity to speak without judgement. Not every survivor is ready to talk. Some may struggle to find the words. Others may have carried their experience silently for years. Listening means allowing survivors to tell their stories in their own time and in their own way. Sometimes, simply saying, “I am here. I am listening,” can make a difference. We want to be believed When a survivor finds the courage to speak, they deserve to have their experience taken seriously. They should not have to prove that their pain matters. Believing someone does not mean having all the answers. It means listening with compassion and responding with care. We want choice FGM can involve a profound loss of bodily autonomy. For many survivors, reclaiming choice becomes an important part of healing. Survivors should be able to make informed decisions about their healthcare, relationships, boundaries and support. Healing is personal. There is no single path and no fixed timeline. We want compassionate healthcare Survivors need healthcare professionals who understand FGM and trauma and who can create safe spaces for honest conversations. A simple question such as “How are you really feeling?” can open a door, but it needs to be asked sensitively, without pressure or judgement. Survivors deserve to be seen as whole people, not simply through the lens of what happened to them. We want support without shame Shame can keep survivors silent and prevent them from seeking help. But survivors should never have to carry shame for something that was done to them. They deserve to hear: What happened to you is not your identity. Your body is not something to be ashamed of. Your voice matters. We want our voices to matter Survivors should not only be spoken about, they should have opportunities to speak for themselves. Their experiences can help shape healthcare, education, safeguarding, community support and prevention. Listening to survivors helps us understand what support really feels like. We want a future beyond survival Survivors are more than their experiences. They have careers, families, friendships, ambitions, creativity and dreams. They deserve the freedom to build a future that is not defined by their past. Healing does not mean forgetting what happened. It can mean reclaiming choice, rebuilding trust and learning to live with greater freedom and self-compassion. So, what do survivors want? To be heard. To be believed. To be respected. To have choice. To feel safe. To be supported without judgement. To have the freedom to heal in their own way. Sometimes change begins with something simple, "We stop speaking over survivors and start listening to them." Because when survivors are given space to speak, their voices can become part of the change that future generations need. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Howaida Abdalla Howaida Abdalla, Life Coach Howaida Abdalla is a life coach who helps women (survivors) of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to reconnect & love themselves again. She was seven years old when the FGM procedure was done on her, which left her lost and disconnected not only from people, but also from herself. She has since dedicated her life to helping other survivors reconnect and love themselves. She is a founder of "The Growth Hub Coaching," where she helps & coaches survivors. Her mission is to help, inspire, and empower.

Makiya Everett is the Founder and Marketing Consultant of Vonyia Business Solutions, a business and marketing consulting firm helping entrepreneurs build strong brands, create effective strategies, and grow scalable, sustainable businesses. In this interview, she shares the personal experiences that shaped her, the evolution of Vonyia, and her approach to helping entrepreneurs build with strategy, structure, purpose, and resilience. Makiya Everett, Founder & Marketing Consultant of Vonyia Business Solutions Before Vonyia Business Solutions, what experiences shaped the woman and entrepreneur you are today? Several experiences have helped shape the woman and entrepreneur I am today, but one of the most significant was losing my brother just months before I graduated from high school and left for college. That loss changed my perspective on life at a very young age. I made a promise to myself that I would continue moving forward, pursuing my goals, and building a life that would honor him. Professionally, my journey has also shaped me in ways I could not have anticipated. I've worked across several industries, from fast food and healthcare to corporate insurance, and each experience has taught me something different about people, business, and leadership. I've also been fortunate to learn from phenomenal women throughout my career. One of my aunts owns a State Farm agency, and watching her lead a team and build her own business gave me an early example of entrepreneurship in action. Later, I had a corporate manager who taught me how to navigate professional spaces as a Black woman. She remains one of my biggest supporters and mentors today. Those experiences taught me resilience, adaptability, leadership, and the importance of having people who see your potential and encourage you to keep going. What inspired you to create Vonyia Business Solutions, and how has your vision for the company evolved since you started? Vonyia Business Solutions has really been a work in progress since I was about 16 years old. I've always had a creative side, and as a teenager, I taught myself how to build websites, create blogs, edit videos, and create content for YouTube. Eventually, a classmate asked me to design a website for his clothing brand and paid me for it. That experience showed me that something I enjoyed doing could also become a business, and what started as VidsByKiya was born. Over time, that vision evolved. What began as creative services like website design and YouTube intros eventually grew into something much bigger. As I earned my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and gained more professional experience, I began to understand that a successful business needs more than great visuals. You can have a beautiful logo and an amazing website, but without the right strategy and foundation behind them, growing a sustainable business becomes much harder than it needs to be. That realization helped transform Vonyia from a creative agency into the business and marketing consulting firm it is today, helping entrepreneurs build strong brands, develop effective strategies, and position their businesses to scale sustainably. What first made you realize entrepreneurs often need stronger structure before they need more marketing? That realization was really twofold. Before Vonyia became what it is today, there were several times when I put the business on hold because I couldn't understand why I wasn't growing or generating the sales I wanted. I was creative, I knew how to market, and I had ideas, but I eventually realized that marketing wasn't necessarily the problem. I didn't have the proper foundation and structure in place to support the growth I was trying to achieve. Once I recognized that in my own business, I started thinking about how many other entrepreneurs were likely experiencing the same frustration. Sometimes we assume we need to post more, gain more followers, redesign our website, or market harder when the real issue is underneath all of that. That realization changed the direction of Vonyia. I no longer wanted it to be strictly a creative agency that simply delivered websites or marketing materials. I wanted Vonyia to educate entrepreneurs on the strategy behind what they're building and help them create stronger foundations first. Marketing can create visibility, but without strategy and structure behind that visibility, it becomes much harder to turn attention into sustainable growth. In your Strategize, Optimize, Scale framework, what needs to be in place before a business is truly ready to scale? My Strategize, Optimize, Scale framework starts with understanding where you want your business to go before trying to grow it. In the strategy phase, we look at the vision and goals for the business, assess where it currently stands, and create a realistic plan for getting from where you are to where you want to be. From there, we optimize. This is where we look at the systems and processes already in place and determine whether they can support the new direction. That might mean improving existing workflows, introducing website automations for client communication, refining marketing processes, or even building a team so the owner no longer has to manage every aspect of the business alone. Then, we scale. At that point, growth is supported by the strategy and systems we've intentionally put in place. I believe scaling before establishing those foundations can simply create bigger problems. Sustainable growth happens when your business has the strategy, systems, and support necessary to handle the opportunities you're working toward. You've built Vonyia while maintaining a career in corporate America and continuing your education. What has that experience taught you about building a business while life is still happening? This experience has taught me just how resilient and determined I am. I've learned that with those two qualities, I can accomplish almost anything I truly put my mind to. That doesn't mean it's always easy, though. There are days when I'm completely wiped out and have to give myself permission to recharge, spend time with family, or simply play video games with my boyfriend, Josh, who is one of my biggest supporters and a proud advocate for me taking breaks because I can definitely be a workaholic. Balancing my corporate career, education, business, relationships, and personal life has taught me how to prioritize what matters and become intentional with my time. It has also taught me to take risks. There is no reward without some level of risk, and I've realized that we can't keep waiting for life to become perfect before starting something that has the potential to change our lives. Life will probably never be perfectly convenient. Sometimes, getting something we've never had requires us to do something we've never done. For me, that has meant learning when to push myself, when to rest, and when to take the leap anyway. Where do you see entrepreneurs most often mistaking activity for meaningful business growth? One of the biggest areas where I see entrepreneurs mistake activity for meaningful growth is social media. Social media is one of the greatest tools we have for gaining exposure and building awareness, but I think many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of believing that thousands of followers automatically translate into thousands of dollars in revenue. That simply isn't always the case. I encourage my clients to focus less on reaching everyone and more on clearly defining their target audience and marketing directly to the people who are most likely to need, value, and ultimately purchase what they offer. Of course, having a video go viral or seeing your follower count grow is exciting, and that visibility can absolutely create opportunities. But I wouldn't measure the health of a business by those numbers alone. Only a fraction of the people who view your content may actually fit your ideal customer profile. Meaningful business growth happens when visibility begins translating into things like qualified leads, paying customers, repeat business, stronger revenue, and sustainable demand. I'd rather help a business build an engaged audience of the right people than simply chase the biggest number on the screen. How has navigating personal loss while continuing to build your career and business changed your understanding of resilience and success? Resilience, to me, means refusing to let life's difficult moments keep you down. As a Christian, my faith has been one of my greatest anchors. One of my favorite scriptures is Romans 8:18, which reminds me that the pain we experience now cannot compare to the joy that is coming. I carry that perspective with me because life has taught me that painful seasons and joyful ones can coexist within the same story. I lost my brother, but I continued forward and graduated high school a year early. I worked full-time while attending college full-time and ultimately earned my degree at 25, even though my journey didn't follow the timeline I originally imagined. I fell in love, then took a leap of faith and moved to another state for a career opportunity while navigating a long-distance relationship. Those experiences taught me that life isn't linear, and success doesn't require a perfect journey. What keeps me going is my faith, knowing I'm making my brother, grandfather, and great-grandmother proud, and having an incredible support system here with me. My family, my nana, and my boyfriend, Josh, have continued to love, support, and cheer me on through every version of my journey. For me, resilience is trusting that a difficult chapter isn't the end of the story. As Vonyia continues to grow, what kind of company are you ultimately working to build? My ultimate goal is to build Vonyia into a full-scale business and marketing consulting firm with a team that spans everything from customer service and business strategy to marketing, website development, and UX design. I want Vonyia to be known as the firm that gives new businesses and entrepreneurs the education, strategy, and support they need to turn their ideas into sustainable businesses and, ultimately, their dreams into reality. As a Black woman, I also understand that we don't always have access to the right mentors, resources, or advice when we're starting out. I want to help change that. I don't believe in gatekeeping information that could help someone move forward. If I've learned something that can make another entrepreneur's journey easier, I want to share it. My vision extends beyond Vonyia as well. I plan to create nonprofit initiatives centered around giving back because I believe we have a responsibility to help others as we grow. One day, I envision Vonyia with its own office, an incredible team, and an impact that reaches far beyond Dallas. I want to travel the country speaking to young people about entrepreneurship, taking calculated risks, and building the right foundation for their dreams. I want them to understand that where they start does not have to determine where they finish. What do you want entrepreneurs to understand about building a business that can grow without losing its foundation? The first thing I would ask any entrepreneur is, "What is your why?" Building a business has to be about more than making money, gaining followers, or having a lot of customers. Why do you do what you do? Where does your passion come from? Who or what are you ultimately trying to impact? Years ago, my aunt asked me a question that has stayed with me, "What is something you could do for the rest of your life even if you weren't getting paid to do it?" I believe the answer to that question can tell you a lot about where your purpose lies. Before worrying about scaling, I encourage entrepreneurs to discover their why and build from there. Your why becomes part of the foundation that everything else sits on. There will be early mornings when you don't feel like getting up. There will be slow months, disappointing results, mistakes, and moments when you question whether it's worth continuing. Revenue alone won't always be enough to carry you through those seasons. Your strategy may evolve. Your branding may change. Your business may grow beyond what you originally imagined. But through every stage, always remember your why. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Makiya Everett

Written by Carla dos Santos, SEO Coach & Specialist Carla dos Santos is an SEO Coach dedicated to the alchemy of human expertise and digital strategy. She empowers mission-led entrepreneurs to master search visibility and achieve sustainable organic growth. By transforming complex data into actionable insights, Carla helps her clients build a digital legacy that outlives the algorithm. Having spent 30 years navigating the digital landscape, I have watched search engine optimisation undergo countless reinventions. I survived the era of keyword stuffing, the rise and fall of automated link-farm spam, and every major algorithmic seismic shift Google has ever thrown at us. Through three decades of watching tech "fads" emerge, spike, and collapse, one truth has remained absolute, the pendulum always swings back to human intent, original context, and real quality. Yet today, senior SEO professionals and strategists face a unique, soul-destroying challenge, not from search engines, but from inside the room. We are increasingly being overruled by AI tools operated by non-SEOs. The friction: When a prompt overrules 30 years of experience There is a distinct professional exhaustion that comes from receiving an AI-generated data dump from a client or executive containing "SEO instructions" they want implemented immediately. Some of my colleagues have even started charging 1.5x their standard rates just to cover the administrative burden of reading these novel-length emails, identifying AI hallucinations, and unpicking sweeping recommendations that sound like best practice on paper but completely lack business context. The issue is rarely the data itself, it is the total absence of commercial context. An LLM (Large Language Model) does not think. It collects, pattern-matches, and regurgitates what already exists across the web. It cannot evaluate a brand’s bespoke revenue model, its primary conversion funnels, or its target audience nuance. Case in point: I recently managed a high-value B2B client whose primary buyer demographic, corporate HR directors and C-suite executives, converted almost exclusively on desktop (over 85% desktop traffic). We intentionally built a tailored, desktop-first architecture to serve these corporate decision-makers. A non-SEO stakeholder ran a generic AI site audit. The LLM blindly recommended overriding the viewport parameters to force a mobile-first configuration. The recommendation was executed without consultation. Within 72 hours, Google Search Console flared up with errors, and click-through rates plummeted. We reversed the code and fixed the damage, but the lesson was stark, AI without human context isn't an efficiency hack, it’s an operational risk. Why fully automated SEO hits a quality wall We are currently at the peak of the "push-button SEO" hype cycle. Thousands of business owners are being seduced by the promise of 100% automated, mass-produced programmatic content and AI-generated site structures. It feels like a cheat code, until the quality wall hits. High-touch B2B buyers do not convert on generic, AI-spammed boilerplate text. Search engines have aggressively adapted, deploying search generative models and quality systems designed specifically to devalue thin, unvetted, mass-produced content. When a brand decides to strip away bespoke content architecture, hand-crafted entity schema, and clean technical execution in favour of pure automation, they aren't innovating. They are racing to the bottom of a SERP that is actively filtering them out. "AI SEO by panic" and the executive dilemma Walking away from misaligned collaborators is hard. Running a bespoke SEO consultancy in an era of automated shortcuts is harder. My most difficult professional experiences since the onset of AI occur when my strategic roadmap is actively derailed by an LLM prompt. The issue isn't the machine itself, it is a non-SEO professional triggering an audit without any foundational understanding of search, completely disorienting a custom strategy. AI certainly adds value. In an ideal ecosystem, strategy begins at the genesis, humans and machines bring their best insights to the table for an initial "mind merge." Once that synthesis happens, the experienced SEO must take full ownership of implementation. Instead, when a client becomes anxious, it triggers something far more destructive, AI SEO by panic. At this point, prompt outputs replace rationale, reactive panic replaces strategy, and the human SEO’s voice is rendered entirely inaudible. When a client insists on replacing strategic human direction with 100% automated outputs, the relationship has outgrown alignment. Staying means risking your professional pride, risking burnout, and taking the blame when the machine fails to convert human clients. Holding the line on standards often means having the courage to execute a clean, professional exit, "My model is strictly focused on high-touch technical architecture, hand-crafted entity schema, and bespoke strategy to drive high-converting leads. Fully automated SEO requires a completely different tech stack and operational approach outside my service offerings. To allow you to pursue the path you feel is best for your business without friction, this is the right moment to hand over the project." Walking away frees up the bandwidth required to partner with organisations that understand the true value of high-grade technical SEO and genuine authority. The pendulum returns I am not anti-AI. I use AI daily to assist with data clustering, pattern recognition, and speed tasks. But AI is a supportive co-pilot, not the strategist. To the business leaders navigating this shift, AI can aggregate the entire internet of information in seconds, but it cannot replace human domain expertise, real-world experience, and strategic intuition. As the AI noise continues to flood the market, the websites, brands, and strategists that win won't be the ones generating the most automated text, they will be the ones bringing authentic human value back to the web. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Carla dos Santos Carla dos Santos, SEO Coach & Specialist Carla dos Santos is a forensic SEO systems architect and the founder of The SEO Coach. Operating from her digital laboratory, she reconstructs broken data architectures, untangles topical bloat, and builds unshakeable digital fortresses for enterprise hubs and luxury international brands. Explore her live experiments and read the full technical data ledgers behind this article at The SEO Lab Hub.

Written by David Mahler, Recovery Coach, Sober Companion & Addiction Awareness Facilitator David Mahler is a Board-Certified Addiction Recovery Coach dedicated to helping individuals and families overcome the challenges of substance use disorder. Combining professional expertise with lived experience, he empowers people to rebuild their lives and find lasting hope in recovery. A substance doesn't have to be illegal to become a problem in someone's life. That's an important conversation to have when it comes to kratom. Kratom has been in the news lately, yet many people still know very little about it. Others may have seen kratom products sold online, in smoke shops, convenience stores, or other retail locations and assumed that because these products are readily available, they must be relatively harmless. That assumption deserves a closer look. Kratom comes from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree native to Southeast Asia. People may use kratom for a variety of reasons, including energy, pain relief, relaxation, or as an attempt to manage withdrawal from other substances. The problem is that what begins as occasional or seemingly purposeful use can sometimes become something very different. For some individuals, use becomes more frequent. The amount increases. They begin thinking about when they can use again. Eventually, they may realize that they are no longer simply choosing to use kratom. They feel as though they need it. When "natural" creates a false sense of security One of the challenges surrounding kratom is perception. Words such as "natural," "plant-based," and "herbal" can create a sense of safety. But a substance being derived from a plant does not automatically make it harmless or incapable of producing dependence. Kratom can produce unwanted effects, and repeated use can lead to tolerance and dependence for some people. Reported effects associated with kratom and kratom-related products can include nausea, constipation, and other gastrointestinal problems, dizziness, drowsiness, increased heart rate or blood pressure, and other physical or psychological effects. More serious adverse events have also been reported. Another concern today involves products containing concentrated levels of 7-hydroxymitragynine, commonly called 7-OH. 7-OH occurs naturally in very small amounts in the kratom plant, but highly concentrated products containing 7-OH have emerged in forms such as tablets, gummies, drink mixes, and shots. Federal health authorities have raised particular concerns about these products because of their opioid-like effects and potential for addiction and withdrawal. This distinction matters because when someone says, "I use kratom," we may no longer be talking about one uniform product. What they are taking, how concentrated it is, how frequently they use it, and what else they may be using can make an enormous difference. Kratom dependence doesn't always look like addiction One reason substance problems can progress unnoticed is that people often have a picture in their mind of what addiction is supposed to look like. They imagine someone losing a job, destroying a marriage, being arrested, going to treatment, or reaching some dramatic "rock bottom." But dependence doesn't always announce itself that way. Someone can continue going to work, pay their bills, take care of their family, and look completely functional from the outside while privately becoming increasingly dependent on a substance. While physical dependence and a substance use disorder are not necessarily the same thing, people looking for help may describe what they are experiencing simply as kratom addiction. Whatever language someone uses, the patterns are worth paying attention to. The questions I would encourage someone using kratom to ask are: Am I using more than I originally intended? Have I increased the amount or frequency? Do I become uncomfortable, anxious, irritable, or physically unwell when I don't use it? Have I tried to cut back and found it more difficult than expected? Am I organizing parts of my day around having access to it? Do I feel as though I need it to feel normal? Is kratom beginning to have more control over me than I have over it? You don't need to lose everything before that question becomes worth asking. Kratom withdrawal: What happens when someone wants to stop? Recognizing that a substance has become a problem is one thing. Knowing what to do next is another. This is where I believe we need to be careful about oversimplifying recovery. Telling someone, "Just stop using it," may sound logical, but substance dependence rarely exists in isolation. Why was the person using kratom in the first place? Were they trying to manage pain, stress, anxiety, low energy, or withdrawal from another substance? Were they using it to cope with difficult emotions or circumstances? And what happens when you remove the substance without addressing the reason it became important to the person? Those questions matter. Kratom withdrawal and physical dependence also need to be taken seriously. Recovery coaching should never replace appropriate medical evaluation or treatment. Someone experiencing dependence or withdrawal should speak with a qualified healthcare professional about the safest way to address the physical component of stopping or reducing use. But medical care can be only one part of the picture. Once someone decides they want their life to change, they still have to live that life every day. That's where recovery coaching can become valuable. How recovery coaching can help with kratom dependence Recovery coaching is not therapy, and a recovery coach does not diagnose medical or mental health conditions. Coaching is practical, person-centered support designed to help someone turn the desire for change into daily action. When I work with someone struggling with substance use, I'm interested not only in what they want to stop doing. I'm interested in what we're going to build in its place. That can mean identifying the situations, emotions, people, or environments that trigger the desire to use. It can mean developing strategies for cravings and urges. It can mean creating structure around mornings, evenings, weekends, travel, work stress, or other vulnerable times. It can mean improving sleep, exercise, nutrition, relationships, connection, accountability, and purpose. It can also mean helping someone build what we call recovery capital, the internal and external resources that make sustained recovery more achievable. Recovery capital might include supportive family relationships, healthy friendships, employment, stable housing, faith, physical health, treatment providers, recovery communities, meaningful activities, and a sense of purpose. For someone searching for help for kratom addiction, kratom recovery, or guidance on how to stop using kratom, recovery coaching can provide a practical layer of support alongside appropriate medical or behavioral health care. The goal isn't simply, "How do we remove kratom?" The bigger question is, "What does this person's life need so they no longer have to depend on kratom to get through it?" Accountability can change the recovery experience One of the greatest challenges in changing any substance use pattern is what happens between moments of motivation. Someone may wake up Monday morning determined to make a change. Then Wednesday comes. Work is stressful. They haven't slept well. There is conflict at home. A craving hits. The motivation that felt so powerful on Monday suddenly feels very far away. Recovery coaching provides another layer of accountability during those moments. An addiction recovery coach can help someone recognize patterns before they become setbacks, talk through difficult situations, revisit goals, celebrate progress, and make adjustments when something isn't working. The purpose isn't to police someone's behavior. It is to help them become increasingly responsible for their own recovery. Ultimately, successful recovery cannot depend forever on another person watching over you. The goal is to develop the awareness, tools, confidence, relationships, and lifestyle that allow you to protect your own recovery. What can families look for? Kratom dependence doesn't only affect the person using it. Families are often the first people to notice that something has changed, even when they aren't sure exactly what they're seeing. A spouse, parent, sibling, or close friend may notice that the person is using kratom more frequently, spending more money on it, keeping larger amounts available, or becoming increasingly concerned about making sure they don't run out. They may notice changes in sleep, mood, energy, routines, relationships, or interest in activities that once mattered. Perhaps the person has said several times that they're going to cut back but hasn't been able to follow through. Family members may also notice irritability, restlessness, anxiety, physical discomfort, or other changes when the person hasn't used kratom. Any one of these things by itself doesn't necessarily mean someone has developed a substance use disorder. But patterns matter. You don't have to become a detective to help someone you love. Constantly searching, checking, counting, confronting, or trying to catch someone using can quickly turn a family relationship into a battle between policing and hiding. Instead, begin with what you actually see, "I've noticed you're using this more often." "You told me you wanted to cut back, but it seems like that's been difficult." "I've noticed you don't seem like yourself when you don't have it." Then ask a question rather than immediately making an accusation, "Are you concerned at all about how much you're using?" The goal of that first conversation doesn't have to be getting someone to admit they have an addiction. Sometimes, the goal is simply to open a door. Families also deserve support of their own. Family recovery coaching can help loved ones understand the difference between supporting recovery and taking responsibility for someone else's recovery, a distinction that can be just as important for the family as changing substance use is for the individual. You don't have to wait for rock bottom You don't have to wait until your life completely falls apart before asking for help. If you are questioning your relationship with kratom, that question itself may be worth exploring. Maybe you aren't ready to call yourself addicted. Maybe you aren't even sure you want to stop completely. But perhaps you know you're using more than you planned. Perhaps you've tried cutting back and haven't been successful. Perhaps someone you trust has expressed concern. Or maybe you're simply tired of needing something every day just to feel okay. Those are conversations worth having. Recovery doesn't always begin with a dramatic crisis. Sometimes, it begins quietly, with an honest realization. This has become more of a problem than I intended, and I want my life to look different. You don't have to have all the answers. You don't even have to know exactly what recovery is going to look like yet. Sometimes, the first step is simply becoming willing to have an honest conversation about what's happening and what you would like to change. That realization isn't the end of the story. It can be the beginning. Follow me on LinkedIn for more info! Read more from David Mahler David Mahler, Recovery Coach, Sober Companion & Addiction Awareness Facilitator My coaching approach is rooted in building trust and openness with clients, drawing from my experience with both those struggling with substance use disorder and their families. My coaching journey through my own battle with substance abuse, my career's survival through national tragedy, and my relentless support in my daughter's fight against substance abuse have equipped me with invaluable insights into the recovery process.

Written by Vince Morales, Mindset, Identity, Resilience Coach & Leadership Consultant Vince Morales is a mindset, self-image, and resilience coach. In addition, he is skilled in leadership consultation and development. From April 2016 to June 2017, Vince was a homeless veteran in San Diego, California. While homeless, he made a powerful decision to change his thinking and mindset, which led him to pursue life coaching. Imagine a capable professional leaving a meeting after a colleague repeatedly dismisses a concern. The discomfort brings a quick explanation, “I am making too much of this.” Later, a supervisor praises the professional’s work. That experience receives another dismissal, “They would not say that if they knew how uncertain I feel.” In this hypothetical situation, both pain and accomplishment are denied a fair hearing. What if the moment you keep using to explain who you are cannot support the conclusion you have drawn from it? Imagine delivering a presentation that engages the audience, then struggling with one question. By evening, you are calling the presentation a failure. By the next invitation, you are wondering whether you belong in front of an audience at all. The difficulty was real. But how did one difficult answer acquire the authority to define your ability? In my book The Momentum Mind, I explore how the meaning we attach to setbacks can influence our ability to recover and move forward. That raises a question worth sitting with. When you say you are stuck, are you describing your present circumstances or repeating a verdict you reached about yourself during an earlier experience? Both deserve attention. They call for different responses. A practical obstacle may require resources, preparation, or a change in conditions. A sweeping verdict requires scrutiny. Before accepting a conclusion that limits your future, examine whether the evidence is large enough to carry it. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his coauthor Jason Riis distinguished between two perspectives on our lives, the experiencing self and the remembering self. These are ways of understanding experience rather than separate personalities. One lives through the moments. The other looks back and evaluates them. Their assessments can differ significantly.[3] The experiencing self is present while life unfolds. It feels the enjoyment of a conversation, the discomfort of an awkward exchange, and the relief when understanding returns. Its question is, “What am I experiencing right now?” Across an afternoon, it may encounter many different feelings. Those moments belong to the experience, even when they receive little attention afterward. The remembering self answers a different question, “How was that experience overall?” It draws on memory to form an assessment. That assessment can give certain moments disproportionate influence, allowing an uncomfortable ending to overshadow earlier enjoyment. The distinction matters because our remembered evaluations can influence which experiences we choose to repeat or avoid.[3] Consider the difference between feeling nervous during one part of a conversation and remembering the entire conversation as a disaster. The nervousness may be accurately remembered. The overall verdict still deserves examination. What else happened? Was there connection, useful information, or a moment of understanding that the summary leaves out? For our self-image, I would extend the inquiry further, what happens when “That experience went badly” becomes “That is the kind of person I am”? We have moved from remembering an event to defining ourselves through it. Before giving that conclusion authority over our next decision, we should ask whether it represents the whole experience and whether that experience can justify such a broad judgment. Their illustration is simple, a person enjoys a symphony recording until a scratch near the end produces an unpleasant sound. The ending appears to spoil the whole occasion in memory, although it cannot remove the enjoyment that already occurred. As Kahneman and Riis (2005) wrote, “The remembering self is sometimes simply wrong” (p. 286). Research on painful medical procedures helps explain the distinction. Redelmeier and Kahneman (1996) found that patients’ retrospective evaluations were strongly related to the intensity of pain at the worst and final parts of the procedures. Their findings helped establish what is commonly called the peak-end rule, certain moments can carry disproportionate weight in an overall evaluation. This is a finding about particular kinds of remembered experience, not a formula that explains every memory or every life judgment. For coaching, I would take the distinction as an invitation to examine another question, "What happens when our assessment of an experience becomes a statement about our identity?" That is an application of the research, and it deserves to be examined on its own terms. Return to the presentation. “I struggled to answer that question” describes a specific difficulty. “The presentation was a failure” judges the whole performance. “I am not a capable speaker” generalizes across performances, circumstances, and time. Each statement makes a broader claim. Yet the evidence has not necessarily grown with it. This is where accuracy becomes more demanding than either criticism or reassurance. Perhaps you did need more preparation. Perhaps the audience found the answer unclear. Those possibilities deserve investigation. They still do not establish everything you might be tempted to conclude about your potential. A useful assessment identifies what needs work and remains open to what further practice could reveal. I spent 14 months as a homeless veteran in San Diego. That period is part of my personal history. So are my military service, law enforcement service, and the work I now do as a coach, leadership consultant, author, and regional manager in my other career. If I told you only about those 14 homeless months, I would be giving you a true account of one chapter while leaving you without the rest of the life needed to understand it. Looking back from where I stand today, I can see the difference between acknowledging that chapter and treating it as a forecast. Homelessness described a condition I experienced. It could not tell the complete story of what I would later contribute. The work I do today belongs in the account, too. “You can respect what you feel while examining what you conclude.” – Vince Morales I would never reduce homelessness to a problem of attitude. Rebuilding a life involves practical needs and circumstances alongside personal choices. What my story allows me to say is narrower and more honest, a painful chapter can be real without being a sufficient description of a whole person. When we examine our past, we owe ourselves enough accuracy to include that distinction. The question reaches beyond obvious self-criticism. How much of the evidence you use against yourself comes from periods when you had fewer resources, less experience, or very different responsibilities? A conclusion formed under those conditions may deserve to be revisited under the conditions you live in now. Ask what has changed before assuming that an old result predicts a new one. Kahneman (2011) offered another relevant observation, “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it” (p. 402). He used this sentence to describe the focusing illusion, in which directing attention toward one aspect of life can exaggerate its weight in an overall evaluation. That observation requires care. It does not mean that loss, betrayal, discrimination, or failure is unimportant. It invites us to notice what an intense focus may leave outside the assessment. A difficult event can deserve serious attention while other facts remain essential to understanding the whole situation. This is the purpose of a principle I use in my work, “You can respect what you feel while examining what you conclude.” Disappointment can be acknowledged without making it the sole basis for a judgment about your competence. Hurt can be taken seriously while you examine what happened, what responsibility belongs to whom, and what the experience establishes about you. The distinction also protects against careless positivity. Some events genuinely change the meaning of a situation. A serious breach of trust can warrant a different decision about a relationship. A consequential error may require accountability and corrective action. Reframing should preserve those realities. The question is whether the conclusion fits the evidence, including evidence that is uncomfortable to face. For an everyday setback that you can reflect on safely, try four questions: What happened, stated specifically enough that another person could understand the event without accepting my judgment of myself? What conclusion did I add, and how far does it extend beyond this particular situation? What relevant evidence, context, or change in circumstances have I left out? What action would address the actual difficulty and give me useful information about what I can do next? For the speaker, that might mean reviewing audience feedback, preparing a clearer explanation, and rehearsing difficult questions with someone who will give honest guidance. The next task becomes concrete. “I need to improve how I answer an unexpected question” gives you something to practice. “I am a failure” offers no comparable instruction. The same precision matters in leadership. When giving feedback, identify the behavior and its consequences, then make the expected improvement clear. A missed deadline may require a conversation about planning, workload, or follow-through. Calling someone unreliable reaches beyond the incident and should not substitute for understanding what happened. Accountability becomes more useful when the person can see what to do differently and how improvement will be recognized. There is a psychological reason to make room for new experience. In his account of self-efficacy, Albert Bandura (1977) identified successful performance as an important source of belief in one’s ability to carry out particular actions. This concerns perceived capability for a task, rather than a promise that every effort will succeed or that confidence alone can overcome external barriers. “Awareness changes what becomes possible. Intentional action creates new evidence. Repeated evidence can reshape what you believe about yourself.” – Vince Morales My practical recommendation is to choose a manageable action that tests the conclusion you have been carrying. If the claim is that you cannot contribute in a meeting, prepare one relevant question and ask it. Then assess what actually happened. If the attempt is difficult, use the details to adjust the next one. Give your assessment access to experience beyond the event that first shaped it. As I have put it, “Awareness changes what becomes possible. Intentional action creates new evidence. Repeated evidence can reshape what you believe about yourself.” The word “can” matters. New evidence needs to be noticed and weighed fairly. Dismissing every improvement while treating every difficulty as definitive would preserve an old conclusion regardless of what happens. Before you decline the next opportunity, return to the moment that seems to explain your hesitation. Name what it cost you and what it taught you. Then ask what it could not possibly have known about your future. A memory can tell you about an earlier performance, it cannot observe the person you have yet to become through learning, support, and practice. Your next decision deserves the fullest evidence available, including the evidence you still have an opportunity to create. Ask yourself this one question, "Have I allowed one moment to define more of my life than it deserves?" Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Vince Morales Vince Morales, Mindset, Identity, Resilience Coach & Leadership Consultant Vince Morales is a mindset, self-image, and resilience coach with expertise in leadership consultation and development. After experiencing homelessness as a veteran in San Diego from 2016 to 2017, Vince transformed his mindset and built a coaching career focused on resilience and personal growth. He is the founder of Validus Coaching and Consulting, a certified John Maxwell Team Coach, Trainer, and Speaker, and holds two master’s degrees in leadership and executive coaching. Vince’s work has been recognized through features in U.S. media and honors including the Brainz 500 Global Award, SUCCESS Magazine 125, and IAOTP Top Coach and Consultant of the Year. References: [1] Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. [2] Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [3] Kahneman, D., & Riis, J. (2005). Living, and thinking about it: Two perspectives on life. In F. A. [4] Huppert, N., Baylis, & Keverne, B. (Eds.). The science of well-being (pp. 285–304). Oxford University Press. [5] Morales, V. (2026). The momentum mind: Break old patterns and change your direction. [6] Redelmeier, D. A., & Kahneman, D. (1996). Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: Real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures. Pain, 66(1), 3–8.

Written by David Henzell, Sobriety Coach David Henzell is a qualified addiction therapist, accredited recovery coach, and founder of Phenomenal Sobriety, a transformative recovery programme built on his signature THRIVE Sobriety System. He brings eight years of personal sobriety and three decades of professional experience to everything he writes. For nearly nine years, I have spoken publicly about my recovery. About what it took, what it cost, and what it gives back. Somewhere along the way, and without really noticing, I had stopped being someone who had recovered from alcoholism. I had become Recovery itself. The proof of it. The evidence. Proof, I was learning, has to be maintained. This is the article I would have liked to have written sooner. I had stopped being someone who had recovered from alcoholism. I had become Recovery itself. The proof of it. The evidence. And proof, I was learning, has to be maintained. – David Henzell, Sobriety Coach Inspired by Lauren Kennedy West I watched a video last night that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since. Lauren Kennedy West has schizoaffective disorder. For years, she documented her life with it, honestly, rawly, in real time, and then she began following a strict ketogenic diet, and something remarkable happened. Her symptoms reduced dramatically. She worked with her psychiatrist, carefully adjusted her medications, and began to speak publicly about what metabolic therapy had done for her mental health. She was brave enough to say out loud what many people didn't want to hear, that recovery was possible, that it was happening, and that she was living evidence of it. Then, more recently, her brain slipped into a brief psychosis. She made a video about it. In it, she said something that stopped me in my tracks. She said that somewhere along the way, without really noticing it happen, she had stopped defining herself by her illness and started defining herself by her wellness. By her stability. By being proof that recovery was possible. When reality broke through, when the symptoms returned despite everything she had built, it wasn't just frightening. It was destabilising to her entire sense of self. Because the self she had built was contingent on remaining well. At the end of the video, quietly, she asked, “Who am I when I'm not proving anything?” I sort of laughed when I heard that. Not unkindly, you understand. I laughed because I recognised something in myself that I hadn't quite found the words for until that moment. Let me tell you about a cold evening in Warsaw, back in early 2018. I had been sober for around six months at that point. I'd come through two medical detoxes, found my footing through group work and peer support, and slowly, haltingly, begun to rebuild something that felt like a life. I was living in Muranów, a neighbourhood with a weight of history in its streets, and that particular evening, I had spent the day exploring the city, returning to my apartment as the temperature dropped below zero and the night went still. I ran a hot bath. I opened the bedroom window. Afterwards, I dried off and lay down on the bed. The curtains billowed inward. But there was no wind. A warmth moved through me, slowly, completely, like something passing through rather than arriving. The room was utterly silent. Then, as suddenly as it had come, it stopped. The curtains fell back into place. I heard myself say out loud, to no one, to the empty room, or to whatever that moment was, “That was my addiction. It's just said goodbye. It's gone now. I'm safe.” I have never fully known what to make of that moment. Whether it was spiritual, psychological, something else entirely, I've turned it over many times in my head, and I still don't have a clean answer. I've come to think that maybe I'm not supposed to. What I know is that it felt like a crossing. Like I had moved from one place into another and something had quietly closed behind me. I was safe. I was recovered. I was free. That moment became, without my fully realising it, the foundation on which I built everything that came next. I went on to work as a recovery coordinator, and eventually left the constraints of formal services to do something I felt more passionately about, coaching people through sobriety on my own terms, creating tools and content and conversations that might reach people who would never walk through the door of a traditional service. It felt meaningful. It honestly still does. There is nothing quite like the moment a person realises they are going to be okay. But somewhere in the building of all of that, the work, the identity, the public voice, something shifted in a way I didn't truly notice until Lauren named it. I had stopped being someone who had recovered from alcoholism. I had become Recovery itself. The proof of it. The evidence. Proof, I was learning, has to be maintained. The gap between who I am in public and who I am in private can still feel, especially on the harder days, like carrying a badly packed rucksack on a long walk. The weight is real but distributed wrong, shifting in ways you can't always predict or explain. I have my contradictions, we all do, though some of mine sit at an uncomfortable angle to the image that recovery work can project. There are habits I haven't shed, vulnerabilities I haven't resolved, aspects of my very human life that exist quietly alongside the coaching and the content and the thought leadership, as they do for every person alive. I manage them, mostly. But managing is not the same as integrating. Integration, I think, is what I had been missing. I have coached clients through their darkest moments within hours of living through some of my own. Within hours of losing my dog. Within hours of losing my father. I held the space for their pain while mine waited in the corridor outside, patient and familiar. I am honest with my clients, more honest than most, I think, but even my honesty has a certain structure to it. I share my own difficulties only when I can contextualise them, only after the session is done, only as part of a gentle we're all the same, really on the way out. I let people in. But I choose the door. Choosing the door has never been the same as being fully seen, and some part of me has always known that. When clients ask me, and they do, often, “How did you get sober? When did you know you were better?” I have an answer I give. A good one, I think. A useful one. It talks about detox and community and SMART Recovery and the slow accumulation of better days. It doesn't mention the curtains. It doesn't mention the warmth that moved through a silent room, or the words I said out loud to no one, or the sense I had of something departing that had lived in me for years. I've never known quite how to offer that moment without it sounding like something other than what it was. So it stays inside, turned over privately, unshared. Because that moment is undefended. Undefended is dangerous when your identity is built on being proof. This is what Lauren's video broke open for me. She had attached safety to distance, she said. Distance from symptoms, from medication, from the version of herself who had been most unwell. As if healing meant she would never again be vulnerable to the thing she had healed from. I understood that completely, because I had done the same thing, not with medication, but with identity. With the careful, gradual construction of a self that was defined by how far it had come from where it started. The people I work with all carry versions of this weight too. I see it in them. The ones who have been sober for years and still feel vaguely fraudulent. The ones who are terrified that one bad day will erase everything they've built. The ones who have quietly started to believe that recovery is a performance with no interval and no understudies, and that if they slip out of character for even a moment, the whole thing will unravel. We don't talk about this honestly enough. We talk about recovery as a destination, a place you arrive at and then inhabit. We don't talk as much about what it costs to maintain the arrival. About the way the identity can slowly, imperceptibly, become its own kind of cage. Lauren ended her video without a neat and tidy conclusion. She said she was still in the middle of it. Still injured, still waiting, still sorting through what safety means in a life that is genuinely, stubbornly unresolved. I want to try to do the same. I am recovered. I know that to be true in a way that is bone-deep and unshakeable, a cold Warsaw evening told me so, in language I couldn't argue with. I don't. But I am also still human, still contradictory, still carrying things I haven't fully set down. Those two truths are not in conflict. They are just both true. I can be a sobriety coach and still have my own unfinished business. I can speak about healing and still be someone who is healing. I can have had a moment that felt like grace, like something holy passing through a still room, and also know that grace is not armour. It doesn't make you untouchable. It just makes you, perhaps, more honest. More willing to sit with both realities at once. More willing to say, I have come so far, and I am still on the way. To the people I work with, you are allowed to be this complicated. Recovery was never a single moment, however luminous. It is the long, human, imperfect work of learning to carry both what you've been through and who you are now, without letting either one of them be the whole story. To Lauren, if she reads this, you asked who you are when you're not proving anything. I think you're this, honest, searching, willing to sit in the unresolved middle and speak from it anyway. That's not a failure of recovery. That's the most recovered thing I've ever seen. I'm still learning to do it myself. Lauren Kennedy West documents her journey on YouTube. This piece was written in response to her recent video on psychosis, identity, and the complicated territory of recovery. I'm grateful for her honesty, which gave me permission for mine. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from David Henzell David Henzell, Sobriety Coach David Henzell writes at the intersection of sobriety, identity, and personal transformation. With eight years of personal recovery and a professional background spanning addiction therapy, creative practice, and academia, he brings a rare combination of lived experience and clinical insight to his work. He is the founder of Phenomenal Sobriety, a premium recovery programme built on his signature THRIVE Sobriety System, combining evidence-based techniques, AI companion support, and genuine community. David's approach draws on meaning-centred psychology and a restless curiosity, resisting the dogma of traditional recovery culture. His mission is simple, to help people who don't fit the conventional recovery mould find their own way through.

Written by Zaina Kourki, Founder of Zein Zone Zaina Kourki is passionate about bridging cultures through creative communications, meaningful partnerships, and immersive experiences that foster human connection. She is dedicated to creating impactful initiatives that bring people together and inspire cross-cultural understanding. Five lessons from leaving the structure of corporate life, building Zein Zone, and learning what it really means to create something of your own. For more than two decades, I built my career around strategic communications, cultural management, and helping organizations navigate complexity. I worked across markets, cultures, languages, and large organizational structures, learning how to build strategies, manage stakeholders, shape narratives, and deliver results. Then I decided to build something of my own. Starting Zein Zone has been one of the most challenging and enriching chapters of my career. It has required me to unlearn as much as I have learned, move faster, simplify my thinking, and become comfortable with uncertainty. As I enter my second year as a founder, these are five lessons entrepreneurship has taught me so far. 1. Entrepreneurship teaches you to simplify, without thinking smaller One of the biggest adjustments in moving from corporate life to entrepreneurship is learning to operate differently. In a large organization, complexity is often built into the system. There are teams, processes, layers of approval, specialist functions, established ways of working, and resources that allow you to focus deeply on your area of expertise. As a founder, the environment changes completely. You need to make decisions faster. You need to understand what really matters. You need to move between strategy and execution, often within the same hour. And you quickly learn that not every problem needs a complex solution. This has changed the way I think about my own work, but also the way I work with clients. Entrepreneurship has taught me to scale my thinking to the reality of the business in front of me. A global organization, a growing small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), and an early-stage venture may have very different resources and challenges. The strategic thinking remains important, but the approach cannot be one-size-fits-all. Being agile does not mean thinking smaller. It means knowing what matters most and building around it. 2. Your expertise is your foundation, not your entire business For years, communications was my professional world. I knew how to build strategies, develop narratives, work with media, manage stakeholders, advise leaders, and navigate complex communications challenges. Entrepreneurship quickly reminded me that knowing your craft is only one part of building a business. You also need to understand business development, sales, finance, legal matters, automation, operations, and networking. Some of these areas were familiar. Others were completely new territory. And strangely enough, I have found this to be one of the most enriching parts of the journey. Instead of moving away from my expertise, entrepreneurship has forced me to expand around it. I am still a communications strategist, but I now see the business through a much wider lens. That broader perspective has also shaped Zein Zone. The consultancy is not simply about public relations (PR) or communications. It sits at the intersection of strategic communications, culture, creativity, partnerships, and engagement experiences, helping businesses and cultural organizations grow their reach and impact. My expertise remains the foundation. Entrepreneurship has simply given me more tools to build on it. 3. Your offering is a hypothesis, not a monument One of the biggest misconceptions about starting a business is that you need to have everything figured out before you begin. I have learned the opposite. For me, year one was about putting a hypothesis into the market. What do people need? Where can my experience create value? What kind of clients do I want to work with? What partnerships make sense? What does the market respond to? You do not answer these questions by sitting alone and perfecting a business plan. You answer them through conversations, proposals, collaborations, opportunities, feedback, and sometimes simply by seeing what happens when an idea meets reality. That means being willing to refine. The vision can remain clear while the route changes. This has become one of the most important principles behind Zein Zone. I have a clear sense of the space I want to occupy: connecting communications, culture, creativity, and people to create meaningful impact. But how that vision takes shape is allowed to evolve. Entrepreneurship requires both conviction and curiosity. You need to stay committed to what you are building while remaining willing to change how you build it. 4. The people around you become part of your business infrastructure When you work inside an organization, your professional ecosystem is often built into the structure around you. As a founder, you have to build your own. I have learned that the right people can be just as important as the right strategy. The conversations you have. The rooms you enter. The collaborators you meet. The clients who challenge your thinking. The friends who remind you why you started. They all shape the journey. Some conversations open doors. Others open your mind. Some people become business partners or collaborators. Others simply give you a different perspective at the moment you need it. This is why I have become increasingly intentional about the communities and relationships I build around me. Being in the right rooms is not simply about networking. It is about creating an environment where ideas can evolve, opportunities can emerge, and you can continue learning. No founder builds in isolation. 5. Building a business means building your own voice Perhaps the most ironic lesson of all is that I have spent much of my career helping organizations and leaders find their voice. Doing it for yourself is a completely different game. Building Zein Zone has required me to become more visible, articulate what I believe in, and communicate not only what I do, but why I do it. That has meant thinking carefully about my own identity and the message I want to bring into the world. Zein Zone represents an inflection point in my career, a space where I can bring together more than two decades of experience across communications, culture, creativity, countries, and communities and turn that experience into something of my own. The purpose is not simply to communicate better. It is to create connections. To help businesses and cultural initiatives reach the right people. To create partnerships between different communities. To bring people into the same room. To create experiences that encourage dialogue, curiosity, and collaboration. To celebrate Arab culture and identity while connecting it with cultures and creative perspectives from around the world. Ultimately, it is about human impact. From experience to contribution Entrepreneurship has taught me that building a business is not necessarily about starting from scratch. Sometimes, it is about bringing everything you have learned into one place and deciding what you want to do with it next. There have been moments of uncertainty. Moments when the easier option would have been to return to the predictability of a full-time role. But I chose the uncertainty of building something that feels bigger than me. And perhaps that is the biggest lesson entrepreneurship has taught me so far: You do not always need to know exactly where the journey will take you. You need to know why you are taking it and have the courage to keep refining the path along the way. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Zaina Kourki Zaina Kourki, Founder of Zein Zone Zaina Kourki is the founder of Zein Zone, a consultancy helping brands and cultural projects grow their reach and impact through creative communications, partnerships, and experiences. Over the past two decades, she has led strategic communications and cultural projects across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, supporting government entities, global and regional brands, cultural organizations, and community initiatives. Whether through a creative workshop, a cultural initiative, or a shared story over coffee, her purpose with Zein Zone is to nurture a world where culture inspires connection, shared understanding, and human impact.

Brian Landry grew up with soccer as a constant. He graduated from Rummel High School in 1992, and the game stayed with him long after the classroom years ended. What started as a personal interest eventually became a career built on reporting, interviews, and a podcast that covers soccer from more angles than a scoreboard ever could. Brian is based in St. Charles, Missouri, and has spent much of his career covering the sport through in-depth reporting and conversation. The idea that shaped his work did not come from a newsroom memo or a mentor's advice. It came from watching matches in person, in as many settings as he could find, and noticing how different the same game looked depending on where you stood. Learning the game through travel Brian is an avid sports enthusiast who enjoys attending live matches and traveling to experience different soccer cultures. That habit became more than a hobby. It became a working method. A match covered from a press box in one country does not feel the same as a match watched from a packed terrace in a small town somewhere else. The chants change. The pacing of the crowd changes. Even the questions worth asking change. Brian noticed early on that if he only ever covered the sport from one vantage point, he would end up telling one version of a much larger story. What different settings taught him Traveling to see the sport in different places taught Brian to ask different questions than the ones a typical recap demands. Instead of just asking who won, he started asking why a community cared, how a club built its identity, and what made a particular region's style of play distinct. Those questions do not show up in a box score. They show up when you spend time somewhere. That shift mattered more once Brian moved from general reporting into podcasting, where a single conversation can run much longer than a wire story ever could. Turning observations into longer conversations A podcast gave Brian room to use what he had picked up from years of watching the game in different places. Instead of a quick postgame reaction, he could sit with a coach, a player, or an executive and ask about the path that got them there. The travel habit fed directly into the interview habit. Someone who has seen a few different versions of the sport tends to ask better follow-up questions. Brian's reporting has covered professional leagues, youth development programs, collegiate athletics, coaching strategies, and player development. Threaded through all of it is the same instinct he built by traveling to watch the game: look past the result and ask what shaped it. Bringing a wider view back home Brian also follows international competitions closely, which keeps him aware of how the sport is evolving outside the United States. That awareness shows up in how he frames conversations about the game's growth here at home. He is less interested in treating American soccer as a closed system and more interested in asking what lessons travel well from elsewhere. He also has an interest in sports history, broadcasting, and the ways emerging platforms are changing how fans consume news and entertainment. Those interests sit alongside the travel habit rather than apart from it. A reporter who understands where the sport has been, and who has seen how it looks in different places, is better equipped to talk about where it might go next. A working habit, not a headline None of this came from a single big moment. It came from a habit Brian kept up over years: show up in person, pay attention to the setting, and let that shape the questions. When he is not reporting, writing, or recording an episode, Brian reads nonfiction, spends time outdoors in Missouri, stays active through recreational sports, and spends time with family and friends. Those are quieter pursuits, but they come from the same instinct that sends him to a match in a new setting: curiosity that does not stop at the final whistle. That instinct, built one trip and one conversation at a time, is what continues to shape how Brian Landry covers the sport today.

Some people trace their biggest decisions back to one moment. For Shane Devereux, the idea came slower, built up over years of small choices around West Chester, Pennsylvania, long before he had a name for it. Devereux grew up in a sports-first household split between two cities. His parents are from Chicago, so Sundays meant Bears games and Cubs summers, even while he was growing up a few miles outside Philadelphia. He played baseball as a kid, the kind of commitment that eats up weekends and shapes how a person thinks about effort long after the games end. Baseball and Malvern Prep By the time Devereux reached Malvern Prep for high school, baseball had already taught him something he would carry well past the diamond: a half effort shows up in the results. You either put in the repetition or you do not, and the scoreboard does not care which one you meant to do. That idea, simple as it sounds, became the thread running through almost every decision Devereux made afterward. Not a strategy, not a framework. Just a standard he held himself to. The big idea behind an unconventional major When Devereux got to Penn State, he picked agribusiness, a major that raises eyebrows among people who assume a kid from the Philadelphia suburbs would gravitate toward something more conventional. It was not an obvious choice, and he knew it. But the same idea from baseball applied here too: commit fully to the thing in front of you instead of hedging toward whatever looks safest on paper. Agribusiness sits at the intersection of economics, operations, and the kind of practical decision-making that does not always show up in a typical business curriculum. For Devereux, that combination mattered more than the name on the degree. He has said he grew up with an older brother, Brady, and watching how two people from the same house can take different routes was part of what convinced him that the "safe" path is not always the right one. Choosing a major that fit his actual interests, rather than the one with the most predictable label, was his version of applying the lesson baseball had already taught him. Why the choice stuck The payoff of that kind of decision is not obvious right away. Devereux has described his days now as fairly regimented: work, a workout, time spent cooking, then friends and family before the day wraps up. None of that structure announces itself as the result of a big idea. But it is the same discipline that got built on a baseball field and tested again with a college major that did not follow the script. Carrying the idea into daily life Devereux reads a lot, and three books come up often when he talks about how he thinks: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. What connects them is not the subject matter so much as the pattern underneath. Housel's book changed how he thinks about long-term decisions. Clear's made him think differently about consistency and how small habits compound. Shoe Dog stuck with him because of the risk and persistence involved in building something from nothing. He listens to a similar mix in podcast form: The All-In Podcast for how different people talk about markets and current events, The Tim Ferriss Show for conversations with people at the top of unrelated fields, and How I Built This for the real stories behind how things got built. Each one reinforces the same idea he picked up decades earlier on a baseball diamond in Chester County: commit, repeat, and let the compounding happen on its own schedule. What comes next Devereux still lives in Malvern, not far from where the idea first took shape. He plays basketball, golfs, works out, and spends time with dogs and friends in roughly the same regimented rhythm he described building for himself. The big idea was never loud. It showed up quietly, in a major most people would not expect, and it's a routine that has not changed much since.

Written by Lucia Petrusova, Leadership Mentor Lucia Petrusova is a leadership transformation expert known for her work with the subconscious patterns behind how leaders think, decide, and perform. She is the founder of Lutencia and creator of Standards That Magnetize®. She brings 20 years of corporate experience together with expertise in subconscious transformation. Leadership decisions are often shaped by subconscious patterns formed long before someone steps into a position of authority. This article explores how hidden fears and protective behaviors can drive micromanagement, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and other forms of leadership self-sabotage, and why lasting change requires addressing the root beneath the strategy. The hidden programming behind leadership decisions Every leader I work with believes they are making rational decisions. They point to data, market conditions, targets, and the advice of trusted mentors. Yet, the decision was already made by the subconscious long before the spreadsheet was opened. This is leadership self-sabotage, and it is far more common among high performers than anyone admits. After two decades in the corporate world and thousands of hours guiding executives and entrepreneurs through subconscious work, I can tell you with certainty: your decisions are not strategic. They are subconscious. The short answer Leadership self-sabotage is not a lack of strategy, skill, or support. It is subconscious programming, formed early in life, that tells the nervous system what feels safe. It shows up as micromanaging, difficulty delegating, people-pleasing, and a constant need for validation. Because it sits below conscious awareness, feedback and new frameworks rarely change it. Changing the root does. Why smart leaders stay stuck Most of them are not lacking support. They have a strong executive advising them, solid structure, and the best benchmarks. Everything they need is already there, and still they don't move. That contradiction is the clue. What's missing isn't external, it's internal. Somewhere underneath the competence, they don't fully believe in themselves, and that feeling quietly outvotes every strategy in the room. These subconscious blocks form over years, sometimes decades, before someone holds a title. They were never formed through logic, so logic alone cannot undo them. A leader can fully understand that delegating is the right move and still feel resistance every time they try. Why do leaders micromanage? A real case Most advice says micromanagement is rooted in fear. That is true, but incomplete. The better question is where the fear came from. Recently, I worked with a senior director who micromanaged her team. She understood what it was doing, the feedback had been clear, and she genuinely wanted to change. Nothing changed because awareness doesn't reach the place where the pattern lives. (Shared with her permission, anonymized.) At the subconscious level, the roots were in childhood: being left alone and terrified that no one was coming back, being responsible in a moment when something nearly went terribly wrong, and a small mistake met with an intense and unpredictable reaction. From those moments, her subconscious drew a very intelligent conclusion: If I control everything, nothing unpredictable can happen. Decades later, that conclusion was running a department. Micromanagement was protection from fear, guilt, and shame her nervous system had never learned to process. She didn't need another delegation framework. She needed the root to change. Signs of leadership self-sabotage The same mechanism also drives: Difficulty delegating, because letting go feels like losing relevance Overcontrol, because trusting others feels riskier than exhausting yourself People-pleasing, softening decisions to avoid conflict Chasing external validation, the next title, the next number Perfectionism and overworking as a way to feel safe or valuable None of these are character flaws. They are protective patterns that once kept someone safe and were never updated. What changes when the root changes You cannot out-strategize a nervous system that still believes it's unsafe to delegate, say no, or be seen. When we work with the subconscious source of a pattern rather than its symptoms, delegation stops being a discipline you force yourself into and becomes simple because you no longer need to be indispensable to feel secure. For the director, the stakes were real. Her manager had told her that her performance was dropping, and the company was worried she would not return to her previous level. After our work, she did. Her performance recovered, then went beyond where it had been, and the company increased her salary. Her competence hadn't changed. She simply no longer needed control to feel safe. This isn't insight work or another round of reflection. It's deep transformational work at the subconscious level, where the pattern actually lives. Strategy can only take you as far as the identity underneath it allows. The real work starts where strategy cannot reach. Apply to work with me. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Lucia Petrusova Lucia Petrusova, Leadership Mentor Lucia Petrusova is a leadership transformation expert, executive coach, and founder of Lutencia. After 20 years in the corporate world, she now works with leaders and entrepreneurs to transform the subconscious patterns behind how they lead, decide, and perform. She is the creator of Standards That Magnetize® and author of Unapologetically Feminine. Her work bridges leadership, human behavior, and the subconscious mind to create change at the root, not just at the level of strategy. Her core belief is simple: Your decisions are not strategic. They’re subconscious.