Written by Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice Paula Rose Castronova is a sustainability leader and speaker who turns complex concepts into practical action. She champions sustainability as a human issue, uniting strategy and everyday choices to align purpose with performance and inspire systemic, real-world change. Have you ever felt emotionally exhausted by the state of the world? It is as if no matter how much you recycle, reduce your waste, care deeply, or try to make better choices, it still does not feel like enough. Around the world, millions of people are experiencing eco-anxiety, a growing emotional response to environmental degradation, climate disasters, and uncertainty about our shared future. Yet despite its name, eco-anxiety is not a personal failure or a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a deeply human response to witnessing this instability and change. The goal is not to suppress these emotions. It is to learn how to transform them into something more powerful. Anxiety is often awareness without direction. Empowerment begins when awareness finds purpose. As conversations about sustainability continue to evolve, we are beginning to recognize that solving environmental challenges is not only about technology, policy, or innovation. It is about people. It is about our emotional wellbeing, resilience, and capacity to remain engaged even when the problems feel overwhelming. Caring deeply about the world we live in should never be viewed as a weakness. In fact, it may be one of our greatest strengths. What is eco-anxiety? Eco-anxiety is becoming increasingly common, particularly among younger generations who are growing up in a world where extreme environmental degradation is no longer a distant possibility but an everyday reality. It often shows up as helplessness, guilt, or emotional fatigue. Many people describe feeling overwhelmed by a constant stream of negative information while also questioning whether anything they do can make a difference. These emotions are often experienced in isolation. People assume they are the only ones struggling or believe they need to be more resilient. The reality is very different. Eco-anxiety is becoming one of the defining emotional experiences of our time because it reflects something fundamentally human. It reveals empathy, awareness, and emotional intelligence. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves a different question. What if your overwhelm is not evidence that something is wrong with you? What if it is evidence that your humanity is still intact? Rather than seeing these emotions as problems to eliminate, we can begin to recognize them as signals. They tell us that we care, we value life, and we want to contribute to something better. The opposite of apathy is not perfection, it is participation. Why do we feel powerless? One of the greatest challenges of modern sustainability is the sheer scale of the issues we face. Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, social inequality, and resource depletion are global problems that leave individuals feeling insignificant. It is easy to believe that governments and corporations hold all the power while ordinary people have little influence. Many people tell themselves, "I am too small to matter." Others believe systems are responsible for many of our environmental challenges and that our individual actions are meaningless. In reality, our systems are made up of people, and every policy, organization, industry, and institution is shaped by human decisions, values, and behaviors. History reminds us that meaningful change has almost always begun with shifts in collective thinking. Social movements, consumer behavior, and cultural expectations have transformed industries, influenced governments, and redefined what society considers acceptable. Individual actions may seem small in isolation, but together they create powerful ripple effects that can reshape entire systems. Hopelessness grows when we only measure impact by immediate results. Sustainable change often happens gradually, building momentum one conversation, decision, and action at a time. Turning emotion into energy Rather than trying to eliminate difficult emotions, the better approach is to learn how to channel them. Emotional resilience is not about avoiding fear or grief, it is about developing the capacity to move through these emotions without becoming consumed by them. One simple framework offers a powerful way forward, awareness, acceptance, and action. Awareness means recognizing what we are feeling without judgement. Instead of suppressing anxiety or pretending everything is fine, we acknowledge our emotions and understand what they are telling us. Awareness alone, however, is not enough. Acceptance follows. This is not about surrendering to hopelessness, but accepting that uncertainty exists while recognizing that uncertainty does not prevent meaningful action. We do not need all the answers before moving on to the next stage. Action is the final step. Awareness without action becomes despair, while action without emotional grounding often leads to burnout. Sustainable change requires both emotional resilience and practical engagement. This shift also means replacing guilt with conscious, values-aligned choices. Instead of trying to save everything, we can focus on doing one meaningful thing well. Progress will always be more sustainable than perfection. Whether it is reducing waste, supporting ethical businesses, mentoring others, or simply having conversations that inspire change, every action reinforces our ability to contribute. Importantly, we must remember that we do not have to carry the whole world to help change it. Redefining sustainability as human sustainability For many years, sustainability has focused primarily on environmental indicators such as carbon emissions, renewable energy, and waste reduction. These remain critically important, but they are only part of the picture. Sustainability is equally about people. It considers emotional wellbeing, resilience, connection, leadership, values, and the way we choose to live every day. Communities struggling with fear and disconnection find it difficult to collaborate, as exhausted people cannot build a sustainable future. Organizations cannot create lasting change if the people within them are emotionally disengaged. This is why we need to expand our understanding of sustainability to include human sustainability. Caring for the planet and caring for ourselves are not competing priorities, they are deeply interconnected. The environmental crisis is also a relationship crisis. It reflects our relationship with nature, each other, our communities, and the systems we have created. Restoring those relationships requires more than scientific innovation. It requires empathy, trust, resilience, and a renewed sense of shared purpose. When people feel emotionally supported, connected, and hopeful, they become willing to lead, collaborate, and create positive change. Human wellbeing becomes one of the most important foundations for environmental sustainability. Practical tools for empowerment Empowerment does not require extraordinary actions. It grows through small, intentional choices repeated consistently over time. One of the simplest ways to protect emotional wellbeing is to limit fear consumption. Staying informed is important, but immersing ourselves in negative news can leave us feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Seek balanced information that also highlights solutions, innovation, and progress. Choose one sustainable habit rather than attempting to transform every aspect of your life at once. Small, consistent actions often create far greater long-term impact than dramatic but short-lived efforts. Another powerful mindset shift is to focus on influence rather than control. Ask yourself, "What can I influence today?" The answer may be your workplace, family, purchasing decisions, community, or simply the conversations you choose to have. These are the places where meaningful change begins. Building community is equally important. Eco-anxiety often flourishes in isolation, whereas shared action builds resilience and reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Whether through local groups, workplaces, or neighborhood initiatives, collective action reduces emotional burden while increasing positive impact. If we celebrate progress, hope grows through visible movement. Every step matters because it reinforces the belief that change is possible. As a simple exercise, ask yourself one question: What is the one action I can take that better aligns my values with the way I live? The answer does not need to be life-changing. It only needs to move you one step closer and help create the world you want to see. From caring to courage Perhaps the greatest misconception about eco-anxiety is that it is something to overcome. In reality, it may be something to understand. Caring deeply is not a weakness. It is evidence that we remain connected to each other, nature, and the future. The challenge is not to become fearless. It is to become engaged. Hope is not something we wait for, but something we practice. It grows through participation, everyday choices, and the willingness to contribute even when the outcome is uncertain. You are not powerless because you are one person. Every movement, innovation, and social transformation began when ordinary people chose to act. If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the state of the world, remember this: you are not overwhelmed because you are weak, you are overwhelmed because you care. When these emotions are supported by resilience, grounded in purpose, and transformed into meaningful action, they become one of the most powerful forces for creating a sustainable future. "I do not see emotions as weaknesses. I see them as signals." – Paula Rose Castronova Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Paula Rose Castronova Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice Paula Rose Castronova is a sustainability leader, speaker, and holistic thought architect transforming how people and organizations respond to today’s defining challenges. With a career rooted in creativity, design, storytelling, and leadership, she turns complex sustainability ideas into clear, actionable pathways. She sees sustainability as fundamentally human, shaped by how we live, lead, consume, and connect. As an Active Sustainability Director, she identifies opportunities where others see obstacles, using systems thinking to link environmental, social, and economic issues. Through her writing, speaking, and strategy, she bridges policy and daily action, turning knowledge into meaningful change.

Written by Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach & Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is the founder of Lotus Journey, a breast cancer survivor, author, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner, and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis at 39, she now helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by supporting the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of healing. There is a strange contradiction at the heart of breast cancer survivorship. You have fought incredibly hard for your life, yet once treatment ends, fear can make it surprisingly difficult to fully live it. During treatment, there is usually a plan. There is another chemotherapy session, another scan, surgery, radiotherapy, or a follow-up appointment. Your medical team is close, your progress is monitored, and, however difficult the experience may be, there is often a sense that something is actively being done. Then treatment ends, appointments become less frequent, and you are expected to move forward. For many women, this is when another challenge quietly emerges, fear of recurrence. It may appear before a scan or follow-up appointment. It may surface when someone you know receives a cancer diagnosis or when a cancer story appears unexpectedly on social media. Sometimes, it is triggered by something as ordinary as an unfamiliar ache or sensation in the body. The mind that once interpreted an ache as simply an ache has learned another possibility. "What if it's back?" That fear is understandable. You have experienced something that fundamentally challenged the assumption most of us live with, that tomorrow will probably look something like today. Breast cancer can take away that innocence. The question is not necessarily how to get it back, but how to build a meaningful life without needing absolute certainty first. When your body stops feeling like a safe place Before cancer, many of us move through life without constantly monitoring our bodies. We notice discomfort, but we don't necessarily attach a frightening meaning to every sensation. Cancer can change that relationship. A headache, pain in the back, unusual tiredness, or a change somewhere in the body can suddenly become loaded with meaning. Paying attention to genuine symptoms and discussing concerns with your healthcare team is important, but there is a difference between appropriate awareness and living in a continuous state of surveillance. After cancer, learning to trust the body again can therefore become an important part of emotional recovery. That does not mean blindly assuming that everything is fine. Nor does it mean ignoring symptoms because we are afraid of appearing anxious. It means gradually finding the space between awareness and hypervigilance, listening to the body without allowing every sensation to become evidence of the worst possible outcome. For some women, that takes time. The impossible search for certainty Fear has a clever way of disguising itself as control. After breast cancer, it can be tempting to believe that if we eat perfectly, exercise enough, take the right supplements, eliminate every potentially harmful product, manage our stress perfectly, and follow every piece of health advice we encounter, we can guarantee that cancer will never return. Lifestyle absolutely matters, which is one of the reasons I trained in Lifestyle Oncology. Nutrition, physical activity, sleep, maintaining health, reducing alcohol, avoiding smoking, and supporting psychological wellbeing can all form meaningful parts of health after cancer. Following appropriate medical recommendations and ongoing surveillance also matters. But empowerment becomes something different when our choices are driven entirely by fear. A nutritious meal can be an act of self-care, or it can become something we are terrified to get wrong. Exercise can make us feel strong and alive, or it can become another way of trying to earn safety. Research can help us make informed decisions, or it can leave us spending hours searching for a certainty that no website, practitioner, or medical professional can give us. There is an important distinction between taking responsibility for what is within our influence and believing we must somehow control what cannot be controlled. I believe genuine empowerment requires both. We do what we reasonably can to support our health, and we gradually learn to release the impossible responsibility of guaranteeing our future. Fear is not the enemy One of the things I have learned through my own healing and through supporting other women is that fighting fear often gives it even more power. We tell ourselves we should be positive. We become frustrated when frightening thoughts return. We may even judge ourselves for feeling anxious because we believe we ought to be grateful simply to be alive. But fear of recurrence is not evidence that you are negative or failing at recovery. It is an understandable response to having experienced something genuinely frightening. The goal, therefore, is not necessarily to eliminate fear. It is to change your relationship with it. We can learn to notice fear without automatically obeying it. We can ask ourselves, "Is something happening right now that requires action, or is my mind taking me into a future scenario?" If there is something that needs medical attention, we take appropriate action. If there isn't, we can gently return to the life that is happening in front of us. That distinction sounds simple, but practising it repeatedly can be profoundly powerful. What if it comes back? For a long time, I believed that overcoming fear meant somehow convincing myself that the thing I feared would never happen. I now see it differently. None of us can obtain a guarantee about our future. Cancer simply makes us painfully aware of a truth that has always existed, life is uncertain. Paradoxically, accepting that can eventually create more freedom than continually fighting against it. Instead of asking, "How can I know that cancer will never come back?" we can begin asking different questions, "How do I want to live while I am here? What matters enough that I no longer want to postpone it? Who do I want beside me? What makes me feel alive? What am I tolerating because I assume I have unlimited time?" These questions move us from trying to predict the future towards participating in the present. Don't let prevention become another prison After a serious illness, wanting to do everything possible to protect yourself is completely understandable. I felt strongly about becoming an active participant in my own health, and that philosophy remains central to the work I do today. But there is a balance I believe we need to protect. If our entire life becomes organised around preventing cancer, cancer can continue controlling our life even when there is no evidence of disease. We can become afraid of food, products, stress, travel, missing a workout, or making the "wrong" choice. Health itself can become another source of anxiety. Lifestyle medicine should expand life, not shrink it. Healthy living should help us feel stronger, more energetic, and more connected to ourselves. It should create greater capacity for relationships, purpose, pleasure, and experiences that matter to us. The objective is not to construct a perfectly controlled life in which nothing bad can ever happen. Such a life does not exist. The objective is to care for ourselves well while still allowing ourselves to live. Learning to trust yourself again Perhaps the deepest form of trust after breast cancer is not trusting that nothing difficult will ever happen again. It is trusting yourself. Trusting that if something changes, you will respond. Trusting that you can ask questions and advocate for yourself. Trusting that you know your body and can seek professional advice when something genuinely concerns you. Trusting that uncertainty does not mean danger is present today. Trusting that whatever the future brings, you do not need to spend the present rehearsing every possible tragedy. That kind of trust is very different from certainty. Certainty depends on knowing what will happen. Self-trust means knowing that you can meet life even when you don't. For me, this distinction reaches far beyond cancer. It changes how we approach relationships, opportunities, vulnerability, and love. Once we stop demanding guarantees before allowing ourselves to feel safe, we create more space to experience life as it actually unfolds. From surviving to living There may always be moments when fear returns. A follow-up appointment may bring anxiety. An unexpected symptom may frighten you. An anniversary may remind you of everything you went through. Healing does not necessarily mean those moments disappear. Progress may instead look like fear visiting without moving in. Perhaps you notice the thought, acknowledge it, and continue with your day. Perhaps you ask your medical team about a symptom rather than spending three nights searching the internet. Perhaps you book the holiday instead of thinking, "What if I'm not well enough next year?" Perhaps you allow yourself to fall in love, make plans, start something new, or imagine yourself growing older. These may seem like ordinary acts. After cancer, they can be extraordinary acts of trust. You fought hard to survive breast cancer. You deserve a life that contains more than trying to prevent yourself from ever experiencing it again. Take care of your health. Attend your follow-ups. Nourish your body. Move it. Rest it. Ask questions. Make informed choices, and seek professional support when fear becomes difficult to manage. But somewhere among all those responsible acts of self-care, remember to live. Because perhaps freedom after breast cancer does not come from finally believing, with absolute certainty, that cancer will never return. Perhaps it comes from recognising that uncertainty is part of being alive, and deciding that fear will not be allowed to take today away from you. You don't have to let fear decide how you live If fear of recurrence is taking up more space in your life than you want it to, the answer isn't necessarily to eliminate every frightening thought. It may be learning how to feel safe enough within yourself to stop organising your life around them. This is one of the areas I support women with through my transformational breast cancer coaching, alongside rebuilding confidence, identity, and trust after treatment. You can begin with Veronika’s free Breast Cancer Support & Healing Series, or explore how she works with women individually through Lotus Journey. Start here. Or discover my programmes here. To learn more about Veronika, her story, speaking, and media work, visit here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Veronika Bubenickova Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach & Therapist Veronika Bubenickova is a breast cancer survivor, author, speaker, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis in 2023, she embarked on a profound healing journey that transformed every aspect of her life. Today, she helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by addressing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. She is the founder of Lotus Journey and author of Diary of a Soul Reborn, with a mission to help women thrive beyond breast cancer, not just survive it.

Lindsay Marie Branton is a Registered Kinesiologist and Director of Brain Health and Concussion Care at EPIC Health and Movement, where she works with people experiencing persistent and complex concussion symptoms. Her approach looks beyond isolated deficits to understand how the brain and body have adapted after injury, and why those adaptations may continue to affect function long after the initial concussion. In this interview, Lindsay explores why recovery can stall, how compensations and nervous system responses can contribute to persistent symptoms, and why a plateau in rehabilitation does not necessarily mean someone has reached the limit of their recovery. Lindsay Marie Branton, Complex Concussion Clinician You’ve experienced more than 14 concussions yourself. How did your own recovery experiences shape the clinician you became and the way you approach complex concussion cases today? After my 14th or so concussion in 2014, my health began to decline gradually, but significantly. I developed symptoms I never would have associated with concussion: resting tremors, tachycardia, high blood pressure despite being very fit, persistent pain and injuries, an exaggerated fight-or-flight response, insomnia, gut issues and food intolerances. I was also struggling with more recognizable symptoms like memory and word-recall difficulties. I felt like I was losing control of my health, but no one could tell me why. Neurologists found nothing pathological to explain what I was experiencing, and my family doctor didn’t know what was happening. That was incredibly scary. Eventually, with the help of my colleague Dr. Mel, we began to recognize that my concussion history could be connecting many of these seemingly unrelated issues. I found a practitioner who completed a detailed assessment and, for the first time, could explain why I felt the way I did. I no longer felt crazy. There was an explanation, and then the hard work of rehabilitation began. That experience fundamentally shaped how I work today. I understand firsthand both the gaps that can exist in our healthcare system and how broad the effects of concussion can be. A concussion is a brain injury, but its effects can extend throughout the body. Understanding those connections is critical when working with complex cases. What tells you that a concussion case may require a more comprehensive approach than a typical recovery? One of the first things I look at is how long symptoms have persisted. When someone is still struggling months or even years after a concussion, I'm no longer thinking only about the original injury. I'm thinking about how the nervous system and body have adapted in response to it. Compensations can be helpful initially, but over time, some may begin contributing to the person's ongoing difficulties. Concussion history is also important. A particularly traumatic mechanism makes me think differently, but so does a history of multiple concussions that were never properly identified or rehabilitated. Interestingly, patients will sometimes tell me they've never had a concussion before, but as we go through their history, we uncover accidents, sports injuries or other events that sound very consistent with concussions that were simply missed at the time. I also look closely at the symptom pattern and how much it affects function. Unexplained tremors, tachycardia, fainting, significant anxiety or difficulty tolerating exercise, screens, driving or busy environments tell me there may be more going on than an isolated deficit. The more systems, environments and activities involved, the more important it becomes to step back and look at the whole picture. What can testing multiple systems together reveal that isolated vision, balance, or cognitive tests may miss? Testing multiple systems together gives us insight into what is actually happening during activities of daily living. Having one system perform normally in isolation, for a short period of time, in a quiet and controlled environment isn't necessarily reflective of the demands of real life. This becomes especially important when someone is further out from their concussion or has already completed rehabilitation. Their vision, balance or cognitive testing may look relatively normal when assessed individually. But real life rarely asks us to use one system at a time. Think about walking through a busy grocery store while looking for a specific item. Your brain is simultaneously processing visual information, controlling eye and head movements, maintaining balance, navigating around people and objects, filtering noise and making decisions. Someone may perform each of those tasks well individually but struggle when they're combined. Endurance matters too. A patient might perform well during a brief assessment but be unable to tolerate screens or noise by the end of a workday, with fatigue becoming overwhelming. A detailed history is often where this investigation starts. Listening carefully to what a patient can and cannot do helps me determine which systems need to be challenged together and where we may find weaknesses that isolated testing hasn't captured. How do compensations develop after concussion, and when can they start limiting recovery rather than helping it? Compensation is actually a very normal and useful response to injury. When one system becomes less reliable, the brain will often rely more heavily on another system to help us continue functioning. For example, after a concussion, someone may have impaired oculomotor function, while an associated whiplash injury may alter proprioceptive information coming from the neck. If vestibular information also becomes less reliable, the brain may begin weighting vision more heavily to understand where the body is in space. Initially, that's helpful. The brain is finding another way to accomplish the task. The problem is when that strategy persists long after the acute injury. If someone becomes overly visually dependent, for example, environments with large amounts of visual information – grocery stores, crowds, scrolling screens or driving – can become overwhelming. That altered sensory weighting may contribute to symptoms like dizziness, disorientation or visual motion sensitivity. This is why, in persistent concussion, I'm not only asking, “What isn't working?” I'm also asking, “What has the nervous system learned to do instead?” Sometimes the thing that helped someone function early in recovery becomes part of what is limiting them later. What role can the nervous system’s stress response play when concussion symptoms persist, even after some of the original deficits have improved? After a concussion, sympathetic activation is appropriate and protective. This is part of what we commonly call the fight-or-flight response – the body enters a heightened state of awareness following an injury. Most people gradually settle back toward normal regulation, but in some persistent or complex cases, the nervous system can remain biased toward that heightened state. I find this is an often-overlooked part of rehabilitation. For example, a patient may initially have oculomotor deficits that make reading difficult. They eventually complete rehabilitation and those measurable deficits improve, but reading still provokes symptoms. I see this particularly in people who went months or years before the original problem was identified and treated. By that point, the nervous system may have developed a strong association between reading and threat or symptom production. The original deficit has improved, but the response to the activity hasn't fully changed with it. This can be a point where patients feel dismissed or are told this is simply their new normal. Instead, we may need to work on recalibrating that response – gradually teaching the nervous system that the activity is safe again. It's nuanced work, but I think it's an incredibly important part of complex concussion rehabilitation. Where do you see the biggest gaps in concussion care, particularly for people whose symptoms have persisted despite seeing multiple providers or trying different forms of rehabilitation? I think it can be very difficult within our standard healthcare model for people with persistent concussion symptoms to get the kind of care they need. That's not necessarily because anyone is doing something wrong. It's partly the reality of an overburdened system and a condition that often doesn't present with a clear structural abnormality or disease process that explains why someone is still struggling. Physicians and neurologists play an important role in ruling out serious pathology and managing medical concerns. But when a patient says, “I've done the rehabilitation, my imaging is normal, but something is still wrong,” the next question is often much more functional: What isn't working well together, under what conditions, and why? Even within rehabilitation, we can become very focused on individual systems – vision, vestibular function, the neck, exercise tolerance – without always stepping back to see how they interact. Complex concussion care takes time. It requires a detailed history, assessment, problem-solving, rehabilitation, reassessment and sometimes repeatedly changing the hypothesis as you learn more about the patient. Our healthcare system isn't really structured to accommodate that kind of investigation. It's one of the reasons I developed my Complex Concussion Consultations: to create the time and space to step back, look beyond individual deficits, and understand why this particular person still can't function the way they need to. What signs might tell someone with persistent concussion symptoms that it’s time for a fresh assessment or a different approach to rehabilitation? One of the biggest signs is that you're no longer making meaningful progress – not only in your symptoms, but in your capacity. I often say that people living with persistent concussion symptoms have made their lives small out of necessity. They've reduced their work hours, stopped exercising, limited social interactions, avoided busy environments or given up hobbies because those things make them feel worse. Good rehabilitation should gradually help you make your life bigger again. If you've been consistently doing rehabilitation but that process has stopped, it may be time to ask why. Another sign is when the deficits you've been working on appear to have improved – perhaps your eye movements, balance, vestibular function or neck function are testing well – but you're still significantly limited in everyday life. That doesn't necessarily mean the rehabilitation you've received wasn't valuable. It may mean there's another piece of the problem that hasn't yet been identified. Broader changes in health can also warrant another look, including changes in heart rate or blood pressure, gastrointestinal symptoms, or hormonal and menstrual changes. These aren't specific to concussion and may require appropriate medical investigation, but they shouldn't simply be ignored. If your testing is improving but your life isn't, that's a good reason to step back, reassess the bigger picture and potentially bring in a different perspective. How do you decide when a patient is ready to increase complexity or challenge without pushing beyond their current capacity? Symptoms are one of my biggest guides for progressing rehabilitation. The goal isn't necessarily to make rehab completely symptom-free – we often need to challenge the system—but the challenge needs to be tolerable. I often use a green-light, yellow-light, red-light approach. Mild, temporary symptoms may be acceptable, particularly if they settle quickly after the exercise. If symptoms become more significant, continue building, or take a long time to return to baseline, that's a sign that the current challenge may be too much. I'm also looking for change over time. If an exercise that initially caused noticeable symptoms is now producing very little response and the patient is recovering well, that's a good indication that we may be ready to increase the complexity. Importantly, I don't progress based on performance alone. Someone may look like they're performing a task perfectly while their nervous system is still responding as though the task is highly threatening. Increasing the difficulty too quickly in that situation may continue to reinforce that response rather than improving tolerance. Capacity can also fluctuate with sleep, stress, workload and environment, so individual sessions will vary. What matters most is the overall trajectory: over time, can we safely challenge more, recover more quickly and tolerate increasingly complex demands? What do you want someone with persistent symptoms to understand when you say, “Persistent doesn’t mean permanent”? I want people to understand that just because their symptoms have lasted a long time does not automatically mean they are permanent – even if they've been told, “This is just how you are now.” I've worked with numerous patients who came to me after being symptomatic for months or years and having been given that message. I've watched people continue to make meaningful improvements, return to work, tolerate activities they had avoided for years and gradually make their lives bigger again. This isn't just something I see clinically. Current concussion guidelines emphasize that even among people whose symptoms persist beyond the expected recovery period, the majority can still achieve symptom resolution, particularly when treatment is targeted toward the specific factors contributing to their symptoms. In persistent concussion, ongoing symptoms aren't necessarily evidence that the brain has been damaged in some permanent, irreparable way. Sometimes symptoms are being maintained or influenced by the compensations and adaptations the nervous system developed in response to the original injury. Those patterns can change. The brain is plastic. It can learn and adapt throughout our lives. That doesn't mean every person will recover completely, or that recovery follows a predictable timeline. But the passage of time alone shouldn't be used to decide that someone has reached the limit of their recovery. Persistent describes how long symptoms have lasted. It doesn't tell us what someone is still capable of changing. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Lindsay Marie Branton

Written by Meagan Hruska, Licensed Mental Health Counselor Meagan Hruska is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has been practicing both in-office therapy and Equine Assisted Psychotherapy for 10 years. She currently owns her own practice and is a co-founder of Dusty Boots Barn, where she provides counseling services and innovative trainings for professionals in the mental health field. When coming into therapy, the idea of having to “feel” emotions or “talk” about emotions can be a big barrier, prompting us to steer clear of mental health services, especially when many of us have been taught that accessing emotions is a weakness. But what if emotions aren’t what you think they are? When I facilitated men’s prison programs, there was always at least one man who would initially say something along the lines of “Don’t be making us too emotional now,” “I don’t want to be all feminine,” “Don’t turn us into women,” or “Don’t make us weak with all the emotion stuff,” and everyone would chuckle in agreement. These men were also in prison, surviving what they referred to as “the jungle.” They couldn’t afford to be perceived as weak. It could (literally) be dangerous to be “soft.” Here’s what most people don’t understand about emotions: they are simply data. That’s it. To feel and know emotions is not the same as being reactive or overly expressive about them. Emotions are a map, a sort of global positioning system (GPS) that helps us navigate life. They are a divine tool. Their purpose is to help us, to show us the way. “Don’t make us weak with all that emotion stuff,” – said a client to a therapist Emotions tell us when something is working and when it isn’t. They tell us when we are on our purpose or mission and when we aren’t, what’s in alignment and what isn’t. Emotions show us what matters to us and what doesn’t, our likes and dislikes, and who’s a good fit for us and who isn’t. They show us what we care about and what we don’t. If you can’t access your emotions or you push them away, you are living a life without all the data or information. Yikes. We wonder why we feel directionless or empty. Shutting off emotions means limiting access to crucial information. It’s like having a GPS that you’ve turned off. Instead, you try to find your way blindly, wandering around aimlessly in the dark and never getting anywhere. Imagine how much easier it would be if you decided to just use the GPS or map. When the men I worked with in prison realized this was all emotions were, they became more willing to access them, feel them, and use them. They actually became more powerful, more aware, and more grounded. They could lead! They then had a map, their map. They began following it, and boy, did they rise. Those men in prison who chose to work with their emotions found their purpose. They got on mission and were no longer lost. Emotions aren’t something to fear. They are something to use to navigate life successfully. They are an incredible tool, especially when you know how to understand them, feel them, and use them effectively. They are a tool for self-mastery, communication, relationships, and your mission. Without them, there is no real direction. This is why we get to know our emotions and what they tell us. Once we interpret the information and understand our emotions, we feel them so they can be released from the body and then pass. The idea that we also need to feel and release past emotions is crucial. When we let go of the past, our emotional system operates more efficiently. We then need less energy to decipher whether the emotion we feel is from the past or the present. The more we release the past, the more we can trust the immediate feedback of the nervous system. When this tool operates smoothly, it leads to more efficient decision-making and action. Hello, powerful leadership! There truly is so much wisdom and strength in emotion work. For those of us brave enough to decide that emotions are a strength, we can successfully conquer and overcome life’s challenges. Although learning to understand and work with our emotions takes time, here are five quick steps to begin tapping into the power of regulating your emotions. Name the emotion and remind yourself it’s just information. Its job is to help you by communicating something to you. What is it telling you? Is this emotion from the past or the present? Is something happening now in your immediate environment that is bringing up a strong emotional response, such as an argument with a spouse or a stressful situation at work? (This may be a present emotion.) Or is there no identifiable immediate stressor in your current environment, but you are still noticing a rising emotion? (This is likely a past emotion surfacing to be processed because your nervous system is relaxed. Your body is ready to let it go!) Take three deep breaths from your stomach. This type of breathing communicates to your body that you are safe, making it easier to understand, interpret, feel, and let emotions pass through your system. Repeat as needed. Put both feet on the ground and press them down. This grounds your body, which can help prevent the feeling that emotions are “taking over.” Place a hand on your body where you feel the emotion and gently apply pressure. This pressure signals to your body that you are safe. It also helps you develop more awareness of the connection between your body and emotions. Follow me on Facebook for more info! Read more from Meagan Hruska Meagan Hruska, Licensed Mental Health Counselor Meagan Hruska, MS, LMHC, is a leader and innovator in the mental health field, evolving and pushing the field forward through her insight gained from years of clinical experience practicing and providing mental health-based services in numerous settings. She also specializes in incorporating experiential learning and somatic-based practice in her work, as well as Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, where clients experience services in the company of horses and nature. Her intention is to help people reconnect and become embodied in the essence of who they are, both personally and professionally.

Written by Monique Mason, Motivational Speaker & Leadership Monique Mason is a Healthcare Leader and Motivational Speaker known for helping women and emerging leaders turn hardship into purpose. She is the founder of Her Vision LLC and the creator of the See Her Vision leadership framework. Leadership isn't simply a title you are given. Leadership is something you grow into, develop, and intentionally choose every day. Whether you're stepping into your first leadership role, leading a team, building a career, starting a business, or finding your voice as a speaker and mentor, leadership growth begins with understanding who you are, where you're going, and the impact you want to make along the way. Throughout my journey as a Nursing Home Administrator, mentor, speaker, and founder of Her Vision, I've learned that leadership is about much more than managing people or achieving results. It's about vision, purpose, service, growth, and having the confidence to become the leader you were created to be. Here are 5 essential steps that have shaped my leadership journey and that I encourage women and emerging leaders to embrace. 1. See your vision clearly Before you can lead others, you have to understand where you're going. Every leader should be able to answer a simple question: What kind of leader do I want to become? For me, leadership has never been only about managing operations. As a Nursing Home Administrator, my vision has always been to create an environment where the people we serve and the people I lead have the opportunity to thrive. That same vision became the foundation for Her Vision. Define what leadership means to you. Ask yourself: What do I want my leadership to represent? Who do I want to impact? What do I want people to experience because I led them? What kind of legacy am I building? Your vision becomes your compass. Turn your vision into goals. A vision without action remains a dream. Set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and tied to a deadline. Don't simply say, “I want to become a better leader.” Ask yourself: What specifically do I need to develop, and what action will I take to get there? When I decided to develop my speaking platform, I had to move from simply having a message to creating a plan, developing my signature talk, seeking opportunities, and putting myself in rooms where my voice could make an impact. Your vision gives you direction. Your goals give you movement. 2. Know the people you lead Leadership is about people. You cannot effectively lead people if you don't take the time to understand them. Listen before you lead. Great leadership doesn't begin with having all the answers. It begins with asking the right questions. Learn your team's strengths, concerns, goals, communication styles, and motivations. People want to know that they are seen, heard, and valued. Lead the person, not just the position. Not everyone needs the same kind of leadership. Some people need clear direction. Others need encouragement and room to grow. Some need accountability. Others may simply need someone to believe in them. I've learned that transformational and servant leadership require me to look beyond a person's job title and see the person and potential behind the role. When you understand people, you can lead them more intentionally. Leadership isn't about making everyone fit your style. It's about learning how to meet people where they are while helping them grow. 3. Walk in your leadership presence How you show up matters. Your leadership presence isn't about being the loudest person in the room. It isn't about having the perfect words or being the most charismatic person. It's about confidence, consistency, authenticity, and purpose. Show up as the leader you say you want to become. Be consistent when things are going well and when things are difficult. Be willing to have hard conversations. Celebrate others. Take responsibility. Keep your word. Don't shrink yourself because you're afraid of how your leadership will be received. Use your voice. One of the ways I've grown personally and professionally is by learning to share my experiences and lessons with others through speaking, mentoring, and writing. Your story has value. Your experiences have value. Your voice has value. You don't have to wait until you feel completely ready before you begin using it. Sometimes confidence doesn't come before you step forward. Sometimes confidence is built because you stepped forward. 4. Invest in the people around you Leadership isn't about how many people report to you. It's about how many people become stronger because you led them. As leaders, we have an opportunity to develop people, not simply manage performance. Develop people, not just metrics. Whether I'm leading a team or mentoring someone through Her Vision, my goal is to help people recognize their potential and become the best version of themselves. Celebrate growth. Recognize effort. Provide constructive feedback. Create opportunities. Challenge people to stretch beyond what they believe they can do. When someone succeeds, don't be threatened by their growth. A strong leader doesn't need to dim someone else's light to shine. A strong leader helps others discover their own light. Lead with empathy. People may forget exactly what you said, but they often remember how you made them feel. Leadership requires accountability, but accountability and empathy can exist together. You can have high expectations while still treating people with dignity, compassion, and respect. 5. Never stop becoming Leadership growth doesn't have a finish line. The moment we believe we have arrived is often the moment we stop learning. Stay teachable. Read. Listen. Ask questions. Seek feedback. Study leadership. Learn from people who have walked the road before you. Be willing to learn from people who don't look, think, or lead exactly like you. Invest in yourself. Your growth as a leader requires it. Develop your communication. Strengthen your confidence. Improve your emotional intelligence. Learn new leadership frameworks. Develop your public speaking skills. Step into opportunities that stretch you. You cannot pour into everyone else while refusing to pour into yourself. Find a mentor and become one. There will always be someone ahead of you who can teach you something. There will always be someone behind you who may need what you've already learned. That is one of the principles at the heart of Her Vision. Grow. Then reach back and help someone else grow. Your leadership growth starts with you Leadership isn't one defining moment. It is built through the choices you make every day. It's built when you choose vision over confusion. Purpose over comparison. Growth over comfort. Confidence over fear. Service over status. Impact over recognition. You don't have to have everything figured out to begin. You simply have to be willing to see where you're going, take the next step, and trust the growth that happens along the way. My journey has taught me that leadership is not just about becoming better at leading others. It's about becoming more intentional about who you are, what you carry, and the impact you're called to make. That's the heart of Her Vision. See your vision. Own your purpose. Walk in confidence. Then give yourself permission to become the leader you've been growing toward all along. If you're ready to take the next step in your leadership, personal growth, or professional journey, I would love to connect with you through Her Vision by Monique. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Monique Mason Monique Mason, Motivational Speaker & Leadership Monique Mason is a healthcare leader, motivational speaker, and founder of Her Vision LLC. As a nursing home administrator, she led her organization to a Bronze Award for leadership excellence, building a track record in operational leadership, team development, and organizational performance under pressure. She is the creator of the See Her Vision leadership framework, which she has delivered to audiences including college and university programs and professional panels. Her work focuses on leadership development, resilience, and purpose-driven growth for professionals and organizations navigating change.

Written by Engy Neville, Conscious Leadership Mentor & Emotional Intelligence Expert Engy Neville is a Conscious Leadership Mentor and Emotional Intelligence Expert who blends 30 years of corporate brand management, leadership, and brand strategy with NLP, subconscious work, and energy healing to help people recognize the patterns shaping how they live and lead, and consciously choose what comes next. Have you ever changed something significant in your life only to eventually find yourself experiencing a strangely familiar version of the same problem? You leave the demanding job for one that promises more balance, but within a year, you're overworking again. You grow your business so you can have more freedom, yet somehow become even more indispensable to its daily operation. You promise yourself you'll establish stronger boundaries, but the moment someone needs something, you hear yourself saying yes. You step into a bigger leadership role and discover that despite having more authority, you still feel responsible for keeping everyone happy. The circumstances changed. The outcome didn't change nearly as much as you expected. When this happens, our instinct is often to look for another external solution. Perhaps we need a better strategy, a different environment, stronger boundaries, a new job, another productivity system, or a clearer plan. Sometimes we do. But when the same experience continues appearing in different forms, I think there is another question worth asking, "What if the problem isn't only the situation you're trying to change, but the identity you're bringing into it?" We take ourselves with us There is an understandable belief that changing our circumstances will change our experience. Sometimes it does. Leaving an unhealthy workplace, ending a relationship that no longer serves us, changing careers, or restructuring a business can be exactly what is needed. But external change doesn't automatically create internal change. We take ourselves with us. We bring our beliefs about success into the new job, our relationship with worth into the new business, our discomfort with disappointing people into the new boundary, our need for control into the larger team, and our fear of being seen into the bigger opportunity. This is why someone can consciously want one thing while repeatedly behaving in ways that create something else. You can genuinely want more balance while carrying an identity built around being the hardest-working person in the room. You can want to delegate while believing that being needed makes you valuable. You can want greater visibility while associating being seen with criticism or exposure. You can want to become a more empowering leader while believing that a good leader should always know the answer. The desire isn't necessarily the problem. The strategy may not even be the problem. Sometimes the identity pursuing the goal is still operating according to an old set of instructions. Identity is more than how you describe yourself When I talk about identity, I'm not simply referring to personality or the labels we consciously choose. I'm talking about the collection of beliefs we hold about who we are, what is expected of us, what makes us valuable, what success requires, and what we believe we need to do in order to belong. Those beliefs are shaped over time. Some come from experience. Some are modeled by the people around us. Others are reinforced because a particular behavior produced a result. Perhaps working harder than everyone else helped you advance in your career. Being agreeable kept relationships harmonious. Doing everything yourself protected you from disappointment. Perfectionism earned recognition. The behavior worked, so you repeated it. Eventually, what began as something you did can start to feel like who you are. I'm just a perfectionist. I'm the person everyone depends on. I've always had a hard time saying no. I'm better when I do things myself. I work best under pressure. These statements can feel like descriptions of personality when they may actually be descriptions of practiced patterns. That distinction matters because there is a profound difference between "this is who I am" and "this is something I learned to do." One feels permanent. The other creates possibility. When the old identity creates the new outcome Imagine someone who has built a successful career by being incredibly dependable. She anticipates what people need, takes responsibility, works harder when pressure increases, and rarely lets anyone down. Those qualities helped her succeed. Then she becomes a senior leader. Her role now requires something different. She needs to delegate, develop other people, allow them to make decisions, and stop being involved in every detail. Intellectually, she understands this. But every time something important happens, she steps back in. She reviews everything, fixes things herself, and takes on work that belongs to other people. From a strategic perspective, the solution seems obvious, delegate more. But if her identity still says, "My value comes from being the person who can handle everything," delegation isn't simply a management skill. It challenges who she has learned to be. This is why knowing what to do doesn't always mean we can easily do it. The same dynamic can appear anywhere in life. We change the goal without examining the identity pursuing it, and then we're surprised when that identity recreates familiar conditions. The setting changes. The pattern adapts. The outcome feels strangely familiar. Before changing the strategy again, become curious I spent much of my corporate career working in strategy, and I believe deeply in its value. The right strategy matters. But strategy works best when the person executing it isn't unconsciously working against it. When you repeatedly find yourself recreating something you consciously want to change, rather than immediately asking, "What should I do differently?", try asking, "What would I have to believe for what I'm doing right now to make complete sense?" That question moves us away from judgment and toward understanding. If I keep overworking, perhaps the question isn't simply how to manage my calendar better. Maybe I need to understand what productivity means to me. If I struggle to delegate, perhaps the question isn't only how to build better systems. Maybe I need to examine what being needed has come to mean. If I continue saying yes when I want to say no, perhaps I need to become curious about what I believe will happen when someone is disappointed in me. If I keep shrinking from opportunities I genuinely want, perhaps I need to understand what visibility represents beneath the excitement of being seen. The goal isn't to analyze every decision we make. It's to notice when the same pattern keeps showing up despite our conscious efforts to create something different because repetition is information. You don't have to reject the identity that got you here There is another important distinction. Recognizing that an old identity is influencing your current outcomes doesn't mean that identity was wrong. In many cases, it helped you get here. The person who worked incredibly hard may have built an extraordinary career. The person who became fiercely independent may have developed tremendous resilience. The perfectionist may have cultivated exceptional standards. The person who learned to anticipate everyone else's needs may have become an empathetic leader. Growth doesn't require us to reject those versions of ourselves. It asks us to become discerning about what still belongs. You can keep the work ethic without believing exhaustion is evidence of commitment. You can keep the high standards without requiring perfection. You can remain deeply caring without making yourself responsible for everyone's experience. You can keep your independence while allowing other people to support you. You can keep the wisdom and release the pattern that no longer serves you. That is a very different way of thinking about change. Instead of asking, "How do I become someone completely different?", we can ask, What part of who I've been still serves who I'm becoming? And, "What am I ready to stop carrying?" A different outcome requires awareness before action When something in your life isn't working, there will always be an understandable urge to fix it quickly. Change the plan. Set the boundary. Create the system. Make the decision. But if you've changed the strategy before and somehow arrived at a familiar outcome, pause before doing it again. Look at the pattern. Look at the identity underneath it. Ask yourself whether the person making the next decision is responding to what is actually happening now or following an instruction learned somewhere along the way. Because patterns aren't destiny. They are learned, practiced, and reinforced. What has been learned can be examined. What has been practiced can be practiced differently. You don't need to abandon who you were in order to create a different outcome. But you may need to stop asking an old identity to lead a life you've already outgrown. If this resonated If you recognize an outcome you keep trying to change but find yourself returning to the same patterns, another strategy may not be the place to begin. It may be time to understand the identity underneath the behavior. I invite you to book a complimentary Discovery Call with me. Together, we'll explore the patterns that may be influencing your choices, what they have been helping you protect or maintain, and what becomes possible when you begin choosing from who you are now rather than automatically responding from who you once needed to be. Book a discovery call here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Engy Neville Engy Neville, Conscious Leadership Mentor & Emotional Intelligence Expert Engy Neville is a Conscious Leadership Mentor and Emotional Intelligence Expert who spent 30 years in corporate brand management and leadership before bringing that experience into the transformational work she leads today. Blending emotional intelligence, NLP, subconscious work, and quantum energy healing, she helps people uncover the patterns and beliefs shaping how they live, lead, and see themselves. Her work bridges the practical and the intuitive, helping people move beyond intellectual self-awareness into meaningful, embodied change. Through Embracing Zen with Engy, she teaches a simple but powerful philosophy, when you understand what has been unconsciously driving you, you gain the freedom to consciously choose who you become.

Joana Esteves, founder of Holistic Transformation Center, is a Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) practitioner and hypnotist who works with high achievers to uncover the subconscious beliefs and patterns that can quietly undermine their success, wellbeing and relationships. Her work explores a powerful paradox: how someone can be highly capable, disciplined and successful, yet still struggle with perfectionism, procrastination, overworking, self-sabotage or the persistent feeling of never being quite enough. In this interview, Joana explores the hidden drivers behind high achievement, the role subconscious beliefs can play in keeping people stuck, and why true transformation isn't about becoming less ambitious, it's about learning to pursue success without abandoning yourself in the process. Joana Esteves, RTT Practitioner, Clinical Medical Assistant & Hypnotist What drew you to helping high achievers change the patterns that keep them from reaching their full potential? My interest began very personally. I witnessed incredibly capable, successful people struggle in their closest relationships, not because they lacked intelligence or ambition, but because achievement doesn't automatically create emotional capacity. I saw workaholism, emotional avoidance, difficulty navigating conflict and a constant need for validation coexist with impressive success. At first, I became fascinated with understanding them. Why would someone so capable keep repeating behaviours that were hurting themselves and the people they cared about? Eventually, the more important question became: What about me? I had to understand my own patterns too, why I had participated in certain relationship dynamics and what genuine self-care, boundaries and self-worth actually looked like for me. I learned that understanding another person's behaviour doesn't give us the power to change them. They have to want to see themselves and do the work. But understanding ourselves gives us tremendous power to change our own lives. That experience became fundamental to what I do today. I love working with high achievers who aren't simply hungry for greater success, they're willing to look inward and become the person capable of experiencing it differently. Why can someone be highly disciplined and successful yet still struggle with procrastination, perfectionism, or self-sabotage? Because success and self-worth are not the same thing. Someone can be exceptionally disciplined and accomplished while carrying an underlying belief such as "I'm only worthy when I'm productive," "I have to be perfect to be accepted," or "If I stop, I'm falling behind." Sometimes, those very beliefs can become part of what drives achievement. The problem is that there is never a real finish line. No accomplishment provides lasting proof that you are finally enough, so you keep striving, overworking and moving the standard. Rest creates guilt. Mistakes feel threatening. Procrastination can emerge when the pressure to perform becomes overwhelming. Eventually, burnout may follow. This is why, when I see self-sabotaging behaviour in a high achiever, I don't immediately ask, "Why aren't they more disciplined?" They usually have extraordinary discipline. I'm much more interested in asking: What belief is driving this behaviour? What are they trying to prove or prevent, or what are they trying to protect themselves from? Sometimes the behaviour we are fighting is actually an attempt to keep us emotionally safe. When we understand that, we can stop fighting only the symptom and begin exploring what is underneath it. What does RTT help uncover that conscious effort or willpower may fail to reach? One of the most frustrating human experiences is knowing something intellectually and still being unable to change how you automatically feel or behave. You can consciously know that you're good enough, that one mistake won't define you or that you deserve to rest, while another part of you seems to operate according to completely different rules. This is where I find Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) particularly valuable. RTT uses hypnosis alongside therapeutic techniques to explore beliefs and associations that may underlie recurring patterns. Rather than focusing only on the behaviour we can see, we become curious about what sits beneath it and the meaning the person has attached to earlier experiences. High achievers are often extremely self-aware. They may have read the books, listened to the podcasts and analysed themselves endlessly. Understanding isn't always transformation. I know that personally. Understanding other people's patterns didn't change my life. Understanding my own, and being willing to act differently because of that understanding, did. No method can do the inner work for someone. But when a person genuinely wants to see themselves and change, RTT can offer a powerful way of exploring what conscious effort alone may not have shifted. Where do you see the line between healthy ambition and achievement driven by fear or the need to prove your worth? For me, one of the clearest distinctions is self-abandonment. Healthy ambition can stretch you. It can require courage, discipline and even sacrifice at times. But it shouldn't require you to repeatedly betray yourself in order to feel worthy. When achievement is driven primarily by fear, validation or the need to prove yourself, there is often an underlying message: "I'll take care of myself when I've done enough." The problem is that enough keeps moving. I want the high achievers I work with to learn to give from an overflowing cup rather than constantly pouring from an empty one. That means recognizing when to slow down before reaching breaking point, resting without guilt, setting boundaries and being able to say "no" when no is their truth. I've also learned that self-care isn't only about what we give ourselves. Sometimes it's about what we stop allowing, including situations and relationships that repeatedly require us to abandon ourselves to maintain connection. The goal isn't to extinguish ambition. Quite the opposite. I want people to keep their fire without allowing it to consume them. There is a profound difference between pursuing success because you know your worth and pursuing it because you're desperately trying to prove it. What misconception about hypnosis most often prevents people from understanding how it can support change? Probably either the belief that hypnosis is "woo-woo" or the belief that it means surrendering control to somebody else. Entertainment and stage hypnosis have contributed to an image of people becoming powerless or doing things against their will. Therapeutic hypnosis is very different. You're not unconscious, and the purpose isn't to take control away from you. In fact, I see it as an opportunity to develop greater awareness of and agency over internal processes that may already be influencing your life automatically. We all develop associations, emotional responses and beliefs through our experiences. We don't consciously stop and analyse those beliefs every time they're activated, we simply respond. Hypnosis involves focused attention and can provide a way of exploring some of those patterns and working with them differently. So, to me, the intention is almost the opposite of losing control. It's about becoming more conscious of what has been operating automatically and more deliberate about the beliefs and responses you want guiding your life. The goal isn't for someone else to take control of your mind. The goal is to understand your mind well enough that old subconscious patterns no longer get to run your life. How can someone recognize that a recurring problem may be rooted in a deeper subconscious belief rather than a lack of motivation? One of the simplest clues is this: you know what to do, genuinely want to do it, and repeatedly find yourself doing the opposite. You know you need to rest, but feel guilty the moment you stop. You want greater visibility in your career, but procrastinate when it's time to put yourself forward. You want healthier relationships, yet keep finding yourself in familiar dynamics. You know perfectionism is exhausting you, but submitting something that feels less than flawless still feels almost impossible. When a pattern continues despite knowledge, motivation and genuine effort, I become curious about what may be happening underneath it. Instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?" or "Why don't I have enough willpower?" I think there is a much more interesting question, "What does some part of me believe this behaviour is protecting me from?" Perhaps failure feels unsafe. Perhaps success does. Perhaps saying no feels like risking rejection. Perhaps rest has become associated with laziness or lack of worth. The behaviour that seems irrational today can sometimes make much more sense once we understand the belief beneath it. Once we understand its purpose, we can begin showing ourselves that we no longer need the same strategy to be safe, accepted or worthy. What can high achievers do to pursue ambitious goals without sacrificing their wellbeing in the process? I believe self-awareness needs to become part of our strategy for success, not something we finally turn to after burnout. High achievers are exceptionally good at asking, "What do I need to do next?" I encourage them to also ask: "Who am I being while I do it?" Am I pursuing this because it genuinely matters to me, or because I need the outcome to prove something about my worth? Can I recognize when my mind and body need recovery? Can I celebrate progress without immediately moving the goalpost? Can I say no without feeling responsible for everybody else's disappointment? Our experiences shape many of our automatic responses, triggers and beliefs about ourselves. Understanding those patterns gives us greater freedom to choose rather than simply react. I don't believe wellbeing and ambition need to be enemies. You don't have to choose between an extraordinary life and inner peace. For me, real success isn't achieving extraordinary things at the expense of yourself. Real success is creating an extraordinary life on your own terms, and being present and well enough to actually enjoy it. How did your own decision to change direction shape what a meaningful and abundant life means to you today? My life and professional experiences can look very different from one another on paper, but today I can see how each one shaped my perspective, my curiosity and ultimately the work I chose to do. For a long time, my curiosity was directed outward. I wanted to understand why people behaved as they did, particularly when their behaviour seemed completely at odds with what they said they wanted. Eventually, that curiosity turned inward. I had to become willing to examine my own beliefs, boundaries and patterns, including the ways I had enabled dynamics that weren't good for me. That changed my understanding of personal development. It stopped being about analysing other people and became about taking responsibility for the only person I could truly change: myself. Changing direction also taught me that a meaningful life doesn't necessarily follow a perfectly straight line. Sometimes experiences that appear disconnected are actually preparing us for the work we're meant to do. Today, this work genuinely makes my heart sing. I feel a responsibility to share what I've learned because transformation rarely stops with one person. When someone changes how they relate to themselves, the ripple effect can reach their relationships, families, work and future choices. That's what abundance means to me now: not simply having more, but becoming more, and positively affecting the lives around you. What is one belief you would encourage someone to reconsider if they feel they are constantly getting in their own way? I would challenge the belief: "This is just who I am." People often turn repeated behaviours into identities. "I'm a procrastinator." "I'm a perfectionist." "I'm terrible with boundaries." "I always sabotage good things." A pattern is not necessarily a personality. Many of our patterns were learned. They may have developed in response to experiences, relationships or beliefs about what we needed to be in order to feel safe, loved, accepted or worthy. That doesn't mean our past determines our future. I would encourage someone to replace "This is who I am" with a much more powerful question, "What have I learned to believe about myself, and is that belief still serving me?" We have far more capacity for change than we often give ourselves credit for. When we become aware of the beliefs influencing our responses, we create an opportunity to choose differently and practise something new. You don't have to remain loyal to a version of yourself that was shaped by an earlier chapter of your life. Your past may explain your patterns, but it doesn't have to dictate your future. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Joana Esteves

Written by Maira Flores Xavier, Embodiment Coach for Executives Maíra Flores works with executives whose success has come at the cost of their body, the same tension, the same wall, the same pattern, no matter how much they've 'worked on it.' She helps them see what their body's been trying to tell them. For a while, he was the centre of your world. Not a small part of it, the whole architecture. Whether he was coming. What he'd bring, based on how good you'd been. You didn't need any other explanation for how presents appeared under the tree. That was reality. Complete, self-contained, and entirely true, until the day it wasn't. When it wasn't, when you found out, your whole world had to reconfigure. Not just, "Oh, that one fact was wrong." Something closer to: everything I built on top of that fact now has to be re-examined too. There was grief in it. A real loss, even if it sounds small from the outside now. For some of us, it took a while to land fully. I bring this up because it's the closest thing most of us have to a memory of what it feels like when a blind spot becomes visible. It's useful because, as adults, this happens far less often than it should, not because we have fewer blind spots, but because nothing forces the reveal the way growing up forces the Father Christmas reveal. We just keep living inside them. Here's the thing about a blind spot: it is a blind spot until the moment you see that it's a blind spot. Before that moment, it isn't "a belief you hold." It's simply reality. The only one you have access to. You don't experience it as an opinion you could question, you experience it as the water you swim in. In my work, this is most of what I'm actually doing: not fixing behaviour, not installing new habits, but helping someone find the edge of a blind spot they didn't know was there, gently enough that it doesn't have to feel like the ground giving way underneath them. A few I see constantly, in almost exactly this shape, in the leaders and executives I work with: Rest has to be earned. Not a preference, not a strategy, a rule so deeply embedded it doesn't register as a rule. Stopping without having "deserved" it first triggers something closer to guilt than relaxation. Being fully seen is dangerous. Not disliked, dangerous. So the public version stays curated, competent, composed, while the rest stays carefully out of view. Visibility itself, not just judgment, is what the nervous system is bracing against. If I slow down, it all falls apart. Not a conclusion reached through evidence. A belief so foundational it was never actually tested, because testing it feels too risky to attempt. None of these arrived through conscious choice. Like Father Christmas, they were installed early, absorbed rather than decided, and have been running the show ever since, quietly enough to be mistaken for personality, or "just who I am." The difference between this and the Father Christmas moment is that this reveal doesn't have to be sudden, and it doesn't have to be a loss. Nobody has to yank the belief away from you at a birthday party. It can be found slowly, on your own terms, with someone alongside you who already knows the shape of what you're looking for, because they've had to find their own. So, what's a rule you're following right now that you never actually chose? And what might be possible if you could finally see it? Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Maira Flores Xavier Maira Flores Xavier, Embodiment Coach for Executives Maíra Flores is an embodiment coach working with high-achieving professionals and executives who look after their bodies on the surface, the gym, the routines, while staying disconnected from what those bodies are actually signaling underneath. Combining ontological coaching, somatic medicine, and movement, she helps leaders recognize the patterns, often shaped by old trauma, quietly running their decision-making and leadership presence. She is the creator of The Five Masks framework, a diagnostic identifying the survival identity the nervous system has organized itself around, and works with clients internationally from her base in London.

Written by Darren Tebbenham, Metabolic & Mental Health Expert Darren Tebbenham is a metabolic and mental health expert known for the idea that metabolic health is mental health. A former university lecturer in exercise psychology, he co-founded Gloo Fitness, authored two books, has trained more than 3,000 health professionals from 30+ countries & now speaks to organisations on energy, wellbeing & performance. There’s a reflex almost everyone has when they decide to lose weight. Eat less. Cut something out. Go without. It feels like the right instinct because it feels like penance, as though the weight is a debt and hunger is how you repay it. For a fortnight, it appears to work. Then it stops. What almost nobody is told is that it stopped for a reason, and the reason isn’t you. What your body does next When you eat less and move more, you create a gap between what you’re taking in and what you’re using. That much is simple arithmetic. The interesting question, the one that decides everything, is, "What does your body do about that gap?" It has two options: It can open the cupboard and burn the fat it has been storing for exactly this situation. Or it can quietly reduce what it spends, so the gap closes without touching the fat at all. One of those looks like progress. The other looks like being cold, tired, irritable, and hungry while the scales sit exactly where they were four months ago. Most people who come to me for help are getting the second one. Not because they’re doing it wrong. Because their body has decided that fat is not available. Availability is the whole game Fat isn’t locked away by willpower. It’s locked away by hormones, chiefly insulin. While insulin is high, fat release is switched off. That’s not a metaphor; it’s the mechanism. Insulin’s job is to store, and it cannot store and release at the same time. So, if your insulin is running high, which it will be if you’ve spent thirty years eating a diet high in refined carbohydrates, you can create as large a deficit as you like, and your body will still not touch your fat. It will take the energy from somewhere easier instead. Your thyroid output. Your body temperature. Your inclination to move. Your muscle. You end up smaller, weaker, colder, and hungrier, and everyone congratulates you. Then you eat normally again, and it comes back with interest because the machinery that burns it is now smaller than when you started. Which is why the answer isn’t less Here’s the sentence I’d like people to take away because it inverts almost everything the industry has told them, “Give your body what it needs, and it will give you what you want.” Enough protein, so it stops taking the difference from your muscle. Enough real food, so it isn’t hunting for something at four in the afternoon. Fewer refined carbohydrates, so insulin comes down and the cupboard opens. Enough sleep because a tired body is an insulin-resistant one. That is nourishment, not restriction. It is a genuinely uncomfortable idea for someone who has spent decades believing that the answer to a body they dislike is to give it less. But watch what happens when the fat becomes available. Energy comes back first, usually within a fortnight and long before the scales do anything interesting. Then focus. Then mood. Then, eventually, the weight, steadily and from fat rather than muscle. Then the harder half If explaining this were enough, I’d have been out of a job twenty years ago. Because here is what I’ve watched happen thousands of times: someone understands all of the above completely, agrees with every word, goes home, and by the third Tuesday, it has quietly stopped. Not because they stopped believing it. Because it met a bad night’s sleep, a birthday cake in the office, a fortnight of stress, and somebody else’s crisis. This is the part the industry skips, and it’s the part that actually decides outcomes. Nobody fails on the plan. They fail when the plan collides with real life. So the questions that matter are rarely nutritional ones. They’re: What happens on your weekends? For most people, the whole week is undone in forty-eight hours, and no amount of Monday-to-Friday discipline outruns it. What do you do when you’re stressed? If eating is how you take the edge off a difficult day, then a meal plan is an answer to a question you weren’t asking. What happens after you slip? This is the big one. When the plan requires perfection, the first ordinary human moment doesn’t dent it; it ends it because you’ve relabelled yourself as “off it,” and the rest of the week goes with it. What have you built for the weeks that go badly? Not the weeks that go well. Anyone can do the good weeks. Simple isn’t the same as easy None of this is complicated. Nourish rather than deprive. Bring insulin down so your fat becomes available. Build muscle because it’s where the burning happens. Then deal honestly with the specific things that break your consistency rather than pretending willpower will cover them. It’s simple. It’s just not easy, and anyone selling you easy is selling you the fortnight, not the decade. But it is learnable. The strange gift buried in all of this is that once the habits are running the show rather than your willpower, the whole thing becomes something close to effortless. Easy is earned. Next, two books on the biology and psychology of weight loss are free here. Darren provides virtual as well as in-person wellbeing events, as well as the Ultimate 10 Week Challenge. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Darren Tebbenham Darren Tebbenham, Metabolic & Mental Health Expert Darren Tebbenham is a leader in metabolic and mental health, behaviour change, and human performance. A former university lecturer in sport and exercise psychology, he grew frustrated that knowing what to do rarely helped people actually do it, so he left the lecture hall to build methods that change behaviour from the inside out. He has since dedicated his career to helping people and organisations transform their health, energy and performance, having trained over 3,000 professionals across 30+ countries and co-founded Gloo Fitness. His mission is simple: metabolic health is mental health. Body and mind are inextricably linked, and both perform at their best only when we treat them as one.

Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview A promotion can open the door to leadership, but it does not automatically prepare you to lead. The journey from being a high performer to becoming an effective leader requires new skills, self-awareness, and a commitment to helping others grow. In this interview, Noel Massie, author and speaker, shares lessons from his decades of experience at UPS, where he guided large teams and supported the development of future leaders. Drawing from his book, "Congrats! You’ve Been Promoted", Noel explores the challenges of stepping into leadership, the importance of intentional growth, and why human connection remains essential in a workplace shaped by artificial intelligence. Noel L Massie, Author & Speaker What inspired you to write "Congrats! You’ve Been Promoted"? Was there a specific moment or experience in your career that made you realize this book needed to be written? As Vice President of U.S. Delivery Operations for UPS in 2016, I would travel the entire country, meeting with business unit leaders. During these visits, I made it a practice to hold roundtable discussions with frontline leadership teams. It was apparent that the predicted baby boomer retirement tsunami was in full force. Companies were promoting managers and supervisors at a rapid pace to fill the gap, but their capacity to train and develop new promotees within their first year was a challenge. The first year is the most critical when developing young leaders; more sink than swim. Organizations typically promote their best workers into frontline leadership positions. When one of them resigns due to the stresses of the position, two bad things happen: you lose a great employee, and you also have to train and develop someone all over again. Getting engaged in developing young talent pays enormous dividends. It sets the tone for how they will value developing themselves, as well as others, throughout their entire career. You give to others what you have been given. Many people are promoted because they're great at their jobs, not necessarily because they've been trained to lead. Why do you think this transition is so challenging, and what are the biggest mistakes new leaders tend to make? It is normal for organizations to promote the most diligent employees into leadership positions. The hardest working, most reliable workers set a great tone for others. Their promotion telegraphs to employees what good looks like. While this is important, it is only part of the equation that should be used to assess who will be a strong leader. Leadership, while not rocket science, “is a science” that should be respected in the same fashion we respect the skills needed for any professional position. Leadership is “The ability to influence the behavior of an individual or group of people without coercion.” The biggest mistake new leaders make is failing to prepare themselves for their new role. Business owners and executives feed this error by failing to insist on a behavior-based development plan for the first year. I promoted hundreds of leaders during my career, not just new ones, and there were patterns. Most start out wanting to establish that they were the boss. They would then spend more time with reports than with people. These are mistakes I would make knowing their people individually a requirement. What is everyone on their team good at? What skills do they need training on? All leaders, and particularly new ones, must understand some key principles, such as: People produce results, not reports. People work for people, not companies. When leaders engage daily with team members to develop them, employees get better. Leaders were not promoted to be human memos. Leadership development has changed significantly over the years. Where do you think the field stands today, and what do organizations still get wrong when it comes to developing strong leaders? I led through six decades, from the late 70s to the 2020s, and leadership approaches and principles were ever-changing. There were always new data and techniques being introduced. Today, the biggest threat to investing in leadership development is the idea that AI will replace the need for physical leadership. When a toilet needs to be replaced in a home, AI will not be replacing it; a human being will. The same goes for the roof on a house or a flat tire on the side of the road. Someone will always need to get up and make the donuts. Someone will always be needed to deliver packages. Where more than one person is involved in an enterprise, there will be a leader. As such, effective skills to train and develop employees will be needed. Skills associated with conflict resolution, delivering professional daily messages, and providing motivational and formative feedback will be critical. Training must be available in these areas; if not, failure rates and company results will reflect this absence. Your book challenges some traditional ideas about leadership. Were there any widely accepted leadership beliefs that you intentionally wanted to question or rethink? My book challenges the idea that leadership training is reserved for high level and C-suite executives. Culture is created at the top; it is executed at the bottom. However, it must be intentionally created. If it’s allowed to create itself, it will. Leaders own culture cultivation, period. Culture is built at the top; it’s executed at the bottom. Organizations that value integrity and ethics make it visibly clear from the top; it’s not the plaque on the wall, it’s who we are. It’s a regular, intentional part of the daily language from the top. I would make it a habit to go on the floor and have discussions with the frontline leaders and their employees. A question they knew I would ask was this: How often should you do that right thing? Employees always answer, “All the time.” By doing this, I made it clear to all managers and employees what our values and intentions were to be daily. Artificial intelligence is transforming the workplace at a rapid pace. How do you see AI influencing leadership development, and where do you believe human leadership will always remain irreplaceable? As I mentioned earlier in this interview, AI “will not” become who leads the plumber, electrician, or body shop employee. AI can be a useful tool to train employees in various ways using simulations. At UPS, we had been using simulations for the last decade or so, and AI has enhanced this ability. AI will be impactful in replacing white collar professional positions. Software engineers are feeling this now as AI can write code. Financial advisors and CPAs will be impacted as well, to what degree has yet to clearly reveal itself. Thought based professions are where AI will emerge in a prominent way. Leadership skills will be a premium talent, particularly in the trades and union based environments. Will there be a human less society? That’s pure speculation. That’s not the case today, and we are discussing the here and now. Looking ahead, what qualities do you think will define the most successful leaders over the next five to ten years? Adaptable leaders will always be the most sought after. As a president of a business unit, when we developed talent, we actively sought and valued adaptable individuals highly. Everyone can learn technical skills; there are lots of smart people out there. Those who stay current with society’s trends (think driverless cars) and keep their skills aligned will stand out. The ability to communicate effectively cannot be overstated as a necessary talent. Successful leaders will be excellent communicators. If a newly promoted manager could apply just one lesson from your book immediately, what would you hope it would be, and why? The strongest principle in the book is the B.E.S.T. Principle. It is like the frame around a picture. All of the techniques I teach in the book sit inside the B.E.S.T. Principle. It guides all engagements a leader will have with their team, whether it is a performance review, a training session, or a spontaneous flare-up. This principle, when used, gives the leader an approach that will be effective in these scenarios. It states in any discussion: Examples: B. Be clear: Always state “exactly” the nature of the discussion. Concise statements, less is more. Daryl, we are here today so I can train you to drive a forklift. There are 37 steps you must demonstrate to be certified. When we are done, you must know them all. E. Expect the best: When engaging an employee, begin by stating the confidence you have in the person. Enhance their self-esteem. Daryl, I know you have waited quite a while for this opportunity. I know you’ll apply yourself 100% to this. You’ll do great! S. Stick to the objective: Stay focused on the task at hand. Daryl, we will only focus on this training until you are certified. When other topics come up, move the engagement back to where it belongs. T. Test Commitment: Once any engagement is complete, a verbal commitment to use the skills or change the behavior is required. Daryl, you have completed the training. Do I have your commitment to use these skills as learned daily? In the feedback I have received over the last year from seminars and readers, the B.E.S.T. is consistently mentioned as the most valuable technique they learned. What do you hope both individual leaders and organizations will take away after reading "Congrats! You’ve Been Promoted", and what kind of impact would you like the book to have on the future of leadership? I want anyone who reads the book to come away with a few things. Number one, that being an effective leader takes skill. Anything you want to be good at, you practice it regularly. Leadership is no different. "You can’t hope to get more than you give." Don’t give it anything, then why should you be effective? Number two, "There are no casual moments in leadership." Because, there aren’t. A leader’s actions are always being evaluated. Your employees see what you do and who you talk to the most. Leaders don’t get to have favorites, for example. Leadership is not a promotion; it’s a responsibility. To learn more about Noel’s work and stay connected, follow him on LinkedIn, Instagram, or visit his website for more insights, updates, and resources.

Written by Caren Carnegie, Founder, Intuitive Momentum Coach, Speaker & Writer Caren Carnegie is a coach, psychic channeler, and the creator of Transform, a space where fitness, healing, and intuition meet. She helps people return to themselves by honouring the body and awakening the coach within. Recently, I realized I haven’t thought much about consciousness in a while. At first, that surprised me. My work and life are deeply connected to embodiment, awareness, spirituality, and what I experience as a connection to source, or universal consciousness. You would think consciousness would be something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Then I realized: I’m not reaching for it in the same way anymore. I’m in it. Aware and participating. I’ve noticed something similar happening with my thoughts. I’m not constantly using them to reach toward another idea, explanation, or level of understanding. My thoughts feel more like awareness in action, part of how I interact with what is already here. That has made me wonder whether some of our conversations about expansion, elevation, and becoming more conscious have inadvertently taught us to keep looking somewhere else. What if there is nowhere else to get to? We often speak about expanded, elevated, or “higher” states of consciousness as though they exist somewhere above our current experience, something to attain through the right spiritual practice, ritual, teacher, philosophy, or way of living. Those things can be meaningful. Ritual can help us pay attention. Spiritual practices can create space. Teachers can offer perspectives we may not have considered. Community allows us to experience ourselves in relationship. But none of those things can become our awareness for us. Consciousness is not found in performing someone else’s spiritual practice correctly or receiving someone else’s approval. Eventually, whatever we receive has to meet our own life. Our thoughts. Our body. Our discernment. Our choices. Awareness asks for participation. From reaching to participating I experience a connection to Source, to a universal consciousness. But receiving is only part of that relationship. What I do with what I receive matters. That is where consciousness becomes embodied. It moves through thought, but also through the physical body: sensation, breath, movement, instinct, expression, and response. It is present in our emotional experience, our perspective, our words, our actions, and our relationships. All of this is happening while our feet are quite literally on the Earth. Perhaps that is worth remembering when we talk about “higher” consciousness. Expansion does not necessarily require us to move farther away from our physical experience. It may ask us to become more fully present within it. More aware of the body we live in. More aware of the Earth we live on. More aware of our thoughts without automatically believing every one of them. More willing to feel and more discerning about what we choose next. Consciousness becomes less about where we are trying to get and more about how we participate with where we already are. When expansion is no longer somewhere else There was another part of this realization that helped me understand why I have sometimes felt out of place in conversations about awakening, expansion, or a “new” way of being. My thoughts were no longer reaching for expansion or elevation in the way they once had. I wasn’t continually trying to think my way toward another level of understanding. I was existing within it. That doesn’t mean there is nothing more to learn or discover. We can desire, and I believe we should desire, a deeper understanding of what life presents to us. But understanding is not something we have to demand an answer for. We meet it through interaction. We question, notice, feel, move, listen, try, reconsider, and experience. Someone else may offer knowledge or perspective that allows us to see differently, but even then, understanding becomes ours through our interaction with it. There is a difference between seeking greater understanding and waiting for someone else to give us the answer. One keeps us participating. The other can quietly remove us from our own experience. Expansion no longer has to be somewhere else, or somewhere above us, to move toward. It can be where we live from. We can want more without being less There is something worth noticing in our desire to become “more.” More conscious. More awakened. More evolved. More spiritual. More healed. Curiosity and the desire to understand can move us into a deeper relationship with ourselves and the world. But there is a difference between wanting to understand more and believing we need to become more in order to be enough. Every time we position a future version of ourselves as the one who has finally arrived, we risk overlooking the person who is already here. Even the pursuit of enlightenment can become another form of reaching if we measure our present selves against an imagined state we believe we should have attained. Perhaps constant seeking can sometimes make it harder to recognize the very awareness we are seeking. What if growth does not require us to begin from deficiency? We can want to understand more without deciding we are less. We can expand without rejecting where we are. We can change without making our present state wrong. We can participate in what comes next without waiting to become someone else, or for the environment around us to change first. Fit-ness as a state of being For years, I have returned to the idea that fit-ness is not simply something physical we achieve. It is a state of being. Being fit in the moment does not mean we have perfected ourselves for it. It means we are able to meet it, to notice what is being asked of us, recognize what we have available, discern what we may need, and participate from there. Sometimes we have the internal resources to take the next step ourselves. Sometimes awareness tells us that we don’t. That matters too. Being resourced does not mean possessing every tool. It means having enough awareness and self-authority to recognize what we have, what we do not have, and when another person may hold a tool that can support what we are building. That is not giving our power away. It is using it. Reaching out is also participation Self-authority does not mean believing we know everything or deciding we no longer need one another. In fact, knowing when to reach out may be one of its clearest expressions. There is an important difference between reaching toward someone to tell us who we are, what something means, or whether we are doing life “right,” and reaching out because our own awareness tells us we could use another resource. We can make the call. We can ask someone we trust, “Do you have a tool for this?” That question does not surrender authority. It exercises it. We remain responsible for discerning what fits and what we choose to do next. This matters because what we are building will require collaboration. We were never meant to possess every perspective, skill, experience, or resource individually. Someone beside us may see something we cannot see from where we stand. They may hold knowledge or a tool we need for one part of what we are building. Self-authority does not eliminate our need for one another. It changes how we meet one another. We can receive guidance without handing over our discernment. We can support one another without assuming responsibility for one another’s path. We can arrive with what is ours and allow someone else to arrive with what is theirs. That is collaboration. Responsibility for ourselves, with others Our responsibility is not to become responsible for everyone else’s awareness, growth, healing, choices, or path. Our responsibility begins with ourselves. Because we are in relationship, responsibility for ourselves changes how we are able to be with others. This is not individualism. It allows relationship to become participatory rather than dependent. I do not need you to carry my awareness for me, and I do not need to carry yours. I can stand beside you. Listen to you. Learn from you. Support you. Ask you for help. Offer what I have. Be changed through relationship with you. I can do all of that while remaining responsible for how I participate. Perhaps this is part of how humanity moves forward, not through everyone arriving at the same belief or following the same practice, but through more of us becoming aware of our own participation within the whole. We do not need sameness to build together. We need enough self-awareness to know what is ours to bring, and enough relationship to recognize when someone else has something we need. Momentum is not always forward I continue to think about consciousness much like momentum. We tend to imagine momentum as forward movement. We imagine expansion similarly, as though growth should continually take us forward and upward. But lived transformation rarely behaves that neatly. Sometimes momentum moves sideways. Sometimes it feels as though we have moved backward. Sometimes the most important movement is happening underground, where there is little external evidence that anything is changing. The Earth demonstrates this continually. Growth is not only what becomes visible above the soil. Dormancy is not the absence of life. Decomposition can become nourishment for what grows next. Fire offers another expression of transformation. It changes what it interacts with. Something may be released, something may remain, and something different becomes possible afterward. But transformation itself is not the end of the story. What will we do with what has changed? That question matters to me more and more. Perhaps we spend too much time trying to guarantee outcomes when our responsibility is much closer to us: awareness, discernment, choice, and action. We participate. What emerges from that participation will continue to interact with a world much larger than any one of us. Potential may exist within us. Possibility may surround us. We may experience profound insight, awareness, or spiritual connection. But potential without participation remains potential. Wholeness cannot leave the body behind There is another reason I hesitate to think about expansion only in terms of becoming “higher.” We are whole beings. There is wisdom in considering the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our experience together, something I am continually reminded of when reflecting on teachings represented through the Medicine Wheel. These dimensions of ourselves do not have to compete for importance. They interact. A spiritual realization that never enters our choices remains an idea. A mental understanding that ignores what the body is communicating is incomplete information. Emotion can reveal something that intellect has not yet named. The physical body continually places us in relationship with an equally physical Earth. Embodiment asks us to include all of it. Perhaps expansion is not about transcending our humanity. Perhaps it is about inhabiting more of it. What if the “new” is already here? We hear a great deal about a new consciousness, a new humanity, even a New Earth. But what if we are not waiting for something to arrive? What if it already exists? Perhaps what feels “new” is not consciousness itself. Perhaps what is changing is our capacity to recognize that we already exist within it, and our willingness to participate accordingly. Already embodied. Already present in our bodies, in nature, in relationship, in what we create, in what we question, and in what we are becoming willing to see. Maybe this is why I no longer feel the same need to reach for expansion with my thoughts. I am not waiting to become part of it. I am living, breathing, working, and participating within it now. That changes the questions. What am I willing to see? What am I willing to feel? What am I willing to interact with? What am I willing to become aware of within my own thoughts, my body, my patterns, and my choices? Do I feel resourced enough to participate in what is here? If I don’t, can I recognize that without judging myself, and make the call to someone I trust who may have a tool? Then comes the question that perhaps matters most: "What will I do with what I become aware of?" Those questions return us to the present, to the body, the Earth, one another, and ourselves. There is enormous potential here, individually and collectively. But humanity does not need us endlessly reaching toward some future version of ourselves before we believe we are ready to contribute. We can become aware. We can discern. We can resource ourselves and one another. We can act, and then we allow what comes next to emerge through our participation. We are already here. Potential alone does not move us forward. Participation does. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Caren Carnegie Caren Carnegie, Founder, Intuitive Momentum Coach, Speaker & Writer Caren Carnegie is an Intuitive Momentum Coach, Certified Personal Trainer, and Speaker. She is the founder of Transform Fitness Coaching and creator of Transform HQ in Sebringville, Ontario, a holistic training space redefining strength for the New Human. Caren is an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine and an emerging voice in embodied leadership and soul-aligned well-being.

Written by Myra Swan Kotze, Executive Pressure Specialist Myra Swan Kotze is an Executive Pressure Specialist, author, Industrial Psychology graduate, and former Group Managing Director. Drawing on decades of leadership experience, she created Accumulated Executive Pressure™ and now works privately with women in senior corporate leadership. There were decisions I made during my years in senior leadership that were finished long before I stopped carrying them. The meeting was over. The decision had been communicated. Everyone had gone back to their offices, and another problem was already waiting for my attention. From the outside, we had moved on. I hadn't always. I could replay a conversation later that evening and wonder whether I could have handled it differently. I could know that a difficult decision was absolutely necessary and still think about the people affected by it. I could move straight into the next meeting, make another decision, and continue performing exactly as everyone expected me to. That is one of the strange things about being highly capable. You can continue functioning long after something has stopped feeling finished inside you. During my years as a Group Managing Director, I carried responsibility for hundreds of people. Decisions had consequences. They affected jobs, families, financial outcomes, and the future of the businesses I was responsible for. I understood that responsibility came with the role. What I didn't understand nearly as well was this: My responsibility could be complete while the pressure associated with it remained active in me. There is an important difference between the two. Difficult decisions still matter I think we sometimes make leadership too simple when we talk about decision-making. We talk about being decisive: gathering the information, assessing the risk, making the call, communicating clearly, and moving forward. All of that matters. But some of the hardest decisions in leadership are difficult precisely because there is no perfect answer. You may make the right decision for the organisation, knowing somebody will be hurt by it, or end someone's employment while still caring about what happens to their family. You may choose one direction, knowing another person strongly believes you are wrong. Even when you make the best decision available with everything you know at the time, you may still wonder three days later whether there was something you missed. This is not the pressure of trying to decide. It is what can remain after the decision has been made, communicated, and acted upon. That doesn't necessarily mean you lack confidence in your decision. Sometimes it simply means you are human enough to understand its consequences. The problem begins when caring about the consequences turns into continuing to carry responsibility for everything that happens afterward. Where your responsibility ends This distinction has become increasingly important to me. A leader should care. I never want to promote a version of leadership where becoming more senior means becoming less human. You should care about the people affected by your decisions. You should think carefully about consequences. You should be willing to question yourself and acknowledge when you get something wrong. But caring about something and carrying it indefinitely are not the same thing. There comes a point when your part is complete. Perhaps you made the decision, explained why, treated people as respectfully as you could, and dealt with what was yours to deal with. What happens next may no longer belong entirely to you. That sounds obvious when written on a page. It can feel remarkably different at two o'clock in the morning. Because your mind doesn't always respect organisational boundaries. It doesn't necessarily say, "The decision was signed off on Tuesday, therefore we are finished thinking about this." It goes back, replays the conversation, and searches for another answer. Because senior women are often exceptionally good problem solvers, we can keep trying to solve situations over which we no longer have any meaningful control. What still belongs to you One of the questions I wish I had asked myself more often in leadership was very simple: "Is there actually anything left for me to do?" Not think about it, worry about it, or mentally rehearse it. Actually do. Sometimes the answer would have been yes. There was another conversation to have, a decision to document, someone I needed to follow up with, or something I had promised to resolve. But sometimes the answer would have been no. My part was finished. The uncomfortable part is accepting that completion does not guarantee a comfortable outcome. Someone may still be angry. A former employee may disagree with what happened, or a colleague may think you should have chosen differently. A board may make a decision you would not have made yourself, and a market may respond in a way you cannot control. Leadership gives you responsibility. It does not give you authority over every consequence. Yet we can continue carrying outcomes as though thinking about them for another six hours will somehow increase our control over them. It won't. How pressure travels This is one of the places where Accumulated Executive Pressure™ becomes important. I use that term to describe the continuous, day-to-day reality of sustained executive responsibility and the pressure that can accumulate through carrying it over time. We tend to notice the restructuring, the crisis, the board conflict, the difficult dismissal, and the financial decision with enormous consequences. But an executive career is not one difficult decision. It is thousands of them, and if each experience leaves something behind before you move to the next one, pressure can begin travelling with you. You finish one difficult conversation and walk into another meeting. You leave the office, but the conversation comes home. You go to bed, but part of your mind is still at the table. Then morning comes, and because you are capable, you get up and do it again. That ability to continue can become misleading. We can mistake functioning for completion. They are not the same thing. When your body stays alert There is another part of this that deserves attention. Sometimes you are no longer consciously thinking about what happened, but you still don't feel as though you have come down from it. You may find it harder to switch off, notice that your patience is shorter, or notice that your sleep has changed. You may be sitting at dinner with people you love while some part of you still feels as though it is waiting for the next problem. None of those things automatically means leadership pressure is the cause, and persistent or concerning physical or psychological changes deserve appropriate professional attention. But I do think senior women should become more curious about what their lives are telling them. In my work, I call these Footprints™: the physical, cognitive, emotional, or relational changes worth noticing when sustained responsibility has been carried for a long time. The question isn't, "Why can't I get over this?" I think there is a kinder and far more useful question: "What am I still carrying from something that has already ended?" Recognition changes what follows This is where Recognition – Release – Recovery™ begins. Recognition is not analysing yourself endlessly. It is becoming clear about what is actually still active. Is there something you genuinely need to do? Is there a responsibility that still belongs to you? Are you carrying somebody else's reaction? Are you trying to control an outcome over which you no longer have authority? Or has an experience simply never had anywhere to go because you moved immediately from one demand to the next? Those are very different situations, and they require different responses. Sometimes release means taking action: finishing the conversation, documenting the decision, or making the call. At other times, it means recognising that the responsibility belongs to somebody else now. It may also mean accepting that another person is allowed to be unhappy with a decision you still believe was necessary. For some experiences, release means having one confidential place where you don't have to be the composed executive for an hour and can finally say what carrying that decision actually asked of you. That is not weakness. It is completion. Let the decision end I don't believe the goal is to forget difficult leadership experiences. Some decisions should stay with us. They shape our judgement, teach us what we value, and change the way we lead the next time we find ourselves sitting across from someone having to make another impossible choice. There are decisions from my own leadership years that I would never want erased because they became part of the leader, and eventually the woman, I became. But there is a difference between carrying the wisdom of an experience and continuing to carry its pressure. That distinction matters. Because there will always be another quarter, another person who needs an answer, and another situation where the woman at the top is expected to know what to do. The next time a completed decision follows you home, don't immediately tell yourself that you should have moved on by now. Ask whether there is genuinely anything left for you to do. If there is, do it. If there isn't, perhaps the work is no longer making another decision. Perhaps the work is allowing this one to finally become complete. The decision can remain part of your leadership without remaining active in your life. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Myra Swan Kotze Myra Swan Kotze, Executive Pressure Specialist Myra Swan Kotze is an Executive Pressure Specialist, author, Industrial Psychology graduate, and former Group Managing Director. Her work is grounded in decades of leadership experience and a deeply personal understanding of what it takes to keep carrying responsibility when everyone assumes you are coping. She created Accumulated Executive Pressure™ to give language to the often-invisible pressure that builds while accomplished women continue to lead, deliver, and hold everything together. Through Elevated Woman, her deliberately intimate private practice, Myra helps women in senior corporate leadership recognise what years of responsibility have asked of them and release the pressure their bodies have been carrying. She also hosts the Elevated Woman™ Podcast, where she opens honest conversations about the woman behind the leadership role.