What happens when leadership, governance and organisational change are treated not as separate disciplines, but as interconnected parts of the same system? In this interview, an experienced leader explores the role of judgement, accountability, empathy and discernment in navigating complexity, strengthening organisations and creating meaningful, sustainable change. Netis Kennedy, Leadership and Change Advisor & Governance SME What drew you to bring leadership, governance and organisational change together in your work today? I have woven together threads, consciously and instinctively, across leadership, governance and organisational change. Three decades in complex, regulated environments showed me over time that they were never truly separate. On paper, they can look like distinct disciplines. In practice, I kept seeing the same tension: excellent governance becoming bureaucracy when the evidence showed how difficult it could be for leaders to exercise judgement within it, inspiring leadership losing impact when ownership was unclear, and transformation plans failing because leaders and teams did not understand what needed to change, why it mattered or how they fitted into it. That pattern helped me recognise something about my own strengths too. I can maintain business as usual (BAU) and keep a function running effectively, but it is not where I’m most fulfilled. I’m most energised when there is something to build, fix, improve or move from one state to another. My career path reflects this, I’m often approached to fix, build, train and lead until something reaches the routine maintenance stage. At that point, my purpose is usually complete, ready for handover to a BAU operator, with me moving into advisory support where relevant. I now think of capability in those terms: builders create structure and roadmaps, fixers diagnose what is really broken and reset it, scalers optimize what works, and BAU operators sustain it. All are valuable, but they require different strengths. My work sits where those worlds meet, understand the system, find the constraint, then create the conditions for practical change. What have three decades in regulated environments taught you about where governance frameworks stop, and human judgement begins? Three decades in regulated environments have taught me that frameworks are essential, but they cannot make the decision for you. A mature framework can define principles, thresholds, responsibilities and escalation routes. The tension appears when the facts are incomplete, competing risks exist, or two reasonable people could reach different conclusions. That is the point at which judgement becomes the hidden variable. The quality of that judgement depends heavily on context. I want to know what worked before, why it worked then, what changed and why people may now be resisting a new process or control. Resistance is not always obstruction. It can be operational intelligence, evidence of a constraint, an unintended consequence, a lost workaround or a past solution that addressed a genuine problem. Organisational history often explains why today’s behaviour exists. Judgement is also shaped by pressure, hierarchy, incentives, perceived influence and experience. The same framework can therefore produce different outcomes in different habitats. Good governance should not try to remove judgement. It should make the reasoning visible, supported and defensible, including the assumptions, history and context that shaped the decision. During periods of regulatory scrutiny, what separates organisations that genuinely mature from those that simply complete the remediation? The organisations that genuinely mature treat remediation as information about how the system actually behaves, not simply as a list of findings to close. The tension is that a control can be redesigned, documented, tested and technically closed while the conditions that created the failure remain untouched. That is the difference between design effectiveness and operational effectiveness. There is also a commercial reality. In large, complex organisations, some remediation will remain a pragmatic 'band-aid' or compensating control because the cost, scale and disruption of ripping out legacy systems or rebuilding an operating model from scratch may be impossible. Maturity is therefore not pretending every workaround can disappear. It is understanding why it exists, what risk it compensates for, what new risks it may create, and whether that trade-off is still acceptable. The strongest organisations make those compromises consciously, they understand the root cause, document the rationale, assess residual risk and keep sight of the longer-term end state. Less mature organisations close the finding and move on. Mature ones keep revisiting the assumptions until the temporary fix is either genuinely embedded, improved or no longer needed. Where do you see leaders struggling most when they have to make decisions without certainty? I often see leaders struggle with the belief that accountability requires certainty. It doesn’t. The pressure point comes when information is incomplete, but a decision still has to be made. Accountability means being clear about what you know, what you do not know, which assumptions you are making, what judgement you are applying, and then owning the decision. It’s like problem-solving: view the holistic picture, review the risks, priorities and root causes, then work through them in a methodical but spider-map, inter-relational and associative way. Experienced leaders often notice weak signals before the headline metric changes. By the time a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) turns red, the story may have been unfolding for months through changing relationships, workarounds, assumptions, behaviours or decision patterns. The challenge is avoiding both extremes: paralysis while waiting for perfect information, and overconfidence because we have become attached to one interpretation. Humility matters because the moment certainty becomes part of our identity, we can stop seeing what is changing around us. The strongest leaders act with enough conviction to move, but enough curiosity to change course when new information appears. Good governance makes that possible without pretending uncertainty has disappeared. How can organisations strengthen accountability without creating cultures driven by fear or excessive control? For me, the starting point is separating psychological safety from comfort. Comfort avoids difficult conversations. Psychological safety makes difficult conversations possible by creating a safe place for disclosure. An accountable culture allows someone to say, 'I made this decision, this was my reasoning, this is what happened, and this is what I learned,' without every imperfect outcome automatically becoming a personal failure. Fear produces the opposite behaviour, people hide uncertainty, escalate defensively, seek excessive approvals, and gradually stop exercising judgement. Accountability then turns into dependency. I have also seen good leaders unintentionally create that dependency by stepping in too often. It feels supportive in the moment, but over time ownership blurs, decisions slow, and issues loop back to the same senior person. Support lands very differently when responsibility sits cleanly. The answer is not less accountability but clearer accountability, visible ownership, trust, constructive challenge and proportionate consequence. People should know what they own, feel safe enough to surface problems early, and understand that challenge is part of responsible performance, not evidence of disloyalty. When a leadership or governance problem appears on the surface, how do you identify the deeper thread driving it? I start by assuming the visible problem may be only a symptom. A behaviour, backlog, control failure or performance issue can look self-contained on the surface. Underneath it may sit organisational history, incentives, power dynamics, workload, unclear ownership, communication patterns, belief systems or a process that has gradually drifted away from operational reality. So I slow the diagnosis down, not the response. Acting quickly on the wrong problem usually creates another one. What is actually happening? What changed? What happened immediately before it? Where are decisions slowing? Where are people compensating? What does the documented process say, and what process is genuinely running the organisation? The richest insight often sits in the gaps between functions, handoffs and decision points, because that is where people adapt to constraints and where workarounds become normalised. Then I look for repetition across apparently unrelated fragments. In financial crime, that might mean moving beyond one transaction to vessel movements, jurisdictions and behavioural patterns over months. In leadership, it might mean connecting attrition, decision drag, escalating workload and a manager who has unintentionally become everybody’s answer. Different surface problems can be manifestations of the same underlying thread. Once that thread is visible, the intervention becomes much more precise. What can leaders do to build better judgement before they are tested by a high-pressure decision? Judgement develops through use, not simply through instruction. Technical knowledge matters, but the real test comes when information is incomplete, perspectives conflict and the consequences are not obvious. Leaders need repeated opportunities to practise in that space before a crisis forces them into it. I use scenario thinking and second-order and third-order questions: What happens next? Who else is affected? What behaviour might this create? What new risk could our solution introduce? That moves thinking beyond the immediate control or decision. Reflection is equally important. Good leaders examine not only whether the outcome was good or bad, but how they reached the decision, what they noticed, what they ignored, and where pressure influenced them. Exposure to different perspectives matters too. The quieter person in the room may be the one observing dynamics everybody else has missed. Senior leaders need places where they are not expected to be the answer: peers, mentors, coaches and trusted challenge outside the hierarchy they lead. When curiosity, experience, challenge and reflection accumulate over time, judgement is already stronger before the high-pressure moment arrives. What does ‘Find the Thread. Make the Change.’ mean to you beyond your professional methodology? 'Find the Thread. Make the Change.' has become much more personal than a consulting methodology for me. Over time, I have realised that information is rarely the real problem. In organisations and in life, the clues are often already present. The difficult part is seeing what they mean when they are fragmented or challenge the story we have been telling ourselves. Some people do not see, some do not want to see, and some see what is happening and choose to respond. That response does not always require a heroic act of bravery. Often it is simply the next logical step. Finding the thread means recognising the pattern connecting events that previously looked separate. Making the change means accepting that insight creates a responsibility to respond. Understand the human. Understand the habitat. Understand the interaction. Then change what needs changing. Behaviour does not always reveal potential, sometimes it reveals adaptation to the environment. The same is true in organisations, pressure, culture, hierarchy, incentives, and safety shape what people can express. Don't mistake adaptation for identity. Sometimes the meaningful change is movement. Sometimes it is stepping back and letting clarity emerge before the next step forward. What is one leadership capability you believe the next generation will need more than ever? I would actually choose two capabilities that increasingly need to sit together: discernment and empathy. The next generation of leaders will have access to more data, automation, artificial intelligence (AI) generated analysis and recommendations than any generation before them. The tension will not be access to information, it will be deciding what matters, what connects, what is noise, and what the consequences of acting might be at the second- and third-order. That is discernment. But decisions do not land in a vacuum. Leaders also need to understand how change, pressure, uncertainty and governance are experienced by the people inside the system. That is where empathy becomes essential. Empathy is not avoiding challenge or lowering standards. It is understanding context well enough to lead proportionately, communicate clearly and recognise the human consequences of a decision. For me, leadership development also works in both directions, helping the next generation build judgement earlier, while helping experienced leaders remain open enough to question assumptions, update their perspective and keep learning. The strongest future leaders will hold discernment and empathy at once, enough discernment to see clearly, and enough empathy to understand what they are seeing means for others. Technology can accelerate decisions. It cannot replace the responsibility to make them wisely, accountably, and humanely. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Netis Kennedy

Written by Tiffany Meredith Lynch, Sum Faht Meditation & Emotional Wellness Coach Meet Tiffany Meredith Lynch, a Certified Meditation Teacher, Qigong Instructor, TCM Practitioner, and Emotional Wellness Coach. With her extensive travels and deep immersion in ancient wisdom, spiritual teachings, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she brings a transformative approach to holistic healing and personal growth. Many of us are feeling worried in these uncertain times, but what if we could use this uncertainty, and even our worry, as an opportunity to awaken? Lately, have you been feeling worried? Maybe you’ve noticed anxiety moving through your body. A tight chest. Restless thoughts. That underlying sense that something doesn’t feel right. If so, you are not alone. So many people are feeling it right now. The world is feeling increasingly unstable. Social and political systems are strained, divisions are growing sharper, and even families are feeling the weight of political differences in deeply personal ways. For others, the worry feels closer to home. Rising prices, financial pressure, and the ongoing question of whether home ownership will ever feel possible can create a constant hum of stress. For some, there is also a heightened sensitivity to changes in the natural world. As Earth’s electromagnetic activity intensifies through space weather, solar flares, and powerful earthly storms, many sensitive people are noticing the effects in their bodies, emotions, and overall sense of balance. Worry is a natural human response, especially during times of uncertainty and change. When so much feels like it is shifting, it makes sense that our nervous systems would respond. But perhaps this anxiety isn't something to fear or fix. Perhaps it's a sign. A sign that something deeper is moving through the planet and through us. A sign that we are living through a time of profound transition. Maybe, just maybe, this worry is part of a larger awakening, one that is asking us to pay attention, to soften, and to evolve. Worry can be an invitation back to presence and self-trust. When fear rises collectively, the mind naturally tries to get ahead of it by scanning the future and searching for answers. Worry steps in as an attempt to create control in uncertain moments. But its deeper purpose can be surprisingly supportive. It creates enough inner discomfort to help you notice when you’ve drifted too far into external noise, and gently calls you back to the present. From that place, you can reconnect with your own grounding, your own truth, and a deeper trust in yourself. Worry can also be the beginning of discernment. Worry has a way of disrupting old thought patterns and bringing unconscious fears to the surface so they can be seen more clearly. In that moment, you’re given a choice: to believe every fearful thought that passes through, or to pause and ask, “Is this actually true? Or is this old conditioning, collective fear, or borrowed energy moving through me?” That practice of questioning, noticing, and choosing is what strengthens energetic discernment and refines your heart-centered intuition. Worry in Chinese medicine In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the emotion worry is closely connected to the stomach and spleen. A little worry coming from a loving place can reflect empathy, care, and a deep desire to protect the people and things that matter most to us. But when worry becomes excessive, it can disrupt the flow of chi and create imbalance in the body, especially in the stomach and spleen area. Worry is associated with the Earth element, the energy of planting seeds, nurturing life, and supporting growth. At its core, worry holds a powerful and meaningful quality. It is the mind’s natural ability to anticipate, plan, and prepare. In a way, when you worry, your spleen and stomach are trying to “digest” a future problem before it even arrives. The invitation is not to judge yourself for worrying, but to notice when care has tipped into excess. In balance, this same energy becomes one of your greatest strengths: meticulous care, grounded planning, nurturing stewardship, and the steady presence that helps both you and others feel supported. Worry: The catalyst for awakening Because the external world is feeling highly unstable, worry spikes dramatically. However, this global experience is exactly where worry can be used as a primary catalyst for personal and planetary awakening. When the planet undergoes such an extreme energetic shift, human biology naturally reacts with worry. The mind craves predictability. When global systems shake, your mind tries to compute every possible dangerous future scenario to keep you safe, which triggers a loop of chronic overthinking. Much of the worry people feel right now is not even their own. In these times, the veil is thin, and sensitive people unconsciously absorb the fear, anxiety, and survival-mode energy of the collective population. Instead of fighting worry, it is helpful to celebrate it as a sign of sensitivity. In these new times, worry can be your body detecting a massive shift in environmental energy. It means you are awake enough to feel the friction between the old, dying world and the new world emerging. Worry is not a sign that you are failing your spiritual journey. It is the friction of your nervous system adjusting to a planet in rapid evolution. Awakening happens the moment you stop trying to solve the planet’s chaos with your mind and instead use that intense energy to ground your feet into the Earth and open your heart to the present moment. Breathe, my friend, and let worry become warrior. If you enjoy this article, please click here for my free ancient healing workbook. From my heart to yours, Tiffany Ann – My Zen Living. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tiffany Meredith Lynch Tiffany Meredith Lynch, Sum Faht Meditation & Emotional Wellness Coach When you meet Tiffany, you encounter someone who has tackled life's toughest challenges head-on and gained a deep, transformative insight into authentic healing. Her spiritual journey, spanning several decades, has taken her across continents. She studied under esteemed teachers in Malaysia and Thailand, where she deepened her knowledge of meditation, breathwork, qigong, and Traditional Chinese medicine. These invaluable experiences have enriched her ability to harness transformative techniques, empowering both herself and others to cultivate deep healing and rediscover the divine heart.

Written by Michael Klein, Owner & Director at Michael Klein Arts, LLC Michael Klein is best known for his work and achievements in the field of contemporary art. As both a dealer and curator, he has had a long and distinguished career as a New York gallery owner and director, representing an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists. He became the first in-house curator for Microsoft Corporation. Few painters can or desire to make sculpture. Throughout the history of art, Picasso, Giacometti, even Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg are prime examples. Today, Scully has managed to take his painting geometry and shape it into remarkable three-dimensional works. “Having made sculpture in my student days, but the big impetus was Tappan, my studio, where I had land.” From a recent book about his sculpture, its general character is described here: “Scully layers elements made of steel, stone, bronze, and painted aluminum on top of each other, creating horizontal structures that expand upward.” The simplicity of the description doesn’t prepare the viewer for the great variety of forms, shapes, and structures that Scully has produced and continues to produce in his other studio in Aix-en-Provence, France. The geometric nature of Scully’s paintings now finds its way into his vision of sculpture, sculpture that is more than minimal and highly expressive, using rectangular forms to capture our attention. He builds and engineers these sculptures as stacks with grids that are either open or closed in format. In all, there is a strong and dynamic architectonic quality to these works. Many are akin to the architecturally inspired sculpture of the British artist Anthony Caro and the Danish artist Per Kirkeby. Depending on the materials chosen, the structures can look somewhat ancient or supermodern. In conversation about his sculpture, Scully remarked, “The personality of material becomes important.” For example, this very recent stone work called Wall of Light Cubed Aix (2026) is a rough-textured limestone organized in a grid pattern, with the blocks placed one atop another and side by side. Then there is this 20-foot-tall, multicolor piece, 48,2024, built of aluminum and car paint. They represent the varied approaches at hand, with material matched to composition. Scale, too, plays an important role in the character of each work. The sculptures range from monumental works like the grand piece Boxes of Air (2015 to 2021), built of Corten steel, which sits outside the studio in Tappan, New York, and stretches some fifty feet across, to more intimate works like this elegant vertical five-part marble piece in France entitled Little London Landline, made in 2023. What is most striking about his body of work is both the range and diversity of shapes and materials. Each is a unique invention. In a way, sculpture can be more experimental than painting, since painting relies mostly on two prime elements: paint and canvas. Sculpture, instead, is potentially more variable because of the material character of its form. For Scully, it is a chance to experiment, investigate, and devise, whether he is working with stone or metal. The grid structure, which is the underpinning of his thoughts, whether in painting or sculpture, is modulated by and expanded with the materials he chooses, “their personality,” as he has remarked. Each material has certain associations, so steel or metal can be thought of as modern, while stone suggests something more ancient. For Scully, visual ideas and concepts are translated into three-dimensional forms and always stacked. The stacking method is used whether he is building with cubic shapes or flat elements. In a monograph on his sculpture, Scully states, “Sculpture is the step beyond painting. It is what you resort to when your obsession with things goes beyond an illusion of something on canvas.” Throughout his career, Scully has explored the variations and possibilities of the grid. It is the structural basis for his compositions. Color is the emotive property of his paintings. The same holds for his sculpture, with the structure being a grid format and color present through the material selected or used. When painting, color sets the mood, expresses emotion, and charges our memories. In sculpture, it can be both the material and the scale. About Indoor Sleeper (2020), made of jarrah wood, an evergreen tree, Scully writes, “I love that wooden stack because it’s like an old person that worked all their life and is now resting in retirement.” “Materials have associated qualities, and each of us relates to materials in different ways depending on our own personal stories, the same way we react to different colors that elicit different emotions and reactions in each of us.” In a 2007 letter published in a recent catalogue, Scully explained, “Jackson Pollock and James Joyce were both non-negotiable” in their separate art. Scully, too, reflects Frank Stella’s statement, “What you see is what you see.” In a Scully sculpture, there is clarity in the material and clarity in the composition, all non-negotiable. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Michael Klein Michael Klein, Owner & Director at Michael Klein Arts, LLC Michael Klein's expertise lies in his role as a private art dealer and freelance, independent curator for individuals, institutions, and arts organizations. Today, Michael Klein Arts works with a diverse group of artists, estates, galleries, and non-profit institutions, providing management, curatorial, and other consulting services. At the same time, the company serves institutional as well as private collectors, focusing on developing collections of emerging, mid-career, and established artists. The company also organizes traveling exhibitions both in the United States and abroad.

Written by Anya Walsh, Feminine Embodiment & Pleasure Coach Anya is a Trauma-Informed Feminine Embodiment and Pleasure Coach and Project Manager for Tao Tantric Arts. Drawing on a decade of somatic, tantric, and nervous system practices, she guides women and men to reclaim safety, pleasure, vitality, and authentic self-expression through the body. Most people’s sex lives follow a rhythm: feel arousal, stimulate ourselves or a partner, feel the build, climax, experience a moment of bliss, feel a sense of release, then feel sleepy, depleted, and ready to collapse into sleep. Our minds and bodies have been trained by the media, porn, and societal beliefs to see this as normal. But what if orgasm could be experienced differently? What if sexual energy could be harnessed rather than simply released? What if pleasure could move through the whole body, creating greater vitality, connection, and aliveness rather than leaving you feeling depleted? This is where the concept of an energy orgasm comes in. The tension release pattern Many genital orgasms can be understood as a form of tension release. There is a build-up where energy intensifies and contracts against pressure in both male and female bodies. Without another pathway for that energy to move through, the energy is most often released through its known pathway, resulting in ejaculation. The genitals can become a place where strong emotions and energetic intensity accumulate. Stress, frustration, anger, passion, and desire can all become intertwined with sexual energy. This can create a powerful pattern of seeking release. Whenever there is stress, emotional intensity, or energetic activation in the body, the body's familiar response may be to seek a release of these emotions, either alone or with a partner. There is nothing inherently wrong with pleasure or ejaculation. However, when release becomes the only known way of working with sexual energy, it can become a repetitive pattern that leaves us disconnected from the deeper potential of our vitality and pleasure. So, instead of simply releasing energy, what if you could learn to build and circulate it, allowing you to feel more alive than before rather than depleted? Or you might like to experience longer, stronger, and deeper pleasure throughout your whole body, both in your own pleasure and with a partner. Cultivating sexual energy In Taoist and Tantric practices, sexual energy is consciously cultivated and circulated through the body. Rather than allowing energy to remain concentrated in the genitals, the practice is to create pathways through which it can move upwards and throughout the body. This process is referred to as sublimation. It is best to begin by practising when you are not highly aroused. Through breath, sound, movement, and awareness, you begin to familiarise yourself with the sensation of energy moving through the body. You can begin by activating the area around the perineum, traditionally associated with the root chakra, and then consciously guiding the energy upwards through the body's energetic centres. From the root, the energy can move towards the sacral centre, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown, eventually extending beyond the crown. The more you practise this, the more familiar your body becomes with expansive states of pleasure. From arousal to expansion Once you have developed some familiarity with circulating energy while not aroused, you can begin exploring it as a self-pleasure practice or practising with a partner. Rather than allowing arousal to build continuously towards climax, you begin to work with waves of arousal. You might reach around 20 percent arousal, then consciously circulate and sublimate the energy. Your arousal may decrease to 10 percent. You then build again, perhaps to 30 percent, and circulate the energy once more. Over time, you gradually learn how to build and circulate increasingly powerful levels of sexual energy. This allows pleasure, desire, and arousal to continue for much longer than the familiar pattern of building towards a single climax. When first learning, it can be useful to practise well below your usual point of climax. You might choose to work only up to 50 percent arousal, gradually developing the sensitivity and confidence to explore higher levels. With practice, you may become more familiar with your own energetic landscape and learn to recognise 70 or 80 percent arousal without automatically moving towards ejaculation. An important part of this practice is discovering at what point your arousal becomes so strong that ejaculation is inevitable. This is your own point of no return. Learning to recognise your own unique point of no return gives you greater awareness and choice around your sexual energy. The waves of pleasure Energy moves in waves. Rather than a rocket shooting continuously upwards, pleasure becomes more like waves moving through the body. The energy rises, you sublimate, and it plateaus. The wave of energy builds upon the previous one, you circulate it, it steadies, then rises once more. The more familiar you become with this process, the more expansive the pleasure becomes, spreading throughout the entire body. Experiencing an energy orgasm You or your partner, or both of you together, may eventually reach what feels like a climactic point where there is a profound state of bliss moving throughout the entire body, regardless of whether ejaculation occurs. For many people, this state can feel much longer lasting and much more expansive than a conventional genital orgasm. With continued practice, practitioners may increase their ability to sustain states of orgasmic bliss that can even last for hours. When this energy orgasm is combined with genital orgasm, this is what’s known as a full body orgasm. Your entire body is in a state of orgasm, pleasure, and ecstasy. From depletion to vitality Ejaculation is a potent physiological and energetic experience. Traditional Taoist approaches have long explored the relationship between sexual energy, vitality, and ejaculation. The intention is not necessarily to eliminate ejaculation entirely, but to develop greater awareness and choice around sexual energy. The recommended frequency of ejaculation depends on your age, hormones, lifestyle, and many other factors. The more your awareness of your energy develops, the more you will find the right fit for your ejaculatory choices. You will begin to feel what brings more vitality and what depletes it. This is not just about better lovemaking. The benefits of this practice extend far beyond sexuality. Your overall vitality improves, your emotional and energetic intelligence expands, and your self-esteem and mental health can improve. You learn how to work with energy in all areas of life and how to harness it rather than becoming overwhelmed by it. Over time, this supports a greater sense of personal power, self-esteem, self-worth, aliveness, connection, and resilience. A different relationship with pleasure An energy orgasm invites us to reconsider what orgasm actually means. Exploring energy orgasms invites us to relate to arousal as a source of vitality rather than something that simply needs to reach an endpoint. It can be fun to explore this with yourself or with a partner, but in the beginning, it might be beneficial to seek support and guidance from a trained practitioner in repatterning how your body relates to arousal, pleasure, and energy cultivation. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anya Walsh Anya Walsh, Feminine Embodiment & Pleasure Coach Anya is a Trauma-Informed Feminine Embodiment and Pleasure Coach and Tao Tantric Arts Project Manager who guides women and men to reconnect with safety, pleasure, and power in their bodies. Drawing on a decade of study and practice in Somatic healing, Tao Tantric Arts, nervous system health, breathwork, yoga, and embodiment-based therapies, she weaves together a range of modalities to rebuild resilience, expanding their window of tolerance, reprogramming their approach to pleasure, and reclaiming a deeper sense of vitality, connection, and authentic self-expression.

Written by Stanislav Chufus, Personal Trainer & Rehabilitation Coach Stanislav Chufus is an International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) certified and European-certified Personal Trainer and Nutritionist with international experience in fitness, coaching, rehabilitation, and wellness. He helps clients improve their health, strength, nutrition, and confidence through personalized, goal-focused guidance. If you stop for a second and think about your body and what it actually is, you will revalue your whole life differently: being on this earth, the time that you take for your own good, and you will also realize the necessity of investing in yourself. Self-development is the biggest asset that you can build in your life, whether it’s educational, spiritual, emotional, or physical. Every one of these aspects requires self-education or mentorship. But obviously, it’s better to take both. As a Personal Trainer, I consider all of these things (education, emotional health, spiritual life, and physical well-being) as irreplaceable parts of development because they are essential by their own nature. You will not be able to substitute any of these four elements, since nothing in the world can contribute in the same way as they naturally do. They are not available for purchase, as a gift, to be given, or to be borrowed. They have to be gained through your hard work. Whatever you sow will be harvested. If you show up every day and put in all the effort you can, results will have no other choice than to follow! This is about real investment in your life. In my profession, I have met a lot of different people. I have heard their stories and how they came to the decision to change their lives. I was a witness to many miracles, but I know that many of you who are reading this article will be skeptical or even look with concern at the word “miracle.” I helped a lot of people get to the point where they were dreaming of being on their life fitness journey or reaching that point of health. Different people, different situations, different goals, and different backgrounds. But almost all the time, they had one thing in common: a late decision. Over 90% of my clients came to me and asked for help, and sometimes down the road, admitted that they regretted not taking this step sooner. Humans are, by our nature, unfortunately ungrateful, and we take a lot of things for granted. Most of the time, we start giving true value to the things or people that are almost gone or already lost. Even to ourselves. We go to the doctor because we are sick or something hurts, but only a small percentage of us want to prevent it. We start working harder when we hit the ground. We start eating healthy when there is some hormonal disturbance or the weight scale cannot read the numbers. We go to a personal trainer, coach, or health mentor when we reach the point of saying, “I have to change something in my life,” or “I cannot take it anymore.” I have two short stories about two families that came to me and asked for cooperation. I love my clients, and most of them I will remember forever. “John” (not his real name, to protect privacy), who was 11 years old at the time, and his parents came to me and asked for help. The kid was bullied at school every day for his appearance, weakness, and lack of confidence. During our sessions, I saw that this little boy had some sort of mobility problem and a fear of being ashamed, obviously because of his situation at school. The mobility problems came from his early childhood because the kid had never played, sat, or even tried to exercise or do squats. Little kids almost always have perfect technique when squatting, and they can remain in this position for a long time. As soon as his parents were told about his little problem, they decided to pay closer attention. They took him to the doctors to have scans and X-rays of his body. The results were scoliosis and flat feet. We started taking care of those things so much that even when the gym was closed, they asked me to start home training sessions, and we did everything possible so the goals would be met. In a couple of months of hard and consistent work, the issue with his feet was gone, there was an improvement in his spinal situation, and “John” performed the three movements of powerlifting during Talent Week at his school, which made him more confident and respected among his classmates and other kids at school. The second story will be short because I refused to work with a client. One mom came with her high school child and asked me to take care of her daughter and work out with her. The reason why they were not accepted by me as clients is super simple. During the conversation, they revealed that the daughter had scoliosis, which was a result of being totally irreverent to the doctors’ recommendations. This was my turning point. It started with flat feet, which caused a difference in the length of her legs, which caused discomfort and imbalance. The difference in the length of her legs caused changes in the angle of her pelvis. Over time, a spinal deformity developed, and by the age of 15 or 16, she had scoliosis of around 30°. I was told that I had to have some kind of magic and fix it, but with their zero effort and refusal to follow every instruction. A personal trainer is not a magician or God. That is why I am saying: people are coming whenever it’s almost or already too late. As a child of God, I can preach to you for hours and for days, but I will deliver a simple message to you: every work that is not built on faith will have an unstable foundation. Your body is a gift, a Temple, and a fantastic, powerful, miraculously created instrument. You will have no chance to replace it, return it, or purchase another. There is no 2-week return policy. No 30-day, 90-day, or whatever. This is like a priceless, expensive machine that requires a lot of attention and care. If I tell you that you will have your dream vehicle in front of your house tomorrow, but it will be your only car for the rest of your days, what would you do with that? Would you take care of it or neglect it? Would you keep it clean? Fill it up with the best gas? Oil? Filters? What about brakes? It takes work and maintenance. Think about it. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Stanislav Chufus Stanislav Chufus, Personal Trainer & Rehabilitation Coach Stanislav Chufus is a European and ISSA-certified Personal Trainer and Nutritionist and a sports academy alumnus whose career in fitness spans multiple countries. His education includes specialized training in sports anatomy, physical therapy, stretching, kettlebell training, and nutrition. Stanislav approaches fitness as more than physical transformation, combining training, nutrition, discipline, and mindset to create lasting change. Having built his own journey around continuous self-development, he leads by example and encourages others to discover what their bodies and minds are truly capable of. His purpose is to help people become stronger, healthier, more confident, and ultimately build a lifestyle they are proud to live.

Do you understand how your emotions affect the people around you? Our experts explain how greater self-awareness, empathy, and emotional control can make you a more effective leader. Expert Panelists 1. Own your impact Emotional intelligence isn’t about managing emotions so everyone feels good; it’s about understanding the difference between what you meant and what actually happened. If you intended to hit someone in the face and they’re screaming about their bloody lip, you don’t get to argue the impact. And if you didn’t intend harm, emotional intelligence is what makes you pause, assess the damage, and choose the next best step. People experience impact differently, and leaders who ignore that create unnecessary risk. The work isn’t defending your intention – it’s owning your influence. Dr. Ari McGrew, Founder, Business Psychologist 2. Embrace the edge As AI makes knowledge abundant and answers almost instantaneous, emotional intelligence will become an increasingly valuable human advantage and absolutely critical in leadership. The leaders who stand out won't be those who know the most, but those who can control themselves under pressure, lift the energy of a room, and bring out the best in the humans around them. In a world accelerating faster than any of us can predict, clarity, emotional regulation, and human connection aren't soft skills anymore – they're leadership currency. The future of leadership is human. Aran Bray, Founder of Be Outstanding | Speaker | Human Performance Coach 3. Read the signals Before you lead anyone else, answer this: Do you understand how your emotions affect the people around you? Leadership is not only what you decide, but what you transmit while deciding it, and people read your emotional state before they process your words. Self-awareness means closing the gap between how you believe you come across and how you actually land, especially as seniority makes honest feedback harder to come by. Empathy is not agreeableness; it is the discipline of accurately perceiving what someone else is experiencing, which is what makes hard feedback survivable rather than corrosive. Emotional control is not suppression either; it is the choice point between feeling something fully and letting it dictate the room's temperature. The leaders people choose to follow again are the ones who treat this as a practice, not a personality trait. Pritesh Lohar, Certified Medical Oncologist 4. Know yourself first Understand yourself before understanding others. It basically means noticing your emotions, recognizing what triggers them, and choosing your response rather than reacting automatically. A strong leader can listen to critical feedback without showing defensiveness. They create space for others to speak, even when the conversation is uncomfortable. Emotional intelligence is also knowing when to set a boundary, have a difficult conversation, or simply pause before making a decision. The goal is not to remove emotions from leadership, but to use them with awareness and intention. When you understand yourself better, you can lead others with greater clarity, empathy, and confidence. True emotional intelligence is having the strength to stand for what is right, lead with fairness, and stay grounded in your values without shrinking yourself to please everyone. Ranya AlHusaini, Mindset Transformation Guru 5. Practice empathy Begin recognizing your own emotions and understanding how they influence your decisions and interactions. Take time to actively listen to others, show empathy, and respond thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively. Strong emotional intelligence also involves accepting feedback and communicating with honesty and respect. A helpful suggestion is to regularly reflect on your conversations and identify one way you can improve your listening or communication each day. Yujia Zhu, Social Entrepreneur, Author, Executive Coach 6. Lead from clarity A leader must first understand what is shaping them beneath the surface. The patterns, conditioning, and subconscious beliefs that drive our decisions and our reactions operate largely outside of conscious awareness, and until they are understood, leadership will default to reaction rather than intention. When a leader does that deeper work, decisions are made from clarity rather than conditioning, situations are met with steadiness rather than reactivity, and validation shifts from external to internal. The leader moves away from leading in the way that they have been conditioned or trained to lead, and towards leading in the way that they were born to lead. They begin to live how they lead and lead how they live, and that coherence is felt by everyone around them. When a leader operates from genuine alignment, their impact extends far beyond their immediate environment, because when we become the best possible version of ourselves, we naturally inspire others to do the same. Niaby Codd, Author, Dream Weaver, Transformational Mentor 7. Shape the tone Your emotions do not stay contained within you. They influence the environment you create for everyone around you. Under pressure, people often look to leaders for cues about how to interpret what is happening, which means a leader's tone, body language, and response to uncertainty can either increase tension or create stability. The goal is not to suppress emotion, but to recognize what you are feeling, regulate your response, and choose how you want to show up before reacting. A simple practice is to ask yourself, "What am I bringing into this environment right now, and is it helping the people around me perform, connect, and grow?" Emotional intelligence becomes powerful when leaders understand that managing their own state is not only personal. It is part of how they lead. Nassim Ebrahimi, Developmental Psychologist, Mental Performance Coach, Author, and Speaker 8. Think ahead Recognise that sustainable success starts with people. Like sustainability itself, emotionally intelligent leadership looks beyond immediate outcomes to create long-term resilience, trust and wellbeing. Great leaders understand their own emotions and recognise how their behaviour affects others. They listen actively, communicate with empathy and create space for different perspectives. Rather than reacting under pressure, they pause, reflect and respond thoughtfully. This builds stronger relationships, encourages collaboration and helps teams navigate change with confidence. Emotional intelligence means understanding that people are not simply resources to be managed. They are the foundation of an organisation's ability to adapt, innovate and thrive. By valuing wellbeing alongside performance, leaders create cultures where people feel respected, supported and empowered. To lead with emotional intelligence is sustainable leadership: balancing performance with people, purpose with empathy, and today's needs with tomorrow's potential. Paula Rose Castronova, Global Sustainability Voice 9. Notice the cues Pay attention to both verbal and physical cues from the people around you. Someone may not say that something is wrong, but changes in their tone, body language, stance, focus, or energy can communicate that their emotions are affecting them. As a leader, recognizing these cues gives you an opportunity to adjust your approach, ask questions, and better understand what your team member may need. Emotional intelligence is not about assuming what someone is feeling, but being aware enough to notice changes and respond with understanding while still maintaining accountability. Great leaders don't just listen to what people say; they pay attention to what people communicate. Ryan Phillips, Entrepreneur, Model & Fitness Trainer 10. Set the climate Like a tuning fork, every leader influences the emotional atmosphere around them. Your thoughts, emotions, and reactions influence the atmosphere long before you speak. After 20 years in Human Resources and now leading transformational workshops, I've found that emotional intelligence begins with one daily question: "What do I need today to show up as my best self?" When leaders regulate themselves rather than react impulsively, they build trust, encourage authentic communication, and unlock the group's collective potential. Great leadership isn't about controlling emotions – it's about understanding them and leading from self-awareness. Katalin Fligg, Trance Evidential Medium & Consciousness Educator

Written by Nadija Bajrami, Strategic Hypnotherapist, Mind Coach Nadija is a multi-award-winning trauma and empowerment specialist with a double diploma in hypnotherapy, mind coaching, and online therapy. She is also a Reiki Master and a grief educator, and she has been trained by international grief specialist and best-selling author David Kessler. Nadija is also an end-of-life doula. What if your story began before you had a voice? Before your first breath, before your first cry, before your first memory? We often speak about trauma as something that happens after birth. The childhood we survived, the relationship that broke us, the abuse, neglect, violence, abandonment, or loss that changed us. But human development begins earlier than most of us realise. It begins in the womb. Research increasingly shows that the prenatal environment can influence aspects of foetal and infant brain development, stress response systems, and biological regulation. This does not mean an unborn baby consciously remembers every argument, every tear, or every difficult day. It does not mean that a mother experiencing anxiety during pregnancy has automatically “traumatised” her baby. It certainly does not mean mothers should carry another burden of guilt. It means something much more nuanced, the developing human being is biologically sensitive to its environment. The womb is our first environment The womb is not simply where we grow. It is our first biological environment. Through the placenta, the developing foetus is connected to the mother's physiological environment while its brain and nervous system develop. Scientists study systems such as the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, which plays an important role in the body's stress response. Stress itself is not inherently harmful. Our bodies are designed to respond to challenges. But severe and prolonged stress is different. Research has found associations between significant maternal stress, anxiety, and depression during pregnancy and differences in aspects of foetal and infant brain development, including areas involved in emotion and stress regulation. Scientists are also exploring epigenetics, how environmental experiences can influence how certain genes are expressed without changing our DNA itself. Research has found associations between prenatal stress and epigenetic changes involving genes connected with stress regulation, although this science is still developing. But let us be very clear, association does not equal destiny. Genetics, nutrition, birth, relationships, childhood experiences, and the environment after birth all matter. The prenatal environment is one part of a much bigger story. Your body can learn before your mind can remember When I speak about prenatal trauma, I am not suggesting that a foetus has the same conscious psychological experience of trauma as an adult. We are talking about biological adaptation. The developing nervous system responds to signals from its environment. The body does not need conscious language to adapt. It learns through biology. It learns through patterns. Some of that biological learning begins before birth. But here is what matters most, your beginning is information. It is not a life sentence. This is where I want to protect mothers There is a danger in talking about prenatal stress without talking about maternal guilt. A pregnant woman may hear that stress can influence development and immediately ask, “Did I damage my baby?” No. That is not the message. Pregnancy is not nine months of emotional perfection. Women experience grief, fear, financial pressure, relationship difficulties, illness, trauma, and loss. Sometimes women are simply surviving. Instead of telling pregnant women to “stay positive,” perhaps we should ask, “What support does this woman need?” If maternal wellbeing matters to prenatal development, the answer is not to blame mothers. The answer is to support them. Give them safety. Give them compassion. Listen to them. Believe them. Help them. Supporting the mother is part of creating healthier beginnings. Trauma is not only what happened after birth This is the conversation I believe we need to have. When someone tells me, “I do not understand why I am always on high alert,” “I do not understand why I struggle to trust people,” or “I do not understand why I cannot relax,” there may not be one simple explanation. Sometimes the answer is in childhood. Sometimes adulthood. Sometimes biology, temperament, or genetics. Sometimes significant prenatal adversity may be part of a much larger developmental story. Human development is a continuum, before birth, birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Every stage matters. But none of them tells the entire story. We are more complex than what happened to us. This is where I want to bring you back to empowerment. If our earliest environments can influence us, our later environments can influence us too. If the brain can adapt to adversity, it can also adapt to safety. If the nervous system can learn hypervigilance, it can learn regulation. If the body can learn survival, it can learn that survival is no longer necessary. We are not frozen in time. Neuroplasticity reminds us that the brain remains capable of change. You can learn, heal, regulate, build healthier relationships, challenge inherited patterns, and become the person who breaks the cycle. Your beginning is not your destiny Maybe your mother experienced profound stress while pregnant with you. Maybe she was grieving. Maybe she was frightened. Maybe she was living through circumstances you will never fully know. Please hear me, you do not have to spend your life blaming her. Understanding is not blaming. Understanding gives us context, and context can create compassion. Perhaps your body learned vigilance before you ever understood what vigilance was. Perhaps you became someone who needs control because uncertainty feels unsafe. Perhaps there is a reason. But a reason is not a sentence. Your past may explain you. It does not have to imprison you. Breaking cycles does not require us to hate the generations before us. Sometimes it requires us to understand them and then consciously choose something different. You are here now Maybe your story began before your first breath. Maybe your body encountered signals of stress before your conscious mind existed. Maybe some of your earliest adaptations were formed in an environment you never chose. But listen carefully, you are here now, and that matters. You can learn, heal, regulate, build safe relationships, choose differently, become the safe adult you once needed, and create a different emotional environment for the next generation. You can stop asking, “What is wrong with me?” and begin asking, “What happened, what did my body learn, and what is it ready to learn now?” That question changes everything. Because healing is not about pretending the past didn’t happen. Healing is about refusing to let the past have the final word. Your story may have started before you had words But you are holding the pen now, science is teaching us that the prenatal environment matters. Trauma research is teaching us that the nervous system matters. Neuroscience is teaching us that the brain can change. Human experience keeps reminding us, we are capable of transformation. Your beginning matters. Your history matters. Your biology matters. Your experiences matter. But none of them get to decide who you become. You are not broken because your nervous system learned to survive. You are not weak because you react to things others seem able to handle. You are not doomed because your story began with circumstances you did not choose. Your body was always trying to protect you, and now, with awareness, compassion, and the right support, you can begin teaching it something new, safety, trust, connection, and possibility. Your story may have started before you had words. But you are holding the pen now, and you get to write what comes next. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info. Read more from Nadija Bajrami Nadija Bajrami, Strategic Hypnotherapist, Mind Coach French by birth, Nadija lived in Scotland for seven years and travelled the world. After recovering from some serious health issues, Nadija had a wake-up call and came to Ireland to find her path. She has been living in Dublin since 2017. Nadija works mostly online worldwide and shares her time between Ireland, France, and Switzerland. Nadija is a multi-award-winning trauma and empowerment specialist with a double diploma in hypnotherapy, mind coaching, and online therapy. She is also a Reiki Master and a grief educator, and she has been trained by international grief specialist and best-selling author David Kessler. Nadija is also an end-of-life doula. She is dedicated to helping her clients get empowered, supercharge their confidence and self-esteem, overcome their limiting beliefs, and manage anxiety and trauma responses. She also helps people on their grief and healing journeys through her therapy, coaching, grief education and support programmes, and spiritual work.

Written by Elizabeth Ballin, Professional Certified Coach In this series, Elizabeth Ballin, PCC, offers reflections from her coaching and mindfulness practice on how people discover insight, meaning, and resilience in the changing landscape of modern life. Her perspective is rooted in years of working with people from many cultures and in a driven curiosity that understands human growth as a life in motion. Anger is an interesting emotion because, as uncomfortable and sometimes destructive as it can be, it usually has a positive intention behind it. That may sound contradictory. What could be positive about wanting to scream at someone, say something cruel, or throw something across the room? The behavior it provokes may not be positive at all, but underneath it all, anger is trying to do something for us. Anger can also feel good, honestly. Don't most people get some satisfaction out of finally letting go and saying what they really feel? In that moment, you probably don't want to calm down because the anger feels justified. That's part of why it's so hard to control. There are many techniques to control one’s overreaction to anger once it's already there, like taking a breath, counting to ten, or walking away. While these strategies can be effective in the heat of the moment, it is also important to understand how anger develops before it becomes overwhelming. There is an enormous difference between feeling anger and acting on it. The impulse can feel completely justified while we are experiencing it, but the anger may pass in ten minutes, while the consequences can remain for years. Sometimes, though, a person stays angry because some part of them believes the anger itself will get them what they want. So maybe the better question isn't, "How do I control my anger?" Maybe it's, "What is my anger actually trying to do for me?" What is the positive intention? During coach training, one approach stood out, getting curious about the positive intention behind a reaction instead of just trying to shut it down. A "positive" intention here doesn't mean the actions taken in anger are justifiable, or that the intention itself is morally good. Someone's anger may drive them toward goals that only benefit themselves, or even into controlling behavior. It means the anger serves a real personal need, like protection, power, or regaining something that feels threatened or lost. Separating the behavior from that underlying motivation makes it possible to address the real need directly. We react to the meaning we give an experience We often think an event alone causes our anger. Someone interrupts us in a meeting, and we interpret it as, "He doesn't respect me." At that point, we're not only responding to the interruption. We're responding to what it may mean to us, and that meaning carries an emotional charge we might not even notice. That's why two people can go through nearly the same situation and come out completely differently. Same words, different meaning. That meaning is where the real work with anger starts. Start with the body When anger comes up for a client, many describe it the same way, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, like a volcano, and afterward, they're left with guilt, shame, or the quiet fear that something is wrong with them. One client, a composite of many I've worked with over the years, put it this way, "I don't even recognize myself when it happens. Then I hate myself for hours afterward." So I start with, "Where do you feel it in your body?" Tightness in the chest? Rising heat in the face? A clenched jaw? Instead of rushing to make the sensation go away, I ask them to notice it. Then I ask, "If this part of your body revealed a positive intention behind the anger, what would it be?" Say the answer is self-protection. Maybe the client says, "It means people can't walk all over me." So I ask, "If you had a sense of self-protection, what would it give you?" Strength? Safety? Confidence? We're peeling the onion one layer at a time, moving toward what's actually going on inside the person. Naming what is underneath the anger The anger itself is not always about the thing that set it off. Someone's interruption, a partner's unfulfilled promise, or a friend's tone in an email may be what sets off the anger rather than the whole cause. Dig one layer down, and the disrespect they describe may mean something more specific, "He doesn't value what I have to say." Dig further, and there's a feeling underneath that meaning. Often, it lands somewhere like, "I feel insignificant." The conversation started with anger at another person over something perhaps minor and ended up somewhere much more personal. That's often where the real intensity of the reaction is coming from. If the client feels insignificant, what would help them feel significant instead? This is where the work begins. The same pattern can show up with other emotions too. Insecurity may point toward a desire for security. Rejection may point toward belonging. Helplessness may point toward personal power. Naming the emotion gives the work somewhere to go. Instead of "He's disrespecting me again," maybe they notice, "Oh, this is my feeling of being insignificant again," and ask, "What actually is important to me right now?" Keep the intention, change the strategy Just telling someone to control their anger usually doesn't work. If the intention behind someone's anger is self-protection, and they're told to stop being angry, part of them may hear that as, "Stop protecting yourself." That's why it works better to understand the intention and change the strategy instead. Take a client whose temper flared every time a coworker took credit for her work in meetings. Underneath, she was looking for self-protection, a need not to be walked over. Instead of asking her to let go of that need, we explored a strategy that was more likely to give her what she wanted. So we asked, "If she felt fully and completely protected, what would the disagreement actually look like?" The same question works for anyone. Understanding what it is that you are truly after is the first step in building better strategies in an argument. Once you are clear about what you want, you can find the courage to communicate your goal and set the boundaries you need. You haven't given up the need for self-protection. You are simply finding a better strategy for meeting it. This won’t happen overnight. Catching the eruption of emotion before it turns to rage takes awareness, and that awareness is built over time. Be compassionate with yourself in the moments when you don't catch it. Rage can move faster than thought, and it takes practice to become aware of it before it takes over. This highlights the importance of continuous, intentional practice in recognizing and reflecting on emotional needs, not just when the emotions are out of control. When coaching is not enough Coaching can help people recognize their triggers and find new ways to meet the intention behind their reactions, but there's a limit, and I've seen it firsthand. One client, a composite of situations I've encountered over the years, came in after discovering his wife's infidelity. He wanted answers, apologies, and the love he felt he had lost. His anger stayed high throughout the day and into the night, and to him, it felt completely justified. Anger often creates an urge toward action. We want to confront, fix, defend, reclaim, or change something, but with him, staying angry wasn't leading to the action he wanted. Some part of him believed that if he stayed there long enough, he would find the answer. Instead of exploring what was underneath the anger, he stayed in it, as if the anger itself was the answer. That's when I knew coaching wasn't going to be enough. What he needed was time and the support of therapy, someone who had the training to work with him on a deeper level than coaching could. In the end, it’s about knowing what you want By the time someone is in full rage, the urge to react impulsively can overwhelm everything else. That’s why taking the time to find out what other emotions are underneath the anger must happen earlier, learning what anger feels like in the body, staying curious about its intention, and naming what’s underneath it. Then, when anger starts rising again, there’s a better chance of understanding the reason before reacting. By creating that small space, you can decide what the best way to respond is. Anger is not an enemy. It can have bad manners but good intentions. It may be trying to defend you, restore a sense of power and identity, or recover something you feel you’ve lost. The work isn’t to silence it, but to understand what it’s really trying to achieve and to find a healthier way to get there. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Elizabeth Ballin Elizabeth Ballin, Professional Certified Coach Elizabeth Ballin, PCC, is an International Coaching Federation (ICF)-accredited professional coach and mindfulness practitioner working globally with people and professionals from many backgrounds. She combines emotional insight, cultural intelligence, and practical structure to support meaningful growth. She brings a lifelong multicultural awareness, deepened by twelve years of coaching across more than twenty cultures, which helps her attune to the emotional and practical realities her clients face. Her writing spans themes such as curiosity, creativity, well-being, communication, judgment, and the inner shifts that support meaningful growth in the complexity of modern life.

Written by Roxy Hops, Resilience Coach & Mental Health Advocate Roxy Hops is an internationally recognized resilience coach, speaker, author, and social entrepreneur who helps leaders and changemakers transform adversity into agency. Through neuroscience-based frameworks, she bridges trauma healing, identity rewiring, and purpose-driven leadership to create lasting impact. We know the person we tend to call resilient. They are the one who keeps going when circumstances become difficult. They absorb complexity, carry responsibility, remain composed and continue functioning. They may be leading through uncertainty, holding a family together through disruption, managing a profound personal transition, or simply becoming the person others rely on when things get hard. From the outside, the evidence seems clear: they are still standing. Still delivering. Still managing. Very often, that capacity is real. But it raises a question we do not ask often enough, "What exactly are we measuring when we call someone resilient?" Resilience has become closely associated in our everyday language with endurance, the ability to withstand pressure, tolerate difficulty and return quickly to normal. Yet psychological research has long offered a more nuanced model. The American Psychological Association describes resilience as successful adaptation to challenging experiences, particularly through mental, emotional and behavioural flexibility and adjustment to internal and external demands. The distinction matters because endurance can be an expression of resilience without being the whole of it. When endurance becomes the evidence There are periods in life when continuing is exactly what is required. Persistence can be courageous. It can protect what matters during a crisis, preserve stability while circumstances are uncertain, and allow us to move through difficult periods that cannot simply be avoided. A more mature understanding of resilience should not diminish our capacity to endure. The problem begins when endurance becomes the primary evidence by which we recognise resilience. Human beings can remain remarkably functional under significant pressure. A person can meet deadlines while becoming increasingly depleted. A caregiver can remain dependable while having very little capacity left for themselves. A leader can continue making difficult decisions while privately carrying considerable strain. None of this means that competent people are secretly unwell. Continued functioning can reflect genuine strength and healthy adaptation. It simply means that visible performance cannot tell us the whole story. Capacity can conceal cost. When someone is still functioning, we tend to conclude that the existing response is working. But there is a difference between being capable of maintaining something and that thing remaining adaptive over time. This distinction becomes particularly important for people with considerable capacity. The more reliably someone handles difficulty, the easier it is, for others and sometimes for the person themselves, to use continued performance as evidence that nothing needs to change. Endurance matters. But our ability to tolerate pressure should not become the sole measure of how well we are responding to it. Resilience is not only resistance, it is responsiveness Perhaps a more useful way to think about resilience is through our capacity to respond to changing reality. Research increasingly emphasises this flexibility. Psychologists George Bonanno and Maren Westphal, for example, have argued that resilient outcomes emerge through flexible self-regulation rather than any single defining trait: the ability to respond differently depending on what a particular situation requires. That idea has an important implication. If circumstances change, the most adaptive response may need to change with them. Sometimes resilience is persistence. There are situations in which we need to tolerate discomfort, stay the course and continue doing what matters despite difficulty. But sometimes persistence stops being the most intelligent response. Resilience may then look like adapting a strategy that no longer fits the circumstances. It may involve recovering capacity before continuing, drawing on other people rather than handling everything alone, revising an expectation, or recognising that the direction itself needs to change. This is why I find it useful to think of resilience not only as resistance, but as responsiveness. Resistance asks, "Can I withstand this?" Responsiveness asks something broader, "What does this situation now require?" The difference is not an argument for giving up whenever something becomes difficult. Quite the opposite. Responding intelligently to reality can demand considerable discipline. Sometimes the difficult decision is to persist. Sometimes it is to change. Resilience lies partly in being able to tell the difference. Recovery is not always return Our common metaphor for resilience is to “bounce back.” It is an appealing idea because it suggests restoration: something disrupts us, we absorb the impact, and eventually we return to where we were. Sometimes that is exactly what recovery looks like. There are setbacks and stressful periods after which stability returns. A project fails; another opportunity emerges. A demanding period ends; capacity is restored. Circumstances settle and life resumes something close to its previous shape. But some forms of adversity alter the reference point itself. A significant loss can change a family permanently. Illness may change what is physically possible. A major transition can reshape identity, priorities or relationships. A profound personal or professional disruption can make the previous version of life neither available nor desirable. In circumstances like these, “getting back to normal” may be the wrong measure. Recovery is not always return. Sometimes resilient adaptation involves integrating what has happened into a reality that is now different. The task may no longer be restoration alone. It may be reconstruction. That does not require romanticising adversity or pretending that every disruption produces growth. Some experiences simply involve loss. Some changes are painful rather than transformational. But when the landscape has changed, resilience may mean learning how to live, decide and move meaningfully within the landscape that exists now, rather than attempting indefinitely to recreate the one that existed before. Agency after disruption This brings us to another dimension of resilience that deserves greater attention: agency. Adversity often narrows choice. Sometimes that narrowing is very real. Circumstances beyond our control can reduce financial, professional, physical or relational options. At other times, sustained pressure narrows what we can perceive. Our attention becomes organised around immediate demands. We focus on getting through the day, solving the next problem or preventing something else from going wrong. Possibilities that once seemed obvious become difficult even to see. Agency does not mean controlling everything that happens to us. That is neither possible nor a credible model of human resilience. It means having some meaningful influence over what happens next. What can I change? What cannot be changed? Where is support needed? Which response is still serving its purpose? Which one was necessary once but no longer is? What options remain available from here? A resilient person, then, may not be the person capable of tolerating the greatest amount of pressure. They may be the person who can recognise that circumstances have changed and retain or gradually rebuild enough agency to respond accordingly. People exercise agency within conditions But our capacity to exercise agency is also shaped by the conditions in which we are operating. We do not respond to adversity from a neutral starting point. Our available choices are shaped by relationships, resources, safety, autonomy, culture, leadership and access to support. Research supports this broader view. A 2024 umbrella review drawing on 44 reviews and more than 556,000 participants identified factors including social support, community cohesion and self-regulation among those associated with resilience after adversity. This does not make resilience purely environmental any more than it makes it purely individual. Individual capacities matter. Self-awareness matters. Decision-making matters. Coping skills matter. Our ability to act matters. Conditions matter too. People exercise agency within environments that can expand or constrain the responses available to them. Someone with strong relationships and meaningful support is navigating adversity from a different position than someone carrying the same disruption in isolation. A person with some autonomy has options that someone without it may not. Resources, trust and stability do not remove adversity, but they can alter what becomes possible in response to it. That gives us two questions rather than one, "What capacities does this person need?" and "What conditions are they being asked to function within?" We do not need to choose between the two. A more useful question Perhaps the problem is not that we value resilience too much. It is that we have sometimes learned to recognise it too narrowly. We see the person who keeps performing and admire their endurance. We see someone return quickly after disruption and call it recovery. We notice composure because composure is visible. What is harder to see is adaptation. The decision to change course because reality has changed. The recovery period that preserves future capacity. The willingness to use support. The acceptance that something cannot be restored. The gradual rebuilding of agency after circumstances have taken choices away. These responses may look very different from one another because resilience is not a single behaviour. One useful way to understand it is as the capacity to remain responsive as circumstances change: to persist when persistence is appropriate, adapt when reality shifts, recover when capacity has been depleted, draw on support when necessary, and rebuild meaningful agency when adversity has narrowed our choices. That understanding changes the question. Instead of asking only, “How much can this person withstand?” we can ask, “What does this reality require, and what capacities and conditions make an adaptive response possible?” That is a larger conversation than resilience as endurance. It asks us to strengthen human capacity without assuming that capacity is limitless. It asks us to value persistence without confusing it with permanent tolerance. It asks us to pay attention not only to how people respond to difficult circumstances, but also to the conditions within which that response must take place. Because resilience should not be measured simply by how much pressure a person can absorb without stopping. It should also be understood through their capacity to recognise when reality has changed and respond to it. Continue the conversation My work connects resilience, mental health, leadership and human systems to help people and organisations respond to pressure and change with greater clarity, agency and sustained effectiveness. If this work is relevant to you or your organisation, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website to book a conversation to explore potential collaborations and how these ideas may apply to you, your team or your organisation. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Roxy Hops Roxy Hops, Resilience Coach & Mental Health Advocate Roxy is an internationally recognized resilience coach, speaker, author, and mental health advocate who helps leaders and changemakers rise from burnout and adversity into clarity, purpose, and authentic leadership. Combining evidence-based neuroscience with deep emotional work, she bridges brain science with soul, empowering others to rebuild from the inside out. Her transformative frameworks have inspired leaders and visionaries worldwide to redefine success on their own terms. She is the founder of Centro Gracia, a youth-focused movement in Chile that brings emotional intelligence and suicide-prevention programs into schools and communities. Her mission is clear: to make emotional resilience a cultural foundation, not a crisis response. References: American Psychological Association. Resilience. APA Dictionary of Psychology / Help Center. https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/resilience Bonanno, G. A., & Westphal, M. (2024). The three axioms of resilience. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 37(5), 717–723. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.23071 Abate, B. B., Sendekie, A. K., Tadesse, A. W., Engdaw, T., Mengesha, A., Zemariam, A. B., Alamaw, A. W., Abebe, G., & Azmeraw, M. (2024). Resilience after adversity: An umbrella review of adversity protective factors and resilience-promoting interventions. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15, 1391312. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1391312

Written by Lovisa Engstrand, Nervous System & Stress Specialist Lovisa Engstrand is a Nervous System & Stress Specialist and founder of The Exhale Collective, dedicated to helping high-functioning women rebuild their internal capacity and overcome chronic burnout. Combining psychology, breath science, and her own health recovery, she guides global clients to regulate their stress through her integrative framework and targeted lifestyle design. It is a Tuesday morning. I am crouched over my husband's groin with my reading glasses on, forensically examining the surgical stitches covering his penis. We have been married for nine months. My mother-in-law is leaning over my shoulder, she wants a better look too. Joel shuts his eyes. He does not flinch. "Looking good," I say, and I mean every word. This is what our first year of marriage looked like. It is the best thing that ever happened to us. The man who lied about being 6 feet on Tinder Joel and I met on a dating app in Sydney a decade ago. He lied about being six feet tall on his profile. On one of our very first dates, though, he told me the truth about something considerably more significant: he had been born with a condition called hypospadias, a urological condition in which the urethra does not sit where it should. Multiple surgeries as a child had given him a functional life, but they had not held. By his late twenties, scar tissue had begun narrowing his urethra again, making it increasingly difficult to urinate. The childhood surgeries had failed. What is hypospadias and why most men suffer in silence For the next seven years, Joel sought eight different medical opinions. Some recommended reconstructive surgery, others urged him to wait. A full urethroplasty, a complete reconstruction of the urethra, was the only permanent solution. But with almost no surgeons experienced in complex cases, and almost no one publicly sharing what success and recovery looked like, he spent years feeling alone with his issue and postponing the inevitable. Eight years of friendship before we became us Although our romance did not take off in those early years, our friendship deepened. We regularly spoke from opposite sides of the world. In 2019, even though we had not seen each other in five years, I was the first person Joel called from a car park after an upsetting doctor's appointment. I did not think much of it at the time. In retrospect, it tells you everything about what we were to each other. It was not until 2023, when I found myself single and completed a writing exercise describing the qualities I wanted in a partner, that I had a startling realization. I was not describing some imaginary future husband. I was describing Joel. We reunited in Los Angeles and fell back in love almost instantly. We married in June 2025 on a tiny Swedish island. Five months after our wedding, the surgery began. What a sexless marriage actually looks like: From the inside Conventional wisdom says a sexless marriage spells trouble. By that logic, Joel and I should have spent our first year bickering over the dishwasher. Instead, we have never felt closer. We train together at the gym, tackle escape rooms, dance in the kitchen while making dinner. We kiss and cuddle with no expectation that it needs to lead anywhere else. If we are intimate, it is focused on my pleasure, which, I joke, has its perks. We have learned, through necessity, that penetrative sex is not the only way to have a fulfilling intimate life. There are more ways to be close to someone than the ones we typically default to when they are available. But I want to be honest, because the honest version is more useful than the tidy one. This year has also genuinely been one of the most demanding of both of our lives. Joel has been through surgery, pain, fear, and the particular kind of loss that comes with having something taken from you, however temporarily, that is tied to identity, intimacy, and manhood. Because of the shame and silence that surround conditions like hypospadias, he spent years feeling completely alone in this experience. Until recently, he had never met another man who had it. He has since started an online support group, and hundreds of men have reached out to share stories they had never told anyone. I have been his primary support through all of it, while building a business, navigating painstakingly slow visa processes, living out of a suitcase across three continents, and trying to process my own experience of a year neither of us chose. No version of this is easy. That's exactly why I want to talk about what made it navigable. What chronic stress does to a relationship Because of the work I do as a nervous system specialist, Joel and I spent more than two years before the surgery preparing, not just practically, but physiologically. Sleep, nutrition, breathwork, stress regulation. Not because any of it could change the surgery itself, but because it meant Joel went into it calmer, stronger, and more resilient than he would otherwise have been. The window of tolerance and what happens when sustained stress narrows it His nervous system was regulated enough to face something genuinely frightening without being completely destabilised by it. That groundwork has mattered more than I can adequately explain during the recovery itself. Here is why. When your nervous system is under sustained load, when cortisol has been elevated for weeks or months, when sleep is disrupted, when there is ongoing physical and emotional stress, your window of tolerance narrows. Things you could previously absorb without reacting now land differently. Small irritations become arguments. Silences become loaded. The person you love most becomes, in certain moments, the person you are least patient with. This is not a character flaw. Co-regulation: Why your partner's nervous system directly affects yours It is physiology. It compounds, because nervous systems are contagious. This is what we call co-regulation: when one person in a relationship is dysregulated, the other person's system picks it up. Two chronically activated nervous systems in a small space during a surgical recovery is not a formula for connection. It is a formula for two people who love each other saying things they do not mean and having to find their way back. The most regulated person in the room has the most influence. I have come back to that sentence more times than I can count this year. Choosing, as often as possible, to be the one who responds rather than reacts, who comes back rather than escalates, is not suppressing your own experience. It is what makes the relationship a safe place when everything outside it is not. Real teamwork is not always 50/50. This year it has sometimes been 80/20, occasionally 90/10. The capacity to carry more when your partner cannot, without resentment calcifying into the load, requires a regulated nervous system underneath the relationship. Without it, the imbalance becomes the story. With it, it is just a season. What this year has actually taught us about marriage It was not a surgeon who ultimately convinced Joel to have this surgery. It was our relationship, and knowing that whatever happened afterward, we would face it together. That is worth naming, because it speaks to the thing I believe matters most in a partnership: safety. Not romance. Not chemistry. The deep, cellular experience of knowing that this person is not going anywhere. Judge your relationship by how you treat each other when things are hard, not when things are easy. Everyone has a good relationship when things are easy. The question is what you find when the ease is gone. What we have found this year, in its least glamorous, least Instagram-friendly moments, is that we genuinely like each other. We make each other laugh. We still choose each other every morning, including the mornings when choosing is a conscious decision rather than an effortless one. This was not the first year of marriage I had imagined. It was something better, it was the year I learned what marriage actually is. Not candlelit dinners or honeymoon stages. Being in a king-sized bed at 9 am with reading glasses on, looking at surgical stitches covering a graft on a penis, and saying 'looking good' and meaning every word. What nervous system regulation looks like when life is actually hard Living through the hardest season of my own life has made the value of this work impossible to overstate. A regulated nervous system does not mean the hard things stop being hard. It means you have something to come back to when they are. That is the difference. I have never been more certain that it matters. This work is available to you If you want to become the most regulated person in the room and stay steady even when things are hard, I am opening two small cohorts: one for my Swedish community and one for my English-speaking community across the US, Canada, and Australia. Small groups, real support, a structured plan, and accountability across three months. This is not a course you do alone. This is a group of women moving through the work together, with me alongside them the whole way. Swedish cohort starts on September 29: Apply here! English cohort (US/Canada/Australia) starts on October 3: Apply here! Both are by application only. Enroll before September 15 for an early bird discount. Learn more about the framework and programme here. You can follow Joel's and my journey on Instagram. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Lovisa Engstrand Lovisa Engstrand, Nervous System & Stress Specialist Lovisa Engstrand is a Nervous System & Stress Specialist and breathwork practitioner working at the intersection of psychology, physiology, and behaviour change. She specialises in helping high-functioning women who feel exhausted, overstimulated, anxious, or stuck in survival mode. Her work is grounded in her own lived experience of training, eating well, and still waking up anxious, bloated, and depleted - until she understood her nervous system. Through her Regulate & Restore Framework, Lovisa addresses stress regulation, sleep, movement, nutrition, and identity to help women rebuild capacity from the body up. She lives between Australia, Sweden, Canada, and the USA and works with clients globally through 1:1 containers & online programs. Please note: This article reflects personal experience and is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical or psychological professional support. Hypospadias and urethroplasty are complex medical conditions - if you or someone you know is affected, please seek guidance from a qualified urologist. Related articles: Why You Feel Like a Teenager Around Your Family and What Your Nervous System Has to Do with It Why Stress Is Causing Your Constipation and Bloating — And Why Fiber Alone Won't Fix It You're Not Bad at Sleep, Your Nervous System Has Never Been Told It's Safe to Rest

Melinda Thomas is an Empowerment Coach for Women, Sacred Activations Practitioner, and founder of Rise Within, Glow Without, a movement for women in mind, body, and soul. She is passionate about helping women get unstuck, reclaim their inner power, and rise beyond survival mode while creating space for growth and new possibilities in their lives. In this interview, Melinda explores the practical, energetic, and intuitive layers of her work, why feeling stuck may have more beneath it than we realise, and the role identity can play in creating lasting change. She also shares what empowerment can look like as layers begin to shift, creating space to grow and thrive. Melinda Thomas, Empowerment Coach for Women What inspired you to return to coaching with a specific focus on helping women to reclaim their inner power? My inspiration came from my own lived experiences and my desire to keep other women from feeling as broken or alone as I once did. At one of my lowest points, I reached out for professional support, only to find providers were full. I remember thinking, “If no one else can have my back right now, I need to have my own back.” Personal growth has been a big part of my life. I explored various modalities and undertook practitioner training. When I returned to Sacred Activations, which I first crossed paths with in 2011, something felt different. It felt like coming home. I began experiencing lasting shifts and a sense of inner contentment, even on challenging days. Working with women feels like a calling, a strong intuitive pull. Through women's stories and conversations, I recognised parts of my own experiences: losing confidence and a sense of identity within motherhood, carrying more than they reveal, feeling alone or living in survival mode. I knew I needed to share what I had learned. At the heart of my work is something I want women to understand: you are not broken, even if you feel like you are in the moment. What you have experienced does not have to define who you are or the life you desire to live. “There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are holding experiences that were never fully processed or cleared.” – Melinda Thomas How do Sacred Activations and intuitive guidance complement the empowerment coaching you offer women? Sacred Activations, intuitive guidance, and empowerment coaching work together across three different layers: practical, energetic, and intuitive. Empowerment coaching is the practical layer. It gives women skills, tools, techniques and processes they can learn and implement in their everyday lives. But we can have all the practical tools and still find ourselves unable to shift what may be happening beneath the surface or holding us back. Sacred Activations complements my coaching by working with the energetic layers, the unseen energetic imprints of past experiences we may not consciously be aware of. As a practitioner, I act as a channel for the energy while running the activations. Intuitive guidance adds another layer. Information and messages come through that can offer insight into what may be contributing to why the client is feeling stuck. It also overlaps with Sacred Activations, as I receive intuitive guidance on which activations to run, or sometimes when not to run an activation at all. Together, the practical, energetic and intuitive layers allow me to support women on multiple levels. What does helping women move forward without repeatedly retelling or reliving past pain look like in practice? The Sacred Activations process is the same whether I’m working one-to-one or with a group, and sessions can be done online from the comfort of their own homes. Clients can sit comfortably, close their eyes and take some slow, deep breaths while I ground them and begin running the activations. They don't need to retell their story, relive painful experiences, or dig into their past. There are also no processes or techniques for them to learn. They don't need to get anything right or worry about doing anything wrong. They can sit quietly and have their own experience. They can even fall asleep if they want to. There are periods of silence, or if an intuitive question comes through, I may ask it. At the end of the session, I share any intuitive guidance or messages that have come through, with the client's permission. Clients are then invited to share their experiences with me if they choose. People may notice different sensations, emotions or responses during a session, while others may notice very little at the time. Each person’s experience is individual, and there is no right or wrong way to experience a session or to feel afterward. With Sacred Activations, the energy is understood to continue running for up to 30 days after a session, allowing the process to continue while clients go about their everyday lives. How can a woman recognise when she is genuinely thriving rather than simply becoming very good at surviving? In my experience, when you're surviving, most of your energy goes into getting through day to day, and it can feel like life is happening to you. You're getting everything done, and you appear to be coping. Underneath, you're running on empty. Your own needs can fall to the bottom of the list. Boundaries can become harder to hold, and there can be little energy left for the things that bring you joy. When you're thriving, you have the energy to live your life, be more intentional about how you spend your time, and choose what brings you joy. You're more inclined to take care of your own health and personal wellbeing. You begin to hold your boundaries more confidently. Your dreams come back into focus, and life begins to feel like it's happening for you, not to you. That shift doesn’t only affect you. It can create a ripple effect. The way you show up in life shifts. The energy you bring changes, and in doing so, you can inspire others to rise and create change in their lives too. What do you think is most often overlooked when women feel stuck despite understanding what they want to change? I think what is often overlooked is that feeling stuck may have a purpose. We can know exactly what we want to change or where we want to go, but something may still need our attention before we can move forward. It could be a limiting belief we're not consciously aware of, past conditioning, a repeated pattern that needs to be addressed, an energetic imprint from a past experience, a lesson we haven't yet recognised, or even an opportunity for growth. Sometimes the question isn't, “Why can't I move forward?” but rather, “What is this stuckness trying to show me or communicate to me?” When we become curious about what may be underneath the stuckness, rather than becoming frustrated with ourselves for not being able to move forward, we can begin to see things from a different perspective and perhaps even see opportunities for growth. When you talk about subtle shifts creating profound change, what might a woman begin noticing first in her everyday life? The women I have worked with often say, “I can't explain it, but I just feel that something has shifted.” She may notice it in how she responds to everyday situations. Something that would normally leave her irritated, upset, or frustrated suddenly doesn't affect her in the same way. Overwhelm can begin to lift, bringing greater clarity around what is happening in her life. She can start to feel more optimistic about her life, more open to exploring what she wants and more willing to try new things. She may also notice unexpected shifts in other areas of her life, including within her relationships. That's often how profound change shows up, through shifts in how we feel, respond, and experience everyday life. What role does identity play in creating lasting change, and how do you help women reclaim who they are beyond what they have been through? Identity plays an important role in creating lasting change because how we see ourselves can influence what we believe is possible for us. But the beautiful thing is that our identity isn't fixed. It can evolve, expand, and change as we do the inner work. Through Sacred Activations, I can run activations around things such as confidence and self-belief, while working with limiting beliefs, past conditioning, patterns and energetic imprints that may be holding them back. This can create space for women to expand beyond an identity shaped by what they have been through and reclaim more of who they came here to be. “The beautiful thing is that our identity isn’t fixed. It can evolve, expand, and change as we do the inner work." – Melinda Thomas How have your own experiences with adversity shaped what empowerment means to you today? My experiences have shaped what empowerment means to me in so many ways. I see an empowered woman as someone who holds her own boundaries and makes decisions she knows are right for her, even when they may not be the most popular decisions with those around her. She uses her voice, no longer shrinks herself to fit in, and becomes less concerned about what others may think of her. She stands tall, stands out, and stays true to herself. Empowerment also means having her own back during challenging times and trusting that she will find her way through a difficult season, while also recognising that she doesn’t have to carry everything alone. It’s knowing she has skills, tools and modalities she can draw on to help her move through those times, as well as the courage to reach out for support when she needs it. For me, empowerment is also about recognising and acknowledging the power we already hold within ourselves, while being conscious of how we choose to use that power. What do you hope women ultimately understand about themselves through the Rise Within, Glow Without, Movement for Women? Ultimately, I want women to understand that even when they feel broken, they are not broken. The power they are looking for already exists within them. Their past does not define them, and neither do the experiences, beliefs, or conditioning they may be carrying. As long as we are here on this planet, there is always an opportunity for change and to create the life we truly desire to live. I want women to recognise that they don't have to dim their light, shrink to fit in or spend their lives surviving. Sacred Activations can support them in shifting limiting beliefs, past conditioning, and energetic imprints, creating space to reclaim their inner power and rise. My vision for Rise Within, Glow Without is for it to continue to grow globally, a movement and community where women rise and uplift one another, feel supported and empowered, and know they don't have to carry their struggles alone. Rise Within, Glow Without is about awakening, uncovering and honouring that power within, in mind, body and soul, so women can stand tall, stand out and stay true to themselves, and create a life they truly desire to live. Follow me on Facebook for more info! Read more from Melinda Thomas

Karmen is a Speech Pathologist, business owner, and reflective practitioner exploring what sustainable service looks like at the intersection of allied health, leadership, motherhood, and faith. In this interview, she shares her journey of redefining success, learning the importance of boundaries and compassionate systems, and exploring how people-focused leaders can create meaningful work without losing themselves in the process. Karmen Fairall, Speech Pathologist and Reflective Practitioner You describe this season as redefining what sustainable service looks like. What led you to question the way you had been working and leading? The turning point came through two significant moments close together. First, my body forced me to slow down through an unexpected hospital admission. Shortly afterward, I realised that the business I had worked so hard to build had moved from a healthy surplus into a place where it was no longer financially sustainable. My first response was fear, followed by disappointment and frustration with myself. I felt deeply disappointed because something I cared so much about was no longer operating the way I had hoped. The hardest part was that my decisions had always come from a place of care. I wanted to create the kind of workplace I would have wanted to be part of, so I invested heavily in my team, their development, and creating a supportive environment. What I learned was that generosity and sustainability are not the same thing. Caring for people well requires more than good intentions. It requires clear boundaries, healthy systems, and wise stewardship. This season has reshaped how I understand leadership, not as carrying everything, but as creating something that can continue to serve people well. Looking back, what were the earliest signs that serving others was starting to come at too great a personal cost? Looking back, the earliest signs were not simply that I was tired. They were that I had tied too much of my identity to being productive, dependable, and needed by others. Ten days after giving birth to my second son, I experienced complications that resulted in an unexpected and sustained hospital admission. But what stands out most to me is what was happening before that moment. I gave birth on a Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning, I was already messaging my team. I had not even told them I had welcomed my baby because I felt I could not step away. At the time, I did not recognise this as a warning sign. I saw it as a commitment. I was struggling to understand how to be both a mother and a business owner, and I carried an unrecognised belief that if I was not actively contributing, I was letting people down. Looking back, I feel sad that I didn't give myself more permission to fully enter that season. What I wish I had understood then was that the business could wait, my recovery, my health, and my connection with my baby mattered too. That experience became a turning point. It showed me that sustainable leadership requires more than commitment and responsibility. It requires the humility to recognise our own humanity, our seasons, and our need for support. You often say that healthy boundaries are only part of the solution. Why do compassionate systems matter just as much? Boundaries are essential because they help us understand what we are responsible for and what we are not. However, I have learned that boundaries alone are difficult to sustain without compassionate systems around them. This became one of my biggest leadership lessons while building my allied health practice. I created the business from a place of genuine care. I wanted my team to feel valued, supported, and to have the kind of workplace I would have wanted myself. What I underestimated was that care also requires clarity. I had built a business heavily reliant on my ability to provide support, but I had not created enough shared understanding around expectations, accountability, and how each person contributed to the sustainability of the organisation. Compassionate systems are not about control. They create the clarity and structure that allow people to thrive. In clinical practice, when a client is not progressing toward a goal, we do not ask, "Who has failed?" We review the supports, the environment, and what needs adjusting. I now believe organisations deserve the same compassion. When something is not working, the question is not, "Who is the problem?" but, "What structure or support is missing?" How has leading an allied health practice changed your perspective on what good leadership looks like? Leading an allied health practice has changed my understanding of leadership in many ways. When I first started my business, my motivation was simple. I wanted to help people. I wanted to create a workplace where clinicians felt supported, valued, and able to do meaningful work. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that good leadership requires both compassion and clarity. My natural tendency has always been to support people and maintain harmony. However, I learned that avoiding difficult conversations or allowing unclear expectations does not ultimately serve anyone well. Sometimes the most caring thing a leader can do is create clarity, even when that clarity feels uncomfortable. This experience also changed my understanding of the kind of leadership I want to offer in the future. I no longer believe sustainable leadership is about one person carrying the weight of everyone else's success. It also taught me that being liked and being an effective leader are not always the same thing. It is about creating shared responsibility, healthy systems, and environments where people understand how they contribute. I still deeply value leadership, but I see it differently now. Leadership is not about being responsible for everything. It is about creating the conditions where people can contribute, grow, and flourish together. Motherhood, leadership, and clinical work all place different demands on you. How have those experiences shaped the way you approach service today? Motherhood has probably challenged my understanding of service more than anything else. Before becoming a parent, I was very comfortable being the person who gave, supported, and solved problems. Motherhood showed me that my capacity is finite and that this is not a weakness. My children have also become incredible mirrors. They remind me that presence matters more than productivity. They do not measure me by my achievements, my inbox, or how much I have accomplished. They experience me through connection. Clinical work has reinforced the importance of meeting people where they are rather than where we think they should be. Motherhood has deepened that understanding. Together, these experiences have shaped my belief that sustainable service requires compassion, not only toward others, but toward ourselves. We cannot create environments where people flourish if we are constantly operating beyond our own limits. What does reflective practice look like in everyday life, and how has it helped you make more sustainable decisions? Reflective practice has always been part of my clinical identity as a Speech Pathologist, but I have learned that it is just as important personally. For me, reflection is creating space to pause and ask better questions before simply reacting. It looks different depending on the season, sometimes it is prayer, conversations with my husband, gardening, working with my psychologist, or simply creating quiet moments where I can process what is happening internally. I have always been someone who thinks deeply and analyses situations carefully. That can be a strength, but I am also learning that reflection needs to lead toward self-compassion and action, rather than becoming another place to criticise myself. The question I return to most often now is, "How am I showing up for the people I love, whilst also honouring what I need to remain healthy and present?" That question has helped me reconsider success, work, and service. Sustainable decisions are not just about what I can do. They are about what allows me to continue showing up well. For someone working in a helping profession who feels stretched too thin, what is one practical change that can make the biggest difference? The practical change I would encourage is creating a pause between feeling responsible and taking action. For many people in helping professions, the instinct to respond is incredibly strong. We notice needs, we want to help, and we often move quickly into problem-solving mode. But before adding another strategy, commitment, or responsibility, I think we need to pause and ask better questions. "Is this actually mine to carry?" "Does this expectation fit the season I am currently in?" "What support do I need to sustain this?" One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that our capacity changes across seasons. The goals and expectations we set for ourselves need to reflect our current reality, not an idealised version of ourselves. Sometimes the most sustainable choice is to do less. It is letting go of the expectation that we need to be everything for everyone. Care is not measured by how much we carry. It is measured by how intentionally we show up. Your faith is an important part of your leadership philosophy. How has it influenced the way you define purpose and success? My faith has significantly shaped the way I understand purpose, leadership, and success. One concept I have been reflecting on is the biblical tradition of Sabbath and rest. In Jewish tradition, the day begins at evening, with rest coming before work and productivity. This challenges the way I naturally approach life because my instinct has often been to achieve first and rest afterward. My faith continues to remind me that my worth is not found in what I accomplish, but in who I am. It has shifted my understanding of success from simply achieving outcomes to considering the people, relationships, and values impacted along the way. At the same time, I have learned that caring about people also requires stewardship. Compassion and sustainability need to go hand in hand. For me, purpose is not about doing more. It is about being intentional with what I have been given, my time, relationships, gifts, and opportunities, and asking whether the way I am living reflects what truly matters in the long term. As you continue exploring coaching, nonprofit leadership, and strengths-based practice, what kind of impact do you hope to have on the future of service-based leadership? As I continue exploring coaching, nonprofit leadership, and strengths-based approaches, I hope to help people who serve others create healthier, more sustainable ways of working. My own journey has shown me that passion and commitment are not always enough. People can care deeply and still become overwhelmed when there is not enough clarity, support, or structure around that care. I am particularly interested in supporting allied health leaders, nonprofit teams, and purpose-driven organisations who want to create cultures where both people and outcomes can flourish. I am continuing to discern what this next chapter will look like, but I know the thread that matters to me is helping people feel better equipped. Whether through writing, coaching, leadership development, or future consulting work, I want to contribute to conversations around sustainable service, where compassion and accountability can exist together, and where people do not have to lose themselves in order to make a meaningful difference. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Karmen Fairall