People who once loved writing, painting, designing, gardening, cooking, building businesses, or simply dreaming up new ideas suddenly find themselves staring at a blank page.
Nothing comes.
And because creativity once felt like such a natural part of who they were, its disappearance can be frightening.
They begin to wonder whether they’ve lost something.
But perhaps creativity hasn’t disappeared at all. Perhaps it has simply become less accessible because your system has other priorities.
Survival Narrows Our Focus
When life feels uncertain, stressful, or overwhelming, our attention naturally shifts towards whatever needs to be dealt with right now.
Pay the bill. Meet the deadline. Look after the family. Solve the problem. Get through the week.
This focus is incredibly useful when we’re facing genuine challenges. Our energy becomes directed towards managing what feels most important and immediate.
But creativity usually requires something very different.
It needs room, curiosity, play, possibility, and the freedom to explore an idea without knowing whether it will lead anywhere useful.
Those things can begin to feel like luxuries when your system believes it needs to concentrate on simply getting through.
Why You Can’t Always Force Creativity Back
This is where we can inadvertently make things harder for ourselves.
We notice that our creativity has disappeared and decide we need to make ourselves create again.
We set targets. We buy another planner. We schedule creative time. We tell ourselves we should be producing more.
Then, when nothing happens, frustration sets in.
Suddenly, creativity has become another job we’re failing at.
But pressure rarely creates the spaciousness creativity needs. In fact, sometimes it closes the door even further.
Rather than asking yourself to produce something, it can be more helpful to create the conditions in which creativity naturally wants to emerge.
Creativity Needs Permission to Be Unproductive
One of the beautiful things about creativity is that it doesn’t always need to have a purpose.
A doodle doesn’t need to become a painting.
An idea doesn’t need to become a business.
A melody doesn’t need to become a finished song.
Sometimes creativity simply wants to explore.
Yet many adults become so accustomed to measuring the value of their time by what they accomplish that doing something without a productive outcome can feel wasteful.
Children rarely have this problem.
They draw, build, imagine, invent, and experiment because creating itself is interesting. They don’t necessarily ask whether what they are making will be useful later.
Perhaps there is something we can relearn from them.
Safety Creates Space for Possibility
When our internal world begins to feel safer, something interesting often happens.
Curiosity starts returning.
We notice things again.
An idea appears while we’re walking. We suddenly want to rearrange a room, write something down, make something with our hands, learn something new, or try something completely different.
Creativity begins quietly knocking on the door.
Not because we forced it back.
But because there is finally enough space for it to return.
Your Creativity May Still Be There
So, if you feel as though you’ve lost your creative spark, perhaps you haven’t.
Perhaps it has simply been waiting while other parts of you concentrated on getting through.
Instead of asking:
“How can I make myself creative again?”
Try asking:
“What would give my creativity more room?”
Maybe it’s less pressure.
More rest.
More play.
More support.
Or simply more time spent doing something because you enjoy it, without needing to justify where it might lead.
Creativity doesn’t always need more discipline.
Sometimes it needs safety.
Sometimes it needs permission.
And sometimes it simply needs us to stop demanding that everything we create produces something useful.
Your creativity may not have gone anywhere at all.
It may simply be waiting for you to have enough space to hear it again.
Create More Space for Your Creative Flow
In my work, I explore the deeper patterns that can influence our ability to create, receive, and thrive.
Through my Creative Wealth Flow programme, I help you explore how greater inner safety and capacity can create more room for creativity, possibility, and receiving to begin flowing naturally again.
If you feel that your creativity is still there but has become harder to access, I’d love to help you create the space for it to emerge again. Visit my website here.
Vilma Vieira is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with her. She impressed us with her passion and confidence.
She is a coach, therapist, and workshop facilitator who believes that true transformation begins when we stop looking outside ourselves for the answers. Through her work, she helps people reconnect with their emotions, intuition, and inner strength.
She understands this journey personally. Her own experiences with transition, burnout, anxiety, and self discovery taught her to stop following external expectations and start listening to what she truly wants.
She brings together meditation, transformational exercises, creativity, and intuitive practices to help clients find clarity, process emotions, and reconnect with themselves. Her ultimate goal is to help people awaken their own inner tools and discover just how capable they truly are. Here is what she said…
Meet Life Coach Vilma Vieira:
Name: Vilma Vieira
Pillar: The Spirit, The Mind, The Heart
Who is this coach for: People seeking deeper self awareness, emotional healing, inner transformation, and greater clarity in their personal or professional lives.
How they can help: By using various meditation techniques and exercises, as well as past lives regression therapy, oracle cards and stones.
First of all, how are you and your family doing in these “crazy” times?
I feel good within myself after going through a challenging period of transition, transformation, and self discovery.
My family is living their day to day lives according to their own choices.
How did the coronavirus pandemic affect your clients? Did it affect you at all?
The pandemic ended up giving my profession a significant boost.
It brought me clients from all over the world and helped me grow my following.
The Origin:
Tell us about you, your career, how you started with your coaching career?
I am a “Jack of all trades.”
I have done and continue to do many different things, particularly in the fields of communication and creativity.
I started working as a Life Coach when I realized that I had already been doing it naturally in my everyday life.
With friends and family, but especially throughout my career in sales, where I was always a top performer, I noticed that by focusing more on listening to and talking with my clients, I gained their trust and they bought the products.
Many of them would open up to me, and I would naturally offer advice or a different perspective.
They became so attached to me that even after the sale, they would call customer support and specifically ask to speak with me.
I already had some knowledge and had completed several courses, learning different techniques throughout my own journey of self discovery.
When I combined that knowledge with my creativity, I realized I had everything I needed to create one on one sessions and a wealth of information to share through workshops.
I decided to stop working for others and dedicate myself to my new profession as a therapist and workshop facilitator.
I also started sharing my work on social media through live sessions.
All of this happened shortly before the pandemic.
The quarantines ended up giving my career a significant boost, as many people began seeking support or simply looking for more information.
Then, when I moved to the Netherlands, I had to start everything all over again.
One of the essential factors was the language, and I had to start doing everything in English.
However, I had actually chosen to move to the Netherlands precisely because I wanted to improve my English to the point where I could feel more confident and comfortable expressing myself in English as a public speaker.
What was your biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?
Although things went well for me in the beginning, especially because of the pandemic, I always struggled with social media.
For example, Facebook worked very well for me, but Instagram did not.
I became extremely frustrated.
I even hired someone to help me and took courses, but I have to admit that I never really liked those rules, having to post for the algorithm and asking for “likes” and comments.
It all felt very unnatural to me.
Still, I made an effort and tried to adapt.
And then something happened that should never have happened: I became more focused on results and metrics and lost the joy I used to feel when creating videos.
I ended up experiencing burnout and anxiety, and ultimately, it was all for nothing because the results did not improve.
When I decided that I would no longer worry about the rules and would simply publish whenever I felt I had a message worth sharing, things started to improve.
Even so, it was not enough to scale the business to the level I had expected.
My clients increasingly started coming through word of mouth, as well as through connections I made at events and through networking.
What are the biggest lessons that you learned overcoming your greatest obstacle?
This journey helped me get to know myself on a very deep level.
It brought my wounds to the surface, forced me to do the inner work and discover my worth, and taught me to stop trying to please others or do things simply because that is how everyone else does them.
I realized that there is something different I can do, or that I can do things differently.
I would say the greatest lesson was learning how I see myself and understanding what I truly want for myself.
The Coaching Style:
How do you innovate with coaching your clients?
My approach is highly adaptable and personalized to each audience or individual client.
We are all different.
We have different filters, different perspectives, and different pain points.
I may use the same healing or transformation technique, but the way I apply it has to be tailored to the person receiving it.
That allows people to feel unique and truly seen, as though the experience was created specifically for them.
Another advantage is that I am extremely intuitive and psychic, and I channel what the person or the audience needs.
What’s unique about your coaching approach?
Everything I do, whether I am advising an entrepreneur, helping someone heal a trauma, or guiding someone through a crossroads in life, is aimed at helping my clients awaken their own inner tools so they can make decisions based on their individuality and a deep sense of self love.
The goal is for them to become independent and learn how to cultivate their own peace.
What benefits do your clients get after working with you?
My clients gain a deeper awareness of the reasons behind the experiences in their lives, process their emotions, and gain clarity and direction.
All of this comes with a profound sense of peace and transformation.
They find themselves again.
Do you use any specific tools to be efficient with your clients?
I mainly work with meditation techniques and exercises.
When necessary, I may also consult oracle cards or use stones.
The Impact:
If you had a super megaphone that, when you speak into, the whole world will hear your message, what would you say?
To enjoy Heaven eternally, you first need to know Hell to its very limits.
What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your life?
I cannot say that I have learned one single greatest lesson.
I would say I have learned several important ones.
But if I had to highlight one, it would be this: I learned that I am capable.
And what I am capable of is extraordinary.
Your final thoughts?
Our success in every area of our lives is only truly complete when we are able to act from our soul in those same areas.
Our focus should never be solely on the commitments of material life for their own sake, but rather on using our soul as an ally as we honor those commitments.
To do that, we need to unblock the channel that connects us to our soul, releasing blocks such as fear, guilt, limiting beliefs, or abandoning ourselves.
Where Can You Find Vilma Vieira?
If you liked this interview and if you would love to see how Coach Vilma can help you live a life in alignment with what is true for you, go to her website and find out a service that fits your needs.
If you’d like to peak a glimpse into her coaching, follow her Instagram account.
And if you’d like to connect with her more personally, you can do that through LinkedIn or by sending her a direct message on her Email [email protected]. It was an honor having this interview with her.
Think about the last time you trusted someone instantly.
Not because of what they said.
Not because of their title or credentials.
Something about the way they were in the room before they opened their mouth.
You have probably also experienced the opposite.
Someone technically saying all the right things, and yet something felt off.
You couldn’t name it.
But you felt it.
That feeling isn’t intuition.
It’s information.
And the science of how it works is more precise than most people realize.
Trust Is Formed Before Your First Sentence
Most communication advice focuses on what you say.
Choose powerful words.
Structure your message clearly.
Make eye contact.
These things matter.
But they arrive too late.
In a landmark 1992 study, psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal examined what they called “thin slices” of behavior, brief observations of another person that can provide surprisingly rich information about how that person is perceived.
Their research, published in Psychological Bulletin, found that judgments based on very brief observations of nonverbal behavior could correlate significantly with evaluations made after much longer periods of interaction.
A later study by Willis and Todorov (2006) found that people began forming judgments of facial characteristics, including trustworthiness, after exposures as brief as 100 milliseconds.
This does not mean that people make accurate judgments about someone in an instant.
It means something more subtle and more important for anyone who communicates.
The process of forming an impression begins before we have consciously processed very much at all.
By the time you finish your first sentence, the audience has already begun forming an impression of you.
So the question becomes: what are you communicating through your state before you begin?
The question is not only what you are saying.
The question is what state you are in when you begin.
What the Body Is Broadcasting
Research on nonverbal behavior has consistently shown that physical signals, including posture, gesture, facial expression, and vocal behavior, contribute to how other people perceive us.
Research by Lee, Knox, and Breazeal at MIT (2013), for example, explored how nonverbal behavioral cues can be used to predict trust in social interactions.
What matters here is not that one particular gesture automatically means “trustworthy” or “untrustworthy.”
Human communication is more complex than that.
The deeper point is that other people are continuously receiving information from our bodies, often without either person consciously analyzing every signal.
And this is where Body Speech begins.
“You cannot consciously manage every signal your body sends. But you can work with the state from which those signals emerge.”
That distinction is important.
Body Speech isn’t about learning a list of gestures that make you look confident.
It’s about changing what’s happening underneath the performance, so that the way you communicate becomes more aligned with the person you actually intend to be.
The Three Elements That Build Trust Before Words
Body Speech identifies three elements that shape how trust is formed before language arrives.
1. State
State is the internal condition you are carrying into the moment.
Not how you feel in a general sense, but the specific quality of your nervous system right now.
Are you contracted or open?
Grounded or scattered?
Present or performing?
Your internal state doesn’t remain entirely internal.
It can influence breathing, facial tension, movement, vocal behavior, and the quality of your attention.
Some of these signals may appear without conscious intention.
When your state is grounded and open, people may experience something different from when you are defended or contracted, even when they cannot explain exactly what they are noticing.
2. Body
The body is the medium through which state becomes visible and audible.
This is not about posture correction or “power poses.”
It’s about recognizing that your body is already participating in communication and that you can use physical awareness to change how you enter a moment.
Three simple entry points:
Feet.
Feel the ground beneath you before you begin.
Not as a concept, but as a physical sensation.
Exhale.
Let the breath out fully before you speak.
Do not force the next inhale.
Let it come.
Eye contact.
Rather than scanning the room for reassurance, arrive in the eyes of one person before you begin.
Real contact, not performed contact.
These are not tricks for appearing confident.
They are simple physical practices for changing how you enter the moment and, from there, changing how you communicate.
3. Intention
Intention is the direction your presence is moving.
Before high stakes communication, most people ask:
What should I say?
Body Speech asks a different question:
Who am I speaking for?
When your intention is clear and outward focused, your attention naturally moves toward the other person.
Your voice can become more available.
Your eyes can soften.
Your presence can become something the audience receives, rather than something they have to decode.
Without clear intention, even technically polished communication can feel hollow.
Not necessarily because there is an obvious mistake.
But because there may be a gap between the person speaking and the words being spoken.
State.
Body.
Intention.
When these three are aligned, trust can begin forming before you finish a sentence.
Not because you performed well.
But because you arrived fully.
A Practice for Before Any High Stakes Moment
This takes sixty seconds.
Find your feet.
Before entering the room, pause.
Feel both feet on the ground, not as a concept, but as a physical sensation.
Exhale completely.
Not a deep breath in.
A full breath out.
Let the inhale follow on its own.
Choose one intention.
Not what you want to achieve, but who you are speaking for.
One person.
One reason.
Arrive before you begin.
Give yourself one moment of stillness before your first word.
Not a dramatic pause.
Not a performance.
Just the space between preparation and presence.
This is the foundation of Body Speech.
Not a technique.
A return.
Why This Works When Everything Else Doesn’t
We live in an era where words can be optimized, messages can be tested, and AI can produce a persuasive argument in seconds.
But there is something technology cannot manufacture for you.
The felt sense of being in the presence of someone who is fully there.
You can prepare every word.
You can refine every slide.
You can rehearse every gesture.
And still, something may be missing.
Presence is not another layer you add to communication.
It’s the state from which communication begins.
That quality can build trust before a word is spoken.
That quality is what Body Speech cultivates.
Not by adding more to what you say.
By arriving more fully before you speak.
In the next article: Why presence may matter more than communication in the age of AI and what that means for how we show up.
Body Speech is not something you understand by reading about it.
It’s something you begin to notice in your own body.
If you’d like to experience the framework for yourself, my Udemy course takes you through the Body Speech fundamentals: how to read your own state, how to reset it before high stakes moments, and how to build the kind of presence that makes trust form naturally.
Hans Bruintjes is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with him. He impressed us with his unique perspective and passion for coaching.
He brings together lived experience as a neurodivergent person with a background in law, public policy, and independent research into discrimination and inclusion. His work is shaped by both personal experience and a deep understanding of the systems that influence people’s lives.
He is passionate about giving neurodivergent people a stronger voice, particularly in environments where their needs and perspectives are often overlooked. Through coaching, research, presentations, and advocacy, he helps people navigate challenges with greater awareness and confidence.
He offers a distinctive perspective by connecting personal experience with legal, administrative, and human rights knowledge. His work encourages people to question the rules and expectations around them, understand what truly serves their wellbeing, and take purposeful action toward meaningful change. Here is what he said…
Meet Life Coach Hans Bruintjes:
Name: Hans Bruintjes
Pillar: The Mind, The Heart
Who is this coach for: Neurodivergent people seeking greater self awareness, inclusion, confidence, and support in navigating education, work, and everyday systems.
How they can help: By combining lived experience, coaching, legal knowledge, and policy insight to help clients understand their options, advocate for themselves, and create meaningful change.
First of all, how are you and your family doing in these “crazy” times?
I’m doing fine.
I still live with my parents, so I can easily build my career and study public law alongside it.
How did the coronavirus pandemic affect your clients? Did it affect you at all?
The coronavirus had hardly any impact on me.
I was already working from home a lot before that time, and I was already taking a distance learning course.
So it didn’t really affect my work.
Life was mainly influenced by measures such as face masks and social distancing.
The Origin:
Tell us about you, your career, how you started with your coaching career?
This is a long story, and I do my coaching for several reasons.
The first reason is that I am autistic myself and, as a result, have experienced a great deal of inaccessibility in education, primarily due to policy choices.
I was advised against studying at a university of applied sciences, and I was treated poorly during an internship, which resulted in health problems.
I thought about this and realized that this has to stop.
The second reason is that I worked as a policy advisor, and in that role, my portfolio included social issues and diversity and inclusion, among other things.
In doing so, I read all kinds of reports and policy documents on discrimination, inclusion, and human rights.
And every time, I saw that there was no attention paid to autistic and other neurodivergent people.
I wanted to change that.
The third reason was that, for my bachelor’s thesis, I started conducting my own research using a survey on discrimination against neurodivergent people.
I received so many responses to it that I thought, “I need to do more with this.”
After quite a few failed job applications, with arguments such as “you don’t fit in here” and “you lack experience,” I thought, “I need to make this my profession.”
That is why I started conducting independent research into discrimination against neurodivergent people, and I apply my knowledge by giving presentations and providing advice to government organizations and universities, among others.
What was your biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?
The advice not to pursue higher education was particularly significant.
I was told this by the admissions coordinator at a vocational school for students facing barriers to employment.
During the introductory interview, the conversation revolved around my autism and my rejections from regular vocational schools.
That coordinator told me at the time that I would not be entitled to the accommodations I needed in higher education.
At the time, I gave in because I didn’t know what to say in response.
So I went to study there.
But I didn’t choose the program myself.
I was first thoroughly assessed.
I completed all kinds of practice assignments and tests and had conversations about everything in my life.
Based on that, advice was given regarding a tailored study program.
Initially, that gave me some peace of mind.
But later in my time at that school, I was often spoken to aggressively by an internship supervisor, which the school had approved at the time with phrases such as “not our responsibility.”
I also experienced all sorts of stigmatizing remarks made about me by the work coach.
I knew then that this wasn’t going to work for me.
I did have a way out back then.
I applied for another assessment, but this time one focused on higher education.
That was possible, and I was advised to pursue a distance learning law course and work as an advisor.
So I started a distance learning course and am currently taking another one.
What are the biggest lessons that you learned overcoming your greatest obstacle?
The system I am part of can also make mistakes.
And you have to be vigilant about that.
As a child, I was quite the authority figure everywhere and followed every rule.
This also stemmed from the fact that I really like rules and agreements.
But I have also learned that you can go so far with this that rules, agreements, and actions that can hurt or harm others end up being defended.
This also happened to me during that intense internship.
I spoke up about it once and asked if I could take it easier.
This request was rejected with an explanation such as “that makes you tough.”
My parents also felt that the work coach treated me poorly on multiple occasions and spoke out about it.
I still find agreements and rules very important, and they still give me a lot of peace.
But now I believe that you establish these primarily to protect things like love, safety, health, and harmony.
So the rules you make should serve these goals.
And if they do not, they must be adjusted.
The Coaching Style:
How do you innovate with coaching your clients?
The work is largely influenced by the public.
In the advice and presentations I give, I sometimes receive questions from my clients that prompt me to conduct further research.
I also try to tailor my coaching as closely as possible to the client’s needs.
Furthermore, it involves a great deal of observation.
Where can I make a difference as a coach?
I just mentioned the absence of neurodivergence in reports on discrimination.
I can make a difference here by sharing what I have experienced as a neurodivergent person, analyzing it using relevant concepts, and building upon work that has already been done.
My research methods are primarily inspired by research into discrimination that is already being conducted systematically, combined with relevant legal concepts and my personal experiences with discrimination.
What’s unique about your coaching approach?
I combine my experiential knowledge with a legal and administrative perspective.
Because I am neurodivergent, I can view my work through the eyes of neurodivergent people.
And because I have worked as a policy advisor and am a lawyer, I can also look at individual cases from a legal and administrative perspective.
My knowledge profile is also very unique.
For instance, there are many researchers and coaches who focus on neurodivergence in the workplace or in education.
There are researchers and policy advisors who focus on inclusion and discrimination.
There are also lawyers specializing in constitutional law and human rights.
But in my work, I combine all these fields.
What benefits do your clients get after working with you?
For many neurodivergent people, I am a voice in places where I can make an impact.
For example, I discussed my research with the Dutch Coordinator against Discrimination and Racism.
I have also used this knowledge to advise politicians on submitting proposals to ensure greater inclusion.
One example is submitting a proposal to clarify definitions so that compliance with human rights becomes more verifiable.
And my book, “The Voice of the Neurodivergent,” has been used by several people to shape their research into neurodivergence and contribute to relevant discussions, such as disclosure about one’s neurodivergence and the knowledge policymakers need to possess.
Do you use any specific tools to be efficient with your clients?
Yes, I mainly use LinkedIn.
Here I can see what is important to my target audience.
I also often have video calls in response to content I post or to content that other people post.
That way, I can network effectively as well.
The Impact:
If you had a super megaphone that, when you speak into, the whole world will hear your message, what would you say?
“Accept each other as you are to ensure peace, health, and safety, and treat each other and what is important to each other with appropriate respect.”
“Handle your responsibilities with care, especially if you hold a position of power, such as a civil servant, teacher, or director.”
“Realize that the things you do can have a significant impact on people’s lives.”
What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your life?
Think carefully about why you do what you do.
And I am mainly referring to the following questions.
What are my goals?
More money?
Better health?
More peace of mind?
Do my actions contribute to this?
And you certainly need to pay close attention to this.
For instance, many actions may be popular, yet they are not necessarily effective.
And some “ugly” and “unusual” actions can actually be good for achieving your goal.
Thinking about this and having a strong vision regarding it fosters a healthy level of self awareness.
This provides peace of mind and can also help you overcome setbacks.
Your final thoughts?
I am happy to have been given a platform here to share these matters with people.
I consider these matters very important, and they are a major reason why I do my work.
Wher Can You Find Hans Bruintjes?
If you liked this interview and you would love to see how Coach Hans can help you, go to hansbruintjes.com and learn more about his coaching.
If you’d like to peak a glimpse into his coaching, we strongly suggest to get his book and join his Substack. Feel free to follow his Instagram account as well.
And if you’d like to connect with him more personally, you can do that through LinkedIn or by sending him a direct message on WhatsApp or to his Email [email protected]. It was an honor having this interview with him.
They accept compliments without batting them away. They allow others to help. They charge appropriately for their work. And when an exciting opportunity arrives, they are able to welcome it rather than immediately questioning whether they deserve it.
For others, receiving can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
We may say we want more support, abundance, success, or ease… yet when those things actually appear, something within us contracts.
The compliment is dismissed.
The help is refused.
The opportunity is questioned.
The price is reduced.
Receiving, it turns out, isn’t always as simple as wanting something.
We Learn How Much It Feels Safe to Receive
Our relationship with receiving develops over many years.
Perhaps independence was highly valued in your family. Perhaps needing something felt vulnerable. Maybe you learned that accepting help meant owing somebody something in return.
Or perhaps receiving more than others brought guilt, attention, or expectations that you didn’t want.
None of this necessarily happens consciously.
We simply develop ways of navigating life that once made sense. And sometimes, those adaptations make us exceptionally good at giving while leaving us rather uncomfortable at the other end of the exchange.
Giving Can Feel Much Safer
Giving often provides us with a sense of control.
We decide what to give, how much to give, and when to give it.
Receiving requires something different.
We have to allow.
We may have to trust.
We may have to tolerate being seen, appreciated, supported, or cared for.
For someone who has spent years being the capable one, the helper, or the person everyone relies upon, that can feel surprisingly vulnerable.
So the answer isn’t simply:
“Learn to receive.”
We need to understand that receiving itself may be something our system needs to become familiar with.
Receiving Can Be Practised
This is why I increasingly think of receiving as a skill rather than a personality trait.
Skills can be developed.
And we can begin very simply.
Someone gives you a compliment.
Instead of immediately explaining why it isn’t deserved, try saying:
“Thank you.”
Someone offers to help.
Before automatically responding, “No, it’s fine,” pause.
Someone gives you something unexpectedly.
Notice whether your first thought is about how quickly you need to reciprocate.
These tiny moments can tell us a great deal about our capacity to receive.
They also give us an opportunity to practise something new: allowing without immediately compensating.
Receiving Isn’t About Taking
There is an important distinction here.
Healthy receiving isn’t entitlement.
It isn’t expecting other people to provide everything we need. And it isn’t taking without giving.
Receiving and giving are part of the same natural exchange.
When we can participate in both, energy moves.
But when we are permanently positioned as the giver, eventually our own reserves can become depleted.
There has to be an incoming flow as well as an outgoing one.
Receiving allows us to remain resourced enough to continue giving from a place of genuine abundance rather than exhaustion.
Allowing More Without Forcing More
This becomes particularly interesting when we think about abundance.
We often approach abundance by asking:
“What else do I need to do?”
More marketing.
More work.
More effort.
More strategies.
More productivity.
But occasionally, the more useful question is:
“How much am I actually comfortable receiving?”
More money.
More support.
More recognition.
More opportunity.
More ease.
Even more joy.
Because sometimes creating a richer life isn’t about finding another way to push forward.
Sometimes, it is about expanding our capacity to allow what is already trying to come towards us.
That doesn’t mean becoming passive or abandoning action. It means recognising that creating more isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes the next step is becoming more available to what we have already asked for.
Receiving Is a Capacity We Can Expand
Receiving doesn’t belong to a fortunate few who were simply born good at it.
It can be learnt.
It can become safer.
And, like any skill, it becomes easier with practice.
The next time someone offers you support, gives you a compliment, pays you generously, opens a door, or celebrates your work, notice what happens inside you.
Do you allow it?
Do you minimise it?
Do you feel the need to immediately give something back?
There is no need to judge your response.
Simply notice.
Because every small moment of receiving is also an opportunity to expand your capacity to experience support, connection, abundance, and ease.
Explore Your Creative Wealth Flow
In my Creative Wealth Flow work, I explore the relationship between creativity, receiving, holding, and thriving. Together, we can begin to identify the deeper patterns that may be making greater abundance and ease difficult to comfortably receive — and, just as importantly, difficult to sustain.
If you are ready to explore what may be standing between you and a greater capacity to receive, I invite you to discover my work and explore the resources available at www.findyourinnerharmony.co.uk.
Because sometimes the next chapter of abundance isn’t about learning how to give more.
Thomas D. Peil is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with him. He impressed us with his innovation and passion.
He is the founder and CEO of Adonis Wellness Group™. He helps people transform difficult life experiences into opportunities for growth, resilience, and greater self awareness, drawing from his own journey through trauma, grief, addiction, and the search for purpose.
He combines consciousness, transpersonal psychology, physiology, trauma awareness, meditation, leadership, behavioral science, and identity development to help clients bridge the gap between what they know, what they value, and how they actually live.
He is the creator of the 3.2 Method, combining morning, midday, and evening reflection with journaling, breathwork, meditation, goal review, physical practices, and pattern tracking to turn insight into consistent action and lasting personal change. Here is what he said…
Meet Life Coach Thomas D. Peil:
Name: Thomas D. Peil, Founder and CEO of Adonis Wellness Group and creator of the 3.2 Method™
Pillar: The Spirit, The Mind, The Body, The Heart
Who is this coach for: People who want to overcome past challenges, build resilience, understand their patterns, and consciously reshape their identity and daily behavior.
How they can help: By using the 3.2 Method, as well as various tools and techniques like journaling, guided reflection, breathwork, meditation, goal review, physical practices, and pattern tracking technology.
First of all, how are you and your family doing in these “crazy” times?
We are doing well, and I am grateful.
Life has taught me not to answer that question automatically.
Doing well does not mean everything is easy or perfectly settled.
It means we are present, connected, and continuing to move forward.
My son is an adult now, and I am proud of the man he has become.
I have also learned that family is not only defined by proximity.
It is built through showing up, checking on one another, and refusing to let pride or busyness replace real connection.
How did the coronavirus pandemic affect your clients? Did it affect you at all?
I was not operating a conventional coaching practice when the pandemic began, so I do not want to rewrite history and pretend that I was.
The pandemic affected the formation of my work because it intensified a period of profound personal crisis.
In 2020, my brother Adonis died by suicide.
Later that year, I found my mother after she had passed away.
At the same time, I was confronting addiction, trauma, isolation, and the question of whether I was going to continue living the way I had been living.
That period stripped away the illusion that information alone changes people.
People were surrounded by advice, content, and motivational language, yet many were still isolated, dysregulated, and disconnected from themselves.
I began to understand that human beings need practices that help them reflect, regulate, reconnect, and integrate what they know into daily life.
That realization became part of the architecture of the 3.2 Method.
The Origin:
Tell us about you, your career, how you started with your coaching career?
I did not begin by deciding to become a life coach.
I arrived here through lived experience.
I am a United States Marine Corps infantry veteran, a father, an author, and the founder of Adonis Wellness Group.
I am also completing my bachelor’s degree in Consciousness and Human Potential at Maharishi International University, with a minor in Transpersonal Psychology.
For years, I lived with trauma, depression, addiction, grief, and a lack of purpose.
I was never a bad person.
I was a human being in pain who had not yet learned how to organize that pain into meaning.
My life began changing when I stopped searching for one dramatic breakthrough and started rebuilding through disciplined, repeated practices.
Reflection, physical training, meditation, writing, accountability, and service gradually became part of my identity.
That process eventually became the foundation of the 3.2 Method.
My work today is broader than traditional coaching.
I think of myself as a Transpersonal Architect, someone who integrates consciousness, psychology, physiology, identity, leadership, spirituality, and technology into systems that help people create lasting change.
What was your biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?
The greatest obstacle was not one event.
It was the accumulation of trauma, grief, addiction, and purposelessness.
I lost my father after a tornado took his life.
In 2020, my brother died by suicide, and later that year I found my mother after she had passed away.
I also had to confront my dependence on alcohol, Xanax, and pain medication, along with years of depression and unresolved trauma.
The hardest part was realizing that pain could explain how I arrived somewhere without being allowed to decide who I would become.
I could not change what happened, but I could take responsibility for what happened next.
That distinction changed my life.
I stopped asking only, “Why did this happen to me?” and began asking, “What am I responsible for building from here?”
What are the biggest lessons that you learned overcoming your greatest obstacle?
I learned that resilience is less dramatic than people imagine.
It is not one heroic moment.
It is making breakfast, answering emails, attending class, paying bills, training, writing, and showing up on the days when nobody would blame you for quitting.
I learned that discipline without reflection can become another form of avoidance, while reflection without action can become rumination.
Real growth requires both.
I also learned that healing is not the erasure of pain.
It is the development of a larger identity that can carry pain without being controlled by it.
Most importantly, I learned that responsibility is not self blame.
Responsibility is the recovery of agency.
The Coaching Style:
How do you innovate with coaching your clients?
The central innovation is that I do not treat transformation as an information problem.
Most people already know many of the things they should do.
The real gap is integration.
Knowledge does not automatically become behavior, and behavior does not become identity without repetition.
The 3.2 Method creates a daily loop of intention, awareness, and integration through morning, midday, and evening reflection.
In the morning, a person identifies how they intend to show up.
At midday, they examine what is actually happening and recalibrate while the day is still in motion.
In the evening, they integrate the experience, identify patterns, and decide what needs to change next.
The technology is being designed to remember themes over time, adapt prompts, recognize recurring patterns, and provide personalized feedback without replacing human agency.
The purpose is not to tell people who they are.
It is to help them see themselves clearly enough to participate consciously in who they are becoming.
What’s unique about your coaching approach?
My approach combines lived experience with an interdisciplinary framework.
I draw from consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology, physiology, trauma, Stoicism, leadership, meditation, behavioral science, and identity development.
I do not force every person into the same language or worldview.
Context shapes delivery.
The 3.2 Method is also built around continuity.
A powerful conversation can create insight, but insight disappears if it is not revisited and practiced.
The system is designed to follow patterns across time, adapt to the person’s language and state, and help close the distance between stated values and lived behavior.
I am not interested in temporary inspiration.
I am interested in integration that becomes visible in how a person actually lives.
What benefits do your clients get after working with you?
The goal is greater coherence.
People begin to see the connection between what they say they value, what they repeatedly do, and the internal states that influence those choices.
They develop stronger self awareness, clearer language for their patterns, and a more practical way to interrupt automatic behavior.
They also leave with a process they can continue using.
I do not want people dependent on me for every answer.
I want them to become better observers of their own lives, more honest about where they are, and more capable of choosing their next action.
The work is designed to strengthen agency, responsibility, emotional regulation, purpose alignment, and follow through.
Outcomes vary by person, but the aim is always sustainable change rather than a short burst of motivation.
Do you use any specific tools to be efficient with your clients?
Yes.
The primary tool is the 3.2 Method, currently delivered through structured reflection materials and a working digital product demo while the commercial platform is being developed.
It uses morning, midday, and evening prompts, pattern tracking, adaptive feedback, identity metrics, and a rolling memory model.
I also use journaling, guided reflection, breathwork, meditation, goal review, physical practices, and direct conversation when appropriate.
Technology should improve continuity and pattern recognition, but it should not replace judgment, presence, or the human relationship.
AI is most valuable when it helps a person see more clearly, not when it claims authority over that person’s life.
The Impact:
If you had a super megaphone that, when you speak into, the whole world will hear your message, what would you say?
You are not finished.
What happened to you matters, but it does not have to become the final authority over your identity.
Stop waiting to feel completely ready.
Tell the truth about where you are.
Take responsibility for the next choice.
Repeat that choice until it becomes part of who you are.
Ask for help when the weight exceeds what you can carry alone, and become the kind of person who notices when someone else needs a second chair beside them.
Be the best human you can possibly be, not as a slogan, but as a daily practice.
What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your life?
The greatest lesson I have learned is that a human being can participate in the construction of his own identity.
We are shaped by our history, biology, relationships, culture, and circumstances, but we are not merely passive products of them.
Every repeated choice teaches the nervous system, the mind, and the people around us who we are becoming.
Pain may explain where you are, but it does not get to decide who you become.
That does not mean pretending suffering is simple.
It means refusing to surrender authorship of the next chapter.
Your final thoughts?
We are living in a time of extraordinary access to information and growing difficulty turning information into wisdom.
The next frontier in human development is not simply giving people more content.
It is building systems that help them recognize patterns, regulate their state, integrate insight, and live in greater alignment with what they know matters.
If you’d like to sneak peak into the Adonis Wellness Group follow their Instagram here.
And if you’d like to connect personally with him, you can do that through LinkedIn or by sending him a direct message on his WhatsApp or his Email [email protected]. It was an honor having this interview with him.
Something in you has already registered it, the relationship that quietly stopped feeling like home, the role that no longer fits the person you’ve become, the pace of life that was sustainable for a season and is not sustainable now.
Somewhere underneath the schedule and the plans and the next quarter’s targets, a part of you has already made the call.
And then the arguing starts.
Not out loud.
Nobody else can hear it.
But you know the voice, the reasonable, articulate, well prepared voice that shows up the moment your body tells you something your mind doesn’t want to accept yet.
It has evidence.
It has precedent.
It reminds you how far you’ve already come, how much you’d be walking away from, how things could still change if you just gave it a little more time.
It is, in its own way, a brilliant lawyer.
And it is arguing a case you have already, quietly, lost.
I want to say something to you plainly, because I think you already suspect it: the arguing is not the same thing as not knowing.
You know.
You are simply negotiating with the knowing, hoping that if you build a strong enough case, the discomfort of acting on it will go away.
It won’t.
Not like that.
The Cost of Arguing With Yourself
Here is what I have watched happen, in myself and in the leaders I’ve sat across from for more than two thousand hours: when we override what we already know, once, twice, a handful of times, nothing catastrophic happens.
We survive it.
We even congratulate ourselves on our discipline, our patience, our ability to push through.
But it rarely stops at once or twice.
Self override becomes a pattern the same way any other habit does.
Each time we talk ourselves out of what we already know, we get a little faster at it.
The rational mind gets better at producing evidence.
The gap between what we sense and what we permit ourselves to admit gets wider, and quieter.
Sometimes the body joins the conversation: a tight chest, a stomach that won’t settle, an unusual restlessness, a fatigue that makes us stop and pay attention.
None of these sensations is a verdict, and they can have many causes.
But they are information.
They are part of the conversation, and they are worth noticing rather than automatically overriding.
Self betrayal is not one dramatic decision.
It is usually hundreds of small ones.
I don’t use that word as an accusation.
I use it to name the quiet distance that can grow when the life we keep choosing and the person we know we are becoming stop moving in the same direction.
For me, the invitation is not to blame ourselves for that distance.
You don’t need your own life explained to you from the outside.
You need a way to navigate it, a way back to yourself that doesn’t require you to have all the answers before you’re allowed to begin moving.
I developed Coherence Architecture within The Shalimova Method™ around a simple premise: you are not just a mind that happens to have a body attached to it.
You are Spirit, Soul, and Body, one integrated whole, not three departments competing for the final word.
That doesn’t mean every part of you will always speak with the same volume or at the same time.
It means none of them has to be silenced in order for you to move forward.
Coherence is not the absence of complexity.
It is the ability to meet that complexity without abandoning yourself inside it.
Getting there isn’t a leap.
It’s a sequence of honest questions.
Five of them, in this order, each one preparing the ground for the next.
Awareness: What is actually happening within me?
Before anything else, before any decision, this is where it starts: not fixing, not deciding, just noticing.
What is the actual sensation underneath the story you’ve been telling yourself about it?
Not ‘I should leave this job’ or ‘I should stay in this relationship’, those are conclusions, arguments, verdicts.
Awareness asks something simpler and harder: what is actually here, right now, in me?
Most of us skip this question entirely and go straight to arguing about what to do.
Nothing coherent gets built on a foundation you haven’t honestly looked at.
Rewiring: What pattern is running, and is it still serving me?
Once you can see what’s actually happening, the next question is about the shape of it.
You have likely been here before, not this exact situation, but this exact pattern.
The specific way you talk yourself out of what you know.
The specific circumstances under which you go quiet instead of speaking, or say yes instead of the no you meant.
Patterns run automatically, beneath conscious choice, until you name them.
Naming a pattern doesn’t dissolve it instantly, but it does something important: it turns an automatic reaction into something you can begin to work with consciously.
Within Coherence Architecture, this is where the BRAIN Method supports the rewiring work, recognising what is running, interrupting the old route, and creating room for a different response.
Coherence: What would alignment between Spirit, Soul, and Body look like here?
This is the question underneath the whole framework.
And it is not only a strategy question.
Practicality matters.
Safety matters.
Facts, consequences, timing, responsibilities, they all matter.
Coherence doesn’t ask you to abandon any of them.
It asks you to bring something else into the same conversation: your convictions, your body, your reasoning, your values, your faith, and the quiet part of you that may have been speaking before the argument began.
What would it look like if these parts were no longer being forced to pull in opposite directions?
Coherence does not always remove fear.
It does not promise certainty.
A coherent decision can still be difficult, costly, or sad.
But the quality of the inner conversation changes.
You no longer have to keep persuading yourself away from what you can clearly see.
Inner Compass: What do I know when the noise becomes quiet?
The rational mind can become very loud, and often for understandable reasons, it is trying to protect you from loss, uncertainty, embarrassment, disruption, the discomfort of change.
Reason is not the enemy.
It belongs in the conversation, just as facts, safety and consequences do.
The Inner Compass asks a different question: what remains when fear, old conditioning, urgency and other people’s expectations stop speaking louder than everything else?
Sometimes what remains is surprisingly simple.
Not a full plan.
Not a guarantee.
Just something you have known quietly for a long time and have finally become willing to hear.
Legacy: What am I creating through the choice I make now?
The final question moves you out of the moment and into the arc of your life.
Not what will people think, not only what is the immediate consequence, but what kind of pattern are you laying down for the person you are becoming, and for everyone watching you become it?
Every time you honor what you already know instead of arguing yourself out of it, you are rehearsing a version of yourself who can be trusted, by others, and by you.
Coming Back to Where You Started
You already know the moment I’m describing.
You may be in it right now, mid argument, building your case for staying exactly where you are a little longer.
I am not going to tell you what to decide.
That was never the point of these five questions, and it isn’t the point of Coherence Architecture.
The point is simpler and, I think, more respectful of you: you may already have more information within you than you have allowed yourself to hear.
Not the whole plan.
Not certainty.
Not a promise that the next step will be easy.
Just the next honest question, asked in the right order, until the arguing quiets down enough for you to hear what was there before it began.
Resilience keeps you standing. Coherence brings you home. — Yevheniya Shalimova
Lauren Roberts is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with her. She impressed us with her passion and kindness.
She knows what it feels like to run on empty. As a mum of three and clinical healthcare professional, Lauren Roberts has lived through burnout and identity loss firsthand.
She believes burnout is more than a mindset issue. It lives in the body and nervous system. Through Calm Working Mum, she combines NLP, breathwork, somatic work, and meditation to help women regulate, recover, and reconnect with themselves.
She helps women move from surviving to truly living. Her work is about rebuilding identity, creating healthy boundaries, and designing a life that works for the woman behind all the roles. Here is what she said…
Meet Life Coach Lauren Roberts:
Name: Lauren Roberts
Pillar: The Spirit, The Mind, The Body, The Heart
Who is this coach for: High achieving, deeply caring mothers who feel overwhelmed, exhausted, disconnected from themselves, or close to burnout.
How they can help: By using various tools and techniques like NLP, breathwork, somatic nervous system regulation, guided meditation, values based coaching, identity mapping, and her “Identity Reset” process.
First of all, how are you and your family doing in these “crazy” times?
Honestly? We’re doing really well, thank you for asking!
Life is wonderfully full and beautifully chaotic.
I’m a mum of three boys, I work in clinical healthcare, and I run my coaching business, Calm Working Mum, alongside all of that.
So “crazy times” is basically just… Tuesday in our house.
But that’s exactly why I do what I do.
I’ve lived the burnout, I’ve been in the thick of it, and I’ve found my way through.
That lived experience is everything.
How did the coronavirus pandemic affect your clients? Did it affect you at all?
At the time of the pandemic, I wasn’t yet a coach.
I was on the front line in domiciliary care.
No PPE provided.
No backup plans.
No support.
No paid hotel room to shield.
I was going into the homes of people with Covid every single day and then coming home to my own family, carrying that fear and that weight with absolutely nowhere to put it.
It was one of the most isolating and frightening experiences of my life, and it was also one of the most clarifying.
It deepened my commitment to serving vulnerable people, and it showed me, in the starkest possible way, how completely invisible and unsupported the people doing the most essential work often are.
Women, carers, healthcare workers.
The ones keeping everything running while the world fell apart around them.
For the women I now coach, the pandemic left a mark that many are still carrying.
The burnout that was already simmering hit boiling point.
The identity loss that comes with motherhood got amplified in isolation.
And we are all now watching how it has affected our children too, emotionally, socially, and developmentally.
The ripple effects are still very much being felt.
The Origin:
Tell us about you, your career, how you started with your coaching career?
I came into coaching through my own healing journey.
I work as a specialist Clinical Support Worker in complex community healthcare, so I’ve spent years holding space for people in some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.
Alongside that, I became a mum, and somewhere in between the clinical shifts, the school runs, and the relentless mental load, I completely lost myself.
I decided to do something about it.
I trained as a life coach, NLP practitioner, breathwork facilitator, and meditation coach, and I went on to complete a Master’s in Coaching and NLP.
I created Calm Working Mum because I couldn’t find a space that spoke honestly to women like me.
Women who are high achieving, deeply caring, chronically exhausted, and desperately trying to remember who they are outside of their roles.
So I built it.
What was your biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life that made you who you are today?
Honestly, it was burnout combined with complete identity loss after becoming a mother.
I poured everything into everyone else and had nothing left for myself.
I stopped knowing what I wanted, what I felt, and even who I was outside of being needed by other people.
I also parent children going through AuDHD assessments, and I’m on my own neurodivergent assessment journey.
Understanding my own brain, the way I process the world, and the way I’ve been masking for years has been one of the most profound and liberating discoveries of my adult life.
It changed everything about how I coach.
What are the biggest lessons that you learned overcoming your greatest obstacle?
That rest is not a reward, it’s a requirement.
That asking for help is a strength, not a failure.
And that you cannot pour from an empty cup, but more importantly, it is not your job to keep pouring until you’re bone dry before you’re allowed to fill back up.
I also learned that healing isn’t linear and it doesn’t have to be pretty.
It can be messy and slow and confusing and still be absolutely worth it.
The Coaching Style:
How do you innovate with coaching your clients?
I don’t do cookie cutter coaching.
My approach blends NLP, breathwork, somatic nervous system work, and meditation because burnout isn’t just a mindset issue.
It lives in the body.
You can’t think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system, and I think a lot of coaching misses that.
I also bring radical honesty.
I’m not here to tell women to “just be more grateful” or “wake up earlier.”
I name the systemic stuff.
The patriarchal load.
The invisible labour.
The impossible standards.
We work with the whole picture, not just the surface level symptoms.
What’s unique about your coaching approach?
It’s whole human coaching.
I work with the mind, the body, and the identity all at once.
I bring breathwork and somatic techniques into every space because regulation has to come before transformation.
And I do it all as a real person who has lived these experiences, not as someone who has had it all figured out from the beginning.
I also refuse to pathologise being overwhelmed.
I help women see that their burnout makes complete sense given what society demands of them.
We name it, we process it, and then we build something that actually works for their real life.
What benefits do your clients get after working with you?
They come in running on empty and leave running the show.
They reconnect with who they are, not who they think they’re supposed to be.
They regulate their nervous systems so they stop reacting and start responding.
They find boundaries that feel good, not guilty.
And most importantly, they stop surviving and start actually living.
Do you use any specific tools to be efficient with your clients?
I use NLP techniques, breathwork protocols, somatic nervous system regulation practices, guided meditation, and values based coaching frameworks.
I also work with identity mapping and what I call the “identity reset” process, helping women rediscover who they are at their core, separate from their roles and responsibilities.
The Impact:
If you had a super megaphone that, when you speak into, the whole world will hear your message, what would you say?
You are not failing at life.
Life is failing to account for everything it’s asking of you.
Stop shrinking.
Stop apologising.
And for the love of everything, please stop waiting until you’ve completely fallen apart before you ask for support.
What is the greatest lesson you have learned in your life?
That you are not too much…
You have never been too much…
You have just been in spaces that were too small for you!
Your final thoughts?
Burnout is not a badge of honour, and it is not a personal failing.
It is what happens when incredibly capable, deeply caring women are expected to give endlessly without ever being given anything back.
If you’re reading this and you recognise yourself, please know there is a way through.
You don’t have to keep going like this.
Where Can You Find Lauren Roberts?
If you liked this interview and if you would love to stop running on empty, rediscover your identity, and start running the show, schedule a Free Discovery Call here and see how Coach Lauren will help you.
Or feel free to explore her website and see all that she offers.
If you’d like to peak a glimpse into her coaching, follow her Instagram and TikTok accounts.
And if you’d like to connect with her more personally, you can do that through LinkedIn or by sending her a direct message to her Email [email protected]. It was an honor having this interview with her.
