Latest news with #HeatherStewart
Entrepreneur
13-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Heather Stewart on the Silent Saboteur: How Apathy Fuels the Mental Health Crisis
You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Unknown to many, another force usually slips under the radar. Heather Stewart, a seasoned real life coach and a wellness expert, believes that apathy is a driver that deepens despair and keeps people stuck in lives they no longer recognize or enjoy. Stewart has over two decades of experience in the wellness industry, serving as a yoga instructor, massage therapist, meditation facilitator, and personal trainer. Her work has helped people reconnect with themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. Before her journey in this field, Stewart spent 15 years in corporate finance as a chartered accountant. This diverse experience gives Stewart's insights weight. She's lived on both sides of the spectrum, anchored in stability yet longing for purpose, and now thriving with intention. Her clients benefit from this breadth of perspective. Stewart's experience has also made her realize that apathy is one of the most significant barriers to mental and emotional well-being. Beyond the lack of motivation, apathy is a creeping indifference that tells people they shouldn't want more, or worse, that they can't have it. "People settle," she says. "They believe their unhappiness is just how life is and give up before they even try." This defeatist mindset manifests early. Stewart explains that even young people say, "Well, that's just how the world works." She pushes back against that narrative. "It doesn't have to be that way," she adds. "It will stay that way if you don't do something different." The problem is that many don't know what "different" looks like. Stewart notes that either they can't see the possibilities or see them and believe they're out of reach. "Maybe you dreamed of becoming an Olympic sprinter, but now you're too old. That doesn't mean you can't chase something as exhilarating," she states. Stewart's idea isn't to chase the exact childhood fantasy but to rekindle the permission to dream and adapt it into an achievable reality. "People narrow their ideas of happiness," she says. "They don't see options. And worse, the culture around them reinforces the message to settle." The real life coach adds that gratitude is also misunderstood. Stewart teaches gratitude as a foundational tool but not an excuse for stagnation. "Gratitude is just the first step," she says. "Be grateful for what you have, yes. But don't use that gratitude to justify staying stuck. You're allowed to want more. You're allowed to pursue what makes you happy." In addition, Stewart is critical of how wellness culture reduces gratitude to a simplistic mantra, omitting the call to action and self-respect it should inspire. Her perspective on gratitude is to acknowledge the present while still reaching for the future. These philosophies are embedded in The Thriving Life Method, her signature coaching service. It's for people overwhelmed by the demands of modern life. The program offers multiple paths depending on where someone is in their journey. They could test the waters with the free Pathfinder tier or dive deep into a personalized transformation with the Visionary level. Essentially, Stewart provides structured, compassionate guidance. Her platform is also intentionally free from social media distractions, offering a private space for authentic growth. It contrasts with the numbing effects of doom-scrolling and curated perfection that dominate online culture. It's worth emphasizing that The Thriving Life Method isn't a quick fix. It's a lifestyle reorientation. Stewart helps her clients uncover what's holding them back (e.g., exhaustion, fear, or codependent tendencies). She understands that the first step can feel enormous, especially when someone's energy is depleted. "If you're drained all the time, even small actions feel impossible," she says. "You can't force someone to change. They have to be ready." Being the lighthouse and not the lifeboat is a philosophy that Stewart learned early in her coaching journey. "I can light the path, but I can't walk it for you," she says. Like a personal trainer who can teach you how to do a push-up but can't do the reps for you, Stewart provides tools, encouragement, and accountability. The real life coach advises people stuck in apathy: "Start imagining again. Go back to what you wanted as a kid. Who did you want to be? What lit you up? What have you given up on, not because it was impossible, but because you were told it was unrealistic?" She urges people to re-examine their choices with curiosity. Stewart herself wanted to be an artist and a veterinarian. She became an accountant instead because it was considered practical. Years later, she reclaimed those passions in her own way, through her career in wellness. Heather Stewart invites everyone to step out of autopilot. Her holistic approach integrates physical health, emotional resilience, and self-discovery to help people feel more aligned and less depleted. With emotional numbing and cultural indifference becoming more rampant, her message rings loud and clear. Apathy can be dangerous, as it keeps people disconnected from their power, purpose, and potential. However, change is possible. It starts with curiosity, grows through support, and is sustained by action.
The Guardian
12-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Tackling child poverty in Britain must be made a priority
Heather Stewart's excellent analysis (Labour must seize the moment to show child poverty matters in push for growth, 9 February) draws attention to those parts of the social safety net – housing, employment and benefits – that need to be strengthened by Labour's child-poverty strategy. There are also two parts of the nutritional safety net, which, with the right reform, would put more money in poorer families' pockets. First, the NHS's Healthy Start scheme is worth at least £4.25 a week for families on low incomes with children under the age of four, enabling them to purchase fruit and vegetables, milk and pulses. Yet, at any one time, about one-third of eligible recipients are not registered for the scheme, leaving tens of millions of pounds worth of support unclaimed each year. Second, the best estimates suggest that a little over 200,000 children in poverty in England alone are eligible but not registered for their free school meal entitlement. Feeding Britain has worked with dozens of local authorities, with support from the Department for Education, to explore ways of maximising registration rates, and one clear recommendation has emerged: a national policy of auto-enrolment, covering both Healthy Start and free school meals, should be embedded in a single application form, which, when eligible families apply for universal credit, automatically signs them up for these two schemes without the need to fill in separate applications. This modernisation of the welfare state would use data and technology to banish the low take-up of passported schemes that bedevils it and put Labour firmly on the side of children in poverty who have previously been denied this much needed Forsey National Director, Feeding Britain Heather Stewart's article rightly stresses the need to scrap the two-child limit. Nevertheless, its removal would still leave child poverty at more than double the rate of the 1970s. Ultimately, the level of poverty depends on how the cake is shared. It is Britain's yawning income gap that explains its dismal record on poverty. The lesson of history is clear: poverty and inequality are umbilically linked. Britain achieved a low point for poverty in the 1970s because it also reached peak equality. This was the high-water mark of postwar egalitarianism. With the dismantling of the pro-equality strategy, Britain is back to its long-term norm of high inequality and high poverty. The scale of the task involved is shown by the 'poverty gap'. This is the amount by which a particular household falls below the poverty line. This sits at about 30%, or over more than £6,000 a year for a couple with two children. This gap stood at about 23% in the 1990s. It is a stark indicator of the inadequate share of national income enjoyed by those on the lowest incomes, and of the power of those at the top to colonise the gains from economic LansleyVisiting fellow, University of Bristol Heather Stewart succinctly captures the cost of further dithering on child poverty. Child poverty, however, is only one issue where the government is falling short on rights. This week, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will grill a UK government delegation on a wide range of issues ranging from its anti-poverty strategy to housing safety, and from discrimination in education to fair working conditions. Submissions from Just Fair, Human Rights Watch and dozens of others groups paint a deeply worrying picture that the government must account for. The evidence is clear: for many across the UK the system is failing. People are struggling to access food, housing, healthcare, decent work and social security. One in five people live in poverty in the UK; healthcare service waiting times are excessive; and benefit levels fail to allow for an adequate standard of living. Addressing these isn't optional but a matter of fundamental human rights. The Labour government may look to shift the blame on to its predecessors, but its own decisions are part of the problem. Keeping the two-child limit on benefits in place increases child poverty by the day; and refusing to accept a key recommendation of the Grenfell inquiry means disabled people in residential blocks won't have personal evacuation plans. In 1976, the UK became a party to the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, which protects rights to health, housing, education, work and social security. But because those rights under the covenant are still not part of domestic law, those affected have no way to hold the government directly to account. That must McQuail Director, Just FairKartik Raj Senior researcher, Human Rights Watch Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
