Life, markets and trading, often tries to wear you down, challenging your confidence, and shattering your self-belief. This week's guest on the AlphaMind Podcast takes us on a unique journey, deviating from our usual guests. Once you hear what she has to say, you'll hopefully recognise its relevance not only to your trading but also to much broader and deeper aspects of your work and life. Maria Iliffe-Wood is a seasoned Executive Coach and specialist in Leadership Development. She is the author of two books, one aimed at coaches, focusing on developing their coaching presence, a vital skill in coaching and other high-performance fields. However, it's her recently published second book, 'A Caged Mind,' that inspired us to invite Maria to the AlphaMind podcast. At AlphaMind, our primary focus is  on  individuals who take on the role of traders, and other challenging high performance roles, in the complex and uncertain worlds they inhabit, and how they can bring the best of themselves to their work and these challenges. They face constant tests from the outside world which seek to expose their weaknesses, undermine their processes and behaviours, and attempting to hinder them from achieving the sort of high-performance they are potentially capable of.  This battle largely happens within them, and this is where the real battle for success happens. Maria's book delves into her own journey through life, grappling with her own challenges and life's trials. She shares her throughs and reflections on her travails, from the perspective of someone who has come through her difficult challenges, and emerged on the other side, a stronger, better and far happier person for it. Maria's story is all of our stories, and thus encourages introspection about one's own life journey and the obstacles faced. Her experiences can be applied to you and your own work, enabling you to embrace to reflect upon how you can embrace you own innate wisdom and bring it to every aspect of your professional life. The full title of Maria's book is: "A Caged Mind: How Spiritual Understanding Changed a Life". It can be purchased on Amazon at this link here. To find out more about Maria, and her work supporting and helping writers, visit her website at https://www.iliffe-wood.co.uk/ ________________________________________________________________________________________________ AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets. Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities. Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.