In this solo episode of the Shiny Minds Show, Dr Shiny Unsal AI reflects on her experience at the International Coaching Federation (ICF) Converge 2025 in San Diego. She emphasizes the power of in‑person, heart‑centered connections among coaches from 161 countries and urges listeners to examine the quality of their relationships. Unsal explains how coaching provides a template for self‑love, self‑trust, and alignment, and introduces her Neuroshine change formula (change = awareness × willingness), arguing that awareness is the prerequisite for any transformation. She distinguishes ethical conduct from legal contracts, illustrating the point with a refund scenario. Unsal shares a personal neurodiversity story about her early‑life traumatic brain injury (TBI), noting how her brain processes information slowly but accurately, and calls for greater awareness of neurodivergence. She highlights music, humor, and art as unifying forces that enrich conference experiences, and stresses the need for continual professional growth through events and community. The episode concludes with a call to action: visit shinyunsal.com, download a free PDF, and book a coaching call to harness one’s “superpowers.”
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If you want to change lives, starting with your own, this episode is for you. I just attended the ICF Converge in San Diego, California, and I would like to share my main takeaways with you. If you are ready, let's begin. Are you ready to shine? Come on, it's the shiny one. You got this. Hello everyone, my name is Dr Shiny Unsal AI. I am the founder of the Academy of Neuroshine Technology, this Shiny Minds Show, and your master certified Nourish Coach. I just came back from San Diego. I was attending the International Coaching Federation's conference that is called the ICF Converge 2025 in San Diego, California, and I am full. My heart is full. My mind is buzzing. I have ideas. I have connections. I have energy within me that I would like to share with you. I would love to start by telling you that the main takeaway that I have in my heart is the connections that I made, the in-person energy, the human touch that we shared, the experience that we co-created, and the heart that we are all aligned with. Because we carry emotions and we are humans and we are heart-based, purpose-driven individuals as coaches all around the world. And when we carry the heart, when we connect through the heart, align through the heart, everything gets so much easier. So much easier. That's my main takeaway. I feel belong at the International Coaching Conference with all the other coaches joining from all over the world, 161 countries. Again, because they are heart-based people. They are purpose-serving people. They want to do good in the world. They are not fighting against something. They're fighting towards something, and we are towards people. We are skills people, and we are mission people. And that is my main takeaway, and I would like to share that with you, how important it is with you. If you look around, look at your life, look at the people in your life, look who they are, look what kind of relationships you create with them, what they represent for you. If they are not inspiring you, if they are not making you feel connected to something bigger than yourself, if you're not inspiring a part of you that knows that there is more in this life, there is more with your life, with your purpose, your legacy, then question those relationships. Question what they are. Question what they're teaching you. Your questioning is not only for letting them go. Perhaps you're not gonna let your relationships go because they are good for you, although they are triggering you, they might be serving you. Only you know what relationships are serving you and what relationships are draining you. And unless you question them, unless you look in the mirror, unless you ask, why did I create this? How did I create this? Why did I choose this? What is the source of this? You will never know why. And that's why I want you to start there. And when you start there, when you look at the entire energy frequency of the people in your life, you'll start seeing the pattern. There is a bigger pattern that you are co-creating. Perhaps you're not clear what exactly is going on, why you have these people, these patterns in your life, but if you only step back and observe yourself, then you can see the big picture, the bigger picture. And it is the most important thing that we can see our own patterns, our own relationship patterns. Why? Because what coaching gave me is a template to create my relationships, to deepen my relationships, to elevate my relationships, starting with my own. I deepened my self-love, my self-trust, my self-confidence. I started to become one with myself. I started living in full alignment with myself, with my life, with my values, thanks to coaching, thanks to the International Coaching Federation. So now let me start talking about the ICF Conference 2025 Converge in San Diego. It was absolutely a mind-blowing, a heartwarming, and a soul-deepening experience. And the most important part of the Converge is really the legacy that I want to bring to the world. I want to leave behind. And the legacy that we are all shaping, the purpose that we are all a part of. And what's made me realize at the conference is that you may not be aware, but you are a part of something bigger than yourself. There is something deep within yourself that is spiritual, that is existential, that is deep, that is metaphysical. That is galactic in my language, and you are a part of it. You are shaping it. You are co-creating it. Know it or not know it, become aware of it or not aware of it. It doesn't matter. It is still going on. And when I sat down and had conversations with coaches from all levels, I realized that not everyone is aware of it. Not everyone is connecting to a higher purpose, a bigger vision, a bigger energy. And that's normal because there is survival, there is matrix, that's the 3D reality versus a higher perspective, a liberated 5-dimensional perspective of oneness that is invisible, that's unseen. It's felt but not seen. People feel it, but because they don't see it, they don't know what to do with it. They don't know what to name it. And that's where I come in. That's how I see coaching as changing the world and changing lives, starting with your own. When you are working with a coach, you become aware of what you were not aware. When you become a coach, you get to share this with your clients, and then you get to make them aware of what they were not aware of. And because I created a formula for change with my Neuroshine technology, which is change equals awareness awareness multiplied by willingness. That is exactly why coaching is so important, we realize, because awareness is the most important component of change. With awareness, you don't know what to change. Even if you are willing to change, what are you going to change? You don't know. If you don't know what you don't know, you don't know where to begin. You get lost. It looks scary. It feels frightening, and you start distorting your reality. You start coming up with excuses and smiles, and you avoid what you don't want to hear. It's all survival instinct. And that's why I, I just believe that it is my mission in this lifetime that through the power of coaching and coaching mindset, and with the gold standards of International Coaching Federation, the core competencies, the code of ethics, the standards, everything that we do at the highest level, at the gold standard level, is what makes me keep going. Because because I know it's the highest level. I know it is the excellence. I know it is the most galactic, and I know that I can carry this mission for a lifetime, and I get excited about it. I get passionate about it, and I share it with, with my coaches. So let me share more takeaways from the ICF conference in addition to this big galactic mission and legacy, and we are part of something big takeaway. That I received. The second takeaway that I am bringing home from the ICF CONWARD is that ethics is not supposed to be always legal, and legal contracts are not always ethical. Interesting point. Think about it. Legal contracts are always binding, legally binding, right? But they may not be ethical. Some terms that you put there may not be ethical. What is ethics? How do you define it? I joined sessions where we were given case studies to analyze and decide if it is ethical or unethical. We were given ideas to brainstorm if there was a breach of contracts or not in the way the business was done by a coach. That to me is always fascinating because Ethics is a moral conduct versus legal agreements and contracts are legal practices. Like legality, you go and you want to get whatever you want because you believe it is the lawful action. And not every lawful action is ethical. In the case of refunds, for example, if you said in that legal agreement that there won't be any refunds, That's your legal right, correct? Yes, agreed. And still, it may not be ethical. It may be legal but may not be ethical because the ethical part of practice is that there is autonomy, there is mutual respect, and then there is some sort of energy exchange that is joyful, that is high frequency, that is co-creation. And when the client asks for a refund, at what point you you honor that? At what point you don't? Do you go with legal or ethical perspective of things? It's interesting to really contemplate on. The third takeaway that I have from the ICF Converge is neurodiversity, the importance of neurodivergence, because about 40% of the population is neurodivergent, meaning they're not neurotypical. They are not processing information in the way that you would, or The others would. I don't know if you're neurodivergent or not. Neurodivergent if you have ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression, any kind of difficulties learning or giftedness. Perhaps you have super high sensitivity or in my case, TBI, traumatic brain injury because of an injury. When I was 10 months old, I fell down and just 10 months old baby and they needed to take me to the hospital because I need to have stitches in my skull. And because it is considered as an injury to the skull, I was diagnosed with TBI, traumatic brain injury. But because it was before my brain was even there, like it was not even developed, it didn't really affect me. So thank goodness I have high IQ, high EQ, everything is functioning well. But according to the studies, according to the reports that I received, my brain is looking like receiving information super slow. It's receiving it super slow, but it is super accurate. Really interesting. It is slow but super accurate. And when I shared that with my faculty trainers in San Diego, they were like shocked. Like, this is, this is you being slow? Like, yeah, like below average slow. That's how I receive information. Or at least at the time of my brain scan, I received the information super slow. I regulated myself because I valued accuracy. I wanted to be accurate so high, so much, that my slowness ended up making me super accurate. So my accuracy was high, above the average, and my speed was low, below the average. So that's why there is nothing to worry about in terms of impulsivity, because obviously it's the opposite that I demonstrated. I was able to slow down the impulses on a level that is so slow that they were concerned, like, is everything okay with your brain, right? So to me, it's self-regulation. That's how I look at it. There are so many approaches. I'm not going to go into that, but the main takeaway is neurodivergence. Did you do a brain scan? Do you know your brain? What do you know about your brain? Have you met your neurons yet? So that might be a very good takeaway for you to look and take home. The fourth takeaway from the ICF conference is music, humor, and art. They unite us more than anything else because there were breakout rooms that we would be able to choose in between. And whenever I joined the humor, the music, and the artful sessions, the breakout rooms were packed. We are attracted to having fun and attending a conference that is beyond just a boring conference, right? We want to mingle, we want to laugh, we want to have a great time. Even the roundtable that I attended with my MCC colleagues, Master Certified Coach colleagues, It was also another experience that I, I brought home with me because I created my own table to discuss how we are elevating the consciousness of our humanity by using coaching as a modern tool. And our table had so much fun, so much respect for each other. And at the end, in my language, we went galactic and it was super fun. So it's always more than the content. It's always humanity. Art brings humanity. That's another takeaway. And the last one, the last takeaway that I have from the conference is that we need to keep growing. We need to keep going to conferences, going to events, interacting with like-minded individuals so that we are reminding ourselves why we do what we do, so that we can love our lives and we can become who we are meant to become. And that is another takeaway that I brought home with me. On another note, as a personal takeaway, I've had several full circle moments that is filling my heart so much that I know it's just going to be another level for me with my purpose, my mission, my business, and how I change lives, starting with my own. And that is my invitation for you, my dear shiny minds. I invite you to join the moment, join this legacy moment, this calling with the world of coaching. If you want to change lives, starting with your own, you may want to discover and experience coaching. You can go to my website, shinyunsal.com, and grab that free PDF just to see if coaching is the right path for you. And if it is, book a call. Let's talk. Let's discuss. If and how you can put your superpowers all together in a delicious structure and offer to the world as your coaching sessions. I promise you, if you love working with people, if you love helping people, you're going to love coaching and then you're going to say, what was I waiting for? That is another takeaway perhaps for you. So thank you for watching. I hope you loved this episode. If you did, please put a like on it, share with your friends. And subscribe for more episodes just like this because, hey, we are hashtag on a mission together, changing lives and the world, starting with our own. Until next time, dear shiny minds, keep shining your lights.
