ILC International, Sofia (2026)

11/05/2026

Some forms of minimalism create space.
Others quietly create distance.

🌱Beautifully explored by Galia Hubanova in this post and through the upcoming workshop.
…
MINIMALISM (random thoughts)
We often speak about minimalism as if it automatically brings clarity and lightness.
Less noise. Less distraction. Less pressure. And often it does.

You clear a crowded drawer, let go of old clothes, unsubscribe from endless emails, and something genuinely shifts. You feel lighter. More present. Nothing important is missing.

But there are other things we remove.

An opportunity declined because it feels overwhelming.
A difficult conversation postponed.
A relationship you slowly step away from emotionally.
A challenge labeled “too much.”

And afterward, something quietly feels absent.

Can you tell the difference between creating space and opening a void?
Between clarity and control?
Between calm and emotional distance?

This is where minimalism becomes psychologically interesting to me. Because the question is not only what we should remove from our lives, but also what we remove because we do not want to deal with it.

Real minimalism is not emptiness.
It is discernment.
It is reducing noise without reducing meaning.
It is staying with complexity where complexity still matters, and recognizing that some tensions are not problems to eliminate, but realities to engage with consciously.

And perhaps most importantly, true minimalism costs something real: comfort, certainty, control, the illusion that life can become entirely frictionless.

This workshop is an exploration of these questions through reflection, tension, silence, and psychological inquiry.

And in honor of Coaching Week, the workshop will also include two coaching practices designed to help participants explore these questions not only intellectually, but personally and experientially.

Not really about owning less, but about understanding what we remove, what we keep, and why.
………………………………………………………………..
MINIMALISM: less…but why?
📅MAY 217, 2026 | 12:30 PM EET
📍 Online
🎙 Led by Galia Hubanova / ILC International
learn more: https://fb.me/e/dz6O2aKdA

👉 Comment ‘JOIN’ and we will send you the registration link

08/05/2026

Meet Nora Marinova – a trusted guide for people standing at life’s crossroads. Blending psychology, coaching, and international business experience, she helps clients gain clarity, reconnect with their values, and move forward with confidence and purpose.

Today, she’s sharing her wisdom in . 💭

📌 We push ourselves hard at work.
Meeting tight deadlines, managing endless to-do lists, and juggling responsibilities both in the office and at home.

Yet somehow, even after doing all of that, it can still feel like it’s not enough.

That same pressure quietly spills into our personal lives. We start to chase perfection in the name of “wellness” – trying to optimize our workouts, our diets, and our daily routines.

It begins innocently enough:
→ "I’m doing home workouts, but maybe I should also join the gym. "
Then it escalates:
→ "Perhaps I should attend a yoga class once a week. "
And then comes the comparison:
→ "My colleague meditates every morning. That must be why she always seems so calm and composed!"

Before we know it, our minds are filled with constant background noise. 🔄
❓Am I taking good enough care of myself?
❓Is this the right routine?
❓Should I be doing more?
❓Am I eating the right foods to feel my best?

What starts as an effort to improve our well-being can slowly turn into a source of stress. We end up overwhelmed, not by necessity, but by the pressure to do everything at once, creating a kind of burnout that we’ve unintentionally designed for ourselves.

The truth is, wellness doesn’t have to be exhausting.🌱

Instead of trying to overhaul everything overnight, focus on one small change at a time. Whether it’s experimenting with a new diet, trying a meditation practice, or attending a single class… give yourself the space to experience it fully! Let it add value to your life, not pressure.

And if it doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. You can adjust, try something else, or simply let it go.

Taking care of yourself shouldn’t feel like another task to perfect. It should feel like something that supports you gently and sustainably.💛

01/05/2026

– a Friday reflection series by the ILC International team.
This week’s voice is Julia Russo 🙏👇
(you can find out more about her on our website)

From the moment we wake up, we are already deciding. ⏰

What to eat. Whether to work out. Which route to take? Which message to answer first?

⚙️ Some of these decisions happen without us even noticing, because we made them once, long ago, and turned them into habits. Automatised choices that run quietly in the background of our days.

And then there are the others.

The ones we carry with us. The ones we postpone, revisit, and lose sleep over. Stay or leave. Speak or stay silent. Let go or hold on.

In my coaching practice, clients often come with exactly that kind of request: help me decide. Should I quit my job? Should I end this relationship? Should I say something, or not?

And there are tools for that. Good ones. The Decartes Square, which asks you to look at a decision from four angles: what happens if I do, what happens if I don't, what doesn't happen if I do, and what doesn't happen if I don't. SWOT analysis. A simple pros and cons list. Frameworks that slow the mind down and make the invisible visible. 🧭

But the most interesting moment, for me, comes later.

After we've talked for a while, I sometimes say to my client: "I'm listening to you, and I have a strong sense that the decision has already been made."
And I watch what happens next.

Because often, it has. The decision is already there, quiet and clear, somewhere beneath the analysis and the frameworks and the second-guessing. What keeps us from acting on it is not confusion. It's courage. The courage to be honest, first of all with themselves.

Whether we decide logically or emotionally, consciously or from somewhere deeper, the decisions that truly matter demand something of us that no framework can provide.

They ask us to be honest.

So let me ask you: when did you last make an honest decision about yourself?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments 💬

24/04/2026

Insights from Veronika Stoyanova on decision-making beyond data and logic
…

How do you really make decisions at work?

🧠 Do you rely purely on data, logic, and rational thinking?
🧠Do you aim to stay objective, independent, and unbiased every single time?
🧠What if that is only part of the equation?

Throughout my professional journey, I have faced situations where facts weren’t enough. No clear data. No definitive proof. Just a persistent sense that something wasn’t quite right.

So, I have learned to pay attention to it - as an additional signal shaped by experience, not captured in the data.

You know that instinct?⚡ When everything looks solid on paper, yet something doesn’t fully add up… and you can’t immediately explain why?

I have learned not to ignore that signal.💡

There was a time I advised senior management to hold off and reconsider a decision involving a potential partner.
What was my reasoning? No spreadsheets. No concrete evidence. Just patterns, context, and signals I couldn’t yet quantify.

Not exactly the kind of argument you lead with in a boardroom.
But we paused.
And that pause made all the difference.

With time, more information surfaced - and it became clear that the hesitation was justified.

🔍Here’s what I have realised: Great decision-making isn’t about choosing between logic and intuition. It is about knowing when each has a role to play.

Data informs. Experience sharpens. Intuition helps connect dots before they’re fully visible.

👉 Have you ever trusted your judgment in a moment when the data wasn’t there - and it paid off?

23/04/2026

AI is already making decisions about your career. No, not in the future but right now.

Who gets hired.
Who gets promoted.
Who is “high potential.”

From hiring → to performance evaluation,
AI is no longer experimental. It’s operational.

But here’s what most people get wrong:

👉 Better data ≠ better decisions

🔬 Research shows something uncomfortable:

• We, humans are not fully rational
→ and that’s exactly what makes good judgment possible

• AI is not truly intelligent
→ it optimizes patterns, but misses meaning

Here’s the part few talk about:

🧠 People without emotional processing
(strong evidence from neuroscience)
struggle to make even simple decisions.

👉 Logic alone is not enough.
👉 Emotion is part of intelligence.

So the real question is not:
“Can AI decide?”

It’s: Where should it stop?

Today, this question is at the center of a key discussion at :

🕒 12:45 – 13:45
🎤 AI and decisions for people: between legality, efficiency, and trust

Glad that Valentina Dolmova , founder of ILC, will bring the psychological perspective into the conversation.

Because this isn’t just about technology.

👉 It’s about people, trust, and responsibility.

If you’re there - come say ‘hi’ and join the discussion.

If you’re not:
Where do you draw the line?

👉 Should AI be making decisions about people?
bg

20/04/2026

Monday after elections and we’d all like to believe we are most objective in the choice we made yesterday.

Many conversations will be had about who is dumb and dumber for making a decision different to ours (and made in the very same context).

Each of us would think of themselves as:

Rational.
Structured.
Clear thinking.

In practice, our decisions are shaped by .

In other words, we don’t respond to reality as it is. We respond to the meaning we’ve assigned to it.

And that meaning is not neutral. It can’t be. It is shaped by our:
- past experiences
- future expectations
- beliefs and values we don’t question

This is why:

The same situation leads to different conclusions.

In a work context it’s the same.

A team is seen as “engaged” and “disengaged” by different leaders.
The same opportunity feels obvious to one person and impossible to another.

The decision is just the surface.
The story underneath is what drives it.

In our upcoming session with psychoanalyst Tsvetomila Boradjieva we’ll be exploring just this. 👇

Not how to “make better decisions” but how to recognise the internal narratives shaping them.

👉 What are you treating as fact that is actually interpretation?

📍 27.04 | 18:30–20:00
Online (Zoom)
47 EUR
Register here:
https://checkout.revolut.com/pay/fa7cb17f-b121-473c-af5a-e495289fbd94

18/04/2026

Are you making decisions in cosumer situations the same way you would when voting for a political party?

The ‘voter-consumer’ analogy, well known in the fields of social and political psychology, poses 1 question:

Will you choose your next purchase throught the same mechanisms that will drive your voting choice?

On Saturday, before elections in Bulgaria, remind yourself that we all make decisions based on subconscious drivers. No exceptions.

To reduce the influence of the autopilot we can begin asking ourselves more questions.

Consider those 5 suggestions:

1. How will you know that you’ve made the right choice?

2. Which of your values you don’t want to make a compromise with in these circumstances?

3. If you were completely honest with yourself, what is it that makes you set in (or confused about) your opinion on this matter?

4. What choice will make the biggest impact here?

5. What truly drives your decision is ……….

Want to find out more about the topic of how we make decisions ? 👇

https://journalofpsychology.org/index.php/1/article/download/104/111

16/04/2026

Alignment is one of the most overvalued concepts in organisations.

It sounds right.
It is logical and feels right.
It signals progress.

But in practice, alignment often hides something else:
Misinterpretation.

We worked with a company redefining its purpose and values after a leadership change.

28 people in the room.
All engaged.
All invested.

Yet the friction was immediate.

Different interpretations of the same reality.
Different assumptions about what matters.

And a shared belief:

“Others are not as committed as I am.”

What we discovered was simple:

No one was disengaged.

People just couldn’t see how they fit into the bigger picture.

Alignment didn’t solve the issue.
Clarity did.

👉 Where are you mistaking alignment for understanding?

14/04/2026

Most decisions are not made in the moment.
They may feel like a product of some rational process and then - “it clicks”, but no. They are made much earlier. When?

In the stories we keep telling ourselves.

About:
what is right
what is possible
what people expect
who we are allowed to be

Once we have them in mind, we act as if those stories are facts.

We see this across all levels in organisations (and obviously beyond work).

For (real) example:

• A leader convinced their team is disengaged
• A high performer believing they are “not ready”
• A founder holding onto a direction long after it stopped working

The pattern is the same.

The decision is not the starting point.
The story is.

And most of the time - it remains unchallenged.

This is exactly what we’ll explore at the end of April and invite you to join a conversation that matters.

Not decision-making as a framework.
But the underlying narratives that drive it.

👉 And yourself - where are your decisions coming from, you think - reality or story?

10/04/2026

| – taking a moment to reflect with Petar Švarc

The very thought of entering traffic in Sofia starts with low expectations: traffic jams in front, potholes from below, BMWs and invisible electric scooters from just about everywhere. We complain about it as if no progress has been made. Thinking about it, I would argue the opposite – our complaints are nothing but our negativity bias at work 🧠

Road conditions continue to be objectively bad, but the driving "culture" in the city has improved over the past 20 years I've had the chance of observing it. How? One driver at a time choosing not to be part of the problem.

That mechanism – individual restraint gradually shifting collective standards – works far beyond traffic.

Friends from abroad still dread driving in Sofia, and compared to most Western cities, they’re right. It’s chaotic. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t improved.

A German friend once said while visiting, "World's most expensive cars on world's most unmaintained roads. Makes no sense!" He's right about the contrast.

But improving the cultural landscape must precede material betterment 🌱 – when enough drivers start respecting lane discipline, the political pressure for proper markings and surfaces follows. Infrastructure rarely reforms behavior; behavior reforms infrastructure 🔁

We should have high expectations over the long term. In the short term, there will be hiccups – ignored red lights, inconsiderate maneuvers, messy turning restrictions.
The way to lift the long-term outcome to the level of high expectations is by not becoming complicit in the degrading process 🚫

Slowly but surely, every time we resist the impulse to match someone else's bad behavior, we contribute positively to the big picture.

The same happens in organizations. A team's culture improves the same way a city's traffic does: one person refusing to cut corners raises the standard for the next. High standards in the long run, with flexible expectations for short-term failures.

Every small achievement raises the bar and gets us closer to the ideal.

ILC International

11/05/2026

08/05/2026

01/05/2026

24/04/2026

23/04/2026

20/04/2026

18/04/2026

16/04/2026

14/04/2026

10/04/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share