Mental Fitness & Neuroscience

There’s a moment every clinician experiences…Where knowledge is no longer the problem. It’s decision making. It’s confidence. It’s leadership. And more often than we admit…It’s what’s happening in the mind behind the eye. VOLK CAMPAIGN SHOOT 2025 Meet Dr Pretty Basra: Redefining Leadership in UK Optics Dr Pretty Basra is an award-winning optometrist, TEDx speaker, and one of the UK’s emerging voices in mental fitness, female leadership, and optical business growth. With over

We need to talk about a word that gets used a lot, often loosely, and sometimes in ways that do more harm than good. Mental health. Don't get me wrong, mental health awareness matters enormously, and the work being done to reduce stigma is vital. But there's a problem with the way we've framed the conversation. By making it almost entirely about illness, about crisis, diagnosis, and disorder, we've inadvertently left out the majority of people who are struggling but don't id

When everything feels urgent, leadership can start to feel like firefighting. You’re juggling patients, staff, numbers, deadlines, and somehow expected to stay calm, composed, and inspiring. But leadership isn’t about being unshakable. It’s about being self-aware. That’s where emotional intelligence (EI) comes in — the hidden advantage that separates average managers from truly transformational leaders.

Every successful person has a moment they’d rather forget - the rejection, the failure, the heartbreak, the closed door. But here’s what most people don’t realise: Those moments are not detours. They’re data points. I failed my A-Levels.I rebuilt a business that was close to collapsing. I’ve been rejected, ignored, and underestimated more times than I can count. And yet, every single setback became the foundation of my success. Because success isn’t about avoiding failu

When “Strong” Stops Working There was a time when I thought strength meant never breaking. Keep going. Keep smiling. Keep achieving. Until one day, I couldn’t. I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom, exhausted from trying to hold everything together, my practice, my clinic, my PhD, my family. I had built so much, yet inside I felt like everything was falling apart. That moment wasn’t the end of my story. It was the beginning. Because that’s where I discov

In the world of optics, we talk endlessly about clarity - 20/20 vision, focus, precision. But what about the clarity within? The future of optics won’t be shaped solely by technology, equipment, or clinical innovation. It will be shaped by the people behind the lenses — their mindset, resilience, and ability to adapt in a changing world.