Fatima Barkatulla – A Muslim Woman’s POWERFUL Story of Turning Grief into Strength

AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of forgiveness and balancing life with a long-term goal, emphasizing the need for comfort in knowing oneself and working towards a long-term vision. They stress the importance of education and support for those who may be struggling, as well as the importance of forgiveness and a collaborative viewpoint of business. The success of businesses in the digital age is emphasized, along with the importance of coaching for people with issues and shaping behavior, as well as the importance of being mindful of numbers and creating a positive life.
AI: Summary ©
Subhanallah, he came upstairs in the morning and
he just said that he had a bit
of a chest pain.
10 minutes later Allah returned his soul back
to him, like right in front of me
and my children.
And I was almost shouting, we will not
question the Qadr of Allah.
It was a practice at the time of
Rasul sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the marketplace,
if someone wasn't doing very well, it was
a practice that other market, you know, other
traders might send some of their business to
the other person who wasn't doing that well.
This one understanding is what just makes business
a pleasure and not a stress, is that
your rizq is written.
Assalamu alaikum brothers and sisters and welcome to
this episode of the Ilmfeed podcast.
Today I spoke to sister Hafsa and we
spoke about grief, losing a spouse, the reality
of this world.
We also talked about business and marketing.
So stay tuned and I hope you enjoy
the episode.
Sister Hafsa has been a faith-based coach
for the past nine years, coaching many Muslims
around the world through her various courses and
programmes.
She's the founder of Awakened Hearts Academy and
the Confident Muslimah, a spiritually centred coaching service
that moulds western psychology with Islamic foundations to
transform professional and personal goals to achieve success
in this life and the next.
She's completed various coaching programmes and diplomas along
with numerous recognised courses in leadership, positive psychology
and confidence led by industry experts.
And she's also, you know, studying various Islamic
courses as well.
So welcome sister Hafsa.
Thank you, assalamu alaikum.
Thank you for having me.
So how did you get into coaching in
the first place?
How long have you been in coaching?
So I've been in the coaching space for
about nine years and I kind of stumbled
into it.
So I used to run an event consultancy
business.
And in the space of one year, it
got quite big.
We were working with like big budgets and
big name charities.
But I'm very conscious of my family values
and making sure that work-life balance is
there.
And I just felt that there was no
work-life balance because events are very much
weekends and evenings.
And I just felt like it wasn't aligning
with my personal values and how I wanted
to see my life holistically.
And I don't like that hustle culture and
I was very much in it.
And so I literally closed every door and
walked away.
I gave back big budgets.
I walked away from like, you know, quite
big prospects that we had.
And I think this is a good thing
to do as well.
I think sometimes we need to just stop
and redefine ourself and redefine, you know, align
with our values and how we want to
see ourself, you know, in the world as
a whole, like with all the different areas
of our lives that we've got going.
Is there harmony?
Is there balance?
Are there boundaries?
You know, the work boundaries are so important,
as you probably know.
So I just literally just stopped, walked away
and then didn't really know what to do
with myself for a while.
And then I kind of stumbled into coaching
and got coached almost accidentally.
But it's not because these are the doors
that Allah opens.
And I just fell in love with it.
I just thought, oh my gosh, I feel
like I've been a coach my whole life.
Like I feel like I've been working with
women and people and it just resonated with
something very deep within me.
And so then I went to get qualified
and then sort of pursue coaching.
Yeah.
And I've never looked back.
Alhamdulillah.
And at the time you were married and
you had children.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I married three kids, Alhamdulillah.
And they were very supportive.
They were very pivotal in that journey as
well.
Alhamdulillah, they gave me a very good sort
of a lot of encouragement, a good support
system as well.
But yeah, but it's far more aligned with
sort of family life as well.
Coaching, it's that balance.
But I think something happened in your family
that then probably made you maybe take coaching
even more seriously.
Please tell us about that.
Yeah, I don't know if it made me
take coaching more seriously versus it realigned me
to something far more meaningful and purposeful in
my life.
In March 2022, my husband, whom I'd been
married to for many, many years, we had
three children.
And he was, you know, fit and healthy
by all accounts.
Like there were no major warnings, nothing to
sort of warn us anything was about to
happen.
And subhanAllah, he came upstairs in the morning
and he just said that he had a
bit of a chest pain.
Ten minutes later, Allah returned his soul back
to him, like right in front of me
and my children.
And that, as you can imagine, shattered our
world.
Like literally, it was like Allah took our
life and all the things that we'd got
accustomed to, you know, you get comfortable in
your rhythm of life and you just don't
anticipate that this is a reality, that this
will ever happen to you.
You probably hear it, but you don't anticipate
that this could ever happen to you.
And within 10 minutes, my whole world changed,
literally.
It was like the facade of this dunya
was just, the curtains dropped.
And it was like the reality of this
life and the akhira was just ripped open.
That's what it felt like.
When someone that close to you steps into
the next realm, you just realize how real
it is.
And it's been a journey.
It's been coming up to three years now.
But I remember, and a funny story, subhanAllah,
I don't know how funny it is.
My friend who came to the house, she
said to me the moment, the day it
happened, all she remembers, and I have no
recollection of this, all she remembers is me
holding my kid's hands and saying, we will,
and I was almost shouting, we will not
question the qadr of Allah.
We will not question the qadr of Allah.
He chooses this for reasons beyond what we
understand and we will accept.
And that reality was just, that handhold was
there in the deen, alhamdulillah, for me to
grab onto.
Because there is no context.
Otherwise, you know, there's no such thing as
meaningless suffering.
That, how do you contextualize it?
How do you understand that kind of loss?
And then two weeks later, we're in Ramadan.
Ramadan was very, very, very tough because we
were very close as a family during Ramadan.
And I remember this hadith just kept going
round and round and round in my head.
This hadith where the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam said to a young boy, the
son of Umar ibn al-Khattab r.a,
and he said, Be in this world like
a stranger or a traveler.
And it just kept going round and round
in my head.
And I remember calling my sister at one
o'clock in the morning and saying, I
feel like I need to put this out.
I feel like I need to say something.
I feel like it's in my head for
a reason.
But I don't know.
I'm nervous.
Like, is it too soon?
I don't know if I should.
And she just said to me, do it.
Just put it out.
So at one o'clock in the morning,
I typed.
I don't even know what I typed.
I just typed the reality of this life.
Our life could go any second.
If we lived with that reality, how would
that change how we speak, how we behave,
the choices that we make?
Like, that needs to be at the forefront
of every single thing that we do.
And subhanAllah, it kind of went viral.
It just resonated with so many people.
It went around on social media.
It got picked up by media outlets.
And even on WhatsApp, my uncle in Australia
contacted me and he said a friend from
America sent him this WhatsApp message.
And he didn't know that we had an
uncle-niece relationship.
So then I just said to my sister,
well, like, you know, just looking at all
of this.
And I said to myself, actually, I said,
you know what?
I can't sit with this.
I can't.
This has touched so many hearts and resonated
so deeply with the ummah.
I feel like we need this.
So a few months later, I opened up
Awakened Hearts Academy, which is an academy built
on training around three things.
Context of this dunya versus the akhira.
The fact that we're living on a speck,
a speck of an existence.
Death is not the final point.
It's just a transitionary moment to real life,
to when real life begins.
And a refining character and spiritual courage.
And I put together a training program called
The Travelers, based on that hadith.
You know, how to live like a traveler
in this life.
And so it's a very long-winded answer
to your question.
But that's how the whole thing came to
be.
And that's what I do now.
I operate under Awakened Hearts Academy and training
people to achieve their personal and professional goals,
but always with an akhira focus.
So I guess having that experience and, you
know, with your husband especially, really brought into
focus, very sharp focus, how short this life
is.
Entirely.
I've always wanted to ask, you know, somebody
who's been through something like that.
What are the things the next day, for
example, that you realize are gone if your
spouse passes away?
In terms of the next day, I can
only speak from my experience.
And from my experience, there was no warning.
You know, sometimes there's an illness, although it's
still hard, and no grief is easier than
the other.
But I think in my case, it was
absolute shock.
Out of the blue.
Just shock.
And I think that went on for a
good month or so.
Right.
Because it feels so surreal.
You're so entrenched in your lifestyle and your
routines and your habits.
And, you know, that morning we woke up
and prayed Fajr.
You know, SubhanAllah, he read his Quran, you
know, and we had our flow.
And then suddenly realizing, like you half, I
remember half expecting to see him pop around
the corner and, you know, and then that
reality would hit.
And it's literally, I mean, Alhamdulillah, it's been
a while now.
So there's grief.
Grief is a journey you're always on, but
you learn to adapt a life around it.
But I remember those were the hardest moments.
That when that realization would come in, it
was like a physical punch to the stomach,
like literally.
And I remember that would just cause me
to kind of like spiral.
And then the only way I could ground
myself, the only way I could center myself
was to say, to bring myself to that
reality that they've just gone ahead.
We're all going to be following.
And we are all belongings of Allah.
He doesn't belong to me.
I don't belong to him.
My kids don't belong to me.
We belong to Allah.
And he will call us back on his
timeline, not us.
So just in terms of the, I guess
later, there's the practical stuff of, you know,
then taking over the household financials and all
of that.
That's all the practical stuff that comes that
follows.
I think for the first week, it was
the janazah preps because my biggest thing was
just to get him buried as soon as
possible.
That kind of, in England, it's, and this
was kind of post-COVID as well.
So there were a lot of things that
we had to contend with.
Right.
Yeah.
Because sometimes, you know, I think about it
and I think, you know, when it comes
to our spouses, we really take for granted
like what their presence is making us completely
free from, do you know what I mean?
There's a certain, almost like circles of, I'm
imagining this whole kind of circles of concern
that we, that are just not on our
radar.
Not on our radar.
Because of our spouses, right?
It's a huge learning curve.
You have to reinvent your, it's like the
way I used to describe it is like
Allah took my life and me, turned it
upside down and it was scattered.
And this has been a process of gathering
bit by bit.
But you don't emerge and gather in the
same form that you were before.
I look back at me before, pictures of
me before, see things that I'd written before
and I almost don't recognize it because as
much as we realize the reality of this
dunya versus the next life, I know my
understanding of it now and my relationship with
it now is in an entirely different place.
Because it was just so real.
Like I look up at the sky and
I don't see the sky anymore.
I see it as the gateways to the
akhira.
I see, you know, it literally changes the
lens of how you look at life.
And I think one of my biggest considerations
was the kids.
When this happened, alhamdulillah, and I want to
share this because this will help anyone else.
One of the biggest blessings I feel that
helped them was Allah inspired me to do
this.
I feel was because we had mashallah, we
were in a beautiful community and they showed
up and our house was filled like for
a month.
It was just people, people, people, mashallah, and
I'm so thankful to Allah that we had
that support.
But I didn't want to lose my kids
in that, you know, in that.
So from the day it happened, every single
day at some point in the day, usually
at the end of the day, I would
say, come, we're going to do a check
in and it's just us.
So we'd go into a room, close the
door, lock it, and it would just be
me and the kids.
And it was just a space for us
to just check in with each other.
How are you doing today?
Is there anything you need?
How are you doing today?
Is there anything you need?
And what I feel that did was it
grounded us and it, you know, gave them
a space, a safe space.
It gave us just that chance to empathize
with each other, to be with each other,
connect and just keep, I found it very
grounding, if that's the word.
Yeah, I can imagine because especially just straight
after somebody passes away, there is a lot
of noise.
There's a lot of people, there are a
lot of people, well-meaning people, you know.
But I can completely empathize that you as
the core members of the family can sort
of become a bit lost in that.
Yes, very much so.
And I think there needs to be a
lot of education as well in our community
of how to visit people who are grieving.
I mean, alhamdulillah, my daughter, she's very, sort
of takes things on the chin, as do
I.
And so we would find it funny.
But I would imagine if there were people
who were sensitive, some of the things that
we would hear, like, for example, well-meaning,
and this is not, you know, to say
that anyone did it with ill intent.
But I think, well, with the best of
intentions, things like, and my daughter was 13
at the time, and they'll say, you know,
they would say things like, oh, girls are
usually like daddy's little princess, and now he's
gone.
How are you going to manage?
And I'm looking at my daughter, she's looking
at me, and we kind of giggled.
But thank Allah that, you know, that she
was of that disposition, because if she was
fragile and like very weak and sort of
like sensitive to it, it would have been
quite hard.
Yeah, almost like rubbing it in a bit.
A little bit.
And someone else said to me, Keith, it's
hard now, but it's going to get way
harder.
And, you know, you're not going to feel
it as much now when your kids graduate.
I was going to say, thanks.
And I'm like, hmm.
And I said, you know, inshallah, make du
'a, make du'a that Allah will make
it easy and that Allah will give us
resilience and that we'll be able to, you
know, we'll be able to manage it well,
inshallah.
Yeah, you reminded me of when a very
dear member of my family passed away.
And yeah, you know, people actually, you're being
too kind.
I think sometimes people just say things, really
stupid things.
Like you do sort of wonder, like, what
were you thinking when you said that?
And I remember one lady kind of saying,
oh, Allah took them too young, you know,
and sort of like that whole kind of
talking about qadr in the wrong way, you
know, and like, you know, almost lamenting it
and in a very vocal kind of way.
And we were the ones who were ending
up, you know, like comforting people in the
end.
Yeah.
So I think people do need to be
mindful of, you know, what they're saying and
what implication it has.
Does it help in any way or is
it, you know?
It's little things.
And again, I want to say the community
were amazing, alhamdulillah.
And there is that beautiful side of support
and being there.
And, you know, the food, mashallah, we had
to physically stop the food, right?
So, you know, alhamdulillah, because people are just,
they want to help.
And that's so beautiful, alhamdulillah.
But I think, as I said, there needs
to be some education around how to speak
and even some of the labeling, like, you
know, I remember a point in time where
people would say to me, you're so strong,
you're so, oh, you'll be fine because you're
so strong.
And that was really hard.
And I remember I wrote a post about
it and saying, look, the face that you
see is not always the face that is.
And there are some people that publicly grieve
and there are some people that do it
privately.
But just because you don't see them breaking
down and having a meltdown or emotion doesn't
mean that they're not struggling.
And actually, a better question is, rather than
saying you're so strong, say, how are you
feeling?
Right.
How are you doing?
What other things do you think people need
to know about that period of time, like
for a person, how to help them maybe
or how to be more helpful?
And yeah, I mean, there's no one rule,
I would say.
But I think it's very important to see
the person in front of you and ask
them what they need rather than assuming and
questions like, how are you doing?
Is there anything you need or what can
I do?
You know, as opposed to saying, I think
in wanting to comfort, a lot of things
can be said.
Like I remember someone said to me, this
is in the early stages, I remember someone
saying to me, my mom lost her spouse
and her children, one became a doctor, one
became an engineer, one became this.
I remember sitting there and I just, it
felt like pressure.
Oh, my God, like I've got to now
got to do something with the kids.
And I know it was well-meaning, but
you just don't know how the person is
responding in front of you.
For some, it could be inspiring, for some,
it could be like, feel like pressure, for
some it could be, you know, and I,
yeah, it's.
For me, one thing I didn't like during
like that period when somebody had just passed
away was people coming and talking about their
lives, you know, and everything that was going
on in their lives that was completely irrelevant.
And, you know, like you said, like we
were in a state of like awakened, we
had just been awakened to the reality of
death.
And it's like you're in a different zone
to everybody else or dimension, you know, and
when somebody's sitting there talking about very, I
don't know if it's mundane or if it's
like, you know, showing off about different things
and just normal chatter in a way.
Yeah, I used to find that very unhelpful.
I loved being with the people who reminded
me of the Akhira, who would be willing
to just be there with me, with us,
you know, where we were, not bring their
world into that space.
Do you know what I mean?
I can relate.
I mean, I didn't mind the chatter so
much, to be honest, I didn't mind the
chatter so much.
It was quite a relief in some ways,
you know, although there is that, you know,
you kind of feel like you're in a
standstill point because you just don't, you can't
see the future.
You had this whole future laid out and
now suddenly you look out and there's nothing
there.
It feels blank.
And so you see the world carrying on
and you're in the standstill place and that's
confusing.
But I didn't mind the chatter, but I
think what I did struggle with in the
beginning, and this again, you know, each one's
journey is different and it's just to be
mindful.
I was so, you know, sort of a
face in the aftermath of my own grief
and my kids and, you know, trying to
contend and deal with that.
I didn't feel that I had space to
hold anyone else's grief at that point in
time of those early stages.
And I feel subhanAllah that, you know, when
people come and they want to relate and
they want to share and they want to
empathize through sharing their grief stories.
And I remember just really almost switching off
because I couldn't empathize.
I couldn't, I really struggled with that because
it was just, and it could be the
shock part as well, that I was still
in shock.
And I think I know, I know subhanAllah
as much as it was amazing to have
community and family and everyone, alhamdulillah and I
don't take that for granted for a day.
Solitude was my, my therapy at that time.
Solitude with Allah and any reminder of Allah,
any reminder of the Akhirah, any reminder of,
of, of what Allah says, the stories.
I take stories from the Quran and it
used to give me so much hope.
And I would take the stories and I
would make du'as from there.
And the names of Allah, I remember some
days waking up and just physically feeling like,
how do I get out of bed?
And then I would say, ya qawi, the
most strong, ya qawi, give me strength and
your strength.
And I remember within like half an hour,
subhanAllah, feeling like I could move and I
could get up.
So those spiritual tools and solitude and just
time with Allah, tahajjud, those were my power
tools, if you could say, or my support
system that really, alhamdulillah, made it easier.
I know you've been doing some work about
grief, around grief and what, what do you
think people need to know about grief and
the grieving process?
I think we can't box it in at
all.
I think everyone defines it in a different
way and everyone reacts to it in a
different way.
But I think, I think, I think that
I would really like to say is that
our faith is the only reality that we
can align with that would enable us to
hold grief, gratitude and optimism at the same
time.
And there's something so beautiful about that.
Again, there's no meaningless suffering.
There's no such thing as permanence in this
life.
It's a temporary separation.
And the promise of what's to come is
where, you know, that optimism can be.
Knowing that the, the legends of the past,
you know, the great prophets, may Allah's peace
and blessings be upon them, and the Sahabas
and the Sahabiyats, they were tested in the
same way, subhanAllah.
And these were the most beloved to Allah.
And we can only pray, we can only
pray that we are even a fraction worthy
of that, you know, but this comes from
our faith.
That grief, in and of itself, just, just,
you know, grief, it's, it's pain, it's suffering.
But there's so much around it that we
have in our faith, the rahmah that Allah
gives and He sends, and the compensation that
He sends.
When Allah takes, He compensates, subhanAllah.
There's khair in everything, as we know.
And there's eases, right?
فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْأُسْرِ يُسْرَىٰ إِنَّ مَعَ الْأُسْرِ يُسْرَىٰ
So if anyone's going through grief, just trying
to look up and see these, these, these,
these things that Allah sends.
What did Allah send you?
Oh, subhanAllah.
Yeah, Allah was incredibly kind.
Just, I remember so many things, so many
things, just little duas being answered.
Dreams that I had, so many dreams, subhanAllah.
Seeing my late husband in a good place,
alhamdulillah.
And little things like, you know, subhanAllah, I
am, this is a funny story, actually.
I made dua when I was pregnant with
my first child.
It's going back 20 years, 20 plus years.
And I made dua, I said, Allah, give
me, and I don't know why I made
this dua.
Oh Allah, make my children warriors.
And for 20 years, I was making that
dua.
But it wasn't a conscious dua.
It was just something automatic.
And, and I remember sometimes laughing at myself
saying, what am I asking Allah for?
Why, why am I feeling like the need
to say, oh Allah, make my children warriors.
And I remember at one point after everything
happened, I remember, subhanAllah, a lot of people
were saying to me, your children are like
warriors.
And it didn't click until one day it
did.
And I just broke down crying to Allah.
I said, ya Allah, you inspired me to
make this dua for 20 years, because you
knew that they needed to be this today.
And it's just little things like that, that
just, subhanAllah, it just, little things, big things,
Allah shows, Allah unveils himself.
That makes this journey tolerable.
And not just tolerable, but you feel optimistic,
you feel grateful, you feel driven.
You feel like it's all temporary.
And I, like the way I look at
it is that, Allah knew that that was
the right time for my husband to go.
And inshallah, it's when he was at his
best.
Had you ever talked to him about death?
We were at a conference just three days
ago, three days prior at a conference, a
Yasir Qadhi conference, where he spoke all about
how the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam dealt
with grief and death.
And so it was a conversation that we
were having just three days before.
And the day before, I was actually with
my mom and we were at my mom's
house, and we were talking about a relative
who was like on their last stages.
This was on the Saturday, and we were
talking all about their janazah.
Did I ever know that the next day,
I'd be organizing the janazah of my husband,
like subhanAllah, you know.
And we did have some conversations around, you
know.
But it's just not something that you anticipate.
It's not like we consciously know that Allah
can take your soul at any moment, right.
But it's not something that you walk around
generally thinking.
But the advice is there though, to keep
death at the forefront, not in a morbid
way.
Like this hadith, like, you know, live like
a stranger or a traveler.
Ibn Umar, Abdullah ibn Umar radhikallahu anhu, he
lived that life.
And then later did a commentary on how
he lived that life according to that prophetic
advice.
And one of the things that he said
was, live in the morning, not expecting to
live till evening.
Live in the evening, not expecting to live
till morning.
If you actually put yourself in that mindset,
if you wake up in the morning and
think, right, today could be my last day.
How is that going to inform your choices,
your words?
What things would you let go of?
What petty issues would you just think, you
know, it's insignificant.
And it would change your entire outlook and
what you prioritize.
And I need to stress, it's not a
call to poverty.
It's not a call to abandon life.
This is actually the opposite.
It's about seizing life, seizing every opportunity, but
always keeping the bigger journey in mind.
And that I need to be, yes, building
my life here, but in a way that
builds my assets in the Akhira.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about
that, because I feel like, if I made
a list once of like, if this was
my last week, or if this was my
last day, what would I be doing today?
Like, what would my week look like if
this?
And although I found that very helpful and
very useful, because there were some very urgent
things that, you know, I would definitely put
in, get in order, right?
One thing I was thinking is, how do
you balance that with any long-term goal?
Because do you know what I mean?
Like most things that you're building, if you're
building a business, if you're building, if you're
studying, if you're investing in something that you're
trying to build, that is going to be,
of course, you have an intention for the
Akhira, but there's a worldly benefit in it
as well, in you building it.
It takes time, right?
And you can't think too urgently when you're
working on that thing.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, how do you balance that?
Oh, I think there's so much in our
Deen that gives us a way to balance
that.
I think we shouldn't be aimless.
We need to have purpose, and we need
to be working towards something.
The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, would leave
his house, and he was with purpose, even
in the manner that he walked.
He walked with purpose, right?
We should be working towards something, and we
should have a good opinion of Allah that
we can achieve, and we can get these
things, and we can do these things in
meaningful ways.
We should always be putting fresh intentions on
everything that we're doing as well, because we
know that the action is rewarded by the
intention.
So if something's sitting on an ikhlas, on
a sincere intention, then even if we don't
get to fulfill it, it's going to extend
beyond this life and weigh for us in
the next life.
And I think we should always be prepared
that, you know, hope for the best, have
khusna dhanbillah, think that you can achieve, work
for this life and the next, because I
think that's the al-muflihun, that's the most
successful people who make their efforts in this
world, work for them in the next life.
Of course, we have to work to survive,
and to live, and to function in this
world, but it shouldn't be...
So this is what I actually, in my
program, The Travellers, I talk about the distinction
between the resident mindset and the traveller's mindset.
The traveller mindset is passing through this life.
And so they have a purpose, but this
is not the destination.
They don't make this place their home.
They're not residents here.
They're passing through.
Whereas someone in the resident mindset, they make
this their forever home.
And the akhirah gets less and less and
less in their mind's eye or in their
focus.
And so with that hyper-focus of this
dunya, it becomes all about achieving in this
life.
And that's when we start to lose our
way.
And it can be very nuanced.
It's not always in the obvious ways, you
know, with the distractions, and the busyness, and
the over-consumption of knowledge, and information that's
out there, and nafs.
We have our nafs, we're always contending with
as well, and inherent states that we need
to be vigilant over.
That's why I talk about a state of
vigilancy within, and self-knowledge, always checking in.
What's my intention?
What am I working towards?
And making sure that we are keeping both
this world and the next in mind as
we do things.
I think one of the things that probably
really became clear to me when I was
thinking, you know, as they call it, mortality
motivation, right?
When I started having mortality motivation, was apologizing
quickly.
That's one of the things that really changed
for me in my life.
Like, I don't feel comfortable leaving any kind
of misunderstanding, or, you know, argument, or slight...
Even if the other person is wrong, right?
Or I think the other person was wrong.
I want to be at peace with that
situation, you know?
So I think one of the things that
having that kind of thinking about the akhirah,
and realizing that you're just here, you never
know when you're gonna go.
Or actually, you never know when that person's
gonna go.
One of the things this helped me with
is sort of knocking my ego down a
bit, and just being like, you know what?
I would rather have the peace of mind
of us being aligned, and us being at
peace with one another, than, you know, me
just holding this grudge, or you having some
negative feeling in your heart about me, you
know?
So I think that's one of the good
things, you know, just apologizing quickly.
Even if you're apologizing just to say, listen,
I'm sorry that conversation went really badly, you
know?
It's not necessarily apologizing because you did something
wrong sometimes, right?
It's just that you wanted it to go
well, and it didn't go well, for example,
right?
Or if there's a misunderstanding, just reaching out
to somebody, and just sorting it out, you
know, rather than allowing it to linger.
How do you feel that thinking in that
akhirah-focused way has maybe changed some of
your everyday practices?
First of all, I just want to say
that I love that you mentioned that.
It's something that I talk about and coach
around a lot, this idea of the art
of forgiveness.
And there's such a precedence for it in
our deen.
You can see our history is littered with
examples, even in the most extreme cases, where
the prophets, the sahabas, they would choose forgiveness.
They have a right to not forgive.
People have a right to not forgive and
to claim their rights in the akhirah, but
the recommendation is always that it's better to
forgive.
And I think, you know, Allah designed us,
He created us, He knows how we operate,
and just like you said, you feel better,
so you can function.
There is a liberation in forgiveness, because when
we keep that hostility and that resentment and
the grudges internally, it eats away on the
inside.
Some psychologists say it's the worst emotion to
hold, because it's the one that eats away,
as the famous saying goes, and it's like
drinking the poison and expecting the other person
to die, or whatever, or get harmed.
But also, can I just say, the reality
of the fact that the other person could
pass away, and that you might regret having
not sorted that thing out, do you know
what I mean?
That's what I mean.
The pain of that, and the sort of
permanence of that, because, you know, once they're
gone, you can but make du'a, and
you wouldn't be able to make amends with
that person, right?
Honestly, one of the biggest, and I've been
coaching for nine years, and I've coached, alhamdulillah,
by Allah's mercy, hundreds of people around the
world, alhamdulillah, and I can say one of
the biggest issues that comes into my coaching
space is so-and-so did this, so
-and-so did that, and they're hurt, and
they're suffering, and they're struggling, and they're combative,
and they, you know, can't let go, they
can't let go, they can't let go, but
Islam, the tools that we have in our
deen are tools that unshackle us from these
lower ego spaces within, and this is why
I say vigilance is so important, self-vigilance,
understanding yourself, and I believe this is muhasabah,
this is self-evaluation, this is so essential,
and being able to choose forgiveness, and why?
And exactly as you said, because you've got
more important things to think about and worry
about, and you're focused on that bigger journey,
but in terms of your question, what changed?
I'd say everything changed, everything changed.
Things that I prioritized before just became a
lower priority, things that I couldn't let go
of before, I think I'm so much more
able to let go of, I think the
biggest thing for me, for sure, is my
conversations with Allah, it's something I just couldn't
live without now, like even yesterday, I was
in the park, and I spent half an
hour walking up and down the park, just
talking to Allah, thinking people must think I'm
mad, but, you know, just...
They probably think you've got headphones in.
Maybe, I hope so, yeah.
Talking to someone on the phone.
But just because it's the only source of
strength and understanding.
True understanding.
True understanding, and knowing who Allah is, that
He's not doing this, or He doesn't test
people because, you know, He's against them, astaghfirullah,
that He's al-wudud, He's the most loving,
He's ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim, you know, He's
all that He says about Him, subhanAllah.
And so you know that there's something behind
all of this.
And so it helps you, you know, to
get through the day and get through things.
I mean, I'm almost three years into my
journey now, alhamdulillah, so I'm in a very
different space now, shukr, alhamdulillah.
But yes, that's why I said I don't
really recognise the person prior, when I look
at photos and I actually see ignorance in
a way, because it's like she had a
cognitive understanding of this reality, that this world
is a blip.
And yes, of course, you know, I was
practising and I was, you know, conscious of
that, but not to the degree that I'm
aware of it now.
And when you're aware of it to a
greater degree, you can't approach things in the
same way.
Same way.
You can't, you know.
Like you said, a veil has been lifted.
A veil, and you can't put the veil,
you don't want to put the veil back
on.
I don't, you know, you don't fear death,
you don't, because when someone that was so
close to you has gone through that transition,
has gone through that, you just recognise the
reality of it.
And in a way, you just, you know,
you abide in time in a way, but
you just want to make this time count.
And you want to make, you know, every
second counts.
Every second.
And, you know, that's why I, you know,
created Awakened Hearts Academy and the Traveller's Programme
to, to create this Traveller's Mindset movement.
Like that's something I personally feel so purposeful
around.
I don't want to keep it just contained,
you know, with myself.
And this is a, this is always, I
always look at it as, as for me,
first and foremost, before anyone else.
I have to live this truth.
But if I can, as a collective, you
know, in Surah Al-Fatihah, something we say
all the time, SubhanAllah, Allah, there's the ayah,
You alone do we worship, right?
I just found out recently that Na'budu
is a collective worship.
It's not, it's not, you're not talking in
the singular term.
I worship, you alone do I worship.
It's you alone do we worship.
So we, as an ummah, as a human
race, we're a collective.
And we need to help one another.
And we need to be that support for
each other and go on this journey together.
JazakAllah khairan for sharing that with us.
I want to just change the topic a
little bit now and talk about something completely
different, which is, well, it's pretty different.
And that is business.
I think the reason why I want to
talk about this is because I'm seeing now,
I don't know if you've noticed this, but,
well, the internet has opened up for so
many people new opportunities that really didn't exist
before.
And I'm thinking that, you know, more and
more sisters are looking into entrepreneurship.
They're looking to like use the talents that
they have or the skills that they have
in the online space, for example, to reach
people, to get customers, for example, serve people,
but also make an income, you know.
What have you noticed about the online space,
the entrepreneurial space?
Like, what is good about it, first of
all?
Oh, I think it's amazing in the sense
of the platform that it gives us the
accessibility.
I mean, before, prior to internet, it was
very physical, isn't it?
We had to do everything offline.
We had to do physical events.
We had to travel to certain spaces.
We had to, you know, get people into
a physical room to reach them, you know.
Or phone people.
Or phone people, exactly.
Or write letters or, you know, snail mail.
Or, you know, so just in terms of
reachability, it was just far less.
And now with internet, the way that we
have it, you know, we can reach someone
all the way the other side of the
world in seconds.
Absolutely.
And it's become a very crowded space and
everyone's vying for that attention and that space.
And so the good thing, alhamdulillah, is that
it gives us a lot more opportunity.
It gives us a lot more reach.
You know, we can make use of software
and there's a lot of, you know, ways
to leverage the business and to make sales
and to bring in that income.
The opportunities are great, alhamdulillah.
So if there's a sister out there, for
example, and she's thinking, you know, I would
like to get into coaching.
Can anyone be a coach, do you think?
Like what, do you know what I mean?
Like some people are a bit sceptical of
the coaching space, actually.
And they're like, well, you know, it looks
like just anyone can just put themselves forward
as a coach.
And a part of me thinks, well, it
doesn't really matter in a way, because if
you see somebody further along the journey than
you in any sphere, right, I know myself,
I would be willing to reach out to
that person as a mentor, as somebody who's
been there, done that, you know, to benefit
from them.
Is that how we should view coaching or,
you know, how would you address, say, a
sister, for example, who's saying, you know, I
would like to be a coach.
Can I just coach in any area that
I'm ahead when it comes to other people?
Yeah, so this is a big question.
As I said, I've been in the coaching
space for nine years.
I've seen a lot happen in nine years.
I've seen it just explode.
And I've seen everybody want to become a
coach.
And I think if there's a sister out
there who wants to be a coach, absolutely,
if you feel a call into it, but
do it the ethical way.
Because coaching is very unregulated.
Literally, I could wake up tomorrow, anyone could
wake up tomorrow and say, right, I'm a
coach and start advertising.
There's no authority board, or there's no sort
of accreditation that they have to have to
be able to call them a coach.
As such, you find a lot of three
-day coaching training programs.
Someone will do three days and now suddenly
they're a master coach.
Oh, you mean like coaching accreditation?
Yeah, yeah, or NLP, things like this.
And we saw this get popularized and a
lot of momentum come into the Muslim business
space.
With that, with that, I've seen a lot
of unethical practices.
I've seen capitalization come in.
I've seen a lot of corruption come in.
I've seen people damaged as a result.
I've seen people who have not processed their
own stuff, trying to go and work with
other people and help them and actually cause
more damage and do a disservice to the
coaching space.
It's a bit of a mockery at the
moment.
I think there's a lot of people saying
there's quacks out there and they're no good.
And to be very honest, as someone who
has stood on the sidelines, and this is
not to say that I think that I'm
anything, or my coaching is anything, but just
as someone who observes a lot and sees
a lot and who strives as best as
I can to run an ethical professional practice,
you see a lot going on.
I know good coaches who've walked away because
they just couldn't take it anymore.
Take what anymore?
Formulas, blueprints, this kind of soulless marketing engine
that comes into it.
The sales element.
The sales element and the practice element.
I mean, there's coaches there that really shouldn't
be coaches because they've got such unprocessed stuff
within themselves and they haven't got coached.
They haven't invested in themselves, but they want
to go out there because there's money in
this.
And you can, as I said, you just
need to wake up one day, think I'm
going to be a coach, get yourself a
profile, get out there and put this stuff
out there.
But if we want to do this in
an ethical, meaningful way, then we need to
bring a focus, first of all, in where
am I at?
What is it that I have done to
work on myself, to put me in a
position where I'm in a stronger position to
help someone else and guide them through whatever
it is.
You don't have to be light years ahead.
It's what you said.
You just need to be a little bit
ahead, potentially, but you need to be very
mindful of yourself and your intentions and why
you're coming into this and be very mindful
of not following a lot of the footprints
that are out there and getting swept away
by that whole marketing engine that is out
there, which has become quite soulless.
I mean, it's all about numbers, targets, money,
income.
There is that practical side to the business,
but it shouldn't be at the expense of
taking your soul out of it.
Yeah, I was thinking about marketing the other
day, and I was thinking that, you know
how the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, he
encouraged business people to give sadaqa?
Because inherent in business is an element, or
it can be, an element of not lying,
but kind of exaggerating, right?
I mean, it's very easy to exaggerate, right?
When you're trying to sell anything, really, like
even when you're trying to promote a podcast
or anything you're trying to promote or market,
it's easy to fall into kind of exaggeration
that then, you know, really you don't want
to, obviously, you don't want to sell something
that doesn't have the description that you're saying
that it does.
That's on the one hand.
On the other hand, I know being an
author of a book, for example, there's no
point writing a book if people don't know
about it, you know, because I know there's
lots of authors out there who have written
books that are just in their garages, you
know, because they didn't have a mechanism to
kind of promote the book, to let people
know about it and then to distribute it,
etc.
So there is a practical, you know, especially
if you're trying to serve people, you're trying
to, you're trying to give them, bring them
results as well, you know, you want them
to know about your services, you want them
to know about the fact that you can
help them.
So how have you, like, if you were
to characterize what are the good practices in
marketing and what are the bad practices, like,
how would you kind of characterize those?
There's a few.
I'd say number one, be honest.
Be honest.
If anything, you might, you know, want to
sort of, like you said, you don't want
to grossly exaggerate and raise expectations and then
under-deliver, right?
So you always want to temper what it
is that you're saying that you can give
someone and you want to be always honest,
right?
And when I say temper, I don't mean
you have to go into this false modesty
of like, oh, I think I can, maybe
I can help, no, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying...
There has to be a level of certainty.
There has to be a level of conviction
and certainty.
Like when I offer my services to people,
I genuinely tell them what I genuinely think
I can, you know, serve them.
And the results you've had, for example.
And the results that you've had, what we've
had, and, you know, and just sort of
what it says on the tin, like this
is what I can do.
The problem that I have is when people
start using formulas and I think a lot
of it that we take from the secular
world and you know, funnily, and what we
find less and less of is authenticity.
What we find more and more of is
fakery and especially with AI.
Can you tell, I don't know about you,
I can tell.
I can tell a mile off.
There are some definite telltale signs and what
it does, I think it loses trust.
I think people lose trust.
If you do feel like you're talking to
a robot.
You feel like you're talking to, so specifically
in the, yeah.
Specifically in the industry of coaching.
It's very person to person, heart to heart,
I would say, you know, soul to soul.
Like you're working with individuals on their personal
lives.
There it's, I always look at it as
an honor and a privilege if someone lets
you in, there's such an amanah there, such
a trust there.
And I always look at it like, whatever
I put out goes to Allah first before
it goes to the person in front of
me.
And I need to stay vigilant of that.
And I would say that's a good practice
to have.
We should also have a collaborative viewpoint of
business.
It's not what can I get or when,
you know, it's all about me and what
can I, you know, sort of this poverty
mindset.
I need to get everything for me and
I can't share and I can't, you know,
I've got to contain all of this within
my copyrighted material.
I mean, I'm not pro plagiarism.
Example, being protective over your email list.
Well, just, you know, it was a practice
at the time of Rasul Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
in the marketplace.
If someone wasn't doing very well, it was
a practice that other market, you know, other
traders might send some of their business to
the other person who wasn't doing that well.
Does that happen today?
It should.
I think we try, you know, where we
can, we're like just support because it doesn't
take away.
And this is the beauty of our Deen,
right?
SubhanAllah.
And I think, you know, when we align
with that reality, it's actually so beautiful to
do business because when you give, it's not
in the sense that you give something, you
lose something.
It doesn't work like that.
You give something, you gain so much because
then what you could invite in is Barakah.
And the moment you get Barakah in something,
it increases.
And I'm sure we've all experienced that in
our lives, right?
Definitely.
And nowadays, I think there is, even in
the business space, you know, this understanding that
collaborations and, you know, like your network is
very, people look at your network, people benefit
from collaborations.
If they can benefit from you introducing somebody
else to them, that's actually something that they
value in you.
And we do see that, Alhamdulillah.
You know, we do see Muslim businesses collaborating
with each other and that's, Alhamdulillah, something praiseworthy
and something that we need to do more
of.
What if somebody was to say to you,
well, you know, you're being disparaging about, you
know, these formulas, okay?
But the formulas work.
You know, the formulas are based on human
psychology and, you know.
What's the end goal of the formulas?
If you word it in this way, you
get this result because like the numbers don't
lie, the results don't lie, right?
So are you saying that it doesn't work?
No.
What I'm saying is, what do you lose
in the process?
Right.
Personally.
Your soul.
That's what you lose.
Personally, I mean, exactly.
It's like in the corporate space, you climb
up the career ladder.
Yeah.
Sometimes as you climb, and I hear this
from my corporate clients, and there's so many
that just leave and walk away.
So many.
Because as they climb that ladder, it works.
They get higher status jobs.
They get higher rankings.
But parts of them start to- What
are they losing?
They start to lose parts of their soul
and they have a big fat paycheck at
the end of it, but they're not inside.
There's such an inner disturbance.
There's no settlement and peace inside because they're
so misaligned.
And so the same thing with these marketing
engines that be, some of them, honestly, sometimes
I find it insulting.
Like when I read some of the emails,
I'm like, do you really not think that
we can't see the manipulation here and there?
And yes, I understand that they use psychology
and all of that.
And look, to what extent we use that,
that's an individual preference, right?
I personally don't like to use, I tried
not to use any of that.
I just, if I've found, if I speak
from my heart and I present just from
my heart, what I feel I can offer,
alhamdulillah, shukr alhamdulillah, bi hurmati l-mursaleen, I've
not felt- Authenticity.
I think that's what you're- Authenticity.
And, subhanallah, I think, you know, to your
point about, you know, it works, the money
comes in.
What's the end goal?
And I think that's where we need to
be the clearest.
When I'm putting out a program, when I'm
putting out something, service, whether it's, whatever the
service is, what is my intention?
Am I after just the numbers and the
money?
Am I just following the money trail?
And yes, then you can use any formula,
any blueprint, any step, anything that's going to
get you that, but what's the value of
it at the end of it?
What's the value of it if you've take,
if you've got superficiality there, if you've got
fakery there, if you've left your authenticity on
the table, if you're hiding a part of
your honest self because it doesn't align with
this formula.
I'll just share this story with you.
Many, many years ago, I hired a digital
team and, you know, they wanted to test
something out and they wanted to use, and
I've never used it before, anyone else's sort
of marketing tools.
And they said, let's try it all work.
And instinctively, I knew I shouldn't.
But I thought, do you know what?
Okay, I'm trying to go, maybe I should
be open-minded.
You know, let me give it a go.
We put out about two, three emails and
subhanAllah, people started messaging me saying, this is
disappointing.
This is not you that wrote this.
And I felt so bad.
And I felt so bad.
So your people knew you so well.
They know, yeah.
They're like, can we have the real Hustler
back?
We don't want the robot.
We don't want the marketing machine.
And I had to say to my digital
team, stop, abort, abort.
Like, I don't want to continue this because
I feel like I'm doing a disservice to
the people who are genuinely there, who want
to connect with what I genuinely have to
say.
And, you know, yes, there is some element
of marketing, of course, you know, we want
to get our products out there.
We want to be of service to the
ummah and we need to use some methods
of marketing, but we don't want to lose
our soul along the way.
But Hafsa, there must be brothers, maybe, especially
watching this and they might be thinking, well,
I've got bills to pay, you know, this
style of marketing, you know, bro marketing, as
people call it, I have to do it
because I need the numbers.
I actually feel that it's not just brothers,
the sisters as well out there doing business
who have fallen into the thinking that this
is the only way to do it.
There's a gold standard of selling and marketing
and it's that, you know, bro marketing, as
you mentioned, you know, it's very salesy, it's
very forced, it's very driven, it's very result
driven.
And we think that there's no alternative to
that, that if you sway from that, if
you stray away from that, that you're going
to lose out money.
And I don't believe that's true.
And, you know, I'll share with you a
story.
I, a while ago, I worked with a
marketing team.
They were amazing, but they were following formulas.
And so they laid out a whole formula,
a marketing plan for my launch and my
product.
And I'm like a marketer's worst nightmare because
everything they do, I go in and undo
and sort of, I look at it as
at every point, if my sole stamp is
not there, then I don't want to put
it out.
And so at every point of the marketing
phase, I would go in and I would
edit, I'll take stuff out, I would reword.
So it ended up looking entirely different to
what we started off with.
And my marketing team was a bit worried
and they were like, you know, we're not
sure if this is going to work.
And I said, you know what?
We've been honest and we've done this with
Ihsan and we've just presented the truth and
inshallah it will be whatever it's supposed to
be.
And subhanAllah, by Allah's mercy, we smashed all
the targets.
Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah.
And they now use that as a case
study to show other organizations or companies that
they work with, that you don't have to
follow the formulas and you don't have to,
and you can get very good results.
Alhamdulillah.
And I think that authenticity sells, you know,
and selling is not a bad word.
To sell is not a bad word.
You can earn an honest livelihood through selling
and through, you know, marketing yourself, but in
soulful, ethical, honest ways.
And you can still create a very, very
good income in business doing it that way.
Yeah, I think when people get lost in
the sales, that's when it becomes counterproductive.
And like, for me, I think the mission
has to be number one.
The why has to be at the forefront.
If your why is very strong, the business
side of it is almost like a vehicle,
right?
To get the message, to get the benefits
for the people out there.
That has to be the driving factor because
if I'm doing it just for the money,
well, first of all, the stress levels I
put myself through then, because now I'm shackled
to this outcome.
Right.
And I don't have a purpose beyond that
or I lose my focus beyond that.
And it can be highly stressful.
As you know, business is not linear.
It's not like, you know, it's highs and
lows.
What gets you through the lows or what
makes you content is when you have a
purpose beyond just the financial returns or the
return on investment financially.
It is, you know, knowing that a life
has been touched and you've put something positive
out there.
And, you know, just because it didn't return
this time doesn't mean it won't return another
time.
But I think it's getting creative and just
honestly understanding that there are many ways to
do things and they can all be successful.
And there's not just one way.
And we don't have to follow these formulas
and these tactics and these marketing tools to
build a successful business.
Yeah.
And that sometimes I think the formulaic way
can have a negative effect on your business.
So, for example, I've actually seen sometimes some
coaches when they put their videos or messages
out, if you look at the comments, you
know, they're full of people saying horrible things
about them because they've either been stung or
they feel like they're being manipulated.
And some of this stuff is out there
in public.
So now it's going to be basically ruining
that person's reputation, right?
Well, your reputation, right?
And it just takes one or two bad
comments.
But we shouldn't live in fear of that.
But, you know, we've got to do our
best to not give anyone a reason, you
know, to say anything negative, you know.
And we've seen a lot of corruption in
the entrepreneurial Muslim space recently.
It's been a lot of scandals.
That's got to mobilize us to be even
more vigilant, more careful, more authentic, more real,
more sincere in whatever we do so that
we can be the forerunners of business space
as we should be because we have those
spiritual values as the driving force.
It's not separate.
It's not my Islam is here.
My business is here.
Islam was spread through trade.
So much of Islam was spread through trade.
Just from traders being so ethical, so morally
driven, so spiritually driven, people would become Muslim
just by watching how they conducted themselves in
business.
So, you know, that has to be the
driving force.
And when that's the driving force, Barakah comes
in many, many forms, subhanAllah.
Right, because I think, like you said, if
you're going into it with a mission, right?
Yes.
If you're mission led rather than led by
money or the fact that this is a
business, you're led by the fact you want
people to have this message and this result.
I don't think you can be a fake
person because, you know, your message will get
lost in the fakery, right?
And you don't touch people's hearts, basically.
Yeah.
And there's always going to be a discontentment.
We're always going to be chasing.
We're always going to be chasing the numbers.
And I, subhanAllah, and, you know, we have
so many stories.
You know, I remember doing a launch and
I remember some, this is a few years
ago, and we did the launch and somewhere
along the line, I got caught up in
the numbers.
Like you start with the digital team, you
start looking at the numbers.
Okay, what's the click rate?
What's the, you know, percent open rate?
What's the rate of sales and all of
that?
And I remember just feeling really off.
And then I got sick and we were
like a couple of weeks before launch and
I got really sick.
So I just had to stop everything.
And honestly, that sickness was the biggest blessing
from Allah because it literally forced me to
stop.
And when I stopped, I had to reevaluate
everything.
So when I reentered the launch, I completely
reset my focus, my intentions, let the numbers
go.
And I felt so much better, subhanAllah.
And, you know, it's at the end of
the day, what is it all for, right?
I know there's a practical side of it
if you have to pay bills and there's
a reality to it as well.
I guess everyone has their boundaries and what
they're able to do, but we always want
to be mindful of a few things.
Ethics, running as ethical a practice as possible.
For me, professionalism has to be right at
the top.
As Muslims, we have to do things with
ihsan.
So we have to strive with excellence.
And I think this one understanding is what
just makes business a pleasure and not a
stress.
Is that your rizq is written.
You put ihsan, you do what you can.
But what is written is exactly what you're
gonna get.
So if I do a launch and I
get 10 people, or if I get 100
people, I can say alhamdulillah.
Because I haven't got a person more or
a person less than what Allah knows is
best for me.
And it just takes all the stress of
the numbers and the targets and the whatnot
out, you know, because you just work with
what Allah has given you, say alhamdulillah.
And when, like you said, when you work
on a mission, if one life is touched,
that's amazing.
And that's what I was gonna ask you
next, actually.
First, I want to say, yeah, I do
find it quite disappointing when sometimes there are
coaches who I actually know in person who
are amazing people.
Like if you talk to them normally, outside
of the business space, outside of their emails,
yeah.
And then you read an email by them
and you're like, I wish you'd just speak
your own voice, you know, because your voice
is so wonderful.
Like, I want to hear from you.
I don't want to hear from your copywriter.
And yeah, I definitely feel that, you know,
especially if somebody has taken the time to
join your mailing list, they want to hear
from you.
Absolutely.
I feel it's a disservice.
I honestly feel it's a disservice to our
audience if we just put fakery out there.
And if we just, if we put things
out there- It doesn't even sound like
the tone of voice of the person.
Do you know what I mean?
It doesn't at all.
It doesn't at all, you can- I
know you didn't say that.
That's why I said it's insulting, right?
In some ways, because it's like, do people
not, like, do they not think that it's
obvious?
Yeah.
And the sales is the driving factor in
the emails, the sales.
Right, yeah.
But I believe when you're working with people,
it has to be what's going to serve
them that needs to be the driving force.
The money will come.
As we know, Ibn al-Qayyim, rahim Allah,
he said, if you chase this dunya, it's
like a shadow, you'll never catch it.
But if you turn your back, it has
no choice but to follow you.
And, you know, if we operate business that
way as well, with ihsan, obviously with strategy,
you're not just running an aimless business, you
have strategy, but you do it with ihsan,
then you just know what's written will come
and it's perfect.
I want to ask you lastly, what are
the sorts of things people seek coaching for?
Okay, if you could just give us like,
I don't know, a couple of examples of
the sorts of people who've come and what
kinds of things they come to you with
and what are the kinds of results you
feel they are able to get from coaching?
And, you know, like, what do you get
out of it at the end of it?
In terms of satisfaction?
Okay, so to your first question, it's quite
a long one.
Your first question, I think some of the
more common things that people come in with
is self-doubt, is feeling suffocated under expectations,
whether it's internal, whether it's external, whether it's
society, loss of identity.
They built an identity around their status, their
job, their wealth, their roles that they've created
in, you know, and they don't actually have
a sense of self.
And that is so impacting.
You know, the moment something goes off track,
it's so easy to destabilize and sort of
dysregulate and get, you know, in this whirlwind
of the problem.
There's no ground and there's no sort of,
you know, um, overthinking, I think is a
huge thing.
People live here a lot in their heads.
And, you know, they live in their heads
so much that they're cut off, you know,
head down.
And, you know, learning to listen within and
tap into that intellect of the body, the
wisdom of the body, the fitra, your heart,
your soul.
We have this whole existence and that's just
not just our mind.
In fact, I would say way more powerful
than your mind because your mind can take
you in all different directions and places.
And then when we follow our mind, we
disconnect from the wisdom of our body.
Your body has memory and understanding and fitra,
you know, there's that.
So they're kind of stuck in some, they're
stuck with something.
Stuck with a number of things or the
symptoms are present, but the root of it
is sometimes, very often, a lack of self
-knowledge.
Too busy caught up in the negative self
-talk.
And yeah, I'd say those are the more,
and then, you know, sort of having relationship
conflicts, whether it's with family, spouse, children, just
dealing with conflicts.
How, and getting into that sort of ego
battles with people and then the repercussions of
that because it becomes very reactive, very defensive
and we disconnect from that sort of fitra
state, grounded state.
And then we just, you know, the ego
is running its own show and then, you
know, it feels very uncomfortable and it never
brings about good feelings overall.
You know, we might say something.
I mean, I was talking to a client
the other day and she said to me,
she goes, but it feels so good in
the moment.
I said, yeah, I understand.
I said, but how did it feel a
week later?
She goes, it was awful.
I felt so remorseful.
I felt so angry, upset at myself.
You know, why did I go there?
And I said, you know, this is about
rising above your ego and the impulses in
that moment and tapping into that higher elevated
self, the better version of yourself and not
drop into that default lower self and giving
into that instant, that moment, holding yourself to
a higher standard.
That's always gonna feel better in the long
run.
And the kinds of results that people get
in your experience and what does it bring
you when you see those results?
It's life.
And I always say, I always say to
my clients, this is from the mercy of
Allah.
Whatever basira, insights we get, it's because Allah
willed it.
Whatever changes we experience, it's because Allah willed
it.
So credit to Allah always first.
But I can say it's been life changing.
People that came into my coaching space and
they were so demoralized.
They were so hard and harsh on themselves.
Life was heavy, difficult, didn't know who they
were.
By the end of sort of the coaching,
there's such a strong sense of self and
direction and purpose.
They know who they are.
They can let things go and see the
good in life and people and always trying
to keep that akhira in mind and working
on that bigger journey.
I know people that have left their corporate
jobs as a result of doing the coaching.
People who have rekindled ties with their family
that they cut ties with.
Changed, made entirely different life choices as a
result of just checking in and doing...
I see coaching as muhaseba.
And muhaseba is self-evaluation.
And we have to take evaluation of ourself
before evaluation is taken of us.
And I see coaching as muhaseba.
Incredible muhaseba.
Like I'm so grateful.
I get coached.
I still get coaching all the time because
I always want to hold myself accountable for
myself.
And it's such a...
I see it as a huge blessing, alhamdulillah.
And in terms of what I feel, I'm
just grateful.
I feel privileged, I feel honored and I
just feel grateful to Allah.
Truly grateful that if we can have a
small part in this journey and this work,
I look at it as a small part
of my offering to what I can do
in this life.
And for people to let me in, I'm
grateful.
And I learn so much from my clients.
Honestly, I feel so inspired by some of
them when they uncover their higher ambitions, aspirations
when they tell me what they're doing.
And I'm so inspired and I learn.
I learn so much from them as well.
So shukr, alhamdulillah, very grateful.
Alhamdulillah.
And Sister Hafsa, do you have any kind
of last message that you'd like to share
with our viewers and listeners about any of
the things that we've spoken about today?
Yeah, jazakallah khairun for having me on here.
Alhamdulillah, firstly.
And secondly, I would like to say, don't
forget we're on a speck.
We are on a speck.
Allah reminds us of this.
Actually, I just did this ayah in Surah
Al-Ghafir where Allah talks at a high
level of the different stages of life, how
you're a clot and then you're a child
and then you grow up and then you
go into old age and then death happens.
And then Allah says, and I'm paraphrasing, but
then Allah says, but I can take you
at any time.
And then the language that Allah uses, He
said, and I hope you understand.
And I just, that's so beautiful.
But that's the reality, that we think that
we're gonna be here for however long, but
actually, if I think, if my life was
taken right now, or if I knew my
life was gonna be taken in a week,
would I carry on in the same direction
or would I pivot?
And so if I would pivot, do it
now.
Do it now.
Do it now.
Jazakallah khairun, that's such a beautiful message.
I've really learned a lot from you today.
Thank you so much for coming.
And brothers and sisters, if you'd like to
find out more about Sister Hafsa's work, you'll
find some links in the description of this
video.
With that, I'm going to bid you farewell.
Do leave a comment, like the video, let
us know what you think about some of
the things that we've discussed in this episode.
Jazakumullah khairun, Subhanakallahumma bihamdik, ashhadu an la ilaha
illa ant, astaghfiruka wa atubu ilayk.
Wassalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.