Season 4 Ep 2

You're listening to the productive Muslim podcast season four Episode Two

productive Muslims. Welcome to the show. I'm your host me from my room, and I'm back with another episode. So in this episode I have for you a productive Muslim interview. These are interviews in which we speak to exemplary individuals from all walks of life, we get an insight into their productivity, and takeaway lessons that we can implement. And joining me on the show today is Sister Catherine Jones. She's a mother of five children, a certified parenting by connection instructor and a certified inside out paradigm coach. She's also the founder of the peaceful parenting Academy that Amy for summit and the great Ramadan giveaway, as well as a business performance coach for Muslim

women who wish to build a six figure business Mashallah many things. So without further ado, let's start our interview. Catherine, how are you? Well, it comes to l'amour de la habana. carto feeling pretty awesome. hamdulillah humbler? That's really good. Oh, awesome. This always makes him even more awesome. So we're looking forward to that. So let's just start off with an introduction. So can you tell us about yourself and what you do? Okay, so some of you may already have come across me. So I'm a mom of five children. My youngest is seven, my eldest is turning 20 Believe it or not blue. I am the peaceful parenting coach. And I teach people how to parent from a peaceful place inside. It's

something I'm really, really passionate about. And I have my five children to make sure I practice what I preach every single day.

I am also a business performance coach for Muslim sisters that are wanting to build a six figure business. And that is something I'm also very passionate about, because I believe, well, it's not that I believe I know we have absolutely amazing Muslim sisters in the ummah. And I know that living in the West, these days, it's getting harder and harder for us to really work in our field outside the home because of the negative rhetoric towards Muslims and the difficulty to practice our Deen in an office setting, often the issue of free mixing all this sort of thing, but also the juggling of family and being tied away from the home when you have children. And so we have a lot of sisters

that have amazing skills, abilities, experience qualifications, that can use those to do something extraordinary from home. And so I am really passionate also about helping them make that happen. And for another reason as well. Because if the world sees how amazing Muslim women are, because we're out there doing these amazing things, it's going to challenge their thinking about how they view Muslim women, what they've heard in the media. And it's going to be a really awesome way of doing dharwad just by being ourselves out there. And so my, I guess experience in business coaching comes from the fact that Firstly, I've had to work really hard to understand how to do online marketing in

order to build a peaceful parenting Academy. Yeah, but also because of 13 years of being in the IT industry, I have a lot of technical skills that I bring into it. So it makes it possible for me to do the technical stuff. Not that I'm allowed to do that anymore. I've got my team to do that. And that was one of the hardest thing to do is to let go of that. And allow us to do it. So I could be more productive when we're talking about productivity. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. I'm a mom of five, and I run two businesses from home. I am an active community member in my community. So for instance, next week, I'm doing a mosque tour with a bunch of grade twos about at grade twos, that

eight year olds. So one one of the things that I want to speak to you about at this interview is about goals and accomplishments. So can you tell us about a goal and or accomplishment that you've had in your life that you're proud of? It's still a work in progress, and I'm really proud of what I've accomplished so far. And I have not so much a goal but a vision for where it's gonna go. And that's the peaceful parenting Academy. The reason I'm really I guess, it's accomplishment that I'm really happy to share is because it's taken a lot of persistence, a lot of consistent, chipping away at it, a lot of learning a lot of investing, to get it to where it is now where I have my peaceful

parenting Academy, where I have people across the world, learning to parent their children from a peaceful place inside. I'm super passionate about it because honestly, what we're teaching and peaceful parenting is the answer to what's the answer to all

problems in the world. Because what we are doing is teaching parents how to manage their own emotions, manage what's happened to them, the hurts that they've had, so that they don't pass them on to their children. And secondly, teach them how to support their children emotionally, so that they develop to their full potential both emotionally. And intellectually. There's so much focus on child development in the intellectual sense. Like, we want children to memorize the whole core, and we want them to be great avid readers, we want them to be able to write really well, we want them to be able to be, you know, do maths really well, you know, so there's a lot of focus on teach, teach,

teach, teach, and that's the intellectual development. But there's not a lot of focus on the emotional development and the to actually go very much hand in hand, and people don't realize that. So I'm teaching this kind of way of parenting, it's the solution to that to ending domestic violence, it's the solution to ending, you know, bad family patterns that that have been passed down generation for generation. So I'm really passionate about that. Because myself, I've been through experiencing what it's like having inherited the family pet my own family's patterns. And things happened to me, that's happened generation after generation of women in my family. And I made this

commitment when I was 17, I was going to break that pattern. And I actually had no clue what I meant when I was actually, I just wanted to break the pattern, I didn't know what that was going to mean. And so this whole peaceful parenting is the breaking of those family patterns, the breaking of the the negative family patterns, if you've got good family patterns later. Now, of course, we want to keep them, I'm talking about negative stuff about the abuse of children, or the neglect of children, or the addictions, or the violence and all these other things that go on in society, even in our Muslim families, even though it's just so contrary to our religion. So it's the answer, it's the

solution. So to me, you know, to have now established the peaceful parenting Academy to have quite a lot of students now having gone through the Academy, having some of my students now taking leadership roles in my Academy meeting, we're getting to the that maturity, that we are the leaders that they've come from within the community. And it's really exciting for me, having that my goal or my vision, I actually look, I really don't talk in terms of goals, I took more in terms of visions, and I can explain more about that later when we talk about productivity. But my vision is a peaceful parenting revolution in the Muslim world, I'm actually won a revolution. So I'm not there yet. This

sounds like such a noble path and a vision that you're taking on. And I'm interested to know, like, Can you take us behind the scenes and actually, tell us how you made that happen. Because like, a lot of us have, like, you know, great visions and great goals that we want to go to go towards and pursue. But it's, if we were to take a look at your particular example, where you're giving and what it took to get to where you are right now. So anyone who's who has like a vision, all I can say first up is you have to be so passionate about it if you're going to make it happen, because there are going to be so many what you'll perceive as failures, but they're actually just life lessons

that you're going to go through to get there. You're going as actually as a quote from Zaha sawari when I met her at the twins of faith conference, like a quote from her is failing your way to success. And that's pretty much how it is. So you have to have basically the grit and the determination to make it happen. You have to really believe in that goal and be really passionate about it to make it happen. Because life keeps happening. And this is what I find, particularly for women as a challenge is because we have families we have children around us we have responsibilities We are the carers tend to be the carers in society. Yes, life happens and life gets in the way of

actually reaching your goals. And so it's about really establishing how you can balance life and keep until you're on task and on your goals. And the way I've done that is I've made sure all the way along I've had the right people helping me whether that is helping me in terms of doing things with me, or in terms of investing in coaches, the people who are going to teach me what I need to know who are going to back me who are going to push me

so much

Because I want to build a revolution, I've actually established a really complex network of people who, who I rely upon for various elements of my business. So I have a coach who helps me with copywriting. Because yes, you're getting your message out there in a clear way, in a way that people are going to relate to is, is totally critical. I have my coach that I work with that I am helps him with strategy. So while I'm really good at strategy, because of my type of analytical background, when it comes to your own business, it's very hard to be strategic on your own, because you get so lost into all of your ideas. Yeah, I have so many ideas, I want to do them all, when I need somebody

to go, Well, those ideas aren't going to get you to where you want to go. But these ideas are, these are the ones to focus on. So someone that can look at the bigger picture and kind of help you prune off all of the wonderful, bright, shiny objects that you want to follow instead of actually do what you need to be doing. Yeah, I also have people accountability in place, I have people who are keeping me accountable that I'm answering to every week in what I'm going to achieve, because I am really pushing some really big, big visions in what I want to achieve with my business. Now, not everybody perhaps needs to go to that link. But you need to put that support structure in place, you

do need people if you think that you can just sit on your own at home, and suddenly build an empire when you're trying to juggle husbands in laws, parents, children, and all that all the challenges that they bring to the table, and the community and everything else, your own house, you know, your own physical health as well. You're you're dreaming? If you don't think that you need help to do it there is there's no way I would have achieved all of this if I tried to do it on my own. Yeah, so pretty much whatever you want to do, you can't do it alone, like you need to have, you need to have people. I mean, you can't just live that hermit lifestyle and say, hey, look, I'm going to do this.

And I'm going to achieve this. And then and I don't need anyone's help. And any anyone who thinks that that's how it's worked. For anyone out there, what you've got to realize is, yeah, there's in all of these amazing people out there. They're like the figurehead of a business, but behind them will be

always amazing team of people. Yeah. And the thing that I've always had in my mind is working towards the the people that are my team, being from the Alma being this, my sisters in Islam. And I mean, that isn't quite the full case. At this moment, I have coaches and things that aren't Muslim, because they've got what I need right now, in terms of my own learning, and in terms of pushing pushing me. But as far as within my business, being the leaders that other parent coaches, the people that are going to be a part of the peaceful parenting Academy, I want them to come from within the community, so that it's also empowering Muslim women within the community to have their

own living as well. All right. So what would you say in all of this has been your biggest challenge? And how did you overcome it, like your own personal struggle that you've had? We've had, it's mostly the children, because I have children of all ages, and we've had all sorts of challenges. So we've gone through so much, um, my children, my first three children, and I, we went through domestic violence. So my marriage was violent, we had to so as a result of that there's been a lot of repercussions in my children's own emotional well being as a result of the hurt that they experienced from being in that marriage. So we've gone through a lot of angry teens angry teen, take

a very distracting. And I've gone through, we've gone through a lot of racism in this country, we've gone through both of my teen boys being racially assaulted by the police here. Now when the police are the ones insulting you, who do you go to for help? It's actually really hard. We had to really battle the court system. And the only way we managed to make it go away was we kept insisting get the mics off the police and hear what really happened. And eventually they backed down. But all of these things you can imagine a very stressful there. And so as a result of all those things going on, I had one of my son's show sort of end up with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, where

he would just paste the whole house at night. And then he couldn't get up for school in the morning.

And so and then having all these physical things. So the biggest challenge for me has been really big things happening. And that's fine. Because I look at it, I go, Well, you know, a Hamdulillah, Allah subhanaw taala has blessed me with so much resilience has blessed me with the knowledge of psychology to be a really strong person. So of course, my tests are going to be big tests, aren't they? Because I love burdens. And

the more we can bear the harder the tests, it's kind of like, Oh, well, you know, I've, it's to be expected. So part of it is that attitude is, is having that Islamic attitude to what's going on. The other part is not allowing yourself to just sink into those problems. And instead going, there's that picture that vision, okay, if I sink, I, how can I make that happen? It's not going to happen. So are you. So it's actually about having that mindset of, I'm not going to allow myself to get lost into all these problems, I'm not going to allow myself to sink and part of not allowing yourself is then getting the help you need. So there was one morning that I had, I was just having a really like

difficult time, there was so much happening in my business, because that's the other thing in the sort of work that I do, I have a whole lot of people who are demanding on me who also come with big problems. It's no surprise that because I've been through domestic violence and all these sorts of things that I end up attracting a lot of women in those sort of situations wanting to be supported. So, um, there was this one morning where it all got so much and I was very off track. And I ended up having a car accident, nothing big it was between me and a pole.

I would did something so stupid in the, in a moment that I hit a pole. And and it was like, okay, instead of going, Oh, no, the car's a mess. Now, this is more bills, and bla bla bla, and then just getting lost in it. I went, Ah, that's a sign that I need to ask for help. And so before the hour was out, I messaged my coach who said, When can you book me in, I need a session, I'm off track, things are really going off the rails, I can't let that happen. So that's what it's about. It's about knowing that these things happening isn't like, Oh, woe is me, I'm being punished or woe is me. Why does it always happen to me it's about that's a sign I'm off track, I need to get back on

track, get the help, I need to do that. That's a good way to look at it. I mean, it was very embarrassing, because my 16 year old witnessed it. And he teased me for the whole week afterwards.

Hey, that's life. You know, it wasn't like, it was a wake up call, it was waking me up to the fact that I was burning the candle at both ends, I was getting my self to breaking point. And I had to stop that happening. Because the next thing would be something would happen with my health or something else would happen. And then I won't be able to keep it going. So So it's about really knowing you have to ask for help and not allowing yourself to get to a place where it's almost like no return. That's true. So with everything that you have going on in your life, how does a typical day look like for you. So for me, because it's really hard to get work done from three o'clock

onwards, once the kids finish school, I start my day really early. So basically, after fudger prayer, there's about a two hour block. But till it's time to get children ready for school. And so that two hour block, I work. And most of the time, I'm either teaching, because that's a time of the day that actually works with the rest of the world. Being in Australia, unfortunately, the rest of the world is sleeping, when we're awake. I use that time to have my appointments with clients, or teaching or that sort of thing. And so that's a really important time of my day. And then once they go to school, I have another chunk of time where I get other stuff done, I still might, I don't tend

to teach it that hour because only Australians are awake at that time. By then, by there we'll have some coaching calls for those that like it late at night in the UK or in the afternoon evening in the US. But mostly it's the time to do other elements of my business. But before that, actually I go on a beach walk with my friend. So straight after dropping kids off, I've got to do that exercise, get that clear head. Even though it's winter we go and we do it even if it's raining, because that cold wind blows all the cobwebs out of our head we feel quite refreshed afterwards.

Nice and and also having that connection with a friend like when we're walking we're solving the world's problems. And so we say every single problem and we also create problems

I know we're into problem solving. So we are really problem solving Pauline Hanson yesterday.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry, the non Australian audience probably don't know what we're talking about when we talk about her. She's our politician, that's the thorn in the side when it comes to women, and trying to work at Apollo parliament to make a point to try and get the burqa banned. So we're talking about that yesterday.

But that's beside the point. So haven't factoring in that social element, like connecting with someone who it's not someone who is like an energy drain, it's like someone who's an energy boost someone who you have really good productive conversation with. So you feel really connected and invigorated by their company, it's really important to have that in your week. So we do that three times a week. It's good for us physically, it's good for us emotionally. And and it makes it helps me be a lot more productive. And so then I will come home after exercising. And it'll be when I do

my Facebook Lives, which is where I'm engaging with my audience and inviting them to learn more about peaceful parenting or about my business coaching. It's when I will record my programs because all the kids are at school. And it's quiet, unless the buggy screech, and then I have to edit out buggy screeches.

So that's my quiet time to record programs or webinars and things like that.

And then in the middle of the day is the time that where I have my admin meetings, my checking emails, catching up on replying to Facebook's replying to comments in the peaceful parenting Academy for people who are going through the programs who have questions and things. Now reason I factor this because this is a very good productive thing that you need to think about, I think I got it from Brendon Burchard, is you don't do the emails and stuff at the beginning of the day. Yeah, because if you do that, that means you end up running your day according to someone else's agenda of whatever's coming through your email. Whereas if you look at that middle of the day, there's still

some time to answer things and programmed things in for the next day. But you still have managed to do your things for your day first, before other people priorities jump in front of you. So there's actually a key reason why that's at the tail end. And there's a new thing I'm about to put into my routine, because I'm discovering I'm feeling a bit flat. See, again, this is recognizing what's going on, and then putting things into practice to make sure that you can sustain your routine sustain, you've got to get to your goals, because if we're pushing ourselves too hard, it's not gonna work. So what I'm realizing is at the moment, I'm being working really intensely, that by the

time the kids coming home, I'm quite flat. And that's not fair on them. So I'm thinking about what do I factor into my day around 230, where I finish work, and I do something, to revive myself ready for my kids to come home, because it's not fair on them, that they just get me as this flat person that had enough of everything for the day because I started work at 530. That's not their fault. That's my choice. So that's I haven't quite worked out what that is.

It might come into in the form of a walk or something. But it's really about factoring in time to switch off of work so that I can switch into family mode, and be there and be connecting and be engaged with my children. Because that will need to meet in that afternoon evening time. That's true. Well, we're actually near the ending of our interview. And so before we end off, I just want to ask you a few like quick questions. And Okay, so the first one that I have here is what is a book, a video article that you've come across recently that has helped you in your personal growth book, video or article, I have to say that one book, because I don't get a lot of time to read books

I live, I tend to try and get to listen to books in the car when I'm driving.

But one book is it's just forgotten the name, how to mind like, it's by Dan Siegel. And it's all about the teen brain. And that was really helpful because it really helped me understand my teenagers better. Yeah, it's actually something I've now incorporated in my teen peaceful parenting for teens program as well because I think it's really important for parents to understand this. So it's helped me be a lot more patient and understanding with my teenagers, which in turn has actually helped them be a lot more on track. And so that has a big impact because that impacts everything when you're when the teenagers are on track. Everything runs so much smoother.

So that's

called brainstorm. Right? All right. The goal? Is that into our show show notes. Yes. He

talks about the brain, the brain? Yeah. Because there's a lot happening in their brains teenager.

And it makes a lot of sense what they've discovered. It's not what we think it is. It's not the hormones, and it's not it lack of impulse control, it's something completely different. I'm going to leave it with that level of why you can't you can't have it hanging. So what is it? Because I always thought it was homemade sitting, Paul said, That's right, everyone thinks that. Um, so the brain is going through quite a transformation at that age. And so one of the things he describes is, you know, when you do spring cleaning, and yeah, how lycia before it gets cleaner? Yeah, yeah. Well, their brain is going through a pruning, which is a bit like a spring cleaning. And so things get

Messier before they get cleaner. So that's the first thing that he said, that kind of went, Oh, that makes sense, because their bedroom kind of looks like their brain.

Most teams anyway. But the other thing is that the dopamine levels in their brain are very different to other times in life, they have a much lower level of

normal dopamine level, dopamine, that happy thing, they're the happy well being kind of hormone that we have. So when it's lower, there's kind of this seeking to make it higher. So that's why they're seeking to do things that are thrilling, that are going to give them a thrill, do you know like break the be bit rebellious and break the rules, because there's a bit of a thrill in it or drive too fast when they're getting their car license. And, you know, all these things that we think are just lack of impulse control, but no, it's them looking for that thrill to bump up their dopamine levels. And then the thing with the dopamine levels is when they get that thrill, it goes much

higher spikes much higher than for younger children and adults, you know, people at other ages. So they've got this dopamine level thing going on in their brain that's different. That makes you understand why it's not lack of impulse control, they've actually weighed up the options, they actually know, of the negative bad consequences of what they they're about to do. But they still do it anyway. Because there is this big waiting on the pros, because the Pro is the thrill, the fit that that buzz that they get out of it. And that so so it's kind of like their balances are off. And there's more weight on the reason to do it rather than the reason not to do it when they're weighing

it up in their mind. Wow, I never knew that night will nor did I until about a lot of senses. Something's like, yeah, yeah. So when you see teenagers doing dumb things, it's not because they're dumb. It's because their brains are wired differently. And so our job is not to come in and criticize them. Because how can you criticize some one for something that isn't? It's naturally inherent in them, that you come in and guide them becoming and guide them? and for how long does that go for like it like At what age? Does that kind of go down? I think I get there out of curiosity. I gather it's different for all kids. Um, but I have noticed having now had four gone

through 14 ages because I have two adult step sons. Yeah, that the sort of the age between 14 and 17 seems to be the key time that it's a struggle. And guess what? That's when they get the driver's license. Yeah, that's a Yeah, it's a seriously don't know how my how my parents were comfortable with me when I was 17 that I started driving because I get scared off that thought. I did some crazy things in the car like yeah,

it seems to start wearing off around the age My son is now because he's starting to become more sensible. He's 19 now turning 20 but the prefrontal cortex for the thinking part of the brain isn't fully developed until probably mid 20s. So the whole I'm really thinking well, doesn't fully mature until around 25. Anyway, so our expectation of teenagers to behave like adults is unreasonable. Because they're not yet they're not mentally Yeah.

Well, that's always like, you know, that you know, when you like, understand something, it just allows you to have more empathy or like, be able to like rather, yeah, like rather than criticize something like Oh, why are you like this or why this is not like this, but just like gaining more knowledge on that, like how that works, or you know, it can be any area, whether it be teenagers or just anything, and just understanding goes a long way. Understanding Yeah, included in my peaceful parenting for teens program, along with a whole lot of other stuff that I teach you because helps parents understand that

Coming down hard on your teens is actually pushing them away. It's not going to help. Hmm, that's true. That's true. You know, Catherine, there's so much I could like I'm so curious to pick up. But I know that the timing is just going. So I just want to end off asking a question that we ask all our guests when they come on is that how would you define a productive, most productive Muslim? Is someone who is using their time? Well, productivity isn't about that you're busy? Yes, I think people get the mistake that being productive is being busy being that if you look at the word productive, it comes from the word produce, being productive means that you're producing something.

And the first thing we should be producing is good deeds for reward from Allah, isn't it? Yeah. So that's the first thing. So yeah, making sure that when we are being busy, we're busy doing things that are producing something good, whether it's good deeds, whether it's helping us in our well being so that we can do a better job, because that can be even rewardable. You know, we can we can get reward for sleeping if we make our intention that we're sleeping in order to be strong the next morning to worship a lot more. You know, so, if that's being productive is where you can turn 24 hours into the worship of Allah, that everything that you're doing is benefiting you because you're

doing it with the intention to please Allah, that you're eating healthily, because you want a strong body so you can worship a lot better that you're sleeping, because you want to rest your body ready to worship a lot more the next day. So even though day to day things that we care for the baby, even cleaning the baby's nappy, or diaper, whatever language people use,

can be an act of worship because you're caring for Allah's creation. If you didn't do that, that that baby is going to be uncomfortable. So when you thinking in terms in that term, when you're doing everything, then that's being productive.

All right. So that brings us to the end of our episode today. For any links and resources that we mentioned in this episode, you can be able to find them over at our website productive Muslim doll calm. While you're there, you can also be able to find more details on how to connect with our guest. So I do hope you enjoyed this episode. do leave us your feedback over there in our show notes, and I look forward to reading them. So that's all for me today. Say inshallah. Until next time, remember, be sincere and work hard.