Assalam ‘alaikum, sisters! Subhan Allah, we are fast approaching the end of 2014. You, like many others, may be reflecting on how the year has unfolded. Are you on track with your goals? Are you feeling a sense of calm or are you overwhelmed? It is quite possible to be experiencing the latter, especially if you have a lot on your plate and the previous months didn’t quite go as you had planned.

Sometimes life throws challenges our way and we draw on our faith to get through them, but we may still feel a little bit anxious or off balance.

Life coach Sayeda Habib provides tips on how to reclaim your emotional balance in order to enhance your wellbeing and quality of life.

Alhamdulillah, Allah’s creation is dynamic; everything is moving and sometimes life moves at a pace with which we feel we just can’t keep up. In reality, whether we are keeping up or not, what really impacts us is our perception: how we experience ourselves and our life. How you gauge yourself is what determines your quality of life, doesn’t it? If you sense that you are coping with things, then you may well experience a sense of calm and balance. If you feel that you can’t keep up, then feeling overwhelmed follows. Reflect on a time when a few stressful things were going on simultaneously. How well did you handle them? Perhaps you were dealing with things on the outside (to others), but inside you were feeling depleted. Did you crave a sense of calm and peace? Perhaps you did. We need to experience a sense of balance and calm in order to be truly productive. Indeed, some people thrive on the energy of last-minute deadlines – of taking action, but that isn’t sustainable over a long period of time. Human beings need to come back to a sense of balance in order to experience life as joyful and fulfilling. So, let’s explore what balance means and how to regain our balance when we feel we need to. Begin with the following exercise in order to clarify your personal definition of balance.

Exercise

Keep a pen and paper handy and answer the following questions:

• What does balance mean to me?
• How do I know that I am off balance? (What are my thoughts about it? How do I feel? What do I do?)
• If my life were in perfect balance, what would I see, hear, feel and experience that would tell me that my life is in balance?
• What have I previously done to regain my balance? How well did it work/not work? (Why/why not?)

There is no right/wrong definition. Feel free to adapt your definition to what works for you. Once you are clear about what balance looks like in your life, go ahead and utilise the tips that appeal to you if you feel that you need to reclaim your sense of inner wellbeing.

Work inside-out

Are you busy from morning to night? If you are spending your days giving your energy to others without replenishing your reserves, you are bound to feel out of balance. You may feel very anxious and overwhelmed if you are giving, but your tank is running on empty. If you find yourself feeling exhausted, perhaps frustrated or even resentful, this is a clear sign that your energy reserves are running low. We aren’t just talking about physical energy here; we are talking about emotional energy and mental drive. These are often the ones that we are unable to replenish. So, if you attempt to regain balance while juggling your schedule, the attempt will probably be futile at this point. Stop, take a breath and focus within. What you will need to do is to carry out some self-care, even at the most basic level. Take a few minutes to do some deep breathing (as often as possible), make sure you are eating and get as much sleep as you can. Do something small to re-fill your heart. Focus on prayer, sitting still or even talking to a loved one. Focusing on building your inner energy will help you to deal with the challenges a little bit more effectively. Make self-care a priority, at least for a day or two, and feel the difference.

Address the outside next

Once you have been able to replenish your own energy a bit, then you can begin to look to re-create balance in your environment and within your relationships. We can feel very anxious, even ill, if an important relationship feels out of balance. First of all, divide your relationships into 5 categories:

1. Relationship with Allah (spiritual self)
2. Relationship with yourself (self-care/personal goals)
3. Relationships with family
4. Relationships within the community
5. Relationship with the world

Take time to figure out which of your relationships feels the most out of balance. It may be that you need a little more time to reflect on your life or perhaps to pray. It may be that a conflict remains unresolved or that you may be feeling guilty for not giving a loved one enough time. First, identify which relationships need a little special attention. Next come up with one or two things that you will do to regain balance in that area. Remember, if there is an unresolved conflict, it will result in anxiety if not dealt with, so find a way to get into conversation and resolve the matter – you’ll be glad you did. Next, deal with any issues within your physical environment. Clutter, disorganisation or having too many tasks pending can also lead to a great deal of anxiety. Either scratch the tasks that seem unrealistic or schedule things in a digestible way. As long as you’re moving forward with things, you should find your sense of inner wellbeing returning.

Bring yourself back to the moment

Do you feel that you have to multi-task? Most sisters say that they would love to do more, if only they had the time. Multi-tasking on a regular basis means that you are forcing your attention in different directions. In addition, your mind will not be in the moment; without realising it, you are thinking about the next thing and the next. These patterns will lead to shallower breathing, more movement and perhaps going into fight-flight mode without realising it. We don’t often realise it, but life is lived in the moment. You can’t repeat the past and you can only live into the future through the present. If you find yourself feeling off-balance, then rest assured that you are living away from the present. The first step is to reduce the multi-tasking. Focus on one task at a time. If you need to, set yourself a small chunk of time for each task. It is more effective to chunk things down into digestible bits than to do many things at once. Give it a go and you will notice that you will find yourself calming down over time.

We all face challenges managing our time and our wellbeing, given that we want to do more with our lives, alhamdulillah. I hope that these tips will provide you with a few tools that you can use in order to regain your balance. Insha Allah, I hope that we can all be productive and live our lives with wellbeing.

The post [SISTERS] A Short Guide to Reclaim Balance in our Lives appeared first on ProductiveMuslim.com.

Last month, life coach Sayeda Habib shared tips on how to get empowered. This month, she guides us on how to follow up with tips on creating a compelling life purpose for sisters.

Assalaam ‘alaikum sisters, and welcome to this article on creating an inspiring life vision. Take a moment to reflect on when you were younger. Someone probably asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up. What was your answer?

Does your career or life path reflect the answer you gave then? A child’s imagination allows him or her to be playful, to imagine being more than one thing, to have more than one dream. But as we grow, life’s disappointments begin to taint our dreams.

Something doesn’t turn out as we’d hoped and it holds us back from wanting more or even believing that it is possible for us to live how we truly want. Creating a life vision can be challenging because of our internal obstacles, but this just makes it even more critical. If we don’t have a dream, we never have a chance of fulfilling one. It’s as simple as that.

Facing Life’s Uncertainty with A Clear Vision

Take *Kouther’s example (*name changed for privacy). She was very unhappy when she came for coaching. She had failed her university course in medicine, she had no motivation to keep trying and her family were pushing her to start again. She knew that she hated it, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to do instead. The stress at home was also taking its toll on her health.

Through coaching, she discovered that she wanted to make a difference in her life, not through medicine, but through law instead. She mustered up the courage to go back to do the course she wanted, but following her dream had a cost. Her family were still quite unhappy. Yet, she believed in her vision and chose to continue.

Over time, she has now built a successful career and is really happy and fulfilled. Alhamdulillah, seeing that she is doing so well, her family have come around and things are getting better between them. Kouther had to face her fears, but having her vision in front of her made those challenges slightly easier to face and she is glad she did.

Would you like to have something compelling you to live a bigger life? If so, then read on. Let’s explore a few simple steps to how to get going.

Step 1: Life Vision Defined

So, how do we carve out a life vision, and essentially what is it?

A life vision is exactly that: a “vision” or a dream for your life. It represents what you want your life to be about. Your life vision will inspire you towards action throughout your life, even when things get challenging. Your life purpose is the meaning you choose to give to your life.

For example, making a difference to the Muslim community through your talent would be something that could call you to action for years.

Step 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Carving out a compelling life vision requires reflection. The best place to begin is at the end. In terms of a life vision, a compelling one is usually big enough that work would remain even after we are gone.

1. Take a moment to close your eyes and imagine that you have passed on. There is a gathering in your honour, and people are talking about you, the life you lead and the impact you had upon them.
2. Listen in; what are they saying about the kind of person you were? What did you do in your life that had a positive impact on them? How did you make people feel? What did you leave behind
3. As you reflect, notice how you are feeling as your inner wisdom speaks to you. These answers will give you some insight on the legacy you want to leave behind. These answers will give you an important insight on what you would like your life to be about.
4. The next step is to notice where you currently are. Are you living a life that reflects this vision? If so, what is it that you are already doing? Make sure to make a note of this; it will help you to begin formulating your vision at the next stage.

Step 3: Create a Compelling Statement

Now that you have an idea of the legacy you wish to leave behind, it is time to begin building a compelling vision statement. This process can take some time, but it can be a lot of fun. I suggest that you ask someone who you trust to help you with this part.

1. Sit down together and allow your partner to ask you some questions around what you noticed in your visualisation. What were you doing? What kind of difference were you making?
2. Ask him or her to jot down the key value words that come out. There could be a big range, so just allow the words to flow. For example, you may notice words such as inspire, enhance, help, teamwork, passion, creativity, etc. There may be things like “make a difference” or “helping the community”.
3. Remember that this isn’t about the specific actions you were taking, but more about the impact you were having on those around you and the world. You want to notice the bigger, value words. A life vision applies to all the areas of your life. It isn’t about one task or group; it is about expressing your vision through whatever it is that you do.
4. Don’t worry if you find this challenging at first. You will get the hang of it. Just keep going back till you find words that start to feel right for you.
5. The next step is to bring these words together in a statement of no more than 10 words. This may be more challenging than it initially seems, but keep going until you come to something that really inspires you. For example,”I live to create positive change and enhance potential” or “I live to create happy moments through expressing my art” are just a few examples to get you thinking along these lines.

Step 4: Make it Come Alive

The next important step is to make your statement come alive. Until now, your life vision is a wonderful idea and a statement that calls you to act.

But we need more than this; we need actual representations of what living our vision would look like in all areas of our life. For example, how you make people happy in your personal life would be very different to how you bring happiness through the product or service you deliver.

1. Begin to look for pictures that represent how you would like to express your vision. These pictures can be of anything; all they need to do is represent your vision for you.
2. Buy a poster board and put it where you can see it regularly and start posting these pictures.
3. You can keep adding to your vision board as you go along. Not only will this process be fun, but it will allow your mind to start looking for avenues on how you can truly begin to express your life purpose, In sha Allah.

Step 5: Create Tasks & Share

Another practical step that is important to take is to brainstorm some practical action steps that you will take to express your life purpose.

1. Think about two or three things you can do at work, at home and with friends or family.
2. Plan some actions out and share them with people you trust.
3. Let them know what you are up to, share your inspiration with them and In sha Allah they will support you in making it come to life.

Of course, the most important thing to remember is that if you find that something isn’t quite working, then go back to the previous steps and play around with them till you get to what feels right. If something doesn’t feel right then it probably isn’t. Be brave and work on it till it feels congruent with your values and who you are as an individual.

I hope that you will find this journey rewarding and enjoyable. Having a purpose that inspires us makes all the difference in the quality of life that we lead. My very best wishes to you on this very important journey!

This article originally appeared in Issue #50 of SISTERS Magazine, the international magazine for fabulous Muslim women co-founded and edited by Na’ima B. Robert, author of From My Sisters’ Lips.

The post Creating A Powerful Purpose appeared first on ProductiveMuslim.com.

Life coach Sayeda Habib talks about the importance of language and the results we experience in our lives.

Asalaamu ‘alaikum sisters! With another year coming to a close, it is natural for us to be entering a stage of reflection. You may already be taking stock of how this year went by. Are you noticing what you didn’t achieve? Are you noticing what got left behind? Perhaps you are aiming to fill some of those gaps in by the end of the year. This time of year can be very tricky. We may be finding ourselves either quite motivated to see things through or perhaps feeling a little bit disheartened or disempowered.

What we may have achieved (or not) will have a lot to do with how we are feeling about our lives and, indeed, ourselves. Of course, in life, there are many considerations. Events that are beyond our control, our health and what happens with the effort we put in. There are so many variables and I imagine that you think about a lot of them.

However, one variable that indeed has a lot to do with how we end up experiencing life is often left unexplored – that is the variable of language; how we speak to ourselves. How we speak to ourselves is a measure of how we are treating ourselves and how we perceive the self and everything in our life. Our language impacts our results as well.

How Language Impacts Our Life Results

Let’s understand this through an example. I’ve known Nasreen as a personal acquaintance for a very long time. Her language has an interesting pattern. Each time we speak, I notice that she uses words like “terrible” or “not too good” when I ask her about how life is going.

She also compares herself with all her friends and feels that she doesn’t do as well or look as good. She complains about having to go out to social events because of her husband, yet she insists on going even though she doesn’t enjoy them. The results in Nasreen’s life are a reflection of her language. She isn’t enjoying life, her health is poor and her relationship with her spouse is suffering. Her focus is on what is wrong in her life; she hardly notices anything that is going well. This has become a habit for her.

Nasreen doesn’t realise that she is disempowering herself through the language she uses. For example, if you keep telling yourself that something is difficult, then your experience of it will be that it is difficult. Instead, if you begin to tell yourself that you are taking things in your stride, then things will become easier.

The mind works like a filter. Information comes in from various sources and it is our mind’s job to filter information out, according to our own unique beliefs, values, culture and preferences. Another way to understand this is to imagine a coffee or water filter. Essentially, what you get is a filtered version of the same product at the other end. So, if we bring negativity into our minds to begin with, what we will get is something that has a disempowering quality at the other end. However, the opposite is also true.

We can train ourselves to bring more productivity in to begin with, so that we feel further empowered and inspired to create more fulfilling lives. Let’s look at a couple of ways in which we can begin to do this.

Step 1: Raise Awareness on Self-Talk

We are talking to ourselves all the time, but we don’t realise it. If you listen in, you will hear your internal dialogue. It is that very voice in your head that may have said, “What internal dialogue? I don’t have any.”

Having an internal voice is something we all share. What separates the empowered from the disempowered is the quality of our internal dialogue. The good news is that we can shift this quality with practice. The first step, however, is awareness.

Most of us aren’t aware of how we speak to ourselves, yet it is fundamentally important in shaping the quality of our life. So, if you find that you are not as productive, as inspired or even as positive as you would like to be, then now is the time to really figure out how it is that you are speaking to yourself. This is a slightly challenging process, but not impossible.

1. Get yourself a notebook that you can keep with yourself all the time.
2. Over a period of 3 days, take time out at various points of the day to write in your book.
3. Each time you find yourself thinking about something, just write down the thoughts that come to you.
4. Remember, don’t censor anything, just let your thoughts flow on paper and don’t read what you have written. Just let it be.
5. The next step is the challenging one. I suggest that you find someone who you trust to help you with this. Have this person (or yourself if you really don’t want to share) go over what you have written over the days.
6. Ask them to highlight any thoughts that may seem a little bit negative or disempowering to you. Ask them to look at it objectively, just to notice the words, without judgement.
7. Then ask them to share what they picked out. Have a look at the highlighted thoughts and reflect. On a scale from 1-10, how productive are they? Do you wish to make a change in the way you speak to yourself? If so, now is the time.

Step 2: Use affirmations!

So now that you know the quality of your internal dialogue, the next step is to begin adjusting it. One useful way is to start replacing disempowering thought with productive thought. One way that people can do this is through using affirmations.

An affirmation is a statement that is meant to make you feel empowered. The idea is that it comes from you and is repeated often. If an affirmation is effective and well chosen, it can become a powerful belief over time.

1. Take a few moments to reflect on what you learnt about your own self-talk.
2. Focus on the areas that come through. Is it about your own self, your family life, your work? Once you have narrowed down the areas, then brainstorm two or three affirmations for each area.
3. Once you have come up with a few statements, write them down.
4. Next, go back and make sure that these statements are not the opposite of what you thought before. An opposite will just set up a conflict and that is not what you want. So, for example if you currently think that you aren’t pretty enough, saying, “I am pretty” as an affirmation will just cause internal conflict. Instead, focus in on one quality you like about yourself and create an affirmation around that. For example: “I am thoughtful and courteous to people around me.” Anything that you feel good about can be used to shift how you perceive things.
5. Once you have two or three affirmations that you are happy with, and then write them down in places where you can see them, and repeat them a few times a day.
6. Do not attempt to focus in on more than 3 at a time. As you repeat each affirmation, close your eyes and focus in on the feeling that the statement brings. Visualise yourself living this statement. Notice how good it feels.
7. If you don’t find yourself feeling empowered or happy, then adjust the statement. Remember, these will become beliefs over time so they need to work for you.

Step 3: Keep an Awareness Jar

Keeping a physical track of how you’re doing is useful, isn’t it? One way of doing this is to keep an awareness jar. This will be an empty jar where you will deposit some money each time you find yourself thinking or speaking in a disempowering way. You can choose what to do with the funds (e.g. give them to charity).

You may find that at the beginning you may be making a lot of deposits; however, as your awareness grows, your attitude and negative dialogue will begin to shift. Work with this in conjunction with the other two steps and you will find small changes taking shape, In sha Allah.

Taking charge of how we treat ourselves is a challenging but rewarding process. Our language is one aspect, but a very powerful one to focus on. I hope that you will find these strategies useful. Remember to keep going until you get to the dialogue you want to have.

In sha Allah, you will succeed and feel empowered to achieve a life you truly love.

This article originally appeared in Issue #51 of SISTERS Magazine, the international magazine for fabulous Muslim women co-founded and edited by Na’ima B. Robert, author of From My Sisters’ Lips.

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