April 22, 2025 • 14 mins
Life coaching... the real, transformative kind, reveals these outdated narratives and offers something profoundly powerful that other healing approaches sometimes miss. As both a physician and a life coach, I've witnessed how coaching unveils the truth that you're not broken; you're simply loyal to thoughts that once kept you safe but no longer serve you. While therapy, self-help books, and spiritual practices provide valuable language for your struggles, coaching delivers the transformation you actually need.
Your brain, designed for efficiency, repeats familiar thoughts even when they hurt you. It whispers constant danger signals, keeping your body in fight-or-flight mode. But when coaching helps you recognize and rewrite these stories, your nervous system finally relaxes.
For Muslim women specifically, I've created a sacred coaching container that combines life coaching principles with Islamic teachings, addressing the unique emotional and generational complexities we carry. This space,Wisdom Wednesdays and the Empowered Muslim Women program, helps women repair relationships, heal from shame, and rise into versions of themselves that feel whole and worthy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, dr Kamal Aftar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
An idea came to my head when Isat down to record this podcast,
and it had to do with how muchpeople don't actually know how
(00:26):
powerful coaching is.
You just don't know howpowerful it is, so I felt a
sudden urge to let you know howpowerful it is.
There are people who try toimpose their thoughts of
inferiority on me, theirthoughts of how coaches are
inferior or not skilled enoughjust because I choose to call
myself a life coach.
(00:46):
When they judge me, what theydon't know is how powerful life
coaching is, and call itjudgment on their part, call it
ignorance.
Either way, if you think lifecoaching should be beneath me
just because I have a doctoratedegree, you have never
experienced real transformationthrough coaching.
I am someone who chose one ofthe highest barrier to entry
(01:08):
profession, which is medicine,and also one of the lowest
barrier to entry professions,which is life coaching.
One came with 10 to 12 years ofschooling and six figures of
debt, multiple interviews,entrance exams, board exams.
The other one came with acertificate and a lot of times
not even recognized byauthorities.
(01:30):
This profession came with a lotof raised eyebrows, although it
was still enough to cost mealmost an undergraduate degree.
And still I chose both, notbecause one wasn't enough, but
because healing takes more thanone modality and because
somewhere along the way, afterthe medical training, I was the
(01:52):
one who needed to be saved.
What if the life coaching thereal kind, the one that I
practice is that it shows youexactly where you've been living
inside a story and the storythat isn't true anymore, a story
that might have been true once,maybe?
Life coaching is about inside astory and the story that isn't
true anymore, a story that mighthave been true once.
Maybe life coaching is aboutrevealing a story to you that
was once true, that helped yousurvive, a story that was your
(02:14):
armor, your justification, yourmap, your whole entire life.
But it's not the map of yourcurrent life, and this is what
no one tells you that your brainneeds to be constantly
upgrading based on the life youenvision.
Healing through life coachingmakes it about realizing you've
been rehearsing the same oldstory for years, that your brain
(02:34):
has not upgraded for years andthe story becomes exhausting,
not to state that it's actuallyuntrue and not even yours
anymore, but your nervous systemstill thinks that's real
because it's what you've beennarrating on a loop.
Every single healing modalityEMDR, ifs, somatic therapy,
(02:54):
hypnosis, talk therapy,spiritual retreats, inner child
work, shadow work they are allwalking you towards one
destination a differentnarrative, a different way to
explain what happened withoutdrowning in it.
They're all trying to help youcreate, hold your past without
handing it to your future, andall of them help.
(03:17):
I love all of these modalities.
They have saved people, theyhave helped me.
But no matter what method youuse, the end game is the same,
and that's what I'm trying totell you.
You're learning to tell a newstory.
You're learning to recognizeand reorganize the memory.
You're learning to quiet yourbody's alarm system by realizing
(03:38):
that it's reacting to a thoughtthat feels like a threat.
If you're unaware that thestory itself is what's keeping
your body in survival, you'llkeep thinking that whatever
modality of healing you'rechoosing isn't working.
But your brain is what'skeeping the memory alive.
And this is where coachingbecomes the missing piece, not
(03:59):
because it's better, not becauseit's the only modality, but
because, specifically for me,coaching told me the truth
nobody else dared to say outloud, which is you are not
broken.
You're just deeply loyal to atruth that hurts.
That is not helpful, and it'snot because you're uneducated or
(04:19):
not intelligent enough.
It's not even because you'restubborn.
It's because when a thoughtfeels safe, familiar, the brain
repeats it in the name ofefficiency.
Once it helped you predictdanger and saved your life, the
brain says this must be repeated, because this method actually
works.
And in the name of safety, thebrain keeps you from healing.
(04:42):
And while feeling safe is partof the healing, sometimes it
takes courage to heal completely.
Coaching is about choosingfreedom, even when it feels
risky, and what coaching gave meis ownership without shame.
It's my thought, I inherited it, I practiced it, I repeated it
and I can also change it.
(05:03):
Coaching gave me creationwithout delusion, and this is
not toxic positivity.
I'm not slapping affirmationsover grief without recognizing
it.
I'm choosing a story thatserves my soul, not just my
survival, as it once did.
Coaching gave me a nervoussystem that is finally allowed
(05:24):
to rest, because when yourthoughts stop whispering, you're
not safe constantly.
Your body stops constantlyrunning from danger, it stops
living in survival mode thewhole time.
I did try therapy and I devouredself-help books, I journaled, I
reflected, I prayed with deepconviction and I think coaching
(05:45):
was the answer to my prayers.
But none of the othermodalities truly helped
completely, not in a way that Ineeded, not at the level my soul
was quietly begging for.
Everything gave me language butnothing gave me transformation.
And that didn't come until Ientered this particular school
of thought in life coaching thatI now choose to practice and I
(06:08):
chose to cert life coaching thatI now choose to practice and I
chose to certify in that program.
And since then I've upgraded myskill level a lot more.
And, of course, thecertification program I went
through was led by and mostlydesigned for white, mostly
secular female audience.
There was minimal to noinclusion of someone like me,
brown person, hijab wearingvisibly a Muslim woman with a
(06:31):
medical background, withcultural nuance and spiritual
depth.
So I did what any other personwould naturally do as a next
step and I created a program forwomen just like me.
I took what was offered to me,I extracted immense value out of
it, including the coaching,certification and my medical
training, and I made it my own.
Then I built what I couldn'tfind.
(06:54):
This is how my coaching programwas born.
It goes from Wisdom Wednesdaysand then into Empowered Muslim
Women.
They're both tiers of mycoaching program that you can
join.
My overall coaching is rootedin life coaching principles, yes
, but they're fully grounded inIslamic teachings, feminism,
spirituality and the specificemotional and generational
(07:16):
complexities that womencurrently carry.
And it's not going to be aone-size-fits-all coaching, it's
life-changing work for Muslimwomen.
Wisdom Wednesdays is my sacredweekly group coaching container
where I bring this coaching toMuslim women, and they bring
multitude of topics how torepair relationships, how to
(07:38):
cure shame, how to come out ofsilence and self-sacrifice.
Women get coached on how torise into a version of
themselves that finally feelswhole, worthy, successful.
When I introduce myself topeople as a physician life coach
, sometimes they assume I addedthe coach for flair or, worse,
(07:59):
that life coaching somehowstains or dilutes my credibility
of medical training.
But I did not add this work forflash.
I pursued it because, evenafter everything I was taught
about the mind and the body, itwas this work coaching, and the
way I practice it, that actuallyhelped me heal.
I train rigorously in bothmodalities, I honor both and I
(08:22):
lead by example in both of theseprofessions, though I don't
always get it right becausesurprise, surprise, I am a human
.
But I will tell you what Inever do.
I never lay my head on thepillow at night and think I
didn't do my best, andAlhamdulillah for that.
Alhamdulillah for the healing,the work, the calling and the
permission to show up imperfectand still be powerful.
(08:46):
I personally believe that youhave a healing intelligence
inside of you, not because Iread it in a textbook, not
because it sounds poetic, butbecause I have witnessed it
unfold in women time and timeagain.
It's one of the most sacredthings I've ever seen.
This is what real coachinghelps you become good at
Learning to heal using theintelligence Allah already
(09:09):
placed inside of you the knowingyou were born with the fitrah
that has been buried under noise, expectations and other
people's opinions, becausesomewhere along the way you were
trained to ignore that innerwisdom.
You were taught to outsourceyour truth to the doctor, to the
therapist, even the sheikh andyour mother, your friends.
(09:30):
You were conditioned to believethat someone else knows what's
best for you.
Even in spaces that are meantto heal you, it is rarely your
voice that is heard.
So why not give yourself a giftof that space.
True coaching is not aboutgiving you advice.
It's not about any diagnosis,labeling or managing you.
(09:52):
Coaching returns you toyourself, coaching the way it's
meant to be done.
I am not an expert on your lifeand I never want to be, because
the most powerful healingdoesn't happen when someone else
hands you an answer.
It happens when someone givesyou a safe space to listen to
your own answers.
That's what I do.
(10:13):
I don't walk in to fix you.
I don't claim to know what'sbroken.
I am not there to rewrite yourstory.
I'm just here to hold it withreverence.
While you decide what the nextchapter will be, how it's going
to be written, I'll ask thequestions that bring you back to
your own inner knowing.
I will hold the light steadywhile you navigate the dark and,
(10:38):
when ready, you will eventuallywalk into a version of yourself
that feels true.
I am not the expert.
I'm the woman who holds spacefor you while you remember that
you are the expert.
At your life, you have mostlyjust been unheard.
You have never been lost, justtoo far from your own voice.
(10:59):
This inner healing intelligenceis what coaching gets you good
at Not just emotional awareness,not just better communication,
not just boundaries Although,yes, all of that still happens.
The intelligence that alreadylives inside of you comes alive
through coaching, theintelligence that Allah created
(11:20):
for you, the fitrah that youwere born with.
And if you've ever yourself orseen somebody else flinch at the
word coach, let me gentlyinvite you into a different
paradigm.
It's not a pyramid scheme.
It's not a multi-levelmarketing pitch.
It's not self-help jargon,definitely not a quick fix that
(11:42):
you accidentally stumble on inyour Instagram feed.
I am talking about real, sacred, grounded, spiritual work.
The kind of work that savesmarriages quietly, without
anyone needing to post about it.
The kind of work that rewirestrauma that's been living in
(12:02):
your family for generations.
There is no hype.
I can provide this type of workbecause it's deep, intentional
healing.
It does not come from a title.
It comes from witnessing.
If you think life coaching isnot good enough for you, you
just don't know how powerful itactually is.
And people ask me physician,life coach what even is that?
(12:23):
And, honestly, it's a title Imade up Because nothing else fit
.
While I spent years trainingreally hard to become a
physician, just two years intobeing an attending, I hit a wall
, a wall of burnout.
I did not think I could keepgoing.
I felt like a fraud in my ownscrubs.
I believed I was a terriblemother and I was honestly
(12:45):
quietly unraveling.
I was not broken, turns out, Iwas just uncoached.
Maybe that's the same for you.
You were just uncoached Withthat, I pray to Allah SWT.
Ya Allah, let me see myselfthrough your truth, not through
the stories I inherited in fear.
Ya Allah, if I've been callingmyself broken, show me the
(13:09):
strength that is buried beneaththat facade.
If I've forgotten how to hearmy own voice, bring it back to
me with clarity and grace.
Heal the parts of me that areloyal to pain.
Show me the modality thatbrings me closer to you through
healing, and guide me towardsthe freedom of my inner knowing.
Help me understand that I wasnever broken, just uncoached.
(13:33):
Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, pleasekeep me in your du'as.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, dr Kamal Aftar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
An idea came to my head when Isat down to record this podcast,
and it had to do with how muchpeople don't actually know how
(00:26):
powerful coaching is.
You just don't know howpowerful it is, so I felt a
sudden urge to let you know howpowerful it is.
There are people who try toimpose their thoughts of
inferiority on me, theirthoughts of how coaches are
inferior or not skilled enoughjust because I choose to call
myself a life coach.
(00:46):
When they judge me, what theydon't know is how powerful life
coaching is, and call itjudgment on their part, call it
ignorance.
Either way, if you think lifecoaching should be beneath me
just because I have a doctoratedegree, you have never
experienced real transformationthrough coaching.
I am someone who chose one ofthe highest barrier to entry
(01:08):
profession, which is medicine,and also one of the lowest
barrier to entry professions,which is life coaching.
One came with 10 to 12 years ofschooling and six figures of
debt, multiple interviews,entrance exams, board exams.
The other one came with acertificate and a lot of times
not even recognized byauthorities.
(01:30):
This profession came with a lotof raised eyebrows, although it
was still enough to cost mealmost an undergraduate degree.
And still I chose both, notbecause one wasn't enough, but
because healing takes more thanone modality and because
somewhere along the way, afterthe medical training, I was the
(01:52):
one who needed to be saved.
What if the life coaching thereal kind, the one that I
practice is that it shows youexactly where you've been living
inside a story and the storythat isn't true anymore, a story
that might have been true once,maybe?
Life coaching is about inside astory and the story that isn't
true anymore, a story that mighthave been true once.
Maybe life coaching is aboutrevealing a story to you that
was once true, that helped yousurvive, a story that was your
(02:14):
armor, your justification, yourmap, your whole entire life.
But it's not the map of yourcurrent life, and this is what
no one tells you that your brainneeds to be constantly
upgrading based on the life youenvision.
Healing through life coachingmakes it about realizing you've
been rehearsing the same oldstory for years, that your brain
(02:34):
has not upgraded for years andthe story becomes exhausting,
not to state that it's actuallyuntrue and not even yours
anymore, but your nervous systemstill thinks that's real
because it's what you've beennarrating on a loop.
Every single healing modalityEMDR, ifs, somatic therapy,
(02:54):
hypnosis, talk therapy,spiritual retreats, inner child
work, shadow work they are allwalking you towards one
destination a differentnarrative, a different way to
explain what happened withoutdrowning in it.
They're all trying to help youcreate, hold your past without
handing it to your future, andall of them help.
(03:17):
I love all of these modalities.
They have saved people, theyhave helped me.
But no matter what method youuse, the end game is the same,
and that's what I'm trying totell you.
You're learning to tell a newstory.
You're learning to recognizeand reorganize the memory.
You're learning to quiet yourbody's alarm system by realizing
(03:38):
that it's reacting to a thoughtthat feels like a threat.
If you're unaware that thestory itself is what's keeping
your body in survival, you'llkeep thinking that whatever
modality of healing you'rechoosing isn't working.
But your brain is what'skeeping the memory alive.
And this is where coachingbecomes the missing piece, not
(03:59):
because it's better, not becauseit's the only modality, but
because, specifically for me,coaching told me the truth
nobody else dared to say outloud, which is you are not
broken.
You're just deeply loyal to atruth that hurts.
That is not helpful, and it'snot because you're uneducated or
(04:19):
not intelligent enough.
It's not even because you'restubborn.
It's because when a thoughtfeels safe, familiar, the brain
repeats it in the name ofefficiency.
Once it helped you predictdanger and saved your life, the
brain says this must be repeated, because this method actually
works.
And in the name of safety, thebrain keeps you from healing.
(04:42):
And while feeling safe is partof the healing, sometimes it
takes courage to heal completely.
Coaching is about choosingfreedom, even when it feels
risky, and what coaching gave meis ownership without shame.
It's my thought, I inherited it, I practiced it, I repeated it
and I can also change it.
(05:03):
Coaching gave me creationwithout delusion, and this is
not toxic positivity.
I'm not slapping affirmationsover grief without recognizing
it.
I'm choosing a story thatserves my soul, not just my
survival, as it once did.
Coaching gave me a nervoussystem that is finally allowed
(05:24):
to rest, because when yourthoughts stop whispering, you're
not safe constantly.
Your body stops constantlyrunning from danger, it stops
living in survival mode thewhole time.
I did try therapy and I devouredself-help books, I journaled, I
reflected, I prayed with deepconviction and I think coaching
(05:45):
was the answer to my prayers.
But none of the othermodalities truly helped
completely, not in a way that Ineeded, not at the level my soul
was quietly begging for.
Everything gave me language butnothing gave me transformation.
And that didn't come until Ientered this particular school
of thought in life coaching thatI now choose to practice and I
(06:08):
chose to cert life coaching thatI now choose to practice and I
chose to certify in that program.
And since then I've upgraded myskill level a lot more.
And, of course, thecertification program I went
through was led by and mostlydesigned for white, mostly
secular female audience.
There was minimal to noinclusion of someone like me,
brown person, hijab wearingvisibly a Muslim woman with a
(06:31):
medical background, withcultural nuance and spiritual
depth.
So I did what any other personwould naturally do as a next
step and I created a program forwomen just like me.
I took what was offered to me,I extracted immense value out of
it, including the coaching,certification and my medical
training, and I made it my own.
Then I built what I couldn'tfind.
(06:54):
This is how my coaching programwas born.
It goes from Wisdom Wednesdaysand then into Empowered Muslim
Women.
They're both tiers of mycoaching program that you can
join.
My overall coaching is rootedin life coaching principles, yes
, but they're fully grounded inIslamic teachings, feminism,
spirituality and the specificemotional and generational
(07:16):
complexities that womencurrently carry.
And it's not going to be aone-size-fits-all coaching, it's
life-changing work for Muslimwomen.
Wisdom Wednesdays is my sacredweekly group coaching container
where I bring this coaching toMuslim women, and they bring
multitude of topics how torepair relationships, how to
(07:38):
cure shame, how to come out ofsilence and self-sacrifice.
Women get coached on how torise into a version of
themselves that finally feelswhole, worthy, successful.
When I introduce myself topeople as a physician life coach
, sometimes they assume I addedthe coach for flair or, worse,
(07:59):
that life coaching somehowstains or dilutes my credibility
of medical training.
But I did not add this work forflash.
I pursued it because, evenafter everything I was taught
about the mind and the body, itwas this work coaching, and the
way I practice it, that actuallyhelped me heal.
I train rigorously in bothmodalities, I honor both and I
(08:22):
lead by example in both of theseprofessions, though I don't
always get it right becausesurprise, surprise, I am a human
.
But I will tell you what Inever do.
I never lay my head on thepillow at night and think I
didn't do my best, andAlhamdulillah for that.
Alhamdulillah for the healing,the work, the calling and the
permission to show up imperfectand still be powerful.
(08:46):
I personally believe that youhave a healing intelligence
inside of you, not because Iread it in a textbook, not
because it sounds poetic, butbecause I have witnessed it
unfold in women time and timeagain.
It's one of the most sacredthings I've ever seen.
This is what real coachinghelps you become good at
Learning to heal using theintelligence Allah already
(09:09):
placed inside of you the knowingyou were born with the fitrah
that has been buried under noise, expectations and other
people's opinions, becausesomewhere along the way you were
trained to ignore that innerwisdom.
You were taught to outsourceyour truth to the doctor, to the
therapist, even the sheikh andyour mother, your friends.
(09:30):
You were conditioned to believethat someone else knows what's
best for you.
Even in spaces that are meantto heal you, it is rarely your
voice that is heard.
So why not give yourself a giftof that space.
True coaching is not aboutgiving you advice.
It's not about any diagnosis,labeling or managing you.
(09:52):
Coaching returns you toyourself, coaching the way it's
meant to be done.
I am not an expert on your lifeand I never want to be, because
the most powerful healingdoesn't happen when someone else
hands you an answer.
It happens when someone givesyou a safe space to listen to
your own answers.
That's what I do.
(10:13):
I don't walk in to fix you.
I don't claim to know what'sbroken.
I am not there to rewrite yourstory.
I'm just here to hold it withreverence.
While you decide what the nextchapter will be, how it's going
to be written, I'll ask thequestions that bring you back to
your own inner knowing.
I will hold the light steadywhile you navigate the dark and,
(10:38):
when ready, you will eventuallywalk into a version of yourself
that feels true.
I am not the expert.
I'm the woman who holds spacefor you while you remember that
you are the expert.
At your life, you have mostlyjust been unheard.
You have never been lost, justtoo far from your own voice.
(10:59):
This inner healing intelligenceis what coaching gets you good
at Not just emotional awareness,not just better communication,
not just boundaries Although,yes, all of that still happens.
The intelligence that alreadylives inside of you comes alive
through coaching, theintelligence that Allah created
(11:20):
for you, the fitrah that youwere born with.
And if you've ever yourself orseen somebody else flinch at the
word coach, let me gentlyinvite you into a different
paradigm.
It's not a pyramid scheme.
It's not a multi-levelmarketing pitch.
It's not self-help jargon,definitely not a quick fix that
(11:42):
you accidentally stumble on inyour Instagram feed.
I am talking about real, sacred, grounded, spiritual work.
The kind of work that savesmarriages quietly, without
anyone needing to post about it.
The kind of work that rewirestrauma that's been living in
(12:02):
your family for generations.
There is no hype.
I can provide this type of workbecause it's deep, intentional
healing.
It does not come from a title.
It comes from witnessing.
If you think life coaching isnot good enough for you, you
just don't know how powerful itactually is.
And people ask me physician,life coach what even is that?
(12:23):
And, honestly, it's a title Imade up Because nothing else fit
.
While I spent years trainingreally hard to become a
physician, just two years intobeing an attending, I hit a wall
, a wall of burnout.
I did not think I could keepgoing.
I felt like a fraud in my ownscrubs.
I believed I was a terriblemother and I was honestly
(12:45):
quietly unraveling.
I was not broken, turns out, Iwas just uncoached.
Maybe that's the same for you.
You were just uncoached Withthat, I pray to Allah SWT.
Ya Allah, let me see myselfthrough your truth, not through
the stories I inherited in fear.
Ya Allah, if I've been callingmyself broken, show me the
(13:09):
strength that is buried beneaththat facade.
If I've forgotten how to hearmy own voice, bring it back to
me with clarity and grace.
Heal the parts of me that areloyal to pain.
Show me the modality thatbrings me closer to you through
healing, and guide me towardsthe freedom of my inner knowing.
Help me understand that I wasnever broken, just uncoached.
(13:33):
Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, pleasekeep me in your du'as.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
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