June 28, 2024 • 29 mins
Welcome to Fraud Busting NeoFraus podcast, the go-to resource for female fraud professionals and their allies. In this episode, host Olga invites Nadja El Fertasi, a former NATO executive turned entrepreneur, to share her inspiring journey.
Nadja opens up about her experiences with burnout, the challenges of balancing work and personal life. She emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence in cybersecurity and discusses the impact of human behavior on digital security.
Through her candid storytelling, Nadja provides valuable insights into overcoming challenges, maintaining mental health, and building resilience. She also offers practical advice on setting boundaries, managing stress, and staying true to one's values.
Join us for an enlightening conversation filled with actionable tips and personal anecdotes that will inspire you to navigate your own professional and personal hurdles with courage and resilience.
Nadja's Bio:
Nadja El Fertasi, founder of Thrive with EQ, is a Human Resilience Expert and former NATO senior executive renowned for her leadership in emotional intelligence and resilience. With over 20 years of experience in the civil-military sector and interactions with professionals from over 40 nationalities, Nadja has honed a profound expertise in crisis management and strategic stakeholder engagement. Celebrated as one of Europe’s influential women in cybersecurity, she features in the book Hacking Gender Barriers: Europe’s Top Cyber Women by Women4Cyber.
At Thrive with EQ, Nadja dedicates her efforts to empowering leaders in critical services infrastructure to adeptly navigate digital disruptions and manage change through emotional intelligence. Her work has earned her global recognition, making her a sought-after expert and speaker on leadership and resilience.
Each week, Nadja shares insights from her own life's challenges in her emotional resilience newsletter, which reaches over 1,700 subscribers. Through these stories, she helps others build their resilience, demonstrating how emotional intelligence can transform personal and professional adversities into strength and leadership.
Enjoy listening! Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/neofraus
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
Hello and welcome to Fraud Busting Neo-Fraud's podcast.
It is the only podcast for female fraud
professionals and their allies who want to stay on top of the fraud awareness
spectrum in order to thrive professionally while maximizing their happiness
and having the courage to create the life they love. Thank you for listening.
(00:32):
I'm Olga and I'll be your host today. We have a special guest for our episode.
This is Nadia El-Ferdassi.
And without further ado, I'd like to give Nadia the floor to quickly introduce
herself to the audience. Hi, Nadia.
Hi, Olga. Thank you very much for having me.
(00:53):
We met through the Operation Sandrock organization that fights big butchering
scams and that's how I met Olga.
So I'm Nadia, I live in Brussels, the New York of Belgium.
I used to work at NATO, the world's largest crisis and security organization
for 20 years and then I hit burnout and then I started to search for my soul
(01:19):
which I'm still looking for it.
But I handed in my resignation to start my own
entrepreneurial journey one year before the pandemic and
after several years and a lot of
lessons and detours and especially after the
pandemic I focused on combining cyber security cyber resilience with emotional
(01:39):
intelligence because I understood that cyber security is going to have a huge
impact on everyone that is working remotely or that is going on their digitization journeys but that
it's going to be a human behavioral problem and an emotional problem because from the scammer side,
they manipulate emotions of people to get a foot in the door.
(02:02):
And also there's a lot of pressure, uncertainty, stress, workload on people.
So people's behavior that then shaped their collaboration in the digital age
is shaped by emotions. So it's how do we build that resilience?
I'm very passionate about mental health and emotional well-being,
so I write a lot about various things,
(02:22):
dark topics, as I mentioned, and topics that are difficult to talk about.
And I love to write about them to kind of find common ground and help people
relieve their emotional suffering that is often invisible because we don't dare to talk about it.
And I share my own experiences. I have been in many emotional disasters,
(02:44):
let's say it, to be polite.
And I have a son, an 11-year-old son. I'm happily divorced.
When I mentioned happily divorced on my CV, someone said, I never thought about it.
I said, well, you know, when we, when I was actually, I mean,
happy to divorce in the end, it was an amicable divorce.
And people were always, I'm so sorry. I'm like, why are you sorry?
(03:05):
I'm not sorry. It doesn't mean that you cannot be happily married, right?
It was also happily married, but I think we should not stigmatize those things as stereotypes.
So I like to be provocative at times.
It's a nutshell, and we have a bunny. We have a two-year-old bunny that takes
a lot more work than we think.
(03:25):
They are not only fluffy animals. They are a whole personality with lots and
lots of special care, but we love him.
Thanks so much, Nadia, for this introduction and for sharing a little bit of
really interesting information about yourself.
So I would like to ask you the first question, which is, I would love to hear
(03:50):
more about your story and about the bumpy road you were going through.
If you could please share on that one with the audience.
Yes, of course. So I think I'll hone in on the burnout aspect.
And I think burnout has become a topic that's being thrown around like as a buzzword.
(04:11):
The other day I saw someone writing, oh, I didn't sleep for a few nights.
And I think I'm suffering from burnout. So I took a few days.
Which I don't I don't like judging people
but I did feel that it's kind of an
insult to people who are going through burnout who
have suffered and recovered from it because burnout according to the World Health
(04:35):
Organization is a chronic stress from workplace stress so it's stress in itself
may not be that bad but it's like accumulated stress so this is I think it's
It's important to keep in mind and it's never,
it's burnout and the result, right?
And often we focus on the symptoms, but there's always a root cause behind it.
(04:56):
So for me, I separate between visible stress and invisible stress.
Invisible stress was work.
I worked a lot. I was definitely one of those women who tried to work her way, right?
And I went from secretary to senior executive. And when I became senior executive,
the responsibility, the workload just became higher and higher and higher.
(05:20):
So I worked a lot. I was trying to manage family as well, going almost into the divorce.
And the visible stress was really physical.
And I didn't necessarily know how to have this holistic life approach.
But then there was the invisible stress, which is important.
Now, I was born in the Netherlands, and I grew up in a dichotomous culture of Arab and Dutch, right?
(05:47):
So we were quite traditional at home. My father was very strict.
May he rest in peace. I love my father very much.
But it was quite traditional and quite conservative.
And that contrasted with Dutch culture. So I, and that had a huge impact as
a little girl. I also went through several traumas as a young child and as I grew older.
(06:10):
So I never felt enough.
Beautiful dog, by the way. I love animals. But I never felt enough.
I never felt like I belong.
I am a highly sensitive person as well.
20% of global population is highly sensitive. Some that they don't even know
(06:31):
it, but I didn't know that then.
So I was already very sensitive to stimuli, to people's emotions, energies.
It was like really overwhelming for me. And that my behaviors then were always
a result of I need to do more to feel enough, to feel loved, to feel appreciated.
(06:52):
I was also the middle child, which is kind of an unlucky position to be in a family of five.
My mother had a lot on her plate and et cetera.
So I was really, in terms of feeling loved, on a scale from zero to 10, it was like two, maybe.
So I was living on an empty love tank. And that's how I try to work, to live life.
(07:16):
Now, on the writer side, it did push me to, you know, start to, I went to university.
I quit university to go to work for NATO as a secretary, but then I picked up my studies again.
So it really helped me to kind of do my,
finish my bachelor's in the end, do my master's, be the first NATO employee
(07:37):
chosen for a NATO executive development program, even if I didn't fit the grade,
so they made an exception because of performance, etc.
So I was very ambitious, right? The problem was, on the inside,
it was never enough, right?
I was draining myself.
It was like doing all these things that were aligned with my mind,
(07:58):
which what I thought I was supposed to do versus what my heart wanted. Where does my heart lie?
And I don't regret any of it. I think if we know ahead of time where our life
journey takes us, we would not walk it because we would be so scared.
But when we look behind, it is that life journey, that bumpy road that shapes
us from who we are, right?
(08:19):
So it's good to not know where life takes you.
And that is, I think, the years of me trying to prove myself of not feeling
enough, combining the invisible, visible stress. One day, I got up,
and I fell on the floor, and I couldn't get up.
And in irony of it, and I'm not mad at anyone, but no one came to see me.
(08:45):
No one came to, I mean, I got some text messages and calls.
Do you really want me to come see you? And I was very proud.
I'm still proud. So I'm like, no, right?
People who go through a lot of trauma in life, they feel that they overburden others.
So they never ask for help. High achievers never ask for help because, you know, the shame.
(09:08):
So I dealt with it myself. I did go into therapy and that's how I discovered
my highly sensitive HSP, etc.
So this is when I thought, okay, I need to, I don't want to go on sick leave,
but I want to change my life.
So I handed in my resignation one year early, which was a mistake because at
(09:28):
work they thought, okay, we're going to milk her as much as possible.
So the last six months, I just, you know, again, it was collapsed.
So I had to stop, but I decided that I'm going to resign anyway.
I'm not going to stay on sick leave and build a new life for myself.
That was the attitude before the pandemic?
(09:50):
And then the pandemic hit, which was another resiliency to overcome.
But at least in terms of the lockdown, in terms of the mental,
I had already my dark night of the soul, the first part of it, before.
So then I struggled with being in my business, with trying to make it meet.
The whole world was in a struggle.
(10:11):
And the other part was, I don't like to make things about gender.
But I do think we have to talk about reality.
I'm a woman. I'm a woman with a minority background and then the cybersecurity
industry is still quite discriminative even though we talk about diversity inclusion
is still a lot of times a checkbox because it requires a lot of mindset shifts,
(10:35):
leadership to change this, right?
And then I come with emotional intelligence and cybersecurity.
So it mainly because of my native background got me into doors But it was like,
I wrote about it in my Saturday newsletter.
I have this vision and I never, ever gave up on my vision.
How many doors closed, you know,
(10:56):
it's really difficult to build something from scratch because I want to build
something and I really see the potential and the outcome and the possibility
of helping people build emotional firewalls against scams,
how we work together, how we live in the digital age.
So that was a very very difficult path but,
(11:17):
I'm someone who thrives on difficulties. It's like, even if I want to stop,
I don't have an off button, unfortunately, when I set my mind to something.
So I just get back up. I fall, I get back up.
And one quote I love is, you learn nothing from success and everything from failure.
(11:41):
And good days build the ego and bad days build the character.
So in terms of resilience, I feel unstoppable.
I'm very resilient, even though at times I wish I was not strong anymore or
people would stop calling me strong because it's really hard.
But I focused on the journey of life and no longer on achieving something, right?
(12:04):
We don't achieve anything in life. It's if we think about it,
we have ideas and we take action.
But life helps us to achieve, to put the right people in our paths,
to put our nemesis in our path, to teach us lessons, to grow,
to teach us compassion, to teach us empathy, teach us how do we elevate,
(12:24):
how do we evolve.
So challenges are an important part of life. But I'm no longer trying to escape
my reality because I really feel aligned now with my soul's purpose and my heart's
desires sounds again, very woo woo,
but it is that love that you feel for what you do that gets you to the very
shitty and difficult days.
(12:45):
So that's a bit my, my story and how I try to avoid to fall for burnout,
which because sometimes I still am on the verge, right?
I have to be careful is I try to balance my lifestyle on, on,
on how I work, what I feed myself, self, how I exercise, really knowing myself
and what I need when I am on the verge of,
(13:08):
relapsing, to stop, take a break.
Because that's the downside when you're very passionate about what you do.
It can become too much and you don't know when to stop.
So you really need to manage daily boundaries.
And it also includes people.
I'm very, very picky on who I spend time with because I've learned my lessons.
(13:30):
People can either lift you up or drain your energy like energy vampires.
So, and I have no problem walking away, especially in the beginning when I don't
know you that well, as soon as I noticed that you're going to drain my energy.
And I think I can do that now because of all the things I've been through in life, right?
(13:53):
And I wish women or even men would do this without having gone through trauma.
You don't have to justify who you spend your time with, right?
You are sovereign over your time and energy, or you can become sovereign.
And I think that's a really important message.
Is it easy? No. Will you be disliked? Definitely.
(14:18):
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing this incredible story, Nadia.
I am sure that a lot of listeners may relate to some degree to your story, some to a lesser degree,
but I feel that it might be a lot of people who can relate to a higher degree, such as myself.
(14:39):
So, and I'm glad you mentioned about exercise because this is one of the things
that we are all looking whenever we are all draining to our workflow and education to the job we do.
We completely forget about our health and we forget we are not machines. cheese.
(15:02):
So I would say this is exactly the same lesson that I learned from my experience
as well, that I need to exercise.
And in the present day, after going through also burnout,
similarly to yourself, I said to myself, okay, from this day on,
(15:23):
I will be creating a good balance for myself in terms of my health,
but also in terms of interaction with people.
Similarly, to you i also learned my lesson and i think that i should not be
allowing any energy vampires anymore.
(15:43):
And it's not easy to like to recognize them because it's easy that often we
we judge a book by its cover but often the ones who are kind of tough or loud
or in your face are less energy
vampires than the ones who are emotionally manipulative, right?
Who try to create an emotional connection to get you hooked.
(16:06):
And then people feel attached. And this is what is important to understand when
building relationship is to take your time.
Because if you would walk on the streets or you meet a stranger, there's no connection.
They can call you whatever you want, or they can ask you. You can be kind if
you want to, but you don't have to because there's no emotional connection.
But if it's someone you feel something for, even platonic, doesn't have to be
(16:29):
romantic, it's more difficult to say no.
Because as people, we want to be kind, we want to help. So that's where you
really need to have boundaries.
I am very kind when I say no, but the no is very clear.
It's like, it's really, I'm like, no, the no is very clear.
(16:50):
And then I get all kinds. And this is where you can recognize someone's character.
I mentioned this in another podcast. If you really want to know people,
tell them no when they want something from you.
Tell them no. And see what happens there.
The ones who say, okay, no worries, and still try to engage with you,
right? Because they respect your no.
(17:10):
Those are the ones you want to invest in more. But the ones who ghost or who
gaslight and make you feel like you're the bad person here, well,
that is already potential for drama that you don't want in your life.
And I think someone else said it as well. As women, we are either pictured as
(17:32):
the victim or the villain.
And as women, we need to develop the courage to be okay to be seen as the villain.
It's okay to be seen as the villain. Really. The most important opinion is the
opinion you have about yourself.
And your character speaks louder than opinions.
(17:52):
I really say this. When you work in integrity and do what is right,
people's words or people's it's always
comes you know to surface this is my
experience really it's always comes to
service and people who want to believe gossip about you
or people who want to believe in it those are already people who are not interested
in another point of view those are people who are not interested they already
(18:14):
made up their mind so you also have to be you know careful about people who
believe things about you who make judgments their ability to practice Practice
critical thinking and always understand that there's never one side to the story.
Already people who are not interested, right? They already decided that they don't want to.
And you should just be okay with that and live your life on your terms.
(18:39):
Don't harm anyone, but be unapologetic about who you are.
Wonderful. Thank you so much. I really enjoy this conversation and I hope that
the listeners will be enjoying it as well. Well, I'd like to ask you a closing question.
What advice can you provide to the listeners out there and perhaps specifically
(19:00):
to women how to deal with difficult situations in life or in our work in order to remain resilient?
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed this conversation so much.
I can't believe it's already the end.
I think a couple of things first. First is change the way you view challenges.
(19:23):
When we place challenges and problems on the pedestal, we are at the same time
smaller than our problems.
I'm making hand gestures, but I realized this is an audio podcast.
So just imagine, right? You have problems and you have you.
So imagine you're putting your problems as like this big mountain in front of
(19:43):
you and you're the small person looking at the mountain.
How are you going to feel? You are going to feel powerless. You're going to
feel victimized. You're going to feel helpless.
It's going to be very difficult to overcome your problems.
So the first thing is take your problems and challenges out of the pedestals,
no matter how big they are.
(20:04):
You can say, well, it's easy for you to say, Nadia. I went through periods where
I had no money to pay my rent or buy food, right?
I really thought I was going to live on the street at a certain point.
And still, I stayed calm and I put that problem smaller than me, right?
(20:26):
And that's how I manage challenges.
I don't make challenges bigger than me.
Second, change the way you view yourself. I was viewing myself as a helpless
single mother, not a good enough entrepreneur, always by myself,
not supported, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That familiar story, because of the conditioning I had been through,
(20:49):
a NATO, past, et cetera, woman, and minority background, was comfortable.
It was painful, but it was comfortable.
So I had to rewire my whole thought process and change the way I viewed myself. How do we do that?
We are very comfortable with our current version based on past experiences.
I had to create a new version of me. So like Matthew McConaughey always said or said.
(21:14):
Famous actor, your hero, my hero is the version five years from now, 10 years from now.
So I really honed in, who is the woman I want to become?
Who is the woman that is bigger than her challenges? That is,
you know, making it on my terms and in my definition, I have a very different
definition of success than most people.
How does she look like? What is she doing? What are our habits?
(21:36):
So I really created a vision of myself.
The resilient, the fulfilling, that life is not
all about suffering and and i became
very clear and i visualized myself to create those positive
emotions so now i have something to look forward to
and not only to look backwards and it's important for the brain because the
brain doesn't know the difference between reality and what is in your head so
(22:01):
when you visualize and remember who you are in the future that emotions will
then propel you forward the third thing is you are nothing without your habits.
A lot of people fail in life or suffer because they are unwilling to put in
the effort that it takes to embrace the change.
Your life will not change unless you change. I went through this painful realization
(22:24):
because at a certain time I had to go to transformation after transformation
and it was too much for me.
So I fell back to my old self, but that didn't help me.
So I really started having practices in
my life habits that matched the
new me and and often the old
me was rebelling we have this transition period where
(22:46):
you're not yet the new you and you're also not the old you and it's like you're
balancing back in between and that's okay when it really is it is not love and
light and it's not an easy journey which you know brings me to to the first
point Don't judge challenges as good or bad.
(23:07):
We feel based on what we perceive. If we perceive something as bad,
we feel negative emotions.
When we perceive something as negative, sorry, good, we feel positive emotions.
That's how we are conditioned most of the time. So just don't judge it as bad
or good. It's an opportunity for growth. That's how I see.
(23:28):
I'm like, universe, you're testing me every single time for the past five years
when it's going to stop. But now I'm like, okay, it's an opportunity to have a different response.
And the more you respond from the version you want to be, the more life will get easier.
I still face a lot of challenges, but I am so much more calm about it.
(23:50):
Because a calm mind is so much more powerful than a chaotic mind.
This is why I write about inner peace. And often people say,
inner peace, isn't it a bit of woo-woo?
It's the most powerful art or
skill set that you can develop life because when you are at
peace with who you are on the inside nothing can
(24:10):
shake you off your center you are very
focused and clear and it's not a static state of being it takes effort it takes
practice it takes habits every day you become better at it right and then the
last thing i will say which is quite difficult for a lot of people and women, especially now,
(24:31):
because especially in cybersecurity industry,
we pay a lot of attention on how we are perceived.
It's, you know, of course you care about other people's opinion because as human
beings, we are social creatures. We compare ourselves.
But you cannot be defined by other people's opinion.
I'm currently reading the Dutch version of Mark Manson's book.
(24:53):
You know, Why You Should Not Give an F.
And it's brilliant. brilliant but it's really that
stop giving an f about you know
don't take yourself so seriously i take what i do very seriously but
i don't take myself so seriously and that has
helped me a lot in managing and
overcoming my challenges by managing my energy
because you need the energy to to
(25:16):
continue on the path and you should you you
shouldn't you only do what you want
to do obviously but i think it's not being defined
by people's opinion will give you freedom people will
judge people will say people will you know focus on
those who support and uplift you right and be thankful for those who speak about
(25:39):
you because you're interesting if people speak behind your back often it's because
they don't want to speak in front of you because you have you know a certain
attitude about you that makes people fearful or makes people not want to come to you right?
And it's not about making people fearful, but I mean, I'm thinking,
you're doing something right.
If no one talks about you, right, then you're not doing anything of interest.
(26:03):
And then, and I think the last thing, what I will say is.
Be very intentional about life. And I've experienced this.
When I was doing stuff because I just wanted the money or I just wanted the
validation or I just wanted to be liked or to fit in, it only brought me misery.
Now, I'm really intentional about everything I do, right?
(26:26):
About people, about places. Even with clients,
friends, when I don't have the energy reciprocated or
when it's not aligned with my values i remove myself
from the experience because it will only bring me
misery but when i'm intentional about what
i do and be very clear on why i do
what i do am i doing it because it comes from the heart because
(26:49):
it comes from the loving place because it's aligned with my mission it
usually i'm at peace but when i'm
stressed and when it doesn't feel right something is
off then it's not you know intentional and this
is how i keep myself aligned and it's
an everyday process because sometimes i'm not aligned
and i get myself back in alignment so those
(27:11):
are several steps i don't even remember all.
Of what i shared to summarize them but the most important is don't
put your challenges on a pedestal you are bigger than
the mountain ahead of you make it smaller and you
know don't don't worry because worry
doesn't solve anything you can care about your challenges but
don't worry it is in energy wasted use the
(27:33):
energy to create solutions don't be defined
by people's opinions right your most
important opinion is yourself and know
your why live with intention live
with intention and like i
said earlier as women we are taught to be a
victim in life because no one benefits from a woman
(27:55):
who is empowered and who knows her value you and
who knows her worth that's a danger to most patriarchal
structure in society so do it
anyway know your worth stand in
your work practice your words and have the courage to be someone's villain because
you have no control on how people perceive you you can only live in integrity
(28:18):
and with your authentic values and that's how you generate more energy to live
the life of purpose in the life you want. And it's a step-by-step process.
Don't try to be happy until you have something because you will always want something more.
You can even find, I sometimes feel happy even when I'm going through my toughest
challenges because happiness is an inside job.
(28:40):
Life is ebb and flow. There will always be challenges.
It is how you feel on the inside and what piece you are,
that you are able to manage these challenges. When you outsource your happiness
and well-being to external conditions,
you are always imprisoned because there will always be something external to
you that needs to happen in order for you to feel good or feel at peace versus
(29:02):
cultivated ability to feel at peace,
have a calm mind, and be sovereign of who you are first.
And that's how you live a life, higher quality of life, and transcend even your wildest expectation.
Wow. Long story. Well, Nadia, I would say that your response to my question
(29:25):
was a toolbox with a lot of tools for all our wonderful listeners.
And it's just amazing. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest today.
You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And And thank you, everyone, for listening.
Stay happy and healthy.
(29:50):
Music.
Music.
(00:06):
Hello and welcome to Fraud Busting Neo-Fraud's podcast.
It is the only podcast for female fraud
professionals and their allies who want to stay on top of the fraud awareness
spectrum in order to thrive professionally while maximizing their happiness
and having the courage to create the life they love. Thank you for listening.
(00:32):
I'm Olga and I'll be your host today. We have a special guest for our episode.
This is Nadia El-Ferdassi.
And without further ado, I'd like to give Nadia the floor to quickly introduce
herself to the audience. Hi, Nadia.
Hi, Olga. Thank you very much for having me.
(00:53):
We met through the Operation Sandrock organization that fights big butchering
scams and that's how I met Olga.
So I'm Nadia, I live in Brussels, the New York of Belgium.
I used to work at NATO, the world's largest crisis and security organization
for 20 years and then I hit burnout and then I started to search for my soul
(01:19):
which I'm still looking for it.
But I handed in my resignation to start my own
entrepreneurial journey one year before the pandemic and
after several years and a lot of
lessons and detours and especially after the
pandemic I focused on combining cyber security cyber resilience with emotional
(01:39):
intelligence because I understood that cyber security is going to have a huge
impact on everyone that is working remotely or that is going on their digitization journeys but that
it's going to be a human behavioral problem and an emotional problem because from the scammer side,
they manipulate emotions of people to get a foot in the door.
(02:02):
And also there's a lot of pressure, uncertainty, stress, workload on people.
So people's behavior that then shaped their collaboration in the digital age
is shaped by emotions. So it's how do we build that resilience?
I'm very passionate about mental health and emotional well-being,
so I write a lot about various things,
(02:22):
dark topics, as I mentioned, and topics that are difficult to talk about.
And I love to write about them to kind of find common ground and help people
relieve their emotional suffering that is often invisible because we don't dare to talk about it.
And I share my own experiences. I have been in many emotional disasters,
(02:44):
let's say it, to be polite.
And I have a son, an 11-year-old son. I'm happily divorced.
When I mentioned happily divorced on my CV, someone said, I never thought about it.
I said, well, you know, when we, when I was actually, I mean,
happy to divorce in the end, it was an amicable divorce.
And people were always, I'm so sorry. I'm like, why are you sorry?
(03:05):
I'm not sorry. It doesn't mean that you cannot be happily married, right?
It was also happily married, but I think we should not stigmatize those things as stereotypes.
So I like to be provocative at times.
It's a nutshell, and we have a bunny. We have a two-year-old bunny that takes
a lot more work than we think.
(03:25):
They are not only fluffy animals. They are a whole personality with lots and
lots of special care, but we love him.
Thanks so much, Nadia, for this introduction and for sharing a little bit of
really interesting information about yourself.
So I would like to ask you the first question, which is, I would love to hear
(03:50):
more about your story and about the bumpy road you were going through.
If you could please share on that one with the audience.
Yes, of course. So I think I'll hone in on the burnout aspect.
And I think burnout has become a topic that's being thrown around like as a buzzword.
(04:11):
The other day I saw someone writing, oh, I didn't sleep for a few nights.
And I think I'm suffering from burnout. So I took a few days.
Which I don't I don't like judging people
but I did feel that it's kind of an
insult to people who are going through burnout who
have suffered and recovered from it because burnout according to the World Health
(04:35):
Organization is a chronic stress from workplace stress so it's stress in itself
may not be that bad but it's like accumulated stress so this is I think it's
It's important to keep in mind and it's never,
it's burnout and the result, right?
And often we focus on the symptoms, but there's always a root cause behind it.
(04:56):
So for me, I separate between visible stress and invisible stress.
Invisible stress was work.
I worked a lot. I was definitely one of those women who tried to work her way, right?
And I went from secretary to senior executive. And when I became senior executive,
the responsibility, the workload just became higher and higher and higher.
(05:20):
So I worked a lot. I was trying to manage family as well, going almost into the divorce.
And the visible stress was really physical.
And I didn't necessarily know how to have this holistic life approach.
But then there was the invisible stress, which is important.
Now, I was born in the Netherlands, and I grew up in a dichotomous culture of Arab and Dutch, right?
(05:47):
So we were quite traditional at home. My father was very strict.
May he rest in peace. I love my father very much.
But it was quite traditional and quite conservative.
And that contrasted with Dutch culture. So I, and that had a huge impact as
a little girl. I also went through several traumas as a young child and as I grew older.
(06:10):
So I never felt enough.
Beautiful dog, by the way. I love animals. But I never felt enough.
I never felt like I belong.
I am a highly sensitive person as well.
20% of global population is highly sensitive. Some that they don't even know
(06:31):
it, but I didn't know that then.
So I was already very sensitive to stimuli, to people's emotions, energies.
It was like really overwhelming for me. And that my behaviors then were always
a result of I need to do more to feel enough, to feel loved, to feel appreciated.
(06:52):
I was also the middle child, which is kind of an unlucky position to be in a family of five.
My mother had a lot on her plate and et cetera.
So I was really, in terms of feeling loved, on a scale from zero to 10, it was like two, maybe.
So I was living on an empty love tank. And that's how I try to work, to live life.
(07:16):
Now, on the writer side, it did push me to, you know, start to, I went to university.
I quit university to go to work for NATO as a secretary, but then I picked up my studies again.
So it really helped me to kind of do my,
finish my bachelor's in the end, do my master's, be the first NATO employee
(07:37):
chosen for a NATO executive development program, even if I didn't fit the grade,
so they made an exception because of performance, etc.
So I was very ambitious, right? The problem was, on the inside,
it was never enough, right?
I was draining myself.
It was like doing all these things that were aligned with my mind,
(07:58):
which what I thought I was supposed to do versus what my heart wanted. Where does my heart lie?
And I don't regret any of it. I think if we know ahead of time where our life
journey takes us, we would not walk it because we would be so scared.
But when we look behind, it is that life journey, that bumpy road that shapes
us from who we are, right?
(08:19):
So it's good to not know where life takes you.
And that is, I think, the years of me trying to prove myself of not feeling
enough, combining the invisible, visible stress. One day, I got up,
and I fell on the floor, and I couldn't get up.
And in irony of it, and I'm not mad at anyone, but no one came to see me.
(08:45):
No one came to, I mean, I got some text messages and calls.
Do you really want me to come see you? And I was very proud.
I'm still proud. So I'm like, no, right?
People who go through a lot of trauma in life, they feel that they overburden others.
So they never ask for help. High achievers never ask for help because, you know, the shame.
(09:08):
So I dealt with it myself. I did go into therapy and that's how I discovered
my highly sensitive HSP, etc.
So this is when I thought, okay, I need to, I don't want to go on sick leave,
but I want to change my life.
So I handed in my resignation one year early, which was a mistake because at
(09:28):
work they thought, okay, we're going to milk her as much as possible.
So the last six months, I just, you know, again, it was collapsed.
So I had to stop, but I decided that I'm going to resign anyway.
I'm not going to stay on sick leave and build a new life for myself.
That was the attitude before the pandemic?
(09:50):
And then the pandemic hit, which was another resiliency to overcome.
But at least in terms of the lockdown, in terms of the mental,
I had already my dark night of the soul, the first part of it, before.
So then I struggled with being in my business, with trying to make it meet.
The whole world was in a struggle.
(10:11):
And the other part was, I don't like to make things about gender.
But I do think we have to talk about reality.
I'm a woman. I'm a woman with a minority background and then the cybersecurity
industry is still quite discriminative even though we talk about diversity inclusion
is still a lot of times a checkbox because it requires a lot of mindset shifts,
(10:35):
leadership to change this, right?
And then I come with emotional intelligence and cybersecurity.
So it mainly because of my native background got me into doors But it was like,
I wrote about it in my Saturday newsletter.
I have this vision and I never, ever gave up on my vision.
How many doors closed, you know,
(10:56):
it's really difficult to build something from scratch because I want to build
something and I really see the potential and the outcome and the possibility
of helping people build emotional firewalls against scams,
how we work together, how we live in the digital age.
So that was a very very difficult path but,
(11:17):
I'm someone who thrives on difficulties. It's like, even if I want to stop,
I don't have an off button, unfortunately, when I set my mind to something.
So I just get back up. I fall, I get back up.
And one quote I love is, you learn nothing from success and everything from failure.
(11:41):
And good days build the ego and bad days build the character.
So in terms of resilience, I feel unstoppable.
I'm very resilient, even though at times I wish I was not strong anymore or
people would stop calling me strong because it's really hard.
But I focused on the journey of life and no longer on achieving something, right?
(12:04):
We don't achieve anything in life. It's if we think about it,
we have ideas and we take action.
But life helps us to achieve, to put the right people in our paths,
to put our nemesis in our path, to teach us lessons, to grow,
to teach us compassion, to teach us empathy, teach us how do we elevate,
(12:24):
how do we evolve.
So challenges are an important part of life. But I'm no longer trying to escape
my reality because I really feel aligned now with my soul's purpose and my heart's
desires sounds again, very woo woo,
but it is that love that you feel for what you do that gets you to the very
shitty and difficult days.
(12:45):
So that's a bit my, my story and how I try to avoid to fall for burnout,
which because sometimes I still am on the verge, right?
I have to be careful is I try to balance my lifestyle on, on,
on how I work, what I feed myself, self, how I exercise, really knowing myself
and what I need when I am on the verge of,
(13:08):
relapsing, to stop, take a break.
Because that's the downside when you're very passionate about what you do.
It can become too much and you don't know when to stop.
So you really need to manage daily boundaries.
And it also includes people.
I'm very, very picky on who I spend time with because I've learned my lessons.
(13:30):
People can either lift you up or drain your energy like energy vampires.
So, and I have no problem walking away, especially in the beginning when I don't
know you that well, as soon as I noticed that you're going to drain my energy.
And I think I can do that now because of all the things I've been through in life, right?
(13:53):
And I wish women or even men would do this without having gone through trauma.
You don't have to justify who you spend your time with, right?
You are sovereign over your time and energy, or you can become sovereign.
And I think that's a really important message.
Is it easy? No. Will you be disliked? Definitely.
(14:18):
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing this incredible story, Nadia.
I am sure that a lot of listeners may relate to some degree to your story, some to a lesser degree,
but I feel that it might be a lot of people who can relate to a higher degree, such as myself.
(14:39):
So, and I'm glad you mentioned about exercise because this is one of the things
that we are all looking whenever we are all draining to our workflow and education to the job we do.
We completely forget about our health and we forget we are not machines. cheese.
(15:02):
So I would say this is exactly the same lesson that I learned from my experience
as well, that I need to exercise.
And in the present day, after going through also burnout,
similarly to yourself, I said to myself, okay, from this day on,
(15:23):
I will be creating a good balance for myself in terms of my health,
but also in terms of interaction with people.
Similarly, to you i also learned my lesson and i think that i should not be
allowing any energy vampires anymore.
(15:43):
And it's not easy to like to recognize them because it's easy that often we
we judge a book by its cover but often the ones who are kind of tough or loud
or in your face are less energy
vampires than the ones who are emotionally manipulative, right?
Who try to create an emotional connection to get you hooked.
(16:06):
And then people feel attached. And this is what is important to understand when
building relationship is to take your time.
Because if you would walk on the streets or you meet a stranger, there's no connection.
They can call you whatever you want, or they can ask you. You can be kind if
you want to, but you don't have to because there's no emotional connection.
But if it's someone you feel something for, even platonic, doesn't have to be
(16:29):
romantic, it's more difficult to say no.
Because as people, we want to be kind, we want to help. So that's where you
really need to have boundaries.
I am very kind when I say no, but the no is very clear.
It's like, it's really, I'm like, no, the no is very clear.
(16:50):
And then I get all kinds. And this is where you can recognize someone's character.
I mentioned this in another podcast. If you really want to know people,
tell them no when they want something from you.
Tell them no. And see what happens there.
The ones who say, okay, no worries, and still try to engage with you,
right? Because they respect your no.
(17:10):
Those are the ones you want to invest in more. But the ones who ghost or who
gaslight and make you feel like you're the bad person here, well,
that is already potential for drama that you don't want in your life.
And I think someone else said it as well. As women, we are either pictured as
(17:32):
the victim or the villain.
And as women, we need to develop the courage to be okay to be seen as the villain.
It's okay to be seen as the villain. Really. The most important opinion is the
opinion you have about yourself.
And your character speaks louder than opinions.
(17:52):
I really say this. When you work in integrity and do what is right,
people's words or people's it's always
comes you know to surface this is my
experience really it's always comes to
service and people who want to believe gossip about you
or people who want to believe in it those are already people who are not interested
in another point of view those are people who are not interested they already
(18:14):
made up their mind so you also have to be you know careful about people who
believe things about you who make judgments their ability to practice Practice
critical thinking and always understand that there's never one side to the story.
Already people who are not interested, right? They already decided that they don't want to.
And you should just be okay with that and live your life on your terms.
(18:39):
Don't harm anyone, but be unapologetic about who you are.
Wonderful. Thank you so much. I really enjoy this conversation and I hope that
the listeners will be enjoying it as well. Well, I'd like to ask you a closing question.
What advice can you provide to the listeners out there and perhaps specifically
(19:00):
to women how to deal with difficult situations in life or in our work in order to remain resilient?
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed this conversation so much.
I can't believe it's already the end.
I think a couple of things first. First is change the way you view challenges.
(19:23):
When we place challenges and problems on the pedestal, we are at the same time
smaller than our problems.
I'm making hand gestures, but I realized this is an audio podcast.
So just imagine, right? You have problems and you have you.
So imagine you're putting your problems as like this big mountain in front of
(19:43):
you and you're the small person looking at the mountain.
How are you going to feel? You are going to feel powerless. You're going to
feel victimized. You're going to feel helpless.
It's going to be very difficult to overcome your problems.
So the first thing is take your problems and challenges out of the pedestals,
no matter how big they are.
(20:04):
You can say, well, it's easy for you to say, Nadia. I went through periods where
I had no money to pay my rent or buy food, right?
I really thought I was going to live on the street at a certain point.
And still, I stayed calm and I put that problem smaller than me, right?
(20:26):
And that's how I manage challenges.
I don't make challenges bigger than me.
Second, change the way you view yourself. I was viewing myself as a helpless
single mother, not a good enough entrepreneur, always by myself,
not supported, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That familiar story, because of the conditioning I had been through,
(20:49):
a NATO, past, et cetera, woman, and minority background, was comfortable.
It was painful, but it was comfortable.
So I had to rewire my whole thought process and change the way I viewed myself. How do we do that?
We are very comfortable with our current version based on past experiences.
I had to create a new version of me. So like Matthew McConaughey always said or said.
(21:14):
Famous actor, your hero, my hero is the version five years from now, 10 years from now.
So I really honed in, who is the woman I want to become?
Who is the woman that is bigger than her challenges? That is,
you know, making it on my terms and in my definition, I have a very different
definition of success than most people.
How does she look like? What is she doing? What are our habits?
(21:36):
So I really created a vision of myself.
The resilient, the fulfilling, that life is not
all about suffering and and i became
very clear and i visualized myself to create those positive
emotions so now i have something to look forward to
and not only to look backwards and it's important for the brain because the
brain doesn't know the difference between reality and what is in your head so
(22:01):
when you visualize and remember who you are in the future that emotions will
then propel you forward the third thing is you are nothing without your habits.
A lot of people fail in life or suffer because they are unwilling to put in
the effort that it takes to embrace the change.
Your life will not change unless you change. I went through this painful realization
(22:24):
because at a certain time I had to go to transformation after transformation
and it was too much for me.
So I fell back to my old self, but that didn't help me.
So I really started having practices in
my life habits that matched the
new me and and often the old
me was rebelling we have this transition period where
(22:46):
you're not yet the new you and you're also not the old you and it's like you're
balancing back in between and that's okay when it really is it is not love and
light and it's not an easy journey which you know brings me to to the first
point Don't judge challenges as good or bad.
(23:07):
We feel based on what we perceive. If we perceive something as bad,
we feel negative emotions.
When we perceive something as negative, sorry, good, we feel positive emotions.
That's how we are conditioned most of the time. So just don't judge it as bad
or good. It's an opportunity for growth. That's how I see.
(23:28):
I'm like, universe, you're testing me every single time for the past five years
when it's going to stop. But now I'm like, okay, it's an opportunity to have a different response.
And the more you respond from the version you want to be, the more life will get easier.
I still face a lot of challenges, but I am so much more calm about it.
(23:50):
Because a calm mind is so much more powerful than a chaotic mind.
This is why I write about inner peace. And often people say,
inner peace, isn't it a bit of woo-woo?
It's the most powerful art or
skill set that you can develop life because when you are at
peace with who you are on the inside nothing can
(24:10):
shake you off your center you are very
focused and clear and it's not a static state of being it takes effort it takes
practice it takes habits every day you become better at it right and then the
last thing i will say which is quite difficult for a lot of people and women, especially now,
(24:31):
because especially in cybersecurity industry,
we pay a lot of attention on how we are perceived.
It's, you know, of course you care about other people's opinion because as human
beings, we are social creatures. We compare ourselves.
But you cannot be defined by other people's opinion.
I'm currently reading the Dutch version of Mark Manson's book.
(24:53):
You know, Why You Should Not Give an F.
And it's brilliant. brilliant but it's really that
stop giving an f about you know
don't take yourself so seriously i take what i do very seriously but
i don't take myself so seriously and that has
helped me a lot in managing and
overcoming my challenges by managing my energy
because you need the energy to to
(25:16):
continue on the path and you should you you
shouldn't you only do what you want
to do obviously but i think it's not being defined
by people's opinion will give you freedom people will
judge people will say people will you know focus on
those who support and uplift you right and be thankful for those who speak about
(25:39):
you because you're interesting if people speak behind your back often it's because
they don't want to speak in front of you because you have you know a certain
attitude about you that makes people fearful or makes people not want to come to you right?
And it's not about making people fearful, but I mean, I'm thinking,
you're doing something right.
If no one talks about you, right, then you're not doing anything of interest.
(26:03):
And then, and I think the last thing, what I will say is.
Be very intentional about life. And I've experienced this.
When I was doing stuff because I just wanted the money or I just wanted the
validation or I just wanted to be liked or to fit in, it only brought me misery.
Now, I'm really intentional about everything I do, right?
(26:26):
About people, about places. Even with clients,
friends, when I don't have the energy reciprocated or
when it's not aligned with my values i remove myself
from the experience because it will only bring me
misery but when i'm intentional about what
i do and be very clear on why i do
what i do am i doing it because it comes from the heart because
(26:49):
it comes from the loving place because it's aligned with my mission it
usually i'm at peace but when i'm
stressed and when it doesn't feel right something is
off then it's not you know intentional and this
is how i keep myself aligned and it's
an everyday process because sometimes i'm not aligned
and i get myself back in alignment so those
(27:11):
are several steps i don't even remember all.
Of what i shared to summarize them but the most important is don't
put your challenges on a pedestal you are bigger than
the mountain ahead of you make it smaller and you
know don't don't worry because worry
doesn't solve anything you can care about your challenges but
don't worry it is in energy wasted use the
(27:33):
energy to create solutions don't be defined
by people's opinions right your most
important opinion is yourself and know
your why live with intention live
with intention and like i
said earlier as women we are taught to be a
victim in life because no one benefits from a woman
(27:55):
who is empowered and who knows her value you and
who knows her worth that's a danger to most patriarchal
structure in society so do it
anyway know your worth stand in
your work practice your words and have the courage to be someone's villain because
you have no control on how people perceive you you can only live in integrity
(28:18):
and with your authentic values and that's how you generate more energy to live
the life of purpose in the life you want. And it's a step-by-step process.
Don't try to be happy until you have something because you will always want something more.
You can even find, I sometimes feel happy even when I'm going through my toughest
challenges because happiness is an inside job.
(28:40):
Life is ebb and flow. There will always be challenges.
It is how you feel on the inside and what piece you are,
that you are able to manage these challenges. When you outsource your happiness
and well-being to external conditions,
you are always imprisoned because there will always be something external to
you that needs to happen in order for you to feel good or feel at peace versus
(29:02):
cultivated ability to feel at peace,
have a calm mind, and be sovereign of who you are first.
And that's how you live a life, higher quality of life, and transcend even your wildest expectation.
Wow. Long story. Well, Nadia, I would say that your response to my question
(29:25):
was a toolbox with a lot of tools for all our wonderful listeners.
And it's just amazing. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest today.
You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And And thank you, everyone, for listening.
Stay happy and healthy.
(29:50):
Music.
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