Sometimes when I look at the work I am doing today, I find myself going back to 2020, a time when I was still at the beginning of my own healing journey. I did not know exactly where that journey would take me, and I certainly did not know that some of the lessons I was learning then would become connected to the work I would later do with young people, families, organisations and individuals. I was simply trying to understand myself, heal parts of myself and learn more about human beings. One of the strongest memories from that period is Lisa Nichols and the classes I attended almost every night, sometimes from 9 PM until 5 AM. Those were long nights, but there was something about being awake when most of the world was sleeping and listening to conversations about human beings, emotions, pain, healing, purpose, and possibility that stayed with me.
One of the lessons I remember most clearly was the idea that, although our circumstances may be completely different, human beings are not so different when it comes to emotions. Someone may grow up in a wealthy family while another grows up struggling financially. Someone may experience divorce; another may experience abandonment; another may experience rejection, failure, bullying, loneliness, or grief. The stories are different, the environments are different, the generations are different, and the cultures may be different, but underneath those stories we often find very familiar human emotions. We all know what it feels like to want to belong. We know what rejection feels like. We know what it means to want to be loved, understood, valued, accepted, and seen. We know fear, anger, sadness, shame, joy, disappointment and hope.
Science gives us an interesting way of understanding this. Human beings have evolved systems that allow us to detect threats, seek safety, form relationships and respond emotionally to what happens around us. Research into basic emotions, including the work associated with Paul Ekman, has shown that some emotional expressions have cross-cultural similarities, although modern research also reminds us that emotional experience and expression are influenced by culture, context, learning and individual differences. In other words, we are not identical, but there are important emotional experiences that connect us as human beings. This is why someone can tell you a story from a completely different life, and suddenly you find yourself thinking, I understand that feeling.
That lesson has become even more meaningful to me as I have grown older. When I look at the work I do now, I realise how much of it somehow connects back to those nights in 2020. A large part of the people I work with are teenagers and young people, and when they sit in front of me and begin telling me what they are experiencing, I sometimes realise that their stories are not as distant from ours as we might think. The technology has changed. The language has changed. Social media has changed the way young people compare themselves with others. The pressures may look different from what we experienced growing up, but the human being underneath all of that is still trying to answer some of the same questions: Who am I? Am I good enough? Do I belong? Does anyone understand me? Am I loved? What am I supposed to become?
This is one of the reasons I have become increasingly interested in the emotional world of teenagers. Adolescence is not simply a smaller version of adulthood. It is a major period of identity development, social learning and emotional development. The adolescent brain is still developing, particularly the systems involved in planning, decision-making and regulating impulses, while social experiences and peer relationships become increasingly important. This does not mean that teenagers are incapable of making good decisions; it means that the environment around them, their relationships and the way adults communicate with them can have a powerful influence on how they develop.
This is why Lisa Nichols' work with young people stayed with me. Her organisation, Motivating the Teen Spirit, was created around helping teenagers develop confidence, discover themselves, communicate, and make values-based decisions. Her current organisation describes the work as helping young people build confidence from within rather than relying entirely on external approval, develop a grounded self-image, and learn to make decisions under pressure. When I look at the teenagers I work with today, I can see why this matters so much. Sometimes young people do not need another adult telling them what to do. They need a safe space where they can understand what they are feeling, learn to put words to it, and begin discovering who they are.
There is another lesson from those classes that has stayed with me for years: our hearts are different, just like our fingerprints. I remember learning about the uniqueness of each person's heart and how that uniqueness affects the way we connect with other human beings. At the time, I understood it as a lesson about individuality. Today, I understand it much more deeply. There may be thousands of people doing work similar to ours. There may be coaches, trainers, speakers, psychologists, teachers, writers and organisations talking about confidence, leadership, healing, relationships and personal development. We may even use some of the same concepts, books, models or exercises. But nobody will deliver them through exactly the same life experience, personality, values, pain, lessons, relationships and heart that we carry. That has become especially important to me as I have continued to grow.
I remember Lisa speaking about how people may take your work, use your ideas, reproduce what you have created and sometimes not even acknowledge where it came from. That lesson became powerful for me because the longer we work in a public space, the more we realise that this can happen. Someone may take something you created and present it as their own. Someone may hear an idea from you and later repeat it without mentioning you. Someone may even build something using a foundation you helped create. And yes, it can hurt.
We are human beings. Of course it hurts when something we poured our time, energy, and heart into is taken without acknowledgement. It is natural to feel angry, disappointed, or betrayed. Psychology itself recognises betrayal as a deeply emotional experience because relationships are not simply transactions; they involve trust, expectations, attachment and meaning. When that trust is broken, the emotional response can be significant. Lisa herself has written about damaged business relationships and describes the experience of betrayal and hurt in very human terms, while also reflecting on the importance of taking responsibility for our own part and creating clarity in relationships.
But the lesson I carried from her teaching was different from simply saying, People will copy you, so don't worry about it. For me, it became: they can copy what you do, but they cannot become you.
They can use the same words, but they do not have your life experiences behind those words. They can use the same exercise, but they do not have your relationship with the people sitting in front of them. They can reproduce a programme, but they cannot reproduce the heart with which you deliver it. They can imitate the visible part of your work, but they cannot copy the invisible years that shaped the person doing the work. That distinction has brought me peace.
There is also something deeply connected to my faith in this. Islam constantly brings us back to the intention behind what we do. Allah reminds us that He knows what is hidden and what is apparent, and the Qur'an teaches that Allah is aware of what is within us. When recognition does not come from people, that does not mean the work has gone unseen.
Sometimes we become too attached to being acknowledged by human beings. We want people to say our name. We want them to recognise where the idea came from. We want them to say, She helped me, or I learned this from her. There is nothing wrong with appreciation, and giving credit is an important part of integrity. But there is a difference between appreciating recognition and becoming dependent on recognition.
The Qur'an reminds us that Allah knows what is done, including what is hidden from people. This changes the way I look at service. If I know that Allah sees the intention, the effort, the tears, the nights, the failures, the learning, and the people I tried to help, then I do not need every human being to validate that my work mattered.
This does not mean allowing people to treat us unfairly or refusing to protect our intellectual work. Boundaries still matter. Contracts matter. Giving credit matters. Ethical behaviour matters. But there comes a point where holding on to resentment can become heavier than the original betrayal. And this is where I think healing becomes different from simply forgetting. Healing does not mean pretending that something did not hurt. Healing means that the experience no longer controls the person you become.
This is also where I think the Islamic concept of tawakkul becomes very powerful. Tawakkul is not sitting back and saying, "Allah will take care of everything," while doing nothing. It is taking the appropriate steps, doing your part, protecting what needs to be protected, learning from what happened, and then trusting Allah with what is outside your control. We do what we can, but we recognise that the final outcome is not entirely in our hands. I have had to learn this repeatedly.
People will come into our lives, and some will stay. Some will leave. Some will support us. Some will misunderstand us. Some will genuinely celebrate us. Some may compete with us. Some may take inspiration from us. Some may take more than inspiration. Some may hurt us. Some may disappoint us. And sometimes the people we expected to stand beside us will be the ones who teach us the greatest lessons about boundaries, self-respect, and dependence on Allah.
That does not mean we become bitter. If anything, I think the challenge is to remain soft without becoming naive. That is one of the hardest forms of growth.
I also remember the story Lisa shared about experiencing betrayal in a business relationship and how devastating that experience was for her. What stayed with me was not simply that betrayal happened to her. It was that she continued to believe that things could eventually be alright. Her own writing about damaged business relationships reflects how deeply personal professional relationships can become and how much pain can come when trust breaks down. That taught me something important: being strong does not mean you never feel devastated. Sometimes strength is allowing yourself to feel the devastation and still believing that your life is not finished because of it. This is something I have come to understand about coaching as well.
People do not come to us as problems to be fixed. They come carrying stories. Sometimes they do not even know how to explain what they are carrying. A teenager may say, "I don't know what's wrong with me," when what they really mean is, "I don't know how to explain what I am feeling." A parent may say, "My child doesn't listen to me," when underneath that may be fear, disconnection, and a desperate desire to know how to reach their child. An adult may say, "I keep making the same mistakes," when underneath there may be an old belief about worth, rejection, or safety.
When we learn to listen beyond the behaviour, we begin to see the human being.
And this is one of the biggest things I carried from those nights with Lisa. People may have different stories, but the heart is still looking for connection.
There is a beautiful Islamic reminder in this too. The Qur'an tells us that Allah created us as peoples and tribes so that we may know one another, not so that we may spend our lives believing that our differences make one human being more valuable than another. The differences in our backgrounds, personalities, and experiences are real, but underneath them is the same human dignity given to us by our Creator.
This has changed the way I look at the people I work with.
I do not want to become someone who simply teaches people how to achieve more. I want to understand people. I want to understand why they behave the way they do, what shaped their beliefs, what they are afraid of, what they are hoping for and what they have never been able to say out loud. My studies in organisational psychology have only deepened this curiosity because the more I learn about human behaviour, the more I realise how complex and fascinating we are.
And when I look back now, I realise that my healing journey and my service journey were never two completely separate things. One prepared me for the other.
Before I could sit with someone else's pain, I had to become more comfortable sitting with my own. Before I could encourage someone to understand themselves, I had to become willing to understand myself. Before I could speak about resilience, I had to experience moments that required resilience. Before I could tell someone that their circumstances do not define them, I had to learn that lesson for myself.
I started in 2020 simply trying to heal and learn. Today, I find myself sitting with teenagers who are trying to understand who they are, having conversations with adults who are carrying wounds they never learned how to name, and training people in organisations while talking about leadership, emotional intelligence, communication and human behaviour. Sometimes I stop and think about that woman sitting awake at 2 or 3 in the morning, watching a Lisa Nichols class and taking notes while most of the world was asleep, and I realise she had no idea where those lessons would lead her. She only knew that something inside her was changing.
This is how transformation happens for many of us. We do not always see the destination when we take the first step. Sometimes we are simply collecting lessons, healing one wound, learning one concept, meeting one person, listening to one story, and having one conversation. Years later, we look back and realise that those seemingly separate moments were actually building something.
My work today is not exactly the work I imagined in 2020 because it has evolved as I have evolved. The people I serve have also shaped me. Every teenager who shares something with me, every client who trusts me with a difficult story, every participant who asks a question, every person who tells me that something we discussed changed the way they looked at themselves teaches me something too.
That is why I no longer see service as something that makes me better than the people I serve. Service makes us human together. I may be the coach in the room, but I am still a human being. I still have emotions, I still have lessons to learn, I still get disappointed, and I still have moments when I question myself. I still have to remind myself that my worth does not depend on applause, recognition or comparison.
And I still return to that lesson about the heart. My heart is mine, and your heart is yours, and our journeys are shaped by experiences that nobody else has lived in exactly the same way. Someone can walk the same road, use similar words, teach a similar lesson or build something that looks similar to what you created, but they cannot carry your heart into the work. They cannot become the person Allah created you to be. That is why I have learned to keep doing the work, keep learning, and keep serving. I can give credit when credit is due and ask for credit when it matters, but I do not want the absence of recognition to make me question the value of what I do, because ultimately the deepest witness to our work is not always standing in the audience. Allah sees the intention, the effort, and everything that people do not see, and that gives me peace.
When I think about 2020 now, I do not simply remember the classes. I remember the beginning of a transformation. I remember the long nights and the lessons about emotions, connection, courage, betrayal, purpose, and the uniqueness of the human heart. I remember being reminded that our circumstances may be different, but our humanity connects us. And the most meaningful part for me is that I am now meeting younger versions of the person I once was. They are trying to find themselves, understand their emotions, feel worthy, belong, and figure out what kind of person they want to become. When they sit across from me, I do not only see a teenager; I see a human being whose story may be different from mine, but whose heart may be asking some of the same questions mine once asked.
Looking back, I can see how the journey came full circle. I started by trying to heal myself, and somewhere along the way that healing taught me how to serve. Now, through serving others, I continue to heal, learn, and become. When I think about those nights in 2020, I realise that I was not only learning lessons for myself; I was collecting lessons that would eventually become part of the way I understand and serve other human beings. I did not know it then, but the woman sitting there from 9 PM until 5 AM was already taking the first steps toward the work I do today, and I am grateful that I kept walking.
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