Conversation with Dr Saima Ali

Her program is called Wealthy Muslim Women and you can check out her podcast , wealthy Muslim Women , on iTunes . She is doing phenomenal work and she was gracious enough to host me on her podcast , so for today's episode I decided to publish that interview . So following is our conversation . Please enjoy .

But instead of me introducing you , I'd love for you to tell everybody about who you are , what you do and just everything about yourself .

It was a good , it was an excellent experience through your wealthy women coaching in the course and I got introduced to this world and then I realized how important and needed this is and literally that was my push in the right direction and Alhamdulillah . I can't thank you enough and this whole journey . So a little bit about myself .

My name is Dr Kamal Akhtar . I am a board certified internal medicine physician and I practice full-time as a hospitalist doctor in South Florida . I go by Dr K because for non-subcontinent people it's hard to pronounce my name , the way it's written , but overall I consider myself a Muslima , first , a physician , a wife , a mother , entrepreneur .

I have a successful business in the medical field that I co-founded with my partner that we've been running for 10 years alhamdul , 10 years and it gives me the perfect like family , work balance , and I started with the life coaching because it is such an underutilized tool and that is the mind .

I feel like our mind just keeps running our life rather than us running our mind , and when I came to this , I was like this is not something that should be kept a secret . So I went full force into this field and that's where I am .

So I host the Islamic Life Coach School podcast and that's where my general life coaching business is it's Islamic Life Coach School .

What exactly is a life coach in your opinion or in your perspective ?

But just like there are different kinds of physicians even if , let's say , like yourself , in the field of neurology or myself in the field of internal medicine there are all different spectrums of physician how they practice , what their specialties are , what they're good at , or if they just pretend to be good at something that they're really not .

Like you , you see all different colors of the spectrum in any profession . Same way you will see that in life coaching there are life . There are people who call themselves life coaches without any quote , unquote , formal training and based on their life experiences , which maybe makes them a good life coach . We never know .

And but life coaching , the way I describe it , is for me , I'm a mindset coach and anybody who can help you manage your mind can be considered a life coach . There are people who call themselves life coaches because they can give you advice on the field of marketing or advertisement .

Or there are people who consider themselves a life coach because they can give you advice in the field of nutrition , wellness and fitness and overall . So there isn't a one size fits all definition to this term life coach . What I do recognize is that for physicians it's a very high bar that is set by the boards and the licensing agencies .

To enter into that field you have to go through training after training , exam after exam . For life coaching that bar is extremely low . Like anybody can call themselves a life coach , and when they come to this then really it's up to the feedback they get to realize if they're good or not .

You might be a successful life coach at something that I would never consider myself that I'll ever be good at that . So life coaching to me is basically a general guidance that somebody else can provide you in areas of your difficulty or areas of struggle .

How do you manage it all , like , how do you have time to be an entrepreneur and see what's in the world , be a mom and be a physician , like all those tasks I feel require so much energy , so much brain power .

But what really helps me is that it only requires energy one item at a time , like if I am working as a mother at home , then that's all I am Like at that point I'm not going to let my brain go crazy on things that need to be done at work or in regards to my coaching business , and the same is true depending on what role I'm playing any day of the

week or any hour of the day . The biggest fallback plan or I don't know , like a cushion for me is where I slip , is where I find my spirituality , my religiosity , and that's exactly why I've founded my life coaching business around .

Religiosity is because the life that you're trying to live kind of poses itself as the most and the ultimate important thing described . You really lose focus on that one thing that matters , and that's your belief in Allah , your religiosity , especially for myself , it's my belief in the religion of Islam .

So when I get lost in all of that , that's one thing that I come back to time and time again and that's one rope that I hang on to with all of my strength , like regardless of what role I'm playing . So you have to have that one foundation , that one basic belief that you always redirect yourself to and that's the goal that you set .

And then all the offshoots as a mom , as an entrepreneur , as a physician all these offshoots kind of come together . And another thing is of mind management .

That's something that I've personally struggled with pretty much my whole life , and I started doing a lot of work on performance , on improving my performance in my life and in my family life and in myself , and I was making categories of things that I need to prioritize .

So for myself , things like , you know , I need to exercise , I need to have meditation time for myself , and then I need to spend time with my kids , and I still didn't feel a lot of peace , a lot of content in my life . And then what I realized is that what I was missing is the spirituality .

And so many times I was neglecting Salah because I was blaming that I'm not getting enough sleep . So if wake up for Fajr , if I wake up , the baby's gonna wake up , and I can't have the baby wake up and I , you know I can delay Fajr , I can do something else at this time , and I was always neglecting that and that contentment was just not there .

And now the way I do it is , you know , I put spirituality as like the first thing that I need for myself and everything else can revolve around it . And I think mashallah like the way Islam is it , we think it's there to bound us that oh , if we're going to take time out for salah , that it's going to take us away from our important task .

But if you really study , like the high performance stuff , it's actually a time to connect with ourselves and with our higher being . So that little break that we take it's almost like a meditation break where we're paying attention to ourselves , our minds and like to our creator , and it actually helps us focus better .

So that's something that I just started doing and learning more about .

After 20 minutes , get up and whatever . They tell you to disconnect from whatever you're doing in your zone of performance and then come back to it later .

Of course , there is that benefit in Salah and Dhikr , in all of your remembrance of Allah , subhanahu wa ta'ala , but there's also the benefit that Allah promised us , and that's what we also forget to sometimes focus on and we say , okay , if I disconnect and go to Allah , then I'll be more productive .

But then you have to also keep in mind that Allah promised you rewards that are beyond your imagination , 700 times more for turning to him and asking him for help or doing the good deeds or really just remembering him .

So a human mind is only capable of learning in references okay , if I'm being productive , that means that this is what I have accomplished , then let me turn to Allah to give myself a break , or whatever and it forgets that Allah has promised so much more than what we're capable of fathoming , so that always also helps me in in keeping it in the right direction

yeah , making those connections from the western perspective and then going back to islam .

And in Islam there's a hadith where Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said there's a blessing for my ummah in the morning with like the earlier hours and we have Fajr scheduled for us correct .

And there's so much evidence in our tradition that tells us exactly that Like wake up , that's your hour of rahmah , that's when Allah is on the lowest of the lowest skies where he listens to your dua .

So we can find evidence of it in the scientific community and we can go back to our tradition and look for it and there's really no wrong or right , whatever fits your calling for that time , right yeah .

So it's amazing when you start paying attention to like whatever your brain is telling you , to questioning it and saying is this a fact ? Is this something I'm making up ? So you know , we're all inspired by something . What makes you feel inspired to do this work ?

But it again came to me one day after the hajj and I was like , okay , if I'm gonna go down this road , how am I gonna do this ? What am I gonna do ? And it was just so quick . It was like it has to be around religiosity .

In the next second the name that came to me was Islamic Life Coach School and I wrote that down and in the next five minutes I had the domain registered like . I have it registered under like $7.99 or $10.99 , something like crazy , crazy cheap . So it kind of I want to say it kind of happened .

But it happened because whenever I would go and explore this topic , I would always be held back by these waswasas that there's so much Islamophobia , nobody's going to sign up for your services .

There's so much even Muslims out there that just hate the culture of Islam , not the religion of Islam , but what the culture of Islam is forcing down their throats of Islam is forcing down their throats . There they'd be like , okay , I would rather practice whatever western science , modern science , is telling me .

Then go down this culture of Islam that my family is shoving down my throat . And I had all of these ideas that I would be excluded , medical community would never accept me , and I had all these fears and nothing was true . None of that . And it's just so fabulous . Again , it goes back to mind management .

It just goes back to addressing your fears , and my inspiration really came from that moment . But it was built on a lifetime of experiences , because I kept questioning things that are I was finding in the Quran versus what I was finding in the culture . I was like you know , I've been fed this narrative all my life .

Let me go to the books , let me go to the ulama , let me go to the right resources and find if there's any validity to that . And whenever I wouldn't find it , I'd just be like , oh my God , this was never true , like Muslims .

Like how men kind of tell a woman their role in a marriage and it says that you're just supposed to take it or leave it , or even leaving is not an option . Like nowhere in our religion does it say that . And yet I was brought up with this , with this image in my mind .

So when I started debunking this and I came to life coaching , I was like you know what ? This message has to be sent out to the masses . There's nothing in our religion that disproves what science is saying . If anything , if science tries to disprove what our religion is saying , it just falls flat on itself Like if not now , then later .

So might as well go to the source , might as well go to the book and the Quran and the Sunnah and get it from there .

You know , should I only you ? You know what , if I get blamed for not including non-Muslim women or any of this stuff , and I had such a such fears around that and yeah , and then the other thing is like the stereotypes that we have .

I was talking to my husband the other day , especially about Muslim women , and I was talking to another friend and she said she's she wants to get therapy , but she's afraid of going for therapy to a non-Muslim white person or you know somebody who's not familiar , because they kind of think , you know , she's submissive , she's coming as this person who is being

taken advantage of , and she said that's not what it's all about . Like , this is , you know , I am strong , I can speak for myself , but they have this stereotype stereotype and that's what I feel like it's going to come from .

And then the other thing I was telling my husband is that we have such a strong example of Muslim woman , like even when we go back to our history , like Hatija .

You know she , hatija was married to Prophet and she was the business owner and she's the one who proposed to him and she had been married before and he was this young guy that she proposed to and she's this .

At that time she was a powerful character in their life and even today , if we look at our , our moms or other other successful business women and we see their strong characters , how they've been able to be resilient and and do all that .

But then we have these stereotypes that , oh , you know , muslim women they're submissive and they're staying at home and they're not allowed to do this and they're not allowed to do that .

So that's another advantage of of life coaching , which me it basically is forward focus rather than past focus , which is a huge advantage that a lot of general population doesn't understand .

But the therapist I was going to it was the same thing , like he thought , just because I was observing the hijab that I was closed in and I was introverted and I didn't enjoy around , being around people and I was just taking my orders from whoever told me to do this , and it was so detrimental because at some level I was questioning that I was like am I

really ? Is this my value ? Like what's happening , like there's a lot of brainwashing that goes on if you go to sources like that and it's dangerous and you have to really like check yourself and there are how , what , like you can be an empowered muslim woman and you can be in a role of support of your family .

You can be in a role of observing the niqab , you can be in a role of I don't know whatever is interest to you to go scuba diving , or being a CEO , or you know . It's such a large spectrum and for other people who already come to the picture with preconceived notions , it's detrimental .

So it's this life coaching around Islam , mind management with Islamic principles , like you were doing , alhamdulillah , alhamdulillah , inshallah I can continue . It's extremely important .

So tell me more about your program . Can you break it down ? What are you doing ? How do you provide your services ? Who do you work with ? Just any details about your program .

We make a decision and we quickly second guess it and we scratch it , and it doesn't really only have to be in your professional setting , about a presentation or about a talk that you're giving , even in real life , like if you want to take your family out for an outing , and you're constantly second guessing yourself is this the right thing ?

So I kind of help you take out that mind drama . And when I say professional Muslim woman , I think a stay at home mom is the toughest profession . Going back to what you said , and as soon as I say that stay at home moms just automatically exclude themselves .

They're like oh , I don't have a job that pays me outside of the work , I don't leave home for work , so that means it's not for me . I mean again , it's the toughest profession .

So stay at home mom are also part of my coaching clientele and basically it's just it's general life coaching around the topic that you're having struggle with , because the way Allah has designed life is that he sent you here and then he will test you with struggles .

So , whatever your current struggle is , is your little flag that's trying to get your attention to pay attention to what your mind and body is going through , pay attention to your thoughts , pay attention to your feelings .

So , once you've come to that crossroads where you realize that you have a struggle , what I want to offer these women and whoever's listening to this podcast is that it's not you , it's , 100% of the time , a mismanaged mind .

What I also offer , which I really consider to be my contribution towards the life coaching model that we follow , is that the entire , literally every thought that comes to you is either made up of a higher brain origin or a lower brain origin .

Lower brain source the primal brain , the evolutionary brain , source of the whispers of the west , of shaitan , or the higher brain , being the voice of your ruh or your connection to allah , your higher conscience and source of your taqwa , your connection , connection to God , and the way we know at any given moment which thought you're acting from either is a lower

brain origin or the higher brain origin , the way we know that is , with the result you create .

So at one point , you could be watching TV and relaxing with your family and you love the whole situation and you've created , as a result , created a bond with your family and at their point , you would be would be thinking , okay , let me watch this tv and you're wasting time and you're not paying attention to your family .

So it's the same thought pattern leading to the same actions , but the result you've created is completely opposite . In one case , you've created a bond with your family . In one case , you've created ignore , like you're ignoring your family .

So it's not so much the thought that comes to you that I can tell you that , okay , this you're acting from your higher brain or the lower brain . It's the result that you create out of it . And a lot of times this type of coaching comes so naturally to Muslim women , especially to all Muslims .

Like I do these talks at mosques and it's so well received because they immediately know how to recognize that wasfasad , because they've been trained on it . They've been like , okay , if this is happening and you're committing a sin , this is the wasfasad , like they've been told that what we're not taught is that wasfasad . That wasfasad is extremely common .

If you're not getting a promotion , it's most likely because you're acting on these waswasas keeping you on shame , in judgment , in second guessing yourself . So when I teach them that that there is a third party at play here , it's not necessarily their own inner being that's at fault .

It's like a light bulb that goes on and it makes a quote like for me , it makes my life so much easier because from then on , I just have to teach them that , okay , this is what you have to do , get out of it . So it's , alhamdulillah , an extremely positive what can I say ?

It's an extremely powerful concept that it's already pre-programmed and yeah , and it works in our favor .

My Dr Kabbalah there and team at islamiclifecoachschoolcom is also an email that you can email , but that email is available on the website as well , so you can't go wrong . You can schedule a consult there or you could look at the program that I offer .

Whoever I qualify could benefit from my services through my free consult is welcome to enroll .

Yes , it is Monday , because I was trying to plan my birthday and I'm Okay .

But then I'm not sure if you're referring to the Muslim woman giving circle . I think Uzma and Zeba yes , uzma and Zeba started that and we discussed that , I think , a couple of podcasts ago .

Now this fund whatever you you can decide to call it . So ours is called muhammad ali fund because my husband's last name is Muhammad and my last name is Ali , so we're the Muhammad Ali family , so we call it Muhammad Ali , and my husband is a huge fan of Muhammad Ali , of course . Yeah , so we love it .

So so we have our own family fund and then this is the charity money zakat money , sadiqah money , whatever it is and we're putting it in that and that money gets to grow and you know , and then we distribute it to charity . So once you put money into that fund , it's not ours anymore , it doesn't belong to us . So you can create like that type of fund .

But then Muslim Women Giving Circle is a bigger circle where it's a mutual kind of agreement . It's it's , I think , over 100 women right now that are getting together and donating a certain amount each year and then collectively deciding who , which charity this money will go to .

Um , so then they this they vote on the charity at the end of this year , and this is Uzma and Zeba's . Oh , I see .

to me now .

I want to thank you guys for joining me . Inshallah , I will talk to you next time .