Happiness Formula for Professional Women

So I'm sitting here in my closet with my equipment , so the sound quality will be different hopefully better only because I have an extra special episode for you guys today . My name is Dr Kamal Akhtar and I'm a board-certified internal medicine physician , practicing hospital medicine for the last eight and a half years .

I'm coming to you today in a capacity of a life coach . Now , for those of you listening to my podcast from the beginning must be wondering why am I introducing myself again ? Well , the answer to that is because today I'm addressing a very specific group of people , and those are Muslim women , physicians with families .

For everyone else , it doesn't mean that they stop listening at this point . It just means that I'm addressing the hardworking , overachieving , multi-talented and always multitasking women that are physicians who keep up with family work and religious obligations beautifully . That's right .

I'm talking to you because I am you and for the other people not completely fitting this description , this episode will be a review , but all the methods will still apply to you and I'm sure you'll find merit in everything I have to say . So continue to listen on .

So to my physician friends , I wanted to let you know that I've created the Islamic Life Coach School because I had everything in life and I was still unhappy and somehow made to believe that I was a bad Muslimah . It was such a struggle for me until I found a specific formula that I applied to life coaching and I'm about to teach you .

I had worked so hard . I've gotten straight A's as a student , followed all the rules , had a beautiful family , alhamdulillah but I always felt overwhelmed , and overworking wasn't even a part of it . All the time I'd feel overwhelmed , even on my time off .

I was reactive to all my situations to my children , to my husband , to even the cleaning lady for not showing up on time . Other people would consider just having a cleaning lady a blessing , and here I was being miserable out of a blessing .

I was struggling with everything , big and small , and I was thinking like there was something wrong with me , and I felt that way all the time . How was it that I got to this point in my career and still felt like a failure ? They didn't warn me about this in med school or residency .

They said practicing medicine will solve all my life's problems , but that was far from the truth . So in my struggle in trying to solve my problems , I tried everything .

Everything from meditation to reading up to five self-help books a week , to taking innumerable self-help courses , to five self-help books a week , to taking innumerable self-help courses , to more volunteering , to less volunteering , to delegating to create more time , to traveling more to distract myself , to traveling less , to try and spend more time with my family .

Everything from blaming my husband to blaming my parents for everything that happened in my childhood and going through therapy because my therapist had me believing that something went wrong in my childhood . And going through therapy because my therapist had me believing that something went wrong in my childhood .

And from therapy to other extremes , from benign to dramatic , tried to solve all my problems with the external world . And then I came across a Dora from one of my teachers from the ribat school for Muslim women , and it was a Dora asking Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to send me a guide . And I repeated that Dora asking for that guide every morning .

This was right around the time of the pandemic , and that was especially stressful time for health professionals . Among all of the chaos and the uncertainty that the health professionals were going through , I discovered a model called CTFAR by Brooke Castillo . I learned more and more about it until I realized that this was it .

This was the guide I had been praying for . I teach it , based on Islamic fundamentals , at the Islamic Life Coach School , and I'll give you everything you need to know for free , right here . I applied this formula to time management and it has changed my life . So what is the formula C-T-F-A-R ?

It is an abbreviation that stands for C for circumstances , t for thoughts , f for feelings , a for actions , r for results . Now I'm going to review some basic descriptions of all of these . C for circumstances these are always outside .

Now I'm going to review some basic descriptions of all of these C for circumstances these are always outside of us , always neutral , always out of our control , and have to be provable .

An example of a circumstance would be the weather , a statement from another individual , an agreed-upon fact , and we set the standard of these circumstances , so much so that they're provable to other people , for example , like in a court of law . Next is the letter T , which stands for thoughts . Thoughts are created in our heads based on the circumstance .

What is it that we're thinking about ? Based on a neutral circumstance ? Thought , very simply speaking , are of two origins the higher brain , or the prefrontal cortex , or the lower brain being the hindbrain and the amygdala , also called the primitive brain . The next letter is F , for feelings , which are generated by our thoughts that serve as fuel of our actions .

Feelings are emotions in our body that we feel as a direct result of a thought . The next letter is A , which stands for action . Actions is something we do based on how we feel as a direct result of a thought . The next letter is A , which stands for action . Actions is something we do based on how we feel .

Sometimes we take strong actions based on positive feelings and sometimes we go into inaction based on negative feelings , so inactions also lie in this line . The next letter in the formula is R , which stands for results . These are the results that we have generated based on our actions that we took .

The power of this formula and the reason it changed my life lies in the T-line . The circumstances are always outside of our control . That is the C-line .

Afterwards , starting from the T-line , which are our thoughts , everything is in our control , and recognizing what we choose to think about our environment can change all of the subsequent lines , including the feelings , actions and the results that we generate .

They don't teach you that in medical school Actually , they don't teach you that in any professional school and all of the self-help books and courses focus on changing one thought how to be a good parent , how to be happy , how to be a good boss .

What I've learned from this formula is that you can literally apply it to every aspect of your life , because it's based on your thought , which is coming from the most powerful tool of the human body , which is your brain and , above all , your conscious brain .

Problems I faced with the self-help industry was they tell you to change one thought and then you're stuck in the same negative thought loop as soon as you're facing another difficult situation . Now don't get me wrong about the self-help industry . I drive a lot of lessons from other people's expertise and I apply them .

But what I'm trying to say is I've never found anything more inclusive than this formula that will help you change your life and get the results you want . At the Islamic Life Coach School , it is my mission to provide superior mental health and emotional intelligence , and I'll give you some examples as to how the formula can do that .

This is going to make for a long podcast , but by the end of this podcast you will understand why you are reactive to so many of your life situations and why you went to school for almost $200,000 in debt and came out still unhappy . What to do with the burnout related to work and the overwhelm created by having a career and a family life .

You can have both . No longer will you wonder who are these people who always look so put together and are doing so much . Now , before I teach you the workings of the formula , I want to add a disclaimer here .

As a practicing physician , I have tremendous respect for all my colleagues in the mental health field and I am not at all claiming that this formula will fix all mental illnesses .

This is the place for us to recognize that the treatment and diagnosis of mental illnesses is extremely vital , and it is done properly through licensed specialties like psychiatry , psychology , psychotherapists , social workers .

Diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses is not at all what I'm trying to do here , even though , as a physician I can , but I want to be very clear from the beginning that I will not be providing any treatment or diagnosis related to mental illnesses . If I do feel someone needs those services , I will refer them out .

Additionally , I want to clarify that , according to my standards , I do not define mental health as a lack of mental illness , which is unfortunately the standard where most of the society operates out of today , meaning if you don't have a mental illness , it must be that you're mentally healthy , which unfortunately is not the case .

Now , this is a topic for a whole another podcast , but I want to clarify it here , since I want to let you know that that is not the standard where I will be operating from , which is a very low standard in my opinion .

Now , going back to the formula , the meat of the podcast that I promised you , the formula C-T-F-A-R as it applies to busy physician moms , here we go . I will start with an example in situations as you commonly face them , and these examples are mostly related to time management . First example C-line circumstance .

I have 15-minute slots to see an office patient T-line thought that is not enough time , especially given all the chronic problems patients have F-line , feeling Overwhelmed , frustrated , inadequate A-line Action I rush through the appointment . I worry about the time , I worry about how much I have to chart and how much I have to document .

I don't pay attention to the patient . That's the inaction . Example Result R-line Unsatisfied patient . I go over the scheduled time because of lack of focus . Poor patient satisfaction score . I've proven my thought to be true .

At this point I'll offer you that , since we learned in the beginning of the podcast that the T-line , or the thoughts , can be of two origins higher brain and the lower brain , the thought that this formula is based on is actually from the lower brain .

The thought in this example I don't have enough time is rooted in scarcity , is rooted in fear , which are both primitive brain functions . I will also offer you that most of us these days are functioning from lower brain thoughts as default .

So we're stuck in this default pattern and then most of our actions coming from lower brain thoughts and then we are made to believe that there is something wrong with us .

But the power is that you have the authority and the choice of changing that lower brain thought into a higher brain or prefrontal cortex thought , which changes all of the subsequent lines of F , a and R , meaning it gives you an entirely different result , something that you would much rather have .

Now let's take the same example and insert a higher brain or a prefrontal cortex thought instead . C line circumstance I have 15 minute slots to see one office patient Thought . T line that is enough time to address one problem . F line feeling Adequate , confident . A line action I address the most pressing problem that the patient presents with .

I educate the patient on the nature of the visit and welcome them for another visit . For other problems R-line result satisfied patient you go through the schedule , you have a high patient satisfaction score .

This formula was generated from a prefrontal cortex thought that we have enough time to address one problem which is based on abundance planning both prefrontal cortex functions . At this point , if your brain is offering you that you cannot find mostly prefrontal cortex thoughts to substitute your previous lower brain default thoughts , let me tell you that is natural .

You've been functioning on your default mode for years . It takes some practice , but it is doable . Now let's take another example , this time maybe from family life .