My Journey
The Encounter with Mindset Transformation
My journey to be a coach goes back to the time when I witnessed the power of mindset transformation in Pakistan.
Pakistan is a Muslim dominant society. When I was working there from 2012 to 2016, the society was (and it still is) facing deep-rooted discrimination against religious minority communities based on false religious beliefs. Christian villages were attacked and burnt down and Hindus were discriminated with the superstition that those who eat together with Hindus would get ill. There was lack of tolerance towards any kind of minority in the society in general.
Dealing with religious discrimination issues was both very sensitive and challenging in the country where people’s identity was closely linked with their religious beliefs. However, I was privileged to be involved in the initiatives to address religiously motivated discriminations through my organization’s programs and witness the impact of mindset transformation on the participants.
At the beginning, some participants were resistant to the idea of tolerating other religions. Some even had radical views against other religions or sects to insist that “Shiites should be killed because they are infidels,” and “Pakistan is a country created for Muslims, so the rights of Muslims should be given priority first.” The divide between the religious majority and minority groups seemed too deep to be bridged.
However, I saw their views starting to shift bits by bits as they spent more time together with the members from minority religions. They started listening to the stories of the minority communities on how they lived each day facing discriminations and how that impacted their sense of dignity. By the end of the workshop, the participants from the majority groups became much more empathetic towards the minority communities and started believing in interfaith harmony and religious coexistence. I heard one participant saying "I was wrong. All people are equal.”
What was even more inspiring happened after the workshops. Some of the courageous participants took initiative on their own to start a movement to address religious discriminations and promote peace and interfaith harmony within their sphere of influence at their campuses and communities.
These experiences exposed me to the power of mindset change and its potential to not only transform people’s way of thinking, but also empower them to become change agents to take courageous actions for larger cause for the society.
Witnessing such powerful transformation enrooted a strong vision in me to one day play an inspirational role in supporting people in their positive transformation.
Realizing the Power of Listening
A few years after, I was still devoting my energy and passion to the work of international development. At the same time, I was starting to sense something unfulfilling in my life though I could not exactly point to what.
"The work in the international development and the job with the UN were what I had wanted for a long time, which I now have…. So why is the sense of unfulfillment? Was this really what I was looking for?"
Around the same time, the big life events– marriage and the arrival of my first daughter—happened, which made me want to revisit my life priorities. Together with the lingering thought that there was something more I could do in my life and for the world, I took the opportunity of the maternity leave to learn coaching in depth.
I started the course only to find the enormous passion for coaching surfacing from within myself and the calling to keep learning more and deeper. It was the sense of conviction that I could serve many people with the act of deep listening that kept me moving forward.
Until I met coaching, I was hardly aware of the importance of listening 0r its impact on people’s lives even when some people told me I was a good listener. I had the wrong belief that I could be successful only if could “speak well,” which may have to do with my sense of inferiority rooted in the circumstance that for many years I had to compete and prove myself using a language that was not my mother tongue. As a result, I was always more conscious and focused on my (or others’) speaking rather than listening skills.
Coaching completely changed this view. For the first time I shifted my consciousness from my speaking to listening. I realized listening has a power in itself and with listening, I can create safe space for people to have the conversation they need with themselves, and help them achieve positive transformation in their lives.
I see a coach as a walking partner to help deepen a client's life by listening to their spoken and unspoken voices, unleashing their authentic selves and potentials, and accompanying their transformation side by side with them. Most importantly, as I help my clients, coaching also helps myself to be in touch with my whole being to live as who I am.