Iman Refaat's Blog, page 12

How Good Are You in Expressing Who You Are?

“Please consider becoming a professional Stylist,” my fifteen-years-old daughter insisted last year. I laughed while explaining that though I do like styling I can’t take it as a profession. “I like to affect people’s lives in profound and more meaningful ways”, I replied.

“May you take me on your next shopping tour?”, “Me too, I love the way you dress!”, “Yes, I admire your style.”, three of my peers in the Meta-Coaching bootcamp I was attending in February told me. Their words reminded me with my daughter’s suggestion and I shared with them my opinion about taking it as a profession.

Did it ever happen to you that you felt like the universe is overhearing you; offering you answers to your questions or sharing with you data about a matter that you were just concerned about? This is exactly what happened later, right after my peers brought up the matter of Styling.

The Coaching Categories 

During our next session we were invited to identify which category of Coaches we want to become. Given a couple of pages to read, I skimmed them and started to study thoroughly the subtitles under ‘Personal Coaching’. ‘Image Coaching’ puzzled me. As soon as we returned to the session I had my hand up and inquired its meaning. The answer surprised me. Never I thought how coaching people in how to dress, how to style their hair, how to take care of their personal hygiene would have a profound impact on their acceptance in job interviews, their relationships and their self-confidence. How fantastic!

Personal Coaching

Personal Coaching was my choice.  It focuses on an individual’s life. The life/work balance, goals, purpose and meaning, relationships, health, career and profession, wealth, lifestyle, value clarification. However, it included many specialised areas.

Personal Coaching Areas

Using my yellow highlighter I made my choice on starting my Coaching services in specific areas:

Life Coaching
Values Coaching
Goal setting Coaching
Career Coaching
Learning Genius Coaching
Relationship Coaching
Parenting Coaching
Family Coaching
Teens Coaching
Image Coaching

An ‘Image Coach’ was among my choices. Yes, I would coach people in how to dress and how to style their hair, aiming to transform their lives and their relationships. Seeing it in this context and for such a meaningful purpose I would do what my daughter nagged for last year.

“Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak.” – Rachel Zoe

#FabulousVeilsNovel#Book Review

“I really enjoyed how the stories were retold, broken down in decades and going within each chapter from one character’s story to another. I am not 100% sure why the author decided to space the stories in 10 year periods over four + decades, but it was nevertheless interesting. I also like how the author stresses that the women in the stories, despite their background, all suffered tremendously, impressing upon the reading that no matter their social status, they felt suppressed by the traditions of their families and their society. Above all, I thought it was so interesting how Iman incorporated Egyptian words into the story, and I think that it was mostly during the episodes involving Fatma that it was more emphasised. I enjoyed looking at the back pages to understand the meanings!”

 

The Secret Behind Living ‘Happily Ever After’

A gem. Out of all the people I’ve encountered in my life she stood like a rare pearl. A shining lady in her sixties. Cheerful, happy and content. Always spreading a fragrance of positivity.

Listening to one of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ songs while watching the movie I thought of her. I remembered our conversation years ago when I was inquiring the secret behind her ever-lasting-happiness. “It’s love. My husband didn’t die. He’s with me all the time. I speak to him. I consult him. I feel him around me everywhere. I feel his love.” This wasn’t a sentence I heard in a Disney movie or I read in a fantasy-world-book. It’s the life lesson my uncle’s wife taught me while her eyes, body gestures and voice spoke with passion about the love of her life who had passed away years ago. Wow..! I remembered back then the words of Mitch Albom: “Life ends, love doesn’t.”

How does a moment last forever?

Celine Dione’s voice tickled our senses in “Beauty and the Beast”, explaining how we must hold on to love. Never easy, but we try. We try to capture moments of happiness, we keep our love alive inside of our hearts.

And what about the moments of sadness?

Again, this tale with its songs fascinates me. It doesn’t detach us from reality. The lyrics clarify how we’ll pass through imperfect moments and how some memories won’t be sweet. And this in particular would be the secret behind living complete lives. How in the midst of our troubles love would flow like a river, protecting, persisting and persevering.

And because of our pure and beautiful love, our happiness will endure.

Where is Fabulous Veils from this love story?

To which extent my main character Gameela and her husband Sherif were able to hold on to love and keep the love story alive in their hearts? Their story is just an example for the ugly truth we’re currently experiencing in an era where divorce became so common, where freedom is associated with breaking ties of marriage and where people mockingly accuse marriage of becoming a love coffin.

Happiness is a choice. Love is a choice. Maurice, Belle’s father, chose to love his wife even after her death, keeping their love alive.  My uncle’s wife chose to live happily while her love was alive and after he passed away and during the many years of his serious sickness. She captured the sweet memories and persevered during the darkest moments. She’s living a complete life. Both couples were great role models for their children in the power of love, a love that stands through thick and thin.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu

 

#FabulousVeilsNovel#Book_Discussion

Is it possible to live happily ever after?

 

 

6 Frames for Better Thinking – Part 3

The first three frames De Bono presented for thinking about information were the purpose (triangle), the accuracy (circle) and the points of view (the square). The second three were:

4- The Heart frame:

Matters of heart are usually of great interest to people. Mine information for interest. Report what you find interesting. Make more effort to note matters of interest when these are not quite obvious.

5- The Diamond frame:

Diamonds are symbols of value. Your diamond frame should reveal all possible values – even ones you do not give much importance to.

6- The Rectangle frame:

It represents a platform on which something is to be placed and exhibited. Come out with conclusions, spell them out, take action if needed.

It isn’t enough to get exposed to information. It isn’t enough to think of the information from the six frames. Act upon your findings and your thinking from all the five previous frames.

Self-Leadership#Travel

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” – Saint Augustine

 

#FabulousVeilsNovel#Helping the Helps

Fabulous Veils highlights the agony and suffer of the Helps working in the majority of Egyptian houses. It isn’t just a call for compassion, it’s a call for an action. The community needs to stand against the humiliation of helps in all houses.

How To Identify the Help You Need?

Though Coaching began as a new tool for individuals and organisations in the early 1990s and it’s heading to become a profession, many people still wrongly perceive it in Eastern cultures. They confuse coaching with therapy while they are way different.

The Five Helping Professions 

‘Tell me what to do’ is one of the common phrases many of my clients tend to say during our coaching sessions and which temped me to clarify in brief the differences between the five helping professions:

1- Training

Which means teaching and educating people through a process to enable them to perform a certain skill.

2- Mentoring:

Which means passing on specific information on a particular skill, knowledge, or expertise, to a less experienced person. It’s a process that includes giving advice, guidance and sharing one’s own personal story.

3- Therapy/Counselling:

Which focuses on problems, their sources and the results from those problems. It helps people in healing hurts and bring resolution to personal pain.

4- Consulting:

It involves giving advice and using one’s own expertise in a given field to inform a client what to do.

5- Coaching:

It’s an art; the art of facilitating the process with the client to identify a specific outcome he desires. It happens through a deep conversation that gets to the client’s core meanings, enabling him to mobilise his inner and outer resources for a generative change. A change that awakens, stretches, disturbs, challenges and unleashes the client’s potentials to live on a different level of life.

“Coaching is unlocking persons’ potentials to maximise their own performance. It’s helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” – Timothy Gallwey

Coaching is about helping people in embracing change and becoming more than they currently are, reaching peak performances and living a meaningful life. If you have a desired outcome, willing to change and yet lacking tools or facing obstacles, it’s time to consider having a Coach!

#FabulousVeilsNovel#Book Review

“I am so grateful for having had the opportunity to read such a fabulous work. Though initially interested in the story for discussion at a monthly book club meeting (shout-out to Rose’s Cairo Book Club!), I’ll admit I couldn’t put the book down since I bought it. Iman Refaat did an amazing job in storytelling, really, with her very captivating descriptions of what would seem mundane details, but they really did add to the stories of these women from diverse situations, allowing me as a reader to feel tremendous empathy for their situations, and be curious about what would happen next in their seemingly tragic lives.”

 

Which of Belle’s 20 Character Traits Would Alter Our Lives?

While watching ‘Beauty and the Beast’ my mind drifted in a comparison between Belle and Gameela. The French Belle in the Disney story and the Egyptian Belle in Fabulous Veils, my novel. The two main characters were named ‘Beautiful’. They were normal girls and had love stories. However, the difference between their endings was as huge as the difference between a beautiful summer day and a dark winter night.

Belle’s 20 Character Traits

I’m one of Belle’s fans. Analysing her character, I identified twenty reasons:

1- She was deep.

She didn’t like Gaston like all the other girls. She was different.

2- She was straightforward.

She told him that they won’t make each other happy and that she will never marry him.

3- She was happy.

With the limited books available in her small village, she didn’t nag, complain or get annoyed. She was cheerful, smiling and singing.

4- She was passionate.

She kept reading the same books. Her passion for reading didn’t fade due to her limited resources.

5- She was ambitious.

She was longing for adventures, for a life more challenging than the one she lived.

6- She was clear.

About her dreams. She communicated them clearly, going out under the sky and asking for a different life. An adventurous one.

7- She was independent.

She went on her own to search for her father.

8- She was a giver.

She sacrificed herself for her old father.

9- She was a thinker.

She asked the Beast to show his face first in the lights. She did it before deciding to sacrifice herself.

10- She was proactive.

Trying to escape from the window. She didn’t surrender. She tried to change what she didn’t like.

11- She was bold.

Refusing to join the Beast for dinner and saying it out loud.

12- She was grateful.

For the Beast to rescue her, she told him she was grateful.

13- She was thankful. 

She took care of him to express her gratitude in a practical way.

14- She was patient.

She changed him gradually. She walked him out of the castle. Taught him how to approach the horse and how to play with snowballs.

15- She was understanding.

She didn’t expect from him to use the spoon. She found a way that would suit them both to eat the soup.

16- She was connected.

To her feelings. To herself. She noticed how she felt towards him.

17- She was receptive.

To his love. She noticed how he was changing. She didn’t label him as a ‘Beast’ and refused his offers. She accepted to dance with a Beast. She dressed up for a Beast.

18- She was loyal.

To her father. She was truly concerned. She remembered how everything she was was because of him and how he was the one who taught her to dance.

19- She was confident.

Whether in the village or at the Castle. She acted upon her free will. She wasn’t concerned with ‘what people would say’ or ‘how would the Beast react’.

20- She was true and honest.

With herself and others. And this one is my favourite of al!. She explained how she couldn’t be happy unless she was free.

This was the French Belle who tamed the Beast. Moving to Egypt, which character traits did Gameela lack? And why did her love story have such a different ending?

Gameela in ‘Fabulous Veils’ is inspired from a true story. The story of million Egyptian girls who ought to watch ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and learn from Belle if they are seeking happiness and longing to live a love story.

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul; that makes us reach for more, that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.” ~ Noah – The Notebook