Iman Refaat's Blog, page 15
March 20, 2017
#FabulousVeilsNovel#Book Review
“I started reading the book with the impression that it is a novel about 3 women & their stories. I never excpected it too be so real & deep discussing our many problems as a society with so many misapprehension about religion which led to many unfair & stupid traditional rules that is oppressing to women in particular.
I hoped the novel to be in Arabic, first of all to reach as many women as it can & secondly to avoid the big glossary that would be confusing to a non-arabic speaking readers. What I really loved about the novel that it explained a lot about different faces of oppression which differs for a high class person than a poor illiterate one. This is our main problem; we can’t see others’ misery as long as we don’t understand or feel it. Keep up the good work & congratulations.”
March 19, 2017
Become the Most Radiant Person in the Room..
“Your life is a journey of learning to love yourself first and then extending that love to others in every encounter,” Oprah
Daydreaming about the second part of my novel, Fabulous Veils, I imagined myself playing a role in it. A Personal Coach for my three main characters; Madiha, Gameela and Fatma. Helping them in loving themselves first.
How to practice Self-love?
Acceptance. The first step in the journey of self-love is acceptance. One of the main struggles of women in our era is their appearance. Their endless pursuit to become slimmer, more beautiful, more attractive. It became a syndrome; the Bridget Jones syndrome. “A major survey in the United States revealed that most women are suffering from this unfortunate syndrome. Symptoms include lack of body confidence and a total preoccupation with our looks. Ninety per cent of the 5,000 women who took part of the survey said that they were ‘depressed’ by the appearance of their body,” Lynda Field
“Telling myself that I have a bad body made me eat even more. I learned to tell myself I have a good body and this made me care for my ‘good body’ hoping to make it better,” my teenager client declared. Accepting herself from such a young age, how fantastic!
Filling Your Cup..
“You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first.” First. Not only to care for yourself. But first. This is the second corner step in practicing self-love. Considering ourselves as our top priority while looking at is as a selfless act. Contradicting all the misconceptions we were brought up to believe. Bringing them down the way Prophet Ibrahim, with his ax, destroyed the statues and rejected his people’s idols.
Had Gameela loved herself, she would have been able to accept herself the way my fifteen-years-old client learned to accept herself. Why a teenager is able to coach and love herself while adults aren’t able to do it? Figuring out the reasons wasn’t that hard. We, the older generations in my community were brought up to believe that ‘to love yourself is a selfish act’. Blame yourself, feel guilty, don’t think of yourself, put yourself last, never feel satisfied with yourself, seek perfectionism, keep pushing yourself, never praise it and the list goes on to what I, and most women in my community, were taught.
My main message to all Women in March, the month of International Women’s Day and the month of Mother’s day is Accept yourself and fill your cup. Love yourself first. It’s a selfless act. And remember the words of Sharon Stone: “The most radiant woman in the room is the one full of life and experience.” Not the one with the best shape, make-up or outfit.
March 18, 2017
#FabulousVeilsNovel#Open_Discussion
What’s the one message you would address to Egyptian Women on Mother’s Day?
Motherhood is an attitude and a mindset. We’re all mothers even if we don’t have children.
A Strategy for Happiness
Saturday March 18, 2017
By: Nada Rafaat
We have no choice in the circumstances which we are born into, but our life experiences and what we make out of it depends on how we shape, steer and direct our thoughts. We often think that becoming successful and getting what we want in life requires only hard work. Of course, hard work is the key to success, however, to be able to truly shape our lives, we first have to change the way we think. Improving the quality of our lives, will require us to learn to practice gratitude.
In a TED Talk on gratefulness, David Steindl-Rast, the Benedictine monk from upstate New York said, “it’s not happiness that makes us grateful, it’s gratefulness that makes us happy.” It is important to give ourselves a chance every once in a while, to think about what we are grateful for in life. Thinking…
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March 17, 2017
Become a Better Thinker with these 6 Hats
How to think? From where to start? Questions my middle-aged students tend to ask when invited to ‘Think’. Edward de Bono, a Maltese physician, psychologist, author, inventor and consultant, wrote several books on the teaching of thinking. In his ‘Six Thinking Hats’ book he offered six lenses to wear while considering a topic. In this video I offer, in brief, a summary of the 6 hats as a tool we can use to better think.
The 6 Thinking Hats De Bono introduced were:
1- The White hat:
Wearing the white hat a person would consider all the facts, data, information in a neutral non-biased way and while ensuring to get the data from an accurate and trustworthy source.
2- The Red hat:
This hat is about emotions and feelings. A person thinking from this perspective would consider how he feels regarding an issue while connecting to his feelings whether they were positive or negative.
3- The Black hat:
People tend, mistakenly, to think of it as the hat of problems. While the black hat focuses on the challenges. Thinking about the challenges and having plans to avoid them would help the person avoid turning the challenges into problems. This hat is about precautions.
4- The Yellow hat:
While smiley faces are originally yellow, the yellow hat focuses on the positive sides of matters. Thinking from this lens a person would consider all the benefits and positive effects of the matter he’s studying.
5- The Green hat:
Many people call it ‘out of the box’; it’s about creativity. Thinking from the green hat or the green lens, people would initiate new solutions, introduce new ideas, find new alternatives. The main key is to do it in a creative way.
6- The Blue hat:
After thinking using the 5 previous hats, a person would need to organise the findings and prepare a plan of action. The blue hat is about summarising and organising. It includes as well planning, scheduling and preparing action plans. After considering a matter from multiple angles, a person would need to identify the actions he needs to take, when to take them, where and with whom.
“Real life, however, is very different from school sums. There is usually more than one answer . Some answers are much better than others: they cost less, are more reliable or are more easy to implement. There is no reason at all for supposing that the first answer has to be the best one,” Edward de Bono.
March 16, 2017
Self-Leadership#Self-Love
“Love Yourself Enough To Live A Healthy Life Style.” Pictures Quotes
March 15, 2017
#FabulousVeilsNovel#Men are Oppressed too
Fabulous Veils is not a feminist novel. It isn’t a call to empower women. It’s a call for discussion, for re-examination and reconsideration for our beliefs, our traditions and our frames of reference. It’s a call for a conversation between both men and women to start a healthy partnership for an Egyptian revival.
March 14, 2017
Meta-Coaching in Brief..
At the very beginning of my journey to become a Coach the word ‘Meta’ sounded mysterious. In a curious state I asked my Trainer: “What does ‘Meta’ mean?” His reply was: “From a state beyond, a higher state. Like Metaphysics.”
“Like Metaphysics”, he explained. And what does ‘Metaphysics’ mean, I wondered. To conquer my ignorance I visited the dictionary and found out that Metaphysics is: “the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space.” And hence being a Meta-Coach means to work with my clients through their own sense of identity, their being, their relationship with time, with others and the world, which means their own Matrix.
Meta Coaching is…
Coaching is a field that works at a higher (Meta) position to the client and the client’s experience. As a sports coach does not have to be an expert in the sport himself, he or she does have to know how to get the best out of the player. A meta-coach is an expert in structure and process rather than in content. The client is his or her own best expert in content.
The meta-coach, knowing how people function and operate, and with his meta-knowledge and meta-skill, is skilled in getting the best out of the client.
As a meta-coach, I deal with my clients from a know-nothing state. I don’t offer solutions, I have no answers. I invite my clients, in a fierce conversation, to explore their own worlds, to identify their own desired outcomes and their personal action plans to move towards their outcomes. The dialogue and relationship I facilitate with my clients empower them to run their own brains, access their resources and achieve their highest outcomes. All on meta levels, beyond the behaviour, exploring the beliefs, identity, values, internal resources and many more.
“Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them,” Timothy Gallwey
References:
Coaching Mastery Training Manual, 2017 edition. L. Michael Hall, PH. D.
March 13, 2017
#FabulousVeilsNovel#Book Review
“We each live wearing a certain mask or another. We smile when we don’t really have a reason to. We try to pretend that we are doing well even if we are not. We do so in an effort to abide by traditional and social norms that dictate that we must not appear weak. We must not share our problems.
Iman Refaat takes us on a journey that is too close to home. Raising a mirror to our masks and exposing them. In many ways, this novel exposes female oppression, however, it also exposes that Egyptian men are as subjected to tradition and social oppression as are women. Iman shows that families tend to oppress both male and female children and put them through very rigid circumstances that they both grow to become oppressors themselves.
Iman writes with such passion and talent, giving very unique and creative voices to her characters, whom the reader tends to feel for, fall in love with, and more often than not, get so angry with their behavior.”
March 12, 2017
The Moment of Decision
While leaders influence, managers direct. While leaders focus on what matters and why, managers focus on how. While leaders advice and counsel, managers command and control. My three main characters in Fabulous Veils, Gameela, Madiha and Fatema, were all managed. They were controlled and commanded by a family member.
What if these three Egyptian women had moved from being managed to being led? To which extent would their lives alter? Would they be ending the way they ended? And what would have happened if they had taken the ownership of their lives, leading themselves instead of waiting for someone else to take the lead? What would have happened if they had Self-leadership skills?
Self-leadership is…
“The practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and behaviours to achieve your objective/s,” (Bryant & Kazan 2012)
It wasn’t a lack of objectives. The three main characters had objectives. They had dreams. Had they practiced this ‘intentional influencing” the novel would have taken a different detour. Not only the three of them had objectives, they were committed to practice too. Practising submission. Surrendering to misconceptions, wrong beliefs and worn-out traditions.
It took Claudette Colvin a moment to make a decision, to make a choice and to pick a path. In 1955, at the age of 15, this African American woman from Alabama refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white person, in violation of local law. She focused on what matters and the why. She practiced intentionally influencing her own thinking. She refused to allow anyone to manage her life. She chose to lead her life. And by leading herself she changed the entire world.
How can we develop Self-leadership skills?
Start with the end in mind, what is the goal, outcome, purpose?
What do you need to do to get there? System, process, plan, resources…
Take action! Focus on the goal not where you don’t want to go.
Identify the help you need to stay on track. Ask for it!
“Self-leadership is having a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, where you are going coupled with the ability to influence your communication, emotions and behaviours on the way to getting there,” (Bryant & Kazan 2012)
Make a Decision, Change the World.
