STEP 3- Doing The Work Of Healing

Changing our brain wiring is no easy task. It’s monumental and it’s the bravest thing you’ll ever do. Making small consistent changes adds up and a few months later you’ll notice that you’re doing better.

1- Find your spiritual safe space

Repeated research has shown that people who are truly successful in life are deeply in touch with their spirituality.

I know that my own journey of healing began when I fell in love with Allah’s book (by studying it from teachers- NOT just reading the translation). It set me free and gave me peace and joy I had never known in my life before. I truly learnt from that book how to give and receive love.

If you’re not religious- try meditation. Try non-denominational worship communities. Try SOMETHING where people come together and acknowledge a Higher Power.

2- a: Find support: You can’t go at it alone. I will tell you right now that we can’t accomplish much without support. Humans are social animals... we need validation and support from the right people.. speaking of which..

2- b: Find your tribe: We live in a culture of wounded people who doubt us, shame us, try to scare us and propagate perfectionist ideas or outdated ideas based on their own unhealed traumas. We can’t let that dictate our lives. So we have to cut through the noise and believe in ourselves by finding people who believe in the kind of change WE believe in.

Fun story: When I first started doing this work and shared my dream of working with the Pakistani population, people laughed at me and told me I was crazy. “You think you’re going to teach Pakistanis how to parent?” Aren’t you glad I didn’t believe them? 🙂

3- Establish life goals and work toward them

It doesn’t matter how busy you are right now. Think about your talents and your life and decide what you want from your life. Then make that your life’s goal. For now, do small things that contribute to that big life goal. For example, you’d love to be a fitness coach but don’t have time right now to do any training for it. Read articles about it. Take an online free class. Watch videos. Try new exercises. Experiment with healthy recipes. All these small things will one day help you accomplish your goal.

4- Volunteer/Give back

Find consistent ways to serve your community. I don’t care what you do and how long you do it for. Make it regular and consistent. Giving back alleviates stress, keeps us busy and allows us to be grateful for our blessings. It also opens avenues for us. You might discover something you’re good at or find like-minded people. I got my first job in the U.S. by volunteering at the homeless shelter.

5- Manage your anger/outbursts

Make a habit of walking away when you feel yourself getting angry. You’ll slowly program your brain to stop giving in to anger. Immediately withdraw yourself and do a calming exercise like breathing deeply, wudu, writing, drawing etc. This is also the ONLY way we can teach our kids how to regulate THEIR feelings. Giving lectures about anger won’t help our kids if we lose our shit every time. (Yes, I just swore.. it happens:))

6- Do something creative

This is something we can involve our kids in. Color together. Draw together. Use kinetic sand or play dough. This kind of #play relieves stress and provides your brain the time to reset and reload. Not to mention, building connection with our kids. Other examples are reading, writing, painting, sculpting, sewing etc.

7- Learn to love yourself and treat yourself well

If we don’t honor ourselves and our boundaries- no one else will. That’s a 100% guarantee. I put this down here as point 7 because if we do the above things, we grow in loving ourselves.

Unless you’re a mass murderer or serial rapist- you have no reason to believe you’re not amazing, wonderful, worthy of love, intelligent, talented and capable. If you don’t believe these things about yourself, someone, somewhere took that away from you. Give yourself back the gift of you. #giftofyou

#HealingOurselves #FixingTheAngerHab