The belief you picked up as a child, and still pay for

LIFT Newsletter 061

There is a story running quietly underneath most of our lives, and we picked it up long before we were old enough to question it.

That was the heart of a conversation I was recently invited into, on the Luminihsan podcast with Guzelya Marisova, and it has been sitting warmly with me ever since.

We talked about the beliefs that limit us, and how quietly they end up shaping the whole of the lives we lead.

If you want to sit in on it, you can watch the full conversation here:

youtube.com/watch?si=0xEHAauLMXigCTx2&v=qne369ZI2cQ&feature=youtu.be

Here is the thing that stays with me.

Most of us cannot actually see our own potential, not because it is not there, but because a belief is parked directly in front of it, blocking the view.

Somewhere along the way, usually as children, we absorb a story about who we are and what we are allowed to become, and then we carry it for years without once stopping to ask whether it was ever true.

I think of a woman I once coached, a leader who was quietly exhausting herself with guilt.

She was doing well at work and showing up fully for her family, and still nothing ever felt like enough.

When we traced the feeling back, we found a belief she had picked up as a small girl, that a mother had to be at home the way her own mother had been, or she was not truly caring for her children.

For years that one quiet story had been charging her, in guilt and in the sense that she was never quite enough, punishing her for being a mother, a wife, and a business leader all at once.

And the moment she finally saw it for what it was, an old story and not the truth, her relationship with herself, her family, and her work all began to change.

She could not see that belief on her own, and almost none of us can, because the story we live by is the one thing we never think to question. It usually takes another person to point at it, a coach, a mentor, a spouse, someone who can see in you what you cannot yet see in yourself.

Now I want to speak to the Muslim professionals reading this for a moment.

Your potential was never an accident, it is a gift given to you by Allah, and part of honouring that gift is refusing to let some old, borrowed belief quietly bury it.

That is the work I care about most.

This coming Wednesday I am opening a free live webinar, for Muslim professionals and business owners, where we gently surface the beliefs that have quietly been holding you back.

It is not heavy and it is not preachy, just an honest evening together, looking at the stories we have carried for far too long and what starts to open up once we set them down.

And if your connection with Allah has felt quieter lately, or you are not sure you even belong in a room with the word Muslim on the door, please know this is for you too, perhaps most of all.

Register here: https://www.lift-ex.com/webinar

Live on Zoom, not recorded. Only 40 seats, to keep it intimate

If you are reading this and the webinar is not meant for you, I still hope the heart of it stays with you this week, because the borrowed story sitting in front of your potential is something we all carry, only in different words.

Whoever you are, it is worth asking gently, what old story have I never once stopped to question, and was it ever really mine.

Lead Beyond Yourself. Rise Beyond Limits.

Rooting for what you cannot yet see in yourself,

Cassandra Nadira and the LIFT Team.