She signed up to the Online Summit called Beat Burn Out. I remember seeing her name when she subscribed on my email list.

Asma*

I just registered it.

The name.

Asma* it had an evocative echo to it

I wondered if she was Pakistani.

Clearly she is Muslim. I thought 

Anyway I then saw she signed up to attend the Webinar I hosted on how to manage time and energy.

She listened mostly in the Webinar and did not put any questions in the chat.

Was I surprised to see that she booked a clarity call with me?

Actually a part of me was surprised as this was the first Summit I did and the first Webinar did and it would be the first Clarity call I offered in my Consulting Business prior to that all the Referrals I had had came from members of Muslim communities that knew my extensive Consulting and Counselling experience on the ground.

I remember feeling very ILL on the day of the clarity call. 

I was feeling exhausted and really did not have any energy for going onto Zoom

I read her answers to the form she filled in that you needed to fill in before you booked the call.

She said her main problem was that she is an Empath and she feels her mother in law is a Narcissist and she feels really burnt out.

There was a big part of me that wanted to reschedule the clarity call to another date as I felt so physically sick.

Then another part of me was this Asma* clearly has the BIG problem that I feel I have been put on this earth to solve, “Burn Out”, and I found something in me saying I cannot let Asma* down.

Somehow even though I was suffering from severe earache, totally fatigued, and was lying on my bed feeling like I was on death’s door, I summoned up the energy to switch that laptop on and log onto the Zoom room.

I turned up to that clarity call that Asma* booked.

There was a part of me that actually was wishing perhaps she would not turn up because I had heard that happened during Clarity calls, Clients that you think will become Clients don’t become Clients because life happens doesn’t it. 

They forget 

They are too ill

They have a family emergency.

They have a work emergency.

They have a business emergency.

And I was wishing that she would not turn up because I was not wanting Asma* to see me looking so ill.

I was not looking like I had during the Online summit which was mostly glamorous wearing my shiny glittery colourful outfits and gold or silver jewels. And yes I did this even on those days I felt exhausted. I would put on some lipstick and jewels to look glamorous for that Zoom camera because well I wanted to and needed to because I was the host of this Online Summit. And I had some Guest Speakers who were very glamorous and well known and even those who were not turned up presentable and not looking burnt out.

Because of course neither myself or the Guest Speakers could turn up looking disheveled in pajamas etc  because we were doing an Online Summit called Beat BurnOut.

It defeats the purpose of what my mission is which, is still to Beat BurnOut. I work with High Achievers many who are prone to Burnout. The mission has never changed really although what I offer in my Business to achieve this mission has over the years.

I remember on this day of Asma’s clarity call, I was in pajamas and didn’t have the strength to even put on makeup and to change from pajamas to some smarter clothes.

So to make myself presentable I just wrapped a big shawl in Urdu we call it chaddor around me and covered my hair with it to hide my uncombed hair.

I think I drank some water, went to the toilet before the call and was semi presentable to her having washed my face and brushed my teeth and although I didn’t put any makeup on (which I don’t usually unless it is a special occasion like a wedding or the office Christmas party), I did moisturise my face with my usual moisturiser and perched myself in the middle of the bed with my laptop and started that Zoom meeting.

I started that meeting because there was a bigger part of me that was succumbing to this voice inside of me that kept saying Taniya 

“Taniya your mission is to beat Burnout and to be there for those in whatever capacity that you can be to hear their story whether they became paid Clients or not.”

And of course there was also the nagging voice that was saying that I had offered this Online Summit to all those individuals that subscribed for free. This voice that was saying with all the time and energy and money I had spent since September 2018 to now January 2019 on this Online Summit, this was what ultimately I wanted from it, a paid Client so I could pay off all the Business costs that I had accumulated from running this Online Business since January 2018.

A year later January 2019 I was in so much debt having paid for Coaches, Online Courses etc. I was drowning in it and I knew to have my head swimming above water I needed to turn up to get some Business revenue into my Business to pay off some of those debts.

Yes, that nagging voice kept saying you are running a Business not a charity and you need to turn up to this call.

I also knew if I didn’t Asma* would not trust me again.

I would be letting her down.

I would be betraying her trust.

Because I know myself having booked a call for myself with an Online Coach almost a year ago in December 2017 takes a hell of a lot of guts. 

I remembered how scared I was booking that Breakthrough call and turning up to it on 26th December 2017. 

It was Boxing day. The day after Christmas 

I remember how I felt such a failure when booking a call with this Success Coach Jessica that I had found when I had subscribed to an Online Summit called Breaking through your Barriers.

So remembering how lost and confused and in pain I felt back in December 2017 and knowing this is how Asma must be feeling and so many others things as well as hopeful that I could be the one that would guide her out of this deep hole that she felt buried in, I turned up to that Clarity call and I waited in that Zoom room for her to turn up.

I waited for Asma* this woman who had signed up to this Online Summit that I had prepared for intensely in September and which I launched and promoted in October 2018 and which I hosted in November and December 2018 by interviewing 22 Guest Speakers, some of whom shared their own personal stories of how they were Burnout and overcame it and some whom gave tips and strategies on how to identify Burnout. Some of these Guest Speakers are Doctors, Coaches, Authors, Entertainers and Therapists.

I shared a little of my own story of being burnt out when hosting this Summit and I wondered in the Zoom room how many of the Interviews did Asma watch? 

I waited for Asma* who in October 2018 was a stranger to me but now was no longer a stranger asI knew about her biggest challenge this Mother in Law.

I wondered if she was a Health Care Professional or a Social worker as this was the Target market I had marketed to.

I sat in the Zoom room for Asma* wondering all this,praying she would turn up and another part of me wishing she would not

I bet you are wondering how long did I end up waiting, until she joined me in that Zoom room?

I didn’t have to wait that long. After a few seconds she joined the Zoom room during that Clarity call. I remember seeing her face for the first time. She is Pakistani in origin and very pretty in that glamorous way but I could tell that she didn’t believe she was or know she was. Which actually added to her glow but the glow was dimmed by this heavy cloud of anxiety that was draped over her.

I decided to listen to her just purely listen during this clarity call and use it for me to get clarity on what was her most biggest challenge and at the same time understand what she thought her biggest challenge was. 

She assumed it was her mother in law who she described as a narcissist and she defined herself as an empath.

I listened to her and thought about saying to  her that this binary way of looking at the world and especially relationships was not always helpful. But I didn’t. I just listened to her. I really wanted to give her the Space to vent.

She said listening to me describe what happened to me and listening to all the Interviews she had heard during the Beat BurnOut Summit gave a name to what she was going through.

She said before she signed onto the Summit she had not heard of the term Burn out and I had really helped her by giving a name to her condition, her experience. 

Asma* then really surprised me.

She then took her credit card out of her handbag in that Zoom call and said “Taniya here is my credit card, please tell me how much working with you costs? I don’t care how much it is because I am willing to pay whatever the price you charge come on please tell me”

I was flabbergasted.

My first clarity call since I started this Business and this woman who had not known me two months ago before and well only until recently knew that I existed,  was willing to pay me anything I asked.

What do you think I asked her to pay me?

What do you think I told her about my Program?

What would you have done?

What would you charge if a Client turned up and flashed their credit card like that?

Has that ever happened to you?

When she flashed her credit card holding it out and asking me the price of her program, I just freaked inside.

No way was I expecting that.

I was expecting her to wait for me to ask her if she was interested in buying.

There is a dance that happens in Sales calls.

And so I just came out with the least time intensive program I had where she could book 15 minute calls or 30 minute calls with me as many as she wanted in a year but had to do the task I set her before the next call so there was some accountability.

What is called laser coaching. 

I told her the Program was very affordable as it worked out as a price of a cup of coffee per day and said it was $997 for the year. She basically signed up to working with me for 12 months.

I said I would send her the written contract and the payment link and she thanked me for this and said that was perfect offer as she is a busy person and booking a 15 minute or 30 minute call would fit into her schedule easily.

I promised to send her the booking link and told her Fridays was the best day for me.

She lives in California so is in Pacific Time and 8 hours behind.

We agreed to meet for half an hour every Friday Friday her time 11am

And then I ended up the Zoom call.

I sent her the Payment link and the Booking link as soon as I ended the call in shock.

There was a big part of me that didn’t want to

I just wanted to sleep but my earache was so bad and I felt dizzy.

A few days later I saw the money in my Wise account.

A few days later I also saw her book the Friday 11am her time call and so it began the sessions with Asma the Friday sessions 

For the next 6 months she turned up promptly to them.

Each and everyone of them

We met three times a month but I would keep the last Friday for myself giving her a break to digest all the information I had given her and time to process the feelings and thoughts that were resurfacing.

We mulled together what really were the challenges she was facing.

And she found quickly it was not the ones she thought were the case.

She had a lot of challenges at work as well as in the family. These challenges had a knock on effect on how she felt within the family.

After exploring initially her relationship with her mother in law we also moved onto her relationship with her husband, son, daughter, father and mother. Asma was very open about each and it emerged she bottled a lot of hee worries, fears, anger inside. She held it in her stomach.

I reflected this back to her.

She noted this down.

What I found with Asma before she could do any of the exploring of the relationships was the fact she needed to slow down. 

Some of this she did by watching the interviews in the online summit as there was this theme to slow down.

The initial few sessions I taught her to meditate the way I have and that is to sit in silence and just focus on the breath coming in and out.

Asma found this hard to do but I encouraged her by asking her to do it just for a minute and then to increase it for a minute day by day until she was doing it for at least ten minutes.

I told her not to chant anything at first and slowly she found the space to sit and notice her thoughts. Asma found it very hard to feel her feelings. However she noticed her thoughts about her husband, her mother in law, her son and her daughter and her sisters and her friends and her colleagues and her manager. I noticed she didn’t discuss her brother. I knew she had one but more about him much later.

I discovered working with her that Asma had a tendency to repress her feelings and these were stored in her gut and this led to her Crohn’s disease. Gut inflammation because she was so at disease regarding her relationships but she could not express this disease.

Asma came from a family where it was not encouraged to express her feelings and being the youngest in the family, her feelings were ridiculed.

Asma due to this disease ended up not being able to eat solid foods and was on a liquid diet. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease five years before I met her. 

The disease developed due to her workaholism, working long hours in her IT job, working hard at home caring for her son, daughter, husband and mother in law and father in law and actually not looking after herself at all.

Asma is a giver, giving to others but she did not know how to give to herself.

Asma actually felt a lot of resentment towards her husband and her mother in law for not looking after her but she was not expressing that she needed to be looked after or wanted to be looked after. Her anger and resentment was literally eating her insides.

I delivered some healing sessions to Asma as well as coaching her.

Using body scanning with her, Asma and I discovered energetic knots inside her gut. Using breathwork and reciting Qur’an, we entangled together these knots that really were ENERGY trapped in her body.

These knots were really thoughts and feelings that lay unexpressed running havoc in her gut.

Asma due to the Crohn’s disease was living a life where she didn’t feel alive, there was no joy. She was just surviving.

If you think about it eating food, tasting food gives you joy and she didn’t have this joy at all 

When she had sessions with me, we spoke about her thoughts and feelings and slowly she started expressing how angry she felt with her husband, her sisters and her mother and her manager and the last member of the family she spoke about was her brother. When she started speaking about him in the sixteenth month of us working together, this was the breakthrough.

We were able to pinpoint the exact thought that triggered her Crohn’s disease. It was when her brother was getting married and she felt she had lost him. She didn’t voice this to him. Her brother was the sibling she felt the closest to.

After she was able to feel the abandonment and loss of her brother, we worked on how she can rekindle the relationship and whilst it wasn’t going to be as it was before he got married it would not be as superficial.

Asma reported to me a week after this session that she was no longer taking steroid medication for her Crohn’s disease and also that she had started eating solid foods again. Asma looked so joyous in that session and thanked me for being able to rekindle her relationship with her husband, her mother in law, her sisters, her mother and father and her brother.

She said before she started working with me they were all superficial she couldn’t really express what she felt and although she still sometimes found that difficult, she didn’t just blame them but also looked at how she was behaving in the relationship. Asma was able to take responsibility for how she was in the relationship instead of painting herself as the empath and her mother in law as the narcissist.

Asma by slowing down and sitting in silence found a way to uncage herself from working on herself.

Before she met me she had become a personal development addict purchasing many courses and signing onto blogs and paying for therapy by email. She spent thousands of dollars on these personal development courses but was still in the same position, depressed, anxious, very miserable and feeling caged by her responsibilities that weighed her down.

Her son is autistic and she felt she managed that by herself too.

She couldn’t really express her feelings to her husband and wanted to divorce him.

By investing in me a Transformational Coach and going deeper than she would have with a Therapist, I gave her support 24 hours a day, 6 days a week even when she didn’t call me, Asma broke the cycle of personal development addiction and was able to meet with me three times a week and really express what was going on for her.

Asma started off investing in the laser coaching program but seeing she needed more sessions than me invested in my Gold Coaching program than my Platinum Coaching program. She had a break before after the Platinum Coaching program and then finally invested in the 3 months Muslim Alchemy course where she learnt about the Light and Shadow Archetypes and heard how the stories in the Bible and the Qur’an related to her current and past challenges.

Asma came to me very burnt out and by the time the 18 months were over, she had improved her relationship with her husband, her parents, her siblings and her friends and her manager getting two promotions at work, not working long hours in the office but working from home instead and lastly she drastically improved the relationship with herself.

Self-care she learnt from me and stopped feeling guilty for giving to herself and instead of investing in personal development courses, she started traveling with her husband, going to concerts and her family and started becoming a human being instead of being a human doing.

Working with Asma* I discovered I am The Muslim Alchemist. Of course I am not the only Muslim who is an alchemist and I don’t only work with Muslims but I did discover that we all have this ability within us to transform the shit within us to GOLD. Asma and I worked together to discover the GOLD within her, EMOTIONAL GOLD i.e the love she had for her mother in law, parents, husband etc instead of feeling the anger and resentment. She also discovered the joy of FOOD and TASTE so PHYSICAL GOLD! Asma experienced rapid and lasting transformations working with me.

Perhaps this was because we come from similar backgrounds and I understand her Pakistani Muslim culture and those nuances.

However I think she experienced those lasting changes and they have lasted, in her marriage, in her job, in her body and in her family because she is still practicing slowing down, sitting in silence and self-care and leads a simple life not over working. Even though she is no longer working with me anymore. I know because I met up with her in London in the summer of 2023 when she was travelling Europe and we met for breakfast. She told me that she still is off the steroid medication and eating solid foods and her relationship with her family members is no longer superficial. She still has a long way to go with her brother but she is working on it not like a  workaholic but slowly.

Asma told me when we had breakfast in London that” Taniya you are my Dumbledore.” I was humbled. She said: “Taniya you helped me embrace my inner magician and instead of trying to figure everything out with my mind, I smile and see the humour in situations and have learnt to let go.”

I really enjoyed working with Asma she was brave and although some of what I said hurt her ego and was not pretty, it never is when you are showing someone their blind spots, Asma hardly ever disagreed.

We came to have a mutual respect for each other and I attribute what seem like miracle outcomes to her courage to face very difficult thoughts. Asma thought her feelings. She became very numb to her feelings as workaholics usually are.

By the time she finished working with me because she was not working most of the time, including on herself, Asma was aware of her feelings and instead of holding onto her rage at something her mother in law did in the kitchen would gently state perhaps this dish needed to be cooked.

Little things that used to seem really huge obstacles became small challenges, she found them easy to overcome.

Asma achieved a really good work life balance and is still living a fulfilled life, a life full of freedom and flow.

I attribute her being able to achieve all those outcomes the three outcomes, I know I am very good at facilitating FLOW FREEDOM and FULFILLMENT because she plucked up the courage and booked a consultation with me back in January 2019.

Now it is your turn!

*denotes fictional name. However Asma is a real person who is willing to talk to you privately if you are thinking of hiring me. I run a Private and Confidential Service because I mainly work with High Achievers and High Performers who are Top Coaches or Top Entertainers or who are well known in their own communities and want to remain anonymous.

#asmaandthemuslimalchemist

#casestudiesandthemuslimalchemist

#personaldevelopmentandthemuslimalchemist 

#beatburnout