Here is what I’ve noticed in almost every client stepping towards real transformation. Their vision is vivid. The person they want to become is clear in their heart. And sitting right between their dreams is that voice of the analytical mind who is working overtime trying to appease the ego’s qualms.

Yes. I said it, Ego.

Ego doesn’t actually fear that you will fail. It knows that you will likely succeed. What Ego doesn’t want is the bruises it will endure along the way. And what it thinks will get bruised varies from person to person.

A common bruise is the real consequences of change, a shifted relationship, a lost comfort, and how one will operate on a daily basis once a change is made.

Another common bruise is having to withstand people whom you love the most, family members, friends being truly confused and sometimes betrayed because now you are acting differently. And your ego doesn’t like to be questioned, prodded, challenged and or judged.

To know if the ego is talking is to figure out what and who you are serving.

When you start something and maybe you do this because you want to serve your Ummah. To test if its your ego, notice if your mind is giving you excuses to do x,y,z before starting. Your mind is telling you to do your due diligence before your start. Now If you are doing due diligence to ensure the service you provide is of ihsan, then that isn’t ego. But if you are doing due diligence to ensure that you are “seen” in a particular way by others, and even by the customers, then this is ego.

Let me tell you about two sisters. Different situations. Same wound.

The first sister came to me wanting to become someone who is beyond a mother, wife, and obedience. She wants to become a business woman that is smart, powerful, her own person, her own success, in her own name, having her own income. And she wanted it so much it ached.

We looked at her Zone of Genius and here’s what surfaced: she genuinely loves being pregnant, loves holding her babies, motherhood is one of her deepest joys. And the same time something else in her was dying to get out.

The obstacle wasn’t ambition fighting motherhood. It was ego, and ingratitude. Specifically afraid of the bruises that when she became that person, she’d stop being seen as the submissive, agreeable wife and mother everyone could rely on without pushback. Becoming visible meant speaking up for herself, creating boundaries, and being accountable for herself and the how she spent her time. She could no longer be a victim (this is the ego’s alliance), she could no longer blame others.

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We don’t procrastinate because we’re lazy — we procrastinate because we can’t picture who we’d become on the other side of the thing we’re avoiding. So we substitute research, reviews, and “more information” for the imagination we’re missing, and call it preparation.

I was twenty-six when I moved somewhere I didn’t know the idiomatic expressions, didn’t know how things worked, didn’t know the weather wouldn’t actually be that cold, and that you needed a wardrobe to fit every climate known to man. I understood the generalities. That was about it. And yet, I just jumped in without knowing anything.

Mistakes, absolutely. Situations that, looking back, were ridiculous. Genuinely embarrassing. But it was in that not-knowing, in those mistakes, that I built a muscle. A muscle that could actually withstand moving forward.

As I was going through it, and more so as I look back, I could laugh at myself. I gave myself permission to figure things out. I listened, I learned from outside myself, and I learned, the hard way, that idiomatic expressions actually matter.

I was reminded of this recently by listening to something from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, a story about a friend, a doctor, lifting weights well past the point his body was screaming at him to stop. His mind kept saying go, go, go, even as his muscles trembled under the bar. Covey thought the guy was going to collapse under it. He didn’t. Afterward he explained: that’s exactly the point. It’s in that push, past comfort, that muscle fibers actually rupture. And it’s in that rupture that new fiber gets built.

Here’s what I think we’ve lost the muscle for, in an age where information is everywhere: of not knowing.

We’ve overdeveloped the muscle of knowing, the need to know, the have to know, the I can’t move until I know, and let the muscle of not-knowing go limp completely. That “limpness” triggers angst and anxiety that creates shivers, and overthinking.

I grew up before the internet made everything searchable. We had the New York Times, Business Week, whatever the TV gave us. If I didn’t know something, I found out by doing it, not by researching it into the ground first. Now, wanting to try a new flavor of ice cream turns into checking reviews. Wanting to visit a new store turns into Googling whether it’ll be crowded. We collect information that doesn’t actually matter, and call it preparation.

There’s a moment in the Quran that captures this precisely. Bani Israel were told by Allah SWT to simply sacrifice a cow. That’s it. Instead, they asked what color the cow needed to be?. What was its age? What type? Question after question, when a single obedient act would have sufficed (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:67-71). All that asking wasn’t diligence. It was stalling, dressed up as thoroughness, and honestly, showing a disbelief in Allah SWT underneath it.

What in our life today does this same trait show up?

I think about this every Ramadan when I’m visiting Morocco, watching the bread line at the bakery before iftar. There’s no real order to it. No line, technically. Everyone crowds the counter, hands up, money out, and somehow, everyone gets their bread. Nobody’s offended by the chaos. Nobody Googles ahead of time whether the bakery will be busy. They just go, trusting they’ll get what they need when they get there.

We’ve become, I think, too soft for that kind of trust. We want the itinerary before the trip, the reviews before the meal, the certainty before the attempt. Somewhere in there, we’ve replaced actual experience with somebody else’s experience of a thing, and started calling that knowledge.

Honestly, I get this attitude constantly from potential clients who want results, some have outright asked me, so what is it, exactly, that you do for people? Although a fair question, the underlying theme here is is the result tangible? And are these results tangible so that I can justify it to those around me?

Here’s my answer: I coax out the version of you that’s powerful but has stayed dormant, because it’s just more comfortable to keep leaning on the abilities you’ve already got. If you’re only ever leaning on your present strengths, you’re moving through your life on an old operating system. The results of this vary because your version of success is different from another.

This answer for many isn’t sufficient, however, those who have worked with me, together we formulate a winning strategy that cultivates success that can only be felt, embodied and only then shows up in their life, work, and vision.

Which brings me to procrastination, because I don’t think what I’ve been describing is really about information at all. It’s a disease of the heart, and Islamic tradition names it plainly. There’s a du’a the Prophet ﷺ recited morning and evening, seeking refuge from al-ajz, the inability to act, and al-qasl, laziness. Morning and evening, not once in a while, because this isn’t an occasional stumble. It’s something that can quietly take over a life.

Imagine solving problems at work today the exact same way you did in middle school. Weaker results, obviously. But bring your middle-school self’s abilities forward and combine them with decisions that actually require you to step outside your comfort zone now, and you’ll find success in ways you couldn’t have imagined from that old operating system.

The Prophet ﷺ also described the wise, successful person as one who holds themselves accountable, for their time, their actions, everything of value, and prepares for what comes after. The foolish person, by contrast, follows their own desires and leans on God only at the very end, staying up all night to finish something, then telling themselves at the last minute that they’ve done their part and now it’s in Allah’s hands. That’s not Tawakkul. That’s a rushed excuse for wearing tawakkul’s clothes.

So here’s my theory, and it’s the piece I actually want you to sit with:

I don’t think we procrastinate because we’re lazy. I think we procrastinate because we cannot picture our future self. We don’t know what she looks like, feels like, sounds like on the other side of the thing we’re avoiding. And what we cannot picture, we cannot move toward. So we stall in the not-knowing, collecting information as a substitute for imagination, because information feels safer than an unknown future we can’t yet see.

Society tells us our current self, our current solution, our current advice, can’t possibly be enough, because we don’t have the [fill in the blank: degree, certification, knowledge, experience]. And that’s exactly what fuels the dire need to go get more. More information. More proof. More permission.

Here are the signs, if you’re wondering whether this is you: you research a decision far past the point where more research would change it. You check reviews before trying something you already know you want. You’ve read the books, taken the courses, and the thing itself still hasn’t started. You feel busy, productive even, and yet the actual task sits exactly where it did last week.

I’m not handing you a fix today. I just want you to notice it. Next time you catch yourself reaching for one more search, one more opinion, one more piece of information you don’t actually need, pause and ask: am I preparing, or am I avoiding meeting the person I’d become if I just did the thing?

Want to bypass all this? I’d love to chat.

With you on becoming the person Allah will be proud of.

Coach Gemi, Leadership | Identity Coach

Learn more about me here

The desire and the pining of wanting to live a different life, to be a “better person” to be successful to get that promotion, to step into leadership, to become a hafid of Quran, to become someone that people trust and look up to feels scary.

Because to become this person you dream about you have to think, act, and do differently.

Einstein said it the best, The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Think about what that actually means. Every time you’re asked to respond differently than you always have, quieter instead of louder, patient instead of decisive, still instead of moving, you have zero prior evidence that this other version of you even works. No track record. No proof it’ll land. You’re being asked to trust a person you’ve never actually met.

No wonder most of us don’t do it. We stay in the one gear we know produces results, because at least we’ve seen that gear work before.

But here’s what I want to sit with today, because I think it’s the actual engine underneath range, not just the definition of it: developing range isn’t primarily a skills problem. It’s a trust problem.

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Looking back, I’m almost surprised at how narrow I actually was. I had been living from one place only: high energy. Upbeat, can-do, opportunistic. It was my default, my most natural gear, and it worked. It was genuinely my power, one I could count on, and I relished it.

So what does range actually mean in coaching?

It’s the capacity to move beyond your default reaction, the gear you reach for automatically, and choose instead the response that actually helps the person in front of you see something new or learn something new about themselves. Also what you might learn about the person in front of you.

A coach who only plays one note limits their clients’ development.

Range, in this context, can be looked at in three ways.

Your reflex, or habitual way of responding. This is the way you typically respond to a discussion, argument, or point of view, regardless of who you’re speaking to. And this includes if you have two different personas, an “office persona,” a “home persona,” and/or a “friends persona.”

Example: road-running over someone else’s thoughts by seeing our own thoughts as the “right way.” Responding without hearing the other.

Responding with consciousness of the mind and heart/body. This is a response driven by the internal compass and intentionality you bring to the conversation in the first place.

Example: your difficult relative comes at you with colorful commentary. Instead of reflex-responding, you make a choice about what kind of relationship you’d like to have with this person, and what your intentionality is behind it. So inherently, your responses will reflect what your heart and body hold. Going back to this example, you want to retain a good relationship with your relatives, so instead of being defensive, you ask them what they really need and what’s important about that need. This is a curious way of being, thus preserving the overall relationship.

Balancing perspectives: holding more than one viewpoint, and allowing the conclusion to come to fruition together. It’s the ability to move between states, rather than getting stuck defending a single one. This is where transformation can happen for the person you’re speaking to.

When a coach can step into this, that’s where clients experience real transformation.

Range isn’t about more energy or less energy. It’s having access to whatever register the moment actually needs.

That’s what my coach was asking of me. A different kind of power. Quieter. Stiller. Speak slower, lower, take my time before the next word landed, sit inside a silence instead of rushing to fill it.

I struggled. A lot. I didn’t have that kind of range yet.

At the time, sitting still was the struggle, because it required me to self-manage, to be still within my own being. And I wasn’t comfortable seeing myself as the person Allah made me valuable regardless of whether I moved, produced, or fixed anything. The action, the movement, the feedback it gave me, that’s what validated me. It fueled a false sense that I was somehow more worthy because of it.

The fixer in me wanted to come out and feel validated.

There’s a name for that: performance-based self-esteem, believing you only have value when you achieve, produce, or fix things for someone else.

Pull the saboteur thread we’ve been walking through these past weeks, it runs right through this too. A saboteur is often just a strength, overused.

Mine was the Hyper-Achiever, overusing pragmatism, getting things done. I’d worn it so hard it became the only way I knew how to prove I mattered. My inner Judge and my Stickler couldn’t sit in that quiet either. Neither of them could eat.

But working from that lower, slower place brought something I didn’t expect: real intentionality. It sharpened an intuition I already had, and let me practice coaching more bravely, giving my clients permission to become braver too.

I know this is challenging, because it asks you to step into someone you haven’t met yet. And as humans, we only have the past and its experiences to refer to. And yet, as a Muslim, we are firstly to believe in the ghaib, the unseen, the unknown, and every day we wake up not knowing what the day will bring us. And Allah says trust Me. I echo it. Put your trust in Allah.

Today, range means stepping into a version of myself I haven’t fully met yet, quietly, on an ordinary day, not in one dramatic moment. None of this exists without Allah first, and without giving myself permission to lean into the parts of me I hardly use, my private wins with Him, shown to no one, that same quiet persistence now showing up in my coaching too.

Here’s what that actually looks like on an ordinary week.

I’m a morning person. For a long time, I crammed everything into my mornings, salat, duas, breakfast for my husband, my latte, Quran, Arabic, social media updates, chatting with family, my PQ reps, and walking. All of it, because morning was my superpower time. It was completely unsustainable. The moment my schedule shifted and I couldn’t fit it all in, I’d write the whole day off, since afternoons are when my brain cells feel the smallest. I was being a total Stickler, insisting everything fit one sacred window or not at all.

You all know that all-or-nothing mentality? Life isn’t like that.

So I tried something uncomfortable. I looked at my actual energy, not my assumptions, and noticed the hours I usually spent half-checked-out with my husband and some TV. I moved my Quran time to Asr.

Turns out my brain isn’t that small in the afternoon. Sitting with my Creator soothed me. It gave me clarity, and actually “more time.” It closed my day instead of leaving me scrambling to open it perfectly. I’ve added more into that window since, and it’s become something I look forward to, not dread.

This shift reshaped my own life purpose statement too. My sentence has broadened as I’ve leaned more on Allah for clarity. It’s no longer just about Muslims, it’s grown to encompass humanity at large, helping people harness their uniqueness and use their capacities for whatever they were actually meant to impact.

And I’ve moved from being a warm cinnamon bun to something quieter, a quiet turn behind a loud life, so the ones dying to become themselves can rise into their purpose bravely, and live with ihsan.

So here’s my invitation this week: find your version of range. Something small enough that only you would notice it.

Maybe instead of rushing to work, you walk there deliberately slowly. Maybe instead of racing to get dinner on the table, you slow down enough to actually be in awe of what Allah made. Maybe instead of defending yourself the next time someone questions your work, you sit back, take it in, and actually listen.

Tell me what your version looks like. I’d genuinely love to hear it.

With you on becoming the person Allah will be proud of.

Coach Gemi, Leadership | Identity Coach

Learn more about me here

Every business has a mission statement. It knows its purpose. So what about the business of becoming the best human your Creator is pleased with? What, and where, is your mission statement?

In my last article, I talked about how having a clear purpose statement has guided every major decision in my life. It still does, to this day.

(PS: if you haven’t read The You Underneath the Skill, it’ll help with this exercise.)

My metaphor has evolved since then. I’m no longer a cinnamon bun. But the sentence still works the same way, a guiding principle that helps me navigate this world called life. When shiny opportunities come at me, I can look straight through them and make a confident decision, because I already know where I’m going.

Imagine you’re headed to Florida, but you’re currently in Greece. Knowing your destination is Florida gives you clarity about which path actually gets you there. If you know you’re going to Florida, do you hop on a flight to Australia because it looks interesting? Probably not. Now think about how many of us walk through life without a clear destination at all. If that’s you, what route have you actually been taking, and where has it been taking you?

This article is a practical, fairly quick way to draft the first version of your life purpose statement.

I’m inviting you to sit and actually think. Can we do that together?

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If you haven’t read Stop Showing Up For Yourself yet, it supports the work we’re about to do here.

So, a quick word to a few voices that might show up while you do this. To the saboteur that wants results, that tells you sitting and thinking is a waste of time, that we should be doing, producing, achieving: this is doing something, even if it doesn’t look like it yet. To the Avoider, worried that having real purpose might mean rocking the boat for the people around you: it might. That’s alright. And to my fellow people-pleasers, the ones sensitive to being seen as nice and good: ask yourself honestly, are we serving people, or are we serving our Creator?

Ready to dive in? Subscribe, and let’s get directional. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

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I broke something last week. I told you the mindset and skill you built your life, career, and business on, however successful, has kept you in a loop and feeling stuck. And that’s triggering, of course. I’m already great at it. It works! I’ve had so much success doing it this way. Why would I change? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The sunk cost mentality can keep you small.

Story time.

This one comes after Singapore, after the company and I parted ways. I was mid-second-pregnancy, taking my existential crises to the kitchen instead of firing on all cylinders in a company.

And yet, I started my own consultancy. Then coaching found me. Or I should say, I went into it kicking and screaming. My bestie insisted I was a natural and encouraged me to apply. So I asked Allah for the answer, and got a full-ride scholarship. So I told myself, okay, then this IS for me. Alhamdulillah.

I committed to coaching.

In class, in coach training, I went all in on learning. This wasn’t just theory. It required me to do the self-development work as I trained to become a coach.

Class probed who I actually was. Where I was. Who I might want to become.

Honestly? I didn’t know. I was just feeling my way around a dark room filled with furniture.

Meanwhile, and this happens to me constantly: whenever I set out to do one thing, something else pops up as a side story, then quietly becomes the main one. I was helping a Muslim business with strategy and marketing. Just helping, the way I always just help. And they loved what I brought so much, they wanted me to become their CEO.

Wait, what? Interesting.

I should mention, I’d already been COO and director of two startups at the same time, and brought in serious revenue. So it wasn’t a total surprise they’d ask.

What surprised me was my own reaction.

That exact week, coach training had us design our life’s purpose. My first internal response: I’m a Muslim. My life’s purpose is to serve Allah.

Obviously. But okay, let’s follow along, I thought.

The exercise was genuinely useful, useful enough that I built my own version of it afterward, one I think fits what Muslims actually need better:

Our ultimate purpose, as Muslims, is to serve Allah. We are each an Abd, a servant of Allah. And underneath that fixed purpose, we carry a dunia purpose, an earthly amanah, something entrusted to us specifically to cultivate and use in service of that purpose.

That felt better to me. I could get behind it. And it lines up with my clients too, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Shout out to the non-Muslims here, genuinely: thank you for staying open to a shift that isn’t always fully aligned with your own beliefs. We’ve witnessed it together, it still taps into something real in you.

So, back to the story. I sat down and did the exercise. I wrote my actual life purpose statement.

And nowhere, nowhere, in that statement was there anything pointing me toward becoming a CEO.

Bruh.

I was even surprised. Here’s what came out instead:

I am the cinnamon bun so that my people can become impactful, useful people, elevating the ummah.

Go ahead, read that twice. I did too. You’re probably thinking, wait, you’re a cinnamon bun?

The back story.

Here’s where that came from. Years before, pre-COVID, while raising my kids and running my Muslim women’s website, which at its peak had over 30 women writing for it from 15 countries, I also started something I called Souq Sunday, a tiny marketplace at my house. I wanted a space where women could gather and talk about work, life, career, whatever needed saying.

So I lured them with homemade cinnamon buns. Real ones, like Cinnabon. I’d proof the dough at night and bake them fresh at fajr. Women from every corner of the community would show up, eat, talk, sometimes stay for hours. People started bringing food to share too. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just loved being around Muslim women, sharing my buns.

Over time it turned into a whole thing. Then the pandemic hit. Lol. No more in-person anything.

But it left an imprint.

Because when I sat with that life statement years later, I recognized exactly what I’d been doing at that table: bringing people together, creating a safe space, gently instigating a different way of thinking about work and life.

I was the cinnamon bun. Warm, familiar, the thing that actually got people to sit down and open up.

I guess I was a little ahead of my time. Most of the women who showed up were decades younger than me. I’m still in touch with a lot of them. They’re my kids now, my girls. They’ve gotten married, had children of their own. One passed away recently, may Allah have mercy on her.

I’m not the cinnamon bun anymore, because I’ve grown and evolved. I’d say I’m more like a well now, a source, a place where those who are ready can come untangle themselves from their loop.

Anyway, back to the story. When I wrote that statement and saw no CEO title, and weighed the impact that title would carry, it felt out of alignment with who I’d already become.

I declined the offer.

I left a lot of people gobsmacked, including myself, honestly. But I checked in with my heart, prayed istikhara, listened to what Allah was whispering underneath all that outside noise, and I knew.

PS: declining it didn’t mean everyone else accepted it. I needed to accept it for myself. And although the chatter hit me, Alhamdulillah, I could gracefully hold space for their concerns while gently pushing their ideas away.

Besides, Allah is the best of planners.

Here’s what happened after: my late mother was diagnosed with cancer. I spent months at a time away from my own family, on the other side of the world, to care for her. Had I taken that CEO role, I don’t believe I could have answered the honor Allah gave me in caring for her until she left this world. Alhamdulillah.

The statement worked. Not because it predicted the future. Because it reoriented me before I even needed it, so that when the real test showed up, I already knew which way was true.

So here’s what I want you to sit with this week: if you wrote your own life statement honestly, right now, what wouldn’t be in it? What opportunity, however good it looks from the outside, might actually be walling off the very thing you’re here to do?

I still find it funny, honestly, that mine involved baked goods. But girl, I get it. Sometimes the truest thing about you shows up in the strangest possible metaphor. What’s yours?

With you on becoming the person Allah will be proud of.

Coach Gemi, Leadership | Identity Coach

Learn more about me here.

Last time, I asked what’s left of you when the skill you built your whole identity on has nowhere left to be used. I want to sit in that question a little longer before I hand you any tool, because I think rushing past it would betray the weight of what we just named.

Here’s what I actually believe, and it’s the ground everything else in this piece stands on: your identity was never supposed to rest on the fixer role, or the listener role, or whatever skill made you valuable and visible for fifteen years. Underneath every skill you’ve built is something called fitrah, your original nature, the version of you that existed before any job title, any role, any circumstance ever asked something of you. Fitrah doesn’t disappear when the fire stops needing you. It was never dependent on the fire in the first place.

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So the disorientation you feel when the skill runs out of places to be used isn’t actually a sign that you’ve lost yourself. It’s a sign that you’d quietly mistaken a skill for a self. Those are not the same thing, even though it’s almost impossible to tell them apart while the skill is still working.

This is where the exercise I want to walk you through today actually earns its place. I’m not handing you this to help you find more things you’re capable of. I’m handing it to you to help you separate what was actually you all along from what was simply useful for a season.

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Last week’s piece was about what happens when that gets overdone, when service turns into a good-girl complex running on fear instead of love. That doesn’t mean helping people is bad. It isn’t.

This week is about something related, but different. It’s not that other people only see one thing in you. It’s that you see it in yourself first, and once you do, you start approaching everything through it.

The fixer. You’re the one who stays calm when everything’s on fire. Systems fail, people panic, and somehow you’re the one who steps in and makes it make sense again. You get so good at it that fixing becomes the only lens you know how to look through. So you start fixing your marriage the way you fix a broken process. You start fixing your kids the way you fix a missed deadline. But a marriage isn’t a process, and a child isn’t a deadline. Sometimes what’s needed isn’t a fix. It’s understanding. It’s listening. It’s curiosity.

The listener. You ask good questions. People leave conversations with you feeling seen, and word gets around. You get so good at drawing other people out that you forget how to ask for anything yourself. You help everyone else make their case, get the promotion, find their voice, but you never learned to advocate for you.

Here’s why this matters more than it sounds like it should. If your sense of self is built on a skill, what happens when the circumstances that let you practice it disappear?

Say you’ve spent fifteen years as the go-to fixer at your company. The high flier. The one everyone calls when something’s broken. You’re good at it, and you know you’re good at it, because the whole company keeps proving it to you. Then you quit. Or you get laid off. And now there’s no fire to walk into, no system to save, no one calling your name because something’s broken and only you can fix it.

Where does that muscle go?

I used to describe this with the image of a college student turning in a paper written like a grade-school book report. Technically a paper, but the professor can see immediately it’s the wrong tool for the room. That’s true. But it’s not actually the most concerning part. The more concerning part is that the student often can’t see it. She thinks she turned in a strong paper. She’s standing so far inside her old paradigm that she can’t recognize it as old.

That’s the real work here. Not fixing the fixer, or teaching the listener to speak up. Not yet. First, just seeing the cage. Noticing that you’re standing inside a paradigm you built years ago, maybe decades ago, and you’ve used it so long you’ve stopped being able to tell it apart from you.

Here’s the question to sit with this week: what’s the one skill you’ve built your whole sense of self on? And what would be left of you if the circumstances that call for it disappeared tomorrow?

You don’t need an answer yet. You just need to start noticing the shape of the cage. Because once you can see it, you can start asking what’s actually in you that hasn’t had room to grow, which is exactly where we’re headed next.

With you on becoming the person Allah will be proud of.

Coach Gemi, Leadership | Identity Coach

Learn more about me here.

PS: Want to have coffee with me on a regular basis? Consider becoming a founding member. ;)

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Last week I threw my own pain relief out the window to keep coaching my clients. Bad neck, real medication, and I still showed up, because stopping felt like failing someone.

I called that dedication. I want to be honest with you: some of it wasn’t.

Some of what I call service is amanah, a gift I was entrusted with, spent the way it was meant to be spent. And some of it, if I’m truthful, is something else entirely, wearing service’s exact same clothes so well that even I couldn’t always tell the difference from the inside.

There’s a name for that something else. Two names, actually. Positive Intelligence calls it the Pleaser. I call it the good-girl complex, the good-person complex, whichever fits the voice you already know.

Here’s what makes it so hard to catch: it doesn’t feel like a flaw. It feels like being a good person. And that’s exactly the problem I want to unpack with you today, because the two can look identical from the outside and be built from completely opposite foundations underneath.

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Here’s the problem nobody names: when the reason is just you, you’re always the first thing you’re willing to sacrifice.

I’ve been sitting with this for weeks, ever sinc I started Dr. Tamara Gray’s Full Focus class through Rabata, a program teaching Quran, Tajweed, and Islamic scholarship through women, all over the world. She was walking through the same “wheel of life” exercise you’d find in any Western coaching program, except she’d infused it with something different.

She approached it with the intention of serving Allah.

Under her fitness goal, she’d written her real motivation: not to “look good” or “feel good,” but that Allah loves a strong believer more than a weak one. She reframed the why behind exercise entirely. It wasn’t about getting fit for herself. It was about becoming a strong believer, physically and mentally, because Allah prefers that over a weak one. Her intention for exercising was for Allah’s sake, not her own.

I realized I do a version of this too. I don’t love exercising either, but I tell myself that my walk is the time I get to do dhikr, or listen to my favorite Islamic lecture. That reframe is what actually gets my sneakers on.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how much more willing I am to do something for Allah, or for someone else, than I ever am to do it just for me, so that I’ll feel and be better.

We inherently love serving and pleasing others, people-pleasers, you know who you are, so why not reframe our why? Making it about Allah instead of about me is what actually gets the task done. It also stops me from putting it last, because we rarely put other people’s tasks last. We put our own last instead.

Here’s another example. I love peanut butter and jelly. I could eat it breakfast, lunch, and snack, and some days I do. Telling myself “eat a balanced meal for you” hasn’t worked consistently lately, even when I force myself to sit down with the family and eat properly, I’d feel full, but nothing more than that.

But shifting to showing up for Allah, my Sustainer, my Creator, wanting to sit and read Quran fluidly, without a sugar crash pulling me under mid-ayah, that’s what actually motivated me. My body couldn’t show up the way I wanted because I hadn’t fed it properly. Showing up for Allah by eating properly changed how I showed up for myself and my body.

It’s changed how I show up for my family too. I caught myself minutes before writing this, rushing off mid-conversation because my mind was already onto the next task. I stopped. Sat back down. Not because I owed my family my presence out of guilt, but because showing up for them, fully, fed and listened to and seen, is itself a way of showing up for Allah. We can still do our own things. Allah gave us those too. But the rushing, the resentment, softens when the reason underneath it changes.

Showing up for yourself is honestly overrated, and more tiring than we admit. So, fellow people-pleasers: instead of showing up for everyone else and running yourself dry, try showing up for Allah first.

I challenge you this week: show up for your Creator in one thing, your food, your walk, your family, your work, and watch what happens to how you show up for yourself.

With you on becoming the person Allah will be proud of.

Coach Gemi, Leadership | Identity Coach

Learn more about me here.

On the mind’s dire need to keep what it already knows, and how that need disguises itself as reason

Bani Israil is free. Pharaoh is gone, the sea has closed behind them, and Allah sends them manna and quail: pure, effortless provision, food that costs them nothing to receive.

And what do they say?

It was never really about the food. It’s about the reflex underneath it: a dire, almost frantic need to hold on to what is known, simply because it is known, and the known is familiar, and familiarity can signal a version of safety. And yet, during that time Pharaoh enslaved them and killed their people and children. However, they didn’t know how to act, or be, when freedom and liberty were bestowed on them.

Later in the same surah, before there was ever an Egypt to miss, Musa (as) gives his people one instruction: slaughter a cow. They don’t. They ask what cow. What colour, precisely. What age? Every answer earns another question, more specific, more technical, further from the actual act of obedience. By the time they finally slaughter it, the Quran tells us, they almost didn’t at all (2:71).

Same reflex, wearing a different coat. With the onions, it reaches backward for a comfort already known. With the cow, it demands forward certainty before it will move at all. Neither is really about food or facts. Both are the mind’s dire need to stay inside what it already knows, dressed up as longing in one story and as diligence in the other.

What have you clung to only because it was familiar, not because it was actually serving you?

Where in your life right now are you asking for one more piece of information, when what you actually need is to do the thing?

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You’re so pregnant with your second, and you’re in survival mode. Taking up short gigs in DC to Philadelphia to New York, sometimes across the country, and you just got back from Singapore holding a huge position and now that position has evaporated. Your husband is finding his feet, worried in a way he won’t say out loud, and you hold that deep worry for him without flinching. You don’t cry. You don’t push back. You just hold it, and he finds his footing, and he flourishes.

I want to tell you: that was strength. Nobody handed you a manual for that.

You were a pioneer, and almost nobody around you could see it yet. You worked mornings, when you weren’t traveling, from home, years before anyone called that normal. People thought you were lazy. Canoodling with the pillow, someone said, like you were just lounging around doing nothing. They had no idea you were working with your own energy instead of against it, building a life around your family instead of a job you commuted to. You didn’t defend your situation. You just kept going.

Here’s what I remember most clearly, though: the bus stop. You wanted your son to get more morning light, more curiosity about the world, so you’d walk to the edge of the complex and just sit with him, counting cars, calling out colors, naming vehicles. Some days you’d ride the bus together for the fun of it, forty-five minutes, then catch the next one home. That boy is an automation engineer now. Organized, observant, kind. You didn’t know it then, but you were laying track for exactly who he’d become.

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You also built something of your own in there. A platform, a real dream, born in the cracks between motherhood and travel. It didn’t survive. The team around you didn’t launch it the way you wanted, and it felt like sabotage at the time. What I understand now that you couldn’t yet: not everyone will share your vision, and building something real means learning finance and structure, not just having the idea. You didn’t ask for that kind of help soon enough. That’s not a failure. That’s a lesson you paid for so I wouldn’t have to learn it twice.

Then came the seafood company. Head of marketing and operations, millions of containers of crab meat up and down two coasts, product development while you mothered two small children. You dropped a million-dollar check at the bank with kids in the back of the van and your hijab a mess, and you just kept going. That kind of drive is rare. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

But here’s the harder truth, the one I’m still catching up on in my fifties: you scheduled everyone else’s success and forgot to schedule your own. Meditation. Time with the Quran. Sleep. Real exercise. You knew how to negotiate brilliantly on someone else’s behalf and never quite learned to do it for yourself. You leaned on food to cope instead of resting. And the parts of you that needed developing back then are the parts I’m working to develop now, later than I’d like, but not too late.

Your kids are thriving. These are Allahs blessings. With Allahs help they became heroes of your life. But don’t forget you were a hero too, and you didn’t let yourself know it yet.

So, girl. Hug yourself. You were brave before it had a name. You were building a woman worth becoming, and you became her. I’m just still learning how to rest inside the life you built.

With so much love,

Gemi

Founder, Khalifah Leadership Studio

Let’s stay connected! Find me on LinkedIn or catch my daily updates on Instagram.

That’s the unsettling part.

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Not the idea of it. The name. The logo Erna (my lovely assistant) poured herself into. The podcast that carried that name. The years of showing up under it. It feels like a small grief, and I am done pretending it isn’t.

We don’t talk enough about sunk cost in our own becoming. We talk about it in spreadsheets. Don’t throw good money after bad. Cut your losses. But nobody tells you what to do when the thing you’re tempted to hold onto isn’t money. It’s identity. It’s history. It’s a name that watched you grow.

I am a proponent of moving forward. I believe in evolution, in shedding what no longer fits. And still, I don’t believe in throwing away who we were to get here. Those are not contradictions. They are both true at once.

So let me say plainly what Being in Business actually was.

It was never about the doing of business. Not the sales funnels, not the operations, not the P&L statements. It was about the being. How we show up every day inside our work. The human behind the decisions, not just the decisions themselves. That was always the defiance built into the name. Business as a place you bring your whole self, not a role you perform.

And that’s exactly why I’m retiring it.

Because being in business was never big enough for what I actually do. What I have come to understand, through years of sitting across from clients, is that leadership doesn’t start in the boardroom. It starts at the dinner table. The hard conversation you finally have with your teenager builds the same muscle as the hard feedback you owe a colleague. The work of repairing trust with your own family is the same work that gets you promoted, because both require you to stay present in a conversation you’d rather avoid.

Every facet of a person informs what they put into the world. Energy, contribution, presence, all of it. You cannot compartmentalize your way into real leadership. I have watched people make the leap into senior roles not because they mastered a new skill, but because they finally got honest with themselves in the parts of life nobody was grading them on.

This is who I want to serve now. Not only the ones already on a clear trajectory toward the C-suite. The laymen too. The mother trying to lead her household with patience instead of exhaustion. The man trying to lead his tribe, his crew, his block, without ever having been handed a leadership title. The person striving to lead herself first, because that’s where it all actually begins.

That doesn’t fit under Being in Business. It needed a bigger room.

So here is what’s happening. Being in Business is becoming Inside Out with Gemi Hartojo.

Nothing here is erased. The archive stays. The history stays. What Erna built stays part of the story, not buried under it. I’m not deleting a chapter. I’m turning the page while keeping the book intact.

What changes is the scope, and honestly, my own willingness to be seen more fully inside it. You’ll find me more raw here. More forthcoming with the stories that connect dots most people are surprised even connect. Because they do. Every time.

I want to normalize what I’m feeling right now, because I doubt I’m the only one who’s ever felt this reorganizing something they built. It’s sad. It’s painful, in a quiet way. I feel wistful reminiscing about the energy that lived inside Being in Business, even as I know, and even as the people I’ve served know, that what I actually do and who I actually am was always bigger than that label.

The label was never the point. What you take from it was always the point.

So I’m putting Being in Business to rest, with gratitude, not erasure. And I’m welcoming Inside Out with Gemi Hartojo. A space for cultivating leaders at every level of life, starting from the inside, because that’s the only place it ever really starts.

Bismillahirohmanirohim.

The Qur’an quietly reminds us, again and again, that alignment with Allah is never passive; it is chosen in moments of tension, uncertainty, and inner struggle. Think of Prophet Yusuf (ﷺ), who chose integrity over ease when no one would have blamed him for slipping. And Allah didn’t remove him from hardship immediately, but He elevated him through it. Or Prophet Musa (ﷺ), who stepped forward despite fear and self-doubt, aligned not with confidence but with obedience and the sea split only after he moved. Even Prophet Ibrahim (ﷺ), beloved of Allah, was asked to surrender what he loved most, not as punishment, but as proof that alignment refines the heart before it rewards the hands. The Qur’an doesn’t promise that choosing alignment will feel good in the moment; it promises that Allah sees the striving, records the sincerity, and responds in ways far greater than comfort—often with expansion, closeness, and a provision the ego could never orchestrate.

Alignment is a word that gets used often—especially in leadership, personal development, and business circles. I also use it frequently in my work. I teach it and I coach it out from my clients. I build frameworks around it. But there is a meaningful difference between talking about alignment and actually living it. And that difference is where most of the real work—and discomfort—lives.

Living in alignment requires a level of vulnerability that many people underestimate. Not vulnerability with others, but with ourselves. It asks us to be honest about where we cut corners, where we rationalize, and where we quietly betray our own values while still presenting ourselves as “together.” Alignment doesn’t break down in the big, dramatic moments—it erodes in the small, private ones, where no one is watching and we tell ourselves it doesn’t really matter.

When we notice that misalignment, what follows is rarely clarity or motivation. What usually shows up first is shame. A deep, internal discomfort that comes from realizing that something we did does not match who we believe ourselves to be—or who others believe us to be. It feels like a blow to the ego. And almost immediately, the people-pleasing part of us (which is really our bruised ego and fear we won’t be liked) steps in wagging its finger, whispering stories about how we haven’t pleased others, or we won’t be perceived as awesome. We beat ourselves up. But really, here in lies the mis-alignment. Here we are actually seeking comfort, agreeability, and permission within ourselves and this is how we become misaligned with ourselves.

The Qur’an makes this clear, not through abstract ideals, but through lived human struggle. Prophet Yusuf (ﷺ) chose integrity in a moment where secrecy and justification would have been easy, and although his alignment did not spare him hardship, Allah elevated him through it. Prophet Musa (ﷺ) stepped forward in obedience despite fear and uncertainty, and the sea only parted after he moved. Prophet Ibrahim (ﷺ) was asked to surrender what he loved most, not as punishment, but as a refinement of his heart. In each story, alignment did not remove difficulty—it deepened trust, expanded capacity, and brought reward in ways that could not have been orchestrated by the ego.

In essence he rejected his ego for enjoyment, comfort and opted for alignment which has elevated him and his stories are preserved in the Quran that is read by millions! Ultimately achieving real success and is in Jannah because of it.

This is the part of alignment we rarely talk about. It is not loud. It is not performative. It is deeply internal and often inconvenient. Alignment asks us to stay present with the discomfort long enough to learn from it, instead of numbing it, spiritualizing it away, or turning it into self-judgment. Shame, in this context, is not there to punish us—it is there to signal that something meaningful matters to us, that integrity still lives within us.

As a business coach, I see this pattern constantly. High-performing, capable people are not struggling because they lack strategy or intelligence. They struggle because they have learned how to manage misalignment instead of addressing it. Real alignment is not about being flawless; it is about having the courage to course-correct when you notice you’ve drifted. It is about choosing truth (ultimate truth lies with Allah SWT) over performance, even when no one else (other creations) will ever know and knowing your Creator will.

So if you’ve been feeling a quiet internal friction lately—an unease you can’t quite name—consider this: nothing may be wrong with you. You may simply be standing at the doorway of deeper alignment, where your soul is inviting you back into honesty, humility, and trust with your Lord.

As always, I invite you to take a moment to reflect, and notice.

And I’m here holding that safe space for you to be your most vulnerable self.

Wassallam

Coach Gemi
Curious to learn how to be aligned while being safe? Let’s chat.

One of the themes that comes up a lot in coaching is this idea of finding balance in life.

The key question, though, is always: what does balance actually mean to the person?
Because every person is different.

Many people associate balance with something quantitative—something measurable. A tit-for-tat situation. Equal portions. Equal hours. Equal effort. And the challenge they often voice is: How do I give all the parts of my life an equal share?

Others feel that “balance” is really a chase for freedom—something they are inherently longing for.

There are challenges with both of these interpretations. And the issue doesn’t actually lie in the desire for balance itself. The issue lies in not having a clear definition of what the word “balance” really means.

As I sit and reflect on my conversations with clients—especially professionals with robust careers and equally robust family lives—I notice this pattern clearly. They are constantly searching for balance.

So let’s talk about what this “balance” is really about.

In the world, balance is often framed as work hard, play hard. Go all in at work, then go all in at home. And to an extent, this can work—particularly for people who are only responsible for themselves, who are not in a relationship, and who don’t yet have family or caregiving responsibilities.

But the challenge shows up for those who do have families, do have children, and do have careers that feel like they’re on the line.

At this stage, it’s no longer a yearning for balance—it’s a reeling. A constant internal tug-of-war.

And here’s the reality: families (even extended families) and kids don’t behave like paid employees. You’re not paying them. They don’t clock in. They don’t optimize for efficiency. They get to act how they want, when they want, because they are not team members showing up for a paycheck.

So what does balance even feel like now?

I want to break this down a bit—and this is a direct call-out to couples with small children who are running at the speed of light. You may have an illustrious career, make good money, take great vacations… and yet still feel there is no clear balance between your own needs, your family’s needs, and what work demands from you.

Let’s look at this through personality types.

There’s the Type A personality—the go-getter. The one who completes a 19-point to-do list by 10 a.m. The one who tells herself she can do it all.

And when you tell yourself you can do it all—you often do.
But it comes at a cost.

At some point, rest becomes non-negotiable. Not intentional rest—collapse rest. “I’m dead. I can’t move. I have no choice but to stop.”

Rest becomes an indulgence instead of a rhythm.

The belief this person often carries is that balance means everything must be exact. Equal amounts. Perfect symmetry. And what I’ve observed—working closely with people like this—is that the workaholism, the checklist living, the constant go-go-go… is often a mask.

A mask for shame.
A performer mindset.
A need to be useful, valuable, and never look bad.

There’s a strong status component here. The ego is being fed. Performance stays high.

There’s also avoidance.

Overworking. Overdoing. Over-producing.
We have to ask: Is this rooted in self-worth?

So when we talk about balance for this person, we need to be honest. The challenge isn’t the desire for balance. It isn’t even the effort they’re putting in.

The challenge is that their intentions aren’t aligned with who they actually are.

Let me give you an example.

A Type A woman completes 19 to-dos by 10 a.m. She pats herself on the back—what an achievement. And yet, in that process, she didn’t pause to set an intention. She didn’t make time for her Maker. She was too busy chasing the next task.

What’s happening here?

She wasn’t just completing tasks—she was performing.

And as Muslims, we must ask: Who are we performing for?
Ourselves?
Others?
Or Allah?

This is the real pivot point.

The shift doesn’t come from better time management.
It doesn’t come from more productivity tools.
It doesn’t come from delegation alone.

It comes from asking:
What does balance feel like for me—not look like?

In working with this woman, balance didn’t mean equal hours or time blocks. It meant serenity. Contentment. The feeling that things were in their place—without counting, tracking, or proving.

Not “I gave this person one hour.”
Not “I worked out for 30 minutes.”

But a deeper check-in with her body:
Do I feel safe?
Do I feel satisfied with what I was able to give today?

This is a safety issue.

And it requires being okay—even when others are not pleased.

Are we performing so people can say, “She’s good. She doesn’t cause commotion. She does everything right”?
Or are we worshipping through our work and saying, “Allah, this is my capacity today. My intention is for You. I ask You for balance within this.”

I’ve seen the shift be incredible when intention changes.

Because balance is not a time-management problem.

Balance is not a spreadsheet.

Balance is a felt experience.

It is an emotional state.

And we are not balance sheets.
We are human beings.

This is just a taste of what I’ll be sharing in my paid space.

There will be nuance. Case studies. Real stories—from thousands of hours of coaching. This isn’t theory. It’s lived work.

I work with entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, professionals at a pivot point—Muslim and non-Muslim, corporate and entrepreneurial. And across all of it, intentionality is the recurring theme.

What’s especially interesting is that for my non-Muslim clients, intentionality becomes an even greater challenge—because there is no heart connection to the Maker.

So if you’d like to join me as I share reflections, case studies, and insights into the human psyche—this is my invitation.

I’m not a psychologist. I’m a coach. This is my lens.

I especially want to call in Muslim coaches—these are powerful case studies as you step into serving the Ummah.

And for those in business who already know this truth: business is not just about doing—it’s about being.

This is Be{ing} in Business.

I’ll also be sharing podcasts inside, and occasionally hosting live Q&A sessions.

I invite you into my world.
I’m honored to have you here.

I’ll see you inside.

— Coach Gemi

Unfortunately, it could have been you.

It destabilizes everything. Work no longer feels safe. The ground beneath you feels like it’s moving.

And what isn’t? What’s stable?

And… all of this is unfolding against the backdrop of a charged political climate — policies shifting, leaders posturing, communities feeling the ripple effects. It only adds to the sense of instability we’re all carrying. But in times like these, the call to stand wider, to root ourselves in values and intentionality, becomes even more urgent.

The Posture of Reactivity

In moments like this, most of us end up in what I call “tennis-court mode.” You know the feeling: the balls keep coming at you, one after another, and you’re just scrambling to hit each one back. Emails, meetings, performance pressure, family responsibilities — you keep serving, keep moving, keep reacting.

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But here’s the problem: reactivity is exhausting. And as Harvard Business Review has pointed out in multiple studies, uncertainty doesn’t just increase stress — it also reduces our cognitive capacity to think strategically. (HBR, “Why Uncertainty Makes Us Less Creative and More Anxious,” 2022). In other words: the more reactive we are, the less we’re able to do the kind of deep, intentional thinking that actually carries us through change.

Standing Wider

So what’s the alternative?

Imagine you’re still on that court, but this time, instead of chasing everything, you pause. You plant your feet wider. You lock your knees. You feel the ground beneath you. You don’t stop the chaos, but you change your stance.

Actually, stand like when you are in Jamaah prayer - toe-toe, shoulder-to-shoulder in a straight line. I say this is better, because you aren’t standing alone. And instead of seeing the world “come at you”, hold the knowing that Allah is the One who puts you were you are supposed to be.

That’s what it means to stand wider in life, together, and with an understanding the world isn’t out to “get” you. You are where you are supposed to be.

Know that Allah is honoring you, and He wants you to stand in a posture of strength and intentionality, not panic and reactivity. That might look like:

• Connecting your heart to your Maker, your Creator through the Quran, Praying, Dzhikir, and Charity.

• Connecting with your family, negotiating, asking for help. Sharing the burden with responsibility and kindness.

• Responding thoughtfully instead of impulsively.

• Listen to understand rather than to answer.

• And listen to yourself, if you need rest, then rest. Your body too has a right upon you.

Organizational psychologists talk about this as psychological resilience. HR thought leaders call it adaptive leadership. In Islam, we call it sabr and istiqāmah — patience and steadfastness on the straight path.

And here’s the paradox: you don’t get stronger by controlling more. You get stronger by standing wider — by rooting yourself in your worship to Allah SWT, emotionally, mentally, so you can weather the storm without toppling.

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What This Looks Like in Life.

We are Spiritual Beings having a Human Experience ~ Dr. Marwa Assar, PSYD

Standing wider might sound abstract — even if you are Muslim. but here’s how it shows up day-to-day:

• Going with Allah’s flow. Allah so perfectly has timed our 5 daily prayers that shift either forward or backward through the year — ok, this might not be so for those living close to the equator but for the rest of the world Shalat/Prayer time does shift — and this is a true blessing, teaching us to not be “married” to a specific time, or thing. Because Shalat time flows for us, how we work, live, play also shifts. This is the foundation for becoming stable in a moving world. Notice those timings (building your awareness) ensure to create break times for 10 minutes to pray + tack on 1-2 minutes of gratitude and reflection.

• Constant and mindful assessment of what you are going to do in the next moment. Is this next thing aligned with what my Maker wants me to be doing? Yes, even as you rush to care for your child, or family member - quickly ask yourself, who am I doing this for? To please Allah or to please the person/or even situation.

  • This is a hard one I know.

• Feed your heart. This means, reconnecting your heart to the ONE source, yes, the ONE who made it. Filling your time with activities that Allah showed us to do to ensure our hearts are connected to HIM.

Give Back the Heart It’s Rightful Position of Leader.
Without God as the greatest Source of guidance and nourishment, a leader cannot lead or guide in a way that serves those he or she is guiding. Similarly, for the heart to take back its rightful position of leader within our psycho-spiritual system, and for it to lead the mind and ego effectively, it needs a strong and direct relationship to its Source, to God, the One who made this heart to know Him, connect to Him, and be nourished and guided by Him. ~ The Compass The Heart over Mind over Ego Method (H.O.M.E) pg. 226 by Dr. Marwa Assar PSYD

The Deeper Invitation

If you’re reading this in the middle of change, maybe even in the middle of layoffs — I see you. And so does Allah SWT. Although it feels destabilizing there is always good for the believer in

But perhaps the deeper question isn’t how do I stop the chaos? Maybe it’s: how do I stand wider?

How do I root myself in sabr and tawakkul — perseverance, patience and trust in Allah — while the winds of change swirl? How do I bring calm into my team, my family, my own soul, when everything feels uncertain?

A Free Resource for You

I recorded a short voice note on this very theme — shifting from reactivity to intentionality, from scrambling to standing wider. It’s free, and I hope it gives you a breath of calm and clarity in the middle of uncertainty.

👉 Afternoon Tea With Coach Gemi 🔈

Leave a comment

Reflection prompts for you today:

1. Where in your life are you reacting instead of responding?

2. What would “standing wider” look like for you right now?

3. What’s one small way you can practice calm, intentional leadership this week?

Bismillah. Stand wider, Stand together.

PS: This coming November I’m hosting a live Muslimah Reset Workshop. I’d love to meet you. <3

Lately in my sessions, I’ve been noticing something… maybe you’ve been feeling it too.
There are whispers.

Not loud, not dramatic. Just these quiet nudges in the body. A tug in the chest, a flutter in the stomach, a heaviness that won’t leave the shoulders. Whispers that say:

• You were meant for more.

• More expansive work.

• More balance in your life.

• More meaningful income.

• More space for joy.

And yet the mind? Well, it does what it was designed to do: think. Analyze. Rationalize. Overthink. And because it’s limited to that one job, it keeps us looping. Thinking, planning, postponing. Before you know it—it’s December 2025 and your dreams are still sitting in the “drafts” folder of your life.

I love something Dr. Marwa always says: the mind is the servant of the heart.

But here’s the thing—we’ve flipped the order. We’ve been leading our lives from the head, when Allah designed the heart to lead.

We think, then act, then think some more. We love to intellectualize because it feeds the nafs. But it starves the soul. And that’s why so many of us are walking around disconnected, almost robotic.

Allah told us already—we will fear poverty. We will fear discomfort. We will fear stepping out of what’s familiar. And He was right. He is always right.

The question is: how are we feeding our hearts?

The heart needs light. It needs nourishment from the Qur’an, from dhikr, from Sunnah. And from being present in our bodies. When we ignore that, we keep trading deep fulfillment for shallow comfort.

And yes—it is hard. Working on oneself is a hassle. It takes effort. It takes intention. But for those who truly love Allah, who live in gratitude for every breath and gift He’s entrusted them with, the effort is an act of worship. It’s proof of love.

And it doesn’t need to be grand or flashy. Real transformation often comes in the smallest, most consistent steps. The little acts that stack up, day after day, until you meet Allah with a tray full of deeds that say: Ya Allah, I tried.

If those whispers in your soul have been growing louder, and you’re ready to take a gentle first step, I’d love to invite you into Aligned in 30—a one-month private coaching journey where we’ll work together on clarity, alignment, and small, doable actions that make a real difference.

So, as you step into this new season, I’ll leave you with some questions to sit with—journal them, voice-note them, or let them roll around in your heart:

What are the whispers my soul has been nudging me toward?
What keeps my mind circling instead of moving?
How am I feeding my heart with Allah’s light right now?
What is one small, doable action I can take this week to align with what Allah has already placed inside me?

Remember: your soul already knows. Your mind just needs to learn how to serve it.

With love and dua,
Coach Gemi
Helping Muslim women align who they are with what they’re here to do—in life, leadership, and business.

PS: Ready to start small but powerful? Explore Aligned in 30, my 30-day private coaching journey.

Not yet ready for coaching? Stay close by subscribing here on Substack, where I share reflections, stories, and invitations to step into alignment.

You’ve worked on yourself.
You’ve built something.
You may have more than one project, more than one role, more than one passion.

But lately…

You’ve felt dizzy.
Spread too thin.
Overwhelmed by the news.
Want to help, participate, make impactful change—like now!
Burning bright, but burning out.
Torn between multiple paths—none of which feel fully aligned with your heart or your faith.

Or your mind thinks all the projects, businesses, organizations you are involved with are aligned but your body, heart, energy is telling you different. In some extreme cases —your loved ones are noticing.

You’re not alone.

Recent research shows that Muslim women entrepreneurs often juggle numerous roles and ventures simultaneously, leading to burnout and lack of direction. PMC While education and ambition are high, sustainable progress is hindered by structural barriers, fragmented focus, and lack of spiritual integration. SpringerOpenPMCResearchGate

Why the Quiz: What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?

Because clarity begins with knowing:

• Are you a Visionary who jumps between ideas?

• Are you a Ninja who silently executes but often feels unseen?

• Are you a Healer who wants to serve, but struggles to scale?

The quiz helps you identify your leadership style—so you don't keep playing in multiple pots and missing your calling.

Take it before our conversation—it’ll help both of us know how to support you more precisely.

Take the Quiz here!

Why Aligned in 30 Can Shift Everything

This isn’t a launchpad for beginners.
It’s not for someone who’s still scratching the surface.

It’s for the woman who has done the work—and now wants to come home to herself.

Within 30 days, we’ll:

1. Reset your focus — choose one soul-led priority that actually matters to you

2. Design your alignment strategy — faith-based frameworks, identity anchored decisions

3. Build with presence, not panic — realistic scaling rooted in worship and balance

Imagine — holding one path instead of ten.
Building deeper instead of wider.
Feeling peace + purpose instead of scattered ambition.

Why I charge $3,000—and what that means

This price is intentional. It’s not arbitrary. It’s a filter. A signal.

Because when women invest at this level—in themselves—they show up differently:

• They show up whole-heartedly in sessions

• They follow through with unseen assignments

• They move with integrity, not impulse

This is transformational work—not maintenance.

Working with me means:

• Being seen in your fullness

• Being held in your rhythms (not hustles)

• Receiving truth, tools, and clarity that last long after our month ends

This offer is only open to women who know they can’t stay the same. Who fear waking up in July 2026, looking back—and nothing’s shifted.

That’s who this is for. If that’s not you yet, that’s okay too—you have access to other supportive tools like the toolkit or quiz.

Or becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack.

Who this is for:

• Entrepreneurs building or juggling multiple ventures, activities, dunia job, family and entrepeneurship,

• Leaders who’ve done self work—but still feel fragmented

• Believers who refuse hustle tactics but crave clarity + purpose

• Women craving one sacred, focused reset for their heart + business

🌿 Ready to begin?

Take the Quiz: What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? here.
Then message me ALIGNED or reply to this email.

I’ll send you more details—and we’ll see if Aligned in 30 is the right fit for your next season.

Or, if you can’t wait and want to get going now find time on my schedule to see if you are a fit.

If not—no pressure. You’re always welcome here, in the quiz, the toolkit, or just this newsletter.

Subscribe now

But if your heart whispered yes while reading this… trust that.

It’s time to stop juggling, start building—with one focus, one heart, one aligned path.

With love,
Coach Gemi

PS: This is for any woman longing for transformation in any part of her life—business, identity, clarity, or next chapter.