We talk a lot about showing up for yourself. “Put yourself at the center.” “Do it for you.” These phrases are everywhere in the wellbeing industry.
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
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