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As habit dictates, she sits comfortably in her chair, sips her coffee, and opens
her email to see what today will bring. She instantly regrets looking at her
internal mail first. Glaring at the top of her screen is an email from her boss. She
hesitantly opens it, unconsciously moving her chair a little away from the desk
as though that would help soften the blow somehow.
She stares at her proposal, the one she had spent days carefully crafting, that is
now littered with comments and changes he wants to be made. As she skims
through his notes, she feels like it’s not just her proposal in question, but herself
as a person and her ability to do the job she was hired for. She feels instantly
ashamed, irritated, and wrongly accused.
Impulsively, she hits reply and without hesitation lets her boss know why she
made the choices she did. She presses send and feels in some way
vindicated.
However, as the rest of the day transpires, his words weigh heavier and heavier
in her mind. Self-doubt and the harsh inner critic are hijacking her mind making
it harder for her to perform at work. She’s constantly second-guessing her
decisions and wondering at what point she’ll get pulled up again. At the end of
the day, she leaves with tense shoulders and a headache, summoning
whatever energy she has to face her other roles of being a mother, wife, and
home carer. In her heart, she already knows it’s going to be a tough evening as
she’s feeling exhausted and defeated before even stepping out of the office.
She sighs sadly, knowing her family won’t get the best of her, again.
Sana came to me because she was exhausted from being in this cycle. She felt
she was on an emotional rollercoaster, feeling confident and great one
minute but then deflated and riddled with self-doubt the next. She felt she
lacked balance and was spiritually compromised. She had little to no energy
and was worn out by the mental marathons she would run in her head with the
constant comparisons and second-guessing her decisions and performance.
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As we began our very first session, “Breathe” I said to her, “Take a few deep
breaths and let’s slow down”.
As Sana and I worked together, she began to discover a new way of defining
confidence allowing her to experience a new level of emotional stability, inner
peace, and fulfillment in a more consistent way.
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The reality is that we do need confidence as it plays a critical role in how you
see yourself and in how you behave. It can improve your relationship with family
and friends, job performance, your involvement in the community, and your
ability to achieve from your smallest to biggest ambitions in life.
One of the most cited sources about self-confidence in the modern context
refers to it as simply believing in oneself. As believers, this notion of believing
in oneself is important but it comes with a caveat. We need to be extremely
careful about where our confidence is coming from in each moment and what
it’s pulling us towards in terms of our beliefs, character, and behavior.
It’s very tempting to build our confidence and construct our lives based on what
we own and what we do. We can feel good about our physical appearance,
how we performed at work, what the boss said, how much money is in the bank
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or even upon the degree by which we are socially accepted by others. These
are all external forms of validation that are very temporary in nature. Attaching
confidence to what we do as opposed to who we are, creates a need to
chase and focus on the external and neglect what’s within. We become
distracted from paying attention to what Allah sees.
It is my hope that by the end of this article you will be able to distinguish the
many different modalities of confidence ranging from healthy and spiritually
enriching to others that are temporary in nature, toxic and serve only to inflate
the ego, detracting from our spiritual wellbeing and our relationship with Allah.
After years of spiritual and personal development training, I finally felt a sense
of authenticity, acceptance, and connection to my true self. It was through this
process that I realized a fundamental truth; the only way to experience
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It was at this stage I qualified as a Life coach so that I could help prevent others
from making the same mistakes I did. By the mercy of Allah, for the past 6 years,
I’ve been researching, teaching, and coaching clients on a new framework of
confidence, one that is rooted in faith and not in ego. I have delivered lectures,
workshops and coached hundreds of people around the world helping them
make the paradigm shift from ego-led confidence to real inner confidence that
is deeply rooted in their trust and relationship with Allah (SWT).
This confidence paradigm shift entails a holistic process of deeper inner work
that’s rooted in Islamic principles. It’s designed to help us reconnect back to our
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fitrah with spiritually fortified confidence and resilience that can be present in
the face of any challenging situation.
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The moment we align with the idea “it’s all on me”, we’re vulnerable to a whole
host of problems. With this mindset, the burden of success is solely on us and it
can create psychological issues such as anxiety, stress and make us very
reactive to outcomes. For example, if a person delivers a presentation and
receives negative feedback, it’s easy to take it very personally, giving way to
self-loathing, negative self-talk and people pleasing behaviour. If the
presentation received great reviews, without humility present and attributing the
outcome back to Allah, any praise could feed directly to their ego, which in turn
can create arrogance and an unhealthy disproportionate belief in oneself and
their ability.
“Do not strut arrogantly about the Earth. You will certainly
never split the earth apart nor will you ever rival the
mountains in height.”
(Qur’an 17:37)
Inadvertently, we may fall into the trap of thinking the only factors at play is
our own ability, effort and self-belief. This disconnects us from the reality that
we are the slaves of Allah and rather than operating from a spiritual soulful
place with purpose and humility, it sets up an identity based on ego with a
penchant for external validation.
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The Prophet (SAW) said: He who has, in his heart, an ant’s weight of
arrogance will not enter Paradise. (Sahih Muslim). Islamic tradition is
about not inflating ego, this is called Jihad Un Nafs (struggle against the self)
out of protection from becoming “full of oneself” and adopting a mindset
independent of Allah.
“The shy person and the arrogant one will not learn the knowledge.”
(Sahih Bukhari). As we can see from this hadith, allowing arrogance to
enter the heart shuts the door to valuable learning and insights. There’s also
a real danger of not being able to do honest self-reflection (Muhasabah) for
personal growth and development.
The reality is that Allah has blessed us with skills and abilities but ultimately, we
ONLY achieve success by the mercy of Allah and because He willed it to
happen. When we align that mindset with a deep sense of knowing that along
with my ability, skills and efforts is the help and might of Allah, we can feel more
assured going into any situation with high levels of self-confidence. If we have
the help of Allah, what is there to fear?
Grounded with this inner confidence, we have the courage to listen to others,
we can accept all outcomes and we have the capacity to entertain other
people’s opinions.
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Our essential self is the purest form of who we are (fitrah). This space is filled
with compassion, goodwill and esteemed qualities that reflect our most
authentic self. Our soul will feel most alive, spiritually engaged and thriving
when we are living in integrity with our essential self.
We try to follow formulas of other successful people and don’t honour who
we really are at a soul level. We lose our authenticity, afraid to show up as
our real self out of fear of loss, judgement or rejection.
We believe negative things that have been said about us in the past and
build an entire life as a reaction to this.
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the outside. The larger the gap, the greater the inner friction and
disturbance at a soul level.
“… By the soul and (by) Him who made it perfect, and then
inspired it to understand what is wrong and what is right for
it. Truly is successful the one who purifies (his soul).”
(Qur’an 91:7-9)
As we learn from this ayah, the soul knows right from wrong. If we learn to slow
down and pay attention to that quiet inner voice we will see that real courage
and confidence is in showing restraint, being kind, showing mercy and carefully
crafting responses with an awareness and care of how our behaviour affects
others.
Sometimes in the rush of modern life, many people forgo a healthy diet. A poor
diet not only affects our weight, but it can affect our mood and emotions. When
our emotions are not healthy this can directly impact our confidence. For
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example, researchers are finding fascinating links between our food choices
and mental health.
There are countless references in the Quran and sunnah with regards to how
we should manage our eating habits as food not only nourishes our body but
the soul too.
The correlation between lifestyle choices and our emotional state extends to
almost every aspect of our life. Some of the impacts of self-neglect include:
Your body has a right over you and we have to make choices accordingly. Allah
blessed us with ONE body and gave it to us as an amaanah (trust) that we will
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look after it, with this intention self-care becomes an act of worship.
He ate well, he slept early, he was active, he gave himself rest and fulfilled the
rights of his body.
From this, we can see self-care is not just a luxury but a necessity.
Ultimately…
From the above we see that true confidence is rooted in Islamic principles. It
requires us to take care of ourselves, to identify the true self and ultimately to
rely on Allah. It is only through our relationship and awareness of Allah that our
hearts can find peace as Allah tells us:
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It’s important to note that striving for the good of this world and having high
ambitions is not inherently wrong, in fact we are advised to make duaa for it:
“Our Lord, give us in this world [that which is] good and in
the Hereafter [that which is] good and protect us from the
punishment of the Fire.”
(Qur’an 2:201)
We ask for the good of this world, but we don’t attach our hearts to it. In hope of
being included as those who are truly successful (Al-Muflihoon) we strive to
make our efforts count for us in this world and the next InshaAllah.
Aligning with this intention, means that we can aim high fearlessly with full trust
that Allah will give us what is best and what we don’t receive in this world will,
InshaAllah, be waiting to greet us in the next world. This spiritually rooted
confidence liberates us from the shackles of chasing dunya and striving to fulfil
society’s demands.
It’s in renewing our intentions and aligning our thoughts, decisions and actions
with our higher purpose and finding our way back to our essential self that we
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can experience that rich, unwavering belief, knowledge and understanding that
Allah’s help is near.
She fully embraced the instruction in these comforting words from Allah:
She recognised that if she wanted to see change in her life, the point of action
had to begin with herself first along with full trust that Allah, Al- Fattah (The
Opener) will open the way for everything else to change.
By working through the Belief model ™, here’s a few of the changes she
experienced with the Mercy of Allah:
She learned to slow down, re-evaluate her life goals and worked on getting
to know her true self.
She deepened her relationship with Allah and as a result felt less fear
around other people and outcomes.
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With new lifestyle choices, she felt less physically drained but also without
the comparisons and self-doubt occupying her mind, she had more energy
to channel toward things that really mattered to her.
Situations that would have previously been taken very personally and weigh
heavy on her mind, now presented opportunities for growth and new
learnings.
The tension in her shoulders had eased and she is now working on living
life with more presence, joy and intentionality Alhamdulilah.
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This will be a 6-week masterclass that combines Islamic spiritual practices with
modern productivity and psychology based on the BELIEF Model ™️. Learn more
here.
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Written by
Hafsah Adham
Hafsah is the founder of The Confident Muslimah
(www.theconfidentmuslimah.com), a spiritually centered coaching service that
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Confidence coaching intertwined with the guidance from the Qur’an and
Sunnah designed to propel you to be more, do more, and give more.
Hafsah is based in the UK with her husband and 3 children. She’s an adventurer
at heart with a passion for sports. As well as being a confidence coach, she’s a
public speaker, community worker, a volunteer lecturer at a revert center, and is
an ongoing student of Islamic sciences studying under various Islamic teachers.
She is most passionate about building the next generation of Muslim leaders
who - like the companions - are confident, courageous, and Jannah-focused so
they can take positive action towards their personal and professional goals with
long-lasting confidence.
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