One day I was invited to an event about the effect of mentoring in workplace. When I arrived I was feeling a bit tired as my energy ceased after a long working stressful day. I thought of mingling with the audience to shift my focus on the event and uplift my energy. A lovely lady approached me gently introducing herself and started talking to me showing an evident interest to know more about me and what do I do, she was full of life and energy and somehow I felt connected to her and wanted to know her better. We stayed in touch after the event and in no single conversation I ever felt disconnected from her or had any desire to stop communicating. It’s rather the contrary, I wanted to communicate with her, know about her and share my knowledge and experience with her more, and when she invited me to attend her Majlis she only promised that it will make me feel delighted and happy, and because I trusted her I could not help saying yes. This lady is Christina Ioannidis, a very interesting Greek surname “Ioannidis” meaning “God is gracious” and I feel it is somehow affecting Christina’s positive attitude and kindhearted character.
A unique experience
After attending my first Female Majlis in which I was welcomed, accepted for who I am and hugged with warmth and compassion, I felt enormous amount of happiness and joy. And when I got the call for the Female Majlis in March 2017 I recalled that lovely feelings I had from the first one and immediately said: “yes I’ll go for it”. When I received the photo of the distinguished guest for this Majlis “Fahima Abdul Razzak Al Bastaki”, I felt something nice about it, it was a sense of kindness; which I value a lot in any human being, and after reading her job title I thought: “WOW! That is interesting, I know almost nothing about finance and it is really interesting to meet someone from this field, especially if this person will be the head of the business development division in Dubai Financial Market!” I also felt curious to know her success story as I am passionate about human being and love to listen to their stories and how they tackle their challenges to become better people in every way possible “career, wellbeing, having successful family, anything they value in their lives and worked hard to create the required shift to improve it and feel proud about their achievement”, and so I went to the Majlis.
Inspirational Learning from a Game-Changer
It was a charming place as usual, and when I entered the room I was welcomed by a warm hug from Christina and lovely smiles drawn on the faces of all women on the room, as if one can’t enter the Female Majlis and do not smile or feel delighted and happy. I greeted the ladies and took my seat right in front of Fahima. I was looking at her with curious eyes waiting to listen to a new human wonder in this life that is full of amazing wonderful stories. Fahima started talking about how she began her career at the HSBC bank as a junior employee by choice, and how she kept learning and working hard until she managed a team of 19 employees. That is quiet normal for a hard working intelligent employee like Fahima, but the interesting and unusual part was after she had that title of a team leader, she chose to become a junior employee again, working alone and learning from scratch on a completely new project with investors. It hit me to see how she put her ego aside and let go the attachment to a title or a position and chose to start all over again just to learn and accomplish something new.
Becoming a Visionary – the internal ‘Entrepreneur’
After Fahima had completed her second mission in the bank, she started surveying the market to see what is new and where does she want to go next in the financial sector, her eyes this time were aiming to work in the stock market; which was again a new idea and she had to work so hard to learn about it from A-Z until she become the head of the business development division; which is not a coincidence, because I personally believe a person who predicts the new trends in the market in a particular sector (Finance, IT, Fashion, …etc.) is the best person to develop the business of the company in that sector. By these two moves and her amazing achievements, Fahima signified to me the concept of being an entrepreneur inside a firm that is not your own, because I see it as building a company within another company or in other words establishing a department or division that was not existing before and put your heart in it as if it is yours inside a company that is obviously not yours. And what is interesting is Fahima comes from a family who almost everyone of its members is an entrepreneur, as if she had the entrepreneurship skills in her blood.
The Power of Knowledge-Sharing
A quote that Fahima shared that night intrigued me and I felt it full of wisdom. It was her mom’s mantra of creating the required balance in life which she fed into her children “including Fahima” since a very young age. The wise mother’s mantra was: “the secret of establishing balance in life is to compromise and rise”, awesome! “compromise and/to rise”, so when you face a crossing road and you want to choose your way think about what are you willing to compromise “give away” in order to rise “reach your destination” and I see this applying to everything in life whether it is as small as “do I want to go to the gym today or take rest at home and watch TV?” or a big choice in life like “do I want to buy a new house or invest in a new project?” or “do I want to study psychology or engineering?” anything that is big or small is done out of choice and while taking this choice something was compromised in order to achieve another thing, you let go the resting to have a healthy body, or compromise having a healthy body to rest, it is all choice. And this leads me to a very crucial conclusion, which we should be aware of our choices on daily basis and take the responsibility of the results of these choices no matter what they were. And if we keep practicing this skill and adopting the responsible attitude of the outcomes, we’ll reach a lovely sense of peace that can’t be taken away easily, because that will also be a choice “compromising anger, blame and guilt and choosing responsibility, inner peace and action”.
Building a Support Network for Success
Beside our fabulous distinguished guest Fahima I got to be introduced to other amazing lovely spirits too, adorable ladies who shared a brief introduction about themselves and what do they do, and they where communicating enjoyably to the special guest, to myself and to each other as well. I honestly feel blessed to be part of the Female Majlis and I do believe that attending this Majlis on regular basis can create a mind shift towards a more positive outlook to life, because the light spirit in the places raises ones energy and makes everyone feel special and connected.
About the author: Reem M. Ahmed, Professional Water Engineer turning into an entrepreneur as Writer, Photographer and Wedding Planner