E20: What it means to be brave?

Hi, everyone. My name is Nada Ahmed, and I'm your host for the Braving Innovation Podcast. I help businesses innovate and bring new products and services to market. I believe every company and team can achieve immense success in creating sustainable and profitable business models.

All you need is an agile leadership mindset to build powerful, high-performing teams. get access to proven tools and strategies for impactful growth, and the ability to get the right mentors and investors on board. In this podcast, I want to help you with all of that. So I will be bringing you inspiring stories, tips, and strategies from leaders all around the world so that you can excel on your journey as an entrepreneur, innovation leader, and investor.

Welcome to Braving Innovation. Hi, everyone. It's a beautiful day in May. And I thought, let's jump on a live.

It's been a long time since I released my book, Determined to Lead, that came out a little bit over a month ago. I haven't actually come out and spoken to you all. So I thought I was feeling inspired. I wanted to bring up a question today.

I wanted to ask you if you're playing it safe. Are you playing it safe in life and at your work? And I wanted to kind of open the floor if there are people who are going to join in live today, like feel free to ask me questions today, especially if you have read the book. And if you have any questions with regards to the book, please do go ahead and ask.

And if not, I'm just going to go on a monologue here and talk about what it means to play safe, right? A few years ago, I realized there's some people who, for them, safety is a big value and security is a big value. And I think it's important that we respect that. But at a certain point, it's also important to ask yourself, are you playing it too safe in life?

Are you playing it too safe at your workplace. One of the things, one of the feedback that I've gotten on my book, so Determined to Lead, for those of you who haven't yet gotten a copy, here it is, Determined to Lead, The Disruptive Woman's Guide to Stop Playing Small and Transform Your Career Through Agile Leadership. And one of the main feedbacks that I've gotten, like an adjective that's really been used by people a lot is like, wow, what a brave book. We needed this right now.

And I'm glad you wrote about your history in some way. You shared your stories in a very brave way. And it's funny because that word brave is a word that's really been coming to me this year. And perhaps that's the word for 2023.

As I said goodbye to one of the boards where I was serving on Norway, as I've made this move back to Houston, Texas, the main feedback they gave me, like now that we're inspired by how much, how you show up with courage every single day, with what you do and the decisions that you make. And many of us only wish we were able to do it, do that. And it surprises me sometimes when people say that, because I feel like I just kind of make decisions, go with really what I'm feeling intuitively is the right thing to do when I go for it.

And sometimes that intuition is so strong that I cannot hold myself back, that the decisions that I make are not brave decisions They the easy decisions for me And sometimes I wonder if it would require way more bravery to stay in the situation there where I am where I am not aligned with my values where I playing it safe For me, it was just be a total disconnect with who I am. And in many ways, perhaps that is how I have lived my life, not playing in safe and always challenging the boundaries and challenging the status quo.

And I remember a few years ago when, you know, and this many of the things does not even have to do with work, right? It has to do with my personal life. Some of the decisions I made where the society or the family was very against me making a certain decision, but I just felt like I had to take that burden as I often say of all of womankind and show the world that we can live in a diverse society where we really value diversity and we remove these silos, these arbitrary silos that we put between people in terms of religion, in terms of race, in terms of cultures and show each other.

But at the end of the day, we're all human. And that connection, that human connection is way stronger than everything else that makes us different. And so when we make those decisions like I did, for example, deciding as a Pakistani Muslim woman to marry a Norwegian, it was a big decision for me to make given that I was very close to my family and very connected to my culture and where I come from. But at the same time, I really, really value new cultures and people who think different from me.

And I knew in my heart, when I do find this person who I was going to be with, they're going to be someone who's going to be different and who's going to make me grow, right? and um and I don't know I just find some inspiration in other cultures and that wasn't always easy to get someone to accept that get my family or the society to accept um that I was going to make that decision and um but in my heart I knew I had to persevere and go through it And I remember in that moment, I thought this is the hardest thing I've ever done.

And I'm not going to be scared of doing anything ever again, because what I'm going through right now, kind of this rift between my family that's so important to me and a decision that I really want to make. And I know it's the right decision that is kind of breaking their hearts in many ways. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And I promised myself I would never, never be scared of doing anything ever again in my life if I can get through this.

And I remember I said that to myself in that moment, and I don't realize it now. But since that moment, everything I've done and making these decisions in terms of leaving my job when I was at my highest and probably had lots of opportunities in front of me. I I wasn't scared to make that decision and unconsciously that promise that I'd made for myself really was so deep that I'd even that it wasn't that I was consciously going back to that moment and saying like now that I remember that because I do do that at times when I faced with something hard and difficult I go back to that moment of when I had to make a difficult decision and I was in a difficult situation but I persevered and I prevailed right So that's kind of where the bravery comes from, if anyone is curious.

It's by doing hard things, you become braver. because by doing something hard and difficult, you're sacrificing something and you're making yourself go through this experience and you don't realize it, that you're growing in so many different ways and it makes you stronger. It makes you able to face even tougher decisions going forward in life. And that is just kind of really embodied who I have become.

Someone asked me yesterday, who have you become now that you're a number one Amazon bestseller? And I said, yeah, I've become this person who is just way braver, who is more confident and self-assured in her decisions. And so in this book, when I talk about some of my stories, I really wanted to make sure that this book wasn't a rant, that it wasn't coming up from a place of resentment. and and I know I talk very openly about some of the challenges that I faced and the way I felt and the way I dealt with it and it is never to put anybody down my intention isn't to say that there was someone else at fault here but it's more to say you know what responsibility can I take what can I what can I learn and how can I grow from these experiences so sometimes people message me and say well I'm sorry if this happened to you at the workplace where we were working together And I tell them it's really, it's also the workplace that gave me the biggest, biggest opportunities and makes me so much of who I am.

So really any resentment or anger that I had, this book has helped me let go of that because over and over again, as I read through these chapters, I said, Noda, take away any resentment that you have and really present it in a way that's really going to add value to the readers and their lives. And, but at the same time, doesn't mean that I don't talk about the challenges I have, because what I did like was that many leaders who came before me just glossed over the challenges that they're faced and undermine the challenges that many women still face by not, by not validating those challenges.

So I wanted to talk about them. I wanted to talk about the discrimination, the microaggressions, the toxic environments that exist and not ignore them. And a lot of these environments hold women back. We cannot deny that.

And I didn't want to be part of that movement that just kind of denies it and pushes things under the carpet. Let's bring these topics up. But at the same time, as much as I'm championing these causes, I don't want to live with anger. I don't want to live with resentment because one of my biggest, biggest values is positivity, is optimism, is giving people the benefit of the doubt when I can.

And so I don't want to live in those lower energy levels. I want to experience joy in my life and I want to experience gratitude in my life and I want to experience forgiveness in my life and I want to experience accomplishment in my life. and when you make space for those other negative comments you're not making space for these other great transformational emotions that um that you want to live your life by and it's a decision and you can decide i really really truly believe you can decide what kind of emotions you want to live by how you want your life to be and do you want it to be a happy and joyful life or do you want to live from a place of anger and resentment And I think that super super important in the workplace, right, as in our lives in general.

Again, those of you who are joining me live, feel free to pop in any questions and let me know if what I'm saying is resonating with you. And so I would encourage you all to, if you haven't had the chance to read the book yet, do get the book. And hopefully you'll be inspired to make more courageous decisions in your career. I was listening to someone else the other day on Instagram, and she was talking about how she's in her 50s now, and she decided to leave her corporate job and a really high paycheck.

and she said that we talk about people following their dreams in their 20s, but we don't talk about people following their dreams in their 50s. And she said, I want to be that voice and let everyone know, regardless of what age you're at, regardless of what phase of life you're at, you need to be following your dreams. You need to live in the way that makes you feel the most alive so that every single day you're living to your fullest and you're expressing yourself fully and not holding back.

And I got that epiphany in my late thirties and now no day goes by that I want to live in a way that I'm holding back on my ambitions and what I want to achieve in my life and how I want to impact people. And I want other women to do the same for themselves because I have seen their power, right? When they've reached out to me and we've had these discussions that have inspired me to write this book. And now as the book is out there, as I am further talking to these people and they're reflecting on some of the topics in the book, I want to make sure that that we create a workplace and we create a future where women are valued for who they are and not have to conform to the societal norms that unfortunately have been dictated by men.

And so as a follow on to my book, I am also launching a Determined to Lead Network. If you're interested in enjoying that, please do DM me, leave me a message. I am also launching a Determined to Lead Mastermind. That one is limited and is a paid program.

Message me if you would like to be part of that too. I have a few seats available there. But the network is open to anybody. And if you're interested in joining the Determined to Lead Network, it's going to be one Zoom meeting a week.

Sorry, not a week, a month. And you're going to get access to all these other women and ambitious women that you can get inspired by and get help on your journey. So with that, I just wanted to drop in here and tell you that don't give up on your dreams. follow your passions and be brave, be brave.

And brave means that you're willing to go through the uncomfortable and hard stuff in life, right? Nothing good in life comes easy. So stay brave and show up as who you are. Thank you.

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