Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Your Imprints Are Making Your Life a Choices
“What if the deepest truths you believe about yourself… aren’t actually true?”
Your reality isn’t shaped by conscious choices, t’s shaped by imprints. The beliefs you hold about love, money, confidence, and success aren’t objective truths. They’re just thoughts that have been repeated so many times, with enough emotion and reinforcement, that they no longer feel like thoughts… they feel like facts.
In this episode, we unravel the power of psychological imprinting:
- How your subconscious mind collects “evidence” to turn thoughts into hardwired beliefs
- Why you feel stuck in patterns that seem impossible to break
- How imprints shape your relationships, self-worth, and financial reality
- The hidden ways cultural conditioning has influenced your decisions
- How to reprogram your mind and rewrite the imprints that keep you trapped
If you’ve ever felt like you’re “just not that kind of person” or that certain things are simply true for you—this episode will challenge everything you think you know.
You'll learn in this deposits:
The Neuroscience of Change: How to Rewire an Imprint
- Spot it – Identify the belief that feels “true.”
- Question it – Where did this come from? Who told you this?
- Interrupt the loop – Say something new to yourself.
- Live the new reality – Embody the opposite belief in small ways.
Your brain is malleable. It wants to change. The same way an imprint was formed is the same way it can be undone, with repetition, emotion, and new experiences.
Your mind only works to prove what you already believe.
Let’s rewrite your story, together.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Aftar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today, we're going to be talking about imprints, so as Google would describe it in psychology. Going to be talking about imprints, so as Google would describe it in psychology. Imprinting refers to a rapid learning process that occurs during a critical period early in life. Either an animal or a person develops a strong preference or an attachment to the first object or stimulus they encounter. I want to take this definition to the next level, something that helps me describe a situation that happens in an adult's life.
Speaker 1:Imprints, as an adult, are beliefs that are etched into you over time by your family, societies, personal experiences and mostly by yourself, and I'm going to give you more details about why I'm describing it like this. Imprints are basically inherent truths that we've started to believe about ourselves, about the world, and then we think that these truths are the law, when they're not. Some of the deepest truths you believe about yourself, who you are, what you're capable of, what's possible for you, how the world is like, aren't actually true. They are just thoughts, very well repeated thoughts. The way it works is that we're constantly imprinting ideas onto our subconscious, reinforcing stories about who we are, what we deserve. We think that we're living life based on reality, but we're actually living our life based on our imprints, things that we've believed to be true now. And the thing is that some imprints are incredibly powerful, extremely helpful. They serve us, they make us stronger, they guide us towards faith, purpose, love, success. But others, they are the reason you feel stuck, the reason you feel like you're not attracted to your husband anymore, or the reason you keep telling yourself I'm not that kind of a person who can do that. These are subconscious truths that you've hypnotized yourself into believing.
Speaker 1:The reason why this is a problem and why it should matter to you is that a limiting imprint is dangerous, because when you believe something as absolute truth, you stop looking for a way out, you stop questioning it, you accept limitations that were never meant to be yours in the first place. Like I'm just not good at math, I'm not good with money, I can't handle stress well. Love fades away after a while. Life is difficult. So for you to pause and question is this really true?
Speaker 1:It's going to ask you to start questioning your imprints, these psychological imprints that are ongoing in your adulthood. They're unknowingly shaping your reality and all you have to do is reprogram your mind so you're no longer a prisoner to these outdated beliefs. Your imprints are not reality, they're just thoughts, and thoughts can be changed. But the difference here is that imprint, by definition, is a thought that no longer feels like a thought. It feels like the truth. But an imprint always starts as a thought and, since the brain is a very efficient machine, subconsciously it starts to collect evidence for that thought and eventually turns it into a belief that then starts to seem like a fact. When a thought in your subconscious is repeated over and over again, it becomes an imprint and then it starts to feel like it's hardwired, genetic, undeniable truth about you, about your preferences. This is what's shaping your further perceptions decisions identity. If you've been told that you're shy since your childhood, then you grow up avoiding eye contact and social settings, not because you're inherently wired to do so, not because there's a genetic code for that, but because that identity has been imprinted onto you so deeply that it feels like an unchangeable part of who you are. If your child overhears you talking about her as shy, then in her mind she's going to automatically go into the mode of collecting evidence for that belief and then that will be imprinted onto her. There is a role of nature versus nurture, and this is not to blame you as a mother for creating an imprint on the child. Human beings of all different ages collect sources of imprints from all different places in the world. But I'm giving this example to identify that. If you are somebody, or if you have a daughter who is somebody, who grew up with this imprint and now you walk with a slumped posture and you're unable to speak up in meetings and you think you're unconfident and because of that you lose opportunities, it is not your genetic makeup. It's been an imprint that's going on undetected for a very long time and that's what's harming your goals.
Speaker 1:Imprints are sort of formed in a linear process. They start at simple thoughts, become reinforced through repetition and then they solidify into a subconscious belief system. Repetition and then they solidify into a subconscious belief system. If as a child you heard money is hard to come by and as an adult you're having a hard time earning money, that's a direct result of an imprint A lot of cultural beliefs, especially around colonized Muslim countries, have these limited money mindsets. The most mind-blowing part of all of this is that financial struggles are created by the subconscious mind and when it collects evidence of the imprint that money is hard to earn or money is hard to find. Do you think anybody who became wealthy that did not come from money continued to believe the thought that money is hard to come by? That did not come from money continued to believe the thought that money is hard to come by? Of course the answer is no. Once a belief reaches a stage of an imprint, it stops feeling optional and you will move through the world assuming that money will always be difficult to earn, making the choices that will reinforce that struggle, never taking financial risks, undervaluing your own skill or avoiding wealth-building opportunities.
Speaker 1:Your mind will only work to prove what you already believe to be true, and what just started as a thought will now shape your entire reality. If a thought absolutely feels true in your entire body, with every fiber of your being, you're dealing with an imprint. Imprint is the natural outcome of prolonged conditioning. This is the end point of self-hypnosis that you're naturally constantly engaging in. That's why I wanted to expand the definition of imprints to include an adult's experience, because it's not just childhood experiences that are leaving a mark. You are constantly, continuously engraving your own minds with thoughts and every time you repeat a thought or a version of that thought, it becomes a little bit more believable to you Meaning you're recruiting a little bit more of your brain's content and your inherent emotional response as a result of it. You're recruiting more of your mind and your body towards that thought and now you're in a constant emotional loop that, of course, eventually becomes your truth, which is not the truth, not the truth with a capital T, but it's a truth, your truth, your felt truth.
Speaker 1:And I've told you guys multiple times, just because it's your subjective truth does not mean it's any less important than the ultimate truth. It's just that your subjective truth is changeable if you allow it, but the ultimate truth, the big truth, is unchangeable. It always remains unchangeable. So if you think to yourself and keep telling yourself I'm just not attracted to my husband anymore, that thought alone over time imprints itself as an undeniable truth. So for anybody to start working on this thought, either a coach or a therapist who comes along and says but that's just your thought, you can just change it, saying that is not taking into account the baggage of imprinting that you're already carrying. That has to be undone, depending how much evidence you've gathered towards this truth. That's what will determine how easily or not easily you're able to rewire it, or if you're able to rewire it at all. But if it is the truth that's not helping you, then it's in your favor to try and rewire it.
Speaker 1:Imprinting is how we create our personal reality. You think you're responding to life as is, but really you're mostly responding to your imprints. Your preference of different cuisines, of what you find physically attractive all of these are not inherent, fixed traits, they're imprints. What you're preferring right now has been imprinted onto you through years of exposure, experiences, subconscious conditioning, the movies you watch, the compliments you heard growing up and the way your culture idealized certain features All of it shapes what you believe, quote-unquote, attractive is. And since your brain is wired to seek patterns, it continuously reinforces that imprint, making you believe your preferences are natural rather than learned. But attraction as a feature is fluid. It can change, expand, evolve over time.
Speaker 1:Your preference for cozy socks, warm weather over cold weather, the way you feel about travel all of them are imprints. They're mental associations shaped by repeated experiences and emotional reinforcements. If you grew up in a home where winter meant cold feet, heavy blankets and you feel like you're stuck indoors, you have imprinted upon you the discomfort of cold weather. But if, on the other hand, you spent childhood with winter, sipping hot chocolate, playing in the snow, creating amazing memories, your imprint might tell you that cold weather is magical. This is what's now dictating what feels right and what feels wrong, what's pleasurable and what's not. And the same thing applies to love. You love your children because the deep imprinting that began before they were even born, the emotional and biological conditioning that reinforces, through thousands and thousands of micro moments, how you're going to love them, how you're going to shower them with your love, these are the imprints that might be aligned with your values as a parent, and they are incredibly powerful. These are the types of imprints that do not need to be rewired. They shape your reality in a way that makes your parenting life much easier. It makes it seamless, it makes it intuitive and deeply connected. But just as positive imprints exist.
Speaker 1:I've given you multiple examples of what negative imprints are, and the key to real freedom is to learn to recognize which imprints are serving you and which ones are keeping you trapped? A woman who's always busy and says I don't have time for myself. It's an imprint, not a fact based on the ideas of busyness. Imprint is an outcome of repeated conditioning. When an opinion stops to feel like an opinion, it is an imprint. It starts to feel like a fact of life, like that's just how things are. I'm bad at public speaking, so if you were to write this down and put it in a formula, an imprint is a thought plus emotion plus repetition. That equals a deep subconscious belief, and enough of these beliefs towards the same idea equals an imprint. Now, I've been using these two terms interchangeably deep subconscious beliefs and imprints but I think imprint is a nice concise way of describing what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Because if you tell yourself enough times that I love sunny days over rainy days, your brain would gather enough data to create that reality where you will feel more happy on sunny days and you'll find yourself to be more energetic, more social, more powerful, more productive, more of anything that fits your idea of loving a sunny day, and this, for you, might be a very well-serving imprint. So you get to keep it. But if you tell yourself I'm not confident enough times, your brain will believe it and your body will respond with anxiety and hesitation and gather evidence of the like every time there is a situation that calls for you to have even slight bit of confidence. The biggest problems in your life are related to your negative imprints, not life itself. Some other examples of damaging imprints might be I'm just not in love anymore when it comes to your marriage. Be I'm just not in love anymore when it comes to your marriage. Versus I've imprinted a belief that I've fallen out of love, which at least gives you a choice of starting to create love for your spouse. Again, about money, the damaging imprint might be I just don't know how to manage money. Versus I've absorbed the conditioning that money is confusing and overwhelming. The latter gives you a choice of trying to create a change.
Speaker 1:If you wanted to, for the sake of this podcast and the work related to it, ask yourself what's something you believe about yourself that feels 100% true? And then ask yourself did you always believe this true? And then ask yourself did you always believe this? What if that wasn't the truth but just an imprint? And if you go to enough therapy, think about or you're past enough you might be able to trace back exactly where your imprint originated when in your childhood either a very specific date or an incident or a general time period where you might have adopted the initial thought of this imprint. But recognizing where it originated is not as important as working on rewiring it now. The origin of a deep-seated core belief like that is important, especially when it comes to trauma, but you can do a lot with rewiring it without going to the past.
Speaker 1:One of my imprints that caused a lot of damage in my life and I didn't even recognize it until much later in my coaching journey had to do with me understanding complicated issues and creating outcomes. Something that I always believed about myself deeply was that I create complicated outcomes, and I highly valued creating these complicated outcomes because I believed everyone needed them and I held that belief with pride. I thought it was a very good talent to have Until I stepped into a life where I wanted to adopt multiple roles, where I wanted to perform at a high level in each of those roles, and whenever I continued to create complicated solutions for these complicated problems, the work in my life continued to pile up, and it built up so much that the amount of work was exponentially higher than the amount of time I had. I could not keep up with all of the roles that I wanted to perform as a mother, as a wife, as a coach, physician, volunteer, as a muslima and currently, as an author. Alhamdulillah, I am in the middle of writing a book and you guys will soon find out about it, inshallah.
Speaker 1:But my imprint that was it's hard to create solutions without complications. My imprint that it's hard to create simplicity out of complexity was not serving me. Create simplicity out of complexity was not serving me. Not only my imprint told me that I can create highly complex solutions, it told me that I can only get there in complicated ways. What that meant was if I was just to host a party, then I would over-plan it, over-order food, over-decorate, over-cook, over-do with all of the activities, and that's what I would end up calling myself having a high level of functioning. And of course, if I traced it back, it goes back to my childhood. High level of functioning required complexity and it required for everything to be perfect. Fast forward to now. That took a toll on my psyche, on my mental and emotional well-being. So my imprint was that a complicated person could not think simply. And since my inner landscape was complicated, with hyperactivity of thoughts and subsequent complex emotional world, then I was not supposed to be the person who could live with simplicity. I could not create a simple solution in my life and this is an imprint that I broke. It took me some time, it took a lot of coaching, but now I create simple solutions in simple ways out of very complicated situations and, alhamdulillah, I'm able to perform high in all areas of my life.
Speaker 1:If you believe you have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously in the world, it's an imprint. All it will do is prove to you how hard you have to work, because your brain will ignore evidence to the contrary. Now, even if you've proven yourself with hard work, you will continue to overwork, overthink and struggle to take breaks, because the imprint will tell you that slowing down means falling behind Again. In this case, all you have to do is to work on rewiring that imprint. First, start to recognize it and then start to tell yourself a different story.
Speaker 1:If you believe that you will never be good enough in your spirituality, that's an imprint. If you believe it to be a fact. If you believe that success in deen and dunya, in religion and in the world are opposites, that they cannot be achieved at the same time. This might be an imprint. Maybe you grew up hearing that ambition is dangerous, that financial success will lead to arrogance, that truly pious people only live simply without any wealth. Over time, this becomes a subconscious imprint and that's what will make you hesitate to pursue any success because it will quote-unquote feel un-Islamic, even when you know that many of the wealthiest sahaba, who were the most generous and were the most pious, or negative imprint in your life. As a mother who wants to study and be financially independent but thinks she can't do that because your primary identity as a woman is tied to your motherhood, your belief that financial independence is selfish Imprint. Maybe you were taught that the husband's role is to provide and the wife's role is to receive, and if you out earn your husband, that's disrespectful. But what if these were all imprints? And what if your financial independence had nothing to do with rejecting anyone, but it had to do with securing yourself?
Speaker 1:The hardest part of breaking an imprint is recognizing that it's not a fact. It's a thought you've been repeating until it started to feel like your truth. And the moment you question it, the moment you ask yourself truth. And the moment you question it, the moment you ask yourself what if this isn't reality, what if this is conditioning, you create the first crack in its foundation and from there, everything can change. How used to believe that you're a complicated person and couldn't think simply to how you now lead your life in the most simplistic fashion possible, and your brain offers you evidence for exactly that. Easiest way to get started is spot it. Name the belief that feels like a truth, question it. Who told you this? Why do you believe it? Where did it start from? Who would you be without this belief? Interrupt the loop. Say something new to yourself, embody a different reality, live as if a new belief is also true, slightly different than before.
Speaker 1:If your imprints are harming you, I'm gonna say you have every right. Actually, I'm gonna say you have every obligation to rewire them. You are not stuck. You're hypnotized by your mind, and now you have a choice to wake up. Inshallah, I pray this episode were powerful enough for you to question everything that you assume to be true. With that, I pray to Allah.
Speaker 1:Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Ya Allah, you're the turner of hearts, the one who guides us to truth and wisdom. I ask you to grant me and all of us the clarity to recognize the imprints that no longer serve us, the courage to rewrite them and the strength to step into the reality that you created for me. Ya Allah, let my thoughts align with your guidance, my beliefs with your mercy and my actions with my highest potential. Remove from me any conditioning that keeps me small, the fear that keeps me stuck and any thoughts that keep me away from the life that I am meant to live. Ya Allah, make my heart open to change, my mind open to growth and my soul open to becoming the person you intended me to be. Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.