Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
How to Reclaim a healthy ego
What if the key to spiritual growth isn't destroying your ego, but reclaiming it? Drawing from Islamic wisdom and modern psychology, this episode explores how microscopic shifts in daily habits can transform your relationship with yourself and others.
We often swing between two extremes...completely erasing ourselves or defensively overcompensating. Neither serves us well. Through practical examples, I share how small acts of self-honoring can initiate profound healing: sitting down to eat when hungry rather than waiting for everyone else, leaving draining group conversations without drama, acknowledging exhaustion instead of pushing through another to-do list, or simply waiting to respond to messages until you're truly ready.
These seemingly minor moments signal to your nervous system that you matter, that your needs are valid. When practiced consistently, they create a foundation for balanced self-expression that feels neither selfish nor self-sacrificing. You'll discover why suppressed desires eventually emerge as irritability or emotional shutdown, how constant overgiving trains others to bypass your boundaries, and why deferring to others' judgments weakens your ability to trust yourself.
Ready to reclaim your healthy ego through practice and guidance? Join me in my coaching programs where we develop these skills through real-life application, helping you recognize yourself again while deepening your spiritual connection.
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Wisdom Wednesdays is your chance to apply what you learn in this podcast. It is my weekly coaching program that will create real time change based on everything you learn here.
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:In the last episode, we talked about reclaiming a healthy ego. Today, we're going to be talking about how to do that and, like I've told you guys before, any habit shift starts with microscopic turns. If you're coming to this episode and you don't know why it's important to claim a healthy ego, I suggest you listen to the previous podcast, 247. But today we're talking about the small, subtle shifts that you have to make in order to be successful at claiming a healthy ego, and that might look like when you sit down to eat before anyone else, not because you like ignoring your responsibilities, because you were just hungry and you decided not to eat leftovers over the kitchen sink. Instead, you decided it was time for you to sit and eat, enjoy your meal. You honored your body instead of waiting until everyone and everyone else was satisfied, and in that moment, you told your subconscious mind that I matter too. That I as it relates to your healthy ego or maybe it happened when you left that WhatsApp group that always leaves you feeling drained. You didn't trigger any drama. There was no anger on your part. You were just done, you left. You didn't trigger any drama. There was no anger on your part, you were just done, you left. You didn't announce your exit and you didn't over explain. You didn't worry about how other people would react. You simply chose to protect your peace.
Speaker 1:This is very much ego reclamation. It also shows up when you say I'm tired and you actually let yourself rest. You didn't push yourself through yet another to-do list. You didn't wait for anyone else to validate your exhaustion, you just paused. You gave your body what it asked for, without guilt. You listened to it. You got better attuned to your inner body feelings and in doing so, you affirm that you are respecting your limits and that you have limits. Maybe it's as small as what you pick out to wear. Maybe it's a dress that helps you feel beautiful, not just to dress to manage other people's reactions. You dress to fit your likes and dislikes and when you are done getting dressed, you feel like it's truly you and in those small quiet moments, it's your ego gently returning home. Even if you don't want to return a message right away, you can create that to be a moment of ego reclamation. You saw the text, you felt your body getting tense and, instead of rushing to fix it and replying, you just breathed and you let it go. You waited and in doing so you told your nervous system that I trust myself to handle this without urgency.
Speaker 1:This is the small reclamations of healthy ego. They are unapologetic, very intentional, they're never performative, but they always return you to yourself, a sense of healthy self. And then there are much bigger shifts, the bigger and larger projects in your life, like the day you stopped trying to fix your marriage by continuing to be more patient. Like the day you stopped trying to fix your marriage by continuing to be more patient. You're not stonewalling or you're not giving up. You just paused long enough to ask yourself what you really needed. What were your needs, emotionally, physically, spiritually. And maybe after a long time you said it out loud for the first time. You didn't blame your past, you didn't blame your relationship, you didn't go into begging. You just named what is true for you, what it is that you want. And even in those ego reclamation moments, things don't magically fix themselves, but it's a start of a mark of something sacred, the start of you showing up fully, you practicing the art of healthy ego reclamation. Or maybe all of this is showing up in your parenting. You realize you weren't just raising your kids, you were also parenting your partner, your parents, your in-laws, your inner critic, along with everyone else and all of their invisible standards. And then, little by little, slowly, you are going to stop. You're going to create more structure around your needs. You're going to say no to the extra obligation that would have sent you over the edge. Otherwise, and doing all of that, you will speak calmly. You gave your inner child the version of you that is well supported. This is you learning to honor your capacity and not pushing harder and harder each time. This is responsible ego reclamation.
Speaker 1:Or maybe you didn't quit your job. You didn't make a dramatic announcement. You just stopped overcompensating. You stopped raising your hand for extra tasks that weren't yours. You stopped trying to impress everyone to earn you a place. You started doing your actual job, clearly, effectively and efficiently. And then you went home On time. That was new. And then, yes, it felt uncomfortable at first and thoughts crossed your mind that maybe you were being lazy or ungrateful. But that is just your ego recalibrating, releasing the habitual need of hustle and validation, slowly letting go of the belief that being worn out somehow proves your worth and it is necessary for your worth, and instead, with your healthy ego, settling into a rhythm that makes sense for your life.
Speaker 1:Because while the shaitanic trap of ego erasure promises spiritual reward, emotional safety and peaceful relationships, it delivers none of that. In fact, it delivers the exact opposite. The more you suppress your desires, the less joyful your marriage becomes. Desires don't just die because you silence them. They keep growing because you're suppressing them and eventually they come out sideways as irritability, indifference or emotional shutdown.
Speaker 1:The more you stay silent at work, the more you convince yourself that you are not qualified, regardless of your qualification. More you convince yourself that you are not qualified, regardless of your qualification, and every missed opportunity of healthy ego reclamation is going to end up in you second guessing your competence. And the more you over deliver, the more people get used to abusing you. You think your excellence will speak for itself, but over time that becomes the baseline people expect, until that baseline becomes so high that you don't even know how to live up to it anymore. The more you avoid conflict in relationships, the less safe those relationships feel you start walking on eggshells, never quite sure if you're being real or being agreeable. The more you say yes to every request, the more you train others to bypass your boundaries, not because they're necessarily malicious they might be but because you've taught them that your no doesn't carry a meaning.
Speaker 1:The more you make space for everyone and everything else, the less space you occupy in your own life, and this is the space that you absolutely need to claim for you to survive. The more you defer to other people's judgments because you don't trust yourself enough, the harder it gets to trust your own judgment. And when you stop to ask, what do I think you don't even have an answer, because you outsource your discernment all your life. And the more you serve without being nourished, the more mechanical your worship becomes. Your dua and salah feel far and disconnected. They feel like a connection of motions that you're going through. Your heart will be absent because it doesn't know how to exist in its own right in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:So how do we actually do this? How do we stop oscillating between one state of disappearing or eventually detonating because we've been suppressing so long, to the other state of keeping up with a high sense of ego that's to the level of self-aggrandizement or even narcissism. You can see that, as I pointed out to you that these are, of course, extremes and, like always, middle is the ideal path and, like everything else, you might fluctuate between the two extremes, at least in the beginning, until you've learned to keep your footing and self-correct without shame, because a healthy ego reclamation can only be achieved through flexibility, not through rigid concepts of perfection and a linear path from A to B. How I started was that I started to articulate my needs in my relationships. I told myself and, by extension, told everyone else that I deserve to be treated with ihsan, with excellence, the same way I strive to treat others, and I didn't have to say it verbally, but my actions spoke. I started with claiming a small portion of my day, speaking up when something hurt and trusting myself through the process.
Speaker 1:And you have to do the same and you have to have your own back while doing it. When you understand your ego this way, as a flexible, intentional tool, rather than something to destroy or something that's always overinflated, you will stop swinging between extremes. You're going to stop either staying quiet to keep the peace or only later to explode in anger just to feel powerful again. And you won't overcorrect by becoming loud or dismissive, and you certainly don't water yourself down into a version of spiritual passivity. Because either way, when your ego is either fully erased or constantly supercharged, you're not operating from self-awareness, you're operating from your survival brain that keeps your nervous system in distress.
Speaker 1:When your ego is completely shut down, you drop into the parasympathetic freeze state, the classic play dead mode. You numb out, you initially overfunction, but then you burn out to an extent where you go through a parasympathetic shutdown. That's your body's innate mechanism of keeping you going into further harm. The body applies hard brakes before it crashes. In that case you will have no choice but to rest. Or, if you're functioning, you'll be functioning with fogginess and extreme tiredness.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, an always-on-the-go ego, a reactive, brittle ego, throws you into a sympathetic fight-or-flight mode. You're usually very hypervigilant, prepared to defend yourself, always creating tension, exerting assertion, over-asserting yourself, just to feel some control. But for many women the fight response is less visible because you're taught early on that you're too emotional, too sensitive, too much. So the fight response doesn't always look like yelling. It can look like conflict, seeking emotional reactivity or constantly needing to prove a point, and this kind of ego is also from the survival response. Both of these extremes are trauma patterns, especially if they're persistent, masquerading as personality traits. Both are distortions of what ego is supposed to do. When your ego is regulated, it does not shut down, it does not flare up, it stands in its right and this is the balance.
Speaker 1:Most of us were never shown An ego that can speak up when necessary and quiet down when your inner wisdom says so. And now we get to unlearn the extremes and relearn what it means to have a healthy ego, the one that carries the embodied trust of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. Ego is a divine gift when it's used with a dial. Most of us were handed a switch either on or off. Most of us were handed a switch either off, which is disappear completely, stay quiet, deny your needs, or on, which is defend, hyper-perform, force your worth. Be loud and assertive.
Speaker 1:What I'm inviting you to do is grow the hand that can adjust the volume. That's the real work, and this is exactly what we practice in my coaching programs. That's the real work and this is exactly what we practice in my coaching programs, inside my weekly coaching sessions through Wisdom Wednesdays or my private coaching sessions through Empowered Muslim Women program, I teach you how to finally tell the difference, the difference between the ego that's inflated and the ego that's aligned. Because an inflated ego is a scared ego. It's loud, reactive, constantly scanning for threat. It snaps, pleases, defends, over-explains, it's always trying to prove something. But the aligned ego is rooted, quietly and powerfully, always emotionally available but never emotionally hijacked, boundaried but not cold. So in coaching with me, you'll learn to spot, when you're running on survival programming, the one that keeps your ego out of alignment, when you're walking on eggshells, bracing for the next emotional blow, and you'll learn how to gently shift out of that consistently.
Speaker 1:This is when the inner split the on and off type of mentality starts to heal. Inner split the on and off type of mentality starts to heal when your sense of self isn't fully rooted. Even the most basic decisions in life start to feel high stakes. Saying no will feel like disappointing God or mother or your third grade teacher. All at once. Setting a boundary feels like betrayal, resting feels like weakness and your mind constantly turns scenario after scenario into a moral failure. Not because any of these actions are wrong, but because deep down, you're not sure if you're allowed to exist as a separate self. That is a very big cost of losing a healthy ego. It's mental chatter, it's chronic overgiving, it's compulsive over apologizing, it's exhausting. You're trying to make up for something you can't even name. But when your ego is rooted in intentionality, you stop asking for permission to exist, because you stop confusing boundaries with cruelty and you develop a capacity to honor yourself.
Speaker 1:Reclaiming your ego makes life simpler, much more happier and enjoyable to live. You do what's right and you stop burning mental calories trying to predict what's going to go wrong and your nervous system starts to register safety. And you for sure deserve that. And this is what we practice inside my coaching program, starting with Wisdom Wednesdays. Reclaiming your ego will clear out the noise. Life will become simpler, much more spacious.
Speaker 1:You will stop rehearsing conversations ahead of time in your head, wondering how and when to say things the right way so people don't misunderstand you. You will start to understand that their misunderstanding has nothing to do with you. You will stop scanning the room to see who's uncomfortable with your presence, because you will become comfortable with your presence. You will say what's true and you will follow through with what's right. And when you notice your body tightens because of a cue, you will actually listen to it. You will stop explaining your decisions 10 different ways. You might explain it once and you might just explain it to yourself, and that's it. You are allowed to make decisions and take up space without overthinking it.
Speaker 1:And inside Winston Wednesday's my coaching program, we practice all of this. We develop this skill every week in real life, in real moments. You bring your coaching moments to me and we walk through them, because living from this place of internal safety and intentionality has to be developed through practice, through application, and when you do that, you start to recognize yourself again. So ego is like a pair of shoes you don't wear stilettos to run a marathon and you don't walk into a formal meeting barefoot. The ego, when healthy, is just that a tool, a tool for you to use when the ground you're walking on requires a certain kind of footing.
Speaker 1:There are going to be moments in your life where your ego needs to be firmly fitted and laced up when you're negotiating, setting a boundary, protecting your time, protecting your children, speaking up in a room where you're not usually heard. In these moments, a healthy ego will give you presence and posture, confidence all of the things that you need to succeed. And then there are going to be moments where you have to take those shoes off entirely, in sujood, in service to your family, in intimacy with Allah SWT or with loved ones, where you don't need to prove or protect, where you surrender this strength knowingly and willingly, where you take this risk, where showing up soft is more powerful than showing up sharp, knowing when to wear your ego and when to leave it at the door that's true wisdom. We're not going to totally crush it or continue to constantly feed it. We're going to understand its role Because, like any tool, it becomes dangerous when you think you are the tool or that you need the tool all the time.
Speaker 1:But when you hold it lightly and you use it with intention, not as an extension of yourself, the ego becomes a means of showing up with presence and respect for yourself and for others, and this is what deeply aligns you with your spirituality. With that I pray to Allah SWT. O Allah, teach me how to carry the self you've given me with wisdom. Let my ego be a tool I use with intention. Don't let me be afraid of it and don't let me worship it. Show me when to speak from strength and when to lead with softness and stillness. Let me pick up my sense of self when I need to stand firm, and let me set it down when the moments call for surrender. Ya Allah, keep me grounded and guided and let my presence reflect your mercy. Ameen, ya Rabbul Alameen, please keep me in your draaz. I will talk to you guys next time.