Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Equanimity
We dive deep into equanimity as a practical, learnable skill for Muslim women who want to stop snapping, start choosing, and carry calm into chaos without numbing their hearts. Instead of trying to “feel calm first,” we flip the sequence: stabilize your actions while your emotions vary, train your nervous system with small, repeatable choices, and let your inner state catch up to your consistent behavior.
We unpack the difference between recalibrating disproportionate reactions (Path A) and channeling warranted intensity for safety, dignity, or justice (Path B). This is disciplined compassion guided by values and supported by faith.
You’ll learn how thought work reshapes the body’s chemistry, why each pause is a rep that strengthens composure, and how prayer anchors the shift. If you’re ready to replace reactivity with choice and let calm become your default, press play, subscribe, and share this with someone who deserves more peace. Leave a review with the one script you’ll try this week...we’d love to hear it.
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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. Tamil After.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you. The topic of today's podcast came out of a theme I hear over and over again in my coaching sessions. Women will come to me and say, I don't want to be bothered by every little thing. I don't want to snap and then just sit there and regret how I reacted. And when I hear this in my coaching sessions, the word that comes to mind is equanimity. How to stay unruffled, how to stay composed. And equanimity happens to be one of my favorite words these days. And these are women that are asking the same thing coming from different stages in life, different ages, different careers, different family situations. And all of it goes to tell me something important, that it's not just a me problem or a you problem, it's a human problem. Muslim women are struggling with this, so I figured I'll make a podcast out of it. The consensus is what you're really craving is equanimity, that steady, even keel state where no matter what's happening around you, you remain composed. Either kids fighting or husband forgetting to do that one thing or co-worker being rude, you still stay steady, not flat or numb, not heightened or reactive, but steady. Here, with equanimity, what Muslim women are asking for is to get off the emotional roller coaster or reactivity to every bump in the road. You don't want to feel hijacked by your anger one minute, your anxiety the next, and then your guilt about having anger and anxiety. What you want to do is that you want to be balanced. You want to be the kind of woman who carries herself with calm and steadiness, and there's composure, especially in the middle of chaos. And this desire of calmness might come off as weakness, but it's actually this strength. And it's not detachment either. This concept of equanimity means that you value your own peace enough not to hand it over to every small annoyance in your life. And I'll tell you something, I value that too. I value that immensely because this is something I had to actively grow into. It didn't come naturally to me, and I definitely always wasn't like this. But if you're sitting there thinking, well, I don't know if I can get there, trust me you will, and you can if you want to. So when I say even keel, non attached, I'm talking about equanimity, which is a state of emotional stability and balance. And this state of feeling calm and composed comes with practice. In the beginning you might feel the highs and lows, you might not feel even keel in your body, but you don't have to react to all of these emotions. And this is what I'm going to expand on in this podcast. To achieve the consistency of your state of mind and the state of your body, meaning truly achieving equanimity, you have to go through the process of feeling steady in your actions. Because coming to a result of a well adjusted woman, this is the journey you have to take. If you want to walk in a room without being on the edge, without carrying the last argument in your body, without overthinking what happened before, you want to be able to respond with intention instead of react out of habit. I absolutely love cultivating and growing that even keel energy in my life. And I slip every now and then, and that's okay. It takes some inner work and a lot of rewiring for some people, and honestly a lot of humility to admit that I want to grow in this area. So it's okay if you weren't handed the perfect circumstances and a perfect life. We're gonna be talking about developing the skill of steadiness. And while I'm gonna be talking about this in this podcast, I invite you to join my coaching because that's all we talk about and that's what we coach on. And if you haven't joined so far, what are you waiting for? Like seriously, you have to do it. It's absolutely life-changing. And even when I share the tools like I am in this podcast, coaching has this way of speeding up your healing. And I'm not talking about faster results, even though yes, you do get faster results. I'm talking about making the changes that stick. You're not just having a good week after getting coached and falling back into the same traps. You're rewiring your brain so the shift becomes permanent. And that's the part I love about coaching because while it's about quick fixes, it's also going to give you the kind of internal stability that lasts. So when you're facing those everyday moments, a disrespectful comment, a messy house, you're no longer reacting, you're choosing. And that choice is going to feel much lighter, much freer, much more available instead of you being trapped in the cycle of regret. So what I want to start with is to tell you about you must have heard composure that is about a state of emotions. And yes, sure, that's what it is. But what if initially you can't get there? But what if you do feel all of your high intensity emotions? Does that mean that you're sentenced to having a temperamental reaction to everything? It does not. And the difference between being even keel in your emotions and being even keel in your actions lies between you trusting your emotional state and you acting from it, versus you creating a break in your emotional state and your actions. And this is where most of us get tripped up. On this journey of equanimity, you were probably told that if you could just stay calm, if you could just feel calm, if you can flatten your emotions, then your behavior would automatically follow. You'd be steady, composed, unbothered. But initially that's not how it works. Your thoughts create your emotions, and the emotions is what creates actions. Which means it is a possibility that you'll feel high and low of the emotions as a part of being human. You can't and you shouldn't try to erase that spectrum, but you don't need to suppress your emotions to show up as steady. What matters is what you do with those emotions, if you qualify them as justifiable and profitable in a given situation, or if you disqualify a heightened emotion if that's not what the situation calls for, and it calls for you to stay calm. Practicing equanimity in your behavior doesn't require for you to stop feeling, requires for you to stop reacting from the feeling. And this is the biggest difference in the beginning. You're not aiming for numbness and flatness, you're aiming for choice in what emotions to act from. You're aiming for self-command, for the ability to feel an emotion fully and still decide, okay, how do I want to act right now? You're aiming to create a gap between your emotions and choosing an action. Being even keel in your behavior is something you can do right now, immediately, and this should be the very first step before you even try to master being even keel in your emotions. And defining equanimity as purely an emotional state, calm, steady, balanced on the inside. And yes, that's beautiful, that most likely is the perfect definition, and eventually you will get there, that's where we're headed. But practically speaking, the faster, more manageable way to get there is to start with your actions. Think of it as a series of intentional moves. Your actions are something you choose to take. Just as importantly, there are actions you choose not to take, all being in alignment with your value of being composed. And that's how you begin training your nervous system. For example, if you feel a heat of anger rising, but you don't want to raise your voice, you can feel that, but you don't have to clap back with the same energy. These are little behavioral choices. Pausing and softening your tone before reacting from the emotion of anger. Maybe it requires for you to step away from the situation for a time being. Or maybe your choice is silence. These are all like repetitions at the gym. You're trying to lift a weight that you haven't lifted before. Each time you practice, you're strengthening your capacity to create a gap between emotions and reactivity. You're aligning more and more with equanimity, starting with your actions. So what will start to happen in this case is when your behavior is consistently lined up with composure, your emotions will eventually follow. Your mind will learn a new pattern. And instead of spiraling into regret after a reaction, your mind will start to associate challenging emotions with steadiness, with strength, with dignity, with composure. And that's what will eventually lead to an inner calm state. Equanimity in your emotions. This is when you're gonna start to settle in your nervous system more calmly. So I don't believe there is a single person in the entire world who doesn't feel emotions. Even though sometimes you're told or even believe that you don't feel your emotions. What really happens is some people get very skilled at masking their emotions or diverting them into something else. But everyone, every single one of you feels the full spectrum, the highs, the lows, the peaks, and the shallows. So if your goal is to appear even keel, and I personally feel that is a very worthy goal, you don't get there by shutting off these highs and lows. You don't get there through numbness. You get there by recognizing the emotions that are going to rise and fall and then choosing not to react to every single one of them. So for example, if somebody speaks to you disrespectfully, that's going to stir up a high energy emotion, maybe anger, frustration, maybe indignation, and that's normal. But feeling that emotion doesn't mean that you have to speak it. You don't have to retaliate or let the emotion be the driver of your behavior. Living with equanimity does not mean you don't feel. It just means you're not letting every feeling dictate your next move. The true evenness starts to show up in your behavior first, not in the absence of emotional experience. Because there are some situations that are going to call for heightened emotions, positive or negative. There's joy, love, awe. There are situations that deserve all of that full intensity. There are situations that are going to call for anger and grief, and those emotions will visit you too. But you still get to decide, do I let this emotion run the show or do I choose to stay steady and choose how I act? And this is where the power of composure lives. If somebody cuts you off in traffic and instantly your body shoots up into anger, if you let that anger spill out with yelling, honking, tailgating, now you're known as somebody who has road rage, but if your goal is not to act from that surge, you have to start with allowing that anger, recognizing it, and choosing not to act from it. The emotion of anger itself does not come from the erratic driver. It comes from the thought your brain attached to their actions. That is dangerous, that drivers shouldn't drive like this, they should care about other people. Those thoughts about the driver is what generates anger in your body. So if you don't want to ride that wave every time, the work is to rewrite that thought, to shift the meaning. Maybe they're in a hurry, maybe I don't have to join them in their chaos. Or their driving has nothing to do with my safety, because I'm in control of my car. When you change your thought, you literally change the chemical response in your body. Your nervous system can learn to stay even keel. And this is what happens when you're feeling equanimity even in your emotions. So this was an example of a situation where you might be experiencing heightened emotions when you don't need to, in which case you can just change your thoughts. But then again, there are situations that really do call for heightened emotions, but just not a heightened reaction. One time somebody said something very degrading to one of my former employees. She wanted me to just let it go. And I knew in that moment that letting it slide would send the wrong message. So I stood up for her. I said directly to that person, This is not appropriate, you don't talk to anybody like that. And this colleague that had said this about my employee didn't like that. He pushed back and said, Well, she doesn't have a problem with it, so why do you? And I told him that she can respond to her disrespect however she wants, but I'm responding to the disrespect of my employee, and that's my choice. Now, did I feel anger? Yes. Did I feel frustration? Absolutely. But the difference is I didn't let those emotions hijack the way I spoke. If I had reacted straight out of my frustration, it would have turned into a yelling match. And to me, that's not professional and not productive. If I had gone down the road of reacting from my frustration, it would not have accomplished my goal, which was to protect my employee and show her that she was safe and respected in her work environment the way I created it. If I reacted from my anger, I might have embarrassed her more by creating a bigger scene and attractive more negative attention. So what I did was I held the emotion, but I chose my delivery. I kept calm in my tone. I said clear words, I said it with equanimity in my actions and steadiness. Even though inside I could feel the burn. That's what even keel in action looks like. Not denying the frustration, but channeling it in a way that aligns with your values and it protects the people that are around you. So I'm gonna make it very nuanced and very simple, because this is exactly where your change is going to start. The core distinction is even keel emotions that will eventually happen, but is not a goal for you as a beginner. You will and can still feel the highs and the lows. Right now being even keel in your actions is the goal. Choose steadiness, choose value aligned behavior regardless of the emotional waves. And a lot of times slowing down, recalibrating, attuning to your body is something that creates the gap between emotions and reactivity from them. If you think your reaction is disproportionate, you can recalibrate. Stay with your body, exhale, stay calm, label the emotion, the annoyance, the anger, reframe. Meaning you can change your thoughts. My value is safety, not score keeping. I can think about the situation differently. This will neutralize the emotion, then you can behave accordingly as well. Some of the self-talk lines that I use that you can steal are I don't outsource my nervous system to strangers. While this is inconvenient, this is not catastrophic. I choose safety over story. This is you choosing to train your nervous system to lower the unnecessary amplitude. You will still feel the things, but you don't let the feelings run the show. So path A moments are the late text response or the spilled Jews or the coworker's passive aggressive emoji text. Unknowing? Yes. Worth a dysregulated nervous system? No. So now we come to path B, which is where you channel, where the emotion is proportionate and points to a value of yours that matters dignity, safety, justice. The same applies where you hold the heightened emotion in your body and you stay calm and attuned to it. You name the language that created that emotion, meaning that was very disrespectful. He shouldn't have spoken like that. But your delivery based on that heightened emotion is what counts as behavior. You create the pause between the feeling and the action. You can say things like if your tone stays disrespectful like that, I'm going to end the meeting now. You can say you can address the issue, you don't have to attack the other person. What I'm getting at is that you keep the energy of anger as information, but you deliver it with leadership, clear and steady, focused on your values. This is the true use of beginning of equanimity. With some practice, it'll take you about ten seconds to understand if your response were proportionate or disproportionate to a situation. And it's really just a quick decision check. Is it about my safety, dignity, or core value? If yes, then you take path B? Is it my nervous system making the intensity bigger than the impact is? Is my nervous system heightening my response for reasons that are not related to my safety or core values? If yes, then take path A. A very good question that helps me determine this is I ask myself, will this matter tomorrow? Well, will I hold the same intensity about this issue in twenty four hours? That usually helps me determine if I need to change the thoughts about my situation or my thoughts are correct and I need to respond with equanimity. The reason we're doing all of this is because when your behavior consistently lines up with composure, your nervous system will learn the new pattern. Your urges are going to quiet faster, and your emotions are going to become clearer to you. Over time the inside will catch up with your outside. Recalibration is at the level of your thinking, adjusting to think properly. This channeling works at the levels of thinking and emotions, meaning your thinking didn't quite pass the checkpoint. And this is where you're gonna gently redirect the language in your mind to create a proportionate appropriate response. Then there's channeling, where you have a heightened response in your thinking and in your emotions, and that is exactly what's called for in the situation, but you decide to act calmly. The skill is vigilance, understanding the difference where you know where your frustration is speaking or your higher self is speaking. This is the gift of discernment. I feel angry, but what's the most effective way for me to use it here? And this composure is going to keep your higher brain intact and it's going to allow you to act calmly. When you practice this, when you consistently pause, observe, and choose, you build this muscle of equanimity. That's what makes you look calm and steady to the outside world, and over time that's how you become on the inside as well. With that I pray to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, O Allah, grant me steadiness in my heart, clarity in my mind, and composure in my actions. Help me notice my emotions without being ruled by them, and guide me to choose responses that reflect dignity, wisdom, and patience. Amin Yarbul Al Amin. Please keep me in your daras, I will talk to you guys next time.