Category: Uncategorized

The True Leader- Plus a pity post and motivational speech all wrapped in one

On By sakeenahtahirIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today I think I truly understood what it means to be a leader. And let me start by being honest and say that it kinda really sucks. It’s REALLY hard. I’m sure the fact that I am a bubbly, short (5’0), high-pitched girl unfortunately adds to it, but its hard to get people to listen to you! Its hard because lots of people have questions that you don’t know the answers to. It’s difficult because not everyone agrees on certain ideas. People don’t always take you seriously, but through all that you still have to strive and persevere and make your expectation a reality. And why?
As a depressed person, a question that constantly crosses my mind is: “Why? Why does it matter? Who cares?

I’ll tell you who cares, everyone who put you on that pedestal and accepts you as their leader. They may be difficult, not take you seriously, cause problems, be argumentative, but at the end of the day they acknowledge that you are the leader. And so when or if something goes wrong, you can’t blame it on your team, its all on you. And there is nothing you can do about it.

I realize I’m making this sound like a pity post and I promise that is not my intention, but I really just realized what being a leader means.
It means taking responsibility for the management of a group of people who may or may not get along. It means welcoming in people that you may not work well with for the sake of getting a job done.  It means having a thick skin when people don’t always listen to you. It means putting yourself out their for everyone to judge when none of them are willing to put themselves out there.

And I know this may have started off as a pity post but dang is that a noble position to take on! True leaders seriously are like my heroes now. I don’t think we as followers, non-leaders, the rest of the world, realize how many times leaders had to fail in front of other people. Or simply how much more often they failed than other people because they had the guts to take a risk. Because they were put in a position that requires action without dictation. There is no one telling you what to do or when to do it. And while bad leaders may perceive this as great, its not super great; Because everyone is looking to you to tell them what to do. They may not listen to you but they are still expecting that you somehow create a great and perfect outcome or product. And to anyone who is sitting in the leadership seat right now, well hats off to you.

*clap* *clap* *clap*

If this were a video blog, I would insert an applause here because Subhanallah, leaders have it so difficult. I respect that and I respect you. I have decided to take on this position as leader of a school club at my college and now I’ve got to do this. Its my job to take on all the qualities I listed before and more.

But you know what is interesting, I am not going to give up. Not because everyone is watching me, not because I already have the position and I’m kinda stuck, but because I am capable of doing. Because Inshallah with Allah (swt)’s help, I will show people that I have what it takes to be a great leader. That I will lead my group to success no matter how internally or externally difficult it may be. I am fighting for education, and inspiring minds, and I am ready to stand up for that. I may be able to give up on myself sometimes, but I will not give up on others.

On a side note, PLEASE PRAY FOR ME GUYS! Omg I am so scared and I pray to Allah (swt) that He help me through this. But I’m sure if Allah (swt) wills it, I know I can do it. I don’t know, there is just something inside me telling me that I can actually do this, and I am going to follow that gut feeling. My depression may throw all these worries in my way but I wont let it take over my thinking and mentality. I can do this!!!!

My Story #1

On By sakeenahtahirIn My Story (Category), UncategorizedLeave a comment

My story begins really before I was born.

I am a child to two parents who have very bad culture clash. My mother (although technically the child of two Indian, immigrant parents) was born and raised in America. Born in the heart of the Windy City, Chicago, and raised mostly in white towns across Michigan forestry.

Not only did my mom go to a Catholic high school and was pretty much surrounded by suburban white, “American” culture, but of all the people I have known my mother is perhaps the most proud to be American. More than people like Linda Sarsour and Uncle Sam! She is not just politically active but she loves her country and works hard for it. She believes in the power of grit and lacing up your bootstraps and building yourself up to the top from perseverance and hard work. She is also very literally/culturally American. Her favorite foods include a good ole-fashioned Cheeseburger, mashed potatoes (or baked), pizza and hot dogs. She also values the American system of independence and individuality as opposed to the popular school of thought in the East- “collectivism.”

In either case, my mom is probably the most American you can get and its beautiful! ❤

Combine this with my father, born and raised in India his whole life, not necessarily a die hard, “INDIA RULES” kinda guy but he definitely knows his home country and loves it as much as anyone else loves their motherland. And you can bet, that if you’re married to a woman like my mom, where America is pretty much in your face day and night, you’d probably start to miss home too. Well anyway, that was how that started. Common in the Indian culture (not Muslim culture please don’t mix the two), my parents had an arranged marriage. Where they MET each other with their families, talked for some time, and ultimately decided to get married. My mother had just gotten into medical school and my father was finishing up. He stayed there for some months after they got married and he moved to America to live with my mom.

Now if I haven’t told you enough about how different my parents are let me break it down.
My father is confident, quiet, observant, loves to travel, introverted but excellent at networking, highly skeptical, highly critical (it’s the “constant need for improvement” bug that is engrained in most Indians), a morning person, a health nut, those “pursuing a healthy lifestyle” kind of people, can read people well (sometimes too well until he’s wrong), open-minded in terms of experiences, loves to try new things, risk-taker, and the jack of all trades.

My mother on the other hand is the complete opposite, she’s sociable but not good at networking, loud, excited, passionate, friendly, talkative, curious, a little unobservant (but sometimes that’s bliss), a complete night owl, accepting of anyone and everyone that comes her way, open-minded in terms of people, positive-nut, “the glass half full” type of person, kind, loyal, giving, extremely generous, genuine, not a risk-taker- she likes familiarity, and whatever work she is focused on she does it to the absolute best of her ability; sometimes even beyond that. She excels in whatever work she does but she also dedicates all of her focus and attention to that one thing. Kind of like a master of one. 🙂

Well, you can imagine how this relationship might’ve turned out. And I can go into the nits and grits of why I think this may not have worked out or what someone could’ve done to make it better but at the end of the day, it is what it is and only Allah swt is the one in control of this (of course we also have free will, perhaps I’ll write something on that later). There is no could’v,e should’ve, would’ve. It is what it is and the real question is how I react to it. How will I react to things that are out of my hands- things I cannot control? Like a parents’ long-winded journey to divorce.

More to come but this was the start! 🙂 Hopefully not too sad. You’ll come to know what amazing parents I’ve had and how much they’ve done for me and my sibling despite all these differences. There are people out in the world who don’t have a mother or father at all. Some people who don’t even know where they come from.
So to end in a way of gratitude I want to remember that the circumstances are what they are and I am a ridiculously lucky and blessed child. I’ve had people who have loved me unconditionally who in some cases didn’t have any reason to. So alhamdulillah and may Allah swt bless all the children out there to cope with the difficult family situations they are going through right now and to ultimately put their trust in Allah swt. Oh Turner of hearts, turn our hearts upon your path. Ameen! 🙂

But long story short this is the end of part 1. More to come!

Sincerely,

Sakeenah Tahir 🙂 ❤

Sometimes, Dim Sunrises Create Gorgeous Sunsets

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(aka a bad morning doesn’t equal a bad day)

This will probably be the most relevant post on this blog.

So, what to do when you create a routine and you didn’t follow it? What do you do when you slept in, missed a class, didn’t follow your study schedule or missed your exercise this morning? 
The natural reaction (for me at least) is to give up. I tell myself, meh I already slept in, missed my exercise, why should I even get up now? I totally ruin my entire day because of one mishap in my day. There are times where I literally just don’t go to campus because I missed one class and I assume its futile. 
Waking up on the wrong side of the bed does not determine the rest of your day to be bad. YOU DICTATE THAT. You and me have the choice to either get up and do whatever else we can for the day or sit in bed and sulk about how our day sucks and we didn’t follow our schedule and life is hopeless.
I did the latter today. I woke up, and I didn’t even want to sit in bed but I just felt very numb. Unconsciously, I told myself it was futile to get up now because I didn’t meet my goal of waking up at 6:00. I just sat there and tried to force myself to sleep. Here is the key though, at one point I stopped giving up.
A few hours later, in my head, I was mentally trying to get up. 
          “Ok time to get up Sakeenah”
           …… Fail.
          “Ok you really should get up now Sakeenah”
           ……Fail.
This continued for a while perhaps an hour or so. But you know what, this was good. This conversation I was having with myself meant there was something in my mind telling me not to give up.
If I had just accepted the failure the first time, I would never have gotten up today. But I didn’t accept it, and I did get up.
I guess that’s the lesson for today. Don’t let one bad morning ruin your entire day. You have 86,400 seconds in a day, and I promise you if you just get out of bed, you can make the rest of those seconds really worthwhile. You will also never regret it. I promise.

I just want to remind everyone that, clinical depression is not always so easy as just telling yourself to get up. Some people, have very severe forms (including me) and I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE YOU to get help! I did that before I started this blog, and I would not be able to help others if I hadn’t helped myself first. So please, If you are really struggling with a major illness, I implore you to get help. Talk to a school counselor, a college psychology service, a psychologist, therapist, etc. Really any professional, and they can lead you to the right people.

Okie dokie, peace be upon you all!

Sakeenah Tahir

Good Morning!

On By sakeenahtahirIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today I got up to drive my brother to school at about 7:00 AM. I DID NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP! Its the second day after I started taking my medicine again. I cannot tell you how bad the fourth day off my medicine was! This is why Psychiatrists exist. They know the best ways to ease off a medication, or switch, etc.

Either way, I came home and talked to my father for a few minutes. Inshallah I got a good deed because I listened to my father when he asked me to go down and make him some tea. That’s one of my resolutions, to get better at obeying my mother and father. If anyone wants to know my philosophy on that in terms of parents, let me know and I will write about it!

In a simple sentence though, in Islam we believe that if you are good to your parents, then Allah (swt) will give you happiness in this life. Or well more generally, Allah swt will make your life better, easier, good. Basically you will be rewarded somehow for it.

This was so true today because for the first time in months I actually exercised this morning. Only for about 10 minutes but it was great! Because of it, i walked out of my room pumped, and got dressed in half the time it usually takes (since depression is the worst for me in the morning, I waste a lot of time sitting, staring, overthinking, just being lazy and not wanting to move, etc.) However, today I didn’t waste the time. I got dressed, danced around my car while wiping off snow (lol) and got to the library in a good enough time.

Did I mention I filled out my planner in the morning?!

Now don’t get me wrong. I still wasted a little time on my phone, Facebook, and I got distracted for a few minutes at the library, but I think at the stage I am in right now, I am just happy I got out of bed and out of the house.

Anyone out there who got out of bed easily today?? Kudos to you!! Woohoo!