Salima Issaoui
What is your ritual to connect with your inner self?
I love rituals that help minimize the risks of falling into unhappiness. I am someone who has to work on her mental health (aka connection with inner self) to stay positively stable. It hasn't been until very recently that I started "meeting" myself in deeper ways and therefore getting to know how my mind and emotions have been shaped and how my brain conducts me to have unhappy behaviours that lead to unhappiness. My ritual consists of being very aware of my meaningful goals and principles. These meaningful goals are the things I want to achieve, be or share with others. Acknowledging them or writing them down is not enough and because I don't want to derail I do the following thing every morning: I open my diary to write down three happy events that happened the day before to trick my mind into "happy mode". Then I read my list of meaningful goals and I ask myself "what are two things I can do today that will bring me closer to my goals", this sets up a purpose on my day and helps me go through it. Then I meditate and I finish my meditation thanking the good stuff and the good people in my life, sending love and healing energy to my beloved ones and visualizing my goals. I have other rituals as well that help me connect with my inner self, but this is the strongest habit I have created and I try to be tenacious with this one because it's helping quite a lot.
How do you contribute to shape the future?
We love to ask others about the things they do to "change the world", and I really like this question for how it reflects our illusion of control. Truth be told: we determine less than we think we do. Yes, I have launched a skincare brand based on sustainability, inclusion and new conversations. But shaping the future is a huge thing. I'd rather like to think that with Uzza we're creating a space where we can explore new shapes within our community. Will this reshape the future? Well, it will reshape mine and hopefully, it will help reshape the future of my community but I don't know about "the" big future. And I say all these, even though it doesn't sound very romantic, because I believe that we should smaller our ideas, circles and aspirations so they are more tangible. We've been taught to "dream big", but it's never the dimension of the dream what makes a powerful thing occur. I prefer to dream small, but more often (and progressively).
With Uzza we're creating a space where we can explore new shapes within our community.
As Simone de Beauvoir said, were you born as a woman or did you become a woman?
I was born as a woman who grew up as a man to then become human. I am the first daughter of a couple of 1.5 generation immigrants (1.5G refers to individuals who immigrate to a new country before or during their early teens) who grew up in Muslim family with a North African Arab culture and went to a Christian school where I was the only one with a weird name. And huh! I was a woman too. As a child, I didn't know how to bloom my identity in such a multicultural environment so I ended up denying all of them, especially being a woman. The latter had to do with my role models. I was a very ambitious kid and I wanted to be a sort of scientific/genius (gosh I loved science). Sadly, back at that time, all my role models were men so I thought being a woman wouldn't help me achieve my dreams. Of course, my family background wasn't helping either. But growing up, moving to new and more diverse countries and meeting beautiful people has helped me understand my nature. In the end, we are all humans inhabiting this weird planet called Earth.
Who is your biggest Muse?
That's a tough one! I've always found it very hard to choose "a favourite" thing or "a favourite" person. I get inspired by many different "muses", from unknown people to world-famous people. I tend to admire people who do something for the very first time, such as Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Malala Yousafzi, Nadia Ghulam, Oprah, Beyonce, Angela Davis and the list goes on and on. So more than the person, what captivates me is their actions.
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