Finding Your Inner GPS to Happiness with Marina Shakour Haber

When Marina's world seemed to be crumbling around her, she turned to spirituality for guidance. But what she didn't expect was the unexpected twist that would change her life forever. Find out what it was and how it led her on a journey towards self-acceptance and empowerment in this inspiring transcript. Show Notes | Transcript When we understand that things do not happen to us, they happen for us, it changes our perspective. We understand this is for our benefit. - Marina Shakour Haber Introducing Marina Shakour Haber: once a successful entrepreneur in the nurse staffing industry, she saw the stress, overwhelm, and unhappiness that plagued people's lives and decided to make a change. As a life coach, motivational speaker, and author, Marina has dedicated herself to helping others find happiness and personal growth. With her books, "Dream a Better Dream" and "Your GPS to Happiness," she shares essential lessons on the importance of faith, trust, and surrender. Marina's personal experiences and wisdom are sure to provide valuable insights for anyone seeking a more fulfilling life. In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the essential relationship between faith, trust, and surrender in enhancing personal growth. Get valuable insights on accepting failures and missteps as vital ingredients for a sturdy foundation. Delve into the world of self-love, acceptance, and understanding as the ultimate sources of happiness. Find out how letting go of outcomes and living fully in the present can transform your life. Master the art of prioritizing self-care, embracing joy, and setting healthy boundaries for mental wellness. Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: How to Achieve Happiness with Sankarshan Das Finding Mind-Blowing Happiness with Trish Ahjel Roberts Reconciling Grief and Happiness with Emily Thiroux Threatt Resources: Connect with Marina here Email Marina.Shakour (at) gmail.com Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand Namaste and welcome. I am so glad to be with you today. And I've got a wonderful woman in the studio, well, the virtual studio that we have and can't wait to get into our discussion today because she's actually somebody that I've known for a while, the same organization and together. So maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later. But first off, I want to introduce Marina Shakour Haber to you and tell you a little bit about who she is. So she was a successful entrepreneur in the nurse staffing industry, where she started to observe that too many people were stressed, overwhelmed, and unhappy. And so as a result, she decided to become a life coach, motivational speaker, and author. And she also has written two books, Dream a Better Dream, and her new book, Your GPS to Happiness. So those of you who are watching on YouTube can see she has a lovely promotional poster back there, and I love that you've done that. So, first off, I want to welcome you, Marina, to live, love, engage. Marina Shakour Haber Thank you so much. Namaste. Gloria Grace Rand A lot of times I'll start off the podcast by asking our guests about their journey and how they got to where they are. But you pretty much cover that already in your bio. I'm sure there's more to it, and maybe we'll get into that, but I thought we would start today instead with asking you a little bit about why you decided to write, especially your latest book, Your GPS to Happiness. So what prompted that? Marina Shakour Haber It really happened around the last election in 2016, 2017, where I observed the great sense of negativity. And I also, what I saw was this trickle down negativity. And, you know, energy flows. And if the energy is positive, it lifts up a room. If it is negative, it pulls us all down. And I observed this enormous sense of heaviness, of discomfort within our inner world, and I thought we could do better. I thought there is something we can do to guide people and also ourselves to find more happiness within, to turn into our inner world and to clean house within so that our outside world will follow suit. Because we truly live inside, not outside. Whatever energy we have within emerges and goes outside and affects everyone around us. So where to start? With the individual, with the individual sense of happiness and well-being. Gloria Grace Rand Now, did you have an experience in your life where you sort of had to come up with this, well, GPS for yourself? And is that kind of what sparked you? Is it based on your own personal story or is it more of just learning from other people? Marina Shakour Haber It's truly many instances where I had to rewrite and reinvent and reroute, reroute, reroute and change course. So, yes, spinning, spinning. It happened really twice. Two major incidents that led me on this path. The first one was pretty significant. It was my husband's business really went into not only bankruptcy, forced bankruptcy for protection, but it was that there was an issue with the nurses and the way he claimed them. He claimed them as independent contractors, but the government said they are employees. Then it went from bad to worse. Things could have been done better on both sides. No blame, it's just the way it was. But one day the IRS agents came and confiscated, took everything pretty much out of our house. Gloria Grace Rand Oh my goodness. Marina Shakour Haber And that was when I had already a two-year-old daughter and I was six months pregnant. We know those are vulnerable. We are a little bit more sensitive when that happens. A little bit, yeah. Throughout the day, I was really crying and I was really upset, but for my mother, who told me that this was not the moment that I can give in to this letting go, this losing control over myself, the day after she told me this is the time that you need to ask for guidance from your divine, divine supporters, your divine team, your spirit guides. You need help. You really need help. And two days after that, I collected myself and I very much in à la mode of Scarlett O'Hara, I stood on the mountain; there was a little hill in my property that no longer was my property. And I stood there and I vowed that I would never be down again, that I would never go through something like this again. And I felt empowered. Not to say that the journey ahead was easy and there were many, many challenges ahead. But I started my own business, followed the same business that my husband had been in after many not so good attempts. And made it only after 14 years of being successful, down again it went. And this time it was just that it was over. And a psychic later on told me that whatever I would have done, it was not meant to continue because I had to follow the path that I believe I chose before I was born to do what I am doing now. And so the universe had been knocking and I had refused to answer before. It didn't need to go to this point that it went the second time that I had to close. I could have sold it, but I said, no, my life is good. I don't want to give up the golden goose for chasing or going after something else. Are you kidding? No. And the universe, they win. And they did. So, yeah. Gloria Grace Rand I so resonate with what you were just talking about because yeah, it is interesting. There's some of this what you resist, persists, but it's also that sometimes the universe really wants you to go down a different path. And even if you have to do it kicking and screaming, it sometimes will, it is the right decision ultimately. And I'm sure you're probably as happy as you were in the other business, possibly even happier now that you've made the shift. What do you think? Is that true? Marina Shakour Haber Absolutely. And you know what? There was always something missing. There was something missing. I was also not authentically me. I denied my spirituality. I denied my beliefs because I didn't want to be so odd. So, no, I didn't want that. And I had to come out of my closet. Besides, I also realized that I was really suffered from not being good enough. I suffered from being uncomfortable speaking up. I was suffered from really the lack of self-confidence. And this journey made me have to go out, and I had to be vulnerable, and I had to break down again and again until it broke wide open. And I said, okay, embrace who you are. It is what it is. And that's all. It's wonderful when we come to this point. I just love it. Gloria Grace Rand Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I wanted to comment about, which I thought was so great, is that I love that your mother was the one who said, you got to listen to your higher power, listen to your spirit guides or whatever. And you are so fortunate to have such an enlightened person for a mother to be able to tell you that, because not everybody does. So you're very fortunate for that. If someone's listening to this, it's like, okay, well, it's nice that you say that we can do this, but can you give us perhaps some practical steps on how we can kind of navigate when things, life does throw us curveballs, which it tends to do from time to time. What have you found? Marina Shakour Haber What I have found is when we understand, and this is really a huge concept, is that things do not happen to us, they happen for us. That one word. When we change that one word, it changes our perspective. We understand this is for our benefit. We do have to go through challenges. There is no way around. You might as well take the challenge and run with it rather than have it run against you. So accept you have to go through challenges. And so, first of all, it happens for you. Second of all,...