Letting your Dreams Lead the Way with Layla Saad | ep 120
How do you find what you’re meant to do in life? What does it mean when you find yourself moving from one seemingly unrelated dream to another?
Let me tell you, love. There are hundreds of dreams living inside of you. And each of those dreams has a life of its own.
Just as we grow and change in life, so do our dreams. They come to us to take root, grow, and serve their purpose. And just like anything that grows, we can grow out of our dreams. That’s because that dream in your heart is just the first draft, love.
In today’s final Courageous Conversation interview on the podcast, I am speaking with none other than the sensational New York Times Bestselling Author, Layla Saad. And y’all, I totally manifested this interview.
I remember years ago seeing Layla on social media and her in-person events in New York and saying to myself, “You know what? You are going to be colleagues or friends with this person.” Honestly, every person I have interviewed in this series, I manifested a relationship of some sort with them. They all have been a dream come true, but this one with Layla Saad is such a big damn deal, y’all. So, let’s get into it.
A quick bio about Layla Saad
Layla Saad is the founder and CEO of Become A Good Ancestor, a learning destination that empowers us with the tools and resources we need to heal ourselves, our relationships, and the world—from personal and systemic oppression. She is also a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author, anti-racism educator, international speaker, and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change.
She is the author of the ground-breaking Me and White Supremacy (2020), an anti-racism education workbook that has been translated into six languages. Me and White Supremacy debuted on the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers lists, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year by the British Book Awards in 2021.
Layla is an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman who was born and grew up in the UK, and lives in Qatar. Layla has always sat at a unique intersection of identities from which she is able to draw rich and intriguing perspectives. Her work is driven by her powerful desire to become a good ancestor; to live and work in ways that leave a legacy of healing and liberation for those who will come after she is gone.
Layla has been featured in ELLE, PAPER, BBC, PBS, Glamour, MarieClaire, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, The Irish Times, Stylist, goop, NowThis News, Jezebel, Psychology Today, Forbes, Fast Company, and many more. She was also featured in British Vogue’s ‘Activism Now’ September 2020 Issue, as one of 40 activists currently shaping the future and giving us hope.
Layla’s work has been brought into homes, educational institutions and workplaces around the world that are seeking to create personal and collective change.
A lot of what we believe is possible or not possible for us, a lot of our beliefs come from what we experienced when we were younger.
So, tell us what young Layla experienced and saw.
Layla Saad:
I feel like I lived two dimensions of my life and you probably recognize this as a third culture kid yourself. We had that life at home where who I am and what my roots are were the norm. My parents were immigrants to the UK from East Africa. I was first generation British, but in our house we very much were about our culture. It was primarily my mom who raised us cause my dad worked at sea, so he would be away for months at a time and then come home for months at a time. So our primary parent was our mother and she spoke to us both in Swahili and English.
She taught us everything that we could know about Islam, our religion, she cooked her Eastern African cultural foods, but also fish fingers and chips, potato waffles, and all of those other things. She's the person who I remember would always take me to the library. I've always been a reader and she would buy me games and would play with me.
Then you had the rest of the world, when we go to school or when we're out in the world. For most of my schooling, I went to Catholic schools that were predominantly white and I was often the only kid of color or one of two. Actually one of my closest friends is a friend that I've had since nursery. She was Jordanian Palestinian and I was East African Oman. We were these two little Muslim girls in this Roman Catholic school.
It was like I was living two different worlds and both of my parents have excellence as a core value. They wanted us to be leaders, to be the best at whatever we did, and to work super hard. It wasn't just because they knew that we had to work twice as hard to succeed in this world. They understood that and they talked to us about that, but it was that wherever we went in the world, they wanted us to show up as these excellent representatives of our character, what we stand for, our intelligence, and all of those things.
There were never really any limitations. Now, there were limitations on not doing art and those kind of things. They wanted the more hardcore academic subjects, but they really wanted us to be the best.
Growing up, I always loved studying, so I always exceeded and excelled, but I did have this nibbling feeling I couldn’t explain. It was more a sense of not belonging and having to prove that I could be there, that I did belong. And that if there was a misstep or if I didn't show up as the best, that the consequence felt so great. It’s like this double consciousness. So, growing up, that became more and more a part of how I saw myself, because I was spending more time in the world, less time at home, and more of what was happening at school and in the world was impacting me.
And the less representation I saw of myself, the less, I felt like my whole self could be accepted.
The more I was pivoting internally, without even realizing it as so many of us do. It always felt like this internal struggle. That's how I think about my childhood.
I really credit my parents for sewing into my siblings and I this core belief of, “There's nowhere in the world that you don't deserve to belong and never think of yourself as lesser than. Ever.”
Wow. Hearing about your family, you all really embody that so beautifully. What were some of those manifestations of that sense of being marginalized? What were the coping mechanisms you adopted to navigate that?
Layla Saad:
Perfectionism, big time.
What I see show up still is — and I have to really consciously override it — is the inability to ask for help or support or believe that asking for help or needing it means that there's something wrong with me. So, even if I get help, I have to soothe myself and talk to myself about it.
It’s like a belief that if you got help to get there, then it doesn't count. It’s so interesting right now, as I'm building this business where all I have is support and it feels so good for my nervous system to be supported and to continue to lean into it.
But it's a conscious choice, not an automatic setting.
And to have that support around you is huge. I see it in myself, in my close friends — many of whom are Black women who work very, very hard and also make it look effortless. Meanwhile, we’re just barely hanging on. And I don’t want to do that.
I love that. You know, I feel when we’re in our late teens to early twenties, we create “The Plan.” Did you have that at all?
Layla Saad:
Yeah, I wanted to be Ally McBeal. one of my uncles was working in a law firm as a paralegal. I looked up to him and I knew that was one of those careers that my parents felt was a very respected career. My mom is still sad that none of her kids became a doctor. But, I wanted to be him because I looked up to him. I knew that this was one of those careers that if I became that, I would be respected, loved. It's the dream, right? Of the place that we're trying to get to emotionally.
So, I started my degree in law and within the first semester, I was like, “Mom, I hate it. I hate it so much. It's so dry.”
And she was like, “You need to make it wet then. Make it wet.”
It's the Blackest mom thing that she could say. She wasn't having any of it. She was like, you gotta figure it out. You started it, you're finishing it. In the first year you could do a major and a minor. I was doing politics as a minor and I found that much more interesting, but it was only for the first year. When I went in second year, it was now fully law.
And that first year of university was my first time living away from home. I'd also moved back from Qatar back to the UK, but I was by myself. It was also the first time being alone. I'm the first child, only daughter of an immigrant family so there were a lot of rules and regulations. And now, I'm suddenly by myself. I have a lot of freedom, but I also don't know who the hell I am.
I'd only been away for three years, but it was basically a lifetime. So much happens at that age. When I came back, I had a different accent and everyone assumed I was American. They didn't think I was British. They also were like, “We don't get what you are.”
I began to very quickly suffer from anxiety and generalized depression. I didn't have the wording for it until probably towards the end of my degree. I just felt broken. I just felt so broken.
I was struggling with panic attacks, a sense of dread and anxiety all the time. I was very depressed. I wasn't showing up for my classes. I wasn't being that star student that I'd always been. Whatever plan that I'd had for myself to become Ally McBeal, that wasn't happening.
It wasn't until my final year of law that I knew I needed to figure this out because I was slipping away. My best friend at the time was really into Tony Robbins. So, he gave me these CDs, I started listening to these CDs, and it was my first introduction into the personal growth, personal development world.
Now, there’s a lot to be said about Tony Robbins, the personal growth and self development world, but I will tell you - at that time - that saved my life. Hands down saved my life. I began to, one step at a time, reclaim my energy, reclaim my mind, and reclaim my body.
I was trying to change. By the time I graduated, I felt better. I wish I would've done better as a student, but it's over and it's passed, and it was clear I wasn't gonna become a lawyer. I really was like, what do I want? I remember trying to hash it out with myself.
There were 2 things I was clear on: One, I knew I wanted to do something that would help other people in some way. I wanted to be of service, help people, and somehow make their lives better. We didn't have the language of coaching back then.
Two, I was really clear that all of the suffering that I'd been through in those years of anxiety, depression, and panic attacks, weren’t for nothing. I believed I could make it mean something. I didn't want it just that I had suffered and there was no point to it.
When I finished my degree, I actually started working in corporate tax, which is random. I was looking for a job basically and that was the job that landed in my lap. But after about five years, after I got married, I was like, “I'm gonna study life coaching.” That's how I got started on this trajectory of transformational work and coaching work and being of service to the world in some way.
But the plan to be a lawyer, I still credit that. I learned so much and I bring that into my business today.
Related: If you’re loving this interview with Layla Saad, you’ll love this episode from Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast, 41 | Surrendering to your Dreams
I believe it so deeply that there’s no wrong decisions, that everything is informing the thing. Oftentimes, we don’t know what the thing is because the dream is always evolving and changing just as you are.
Just like you, I had built an identity of being perfect and the best. When you find yourself in an environment where you can’t do that, it all starts crumbling. You realize you don’t have any tools to actually be your own person.
So, you go through that huge dark storm and all of a sudden, someone like Tony Robbins or Abraham Hicks — who I can say now are problematic — actually give you those tools of self-reflection or growth where you can now be your own person because you weren’t afforded that ability.
Layla Saad:
I had two groups of friends in university. I had my brown friends, like my Muslim friends. Then I had my white friends and when I was with my brown friends, I felt like I really belonged. They were Muslim, they were brown.
Although there was like the African Afro-Caribbean society, which I was also part of, nobody was really like me — the East African Middle Eastern. You are different, you know? But at least I was like, I feel like I belong here. When I was with my white friends, I was the only black one, so I always felt like they would've remembered me. But each time I hung out with them and their friends, their friends didn't remember who I was. I felt invisible. And I look back now like, how would they not know you were black? You know what I mean? I felt like nothing in those spaces that I felt maybe I need to remind them what my name is or maybe they don't remember we hung out last time.
It’s that thing of feeling both hyper visible and invisible at the same time.
I know exactly what you mean. So, another thing I think is so important is for people to hear how you didn’t become this New York Times Best Selling Author overnight. You have this moment of reclamation of self and sitting with the questions of “What do I want to do?”
Layla Saad:
I still did a whole bunch of other things. I went from tax to studying coaching, doing some coaching, then working as a corporate trainer teaching soft skills in companies. Then studying graphic design and realizing I don’t want to do this. Then, studying and certifying as a health coach, doing that, and realizing it’s not this either. Then deciding I want to go back into a job working part-time at a non-profit in marketing.
Then, just before my 30th birthday was a pivotal moment for me.
I used to go into work early because I’m an introvert and I didn’t want to talk to people at the beginning of the day. So, i came in early and sat down at my desk, plugged in my laptop, and I felt like I floated out of my body and looked down at myself.
I had this moment of seeing the ridiculousness of me sitting in this chair at this job, in this life that I didn't even want. Working so hard and I was so stressed out. I didn’t even want this job. This was not even the career trajectory I was supposed to be on.
Those dreams that my parents had sewn into us of “You can, you will go out into the world and be something and do something great.” This wasn’t it. Me working part-time at a job that I barely wanted, this wasn't it. Then, I was almost 30 and 10 years had just passed by like nothing. So, where was I going to be when I was 40? If I don’t make a change right now, this is my life and it only gets worse. You have to actually intervene and do something different.
I remember just laughing out loud because the whole scenario seemed so ridiculous to me that I was sitting in this chair in this job. So, I made a promise to myself in that moment that when the right time comes, and I'll know when it's right, I will quit this job. I will commit full time to being a solopreneur and I won't give up, I won't start and stop. I will do everything it takes. I will take every course. I will put everything into it. I'll do whatever it takes to build it, because that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
A few months later, I got pregnant with my second child. I said, it's not the right moment yet, but now I have a timeline. As soon as I have this baby, I'm done. I had the baby and then two weeks later, I had hired a website designer to help me build my first website.
I spent so many years thinking I was a Jack of all trades, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so smart, but I’m wasting it. I was one of those kids that was gifted. And then, as soon as I made that commitment, I was in it for the long haul.
*To hear the full interview, tune into episode 120 | Letting your Dreams Lead the Way with Layla Saad wherever you love listening to podcasts (or click here) and don’t forget to connect with Layla Saad at any of her amazing resources below.
Connect with Layla Saad:
Check out Layla’s site Be a Good Ancestor where you can find her podcast - Become a Good Ancestor, join her book club, and learn about her self-study course, Claim Your Space to help you uncover your next steps as a change maker. This course is for anyone who is feeling like you’re hear to create change in some way, but want to find your right work, your right channel, and learn how to navigate the challenges of being a change maker.
Follow Become a Good Ancestor on Instagram
Read Layla’s article: I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy (Part One)
After listening, you’re going to love these episodes!
41 | Surrendering to your Dreams
Your dreams have a life of their own. And if you allow them to lead the way, you can create the most amazing things. Listen to this week's episode to find out how you can start to surrender to your dreams and follow their natural intelligence.
65 | Dreams and Dreaming
Dreams are essential to reaching our biggest goals but probably not for the reason you’re thinking of. Listen to this episode to find out the purpose of our dreams and why they are so important. Learning how to dream bigger is one of the most transformative tools you can develop.
98 | The power of Stopping, Pausing and Pivoting
You don’t have to finish what you start, love. So many of us are holding on to goals that deep down we no longer want because we’ve bought into the narrative that we need to finish whatever we embark on. But the truth is, you can stop, pivot, and change course whenever you want to. Listen to this episode to learn about the power of stopping and starting again.
Have you ever wondered how to listen to your intuition? Or how to understand and strengthen your intuition? This week’s episode is a crash course in intuition that teaches you the basics of how to listen to your intuition and distinguish between the voice of Ego and Impulse.
A quote to take with you:
“I’m not just this thing that you have come to know me as or that I have built up or that you want me to stay as. I’m really stretching and exploring different sides of myself.”
Did you know that each episode comes with free guided journal prompts?
If you want to be in the know and get each Mindset Monday straight to your inbox complete with journal prompts to take you even further, get on my email list.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to listen to your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.