Mariam Farag is an entrepreneur, media specialist and motivational speaker – but she’s also struggled with anxiety.
The founder of Humanizing Brands, which helps businesses and media develop more sustainable, diverse and inclusive operations, she also led MBC Group as founding head of brand reputation, communications and social impact. She joined the Livehealthy podcast how we can learn to overcome our fears, and why it’s important to support young people and help them navigate through today’s social media-obsessed world.
How did you get involved with motivational speaking?
Because of my mother. She instilled positivity, ambition and a go-getter attitude in me. She taught me to always pick myself up from any unfortunate incident or situation. I feel like I owe it to her, and what she instilled in my siblings and I. Honestly speaking, I stumbled upon motivational speaking. It was by accident that I discovered I had a gift for it.
I stayed with MBC Group, one of the leading media conglomerates in the MENA region, for eight and a half years, all the while working on areas such as corporate philanthropy, social impact communication and talent development. I was fortunate enough to travel around the region and across the world, and deliver talks about the brand, its values, mission and vision, and what we wanted to achieve.
Our focus was on youth and I realized that when I was on stage in schools and universities, I was inspiring to people because I was real. I told personal stories, connected with people and I didn’t just focus on the corporate world.
When I realized that I had this gift, I decided to build on it and try to motivate more people to find their purpose and pursue it. I do talks on social media, and I also do training sessions both online and offline.
What holds people back from following their dreams?
Fear. Mainly fear of failure, or fear of letting yourself down.
You need to have enough courage to believe in yourself and your dreams, and take a risk. A lot of people tell me that they can’t leave their job because they’re scared about not making it and not being able to pay the bills. A lot of women can’t leave their unhappy marriages because they’re scared of the unknown. A lot of students don’t want to risk studying the subject that they really, really love instead of the one that guarantees a good job.
Fear holds us back a lot. Not speaking to your boss about your promotion. Not being able to negotiate your contract properly and ask for more money. It’s always fear of the unknown. I’m also guilty of that because we’re all human beings. So I’ve started coaching myself. It’s not about, ‘What if I don’t make it?’ The question is, ‘What if I do make it?’.
What if I do actually go for that interview and get that dream job? Or speak to my boss and get that promotion? Or step away from corporate roles and go follow my dreams? To cut a long story short, fear is what we need to overcome. It’s not easy, but you can do it. You can exercise your mind.
It’s interesting that you still feel fear…
Absolutely. I get intimidated all the time. I don’t have much fear on stage but I do worry about not inspiring my audience. I fear that what I post on social media is not going to be valuable enough for my followers. I want to inspire people. I don’t want to seem like a person that’s out there for fame. I have a fear of failure. I think, will I make it? Will I be able to make all my dreams a reality? Will I be successful in my business? Will I be successful in my next step? Am I a good mother? Am I a good person? Am I a good friend?
I think it’s good and healthy to always question because it encourages you to pause and reflect.
Just two days ago, I had an incident with a friend. I didn’t handle the situation properly and so I went back and said I was really sorry and that I shouldn’t have done what I did.
The number one rule is that you admit when you are wrong, scared, mentally not okay or if you need help. The first step is realization and admitting to yourself that you have an issue that you need to work on.
How have you experienced anxiety?
Absolutely. I still fear the future sometimes. I fear financial instability as well, and that’s one thing that I cannot handle. It’s the one big fear that I have because, by nature, I’m a provider and a giver. I want to take care of everyone around me. I worry if my two boys will be able to grow in a healthy world without wars. If they will succeed if they go to university or choose another path, and if I will be able to help them become who they want to be.
Sometimes, when a lot of that fear comes and creeps up on me I suffer from anxiety. I have had many anxiety attacks.
This actually started happening prior to the pandemic. Back in 2016 when I was travelling a lot around the world and I had a massive workload with MBC.
I was always multitasking between my children, husband, work, and myself. I would have an anxiety attack if I was in the middle of a meeting and I received a personal request from my children, or my husband, or about something that was happening back home thousands of miles away. Automatically the room started shrinking, and I would have trouble breathing. I had to exit the room, go outdoors and do some breathing exercises.
Then when the pandemic hit, it hit me hard. I did not take to the lockdown well. That’s when I realized that my anxiety had always been there in the background and that I’d been ignoring it and not wanting to open that Pandora’s box. I wasn’t sleeping well or eating well, I was crying all the time and I felt like the world was going to end tomorrow.
That’s when I started looking for help online. I looked for articles to read and videos to watch, and I tried to work on myself. I think the fear of the unknown never goes away because it’s innately within us. So, you have to know how to handle it. My routine involves just sitting down for five minutes on my own to have a coffee before I wake up my children for school and before anybody else is awake. I meditate and thank God for everything that I have, and everything that I don’t have. Because you could be suffering from a deadly disease or not even have a roof over your head.
I think we all need to count our blessings in a gratitude notebook. Every morning just write down five things that you’re really grateful for and learn to manage your expectations of yourself. One of the things that made me fall into the trap of anxiety was my overachieving fear that I wasn’t achieving enough or doing enough. We tend to create our own anxiety.
How can we cope with all the pressures of social media?
I think social media has taken a toll on the entire world, and especially youth. I talk about it a lot with my children, and other youth that I meet. I tell them to be careful of social media and what they see on there, because most of the time it’s fake. Social media tends to give us anxiety. Everyone else seems to have the perfect holiday, the perfect house, the perfect job and the perfect body. You feel that you’re missing out.
Then you’ve got all these people talking about how to make money, whether it’s through cryptocurrency, NFTs or the Metaverse, and all these entrepreneurs that made it when they were 19 and became billionaires. It all gives you anxiety and makes you feel like such a big loser.
I’ve realized that I need to filter what I stream.
I just stream the things that I like and then stop. The things that I don’t like I unfollow, restrict, or just disregard completely. Again, it is about learning to be happy with what you have, and being grateful for what you have and your journey so far.
However, you should still be ambitious enough to go for more, and be hungry for success. You need to find that purpose that keeps you going every day and makes you get out of bed every morning and go for it. Once you do, all of these external factors will not disappear, but they will whittle down a little bit.
I wrote an article for LinkedIn about a year and a half ago, talking about the meaning of success and how it differs between different people. For a mother, it could be that she has breakfast ready in the morning, the kids’ lunchboxes are done, and they are off to school on time. That’s success for her. While for other people success could be landing another client, or purchasing their dream car. We all have our own path, and we need to define it for ourselves. The minute we start doing that, that’s when everything else around us doesn’t matter. You just need to focus.
How do you overcome the worry that you’re ‘too old’ to do something?
I used to say, ‘I’m too old’ a lot.
I’ve always had a passion for acting and until maybe two years ago I used to tell myself that it was too late to pursue it.
Then after the pandemic hit, I was presented with an opportunity to be part of a pilot for a drama sitcom. I found myself going for the casting call, getting the role and traveling to New York to film for three days. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’
I was following a childhood dream that I’ve had for years and years and I didn’t care what the outcome would be.
I want people to know that it’s never too late. If you Google many successful business people, or even the actor Harrison Ford, you’ll see that they didn’t become famous or land their dream role until they were in the late 40s or early 50s. Honestly speaking, it’s never too late to pick up anything new because you never know, it might be your big break and it might shift you onto a different path. It excites me to try different things and experience different things in life.
You might try something and realize it’s not for you. But if you don’t you have to live with the ‘What if?’. Like ‘What if I had taken that course?’ or ‘What if I had written that book?’
We all lost loved ones during the pandemic. If there’s one lesson it taught me it’s that you can’t postpone things. You need to start doing things. You only live once and you need to live it on your own terms. If living it happily and peacefully and not chasing money is living it for you, then that’s good. If it’s wanting to make money in order to secure the future for your family or creating your own philanthropic line and helping a lot of people, then do it. If it’s quitting your job or taking a sabbatical to go and help children in Africa or in less privileged countries, just do it. Just dig deep and see what is happiness for you and start living that life because it’s never too late. But you need to act now.
What about that pressure, of not enough time?
Yes. I fear that there isn’t enough time. That’s why I was working, traveling, creating, and spreading myself like crazy because I was thinking that I didn’t have enough time to do all the things that I wanted to do, or enough time to inspire all the people that I wanted to inspire. That’s when I realized that I needed to slow down.
You need to take it easy, step by step, and just slowly start doing the things you want. I always say, don’t put 20 goals, put three and with each week or so add another one or two. We tend to overwhelm ourselves with so many things that we end up doing nothing. That’s when procrastination happens. I used to be a procrastinator myself because I used to sit there and flood myself with goals and tasks.
I would think that if I didn’t tick off at least half of my to-do list then I was a failure. I used to punish myself and it was just a vicious circle. We create everything for ourselves. If we just stop listening to our inner demons, everything is manageable. I’m not saying that I’ve mastered it all. There are times when I have to tell myself that it’s ok to feel overwhelmed or extra anxious.
If I have a little bit of a panic attack I maybe take a walk on the beach, or go for a swim. Do whatever makes you happy, read that book, see that friend, and just recoup. But always remember that it’s just a bad day, it’s not a bad life. Tomorrow you have another chance to get up and be a better version of yourself.
How do you help your kids manage their mental health?
Again, we need to look at social media. It’s a great tool for reaching a lot of people, but it can also be a very vicious tool to shame, bully, and inflict suffering. For a lot of the teenagers out there, social media is not really helping because they’re already struggling with their hormonal changes and their struggles in high school. They’re already thinking ‘Am I good enough? Do I look good? Is my hair okay? Am I popular? Am I liked? Am I invited enough to parties?’
We’ve all been through it. I have two boys, a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old, and I can tell you that boys suffer just as much as girls, perhaps even more. This is one topic that I’m very passionate about. Boys are told that they shouldn’t cry or be weak. Adolescent boys have so many challenges that they’re facing alone and they don’t talk about it.
If you don’t talk about it, you build up scenarios in your head and you may end up feeling suicidal.
We’ve seen that happen all over the world. That’s the number one fear that I have for adolescent boys and girls. But girls at least tend to love talking. We talk to each other, we talk to our friends. But boys and men don’t do that.
It’s because of the misperceptions that it is weak for men to talk about mental health problems. I want to raise awareness that it’s okay for both boys and girls to cry, to feel scared or like they’re not good enough.
Society also puts so much pressure on you to figure it all out when you’re a teenager. Like where and what you’re going to study at university. Everything has to be planned. There’s so much pressure from social media to have the perfect look, or the perfect things. The ‘Like’ button is pressure enough by itself. If you publish a post and you don’t get enough likes you think that nobody likes you. I truly fear for this generation.
I lose sleep because of these topics. I want to help more kids understand they are good enough and that it’s ok to embrace their uniqueness and who they are.
They should celebrate themselves and believe in themselves. Everyone is different. So why would they want to be like somebody else or a celebrity?
If you’re struggling, please speak up. Speak to anyone, whether it’s a counselor at school, a friend, parents, an uncle, aunt, or a friend of the family. We can’t just leave the situation and let a teenager suffer on their own. That’s where we end up with another dead child. That’s my ultimate fear for all teenagers.
Parents should talk to their children, but not spy on them. I don’t have access to my children’s social media or phones. I don’t know their passwords and I respect their privacy. I do not snoop around but I have conversations with them and I make sure they know they can tell me anything.
To get real answers, try to be smart with your questions. Have those conversations and dig deeper.
There’s a very thin line between fearing your parents, and respecting and loving them. If they fear you too much, they’re going to do a lot of bad things behind your back, and it will backfire. If you have respect and love and they can have those open conversations with you, you’ve nailed it. Please parents have that conversation with your children and be close to them. It’s extremely important to be your child’s friend.
To find out more about Mariam Farag, follow her on Instagram @mariamfaragofficial.
