Welcome to RaghadEbied.com - I am honoured that you are here and hope to be able to inspire you on your journey to achieving more success and happiness.  I hope you enjoy browsing through my videos and inspirational quotes under Multimedia, my blog posts under the Inspiration Blog, staying up to date with any upcoming events or requesting speaking engagements under Speaking/Events and more.  

Wishing you more joy, fulfillment and peace everyday,
Raghad

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Featured Inspiration:

Where will the road take us next?

Where will the road take us next ?

-By Raghad Ebied

Where will the road take us nextt?

Only God, in His Infinite Wisdom knows what is best.

So carry not the burdens of tomorrow

And carry not only the memories that bring you sorrow

Carry hope and joy and love

And keep raising your hands to the One above

Asking Him to light your path with His Grace

And cast a smile into your heart and on your face

Because yes while the road may sometimes be tough

And you may sometimes feel enough is enough

Believe in your heart that there's a Creator so Kind

Kinder than you can ever  in your mind

Believe in your heart that you will have better days

And God will guide you to the so many ways

In which you will find happiness and peace

And your current worries and distress will cease.

Staring at the Miraculous Sky

Staring at the Miraculous Sky
-By: Raghad Ebied

Sometimes amidst all the struggles and the strife
And with all the ups and downs of life 
all we have to do is stare up at the sky
and ponder in amazement and ask ourselves why
why do we sometimes forget the beauty of this earth we were put on
the majestic sun and mystical clouds which are second to none
is it because of all the suffering we see
because we know seeing that can empower us to be
to be more compassionate and kind
in a world where personal interest has caused some to be blind
not blind by sight but blind by heart
For A heart that sees beauty and emanates beauty
A heart that sees love and emenates love
A heart that sees goodness and emanates goodness
can truly make such a profound difference.
So the next time you feel overwhelmed by suffering or strife
Stare up at that miraculous sky to remember
the beauty of life.

Copyright Raghad Ebied 2016

Inspiring Your Soul - Part 1

Are you looking for more meaning in your life? Are you looking beyond the satisfaction that comes with money, status or fame for the satisfaction that can come from inspiring your soul?

I’ve been in the field of education, personal development and positive psychology for over 10 years now and there is so much about there about how to be happier and how to have more success especially when it comes to your career or business.  

I’ve noticed recently though that people are searching for more - searching for more than the happiness and success that solely comes with money or status or fame.  

They’re looking for something deeper, something more meaningful - something that goes beyond satisfying our bodily desires and rises higher to satisfy our souls.

By inspiring our souls, I believe we can have the opportunity to cultivate hope, strength, and the dream of a better future for the generations to come.  We all know the world has so much suffering and perhaps it’s because we’ve lost touch of this crucial aspect of our well being which is all about how to inspire our souls and feed our hearts.

When it comes to inspiring our soul, I believe this is important and possible for anyone from any faith, background, or tradition so my message is intended for people from all walks of life, because I have enjoyed having and meeting amazing friends and colleagues from all different backgrounds and I see again and again, when we inspire our souls and feed our hearts, we can truly live a life that is aligned with our purpose and the vision we want for our lives.

So I’d like to share a quote from one of my favourite poets, Rumi (Jalaluldin Al-Rumi), who was a Muslim philosopher and scholar.  He says “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy”

And I love this quote because it’s getting at that core issue of doing things with your soul because this is what will bring you joy and fulfillment.

And while I understand that many people will find different ways of inspiring their soul whether it is through music or art or other forms, my particular focus here is going to be on inspiring our soul through having faith in a Higher Power, in A Loving Creator, in God.

So, again in my particular case, I am going to call the Higher Power I believe in God, while understanding that some or many may have other beliefs which I understand.  

Here is the first step you can take to start inspiring your soul:

Recognize all of the divine blessings and gifts we have been endowed with

This requires us to contemplate and be mindful how Divine Grace and Love and Mercy works so amazingly in our lives -  to know that we have a Creator and Sustainer Who has a Divine Plan for us that will unfold keeping our best interest in mind, even when we don’t understand why we may be going through or have gone through certain challenges, losses, and adversities.

Another way of framing this is to have more gratitude. Recent research cites that keeping a gratitude journal where you write down three things you’re grateful for everyday can increase your happiness levels substantially.  This modern research doesn’t come as a surprise to me because again there are many spiritual traditions that teach us the importance of gratitude.  In Islam for example, the Quran cites God saying: “If you are thankful, I shall increase you forever more”

So for example if we can be grateful for:

Our heatlh - our sight and hearing and ability to walk and talk and feel - these are immense blessings that thousands may be missing.

Our family and friends - the support and love they provide us with.

For me personally, my faith and my spirituality and my ability to feel connected and inspired by God, a Higher Power, in my life, gives me a tremendous sense of gratitude.

You find now in our ever competing society for more, more money, more gadgets, more clothes, more stuff in general that we forget the power of gratitude for the simplest yet most valuable blessings we are endowed with.

We seem to focus on our energy what we don’t have and develop what’s called a scarcity mindset and many personal development experts and business mentors will tell you as well that this is not healthy because we tend to attract what we focus on.

So by practicing gratitude we can develop an abundance mindset instead and focus on abundance which in turn attracts more abundance to us.

So a practical way you can implement this step is to write down three things that you’re grateful for each day.

When you live with pain remember...

When you live with pain
Walk with pain
And sit with pain
Remember to be grateful
Because God, in His Infinite Wisdom and Love, is still giving you an opportunity to do something with your life
He is giving you another day
He is giving you another hour
He is giving you another minute
To know Him
To remember Him
To love Him
To do good and inspire others to do good
Inspite of all the pain
Inspite of all the struggle
Inspite of all the fears
No matter how small or insignificant you think that good may be
Because there may be only one simple act of goodness you do
That is more precious in the eyes of God
Than anything you could have done for years or even in a lifetime
So throughout pain,
Remember
You still have life
You still have hope
You still have willpower
You still have an opportunity to do so much good and change the lives of many around you to the better through His Grace.

Who Needs Our Compassion? Does it Start with Ourselves?

Many times we think compassion is limited for the sick and the needy, and while that is very important, the reality is compassion is needed all around us and it can start first and foremost with having self- compassion.

Dr. Kristin Neff , a graduate from Berkeley, in her research and book on "self-compassion" (2015) cited how having self-compassion is related to increased well-being, motivation, happiness and connecting with others and decreased levels of anxiety and depression.

She speaks about how self-compassion, is the idea that we, along with everyone on the planet, have flaws, weaknesses, and 'failures'.  It is being ok with not being perfect because nobody is perfect - no matter what their profiles on facebook or LinkedIn looks like. 

Self-compassion is not 'self-pity' because self-compassion is about recognizing all of those 'icky' feelings you have with kindness, which in fact enables you to let go of them rather than keep them bottled up inside.

It's also not about being 'weak' - research is now showing us that self-compassion can be a great way to cope with life's struggles and enable us to be more resilient and bounce back after adversity.

Self-compassion is also not about giving ourselves excuses to take a 'back seat' in how we manage our lives - to recognize our struggles with kindness, enables us to feel emotionally grounded.  Also, according to research, self-compassion is more powerful than blaming and shaming ourselves, because we recognize the challenges but can also recognize our strengths and how to continue to build on those in order to be our best selves.

Self-compassion is not about feeling better than others which is sometimes referred to as having a high sense of self-esteem.  Although there is a lot of emphasis on having high self-esteem, the reality is this quest for being above average and standing out, if not prefaced with a healthy attitude and intention, can lead to narcissism which is not healthy and not what self-compassion is really about.  On the other hand, self-compassion is this idea once again of acknowledging our inherently imperfect humanity.  So while self-esteem can fluctuate, self-compassion should always be there as a base for us to go back to and say even though things aren't great now, it's okay, it happens because we are human.

Finally, self-compassion is not about being selfish, because when we can be kind and nurturing to ourselves, we can continue to care for the people we love most.  Remember we cannot give what we don't have. This is especially true for women who are known to be 'givers' and 'nurturers'.

Essentially having self-compassion can lead the path for you to be more successful and more compassionate with others.

How is Compassion connected to Courage and Resiliency?

To be compassionate by recognizing and striving to alleviate one's own as well as others' struggles and challenges can take a tremendous amount of courage.

Courage to overcome the shame or blame or fears that keep us and keep others sometimes trapped in a cycle of unhappiness or inability to achieve our goals and realize our greatest dreams.

Courage to feel what it feels to be hurt, weak, betrayed, or the array of other feelings underlying suffering. Many times people are afraid of having self-compassion or compassion for others because they think it can be very emotionally taxing or draining.

The reality is being compassionate can enable you to be resilient - to bounce back after recognizing and striving to alleviate your as well as others' struggles.

I think being resilient may come from having a tremendous amount of gratitude after you've recognized your own struggles and the strength you had and have to overcome them and the struggles others encounter and how blessed we really are.

Resiliency also comes about as a result of realizing that you do have the ability to overcome your own, as well as enable others to overcome their challenges, and to rise stronger after 'falling' for some time.

What is the True meaning of Compassion?

Many times when we hear of compassion, some of the first meanings we think of are empathy and kindness.  And while empathy and kindness are certainly aspects of compassion, there is more to this core value which is inherent to our humanity.

According to a Compassion Cultivation Training Program I participated in at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research in Education (CCARE) at Stanford University (2015), here are some important pointers on compassion:

Essentially, "compassion is to recognize and strive to alleviate one's own as well as other's suffering".  It involves having the "intention, awareness, focus, stability, and capacity to experience and show more compassion".

"Compassion is a natural capacity that is not always easy to express, and not to everyone.   And We have the capacity to develop and broaden compassion."

It is a trait highly regarded in many faiths including Islam, Christianity and Judaism, as well as in spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, and in personal beliefs. Moreover, we now have scientific research which reveals that compassion was a necessary and natural part of our evolution in order for us to protect, connect, and collaborate with one another (Goetz, Keltner, Simon-Thomas, 2010).

In my coming posts, I will be speaking more about the steps involved with fostering more self-compassion as well as compassion with others.