Advice for Women From Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Here’s advice for women on being authentic and trusting your inner voice, with inspiration from strong woman in history Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote Infidel, a memoir describing her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya (where I lived for three years…I’ve been to the streets and neighborhoods that she described! That was cool). Hirsi Ali survived female mutilation, beatings, civil war, arranged marriages, and life in four unstable countries.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali broke away from dutiful obedience and spoke out against traditional Muslim values. Trusting her inner voice, she questioned her family’s faith, her own belief system, and how women were treated in Muslim families. Ali became a Dutch politician and even influenced that country and legal system. Ayaan Hirsi Ali found her true identity - her authentic self - because she trusted her inner voice.
She now lives with bodyguards who protect her from the death threats she receives from terrorists. For more information about Infidel, click the book cover. For advice for women on trusting your inner voice, read on…
Finding authenticity and trusting your inner voice can be tricky because our culture - most cultures - rewards conformity, normal behavior, and blending in with the crowd. Women are especially encouraged to be quiet, don’t make waves, be a good girl. As a result, we can lose ourselves - and your self is a terrible thing to lose. With inspiration from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, here’s how to find your true identity, trust your inner voice, and strengthen your self-esteem.
5 Steps to Trusting Your Inner Voice
1. Listen to your gut. Put other people’s expectations and opinions aside. What do you think, feel, and want? Part of finding your true identity and trusting your inner voice is letting go of the question “What will people think?” Getting older helps with accepting that people may not think what you want them to - and letting it go. Becoming a strong woman involves listening to your gut and finding your true identity - like Ayaan Hirsi Ali did.
2. Stay connected to your dreams and goals. You have responsibilities, duties, expectations, and life to deal with - hopefully not a traditional Muslim childhood or female mutilation - making it harder to stay focused on who you really are and trust your inner voice. But, if you pursue your dreams right now, try picturing yourself achieving your goals in the future. Visualization great advice for women, because it’s a practical way to trust your inner voice and get you started on the path to success.
3. Express your emotions. If you feel angry, get your anger out - without burying your feelings in chocolate ice cream, heroin, cigarettes, wine, or frenzied activity. If you’re sad, cry or write in your journal or pray instead of shopping or watching TV. Staying in touch with your true emotions is hard (and expressing them can be even harder), but it’ll help you be your authentic self. Expressing your true emotions is good advice for women, and requires that you trust your inner voice.
4. Choose your activities carefully. Instead of participating in activities you feel lukewarm about or outright hate, learn to say no without feeling guilty or ashamed. Limit your activities to things that represent who you are and what you believe in. When you choose what you really want to do, you’ll discover who you really are. Maybe you’ll be viewed as an infidel - but that may actually be the highest compliment you’ll ever receive.
5. Take risks. To find your true self, challenge yourself as you try new things. Reach out to other people. Let yourself be vulnerable and don’t be afraid to make waves. Trust your inner voice when it comes to taking risks, especially when you’re afraid, and find creative solutions to your problems. Being an authentic woman involves risks - there’s no doubt about it. But “if there aren’t any dragons, it’s not an adventure worth telling,” says Sarah Ban Breathnach.
Let Ayaan Hiris Ali’s life story as told in Infidel help you learn to trust your inner voice - and to be grateful for the life you have.
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Comment by Christine on 23 June 2008:
Laurie, overall this is a great site with lots of inspirational wisdom. But I feel it’s important to clarify the following:
A traditional Muslim upbringing does NOT include genital mutilation, beatings, oppression of women, forced marriages, etc. These are horrific cultural interventions that happen in spite of Islamic doctrine and tradition, not because of it.
Such offensive and oppressive cultural practices have no place in Islam. Ayaan Hiris Ali’s experiences are understandably upsetting. But she has wrongly accused Islam rather than her family and the society in which she grew up.
Comment by LauriePK on 23 June 2008:
Christine,
Thanks for your comment — it really is great to hear that not all Muslim families are the way Hirsh Ali described. Her memoir does paint a bleak, scary picture of Islam for women. It’s good to know that not all families are like that.
Laurie