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.
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Show Notes | TranscriptWhen 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, and this is a lesson that I learned last year, and I learned it again this year, and I hope I won’t have to learn it again next year. Maybe I got it now, is to let go. Very difficult because especially for entrepreneurial people, for go-getters achievers, we want to make this happen. We want the world to be a better place. We just want this so bad. And then our energy gets very knotted, very tight, all they’re all in a bundle. And we want it so bad. We see it. We know that that’s how it works. It’s out there. We see it, we become it, and then we get all tied, and then it’s the opposite of what we want. And on top of that, we no longer enjoy it. That’s the worst part. We don’t enjoy what we’re doing. We’re doing the things that we’re doing because it brings us joy. And then we get all verklempt, and then we don’t enjoy it, and it’s the opposite. We don’t get where we want, and we spin, spin, spin, spin, and nothing happens. And we get frustrated. And down and down we go. Letting go of the attachment to outcome. You see it like the GPS. I see where I’m going. I need to know where I’m going. But then let the journey unfold. Do what you have to do, do you, and do your stuff, but let go. In businesses, you have different departments. You delegate work. In this case, delegate something to the universe. They’ll take care of their part. You do you.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, yeah. We’re so in sync here because, like, what I talk about in my book, The L.O.V.E. Method, the L in love stands for let go and let God. And that’s exactly what it is. And I even wrote a blog article one time that said that God is your silent partner in business. Because when you can turn things over and you’re so right to let go of the outcome, because when you are yeah, when you’re so focused on, I got to make this happen, or I got to make the budget or whatever it is or get the next client, it actually sends out that vibration that actually pushes people away instead of attracting them. I love that you’re talking about that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Actually I’m going to ask you this question, really. Why should our listeners and our viewers today do what you’re suggesting, especially even just about letting go? Because I know it’s really challenging whether you’re in business or not. So what would you say to someone like that?
Marina Shakour Haber
The letting go is really hard because our concept is the holding on. It also indicates, though, that there’s a lack of faith and trust and certainty. Underneath that it really indicates that we are not trusting the universe. We’re not trusting God. We are not trusting that we are taken care of. You’re not trusting that we are safe and protected. And granted, many people will go, yeah, maybe that worked for you, but it doesn’t matter who we are. Have faith, have trust. And last year I really learned it, and it was, you know, Florida was a hot real estate market. I had been renting a condo for seven years, and I felt I knew things that were turning. I knew it. It came. I got 30-day notice. Thirty days is very difficult, especially if you don’t have a place to move to. So, we had to immediately I stopped everything and started looking to buy. I was no longer renting. I was buying. We found something; 30 days found something. I changed the condition to 40 days. And seven days into it, I learned that the apartment, the condo that I was buying could not be bought because there was a four and a half million-dollar lien on it. That’s not something that you can change.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Marina Shakour Haber
That night I panicked. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. Anxiety wake up call, and I started pacing. And then I went outside on my lanai and my head was spinning. I painted that vision of doom and gloom. There’s nothing out there. What am I going to do? I’m homeless, I’m in and on and on. Even I got on my own nerves. That’s a lot. So I said enough. Enough! Stop. Took a deep breath, I collected my thoughts. Really what I did is I pulled all the pieces and brought them together at my heart center. And I went into a beautiful, deep meditation and I heard the voice. And the voice asked me if it had ever left me homeless without a roof over my head. And there was never a time that I was left without any means. I said, “No”. So did the voice said, why would I do it to you now? There’s really no reason. So I heard, “Let go. Surrender. Surrender. You go and do what you have to do and let us do what we have to do. Have trust, have faith, have certainty. Go. You are safe and you are protected.” The last words were, everything will turn out better than you think it will. And with that I felt this enormous sense of relief and I let go. And I have to tell you, the next day, that morning, I opened the computer, there were a couple of things on listed new. We went and looked. Got something that day. And then from that moment on, it was like magic. Things happened. One led to the other to let the other; it was magic. Everybody said it’s impossible. No, it was possible. It happened by magic. And that’s what I mean. When we let go, as you know, we let in, we let in. We stop spinning when our energy gets too fast, all wound up. Spirit cannot come in. Cannot come in. We are too fast. Spirit is slower. Slow down, slow down. It opens voids. They can come in. And it really worked. And then I forgot all about it. There you go.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love it. Yeah. And I actually have I’ve got a picture that I made or it was like on a block of wood one time and I put with God, all things are possible so that I could remember that. And I have it by my bed so that I can see that every morning and remind myself that because sometimes we still get into things are going on. In fact, I had been having a little well, some of my life is concerned and so it was getting me all upset about it yesterday and then today after, well, I think even before I meditated. But I love that you meditate because I think that’s such a wonderful practice. It is how we can really connect. But I realized I reminded myself just kind of what you were hearing is that God will take care of me. God has been taking care of me and will continue. So even though my other person in my life is fearful right now, that’s his problem and he’s going to have to work through that. But I know that it’s all good because God is abundant. I am part of God. That means I’m abundant too.
Marina Shakour Haber
Absolutely. You know what I did? Every day, I had to repeat a certain mantra over and over and over again. Have certainty, have faith. It is so. Everything will be better because doubt creeps in. Our ego will not allow that because it fears for its existence, its survival. So it will constantly serve this doubt and the worry and all this negative thinking. So off we go. And I had this mantra, and I kept repeating it, and it carried me through that. That energy lifted me up. Yeah.
Gloria Grace Rand
I’m so glad. Is there anything else, any other point maybe that you want to share about the book in particular before I kind of get into I want to maybe ask you some other things too, but is there anything else, any other good nugget that you want to have our audience share? Because obviously you’re going to have to go get the book to read everything. But is there something else that you think would be really important, something to help our audience?
Marina Shakour Haber
I also the other thing is that I feel it’s important to realize that failures are essential. Failures and faults and missteps are essential. They’re part of our foundation. They’re part of the glue that bonds our building stones, our foundation, together. Without them, we cannot make it. Because as I was writing and my editor pointed something out that there was something missing. And so I didn’t want to write where she was guiding me to because I wasn’t going there. So I had this vision came through, and it really came through me. And I saw this pyramid. And the pyramid is the pyramid of every project. We start at the base, and at the base we have building blocks. They’re pure. Then we start on a project. We have all these illusions of this wonderfulness and it’s so pure, it’s like gold. But gold is soft, it’s malleable. So you need something to make this pure, pure building material harder. Failures, faults are like alloys. They strengthen. They glue the blocks together. So with that, I said, oh, we start out broad, we strengthen it. That’s our foundation. And then we build it up. And that’s the journey that the GPS that leads you to the tip of whatever project you have. And as you go through the eye of the needle, you’re birthing your next project. So it is a continuous growth and continuation. So failures and faults are essential. Embrace them. You’ve learned something new.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. Because that’s what life is all about. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Anything in nature is that way, and so why should we not be the same way? And it is important to know that, yeah, things are going to happen again. Living in Florida, we’ve seen this year with a couple of hurricanes that have come through and that have been very devastating for a lot of people. And you can give up or you can say, okay, this is what life has dealt me today. Show me what to do next so I can move forward.
Marina Shakour Haber
Yeah.
Gloria Grace Rand
What gets you excited about the work that you’re doing?
Marina Shakour Haber
Helping other people. That for me, is the greatest joy. To see other people find themselves, to see other people understand who they truly are, understand what is going on within them in the inner world, learning to cultivate their inner world, to embrace themselves, to become empowered, because that’s how we change the bigger picture. The more people have an uplifting and a positive energy, the more we affect our collective consciousness, the more we raise our vibration and lead us into the paradise that this world was meant to be, the more we can overcome the suffering and pain of so many people. That gives me absolute joy and fulfillment. Yes.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, that’s good to hear and I share that. It is so nice when you really great when you can impact the lives of other people. I love that. What are you curious about right now?
Marina Shakour Haber
What am I curious about? Here comes my impatience. Why is it taking so long for us to change the suffering and the pain of the many? So, yeah, that’s what I am curious about. What can we do to make it better? Every morning in my meditation, I do reach out and I ask for guidance so that I can make things better for others. And I ask for guidance to lead me to how I can do that. And that’s really always the question is, is what I’m doing sufficient? I wish I could do more. There’s the impatience. Thank you. So I’m not cured of it myself. Yeah, I would love to know, and that’s really the big picture. What will it take to make more of us come to this deeper understanding and to find happiness within? Because that in and of itself would change who we are, this feeling confident, knowing we are enough, knowing that we are part of the divine and thus change what is.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, and I think that is ultimately, it really does start with you. And so when you do the work on yourself and you’re raising your vibration on a daily basis and connecting, that helps. And then doing what you’re doing now, writing the book, that is certainly a way to be able to get the message out. And I think as long as any of us who are feeling like we want to have a positive impact in the world, go do your part, do whatever it is that you can do, because you also never know how many other people you’re going to impact because of what you have done. One person may read your book and then be inspired, and then they’ll impact somebody else, or even just share the book with somebody else and then they’ll read it and whatnot. But it starts with ourselves. And then just do as much as you can do every day and go back to what you had said earlier about having faith and having faith that everything that people will see the light, because I do feel that they are. I feel that people are waking up. And so we just have to shine the light in the world, keep doing it, what we’re doing, and get more people to shine the light. And eventually it’ll be so bright out there.
Marina Shakour Haber
I agree. We have to just recruit more people to embrace themselves. Just start small. Embrace yourself, love yourself. And that’s really a big taboo, loving yourself. I mean, when I grew up, there was even no such thought. And today at least you talk about that you need to love yourself, because if you don’t love yourself, you cannot love another fully because you’re really not accepting yourself. And it used to be such a taboo, ooh, but it’s really essential.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. And you can see it in the people who are very conflict oriented, shall we say, and are always just either complaining or just really, in a way, even belligerent towards other people. And I send those people lots of love because I truly believe that they don’t love themselves and that is why that they’re lashing out and they’re operating too much from this fear based part of themselves instead of operating from love, which is what they are, because we all are. We all have love is sort of our love is in our DNA. It’s just not always recognized. Is there anything interesting that you haven’t done yet that you would like to do before you’re finished on this go round on planet Earth?
Marina Shakour Haber
I would love to go to Tibet, India. I would love to go to do one of those spiritual journeys and be in an ashram, do some of those meditation. That would be what I would really like to do. Just to maybe really be quiet, because I find that is one of my most difficult things, to sit quietly. I can only imagine the suffering that I must endure to sit quiet for an hour or two. So, yes, I would like to challenge myself to that and enjoy it. Learn to go deeper and to access higher levels of consciousness. Yeah, that would be cool.
Gloria Grace Rand
I’ll tell you what I’m going to suggest to you. Definitely put that on your vision board or whatever you have about going there. But in order to get yourself used to it, you might want to consider looking for a silent retreat somewhere because you can do like a weekend retreat. There are places that have it. If you want to get really intense, you can do a ten-day retreat, which is what I did. I did ten days. And there was a woman who came, who I talked to before we started this, before you actually start everybody gets together first, and then at the end of the evening, then they start. But she had never even meditated before, and so she came to do this, and she’s like, oh, no. When she was like, looking, she’s like, I’m not sure how I’m going to manage this, but I will tell you is that every day there was a teacher that you could go speak to, you could ask questions of, and that’s what she did. She took advantage of that every day so that she could speak. So if it’s something like that, that would probably help you as well.
Marina Shakour Haber
I’m impressed that she stuck it out for ten days.
Gloria Grace Rand
She did. Yeah, she really did. And I was impressed with it too. And it’s definitely a life changing experience. I highly recommend it. But again, you can start with just a day or a weekend or something like that. You don’t have to go ten days.
Marina Shakour Haber
I would start small.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about that I should have?
Marina Shakour Haber
Well, I have my book divided into three parts being, doing, having.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay.
Marina Shakour Haber
Yeah. Because it all starts with being who we are. So we need to work on ourselves first, as we said, embracing, loving, accepting ourselves, knowing who we are, knowing what we want. I realize more and more that very few people know what they want in life. We’re just following a path, we’re just going along. And then certain things happen in life, and we suddenly realize this ended now or it will end, and I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. And there comes this moment of clarity and absolute panic. What now? That’s the time to start preparing and start thinking, who am I? What do I like? And very often it’s extremely blocked by, especially the older we get, I think the more we are into our habits and into this blocking of possibility, and also after COVID, this sense of isolation and separation and our not being together in a community that creates enormous amount of fear. So all of these things put together, the now what is tremendous. So that’s the first thing is understanding who we are, what we want, and then it is doing those things that will get us to where we want to be and what we want to experience in life. I don’t want to use the word have because having tends to lead to material things. That’s not what this is about. It’s really truly experiencing the joy and the thrill and the enthusiasm and the challenges and the failures. Life. In other words, life. And I’ve also learned that, again, in this realm, again, we need to let go because so often we hold on to the outcome that we forget to live, live, enjoy, breathe. This is an experience. It’s not a torture chamber. So just experience and live. And then the having is really having love and gratitude, forgiveness for yourself and others. Those are the big concepts that I would like to invite our listeners to embrace.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I’m with you 100%, and I love all of this because it really confirms everything that I’ve learned over my life and certainly even in the writing of my book, because we come at it from different languages, but we’re still speaking the same language, actually, maybe different dialects or something. But I love it, and I so appreciate that you have put that together. And yeah, it really is because it’s about having joy, having love, having a fulfilled life, which sometimes it is nice to have the things, but ultimately, you’re not going to take those things with you when you leave this planet. So, if you don’t want to be one of those people, they say on their deathbed they’re not being upset about things. They’re more regretting the time that maybe they waste,d that they didn’t get to spend with their family or friends. And so that’s so important. That’s what we want to have.
Marina Shakour Haber
You can have the things. Nobody it’s not that, but we should not live for the things, But rather for the essence of what these things bring to us. Joy.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll just share briefly a wonderful experience I got to have this year because I celebrated my 60th birthday, and something that I love are hot air balloons. And so my son treated me to a trip to Albuquerque for their hot air balloon festival. And so it wasn’t necessarily things, it was the experience. And I got to spend time with him and his girlfriend, which is also priceless. And so it was a wonderful thing and wonderful time. So, I know I want to ask you also now is, if someone is listening to this today and is really very intrigued and wants to know more about how to plot their GPS to happiness, how can people get in touch with you? Maybe they want to work with you and/or get the book. So, where’s the best place for people to connect?
Marina Shakour Haber
They can visit my website. It’s yourgpstohappiness.com. The book is on Amazon. It’s now also on Barnes and Noble. And they can through the website and they can contact me. Otherwise, they can email me at Marina dot Shakour@gmail.com. But it’s easiest, I believe, through the website. Do the contact, and I will respond.
Gloria Grace Rand
Very good. All right, well, I will be sure and have all that information in the show notes. So if you’re listening somewhere and you don’t have a pen in hand, just know you’ll be able to get that. Go back to Liveloveengagepodcast.com or wherever you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform and look up this episode and you’ll be able to get that information. So, thank you so much for being here. I knew you were going to be awesome. And I know I had mentioned at the beginning that we’ve sort of known each other, sort of because we’re both members of a women’s organization, but we never really had… I think this is really our first chance to have a really good conversation. So, I’m so glad that we were able to do it. And I definitely would like to stay connected with you, because, like I said, I think we’re soul sisters.
Marina Shakour Haber
I agree. It’s a beautiful path to walk. It’s a beautiful path.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Well, thank you again for being here. I’m so grateful that you’re here. And I want to thank everyone out there who has been, whether you’re watching on YouTube, be sure to subscribe to the channel so that you’ll be able to get notified when the next podcast episode comes out. It’s at GloriaGraceRand. And I’m sure you probably are subscribed already on your favorite podcast platform, but if not, make sure that you are and tell a friend about the show. And that’s how we grow. And I so appreciate all of you for being here today. So until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
