Building Resilience and Small Steps Back to Yourself: A Conversation with Henrietta Szovati

In this episode, I sit down with Henrietta Szovati to explore a journey shaped by profound moments and courageous leaps. Henrietta recalls how a near-death experience during a mountain hike opened up her path to spirituality, leaving her searching for life’s deeper meaning. Growing up in communist Hungary, she learned resilience in an environment that suppressed religion. She runs a vibrant writing club, empowering women to pursue their creative dreams and support one another along the way. Currently, she’s developing a leadership program specifically for Muslim women, while also nurturing her next big project, which is still under wraps.

Henrietta also shares her love affair with Andalusia's mountains and how nature now grounds her soul. She talks about her one-closet philosophy and how decluttering keeps her mind and life clear. And in one of her most powerful lessons, she describes how a silent six-month pause unexpectedly led her to her biggest dreams. For anyone seeking clarity, purpose, and resilience, this episode is full of insights that will leave you inspired to see the magic in stillness and creativity.

Find Henrietta at her website: www.henriettaszovati.com or on Facebook.

Transcript

Rose Aslan (0:2.466)

Assalamu alaikum Henrietta and it's so lovely to have you today on Rahma with Rose. I'm so pleased to have you as a guest. I've been following your work and we first encountered one another in the Muslim Writer's Salon and as a fellow writer and creative, I really just wanted to ask you to come on and share your story so others can also learn about your incredibly interesting journey too. So thank you for being here.

Henrietta Szovati (0:28.002)

Thank you, Salam alaikum salam, it was lovely to be here today with you.

Rose Aslan (0:32.812)

Thank you. So how would you describe yourself? You gave me a biography and then I'll introduce you. I've just introduced you with your biography, but how else would you describe yourself?

Henrietta Szovati (0:43.478)

Oh, I love this question because I think introduction is amazing when we continually change and we often forget to upgrade our introduction. So we keep sticking to the same labels usually as we are. So my current labels are I am a writer, I am a leadership consultant and I'm also a social entrepreneur. in this order, writer was always at the back of the list most of my life, although it was a dream that I had, but I never really owned it until I

Rose Aslan (0:54.550)

Mm -hmm. Exactly.

Henrietta Szovati (1:13.142)

managed to put together my first book. Leadership consultancy is something I do currently, but it's again something I have been doing for a long while. And social entrepreneurship is a new step for me as I go forward in life. And hopefully very soon I will be able to let you know more about this. But for now, it's just a social entrepreneur.

Rose Aslan (1:34.914)

Wonderful, yeah, in your bag if you mentioned you're working on a secret project, I'm sure we'll be looking forward to hearing more about that when you're ready to reveal. But yeah, you seem to be woman who wears many hats, or as we could say, hijabs. And so I'm really interested to get into this. So I always start with the first question I ask all of my guests is, do you remember when you first started getting interested in spirituality?

Henrietta Szovati (1:38.775)

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

Henrietta Szovati (1:47.867)

Mm -hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (2:0.364)

I do, I do. It's very easy for me to remember because it was at university and I know that might be a traditional story for most people to be interested in new ways and new avenues open up. But unfortunately, I had a near death experience in my last year of university. So I ended up falling on a rock.

breaking my skull and I was in a coma for three days. We were up in the mountains hiking and all I could remember for many, many years, even today, is that someone was holding my head. I was sitting in a car, I was taken to hospital and my parents didn't know where I was. And for three days I was in a coma. So I started hearing voices at the back of conversations between my parents and the doctor who was telling my mother that it was not.

angels who saved me. It must have been God, even though he himself didn't believe in God. So when I woke up, I looked, you know, I had no hair. There was a tube sticking out of my head. And he kept telling me that you need to find out who saved your life. And previously, I never had any experience of anything otherworldly or anything out of this world. So when I came out of hospital, I really needed to start my own journey. So I started healing my body.

And as a result of that, in that physical healing journey, I became a lot more open and receptive to things that were coming from beyond. I felt, it felt to me at that time, it was coming from beyond the curtain. So little encounters, magic in your life, the beautiful things that I previously never took notice of. So that's when I started. was 22, just about 22, leaving university.

And I think fundamentally everything shifted for me from that moment. I started to look at the world differently. started to... Something that I even do today is that I stopped listening to people's words. I started listening to their energies, their... how they show up, who they are, what's their presence like, and whether their behaviour matches their words. Because to me that's a very, very big learning.

Henrietta Szovati (4:20.994)

from spirituality. think spiritual people have a different take on certain things and I really enjoyed, now that I look back at my life, I really enjoyed that part of my life to be able to now at my age to just to say, look, I don't actually believe the words, but I believe your behavior. And that's where it started.

Rose Aslan (4:45.228)

That's beautiful that you're able to see people behind the things they say, which does not always contain the truth. And to be able to discern more about people's truth in their energy, in the way they act. So you grew up in Hungary, correct? And I'm guessing you grew up in the early days during the communist regime. So is that, yeah. So what was, I know that they suppressed religion of all kinds in that era. So when you say,

Henrietta Szovati (4:51.416)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (5:5.516)

Yes, absolutely.

Rose Aslan (5:13.856)

you first had this awakening after your terrible accident. What was it like growing up in that environment where religion wasn't really openly spoken about and was...

Henrietta Szovati (5:25.826)

So quite interestingly, by that time, Hungary was way in advance with other religions, Eastern religions. So we had a big Buddhist community, we had a big Hindu community. So I used to work at the time, I used to work for the Ministry of Interior Affairs as part of the international department of the ministry. So I come from that civil servant background.

I looked after myself, so I was living alone in the capital city, but I lived on the street where there was a Buddhist community group, where I used to attend for various lectures. They used to do the feeding, the cooking of lentils and become vegetarian. So it was continuous presence in my life. There was something beyond just what I was doing. But as I was growing up, just to go back on my childhood,

We were forced to learn Russian, for example. I studied Russian for eight years and I don't speak a word of it because it was not something that I was ever interested in. And I remember incidents like Monday evenings, they would switch off the electricity after eight o 'clock and we couldn't have it back until Tuesday, six, seven o 'clock in the morning. So I remember the rationing of the food. remember, you know, my parents wearing my

particularly my father wearing the same kind of clothes because that was the only thing available. I remember taking trips to Austria because this is where we could get hygiene products. So it was a very interesting, I wouldn't say, I don't think I experienced suppression in that sense, but the limitations that was placed on our creativity, our artistic expressions, even openness to the world was very, very.

Rose Aslan (7:8.534)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (7:15.810)

prominent and dominant. for me, the impact was that ever since I was an eight, nine year old little girl, I used to escape into books and I made up stories and I read stories and I was fascinated with things like Greek mythology and the Roman mysteries. And I loved every story. I probably knew every God in Egypt just because I love their stories. I love the arguments between the Greek gods. And so it's something that was part of my

bringing and I think it may be in a way a kind of saying no to what was available to me. It was very dry, very kind of calculated political system that I never really wanted to be part of. I think for me, Russia, it probably has done a favor for me, to be honest, because I just turned to what I was interested in and that was always stories.

and it was mythology. I'm still, and I have always been fascinated with mythology. Something beyond the obvious, something mystical that you figure your soul out by looking at how other people figure their things out and how they argue and how they solve a conflict. And I think for me, it has always been learning and reading about people's story to understand my own.

Rose Aslan (8:36.034)

Wow, thank you for sharing. I was just thinking back to my knowledge of the Greek mythology and it's been renewed lately because my 10 year old son loves Greek mythology and he listens to podcasts that I have listened with him on various trips and you learn conflict resolution from the Greek gods. I mean, they're always doing pretty nasty things to each other. So what I've never considered learning about that topic from them. So it's just fascinating the things that we draw from those sorts of themes, you know, I would never have considered

Henrietta Szovati (8:44.109)

Okay.

Henrietta Szovati (9:5.900)

Hmm.

Rose Aslan (9:6.126)

learning about conflicts from mythology, but you're right, you can learn about being a human from these myths. So I'm so curious if you can go back to your discussion about getting familiar with the Buddhist community. This was after university or growing up?

Henrietta Szovati (9:24.406)

Yeah, so around my accident, this is where I really became more familiar with what was happening. So when I came out of the hospital, I needed some time to recover from my physical injury. So they literally had to take out the skeleton part from the top of my head. So it took a little while and I had no hair. So I had to cover my hair because I was bald for a very long time before my hair could grow back. And I guess I was drawn

Rose Aslan (9:28.130)

Okay.

Henrietta Szovati (9:53.986)

to the Buddhist way of life because that's what was presented to me. There was nothing else. even though I had experience with living with Indian family, when I was just before university finished, I took a year out. I came to England and for better or worse, I became an au pair because I got a scholarship, but they couldn't pay some of my fees for covering other costs. So I needed to self fund some part of my journey. So I ended up.

living with a Bengali family who fundamentally changed my outlook because they were practicing Hindus and Jain. So the lady of the house was a Jain and the man came from a Hindu family. And fascinating as it was, it also made me think a lot more what's beyond life, what's what I experienced before. So for me, it was the first opening to anything Eastern, non -traditional, anything I wasn't

at all familiar with. But I was always a curious cat. wherever I go, have this thing about what is the learning in this for me. So I, of course, I participated in their traditional ceremonies and I became a vegetarian actually after that. So for two and a half, almost three years, I was a vegetarian. So for me to come back from there and then land in Hungary in a Buddhist community was almost a natural kind of progression. So

Rose Aslan (11:0.258)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (11:18.224)

I participated in their weekly lectures. I used to go to learning about their philosophy and I joined yoga classes. I even became a yoga teacher at some point. Meditation was part of my everyday practice. And there's something about Buddhism that I, even today, I really appreciate. You know, the process of how they approach the self. There is a lot of really beautiful.

elements of that that resonated with me. It's you know, I had a extremely demanding job as you can imagine. So I used to work 16 -17 hours a day. So I needed another life outside of work and because I was so young straight after university almost immediately I went into the Ministry of Interior. So it was a very high -powered high -pressure job. So I needed another life to survive and for me that kind of spiritual

underpinning was so important and I always wanted a life where spiritually somehow holds me up to be able to do the work that I need to do.

Rose Aslan (12:26.644)

How fascinating, the reasons that led you to it and that kept you there as a way just to give you that balance from that position. So bring us more along your journey. So for a number of years, I'm guessing you were in that community and working your job and something changed along the way. Tell us more about that journey.

Henrietta Szovati (12:34.818)

Bye.

Henrietta Szovati (12:44.844)

Yes, mean, interestingly, the way I have come to Islam, I think it's a lot more to do with the way I have become spiritual. And really quite fascinatingly, when I became a Muslim, a little bit later on, a couple of years down the line, my mother never really bothered, or my parents didn't really bother about me becoming a Muslim. Their problem was that I became religious. So for them, and for me as well, I needed to see the difference.

And think spirituality has always been part of my journey. And then when I became a Muslim, then I became religious. And then that was an added element to who I was becoming. But I guess, so I was probably practicing, I would say, a practicing Buddhist for about four years, all in all. But as I was doing my job, I met some fascinatingly interesting people. And one of them was a Muslim. And of course, I was in middle of Hungary.

really bad rap about Muslims in general. So I wasn't open to hear about Muslims. I didn't even know where there was a mosque or anything in Budapest where I used to live, even though we have a very rich Ottoman heritage. We had the Ottoman Empire in Hungary for 150 years. So that brings another really interesting element. And my father's name was Sultan. So later on, I started to kind of put some pieces together. But as I was progressing, one of my

project was that I was doing a international gathering of diplomats. And of course, before they let you know that when they are arriving and this particular gentleman sent me a message to say that I'm not interested in drinking pork, make sure that my food is clean. And I'm not going to be socializing in the evening because I don't drink. I won't be participating on some of the organized evenings. And I find that very strange because I've never met anyone like that who would

openly say these things. So when he arrived, he was coming from Holland, originally from Suriname, and he was getting married to somebody who was Moroccan. And the moment he arrived, he just kind of started to talk to me about all the things that he believed in. And I loved the way he was talking about family, for example. I was very drawn to the idea how Muslim families are, because of course,

Henrietta Szovati (15:9.068)

I wouldn't hold back and I would say to him, I really don't understand Islam. I think Islam is oppressive to women and all the usual stereotypes that anybody would tell him. But, you know, we had a lot of really interesting conversations and he went back, he got married and he was really the first point of contact to Islam. But he must have planted something in my heart because a couple of weeks later, I just became really curious about this religion. So I went to, I looked up and there was a local mosque.

and I, in Hungary, and I attended the first women's gatherings and I felt, I felt peace, I felt something that I wasn't ready, of course, to become a Muslim, but I felt something different. And I kept going, I studied the Arabic, I did some calligraphy with them, I attended the lectures, and I began to become a little bit more comfortable with what I was hearing, and I was always interested about women.

That was my area of interest because that was the biggest propaganda against Islam, even in Hungary. So after I...

Rose Aslan (16:15.817)

What was the community like? who was part of the community?

Henrietta Szovati (16:19.404)

So it was a very mixed community. had mostly local Hungarian women who married either Arab students because we have a very famous medical university. So a lot of students would come from the UAE, from Saudi Arabia, Yemenis at that time, Pakistan, quite a few Pakistanis, even if I remember some Bangladeshis, a few Arab, smaller Arab communities and Turks.

Rose Aslan (16:30.466)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (16:45.054)

mostly the women were Hungarian local women, so could speak to them in Hungarian, but they were married to foreigners. And one afternoon after about two or three years of going, it used to be on Saturdays, and I remember how much I loved my Saturday afternoons. It was one of the ladies who was Moroccan, she invited me to pray and I said, look, I don't know how to pray, I have no idea. And then she said, just follow what I do. And when I did, we went down to the first sujood.

Rose Aslan (16:45.100)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (17:15.582)

And I felt, I still remember the carpet. I still remember the lights coming in, the plush green, red beige carpet in front of me and probably similar to what Turkish carpets would be inviting, lush, amazing. And I put my head down and suddenly with the light, with the carpet, with my head and my entire life behind me, suddenly I felt like everything came together in one piece and everything made sense. So I...

We came up, we finished our prayers and I looked at the lady and I said, I want to be a Muslim. And she looked at me, she said, the study on lady, this is, you know, it's probably a very nice experience, but you know, what, why do you want to become Muslim? And then I took some more time to discover whether I wanted to do that. And I did. And I have accepted it on the 26th of my birthday. So.

That's what led me to, almost I feel like there was a junction between my spirituality meeting my need to understand what God is. I think in that moment I somehow managed to, not me, but the world helped me, Allah helped me to actually merge the two, that there is a spiritual path that I was already on. I just needed to put God somewhere in that picture. And then when I put my head down, it suddenly just all became obvious that this is what I...

Rose Aslan (18:18.754)

Hmm.

Rose Aslan (18:30.754)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (18:38.348)

what my life should be about. And of course I was terrified because I had a great job and I didn't want to leave but after two months I had to leave. So then I ended up in Egypt where I was studying Arabic and Quran and all my adventures started from there. So that's when really life really opened up from Egypt.

Rose Aslan (18:58.826)

I can relate to that having spent five years studying and working in Egypt. Everything starts there, doesn't it? Once you go, tell us what happened to you in Egypt. Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (19:4.502)

Right, yes, yes, yes. I don't think there was any other way. Well, I think it's just that the sheer, the way how I arrived, I didn't know anybody, I landed with two suitcases, all I was given is a telephone number of a friend who is going to be waiting for me with his family, they are already there, I should go and stay with them. And from there on, literally, I felt like I was in the hands of Allah and everything kind of started to take shape. I was...

I found a job, I was teaching English, then I could study and lo and behold, I met a Hungarian woman who was living in Cairo and went to the same school as my mother. And we just became friends and she was literally taking me in into her family, teaching me the Quran in Hungarian because I didn't speak a word of Arabic. And then as I was developing my Arabic, I also developed incredible relationships with people. So some of them are still friends for me today.

It was just a beautiful, very scary, probably the scariest thing I have ever done in my life, actually, just to arrive in a place where I had nobody that was waiting for me. But at the same time, that really shifted my understanding of the world, because previously I was terrified that the world is a scary place. But once I've done that journey, now I pretty much travel the same way. I'm not scared of going out into the world and do what I need to do.

Rose Aslan (20:14.295)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (20:31.544)

for my work, for my spirituality, for my... But I needed that understanding because I grew up scared, I guess, of a lot of things and that journey really changed this for me.

Rose Aslan (20:34.711)

Hmm.

Rose Aslan (20:48.652)

Beautiful. So you think that pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, what did that do for you specifically?

Henrietta Szovati (20:55.190)

I think when you are out of your comfort zone, you have no choice but to take your best self. You have no luxury of whining or complaining or finding excuses. You are out of your comfort zone already. So I always look at it, I often describe it as that you have a new suit and that new suit is a bit too big, but you need to grow into it. And I think this is how we grow in life is...

Rose Aslan (21:2.113)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (21:23.628)

we hold ourselves very small because maybe this is how we grew up, maybe this is how we have a condition, maybe that's what we have seen in our families that, you know, just stay low and don't be ambitious and don't, you know, dream of big things. But I remember even when I was three or four years old, I was sitting on my grandfather's apple trees on the top of the trees. And the feeling that I was getting is that I am going out into the big world and I'm going to do some amazing things. That was the only dream I had.

Of course, my conditioning didn't really allow for that expansion. But once I've done this journey, I somewhat I said to myself, if I can do this, I can do anything. So fear, fear is not not in my life. It's always present in my life. But I have a very different relationship with fear now, because I know what fear is and what fear was before I went. And I know what fear can be. So now I can take fear with me and still do the things that I want to do.

but not being influenced by PSO much.

Rose Aslan (22:26.016)

Yeah, I can so relate to that having started my life over numerous countries, but the first time you step into the country and there's no one there, know, it's the scariest thing. But then it's amazing when you look back and you're established, like, oh, I met all these people. I've done all these things. You can do hard things, right? It really traveling and living abroad really can broaden one's mind and just possibility, I think. Yeah. So, yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (22:36.855)

Yes.

Henrietta Szovati (22:50.262)

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. I think this expansion of the mind is something that not many of us explore and sometimes people need to do big things to have this expansion, other times people are fine just to go on their journeys and continue.

Rose Aslan (23:3.510)

Mm

Rose Aslan (23:9.687)

Mm

Rose Aslan (23:14.006)

Yeah. Do you think like for me, I found that I need dramatic changes in my life, like going to a new country. Some people I find that they just need small shifts in their life, living in the same town or city, right? I don't know why my shifts have to be so dramatic. It's a little tiring after a while. I'm like, come on, just settle in one country, right? And other people, they're like, do I need to move across the world? I was like, no, you don't need to, right? Why do you think some of us have this need and some people can find it right where they were born and raised?

Henrietta Szovati (23:37.132)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (23:44.648)

I don't know the answer to that, but I know one thing is that wherever we go, we take the stuff with us. So even though we might be going to another country thinking that's going to be better than anywhere else we have ever lived in our lives before, that the stuff that we have, we take with us. And I remember this because when I was moving to Spain, jump a little bit. So from Egypt, I came to London, I got married in London and I had children here.

Rose Aslan (23:52.705)

Mm

Rose Aslan (23:57.090)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (24:10.680)

But after about 10 years of marriage, I was homeschooling my children and I needed a change. And it's very hard if an individual wants a change, but the partner doesn't or a partner is so rooted in his work. So we have come to this agreement as a family that I really wanted to take the children. So when I was moving to Spain, this time I was still scared because I had two children with me. If I was alone, it would have been different.

But there was a very interesting conversation I was having with my therapist. And I said to her, she asked me, why are you going like going again? You left Hungary and you left, you know, you left Egypt. Why are you going again? And I said to her, I feel that this time I'm not running away from something. I'm running towards something. So as long as we are clear about what am I running towards as opposed to running away, because the running away carries that.

element of something is still not worked out in me and I'm seeking another place that will solve that for me but no place solves any problem. We know that. I, for me that was a real sense of internal shift to understand that when I'm running towards something I'm running towards going home, I'm running towards meeting my better self. Whereas when you're running away from something you're trying to

Rose Aslan (25:9.572)

Yeah.

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (25:31.572)

not look at something that's inherently part of you, the shadows, the dark sides of us, you know, and it's very easy to pack. mean, traveling has never been so easy than now. We literally, we can pack our entire life in a week and we can move to another continent. You can take your work, can, you know, everything has been made possible. And for me to understand these dynamics of going towards something,

It's a magnetic pull. It's not a push away. I'm being pulled by something. And that's usually the vision. It's a project. It's something that I am hoping that when I accomplish, it's going to be remaining behind me. So it's a legacy that I want to create. Does it answer the question? I hope it does.

Rose Aslan (26:18.304)

Yeah, and I think it does, you know, because people ask me as a coach about this and, you know, I want to reassure them that they don't have to make the shifts I've made in my life, right? It's just my journey is very specific. And like you said, I feel like I've been each move I've made is I'm searching for something in that place, you know, and not usually escaping, but usually just wanting to expand in that direction. Right. And I think it's very possible to do that in that way if we need really big changes. And I think we can also do it where we live.

Henrietta Szovati (26:28.466)

I'm going.

Henrietta Szovati (26:37.527)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (26:47.970)

So I think you did answer that question. So you brought us from Hungary to Egypt and then to the UK where you raise your children, then you moved to Spain. And I know that you're a lover of Andalusia. So tell us more about your affair with Andalusia and you keep on going back to it, it seems.

Henrietta Szovati (27:4.479)

Ah.

Yes, it is a love affair for life, I think. It's probably a marriage now because... So, first time we went was with my children. It is actually a marriage now because I... First, well, I always knew about Andalusia history and I was very familiar with some of the elements. But when we moved over, we lived in a very beautiful little town called Ronda. And we wanted to stay there for a year, ended up being two years.

And as a family, it really shifted everything. And we moved as a family. I moved with the children. My husband used to come once a month for a week. That was the agreement that that was the only way we could hold the family as a unit. And the interesting part of it was that at the very beginning, we didn't know anybody. Again, we didn't know anyone in the town where we moved to. my...

how things with my children were to literally put them in the car on a Saturday morning and then we would drive around and we would stop in different places and we would learn about the space. And one afternoon my son was sitting at the back of the car and as I was driving along the curvy roads, we were passing a small village and there was an Arab castle on the top of it. And he said to me, mom, know, every place we have ever been to, there is something Arabic or something about the Arabs. And that just really got lodged into me. And then I...

frantically started looking the actual history of Muslims in Spain and what I found blew my mind. And of course, being a writer, you know this when you are called for a topic, you do it. And I did years of research on just the history and I started creating historic fiction and I'm currently working on a novel series.

Henrietta Szovati (28:53.980)

addressing some of the places and some of the unknown facts about Andalusia history, which I believe everybody should know about. It's fascinating as it is, the coexistence, the situation of women I'm particularly interested in and how they used to live and what their role was in society. So we moved back eight years ago, but my heart never left. So even though my body is in London, I live in London, my heart is there. So

At some point, I think it was last year, was a period in my life where I was there every month. I would go for a three, four day trip. Now that my children are older, I can have a bit more independence. But I would go to different places and I would just drive around sometimes aimlessly until I find something. And I always found something, which is for me, that's the continuous nurturing element of Andalusia history. I'm really hoping and...

Rose Aslan (29:41.410)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (29:51.240)

I'm hoping that I will be able to publish my books in China in next couple of years. But I also work with this material quite a lot. So I do academic writings. I write for journals. I do lectures. I participate in debates. And there's something about that lifestyle that now at my age is really pulling me. It's about the holistic well -being. It's about nature. I have huge need for nature. So I have passed that stage in my life. I...

I can no longer say it doesn't matter to me. It does matter because London makes me physically sick sometimes in terms of the buildings and the concrete, the facilities, all perfectly wonderful. But I think there is a stage in life when we realize what's important is connection. For me, it's now nature. It's about healing. It's about really treating my body in a way that it deserves.

Rose Aslan (30:27.019)

Mm

Rose Aslan (30:33.921)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (30:49.516)

I'm sorry, I missed the last thing you said. got a little laggy. Could you repeat that, please?

Henrietta Szovati (30:55.588)

So yeah, it's for me to understand that Andalusia, while it feeds my intellectual mind and my cognitive skills, and I love all of that, I love the artistic flair, the expressions, the beauty, but there's also something about being in Andalusia physically in the mountains, with nature, with all the things that my body actually now needs to be able to be regulated and healthy. that holistic well -being is very important.

element in my life. And I can see that you are probably around the same kind of understanding.

Rose Aslan (31:28.606)

I mean, was in Andalusia in May and I just felt so rejuvenated, especially in the community I was spending time with. But Andalusia definitely, there's a few places in the world that are special and Andalusia is definitely one of those places for me. Something magical in the air somehow. Yeah. That's beautiful. how, yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (31:41.929)

I agree.

Henrietta Szovati (31:46.828)

Yeah. Yeah, it's.

I just remember the mountains. I just remember the mountains before I forget because mountains are something that I'm not surrounded by and I didn't grow up with mountains, very interestingly. But as soon as I arrived for the very first time, it was the mountains that spoke to me. And I knew in that moment that I can never live without mountains after that. you know, it's I think spirituality for me over there really opens up the avenues through which I can connect to the

Rose Aslan (31:52.929)

Go ahead.

Rose Aslan (32:8.742)

Yes.

Rose Aslan (32:13.474)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (32:21.066)

elements beyond what I know. I know I love food. I can do food anywhere. when I'm in the mountains and I can drive down to the coast and I can spend half an hour, an hour in a forest, for me, that's a day well spent. I feel that that's a better day for me than sitting and doing some of cognitive work that I do, although I love my job. And I think most people who do love their jobs, they understand this. But then you need a place for your soul.

Rose Aslan (32:36.087)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (32:49.506)

That's for your mind, but you need a place for your soul. You need a place where you really allow your soul to flourish and you create connections that are not available anywhere else.

Rose Aslan (32:56.491)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (32:59.810)

Yeah, 100%. I think as modern humans, we have such a dire need of nature and we don't get it as much as we should. Especially if you're in a big city, it's often hard to access nature. If you don't have a car or for whatever reason, it's not always easy. Here in Istanbul, it's quite difficult to access without a car. This is a big city where I live. I can relate to your experience with London being, it gets hard after a while. So you kind of described and you...

Henrietta Szovati (33:17.634)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (33:25.420)

Yes.

Rose Aslan (33:29.378)

talked about the next question I'm gonna ask, which is, well, how do you describe the spiritual path you're on? It sounds like nature is a big part of it. So if you frame yourself within Islam, what other spiritual influences are playing a role in your life right now?

Henrietta Szovati (33:46.604)

You know, as a coach, I'm very careful with labels. I know it makes things easier when we have some labels, but I often get this question of what, you know, what method do you follow or what kind of Muslim do you consider yourself to be? And I'm very conscious of the labels because I think labels are always limiting, no matter what label put on. Labels are always limiting. And to be, for me to be a Muslim, it's quite interesting.

Rose Aslan (33:50.909)

Mm

Rose Aslan (34:0.374)

Mm

Rose Aslan (34:6.924)

definitely.

Henrietta Szovati (34:15.254)

Because when my husband met my parents, he said to me, your parents are more Muslim than many Muslims I know. So I think for me, spirituality and the path is the path of goodness, of being of good nature, being good to human beings, being good to animals, being good to nature, being responsible for what I do. And I think that...

really encapsulates everything because I grew up on my my grandfather's farm where it was all about how to be good to the trees. If you didn't speak to the trees, they would not yield good fruit. So my grandfather had this ritual that he would take us out and he said, now we're to go make connections with the trees. he was walking and he would pick up every little rubbish from there. So his apple orchard was literally like a salon. It was clean. It was it never had any

Rose Aslan (35:0.354)

Really?

Henrietta Szovati (35:12.702)

you know, reading it because he really looked after it. So excellence or Ehsan for me was his behavior, how he treated his employees, how he looked after the trees. All of those things were so important in the way we, I learned excellence from him. And I think to continue that journey of goodness, and of course we fall off, but if there was any way that I can describe it, it's how to be on the path of goodness because

good behaviour, good understanding, good treatment of myself, good treatment of others, goodness in the face of adversity. You know, these are very important elements and I believe every one of them is described in our tradition of what we need to do to be able to reach that stage. But I think it's a very deep, it requires a lot of deep work, which is what I love about Islamic tradition, is that everything is deliberately placed, it's intentional.

Rose Aslan (35:44.183)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (36:11.414)

and depending on your intentionality, you get the results that you get.

Rose Aslan (36:18.058)

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. love your answer. And I definitely, you know, I don't hear, I don't ask people about their labels, about what Mazhab, I don't care what Mazhab you're in. I'm so curious about the deep spiritual path. You know, I just love how you just put it so simply and how plainly, right? And I think it, people get so complex with describing their theology and spirituality when it's really simple how to practice goodness, Ehsan and excellence in your life, right? Yeah, so.

Henrietta Szovati (36:25.674)

I know you don't, I know you don't.

Henrietta Szovati (36:34.144)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (36:45.168)

I think it makes our life easier, right? When we have this simplicity, it also makes our life easier. You know, it takes away the clutter. It takes away the complications of conversations. That's what I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast is that, you know, people can talk about religion in the most eloquent way, but if their behavior does not reflect what they say, then where is the truth?

Rose Aslan (36:48.737)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (37:12.961)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (37:13.176)

preamble is that we have to find the truth and we need to find out the truth about people too. We have to find out the truth about ourselves. Is my behavior in alignment with what I say? So for example very often it happens that you know people would ask me to do certain topics and and I do say no and they say oh but you would be amazing at this because you're a good speaker. I said not about this topic. I don't feel adequate to talk about this topic because I can say wonderful things about this topic. Do I practice it? No.

And if I don't practice it, I'm not going to do it. I don't teach Quran because I feel inadequate. I think it's important that we do the self -reflection on us, ourselves first, and then ask ourselves, am I able to do this? Am I embodying what I'm saying, what I'm reading? And it always brings to my mind that concept that in the Sahabas' time,

Rose Aslan (37:44.172)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (38:7.020)

they did not memorize more Quran unless they could put into practice what they learnt. So they didn't progress with the next verse until they were able to practice what they learnt previously. So I think for me that's an incredibly beautiful compass is that what we can do, we have to do it with excellence, but we can't do, don't talk about it if you can't do it. And of course there's a human element. I totally understand that we will fall and fail and all of that. That's the human journey.

Rose Aslan (38:31.073)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (38:36.322)

But I think the world would be a better place and our community would be a better place if we could just do a little bit more self -reflection and step back and say, well, I can do certain things and that's part of my legacy, but other things I am not yet able to do.

Rose Aslan (38:44.256)

Yes.

Rose Aslan (38:51.436)

Yes. Yes, I think what you're describing is integrity, right? And a person having been full of integrity and congruence with what they're offering to people. And when you feel in integrity, it means that you have to practice what you preach. it is a bit hypocritical to preach something and you're not able to practice in your own life. So I know you're the author of this book, Heart Smart, One Woman's Journey from Her Head to Her Heart.

which people I hope they'll get a copy of. But I think this will lead us into the next topic of healing. And also, I love this topic because as a former academic who was purely a person of the mind and then went down and found out I had a body as well in the heart, and definitely I focus on heart -centered life, I would love to hear more about this and how that corresponds to your healing journey.

Henrietta Szovati (39:46.927)

So I always describe it as a kind of accident, but of course it's never a coincidence. I was in a meeting with a couple of coaches when I was building up my coaching business. This was about 11 years ago. And we had this session about the balance in life. And we looked at the...

Rose Aslan (39:55.906)

you

Henrietta Szovati (40:9.836)

We were getting ready for the new year and this was one of the exercises. I did the exercise with the group. Everyone was talking about their balance in life. I looked at my balance wheel and it looked amazing. I looked at it and the minute I looked at it, I did not feel good. They asked me, can you describe? This is looking fantastic, so tell us what's next. I looked up and I said, I have all these things.

but I can stand, I can throw it all out of the window tomorrow morning if I could just find my heart in it. And I don't know where that sentence came from. I just felt empty. I felt dry. I felt disconnected. I felt irritated. had everything, everything looked great on paper, but it didn't feel great. So then I signed up for my leadership training. So that was a very big,

Rose Aslan (40:59.522)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (41:8.066)

commitment that I had to make financially time wise. was a one year long leadership training and throughout that training I continuously asked myself like where is my heart? Where is my what is my heart asking? What is my heart wanting me to do? And after I finished the training I actually proposed to my husband and the family that we move over to Spain because I needed to do something different. I needed nature. I needed all of that. So and one of the reasons why I had to be in that space apart from being in nature

is that I was homeschooling my children. So you can imagine I have two children, eight, five and eight, very intense homeschooling. So I had no time for self -reflection, recovery. Writing was not even a question. And I really was ready for writing a book. And the entire question that I'm exploring in that book is what is the relationship between the head, the heart and the gut and the entire intuition system and all the great stuff that we know.

when they don't work, but we don't actually know how they function and what their functionality is. So I also parallel completed my neuroscience training, which was not neuro -linguistic programming, but neuroscience is particularly looking at how the brain actually works in certain behaviors and emotions and fantastic material. So alongside that, I thought I can look at my life story, which is part of the book. It's a kind of travelogue, diary kind of description.

But the other part of it is the science behind intuition, for example, or the science behind, you know, lacking confidence. What is the chemistry of trust? All of those things. it's, it was a fascinating journey that I was doing on my own, on myself and figuring things out. And then I slowly, slowly started to it into, into a book. And that was my, my aims. And while I'm in Spain, the kids went to a local school and while they were at school, I was working on my book. So this is how the book grew out of.

my own desperation for seeking my own heart. And I'm really hoping that one day I will actually do a new edition of this book because since then I have been on this journey. So I picked up so many new things. So I could, I could edit in a way that it gives a more expanded view of where we are with this at the moment.

Rose Aslan (43:7.180)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (43:19.424)

Yeah, beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Could you expound upon some of the practices that you found most useful to give yourself a sense of peace and balance in your life?

Henrietta Szovati (43:33.860)

I think I'm at an age now where some of my rituals are actually sacred, like non -negotiable. Some of the things that I do, I have no negotiating space. So one of them is my mornings. I am the earliest in my family. I wake up really early in the morning. So I spend a couple of hours writing. I do my candles, my meditation after I have done my prayers. My coffee ritual is absolutely sacred. So I actually grind my own beans every time and I have a very slow coffee ritual.

to get present. I do once a week kind of emotional house clearing and house cleaning, meaning I do some reflection and look at what works and what hasn't worked and just generally straightening up my life every week and I do that. Every couple of months I do a proper physical cleansing of my house which means I throw away clothes that I haven't worn.

I declutter, I throw away unused papers. I am probably the only woman, maybe not, but could be the only woman who you will know who only has one wardrobe. I only have one wardrobe. And even that wardrobe is quite small.

Rose Aslan (44:44.256)

Summer and winter, you mean like they're combined?

Henrietta Szovati (44:48.012)

Yeah, I literally have one wardrobe and I'm not willing to expand my wardrobe because if I don't wear something, I don't want to pile up. So when I'm moving, for example, when I move, I don't have boxes and boxes of clothes. I probably have about three or four suitcases at max because I just have a set of clothes that I like wearing and I will wear them until either I don't like them anymore or they have now worn out and I can't. then I, I

Rose Aslan (44:53.986)

Okay.

Rose Aslan (45:2.838)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (45:16.660)

give them to charity or very often what we also do as a family is when we travel abroad we take the clothes that are still good clothes but we don't wear them anymore we take them for charity so we went to Kenya for example we have taken a suitcase of clothes none of them were torn they are not bad clothes but these are not the clothes that we will wear now or we have outgrown them or we become fat or whatever happens so we we take clothes and we give it to charity as well so

Rose Aslan (45:27.273)

Mm.

Rose Aslan (45:32.854)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (45:40.982)

I think for me that the cleansing element is really, important. It is present during my days. I do it every week. And I also have monthly rituals where I get rid of certain things. you know, I don't have paperwork lying around because once a month, almost religiously, I sit down, go through it, file them, away what I need to burn, I need to, lot of my journals, because I write every morning, I write three pages at least. So I have a lot of material that I...

Rose Aslan (45:50.882)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (46:7.902)

every three or four months I would go with a highlighter, I would take the important bits and I would put them aside, I would write poems or I would put them in another piece, but then the rest of the material can go in the bin. So I either burn them or put them in the rubbish, depends. But cleansing would be probably my most, I would say my most important self -care ritual that I do need to cleanse my environment and I need to get rid of some of my thoughts, which is what I do when I'm cleansing my environment.

Rose Aslan (46:38.286)

Sounds like such a structured but beautiful juicy life the way you talk about the joy and the balance it gives you in that life. You talk about if when you go through challenging times when you encounter with a personal family whatever difficulties what do do to

Henrietta Szovati (46:56.288)

I cry, I scream, I crumble, I fall apart, just like every human being. But I think I have something that I inherited and also learned consciously from my grandmother. My grandmother was an incredibly resilient woman, short, stocky, bossy, always knew that things are going to work out. And I think that coupled with the diligence that I learned from my grandfather particularly,

Rose Aslan (47:0.812)

Mm.

Rose Aslan (47:14.978)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (47:26.220)

You know, he was very methodical, very diligent. So for me to combine the I mentioned them because I spent a lot of time with them until the age of four or five because my parents had parents had to go back to work very early. So they were both teachers. And then they left me with my grandma and my grandfather a lot. So it was a farm life for me for the first five years of my life. And for me, the most important part that

I wish I knew when I was younger, more consciously, is this conviction that everything is going to work out, even if it's not the way I like it, even if the way it hurts me and it's painful, it is happening because it had to happen. So I had some horrendous things in my life. But almost every one of them, while I was going through it, I could feel...

that it's going to be useful, almost like internally, like magic. You feel like it's going to be useful at some point. I don't like what's happening now. I hate it. It's painful. I just want to cry. I want to go on the duvet. But every single one of them had to happen for me to learn the lesson I needed to learn. And we never know what lessons we need to learn until God gives us to us to take it because certain challenges I wasn't looking for. didn't want, you know,

Rose Aslan (48:26.657)

Mm.

Henrietta Szovati (48:51.520)

so many things of those horrible things in my life. Nobody wants horrible things in their lives. But if we can understand that this is happening because there is a learning, because I need to go through it to be able to overcome my very own self, I think things become easier. now something comes and my life is not easy. I have some really big challenges constantly, but now when it comes, I don't panic.

Rose Aslan (49:15.596)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (49:20.652)

So my first reaction was always I panicked, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to do this, what's going to happen? And your brain is physically literally flooded with hormones and chemicals that will tell you that you are not safe and you will be in trouble. Now I don't panic so much because I look at it, I take it, I still get, you know, my stomach, I get a bit of a clench of my stomach, but then I'm now able to face what's coming and say, I accept it because it's from God.

Rose Aslan (49:24.354)

Mm

Rose Aslan (49:29.058)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (49:50.668)

I didn't ask for it, I didn't want it. And when you have an acceptance, you can then start thinking about surrendering. How do I surrender to this? How do I surrender to this? had a really, I had a very interesting story about this. So before I was going to Spain, I really wanted to go to Spain. But my husband said, look, it's not gonna work. How are we gonna make it work? The children are young. As a family, you're breaking up the family and it's not going to work.

Rose Aslan (50:6.145)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (50:16.822)

And all I had is this faith in God that somehow we will manage. But I couldn't convey that to the rest of the family, so everyone was nervous. And for six months, all I was doing is I was praying really hard. I was praying every night. And God just opened the door. And guess what happened? About four months into this desperate praying, my husband comes home one day and he says, we've got a death threat. So he had a death threat.

on his name because he's very public, so he does a lot of public events. he did say something along with other Muslim scholars. He said something that the terrorist organizations didn't like. So they put our name and I think a couple of other very famous Muslim theologians and politicians name on their website. So the FBI contacted him and he said, we are very concerned, so we need to talk to you. Your family is not safe.

and this was happening parallel while I was praying. Of course, first of all, a death threat. We had a panic box in our house. The FBI placed the panic box and they said, anything ever happens, just press the panic box, we will come out straight to you. At the same time, I wasn't scared because I knew, I knew that there has to be something, a solution out of this. So when my husband came home and he said, the FBI is saying this and they are saying we need to move house. We had a beautiful house, we lived in a beautiful home.

where my kids were born and I raised them and homeschooled them for five years. And he said, maybe your prayer is now answered, that maybe it's safer for you to move to Spain. So within two weeks, I was back and he was okay with this, I was okay with this. The kids were ecstatic to go. From out of a terrible situation comes the adventure of a lifetime, which then changes the course of my life. So I think any difficulty we have to face.

Rose Aslan (51:58.252)

Panala.

Henrietta Szovati (52:15.978)

At the back of it, there's always something amazing waiting. We just need to be patient enough to find out what that is.

Rose Aslan (52:21.494)

Wow, that is an amazing story, Henrietta, to think that, yeah, because it feels like, it felt scary within me as I was like, wow, a death threat, you you don't play around with that. And somehow you took that into a beautiful journey for your family. You know, when I think about a lot of people I know in my life and people I work with as a coach, they'll be like, yeah, that feels really, that sounds really nice. You know, she can do that. She's had all this, you know, support and help and her life is, you know,

Henrietta Szovati (52:24.618)

I love telling that story because it is.

Henrietta Szovati (52:50.125)

Hmm.

Rose Aslan (52:50.804)

easy even though you know it's not but they're like I can't do that when I'm going through a rough time I can't have that mindset what do you say to those people who just feel like it's impossible for them to reframe you know what their brain is telling them in those very difficult and dark nights

Henrietta Szovati (53:7.040)

So I get that a lot as well, like, you know, it's easy for you, like, it's amazing you have done it. And I said, tell me exactly why is it easier for me than it's easier for you. We are all cut off the same cloth. It's the same for everybody. We all have internal barriers that we need to overcome. Some of the things I will never be able to overcome in my lifetime because it's too much, too big that you might have overcome. But some of the things I have overcome that you haven't been able to do. So my my kind of thought process about this is this.

Rose Aslan (53:10.883)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (53:34.696)

When you hit the dark and the desperation and I'm giving up and you are mentally in a shutdown. So you cannot make sense of anything. You cannot see any positivity in that. So the nervous system is on three levels. We know this. We have the shutdown, we have the sympathetic nervous system and then we have got the connection part where we are most alive. And most of us hang around in the middle bit.

Rose Aslan (53:45.911)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (54:2.988)

We either fight or flight or fees or please. That's the thing we do. And then at that point, we have a chance to either go up in our nervous system regulation and say, okay, I'm scared, but I'm doing it because it's important. Or I am terrified, but it's important that I have this conversation with someone I need to have this conversation. So mentally we need to prepare for that. The other is what we, most people, most humans do.

Rose Aslan (54:6.380)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (54:28.972)

We go down to the, why bother? I can't be bothered. It's not going to be happening. Nothing is going to change. And I think that's when we fail. When you allow yourself to go into shutdown and when you just can't be bothered about anything anymore, that's where it becomes dangerous. Then depression comes in really easily. But even when you are there, when you are at the bottom, there's only one way up. Like you can't go any further down. So make sure that, and it's always the small steps.

You know, people ask me, how did you build up a business? I just did. When I was homeschooling, I did one hour every day. That's all I could manage. Now that my kids are adults, I can do full time, but at that time I could do one hour. Just because I had children doesn't mean you have to give up what you dream about. And if you have half, even half an hour is more than nothing, but you do half an hour every day. In five days, you have got two and a half hours. In a month you have done 10 hours of

Rose Aslan (55:21.196)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (55:25.880)

towards your dream. it's the little steps and this is a very Islamic principle, small but consistent steps. The deeds that we do in small amounts but consistently, those are the most loved by Allah because then you create habits and rituals and you know I remember my kids when I was home schooling I was desperate to write but I never had 10 minutes writing time. So I said to them one day, let's all sit around the table, I am doing writing and I want you to do some writing.

First couple of days it was five minutes, ten minutes, constantly mommy, mommy bothering me. After three days, I think three or four days, the kids just sank into this idea that mommy's writing, let's write together. And I could manage an hour of writing time. And they were sitting next to me and they were tiny, but they were trained in a sense that boundaries are important, mommy's dreams are important, just like your dreams are going to be important one day. And now my daughter,

We started university just today. She is so good with boundaries because she said, if something is important, I need everyone to stop bothering me and I need to do what I need to do. So these lessons are so important for us to practice so that we can pass it on to our children. I say this to people who have children, of course. Not everyone does, but I think it's the small steps. It's not going down in the dark hole. If you are there, hang out. You know, I get depressed.

Rose Aslan (56:43.735)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (56:53.622)

I probably stay in bed maybe for half a day or I have hot chocolate. eat jelly beans when I'm depressed. So I do things that suits me for a while, but don't hang out there for too long because then it becomes a habit. Then it becomes a character that you are depressed. And the more you stay in it, longer it's going to take to get out of it. And our tradition doesn't teach to wallow in our sorrows. We are sad. We mourn, of course.

Rose Aslan (57:15.575)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (57:20.908)

But there's a point where you say, okay, I've done the morning. Now, how am going to get myself out of it? Does it make sense?

Rose Aslan (57:27.574)

Yeah, thank you. That would make so much sense. I I totally agree with, I love chunking, putting things into chunks and little steps because when you look at, if you need to embark on a new project, it's huge. But if you break up into little parts, it feels so much more possible. And I love how you talk about how just for anything in life, we can do that, but also for when we face those challenges, when we have difficulty, it's not.

there's no automatic fix that will get us out of this depressive state, but the little things we do that we know work, they add up, right? All the little things add up. And I think people forget they're like, oh, that won't mean anything. But like you said, it's Islamic framework that all the little things actually add up and they're counted. They mean something, right? Even if you don't see immediate action. Yeah. So as we wrap up Henrietta, I would love...

Henrietta Szovati (57:57.837)

Yes.

Henrietta Szovati (58:3.639)

Yes.

Henrietta Szovati (58:11.532)

Yes.

Henrietta Szovati (58:15.318)

Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Rose Aslan (58:19.894)

For you to share some pearls, like what are your biggest pearls of wisdom you'd like to share with listeners, with viewers from a life lived so far?

Henrietta Szovati (58:31.040)

Oh, I'm a little bit of a cynic now, I think, with my age. one of the things that I keep saying now to people is just get over yourself. And I say this to myself every day. How do I get over myself? You know, how much time I wasted in my youth? How many nights I was awake because somebody said something and it bothered me and I was not able to respond or I couldn't replicate or what did that person think of me?

Rose Aslan (58:45.964)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (58:54.688)

Hmm.

Henrietta Szovati (58:59.320)

You just get over yourself and have it just one day, starting with one day. What is the one day that's your dream day and start living that? What do you need to do differently today that you were not able to do when you were 25 or 35? I think it's important for us to think about what does it mean to get over myself is...

to stop listening to all the internal voices, all the external voices, the things that people are telling us about what we are good at, not good at, useless at, and all of those things. just really having this anchored self in which you are comfortable of who you are. You can tackle the hardest conflict you need to tackle because that will help you. And the other thing I have come around to...

begin to unravel in my life in the next, hopefully in the next couple of decades, is how not to negotiate myself anymore. I lived my life constantly negotiating for others. I negotiated myself and I've given up on so many things that I was so good at and I could have done and I would have done, I should have done. But I kept negotiating because I was scared of not being liked. I was scared of being...

Rose Aslan (60:1.312)

Hmm.

Rose Aslan (60:7.030)

Hmm.

Rose Aslan (60:18.751)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (60:20.534)

different. I was scared of so many things and and I'm just not willing to do that anymore. And I think I think if if had I had I done this when I was in my 30s, I think my life would have done that differently. I really think so. And maybe the third one, something that I see a lot of my clients do or scared of is don't be scared of silence or no movement, because in that there is magic.

Rose Aslan (60:33.772)

Mm.

Rose Aslan (60:50.082)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (60:50.432)

When there's no movement on a project that you want, or there's no movement in a big dream, there's no movement in something that is bothering you, don't be scared of silence. Go silent. Go silent. I had a very interesting story about this too, because last year I was very disappointed with a particular project that I did. So disappointed, because I run various programs in Spain as well.

so disappointed that I said to myself, I'm never going to do this program again. And I took six months off. And I said to my husband that, you know, we need to figure out, I can't do this anymore. And he said, you know, just think about what you want to do. And I had nothing in my life for six months. I had no job. I didn't want a job, actually. There were a lot of opportunities coming and I kept saying, no, I need to think. I really need to understand what I want in life. I really need to see what kind of work I want.

to do. I really want to understand what kind of people I want to work with. And I took six months off. Literally, all I was doing for six months is I was writing and I was clearing my cupboards and decluttered the house. That's all I was doing for six months. And by the end of the six months was over, two of my biggest dreams have come through the door. All I had to say is they asked me, are you ready? I said, yes, I'm ready to go. So both of my dreams have become

Rose Aslan (62:7.072)

Mashallah.

Henrietta Szovati (62:14.868)

apparent because I pushed everything else aside. I didn't want to be consumed by anything else. So for me the message is don't be scared of go silent on yourself and let Allah work it out for you.

Rose Aslan (62:17.953)

Mm

Rose Aslan (62:32.256)

Yeah.

Henrietta Szovati (62:33.410)

For me that was the biggest lesson I've ever learned in my existence. I always visit myself, know, I stuff my... I always do something, I need to be doing something, but actually in the non -doing you become the magnet so your dreams can start coming towards you. When you are constantly doing, there's a lot of hustling and bustling in the doing itself, so you are not actually inviting what you want. You are just filling up time, you're filling up your mind, you're filling up your emotions, but...

When you truly become silent and present and quiet, somehow the words start coming in. And I just love that feeling. And it happened to me quite a few times. And I think that's my biggest lesson. Don't be scared.

Rose Aslan (63:18.592)

Yeah, thank you. That's a very powerful lesson that I've also learned and it's hard because we're programmed that if we do enough stuff, it'll push whatever we need forward. But you're so right. And sometimes when we just leave it and actually find more space and peace within ourselves, that's when the magic happened. It's just very difficult for most of us because we're impatient, right? We want to make it happen. It doesn't always work like that. Well, with that, Henrietta, I want to thank you.

Henrietta Szovati (63:36.704)

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and the funny thing is you always... Sorry, I'm fine.

Rose Aslan (63:48.918)

Go ahead.

Rose Aslan (63:52.524)

Please go.

Henrietta Szovati (63:53.632)

No, I was just mentioning that, you know, very often we've got this language about we need to make things happen and that can be quite difficult sometimes because when we really think about this, we don't make anything happen. We want something and things align, you know, things come in our way, but we are not the ones who are making it happen. It's Allah who provides everything for us. What we do is we open the door which direction we want to go and then

Rose Aslan (64:9.751)

Mm

Henrietta Szovati (64:22.880)

I think it was one of the quotes I read is that when you know what you want, when you take your courage, when you become courageous, the whole universe lines up.

So that for me encapsulates that everything that is coming to us comes at the right time when we are rightly intentioned and we have enough space for it to come in. Otherwise it doesn't come.

Rose Aslan (64:49.538)

Yeah.

Rose Aslan (64:57.270)

Yeah, that's really brilliant. I really appreciate everything you shared with us and being open and transparent and willing to share your vulnerable side. think that the people who listen to this is they want to hear vulnerability. They want to hear authentic stories of the ups and downs. And so I think you really were so open and I'm just so grateful to you for being that way and just for your presence on this earth. You light it up. So thank you, Henrietta, for being on the show.

Henrietta Szovati (65:4.002)

Thank you.

Henrietta Szovati (65:23.490)

Thank you so much. Very kind. You're so kind. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed speaking with you and hopefully we can continue on other topics as well.

Rose Aslan (65:31.681)

Yeah.

Yes.