[hum-ayra]
One who strives to achieve her utmost best
Confidence Researcher | Author | Mentor | Coach
Founder of Goodbye Perfect Project
[hum-ayra]
One who strives to achieve her utmost best
As a lifelong learner and a confidence researcher, like me, you might find the facts and figures below will speak to your head.
But I really want to touch your heart, to speak to that inner longing inside each of us to break through the shackles of fixing and fitting in, and befriend this one and beautiful experience of life.
So after you’re done with the titles, qualifications and achievements, read on to get to know the real me. If I’m the type of person you’re happy to take along in your life’s journey, sign up so we stay in touch.
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Founder and CEO
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Thought Leader
Respected by thousands of women for her paradigm shift approach with her research in women’s confidence. Regularly featured in Forbes, Happify, Thrive Global and The Huffington Post with over 1 Million readers.
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Author
Her new book ‘Goodbye Perfect: How To Stop Pleasing, Proving and Pushing For Others… and Live For Yourself’ is set for release on April 11, 2023.
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Leadership Coach
Has 10+ years of coaching experience working with women across intersectionality, industry, and at different stages of their lives and careers to unhook from disempowering beliefs and unleash their limitless potential.
Speaker and facilitator
Has presented on Tedx on the topic of Belonging and facilitated workshops at Positive Psychology conferences and in organizations such as Logitech, PwC, Earthjustice and more.
Education
Holds Master’s degrees in Coaching Psychology and in Positive Psychology – the science of human flourishing and wellbeing – from the University of East London.
Research
Has conducted postgraduate research (with longitudinal quantitative trials) on women’s confidence on over 250 women from around the world in a variety of professions and at different levels of the career journey.
Body of work
Hired by Happify to create a science-backed game to manage anger with over 3500 participants. Contributed to multiple books on Positive Psychology for general readership and academic study. Created an evidence-based program on confidence building completed by hundreds of women around the world.
“Homaira has an innate ability to blend science and soul; her entire body of work is backed by years of scientific study and research, yet presented with her natural attunement to what truly matters in life, and empathy with people’s lived experience. It’s this unique blend that enables her to inspire what’s possible, while addressing some of the very real and everyday challenges of life.
She proves that by accepting our human imperfections (and moving away from fixing, pleasing and proving), we can embrace the unique gifts our lives embody, and reclaim joy, ease and psychological well being as fundamental tenets of a brave and purpose-driven life. She has been called “inspirational”, “a beacon of hope”, and “a ray of sunshine in dark times”.”
and now the real me
Where Tender
Meets Fierce
For the longest time, there was only one title I wore: mommy. When I went into labor with my twins at 21 weeks, the thing that helped me carry them to term was the vision of a mother hen. I was tender and nurturing.
But I was also fierce; there was no way the doctors or nurses could come close to me when I was trying to calm my contractions. My husband gifted me a necklace with a womb and that became my lucky charm.
Years passed. I became a coach, did research on women’s confidence and flourishing, and found myself working with women who were searching for answers to life’s bigger questions: Who am I? How do I want to live my life? What is it I’m here to do in the world?
I couldn’t give them the answers; they had to come from within them. My role as a coach was to help see and own the potential, while working through the fears, beliefs and expectations that were desperately trying to fit them into boxes that were too small for their limitless lives.
Motherhood reminds me that there’s a light in every soul.
And I deeply care about helping you find it and shine it in the world.
I now realize that all the titles I’ve ever worn have fallen under that same overarching title of mommy. My life is defined by being the mother that Kahlil Gibran describes in his poem On Children:
You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth
I am the bow; I provide you with insights, information, guidance and an expanded perspective to be an agent of change wherever you’re being called to be one— in your homes, workplaces or communities.
Want to start the journey? Listen to my podcast ‘Life is a Highway’
Where Past
Meets Present
I had a beautiful childhood. My father was a diplomat. I traveled the world, and got to meet and dine with top dignitaries. You’d think I’d become the most confident person in the world.
Instead, I got an eating disorder.
For most of my adolescence, I starved myself, sometimes literally to the doorstep of death. It was a miracle I recovered fully because in those days few people did.
But as life went on, I realized that even though I’d overcome my fear of eating and weight gain, I was still a prisoner to the voice in my head.
For decades, I beat down on myself. I pushed myself around and let perfection, anxiety, comparison, praise and approval run my life. I looked confident on the outside—people admired my attitude, multiple talents and success at whatever I took on.
But no one knew the inside story. I lived with the fear of one day being found out. And I kept making compromises with the fear by pushing myself to please and perform. My life was an endless run on the burnout treadmill.
I was nearing my fortieth birthday when I realized that the life I was living wasn’t the life I was here to live. I couldn’t have survived a ravaging eating disorder to crawl my way through life.
As I did my inner work—work that’s a right of passage in this meandering journey of life—I realized that chasing perfection was a mask for the real pain I was avoiding: The fear that I wasn’t enough as I was.
I’ve heard this story again and again from brilliant women around the world. Competent and conscientious women who have so much to offer, but can’t see it, or don’t value it, or who are miserable trying to be everything to everyone and feeling stuck and miserable as a result.
Do you ever feel that way?
That you are trying to fit yourself inside a container that’s too small to hold your potential because it feels too scary to step outside?
Well, then here’s the great news! The constraint, the frustration, the unhappiness you feel is because your limitless potential is trying to break through the perfect little box that you’ve tied with a bow.
The box served you well at some point in your life. It kept you safe when it was perhaps too scary to show up in your full power. But now your unlived life is calling you. It needs to be lived through you.