#LifeLessons - The Biggest Life Learnings Of Asmaa Alkuwari

NAME: Asmaa Alkuwari

INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @coach_asmaaa

JOB TITLE: Executive Leadership Coach, Forbes Speaker, TedX Speaker, Author ‘Back to THAT’, and Founder of You’re Not Alone Community

Asmaa Alkuwari is an international award winning executive leadership coach (PCC), TedX Speaker, Forbes Speaker, and author of the book Back to THAT. As the founder of the You’re Not Alone Community, a leading empowerment community for Arab and Muslim women, she has helped hundreds of women and partnered with tens of organizations around the world to lead purposeful personal and professional lives.

With over a decade of corporate experience and international recognition, including the Women Changing the World MENA Award, Best Life Coach of 2024, as well as Change Catalyst Award from Playbook Awards, Asmaa is known for her culturally rooted, transformational coaching approach that bridges leadership, user experience, digital humanities and identity.

Today Asmaa shares the biggest life learnings she has experienced so far:

#LIFELESSON – 1 Healing Begins With Awareness

You can’t fix what you don’t name. One of the biggest lessons addressed in my book Back to THAT is that awareness is 80% of the healing journey. We spend years wondering why we feel disconnected, unfulfilled, or “off,” without realizing we’ve never paused to ask ourselves why.

This book creates space for that pause. It helps women notice the quiet compromises they’ve made, the beliefs they’ve inherited, and the fears they’ve normalized. From cultural stigmas to limiting beliefs, healing starts when you bring them into the light; not to judge them, but to understand them.

Once you see it, you can choose differently. Awareness isn’t always comfortable but it’s always freeing. It puts the power back in your hands. Because once you know what’s holding you back, you also know what can set you free.

#LIFELESSON – 2 There Is Strength in Gentle Courage

Not all courage roars. Sometimes, it whispers. It shows up in soft decisions, like saying no when it’s easier to say yes, speaking your truth even when your voice shakes, or choosing rest in a world that glorifies burnout. Back to THAT teaches us that courage doesn’t have to be loud, aggressive, or dramatic. Real courage can be gentle.

As Arab and Muslim women, we’ve often been taught that strength means being silent, patient, or obedient. But true strength is knowing when to stand up, when to let go, and when to walk away with grace. Gentle courage is choosing to be kind to yourself after years of being hard on yourself. It’s rewriting the story you were handed and saying: I deserve more, even if the world says I’ve had enough.

This kind of courage isn’t always seen, but it’s deeply felt. And it changes everything. It allows you to lead, love, and live from your center not from fear, not from obligation, but from self-trust.

Gentle doesn’t mean weak. It means you’ve done the inner work. And that is the strongest kind of power there is.

#LIFELESSON – 3 You are Not your Roles:

As women, we’re often praised for how well we play our roles: the supportive daughter, the loyal wife, the responsible employee, the perfect mother. But in becoming everything for everyone else, we risk forgetting who we truly are beneath it all. Back to THAT reminds us that our worth isn’t tied to how much we give to others or how well we fulfill cultural or societal expectations. The real journey begins when we stop asking, “Who do they want me to be?” and start asking, “Who am I when no one is watching?”

This lesson invites us to gently peel back the layers of identity that were handed to us, not chosen by us. It’s not about abandoning those roles, it’s about reclaiming the self within them. You were someone before the titles, and that person still matters.