Q. How would you sum up your new book, Untamable?
A. In this book I share the importance of adopting a key step guided by five principles to turn hardship into success. I use my intense life events to illustrate to my reader how I did it and I take them to a reflection of the situation so that they see what would have happened had I made different choices.
Q. What inspired you to write the book?
A. I saw a consistent pattern repeating itself with every episode in my life and this pattern was clearly related to my thoughts, my perspective, my actions, and the resulting outcomes. In science, we call an experiment ‘scientific’ if repeating it yields the same results, and in this case there was something clearly scientific about my life patterns. As I did my doctorate research I found credible literature validating the science behind the patterns I have been experiencing. Realising that this pattern can be learned by all of us, I ran to share it with my sons, but instead of putting pressure on them to hear me I decided to write it for them in a book that they resort to whenever they are ready.
Q. Why did you choose the title ‘Untamable’ for the book?
A. The title ‘Untamable’ defines how I feel; it defines how I see people. You cannot tame light, you cannot tame love, you cannot tame passion, and these are the key characteristics of being human. Therefore ‘Untamable’ is about me, it’s about you, and it’s about all of us.
Q. Your book is based on five core guiding principles. Can you briefly explain what these are, and why they are important for effecting positive life change?
A. My book invites the reader to implement one core step—“Connect, Trust, and Accept”—i.e. connect to the greater power that created us, trust it and accept that it will have your best interest at its core. The five principles are principles I live by and help me adopt this core step. If people can learn to feel gratitude, if they can learn to observe the details of their life instead of becoming a detail, if they can care for not only their physical bodies but also for their emotional and spiritual selves, if they can allow themselves to dream and release all expectations, they will be able to “Connect, Trust, and Accept”. The book teaches the reader how to adopt these principles and implement this step by illustrating how I did it and using my life events as examples.
Q. How did you come to discover these principles, and their effectiveness?
A. I simply documented how I lived my life. I documented the relationship that governs these principles and links them to the outcome of my hardship. And since some of the outcomes are nothing less than miracles, and since the miracles kept getting created over and over again, I realised that they are not miracles. They are the results of a consistent pattern of behaviour.
Q. What one thing are you most proud about in your new book?
A. Healing and sharing the enlightenment without the suffering. I am happy and proud, and I wrote the book in a simple, pleasant way that will spare the reader any negative emotions towards people who caused my suffering, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
This book also serves another purpose: it aims to set the ground for growth in all aspects of life. Untamable starts by addressing the personal level, while my upcoming book will serve to transform the workspace, to allow growth for all the stakeholders within the corporate setting.
Q. Untamable draws upon the hardships you have experienced through life to show how you have overcome them, and found success from challenge. Among these were a particularly difficult childhood. Can you briefly explain the hardships you faced growing up, and what you learned from these experiences?
A. Growing up taught me that I am untamable. I will not be suppressed and although I learned to adapt and manage my surrounding, my light was never dimmed. It was a matter of waiting for the right time, being guided to the right place, and being presented with the most appropriate circumstances to free myself. My childhood taught me patience and perseverance.
Q. What is the most important life lesson you have learned, and why?
A. Don’t react; don’t judge; there are multiple perspectives for each situation. Your value is to be able to see all perspectives. Reacting weakens you.
Q. You have enjoyed a glittering career, but have fought hard to achieve it. What has been the secret of your success, and how instrumental have the guiding principles you live by been in this success?
A. I believe that the guiding principles I adopt were the key drivers of my success, both on the personal and professional level, and that’s why I was driven to share them with the world.
Q. Your book has a spiritual dimension. Can you explain more about how we are all connected to a universal power, and what this means for us in practical terms?
A. I believe that we all stem from energy, and there is a lot of evidence presented by quantum physics that confirm this. Yet we invest most of our effort in managing only our physical dimension, not realising that we have nonphysical innate powers that we are not using. It is these innate powers that will unleash our ability to create our reality and to turn hardship into success. When we make time to do activities and live a lifestyle that cultivates calm thoughts, we can connect to the energy of our creator/our universe, and receive guidance. This guidance, coupled with our technical qualifications, academic background and learnings from our experiences will unleash a power that some people have experienced and which has driven the success of many very well-known people in our world.
Q. You are a respected gender diversity leader. How can your guidance help female professionals, in particular?
A. Although people in general experience suppression at one point in time within their lifespan, women in different parts of the world can be subjected to severe suppression throughout their lives, and I am one of these women. I was not allowed to get an education, I was bullied, I was rejected, I was discriminated against, I was harassed, and I am not alone. If females who have had similar experiences can invest their suffering and their energy in their mental and spiritual evolution; they create miracles. There are only two directions to choose from: either become the victim or become the master!
I invite women to explore the principles I shared so that they can redirect their pain into energy that will change our world.
Q. Your book contains a wealth of exercises to help readers gain mastery of their thoughts and emotions. Is there a simple yet effective exercise that you swear by, and which you can share with us?
A. All exercises I offer my readers will help them calm their thoughts and uncover what makes them happy. All of the exercises I offer in my book are simple and the reason I offer several exercises is because I want my reader to experience the joy of releasing their biases and setting themselves free from social programming. I want them to love themselves and discover their power. I can’t choose one and I think the reader will choose to do them all because each exercise will widen their view of who they are and what will make them happy.
Q. You are currently working on a new book. Can you tell us more about it?
A. I hope that people will benefit from my first book. If they do, they will not be satisfied working in the typical organisational environment we see in our corporate setting today. Their need to embrace their powers will drive organisational evolution and my second book will assist in this objective. In my second book, I share the methodology I researched and successfully implemented to transform the organisational environment and the culture of my own institution. I offer not only the methodology but also the evidence proving that enabling feelings of spirituality inside the organisation can optimise its performance.
Q. If you could invite one person, living or dead, to dinner, who would it be, and what would you ask them?
A. I would like to invite Nikola Tesla to dinner and I would ask him about his obsession with feeding the pigeons. How did the pigeons make an inventor like Tesla feel?
Q. What are your main ambitions going forward?
A. As I set out to launch my second book, which aims at presenting senior executives with a methodology to unleash human potential in the organisation and form a culture supportive of both the person and the organisation, I hope Untamable prepares people to discover themselves so they can align their evolution with that of the organisation. I hope that it helps people discover their powers so that they create harmony in their personal and professional lives. This is a book that will prepare the organizational environment for a leadership shift, a shift that is described in my second book, where I address senior executives.
Dr. Nahla Khaddage Bou-Diab is the author of new self-help guide Untamable: Claim Your Power, Live Fearlessly, and Become Unstoppable, published through Oneness Offshore and packed with powerful, proven tools to transform your life. It is available now on Amazon, priced £11.59 in paperback and £5.87 as an eBook, as well as on Barnes & Noble. For more information, visit www.nahlaboudiab.com.