Christiane [00:00:00]:
Well, hello there. Hello and welcome back to the happy, healthy hustle. We are here today with Doctor Ailina Ismail, a functional medical doctor, and we're actually going to share her superpower, some of the challenges that she faced in her personal life and how she overcame them. So with that, welcome, Doctor Ailina. Let's do it.

Ailina [00:00:23]:
Thanks, Christiane. So I think the first thing is, I just want to say I'm thankful. Thank you for inviting me to this podcast, video, YouTube video. And the first thing I just want to say, I'm always thankful every day of my life. You know, I always am grateful for being alive, having two eyes to just, you know, have vision, two legs. I know it sounds cheesy, sounds cliche, but I wish everyone could just do that, just be thankful for one thing a day. And sometimes people forget that this is good.

Christiane [00:00:59]:
We're starting with gratitude. This is so important. Thank you, Alina.

Ailina [00:01:04]:
My superpower towards resilience and adaptability. And you know how everyone, every year, well, I've got mentors and a lot of people always say, you know, choose your word for the year. So for 2024, I chose a phrase of the year, and that was to be. That is to be my authentic self and just embracing who I really am. And I think my superpowers, resilience and adaptability complement this because, you know, I find that I've gone through a lot of challenges which I can share later. And it's like, it has enabled me to face all these challenges and to stay grounded with my own true authenticity. Because whatever challenges that are thrown to you, if you're resilient, you know, you'll just bounce back from all these setbacks. You know, it's a test.

Ailina [00:02:08]:
And you've been given that test because, you know, whoever, if you believe in the universe, I believe in God, has thrown that test to you. It's because, you know that you can overcome it. And adaptability is meaning that, you know, every new experience, every new circumstances that I face, whether it's a challenge, whether it's a positive thing, I know I can just adapt to new things. And that's. I think it's my superpower.

Christiane [00:02:44]:
Oh, I love it. Really nice. So now, of course, you get us a little bit curious with regard to challenges, and you already indicated that the resilience and adaptability really helped you to overcome challenges. So given all the challenges that you have, I sometimes compare challenges to, like, the suitcase that we carry along and when we start unpacking it, there are all these different items in there. Small challenges, medium challenges. I want to go to the biggest challenge that you have in your suitcase. Really dig down deep and take that one out and share it with us. And how did you overcome it?

Ailina [00:03:21]:
That's a very deep question. Anyway, lots of struggles. Maybe one of the biggest. I have a few big ones. I think my biggest is giving. I have to treat kids. They're big now. They're going to be 25, 22, and 17 soon.

Ailina [00:03:40]:
And one of the biggest challenges is the mom guilt because I gave birth to two kids who are on the spectrum. That's me. That was one of my huge challenges. I was like, oh, my God, what did I do during my pregnancy? Could I have been healthier? Could I have done this? Why did I have to go through a caesarean section? I know at that time it was necessary and not my, like, you know, it's life threatening. To save the babies, I had to go through emergency cesarean sections. So all of this huge, was a huge struggle. One of my biggest struggles in life. Have I really overcome it? Probably maybe 90%.

Ailina [00:04:21]:
It still comes back to me to haunt me all the time. But, you know, I've been working with a lot of mentors, and I think going to the root cause of my challenge, my mom's guilt, is three things, three piece. I'm a perfectionist. I procrastinate a lot, and I'm always trying to people please. So that's what I had to work through, going deep into myself. And I started all this maybe around February 2020, just before COVID hit. And I've worked a lot on my inner child, never knew about the inner child, never knew about working on my self worth before then, because I used to be like an introvert, a bookworm. I would study, study, do well in my exams, do well, become a doctor.

Ailina [00:05:24]:
But I never looked at the right side of my brain. I guess it was all left sided. Yes. So that's how I overcame. I'm still working on it. I now help people with problems with it, but because that's where I come from, I come from the experience that I have to dealt, deal with throughout my life.

Christiane [00:05:47]:
I think that it's beautiful that you are working in the area that really is something that will help people in a similar situation because it makes it more authentic. And at the same time, it also creates more of a bond between you and your patients because you are most likely using a lot of the elements in your functional medicine yourself. And then you can recommend them from a different perspective than just saying, oh, I will prescribe you this or. I think this will be amazing. It's more of an authentic experience. When you are a coach or a doctor and you have experienced some of the same issues, I think that's amazing, and I really applaud you for sharing this very openly here. I always think that our challenges, if you compare them to, like, a piece of art, are, like, maybe a dark spot in our life. And if you think, like, you take a brush and you're making a dark spot on a piece of paper that over time, they will never go away.

Christiane [00:06:52]:
So maybe you're taking lighter colored, maybe even bright colors, and you start drawing around that dark spot. You might even draw, you know, over it. It will never go away because no matter what colors you choose, that dark spot will always be that. You can't really erase it, but maybe you're just building more layers around it, kind of like an onion where the core is still a dark experience in your life, but other experiences are starting to become the layers around it. And when you really peel back that inner child or that experience will always be there. And what's beautiful about it is that that's truly what actually creates bonding or resilience that, you know, deep down you have this and you can share it. Thanks so much for sharing it. You mentioned 2020, and you also mentioned you had mentors that get you out of it in addition to the mentors.

Christiane [00:07:47]:
Or maybe it was one of the mentors. What is it really that helped you overcome the challenge?

Ailina [00:07:53]:
I think coming up, like, so I used to define comfort zones as where you're comfortable, right? And a lot of mentors, coaches always say, oh, you got to step out of your comfort zone. But this particular lady, she was my mentor. She still is. We are still friends. She said, you know, you got to be. At that time, my challenge was like, I wanted to leave my offline practice. Like, well, I still do. I'm working three days a week now.

Ailina [00:08:25]:
I want to slowly, like, go online and to tell the place where I work. So I I'm self employed, but I practice at practice, and I wanted to cut down my days, and it was so hard for me. I felt indebted to them. Like I said, oh, no. You know, they've done a lot for me, and now I'm going to tell them I'm going to work less hours. But she says, you got to go, Ailina. You got to go into your own comfort zone where you feel happy rather than being pleasing them in their comfort zones. So to me, that was like one of the major breakthroughs, like, that's a new definition of comfort zones that I never thought about.

Ailina [00:09:05]:
So now I'm in a happier place. I'm in my comfort zone. I'm doing what I want to do. I'm being authentic. Another thing was I said I didn't want to be famous online. Like, I. Yeah, I like to be, like, not famous because, you know, going on lives on Instagram socials, that was like my, oh, my God. But now I'm getting used to it.

Ailina [00:09:30]:
Like, it's part of what I do most days. So getting into my own comfort zone, defining my own comfort zone. So to me, that's one of the biggest thing that has helped me. Does that answer your question?

Christiane [00:09:45]:
Sure. Because it's visibility. Becoming more confident with being visible, but visible at a place where you would like to be visible. I compare it to, like, going to a small dinner party versus going to a big mass outing. Right. A mass outing. Being the Internet, that takes time. So you might have to go to a lot of small dinner parties to become confident enough and comfortable enough to go to big mass outings.

Christiane [00:10:13]:
And it might still be some days where that doesn't sound good, but you in general define your own comfort. And we're all different with regard to what feels good to us and how we can, which way our message the best. So maybe just kind of like drawing the storyline here. So your biggest superpower is the resilience, and then your biggest struggle was the mom Guild, and then now overcoming it was finding your comfort level. I think that's beautiful how you draw the story arc right there because it's all kind of connected, if you think about it. So my podcast, the happy, healthy hustle, we're really figuring out what is our hassle, but we want to get there in a way that makes us happy and we stay healthy along the way because we all have different goals that we strive after and different, different things that we love doing.

Ailina [00:11:15]:
It's amazing how you can connect everything. I didn't think about it in that way, but, yeah, you're amazing, Christian.

Christiane [00:11:22]:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, the visual learner. And so that might be one of my superpowers that I'm thinking a little bit of how our lives are connected and how our storyline is frequently connected to where we sometimes look back and you're like, you know, it's happened for a reason. And what I learned in that moment is something that I'm using now much more. So the challenge really sometimes makes you a stronger individual and makes you learn skills that you wouldn't have otherwise picked up. It's nearly like a teacher. The struggle becomes the teacher, and then you realize that what you're doing now is maybe something that you picked up during the struggle.

Ailina [00:12:03]:
So true.

Christiane [00:12:04]:
Yeah. Well, where can we find you? You mentioned you are visible on the Internet, and while you don't want to be famous, we can still reach out to you and maybe connect with you. Tell us where you are in line or which social media you're using.

Ailina [00:12:20]:
I'm focusing on Instagram, so if you just search. Doctor. Doctor. Ilina. My name a I l I n a. You'll find me there. And I've got a website, so. Www.drailina.com.

Christiane [00:12:36]:
Wonderful. What are the ages of your children now?

Ailina [00:12:40]:
My daughter, who's on the spectrum, she will turn. Oh, my God. 25 in April. Then my neurotypical son, but he's the middle. He's got the middle child syndrome, and he gives me the most grief. He's gonna be 22 and then. Sorry, he's gonna be 23. He's 22 now.

Ailina [00:13:05]:
And my youngest, he's on the spectrum, too, but milder. He's 16 going to 17.

Christiane [00:13:12]:
Oh, boy. So those are some fun, challenging ages there.

Ailina [00:13:17]:
They challenge you at every age. You got different challenges when they're small babies and then when they turn 21.

Christiane [00:13:26]:
Good. Love it. They will always be the babies. Right?

Ailina [00:13:29]:
I know my babies. Yep. Yeah.

Christiane [00:13:32]:
Well, thank you so much for being here today. I am sending warm wishes to you. You live in Australia, and, like, we are connecting across in the ocean right there. Thank you so much, and let's stay in touch.

Ailina [00:13:46]:
Thank you. Bye.