TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Hoffman 26:17
Welcome back to the Kickass Couples Podcast. My bride Kimberly and I have our first well we’ve had international connections before only to Canada though, but we are pleased to have Murshida and Zeal joining us from Kuala Lumpur. We are here at nine in the evening, and you are at 930 in the morning.
Zeal Zainuddin 30:07
Yep.
Matthew Hoffman 30:08
Welcome. We’re so glad to have you on the podcast.
Murshidah Said 30:10
Thank you. We’re so happy to be here. We’re so excited.
Matthew Hoffman 30:15
Terrific. Well, so are we. So we love to start off all of our podcasts with the same question. And Murshidah, I’ll start with you. I’d like to know, what do you think makes you and Zeal a kickass couple?
Murshidah Said 30:28
Well, thank you. First of all, I’d like to acknowledge both of you, Matthew and Kimberly, for also getting us on board. And, you know, acknowledging that we are kickass you know, I never thought of it that way. But if you were to ask me, What makes us a kick ass couple, I would say we do things that a lot of people don’t do. You know, especially where we come from, for example, we love to, you know, we do go out. We started street feeding in Malaysia, where not many people actually go out and, and yeah, feed the homeless at that time back more like 15-20 years ago. And now a lot of people are already doing that. We started reaching out to refugees, also. At a time where people were not really, you know, concerned so much with the migrants and helping helping people other than their own communities, we started to reach out and we made it very public. And now a lot of other people are also doing that and very grateful for that. And I think recently, we started like, doing horse riding and encouraging people in their 50s and 60s to start riding horses and now I’m doing horseback archery, and I’m encouraging that and I think with Zeal’s support and also him coming on board and doing things that we think like you know, these are fun stuff. This is what what couples should be doing together as a family instead of just going to the mall and doing the normal things over weekends. I think that makes us a kickass couple.
Matthew Hoffman 32:00
Great answer. Zeal, what would you add to that? What do you what would you add to Murshidah’s beautiful definition of what makes you all a kickass couple?
Zeal Zainuddin 32:07
Okay, yeah. Yeah, thank you very much, Matthew. So one of the things that I feel that makes us a kick ass couple is because we have the utmost love and respect for each other. For example, our tagline is love and respect, because like for me, no matter how outrageous, Murshidah goes, no matter how big it is, I never, I never put her down. I always support her. As long as it’s legal, moral and ethical. I will support her like, you know, like she shared about like, in her 50s she decided saying Zeal, I want to I want to take horseback horse riding lessons, right? If you ask, like, we are Asian culture, most of the people, if you ask older people, they will say you’re crazy, you’re gonna hurt yourself, you’re gonna, you know, you might even kill yourself, you know, that kind of thing. But for me, because I understand about her and that aspect, I encourage her, right? She even took a notch higher, not only she wants to go for horse riding, but she went for horse back archery, which is a totally different level altogether, you know, so and we always have that, like, respect for each other. Like, I also have my dreams like, there was one time you know, I had an opportunity to attend my mentor, one of my idols, seminar was Les Brown, Les Brown, and at that time, we were at a worse time of life. We were challenged financially, emotionally, physically, and it seemed like impossible for us to go there. You know, like but Murshidah always gives me the you know, even though sometimes I’m down, she always gives me the encouragement. Zeal, you can do it, you know, and then that gives me the strength to say, okay, I can do it, you know, like it no matter what other people say people say, we are crazy. We are whatever it is, but I keep on going because I know Murshida is there to support me. I needed just one person there to support me. And eventually, we actually made it you know, we booked the flight and our accommodation to go to see Les Brown in Arizona. I think a few hours before the actual event. Can you imagine, yeah, so that’s, that’s why we make a kickass couple because we really support and believe in each other. Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 34:03
That’s beautiful. Well, what both of you gave fantastic answers. And the big smiles on your face telling me that you genuinely feel that in your hearts, which even makes it more sincere.
Kimberly Hoffman 34:15
Absolutely. Well, I want to go back in time a little bit with each of you. I really believe that in many cases were the product of the people who raised us. And in some instances, that’s a great childhood in a very positive upbringing. And sometimes it can be negative, or even traumatic. We all come again from from
different places. And so I’m curious Zeal, what did love look like in your family when you were growing up as a young boy?
Zeal Zainuddin 34:48
Alright, thank you for asking, Kimberly. So like for myself, let me just give you a bit of context about my my parents, right? My father, he was a government officer, right? And he’s very strict, very regimented, very structured household. And then my mother she was a school teacher, which eventually she became a consultant and a trainer. So she’s more, more outgoing, more neurotic, she’s very vocal, and he’s very value based. So a lot of things for when I see them growing when I grew up, and as for them, they are not the kind of very affectionate, they don’t like do hugs, and they don’t look kisses, but they show their love to each other through actions. For example, my father, he’s a way of showing love to my mother was giving her the best life possible. Now that he works very hard. And you know, he makes sure that she’s very comfortable. She has what she wants, she wanted to become a teacher. So he supported her. And then there was one time when my father was a diplomat. So we started overseas, we went overseas, in Indonesia for his service, and she was a full time housewife. But he supported her. Like she like to do social work, she taught at schools and all that, and my father really supported her in terms of financially, emotionally what she wanted to do, right? And then my mother was very, she was a very, I would say, a very loyal and very, very good wife in the sense that she really understands her husband, my father was very busy in his work, he used to travel a lot, and he was not home most of the time. So when he’s not home, she’s the one she took care of us, we took care of us, took initiative. She was a very good cook, you know, so she cooked a lot of dishes, Western dishes, local Asian dishes, and we had a very, very good memories. When we grew up we had a very good home environment, get good food, we had a very good role models of parents, they were very, very successful in their careers. And because of that, I thought to myself, right, I really want to emulate my parents and, and then become just like them. But at the same time, there’s also certain things that I thought that was not aligned with what I want to do with my family. So I say, Okay, I took the good things. But the things that did not work for me, I told them, I’m going to, I told myself, I’m going to improve it. So when it came to me and Murshidah, we decided to have our own family where we incorporate the values of what we wanted in our family, the good ones we take, but the ones that did not work, we stopped with that. And we continued with what we wanted. Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 37:19
Sure. Well, did you have a large family? Were there a lot of siblings or were there just a few?
Zeal Zainuddin 37:26
My family? I had a sister, my eldest sister, she’s two years older than me. Now she’s a doctor. And then not many people notice but I have a twin brother. I’m a twin myself. So I’m Zeal my brother is Zo, yeah, we are totally opposite of each other. No. But yeah, Zo is my twin brother and I have a younger brother as well. He’s now in his thing in Hawaii now. So yeah, so we have about in our family is four of us.
Kimberly Hoffman 37:54
There were a lot of you
Zeal Zainuddin 37:55
We had different personalities. Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 37:56
So your mother was very busy at home with you then?
Zeal Zainuddin 37:59
Yeah, she was she was a very good mother, very good housewife. She used to cook for us used to make sure that we were very well taken care of. So we can feel that even though she’s not the kind of affectionate but she’s very we can feel her love through her service and the way she treated us. Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 38:15
Sure. So it sounds like there wasn’t a lot of affection that was modeled for you, meaning a lot of hugs and kisses and I love yous, but there was a lot of respect. And there was, you know, a lot of service and your family really made sure that your needs were being met.
Zeal Zainuddin 38:37
Sure.
Kimberly Hoffman 38:38
And how about you Murshida what what was it like when you were growing up? What how was love modeled in your family?
Murshidah Said 38:45
Yeah, actually, I, you know, listening to Zeal it’s very similar, but when I first got to know his family, I come from Singapore. He’s Malaysian right, the famous Malaysian. I thought like, wow, why are people so lovey dovey in Malaysia? In my family? We don’t. We don’t shake hands with our siblings. We don’t hug and kiss, yeah, we just like you know, we it’s all acts of service. And that’s how we show love and my parents also never showed love but, but when I first saw Zeal and how his sister greeted him, she actually kissed him right, like kissed his cheek and I was like, oh, that’ll never happen in my family! So I had a little bit of adjustment. When I got married to zero, like more hugs and kisses, and that’s that’s how I was like when Zeal met me. I believe that growing up, I was not, you know, exposed to a lot of physical touch or how my parents were, you know, affectionate with each other. But I saw a lot of affection when my mom was sick when my mom passed away more than 30 years ago, but when I was, you know, there, you know, when she was ill and my father was there 24/7 within the hospital, that was when I saw a lot of affection, he was hugging, he was taking care of a lot of things he did more than the nurses at the hospitals. He said a lot of loving words. And I was like, you know, I didn’t see that when she was healthy. They were like, you know, they were, they were good to each other. They were very, you know, acts of service. But I don’t see that until she was sick. And I told myself that I wanted to be that I wanted to have that kind of relationship with my husband. And it took a little bit of adjustment on my part to really get comfortable with things like this, you know, holding hands and hugging and all that I had to work on that, as well. And I think Zeal also was like trying to break through, like, don’t touch me, in public kind of thing so I had to break past that one. For me the acts of service is love. I mean, I don’t have to say I love you, I don’t have to be romantic or whatever. But it’s just, you know, I did this for you isn’t that love? So I that was how I saw things. But when I saw what what my father did, I said, How can
I have that in my life? So I had to learn it’s more than just, you know, applying it. In my reality, because I see that in a lot of, you know, Hollywood movies and all these romantic comedies. And it’s just like, oh, that’s how they do it. But you know, I, I cannot. But it is something that I started to work on. And how I have it in my marriage right now and with my daughter with my daughter is a lot of physical touch and hugs and kisses the I love yous openly, you know? Yeah, so that is how it shaped our family. Right?
Kimberly Hoffman 41:37
And I love that you saw that and you said, I want that, I want more of that when it actually was modeled for you in the hospital, you know, you really resonated with it. And you have changed that now. And going forward, you’re able to express that freely and comfortably. So thank you for sharing that.
Matthew Hoffman 41:58
It’s beautiful. So it’s a nice transition. We have 14 key pillars that we think are qualities that really have to be in any successful relationship. And we kind of hone in on three, and we call those three the three C’s. And those three C’s are commitment, communication, and conflict resolution. Zeal, I’d love to start with you and say when you think about your relationship with Murshida, what does commitment look like? How is that? How was commitment demonstrated in your relationship? How do you see that quality expressed? Either from you to her or from her to you?
Zeal Zainuddin 42:35
Yeah. Okay. Thank you for asking the question. Yeah. So for me and Murshidah, because we do the same business. Now we are in the same business and we do a lot of things together. So we actually or my commitment to her is actually we have to also have a separate time for business. And also for our own personal life cannot be like everything is intertwined, because it’d be caused a bit of chaos. We are about business, we are very busy. But when we have, say we like for us, our goal is to actually have at least one family holiday a month. So we all spend time together and also as a family. So we always have like, we always allocate that kind of schedule to have some some personal time with each other as well. Not just business, but it’s also fun, going out going traveling around and then we now we have our passion for horses. So we are really into horses right now. So we do things a lot together in terms of even personal life. And we really commit to doing things together. Like for example, we are one of the things that got me attracted to Murshidah was she had the same values as me, she loves helping people, she wants to live a legacy. So that’s one of the things that I look for, as I look for a couple as well. I don’t want somebody who’s just you know, the intuitive material things they want this and that, when they’re not into like helping others. And when I saw Murshidah, she resonated with that. So so we do a lot of activities like Murshidah mentioned, we do love feeding the homeless. Now we do love programs for the refugees in terms of giving them groceries, doing business mentorship, so we really commit to each other in terms of expertise. As time goes by the center, we also have our own things that we do together as well. Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 44:20
That’s great. So you enjoy spending a lot of time together and creating experiences and it sounds like you’re disciplined to commit to not allowing the business to take over because when you live together and do business together, it’s difficult to have that separation. How about for you Murshida? What does commitment look like to you and your relationship with Zeal?
Murshidah Said 44:42
I believe that you know, in terms of commitment, it is more about keeping to your word. And you know, when we when we say something that we do something we actually mean it it’s not like you know, we say something but it may mean some The else. So any we promise something will fulfill it if we cannot fulfill it, we’ll be upfront about it. I think that is what is commitment, you know, between us and I, you know, when I read about, you know, your three C’s and the commitment and I was thinking about, what is commitment in, in our relationship specifically? It is actually I don’t believe I have any secrets with Zeal at all, it’s like, he knows my thoughts, even though ridiculous ones, even the ones that, you know, it’s just, I just say it, and it’s that’s it and then, you know, judgments aside or whatever I, you know, that is how it is. So, I believe that is how commitment is like, for me that there is no, you know, secrets, and I whatever I say I mean, and, you know, and even if it is out of anger, he knows it is it is something that is going to be short lived. And you know, it’s not, it’s not something that I, you know, out of hatred or something like that it comes out of, perhaps emotions or something like that. Yeah. So yeah, being being honest with with my feelings and be in integrity of my promises as well being that is what’s commitment.
Matthew Hoffman 46:17
I love that concept of being impeccable with your word is, is a great agreement. And I love the fact that you have that honor with one another.
Kimberly Hoffman 46:26
Our second, C is communication. And we believe that good communication and frequent communication within a relationship is vital. And I’m just curious Zeal, how do you and Murshidah make time to communicate, you all are busy, you have, you know, each of your own little sort of whirling vortexes going on over here. And you know, you have family, how do you make time for the two of you to interact with each other? And what does that look like?
Zeal Zainuddin 47:02
Okay, yeah, thank you for asking. So one of the things that Murshidah and have a have a passion about is we both love to eat. So we like to try different kinds of foods. So our time like if you want to spend time together, we always spend around food, for example, we have our favorite restaurants in KL we have one of our favorite Steakhouse very near our house walking distance. So like anytime we want to be spending time together, we will tell Okay, our daughter as she goes to my brother’s house, and then we will go to our favorite place to eat, you know, and that’s where we actually share about our dreams or goals. And we’re very open to each other. And that’s when we either at the highest energy when we are in very nice environment, having nice food, and even now we are together in a in a hotel together and we checked in a hotel. So we are always in that kind of very high energy. And we I noticed that when we both are in that kind of very high energy, a lot of all these amazing ideas for our life and our business comes up. So that’s what we do we actually spend a lot of time around food and travel with each other. Yeah. And now horses, yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 48:04
Love that.
Murshidah Said 48:04
Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 48:05
And I love that. You know, you you put yourself in a position, like you said, where you have high energy.
Murshidah Said 48:11
Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 48:12
and that’s a great time to be goal setting and to connect, and to really, you know, go on a deeper level with each other.
Murshidah Said 48:20
Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 48:21
How about for you? Murshida? How, how would you define communication in your relationship?
Murshidah Said 48:27
Okay, for me communication is being able to understand and know what what the person is going through, or what the person is experiencing. You know, I don’t always spend time with Zeal anyway, because I do travel for my corporate training, sometimes I go to different states, around Malaysia to train organizations. And we’re always on the phone as well, when it comes to keeping in touch with each other, you know, like, WhatsApp. And, you know, we’re always like, communicating in terms of like, we know what’s going on, or IBM training. And, you know, we not may not be talking the whole day, but he knows what I’m doing. And then in between, we have, we have our Calendly also, let’s say there’s any any meetings that set up, we are there so I can see it. So we know what’s going on in each other’s lives. And that’s what I believe communication is rather than you know, someone does something alone, and nobody knows what’s going on. And I believe that’s important. And even if we have some disagreements, we also communicate about it and we know what the other person is thinking rather than not talking about it or you know, just keeping quiet and just feeling resentful and you know, not not not expressing that. So I believe that’s really important to be able to understand where the person is and you know, if you need some time off, you spend some time off but you know, what the other person is going through and you keep in connection with each other. Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 49:57
Sure. That kind of leads right into it conflict resolution.
Matthew Hoffman 50:01
Yeah, our third C is conflict resolution. In every relationship, there’s always times where we either have different viewpoints or one is maybe struggling and conflicts can arise. So Murshidah, what does conflict resolution look like? How do you and Zeal deal with disagreements? Or how do you approach
conflict when those things arise where you’re not seeing eye to eye or you may not be of the same opinion?
Murshidah Said 50:26
Yeah, sometimes it does get, you know, situations where someone is, you know, is unhappy or angry. What I realized is, what worked for us is when a person is angry, the other person also does not, does not, you know, have that same level of anger at the same time. So, the other person will, will come down, you know, I know both of us, sometimes we do face conflicts, and then, you know, but we make sure that we do not talk over each other or shout at each other. If anything like that happens, we just say take some time out and then after that, we find a time where everything is a little bit you know, better then are you ready to talk? Yeah, then we’ll we’ll talk about that. So that was really important to us. Not when we experience someone is angry, and then the other person matches that energy. It’s always like sometimes I’m the one who gets angry and then he’s the cooler person he’s like relax, relax, he will balance it because I normally get like angrier, but you know that he does not he does not try to like argue over me. Just, you know, we’ll just cool off. And then we’ll come back again to talk. I think that’s important as well, not to both be at that level of anger at the same time. Yeah.
Zeal Zainuddin 51:44
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 51:44
Sure.
Murshidah Said 51:45
So I think that works for us. Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 51:46
Okay. How about for you Zeal, what’s your approach when you and Murshidah don’t seem to see eye to eye on something, or maybe have a disagreement over something personal or maybe even in business?
Zeal Zainuddin 51:58
Yeah. So that basically, I am actually a very spiritual person, like I grew up on, my family had a lot of values, a lot of spiritual. So they actually include a lot of those things inside myself. So like for myself, right? I don’t do things out of anger, like if I mean, anger, more, like if I’m very angry, I do not like, go and talk to a person, I make sure that I’m centered first, for example, what I do is I do my prayers first, I meditate I do, I make sure that I’m in a state of calm, then only I will go and and talk to somebody. Sometimes we do want to strangle each other or butt heads in terms of our opinions of doing business. But what I do is I center myself by doing prayers. And then we have a very powerful exercise that we do in our family, we have this exercise, we call it “what I feel like sharing.” So this whst I feel like sharing. So what we do is when we are having conflict, we will sit down and face each other as close as possible, maybe even our knees touching each other. And we will we will start off with like, for example, I will say to Murshidah, what I feel like sharing is I will share whatever I’m not happy about that, I’m not happy and tedious in my mind. And the rule is Murshidah cannot interact at all at any point of time. She
must allow me to express myself. Once I finish expressing myself, then she gets a chance to share what she feels like sharing and is not to defeat whatever I say is to share what she is feeling at this moment of time. Today we know exactly I’m frustrated because of you did this, you did that. And we know where we are coming from when we are not like trying to argue over each other not trying to win an argument, we are trying to find what is our mutual ground and what we are feeling at this point of time. So we like to picture it that way and it’s been very powerful. We applied it with our doctor, with our clients as well, we do the training, like we have this exercise, “What I feel like sharing” and it works amazingly in not just in our family, but even outside of our family as well.
Matthew Hoffman 53:51
That’s beautiful. I love that because you two things that you said you let want to come back to one is you get yourself centered before you try to come back and connect with Murshida or somebody else and saying prayers, meditating. But having that’s that’s a very mature and responsible way to approach it. Because you’re taking emotion out of it. And really making sure that you’re in touch with most important and valuable to you. So you can take your best self and then engage with the person you love and care about or that you’re working with. And I think that centering practice is huge. And then I loved I love “what I feel like sharing” that’s a wonderful family practice and also a personal one, which just sets an opportunity for each person to be able to be heard and express without judgment, or it’s not it’s not an argument. It’s this is what I feel like because understanding what your partner feels like is critical if you’re going to reach that understanding and really try to be effective as a couple in a relationship. So thank you for sharing that.
Kimberly Hoffman 54:55
Yeah, I hope our listeners go away with a new tool to put in their toolbox. When it comes to having moments like those together, I think that they’re very valuable. And when we can learn how to be able to express ourselves in a very respectful and loving, caring way, that’s when we learn a lot about each other. And it’s a great opportunity rather than it being conflict. It’s more about learning and understanding. We have 11 other pillars, and of the 11 other pillars, I’d love to hear from each of you, which one of those most resonates with you and why? And either one of you can go first.
Zeal Zainuddin 55:42
Okay, all right. Okay. For me, I when I look at that, pillars, right, what being a very spiritual person I like, I love the one about faith and moral code. Because for me, I feel like even when I do my coaching and my training with my clients, and even in my family, I put that as a foundation, the faith and the moral code, like, as long as we have values, we practice what we are meant to do on Earth, right, we have certain guidelines, like in our religion, we already had the guidelines of what we need to practice to make a good relationship, how to do business and all that. So I always use that as a foundation, and everything builds on top of that. So I really resonate with that faith, but which I believe is an integral part of our life, not just in business, but in our communication with our spouses, our children, with the people around us, you know, how we do things, right? And I’ve seen, like, so many in my clients who are faith based, right, they get the you get out their conflict, or their problems much faster than people want. They don’t believe in a higher power, they don’t believe in certain values, or universal values, their problems keep on repeating one after another, they do not really like I met people like then they’re not faith based. Five years later, they’re still having the same challenges. But people who are faith based,
they don’t have to be religious, but they are more spiritual, they’re more value based, they get off the problem very fast. So when we apply that in our family, we have the most amazing relationship, the most amazing time together and we are very, we always think ahead, like, if we were to leave this world, right, we’re going to leave behind? Our creator will ask us, what do you do to in order in your service to me and also to others? We have no regrets, we can live free, we have done our best to help others. And we have done whatever in our faith to do and we will live in this world in a very, no baggage as we leave the room with with no bad conscience, we have a very peaceful passing to the other side of the world. Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 57:38
Sure. How about for you, Murshida?
Murshidah Said 57:41
Yeah, I really resonate whatever Zeal says, especially when it comes to faith and moral code, that for me, it’s really important. And I also would like to highlight, I love all your 14 pillars. Matthew, and Kimberly, one of the things that is also really important to me is fun and humor, because that keeps the energy and high vibe in our family as well. And it’s in our relationship. And that is the other one I put in high priority, having fun, and humor doesn’t have to be all you know, why go through life with so much anger burden, and all of those things. I mean, it’s not like everything has to be you know, around money and wealth, with whatever resources that we have, we can always have lots of fun and humor at the same time, even in simple food at home. And, you know, we make jokes with each other, we have we entertain ourselves, I think that is that is very important to me. And that keeps our relationship, you know, fun and we have lots of laughs in the in the family, in the homes. And the other the other ones that also really resonate with me is the selflessness and I’d like to share this with all the viewers out there, all the the listeners out there. Many years ago when Zeal and I were also going through tough times in our relationship because we were really struggling financially we were in, you know, we just moved to a different country. And you know, I had to start my business, I only had like 50 cents in my wallet and we were asked to leave the house. And at that time, I was facing a lot of anger towards like, why why is my life like this? Right? And was it I was like, upset with Zeal at the same time. And when, you know, we managed to come off financially and you know, somehow we didn’t resolve that part part of the anger with zeal or myself until there was a time when we visited an orphanage and when we went to the orphanage, I saw babies abandoned as young as two weeks old and that was when I was everything was like in perspective for me. Why am I upset over small things that are bigger things to work to, you know, what can I do to help these children? What can I do to help this world so that people don’t abandon their own child you know, and live in the jungle, leave them abandoned or to die in the jungle and all that so that will was when, you know, the act of selflessness. Thinking beyond ourselves also came in, and it puts a lot of gratitude in us. It puts more, you know, faith as well in our relationship and working together with the same cause of serving God, serving humanity. And I believe that is that is really powerful in our relationship.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:00:20
Sounds like it was transformational.
Murshidah Said 1:00:25
Yes, we have a lot of stories, and I really love this
Kimberly Hoffman 1:00:31
Individually and as a couple.
Murshidah Said 1:00:32
Yes, yes.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:00:33
Very transformation for you.
Zeal Zainuddin 1:00:35
Thank you.
Matthew Hoffman 1:00:36
It’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So we do webinars in Kickass Couples Nation, and we’re talking this Thursday about selflessness, and why it’s more important to give than receive. And one of the things you shared exactly something that I always shared, when someone is angry and upset, and I don’t have this, I need that. And it’s terrible. And, you know, when we get caught up in how bad our circumstances, the best thing you can do is to give and help somebody else.
Murshidah Said 1:01:08
Yes.
Matthew Hoffman 1:01:10
First of all, it takes your focus right off of your own problems. And then you realize that the problems you have are really not that big compared to so many others. And you have the ability to help them and it helps lift you out of that thinking.
Zeal Zainuddin 1:01:25
Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 1:01:26
And so I love that example. And that’s a we’ve used that often come back to and it’s incredibly powerful. So that kind of leads to a fun idea that we have. And Kim and I talk about it a lot. It’s called spillover thinking. And Kim and I feel that the strength of our relationship, we just celebrated 28 years of marriage together.
Zeal Zainuddin 1:01:46
Yay!
Murshidah Said 1:01:46
Yay!
Matthew Hoffman 1:01:46
Yes, yes, we agree, we are excited. And I can honestly say that is better than I ever thought it could be. And I’m grateful for that. And one of the things that we feel is the goodness of our relationship is and what it’s founded on our faith, and our beliefs and our values, is really what allows us to be successful in every other area of our life. So our goodness, we have so much good between us, we think it spills over and it spills over to a lot of different areas. So I’m curious, how does the good of your and Zeal’s relationship, Zeal and Murshida? How does your goodness spill over into other areas of your life?
Zeal Zainuddin 1:02:27
Yeah, my sovereign, I always see myself as like, an ambassador of love and respect, because I feel that everything in our world is energy, right, and this energy cannot be destroyed, it only can change form, right? But this energy can be transferred from one person to another, even though like there’s somebody at the end of the world in another country, 1000 kilometers away example. If we have this love, they actually can be transferred to them as well. And it’s been proven scientifically, you know, so that for me, when if I see myself as an ambassador of love and respect, I must immolate myself in everything that I do with Murshidah, with the people around me. And we always do this as much as possible to practice, we know that we also have witnessed, we are still working in a work in progress, we know we do have our times, and we do have a meltdown as well. But we do, we immediately switch we say we tell ourselves, okay, this is our foundation, our love and respect, so and a lot of chaos in the world happens because of love and respect. From a very early age, as a child, even why we started this love and respect because we saw in families in education in schools, there’s lack of love and respect in the world, for example, right? I always tell parents or parents, they love their children, all parents love their children, but sometimes they don’t respect their children. Right? What I mean by that is, a lot of parents, they don’t, they don’t really take the time to understand what is the child’s dreams that goes with a passion they want the child to be what they want to be like, I was cringy one time and a parent said, my first dream for them is they must become engineers, you got this, you know, they don’t care that you didn’t dreams, one coming up this or whatever it is, they just want the children to follow their agenda of what they want, you know, so like for me is respecting a child is seeing their strength, their God and send them on Earth with their own strength and own talents. We must expect that like my daughter, she’s not gifted academically, but she is very gifted in terms of she loves doing business. She has a very entrepreneurial mindset. And even like, she saw something that they went to the stables. There’s a cafe that’s not being used. And she said, Mommy and Papa, I want to, I want to start this cafe and make people give food and all that. And we actually encourage her to do that. Even though we say she might not be well academically, but she wants to do business. We are all in for it. We’re gonna support her. So that is the respect that I’m talking about when we emulate it, right? A lot of those couples around us right? Even our own family members change because of us. Like we used to do a lot of a strict feeding and we used to go to even areas which is quite dangerous when some people say I’m not going to this area because it’s dangerous, but we used to go inside it. And because of our act, right, a lot of people started doing the same thing. Even our family members who do not usually do charity they just do on a site like gifts to their favorite charity, but not theirs. They are joining us in our charity.
Matthew Hoffman 1:05:15
I love the concept of being an ambassador of love.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:05:19
Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 1:05:20
And respect. That’s beautiful. I love that. Murshida, do you have anything to add to about spillover thinking and how you see the goodness of your relationship spilling over into other areas of your life?
Murshidah Said 1:05:30
Yeah, I think most important how I see it is self leadership, like Zeal how leads himself, I lead myself as well. And as a couple, we emulate that as well. And in our coaching and training, that’s how love and respect is spread, because I work with leaders, whether it’s in the organizational space, or whether it’s in the marginalized communities face, I work with the leaders, and that is how working with the leaders getting them to transform, lead themselves, see the bigger pictures that to do see how they can do more good within their own organizations and in their communities. That’s how it is being spread and shared with their own communities and in their organizations. And that’s how that’s how this message is also spread. So I believe in self leadership, and then also practicing what you advocate and what you believe in. And that is how other people will also, you know, experience and they share it with their own communities and in their own organizations. Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 1:06:30
Beautiful.
Zeal Zainuddin 1:06:30
One of the things maybe I’ll add one thing, right? One of the things that I saw was when we as a couple have decided to do a lot of things as we we do good things together, we do social impact, we do charity, we notice a lot of other couples, they were inspired as well, like last couple when they have a lot of problems, right when they started doing charity or social work together, all their problems goes away. And that’s what our formula in our life, every time we have a problem, or we are having some kind of challenge. And we tell eachother, Okay, let’s go and help others. Let’s go to an orphanage. Let’s go and feed somebody, let’s help let’s go visit a refugee family that’s having illnesses. And sure enough, right every single time, the problem will just go away. No, like we don’t want us putting enough extra effort in trying to solve the problem. The problem is a formula that the problems just goes away just like that. And sometimes we even get even better things like opportunities to do even more good. Yeah.
Matthew Hoffman 1:06:37
That’s a beautiful example.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:06:57
Murshidah, if you could go back in time to your unmarried self, and give yourself one piece of advice. What would that be?
Murshidah Said 1:07:39
I would tell my, my single self that I do not have to be strong and independent all the time, it is okay to receive. And I remember I’ve been saying I was single for a long time I got married in my 30s. And that
in Asia, in our culture, it’s like, oh, really old already. So when when I was in my 20s, I was single a lot. And there was a lot of walls that I built around myself that I have to be this strong, independent woman, I don’t need anyone. When I would give that advice to just, you know, trust, love, receive in.
Matthew Hoffman 1:08:20
Beautiful
Kimberly Hoffman 1:08:21
How about you Zeal? If you could go back to your unmarried self and give yourself one piece of advice. What would it be?
Zeal Zainuddin 1:08:28
Okay, yeah, so yeah, think about? It’s a very interesting question. Because when I was younger, and I was single, right, I was very one thing I was very hard on myself, I was like, sort of like a perfectionist, I really wanted things, when I do something, I really want to go all out. And then the thing is, I sometimes expect the same of others without understanding, know their strengths, their weaknesses, you know, I’m saying they had, they also have their own limitations. So what I would do is if I were to go back to my single self, I would tell myself to be more tolerant or more understanding of others, you know, don’t expect people to be what I want them to be, you know, like, let them be themselves. But at the same time, I show by example of what they can become, how they can include themselves not become more of a person who shows by example, then first of all, tell people what to do, and then expect them to be a certain way. That will. I’ll do that. Yeah.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:09:19
I love that
Matthew Hoffman 1:09:20
Beautiful. You all have been so gracious and transparent in sharing from your backgrounds. We appreciate you and want to recognize the love and respect and the ambassadors that you are of those qualities to each other, and also to our listeners. So thank you for being with us tonight and sharing all those wonderful experiences.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:09:44
Thank you for all that you do for other people in service of others. And you are in the business of transforming lives it sounds like so keep up the great work.
Matthew Hoffman 1:09:56
If people want to find you or learn more about you or connect with you, where should they go?
Zeal Zainuddin 1:10:02
Okay, like for us, right? Um, for myself, my name Zeal Zainuddin is on on all my social medias, my Facebook, my Instagram. So, the moment they key in the word Zeal Zainuddin probably you guys will put in the link there later, right? They will see my social media or in Google. And then our company we use Love and Respect Transforms. So even if they put in Google, they will see our LinkedIn, they will
see our Facebook as well. So the name itself is mostly they want to find us they do a Google they will find our name there as well.
Murshidah Said 1:19:51
Yeah, and mine is, Murshidah Said. The name of Murshidah Said is in LinkedIn, is in Instagram, on Facebook as well. So yeah, we love to connect.
Matthew Hoffman 1:21:55
Perfect, well, thank you.
Kimberly Hoffman 1:22:36
Thank you both very much
Matthew Hoffman 1:22:38
We look forward to connecting soon.
Murshidah Said 1:23:00
You’re welcome.
Zeal Zainuddin 1:23:09
Take care.