Resiliency, Determination, and Purpose: A Conversation with Zeenat Siman
Nov 04, 2023Season 2Episode 10
Shireen Botha/ Tanya Scotece
Ever felt swamped by the clutter of life and work?
We share the mic with Zeenat Siman, owner of Firefly Bridge Organizing and a wizard at decluttering not just spaces, but also lives. As a professional organizer and productivity specialist, Zeenat dives deep into the art of simplifying life, a journey she undertook herself transitioning from a traditional career to entrepreneurship. Armed with empathy and a powerful quote from Maya Angelou, she challenges us to shift our focus from harmful comparison to uplifting each other, a valuable lesson, especially for working moms.
In our heartfelt conversation, Zeenat takes us on a winding path that led her to find her passion. From the corporate world to staying home with her kids, and from volunteering to introspection – every twist and turn led her to realize that she wanted to make a difference, starting with herself. We also venture into challenging global issues, creating a respectful, non-judgmental space to discuss the conflict in Israel and Gaza. This episode is more than just a conversation; it's an ode to resilience, determination, and the shared human experience. Tune in and let Zeenat's journey inspire you to embrace your purpose.
Ever felt swamped by the clutter of life and work?
We share the mic with Zeenat Siman, owner of Firefly Bridge Organizing and a wizard at decluttering not just spaces, but also lives. As a professional organizer and productivity specialist, Zeenat dives deep into the art of simplifying life, a journey she undertook herself transitioning from a traditional career to entrepreneurship. Armed with empathy and a powerful quote from Maya Angelou, she challenges us to shift our focus from harmful comparison to uplifting each other, a valuable lesson, especially for working moms.
In our heartfelt conversation, Zeenat takes us on a winding path that led her to find her passion. From the corporate world to staying home with her kids, and from volunteering to introspection – every twist and turn led her to realize that she wanted to make a difference, starting with herself. We also venture into challenging global issues, creating a respectful, non-judgmental space to discuss the conflict in Israel and Gaza. This episode is more than just a conversation; it's an ode to resilience, determination, and the shared human experience. Tune in and let Zeenat's journey inspire you to embrace your purpose.
Tales from the Wild, stories from the Heart A journey into the mind and soul of fired-up business professionals, where they share their vision for the future and hear from a different non-profit organization every month as they create awareness of their goals and their needs. Dive into a world of untamed passion. As we join our host, Shireen Botha, for this month's episode of Friends from Wild Places.
Shireen Botha:
All right, good day Wild Hearts. Shireen, here I am your virtual Boutique Bookkeeper and QuickBooks Advisor. The feeling is great and empowering as you scale your business. But you and I both know that as your business grows, the more transactions are made and the more you need to spend time in your books to make sure that they are up to date and accurate. And you don't have that time. Do you Call Shireen's Bookkeeping Services today and allow me to do your books so you can do life? If you want to know more, go check me out at www. shireensbookkeeping. com and allow me to keep your books clean so you don't have to Welcome back listeners. You are listening to Friends from Wild Places with myself, Shireen Botha, and my co-host, professor, Tanya Scotece. Tanya, what's news from your side of the world?
Tanya Scotece:
Well welcome, welcome everyone this morning here in Miami, a cloudy day, but we are doing well. We are enjoying life, staying busy at the college, spreading kindness and love where we can and trying to be the vision in the world. So this afternoon and this morning, depending on where we're calling in from, we have Shireen is calling in from South Africa. I'm based here in Miami and we have a phenomenal guest today, ms Zeenat Simon. Ms Zeenat, where are you calling in from? I'm in Miami, also Miami. We're neighbors then. Yes, we are Awesome, well welcome.
Shireen Botha:
Thank you so welcome. So Zeenat Siman is the owner of Firefly Bridge Organizing from Miami Florida, usa. Zeenat is a professional organizer and productivity specialist. She works with busy parents to organize their homes and workspaces so they can spend time on what they actually love and still have a home that they enjoy living in. She is a wife, mom and chemical engineer with an MBA. She founded Firefly Bridge in 2017 with a mission to teach others how to simplify and organize. She is a member of NAPO, the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, and is a board member of South Florida chapter of NAPO. Welcome again. You are so welcome here, zeenat. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day just to spend with us.
Zeenat Siman:
My goodness, thank you so much for having me. I'm very honored.
Shireen Botha:
Yeah, it's our pleasure. So I just want to get straight into the quote of the day. This is the quote that Zeenat actually it's close to her heart. It is from Maya Angelou Is that correct, Maya Angelou? And it says each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm. When we look at each other, we must say I understand, I understand how you feel, because I've been there myself. I support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike. So that was a good one. Thank you for sharing that with us. And so, Zeenat, what does that quote mean to you.
Zeenat Siman:
For me it means understanding, tolerance. We don't know what's happening in anyone else's life but our own. And it came to me when I read that I just started having children. I'd stopped working after a long career and it just felt very isolating. None of my friends had kids and so everyone was working. I felt very much thrown into this world of motherhood and trying to figure out what that means. I chose not to continue working my my choice, but it was a very, very difficult transition and when I read that I thought, wow, here I am, looking at everyone else, wondering how are those moms that I saw at preschool, who were always fully dressed, always their hair done, and they looked well?
Zeenat Siman:
You know, I always just look at them and think how are you doing this? How are you so well put together when I'm just barely keeping it, you know, straight getting my kids out of, getting my kids dressed and into the car and into preschool? It was such an eye-opener to start thinking why am I comparing myself? No one lives my life but me, and they have also their own lives and whatever is happening in their lives, they may look put together on the outside, but who knows what's happening at home. Who knows what's happening with their children? Who knows what they think about what's happening in my home? Because I look like this. So I tried to stop with the comparison. I think that's what we need to do is to stop with the comparisons and really focus on just lifting each other up.
Tanya Scotece:
Zeenat, it's funny you makes reminisce. Shireen and I had done a podcast several months ago and we had talked about that. It's like sometimes perception, right, it's like if you see somebody made up sometimes we had talked about it was like a really raw and material as far as that. Sometimes people do that because they feel like their world is falling apart. They wish they could be completely natural and not made up, not ready to go. As you know, working parents sometimes it is the flip, because I was a working single mom. It's like sometimes you see people that was just laid back. It's like I aspire to be that person. So, all perception, it really is where we are sitting. So I truly, I admire your words.
Shireen Botha:
Thank you, yes, 100 percent. Whether you're a new mom comparing yourself to other moms, whether you're just a, I don't know it really, comparison issue is, I think, a really, really big issue amongst women.
Zeenat Siman:
Oh, I agree. I think, especially as women business owners, we're starting out and we're looking at others who have immediate success. We're looking at ourselves, thinking this is not me, I'm not making it, maybe I should just quit, maybe I should just figure out something else, because they're doing great and I'm not. What's happening?
Shireen Botha:
But business is business and we understand that everyone has their own path to build their businesses Absolutely, and I think it's a really very long dark down if you start saying, well, why don't, why am I not?
Voiceover:
there where they are right now I'm working really hard.
Shireen Botha:
Why don't I have the success that that person has? And that's a very dark and long tunnel to go down and you need to stay away from that because, as you said, everyone is walking a different journey and no one else can walk your journey. As always, what I say, there's only one of you and we need to just respect the walk and the journey that we're on. So, in the light, in the light, I'm actually nervous to talk about this next topic. Hence my voice is cracking. Okay, in the light of what's going on in the world right now, and I think everyone feels it and it's touched everyone's hearts. But I just wanted to take a moment and I think your quote is applicable in this topic as well, zenites, I wanted to speak about what's happening in Israel and Gaza.
Shireen Botha:
What are your feelings about this whole scenario, especially when it first happened to? How are you feeling about it now and how is it affecting you? And I just want you to know, and everyone that's listening to understand, that this is a time to speak your truth and share your opinion. This is a safe space for everyone, so there's no judgment here and I only want respect and love. So no hate speech, please. But yes, I just want us to talk a little bit about it. So, zenites, as our visitor, please share a little bit about your thoughts on this whole thing.
Zeenat Siman:
Well, it's been. This has been incredible, and this is the first, not the first. This is, sadly, not the first time we've seen this kind of brutality, and so when it first happened, my first reaction was shock and it just felt surreal. Is this really what's happening? You know, this is 2023. Is this really what's happening? Is this really how we treat each other?
Zeenat Siman:
I was flabbergasted that this could even happen, that people, anyone has it in their hearts to do something like this, and so, you know, I've had a chance to sit with it for a few weeks and I am, you know, I've. History repeats itself, but why and you know, this is this is in my mind. It's why. Why does this continue to happen? Why have we not learned? Why are we not able to find some sort of understanding, some sort of compromise? And I know, sitting here on my side of the world, I can say that, and I know that living it is much different than seeing it from over here, but I look at this type of brutality and I just I can't understand it. It makes me so sad and I think about so.
Zeenat Siman:
My kids are older, they're high school and young adults, and so they're able to see this and process and understand and we talk about it. But for the younger kids, how much of this do we want them to understand what's happening, but how much of the raw brutality of it do we share with them? I never want them to feel numb to violence. I want them to understand what violence is. You know, even when they were young and things had happened in the world school shootings and other crazy violent events around the world I wanted them to know what was happening in the world and kind of the reasoning behind it, that, the way that I understood it in any case, and I also didn't want them to feel like this is part of life.
Zeenat Siman:
This is what's going to happen. I have hope that at some point, maybe in my not in my lifetime, but in their lifetimes that things will be different. People will think and feel differently and communicate dialogue with each other differently, and that hasn't happened in the past 80 years. You know that nothing has really changed in that part of the world that I can see. So it's hard, it's hard.
Shireen Botha:
Yeah, and yourself Tanya.
Tanya Scotece:
You know it's when you look at people, right, and people from all walks of life, all nations and everyone has, as you mentioned, you know very eloquently, you know a perspective, right. So we sit back from our viewpoint, from our perspective, but when you look at leaders, world leaders, world politics, world religions, it's so much above the average common person, right? So I think that's what we're sitting. You know, we're sitting back as the one individual or a group of people looking at what's happening and saying what can we do to make a difference? So I think it kind of starts there.
Tanya Scotece:
I mean, if you look historically, you know from a historical perspective, you know politics, religion has been, I mean, many, many over the years, have lost their lives and everything that they had to stand for. So, as you stated, you know, in the year 2023, to still be faced with, you know, maybe times have changed to some degree, but at hand, that's probably the essence. You know just different viewpoints and you know we just pray for peace. I think that's what we do is we pray for peace and just literally, one day at a time.
Shireen Botha:
Right, right. Well, I might trigger something here, but okay, let's start off by saying this I am not on either side, but I am on the side of the innocence. So there has been people murdered and killed and oppressed on both sides, and those are the people I'm standing for. It's those defenseless ones that didn't ask for this, that, unfortunately, wasn't the wrong time in the wrong place. I'm 100% for them.
Shireen Botha:
I do not and don't understand someone that can come to me and go well, I rape and kill those people because they oppressed me, because they did horrible things to me, because they tortured me, and they deserve it. So I'm going to go there and I'm going to do the same things back to them, or even worse. I cannot and will not condone that in any way, shape or form. I can't because, goodness knows, we have all and more.
Shireen Botha:
Others have been horribly oppressed, horrible things have been done to them, but you still decide and you still have a choice on how to react, despite what has been done to you.
Shireen Botha:
We forget that everybody has a choice at the end of the day and you can still have a choice, no matter how much you think that that might have been taken away from you for a period of time. You still have a choice on how you're going to move forward with your life and how you want to be. You know, what you want to leave behind is remembrance of who you are, and so I have to say that because for me, it's really heavy on my heart, because I do, I'm 100%. I'm not on either side, but I do stand for the innocent lives that have been hit by this. But I also do not and cannot condone I'm going to kill your families enough because you beat me up when we were in school and you, right, right, you know, did horrible other things to me when we were growing up, whatever the case may be. So I just wanted to say that I don't know that my if that tree because anything further from YouTube, but I just that's my feelings on it.
Tanya Scotece:
No, I just think you know, as we said, sometimes, you know, people get triggered by watching media and feel that they have to pick a side when that's not really even what's being offered. It's our choice to stay and we can process and, you know, choose peace for for humanity.
Zeenat Siman:
Agreed Exactly and continue to be hopeful that the the lessons of hate and violence don't continue from generation to generation to generation. These, that's what's happened, that's history. And you know you, you teach your children, but I also teach my children to my. You know there's a world of opinions out there, not just mine. So let's listen to a number of opinions before you formulate your own. And of course, you know we can't, we can't, have that influence on everyone in the world. And so that perpetuate, you know there's a perpetuation of my thinking that that at some point has to change. I don't know how to change that. I wish I did.
Shireen Botha:
You being hopeful? Yeah, exactly, it's not an easy thing to fix. As you say, there's thousands and thousands of years and that's been going on. But it can start with you. It can little things can start with you and, and you just got to keep on doing what you're doing, you know, and so with that, see that's, I want to get into a little bit about who you are and your business that you started. So tell us a little bit about your background, who you are and, you know, your decision to become a business owner out of all things. Out of all things.
Zeenat Siman:
Well, I had a very traditional type of career path. Early on I finished my studies and I got a job as an engineer. I was an engineer in R&D at a food company and it was fabulous, was a great career, was fun, there was a lot of creativity, there's a lot of camaraderie and it was great. But when I started having kids, I got asked to creative.
Tanya Scotece:
I'm admiring for the engineer part because I'm here's feet of an engineer like you got to explain that a little bit happen.
Zeenat Siman:
Well. So as a chemical engineer, you know, there were options in the in the day this was in the 90s you could work for a petroleum company and oil company, that kind of thing, or you could work for consumer products companies. And then there were, of course, other French companies, but the ones that came to our school to recruit were mostly the chemical companies, the petroleum companies, and then there were a handful of consumer products companies, and I was drawn to that more so than okay, do I wanna work on an oil field? Not really Do I wanna do this. This felt more like okay, I'm touching individual lives by working for a consumer products company, and so I went that path and within that company, I was lucky enough to be placed in research and development for various food categories during the time that I was there. So that was very interesting. We got to do a lot of new product launches, product formulations, a lot of new product testing with consumers and that kind of thing. We got to see how our products were actually affecting individuals, which was great. It was a lot of fun. That's where the creativity came in. Gotcha, gotcha, yeah.
Zeenat Siman:
But then when I chose to stay home after my kids, in the back of my mind, I thought, okay, well, once they were a certain age, didn't really know what that was, I'll get back into the workforce, no problem. So stayed home, had the kids. I loved being there to take them to school, to bring them home from school. The after school time was fantastic. I loved doing the after school routines with them. And then, as they grew up, they had their after school activities and things. And so we were, I was a chauffeur multiple kids, multiple places. And then at some point, yes, they grew up and then I thought, okay, so is this the time for me to get back into the workforce? Because, honestly, once they're more, you know they can sustain themselves. I am not a person who likes to. I wanna be home to organize my house every day, or I wanna clean all day, or I wanna cook all day. That's not really me. And so I really wanted to do something else to have impact outside of my own home, and so I tried a few different things, a few kind of like side gigs, side jobs that I did a lot of volunteering in between, especially while my kids were in school, did a lot of volunteering while they were in school, very young.
Zeenat Siman:
And then, when I decided, okay, let me think of something that I wanna do, the last thing I wanted to do was to go back to you know, in office or in lab job working for someone else, because I would have. I knew that I would have very little flexibility and I wanted still to be able to. If my child has a performance in the middle of the day, in the middle of the afternoon, I just wanna be able to go pick up and go. I wanna be able to pick them up from school and bring them home. That after school time is so precious with them. They tell you all their stories and, if you're lucky, they'll tell you about what happens at school. So that was still interesting to me and I couldn't figure out how to do that in a typical regular quote unquote job.
Zeenat Siman:
And so I started looking around. What could I start on my own, thinking only as if it was going to be this very, you know, small part time thing while the kids were in school, and all during this time, while they were very young, we moved around a lot with them, multiple times with them, we had, you know, boxes that had moved from our very first move, that hadn't never been opened in 10 years, I would just push them into closets. And I started feeling very overwhelmed by everything that we had in our home, and also overwhelmed by everything that was on our schedules, you know, multiple practices, lessons, this, that for everyone, and so much so that I started kind of losing myself, like why am I here? What am I here for Other than raising these beautiful kids? But like what else? And so I realized that I wanted to just simplify everything so I could start to think and feel about what is it that I want to do?
Zeenat Siman:
And that simplification process for me took a long time because I couldn't understand how I could just get rid of stuff. And I needed to get rid of stuff because it didn't all fit. You know, we were cramming stuff into closets, drawers, and nothing was ever organized. The laundry was always behind. I was always behind on the laundry. You know, things were just upside down. I felt actually a lot of angst and maybe even like embarrassment and shame about having people in my home because of the way that it looked, not because of the home that it was, but because of the clutter. There was always something papers and toys and random things everywhere and I couldn't figure out why.
Zeenat Siman:
I'm an intelligent person. You know I worked in a very technical field. I knew how to do all these things. Why couldn't I just get a handle over my stuff and my home? And you know, the thing that I like to do is do the research. And so I dove deep into why that was happening. I read as much as I could about it. I found lots of psychology books, but also I ended up finding Peter Walsh and Julie Morgan Stern, and then later on Marie Kondo and a very similar theme Organize your Space.
Zeenat Siman:
And for me was just not organize my space, but I organize my space in order to organize my life, simplify my space, in order to streamline my life, and I call it streamlining. And after I figured I had to do this for myself in a way that I can make it stick, that it would stay, that I would stay streamlined and organize easily. So I wasn't spending hours every weekend reorganizing, cleaning. You know, I wanted to spend a middle amount of time doing that stuff so that I could live my life and join my home and join my family. And once I learned how to do that, I realized I found NaPo, the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and through their education and through their association with other professionals doing this as a job, I realized this as an industry, I could do this as a job, I would love to do that, and so I started my business, again as a hobby, thinking this was just going to be like a short term thing until I found what I really, you know, what my real job was going to be.
Zeenat Siman:
But this ended up being the thing that brings me joy. That brings me, you know, this feeling of accomplishment when I'm able to teach others how to streamline their homes. And I always say that my goal is, once I've taught someone to do this. And you know, for some people it takes a day, for other people it takes months. But whatever it is, however long it takes for me to be able to pass on this knowledge to you, you should never need an organizer in your home again. You will be able to do this because you'll know how to streamline your life and keep it that way for good. So that's how I became an organizer.
Tanya Scotece:
Tune in next week for part two from Friends from Wild Places.
Voiceover:
You've been listening to Friends from Wild Places with Shireen Botha. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast from the links to catch every episode and unleash your passion.
