Mohamed Hammoud, Leadership Coach, Speaker, Author

The best part of my birthday wasn’t the day itself, but the day after.

hammoud surprised me with a ticket to see Michael, the Michael Jackson movie, and for a couple of hours, I wasn’t just watching a story. I was reliving pieces of my own life through the music that shaped me, now sitting beside my son who loves it just as much.

We even met a young man, Hector, dressed as Michael, who came to the film because his mother, now gone, had loved him deeply.

I’m reminded that what moves us doesn’t end with us. It carries forward, quietly, from one heart to another.

This year did not ask me to sprint faster. It asked me to stand still with more honesty.

Three words kept circling back: acceptance, gratitude, presence. They became less like concepts and more like daily practices that changed how I see myself, my work, and the world.

I shifted from constant outward motion to something quieter and deeper. I pulled back from always being the extreme extrovert in the room and allowed myself to become a more reflective introvert. I spent more time taking long walks in the woods, afternoons diving into books, and more hours writing with soul and spirit. I travelled, but chose depth over display. And I kept using my voice deliberately to speak about injustice wherever I saw it, without needing attention for doing so.

Writing and publishing were part of this year. But the bigger transformation was internal: who I am when nothing needs to be performed.

These three ideas are not “soft” virtues. They map closely to what research calls the foundations of emotional intelligence: awareness, regulation, empathy, and purposeful action.

Acceptance helps regulate emotion rather than suppress it. Studies on acceptance-based emotion regulation show improved resilience and cognitive flexibility, core ingredients of emotional intelligence. In simple terms, when you stop fighting reality, you free up energy to respond wisely.

Gratitude is associated with higher well-being, better mood regulation, and stronger social bonds in numerous randomized studies. People who regularly practise gratitude tend to report fewer negative emotions and greater prosocial behaviour, both directly tied to EQ.

Presence (often cultivated through mindfulness practices) is linked in many trials to decreased emotional reactivity and improved attentional control. Presence strengthens the ability to notice what you feel before acting on it, which is the heartbeat of emotional intelligence.

In my own life, this looked practical, not mystical: noticing when I was triggered, choosing response over reflex, allowing gratitude to soften comparison, and accepting what is outside my control while taking responsibility for what is not.

Presence helped me see clearly. Gratitude helped me value deeply. Acceptance helped me act wisely.

I am not interested in promises written at midnight and forgotten by February. Instead, as 2026 approaches, I am interested in agency: acting where I truly have influence and releasing what I never controlled. I want to continue becoming healthier, more grounded, less dependent on external validation, and more rooted in self-worth that is not up for public vote.

And I am deeply grateful for what God has given and for what God has withheld. Both shaped the path.

If there is an invitation here for you, it is this:

Do not chase a louder year. Choose a truer one. Cultivate presence in your ordinary moments. Practise gratitude even when life is imperfect. Embrace acceptance so you can act with real agency where it matters.

Here’s to a year not of performance, but of becoming.

Sometimes clarity is born in the middle of chaos.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been in South Lebanon writing We Who Refuse To Die: Between Ashes and the Olive Tree.

It’s a strange thing to find calm amidst ongoing bombings and Israeli aggression.

Yet, in the midst of tension, that’s exactly what these days have taught me.

And even when I wake to the sound of bombs at dawn, I listen for the adhan rising in the distance, take a deep breath, perform my fajr prayer and begin again.

Each morning, I watch the sun rise over Mount Hermon in the east, the light spilling gently across the hills.

I go for my walk through the village, pick the stubborn jasmine flowers that still bloom in November, and greet neighbours who look at me and wonder, Who is this stranger among us?

On my way back home, I pluck pomegranates straight off the trees for a mid-morning snack,

Most days, I’ve taken my writing space outdoors, to sit on our veranda overlooking the mountains that cascade down toward the sea.

There, between the scent of pine and the echo of distant thunder, I write. It’s where I’ve learned that peace isn’t the absence of conflict, it’s the presence of perspective.

These moments have reminded me that patience is not passive. It’s the quiet strength to stay grounded when the ground itself shakes.

That perspective is not denial. It’s the courage to see beauty even when surrounded by fear.

And that resilience isn’t the absence of worry, but the choice to rise each day with presence, purpose, and peace.

If you’re navigating uncertainty, change, or pressure in your own life or leadership, remember: clarity doesn’t come from control, it comes from stillness.

Let’s work together to cultivate that grounded clarity—within yourself, your team, and your leadership.

→ Message me if you’re ready to lead with resilience, not reaction.

No matter the season
There’s always a reason
To fall in love
With Lebanon

For over a year since the war began, I avoided returning to Lebanon, afraid of Israeli escalation. But in September, I made a decision: I would no longer let fear, or Israel’s aggression, keep me from my homeland.

Since arriving, I’ve lived mostly in the South in Kfar Dounine, under the constant hum of drones, writing my new book We Who Refuse to Die: Between the Ashes and the Olive Tree, a testament to Lebanon’s resilience and the steadfastness of its people.

I’ve walked among the ruins of homes destroyed by Israeli bombs, seen the arrogance of an occupier that has been attacking daily even after a ceasefire went into effect a year ago, and witnessed the courage of the Jnoub—the people of the victorious South—who refuse humiliation and, under constant threat, continue to defend their land, rebuild their homes, and live with dignity.

Last Thursday, the war reached our doorstep. During maghreb prayer, I received an evacuation notice, followed by a drone strike, then two rockets that hit a nearby home sheltering a displaced family who had taken shelter before the attack. I felt no fear, only anger: at the Lebanese government’s cowardice, at the cruelty of those who call this “defence,” at the impunity of an enemy that wages war without consequence.

Yet by the next morning, life had resumed. We cleared the debris, prayed, and carried on. Because we who live between ashes and olive trees refuse to die.

Here’s my interview with CTV London, where I speak about what it means to witness—and endure—this reality firsthand.

Each time I stand before this sacred structure, something within me shifts. The Kaaba, the first House of God, is not merely a monument of stone and silk. It is the axis around which hearts revolve, the compass by which souls find their bearing.

Every time I visit, I am remade. I renew my allegiance to my Creator. I feel myself stripped of pretense, humbled before a structure to which I turn many times a day, a structure that realigns my inner compass even when the world throws me off course.

Before this House, every building bows, every believer turns, every breath finds direction. It is here that I return to the beginning, not to a place, but to Presence. His Presence.

“Before the Kaaba, the first House of God that has called to billions over centuries, the axis of prayer, the beating heart of surrender, I bowed, emptied and open. Bodies pressed against me from every side, pilgrims desperate to touch the ancient stone, to kiss its cloth, to draw close. But in that moment, I felt entirely alone. Alone with my Creator.
I pressed my forehead to its walls, the heat of the stone grounding me. My tears mingled with the dust and sweat of those who came before me, generations of seekers who had carried their burdens to this door. I wasn’t merely repenting for what I had done.

There, before the Kaaba, I found a solemn kind of intimacy. Not fear. Not shame. But a beginning of a return, a constant turning. Not to a place, but to Him.

In that moment, I was dust before the Divine, and yet somehow, still beloved. To be seen by God in my naked truth and still be held.”

In that surrender, I am reminded that transformation isn’t a single act — it’s a continual turning. A return, again and again, to the One who has always been waiting.

This moment, this renewal of faith, this intimate reckoning, is at the heart of my upcoming book, My Name Is Mohamed: An Immigrant’s Journey of Resilience, Identity, and Faith.

It is a story of return.
To faith.
To self.
To the One who calls us home.

“For years, I had carried his name, and yet I had concealed it. Willingly. Unwillingly. The world had made it easier to be someone else, to trade Muhammad for Mike, to tuck away the name of the most noble of all creation, as if it were something shameful. And I believed it. The fear, the guilt, the burden of always explaining myself made hiding feel like protection.

I stood before the tomb of Muhammad, the radiant man whose mercy shaped nations, whose truth outshone tyranny. But what I saw was not just a prophet. I saw a mirror.
His name wasn’t only written in calligraphy above me. It was etched within me. A name I had once run from now beckoned me home, to rise, not with arrogance, but with reverence.”

These words from my upcoming book, My Name Is Mohamed: An Immigrant’s Journey of Resilience, Identity, and Faith, capture a lifetime of hiding, healing, and homecoming.

My journey has always led me back to this place—physically and metaphorically. To these sacred grounds, and to the inner ground of self-acceptance.

May we all find the courage to accept ourselves fully, to stand tall in our truth, even when the world makes it hard.

Because confidence begins not with who we become, but with who we refuse to hide.

Karbala is not a place you visit, it’s a presence that visits you.

Here, before the shrine of Imam Hussain (peace be upon him), time dissolves.

Grief and grace share the same breath.

Every tear feels like a return, every silence a confession.

“It took time. It took loss. It took standing in front of the shrine of Imam Hussain in Karbala, asking for a sign, and feeling a surge of recognition so deep it unravelled every doubt I had ever carried. It took tears. It took surrender. It took love.”

Those words, written long before this journey, find their home here. In this sacred soil, I understand again that surrender is not weakness, it is remembrance, and remembrance is love.

These reflections will appear in my forthcoming book, MY NAME IS MOHAMED: An Immigrant’s Journey of Resilience, Identity, and Faith, a work born of loss, longing, and the quiet grace of finding one’s way home.