How 3 Weeks Changed My Life, 25+ Opportunities and more...

Hey there,

Today’s newsletter is a bit different. It’s less actionable and more personal. But I feel like if I was supposed to have any kind of relationship with you - you would want to know this about me. Not going to lie, I am kinda scared to share this because it’s extremely vulnerable but I am sure you will find this of value.

This experience changed my life (not in a clickbaity way but for real) and maybe it can plant a seed in yours too 🌱

What to Expect This Week:

• Opportunities: Dragon’s Den Chat, $100,000 Fellowship and more

• Deep Dive: The experience that helped me find my purpose

• Internships: 100+ New Internship Opportunities

read time: 11 mins

Opportunities This Week

In addition to these, here’s the full list of 25+ Youth Leadership Opportunities.

How 3 weeks Changed my Life

It’s June 23rd, 2017.

It’s the last day of my first year in boarding school. I wake up feeling so excited to go back home to Tanzania.

I am also feeling really grateful that I hadn’t been a victim of the dengue fever outbreak at my school.

But … I may have jinxed it.

Whilst sitting in the school assembly, I start feeling really weak. My head starts hurting, I am feeling really feverish and I am struggling to keep my eyes open.

After the first break, I go to my dorm parents office and fall asleep on his bean bag.

He wakes me up for lunch and tells me to go to the nurse.

The nurse isn’t there… so I go to my room to take a nap and set an alarm for the nurse in the evening.

“Wake up bro, it’s 12am!!! You haven’t packed and our bus leaves in 5 hours!”, says my friend waking me up.

In all that weakness, I somehow manage to pack everything and get on the bus back home.

I sleep throughout the 12-hour bus ride and my parents pick me up, worried.

I hadn’t taken any medication until that point and so we go straight to the hospital.

But doctors don’t know what it is.

We kept hopping from one hospital to another.

And none of them had any answers.

4 days later, on the day of Eid, my body couldn’t take it anymore.

We go to the mosque in the morning and I was feeling so much weakness.

We finally get some results.

Doctors say my platelet had dropped really low and there was potential for internal bleeding.

And so they admit me to the hospital.

Things start to get better.

I would drink an extract made of crushed papaya leaves (most disgusting thing I’ve had btw 🤮 )

And eventually start recovering.

On Day 3, I thought it’d be funny to take this picture as well aha…

And a week later, I was discharged.

I wish that was the end of this story. Turns out, it was just the start…

From the point of getting discharged, up to the next 3 weeks - I go into this weird phase.

Based on the stories people told me, I start acting hypersexual and hyperactive.

I randomly start singing and dancing in the mosque. Would hug every girl I’d see.

The funniest one was I’d pretend to be a celebrity and post videos on my snapchat for my “fans” 😂 (how ironic looking back now)

This goes on for 3 weeks.

And then one morning, I wake up on my bed.

First thing I do is check my phone and I see the date on my home screen.

In confusion, I think “Why is the date on my phone wrong?”

As I try to fix it, I go on my social media and realise I have posted all these things that I don’t remember. Something is not adding up.

So I call my parents, they rush back home and they are relieved to see I am coming to my senses.

They start explaining everything that happened in the last 3 weeks.

I couldn’t believe it.

There was no way in the world I did that.

It was weird because for some of the stories, I had some visual glimpses of them - similar to how you remember glimpses of the dream.

But it was tough to make sense of it all.

Everyone had a different theory:

• Doctors: the medication may have affected my brain

• Psychologist: misdiagnosed me for bipolar disorder, manic episode

• Religious Priests: possessed

• Reiki: negative entity passed through me and chakras were misaligned

I didn’t know what to believe.

Why did this happen to me? What if I never recovered from this? What happens next?

All these questions kept going through my head.

It took me a couple of weeks to fully process it all.

Eventually, I found some clarity.

Although I couldn’t understand what caused it all, there was one thing I came to terms with.

I kept thinking that if I never recovered from this experience, I wouldn’t have been proud of the first 15 years of my life.

I knew I needed to change something.

That’s when I came across this quote:

But how do I find my purpose?

A quick google search led me to this rabbit hole of research which eventually led me to the Japanese concept Ikigai.

Instead of explaining it to you and doing a full breakdown. Check out:

1) Ali Abdaal explaining Ikigai in 58 seconds

2) This article that explains the westernized concept of Ikigai and how to find it

Finding my purpose using Ikigai is what inspired me to start For the Menstruator and eventually led me to this journey over the last 7 years.

And this is why I shared this story, my friend:

1) I found my purpose through this experience. If you haven’t thought about it, I hope this can inspire you to spend some time to think about yours/

2) This experience is just another reminder that every challenge can be converted into an opportunity. I could’ve easily used this experience to go down a vicious path. Instead, I used it as an opportunity to grow and find meaning. Whatever you’re going through right now, however hard or dark it may be, I want you to know that there’s always light at the end of it. And guess what? You’re not alone in this journey. You have me in your corner, and I genuinely mean this.

I really hope this resonated with you in some :)

100+ New Internships by Intern Insider

Last week, over 2500 people in our community found value in the internship list.

And so this week, I reached out to my friends at Intern Insider again to create an updated list of US and Canada Internships from Amazon, Microsoft, JP Morgan, and more!

They sent me a list of of 100+ new internships that you can get by subscribing to them below!

Best part? They are also in their 3rd year of university and so they understand the struggles of looking for a job as well.

My friend, before I go - I just wanted to share some gratitude. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to have a platform to share my story. All the feedback and support from you makes me feel safe to be vulnerable and talk about things that are so personal. But I don’t want this to be only about me - I would love to hear from you. Have you gone through a similar life-changing experience? Have you been able to find your purpose? What is something you’re currently grateful for?

I’ll be looking forward to hearing back from you (I try my best to reply to every email).

Hope you have had an amazing rest of your week, my friend! With love,

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One of the goals of Leaders of Today is to ensure we democratise access to opportunities. But in order for us to do this, we all have to come together ⭕️ Keeping this in mind, I would love for you to forward this with your network. Whether it’s your friends, classmates or colleagues. And to reward you, I will take out 15 mins of my time to have a 1-1 meeting with you for every 5 people that you refer.