Latest / Northern Quarter Talks / You Don't Have to Be Unbreakable | Asia Sharif

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You Don't Have to Be Unbreakable | Asia Sharif · Northern Quarter Talks

• 0:00
  Asia Sharif: It's very funny.
• 0:00
  Asia Sharif: At networking events I've had um many comments such as, oh were you like one of the videographers?
• 0:05
  Asia Sharif: Are you um you know one of the designers?
• 0:08
  Asia Sharif: Absolutely not.
• 0:08
  Asia Sharif: In fact I built that and it was 0.1% of the world coded in 2020 and out of the 0.1% it was like less than 2% were women of colour and for me that was like shocking.
• 0:22
  Asia Sharif: I remember when I first got diagnosed, I knew it was bad when I walked into the room and there was like two consultants, and I was like, Why is there two consultants and a couple of nurses?
• 0:31
  Asia Sharif: Through all those darkest times, the only thing that got me was I kept saying to myself, if I get through this, no, I have to,
• 0:38
  Asia Sharif: It's not you know, it's bit between me and God, like I'm getting through this, but if I don't, then at least that I've did everything that I wanted to do.
• 0:45
  Andy Coley: So, what do you hope to leave people with with your TEDx?
• 0:48
  Asia Sharif: That you do not have to be unbreakable to survive your life.
• 0:52
  Title: This is the TEDx Northern Quarter podcast.
• 0:56
  Simran Whitham: Asia Sharif, award-winning software engineer, DEI advocate, and future TEDx Northern Quarter 2026 speaker.
• 1:08
  Simran Whitham: Welcome to the TEDx and Talks podcast by TEDx Northern Quarter.
• 1:12
  Asia Sharif: No, I know, I'm really excited.
• 1:14
  Asia Sharif: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:15
  Simran Whitham: No, we're looking so forward to seeing you on that stage on September 11th.
• 1:19
  Simran Whitham: But for those that are listening and watching this, who is Asia Sharif?
• 1:25
  Asia Sharif: I feel like that's such a broad question.
• 1:27
  Andy Coley: Hey, we're gonna go straight in with a deep one, you know.
• 1:29
  Simran Whitham: Yeah, we're gonna straight.
• 1:30
  Simran Whitham: Yeah, who are you?
• 1:31
  Simran Whitham: What who are you as a person?
• 1:34
  Asia Sharif: So, Asia Sharif, who am I? So I actually grew up in Liverpool.
• 1:41
  Asia Sharif: And after growing up in Liverpool, I decided to move to London to yeah, for my first real job, I guess, I was in sales, if you class that's a real job.
• 1:54
  Asia Sharif: But prior that I . Who am I?
• 1:59
  Asia Sharif: I studied law, I dropped out second year, so uni dropout, love that for me. No longer wanted to be a lawyer.
• 2:05
  Asia Sharif: I wanted to be something like much more that would um encourage me to actually enjoy like my life and also like enjoy what I'm doing.
• 2:14
  Asia Sharif: So yeah, dropped out of uni, moved to London, lived in London for nearly five years, and decided to settle in Manchester.
• 2:23
  Asia Sharif: So that's how I ended up here, TEDx Northern Quarter.
• 2:26
  Asia Sharif: And I've been here since 2022.
• 2:29
  Asia Sharif: And yeah, I'm a award-winning software engineer, so I'm really into technology.
• 2:35
  Asia Sharif: I love coding, I love doing everything to do with technology and inspiring like women and young girls in tech, and to get into tech or into engineering in general.
• 2:45
  Asia Sharif: I'm a public speaker, I've spoken multiple stages like in the UK and around the world, and yeah, I'm a massive advocate for diversity, inclusion, neurodiversity, and so much more.
• 2:57
  Asia Sharif: So, um, yeah, it's a little bit about myself, but outside that I enjoy life and anything to do with life and travel. So
• 3:05
  Simran Whitham: I think that reflects really much in the content that you put out as well.
• 3:09
  Simran Whitham: And you've I think you're downplaying your achievements there a little bit, but it's very hard to condense it all into one little summary.
• 3:15
  Simran Whitham: But I just want to touch on something at one.
• 3:18
  Simran Whitham: You've had an amazing journey, which we will deep dive deeper into.
• 3:21
  Simran Whitham: But can we talk a little bit about like your earlier life, like where it all kind of stems from?
• 3:27
  Simran Whitham: Because you taught yourself to code in lockdown, and you did a dramatic career shift throughout lockdown and taught yourself to do something that not a lot of people, especially women, tend to think is a real viable career because it's not really advertised to women as you like to highlight.
• 3:41
  Simran Whitham: So, where does your love of technology and what does kind of your earlier upbringing leading you into changing this whole career course and learning to code in lockdown look like?
• 3:51
  Asia Sharif: So, my father was actually an aircraft engineer, so growing up, I I did have you know engineers in the family, and he's super smart, he's also like a hardware engineer, he's just good with anything to do with like computers and hardware.
• 4:05
  Asia Sharif: So I was always like interested in it in general, and then um, so I was exposed to it that way, but I never thought that I could go into it because the school that I went to in Liverpool, a lot of my peers, like it was an all-girls school, and a lot of us we we were kind of just wanting to be other amazing careers, like either a teacher, lawyer, um barristers.
• 4:27
  Asia Sharif: None of us ever mentioned, you know, like we were going to be like an engineer, but when I was young, I would always be like, Okay, well, if my father can be an aircraft engineer, I want to work for NASA doing whatever I want to do, and it was just so random.
• 4:40
  Asia Sharif: Now I never actually seen women in engineering or in careers at NASA, for example, from when I was very young.
• 4:48
  Asia Sharif: So growing up, I always thought, okay, um, I'm someone who believes in like whatever you put your mind to, you'll do.
• 4:56
  Asia Sharif: So after I left home very young when I was like 14, and I ended up in the UK, you can't live on your own at 14.
• 5:05
  Asia Sharif: So I actually had to get fostered.
• 5:06
  Asia Sharif: And my foster father is actually a barrister.
• 5:09
  Asia Sharif: So I thought, you know what, since he's doing this nice thing of fostering me, um, why don't I be a barrister, you know, to give back?
• 5:16
  Asia Sharif: Because you know, he's Nigerian and they absolutely love anything to do with a certificate.
• 5:20
  Asia Sharif: He's got like three degrees, honestly.
• 5:23
  Asia Sharif: Um, so yeah, so I thought, okay, yeah, I'll be um, I'll be a barrister and it'll make him proud, you know.
• 5:29
  Asia Sharif: So I went to university and I realised even though I love reading, like I'm someone who loves reading, loves writing, that you know, I used to write poetry and everything.
• 5:37
  Asia Sharif: Um, and I can condense large amounts of you know, information into like anything really.
• 5:44
  Asia Sharif: So I'm good at arguments if I need to.
• 5:46
  Asia Sharif: Um, so yeah, I thought, okay, barrister would be the career for me.
• 5:50
  Asia Sharif: But then I remember in second year, I thought, surely, like, I can't see myself doing seven years to become a barrister, and seven years in university and studying and doing all the hoops because I'm someone like if I'm gonna aim for a goal, I want to aim very high.
• 6:06
  Asia Sharif: So for me, it was like, yeah, I'll aim to be a barrister and then open it in practice.
• 6:10
  Asia Sharif: So, but then I thought, no, like I'm not into that, and then I ended up moving to I just dropped out uni, didn't tell anybody, dropped moved to London and just found like a job that supplies accommodations, and so and it was a sales job.
• 6:23
  Asia Sharif: So I thought let me do this for a couple of years, and then lockdown happened.
• 6:26
  Asia Sharif: And when lockdown happened by then, when I was in sales, I already started like reading a lot.
• 6:32
  Asia Sharif: Um, I you know, I was in a new city, I had to learn to make new friends, I had to learn so many different people.
• 6:38
  Asia Sharif: I wasn't no longer the small city of Liverpool.
• 6:41
  Asia Sharif: Um, and yeah, this really big world that I was exposed to made me realise wow, there's so much out there just being in London.
• 6:50
  Asia Sharif: So yeah, and sales also exposes you to many things, and one thing I'm grateful for is like the mindset shift that I had.
• 6:56
  Asia Sharif: I had I went from like having this very fixed mindset to this really growth mindset, and yeah, I started reading a lot, like some of my favourite books.
• 7:05
  Asia Sharif: One was The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, and another one was psycho-cybernetics, which is all about human behaviour and the growth of the human brain and everything.
• 7:16
  Asia Sharif: And I remember thinking to myself, I haven't pushed myself to see what's like outside my comfort zone or like my full potential, and then lockdown happened, which was very obviously sad and unfortunate with everything that had happened.
• 7:29
  Asia Sharif: And at the same time, I took it as an opportunity that I have all this time, I have 24 hours like every single day for God knows how long.
• 7:37
  Asia Sharif: I might as well take this opportunity to see how far I can push myself.
• 7:41
  Asia Sharif: So I ended up um Googling um, you know, what's like the hardest thing to do.
• 7:47
  Asia Sharif: Um, and I came across coding, and I thought, you know, when I was young, I was really interested in engineering.
• 7:53
  Asia Sharif: And yes, maybe it was hardware engineering or software engineering or doing something with NASA, like building their rockets somehow.
• 7:59
  Asia Sharif: But I thought, well, I could still start somewhere like as a software engineer.
• 8:03
  Asia Sharif: And when I came across that, and I found the first language, I was like, okay, what language is universal and is needed in the future?
• 8:12
  Asia Sharif: And I came across like machine learning and robotics, engineering and AI engineering, and it the common uh programming language was Python.
• 8:20
  Asia Sharif: So I thought, okay, I'll start with Python.
• 8:22
  Asia Sharif: And yeah, so I watched a TEDx talk actually, um, called 'How to Reach Your Most Ambitious Goals', and he talks about um, it's really important at this point because he talks about how every day for an hour for two hours a day he'd walk through Hyde Park, one hour to work, one hour back, and um he listened to German tapes, and after six months he became proficient in German, and nobody believed him, so he took his family to Germany, and he was speaking to everyone fluently, and they all thought, no way, like you actually can speak German, like from just two hours a day.
• 8:53
  Asia Sharif: So I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna apply the same logic.
• 8:56
  Asia Sharif: So I'd spend one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening teaching myself Python programming, and until I could get into a flow state where I could do a couple of hours a day, like two to four hour windows.
• 9:07
  Asia Sharif: And I realised, like, wow, I've I've never used I've like awakened a whole side of my brain, like my analytical problem-solving logic side of my brain that I hadn't never awakened before.
• 9:17
  Asia Sharif: And I learned something that would probably perceive be perceived as really complex, um, but it wasn't complex, like anybody can learn anything, and that's what it made me realize that anybody if you literally just do something for an hour a day and not think of like how long it'll take you.
• 9:35
  Asia Sharif: And in my case, six months later, I was in a position where I could apply for software engineering roles, and I was started mentoring and you know, public speaking and just my journey, and it was so fresh, and you know, but I was just couldn't believe, I guess, that wow, it's just something so small can change the whole trajectory of your entire life, and yeah, and then that's kind of like my lockdown journey where I went from uh teaching myself to code within 12 months getting my first software engineering role and then winning like my first award as well, um, to like where I am now, and that was lockdown was 2020, so six years ago, and obviously so much has occurred since my career has completely you know expedited since which has been amazing.
• 10:26
  Simran Whitham: I mean, uh was it the challenge that drew you to specifically software engineering?
• 10:32
  Simran Whitham: Because a lot of people in lockdown, like I took up gardening, and I love gardening, I love growing my own stuff.
• 10:38
  Simran Whitham: But you took on, as you said, something very untraditional, a lot of people would perceive it as hard, and you'd had no obviously I know you come from an engineering-inspired upbringing, but was it the challenge that drew you to a software engineering, or was it the fact why did you go, I want the hardest thing humanely possible, two hours a day?
• 10:57
  Simran Whitham: Like, not a lot of people want to chase something that is deliberately really difficult.
• 11:02
  Simran Whitham: And in lockdown, my first thought was I want to grow my own food because I'm locked up here, the supermarkets are running out of strawberries, and I really want to learn how to grow strawberries.
• 11:12
  Simran Whitham: So, what was it that made you just go, I want the hardest thing that I can think of?
• 11:16
  Simran Whitham: Was it a particular thing you saw, maybe some content you'd consumed, or was it literally just you saw it and went, I want to do that?
• 11:23
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, it was a challenge because you know, like I said, I started like really educating myself.
• 11:28
  Asia Sharif: I'd watch a lot of TEDx talks, I'd read a lot, and I always thought, well, you know, if they can achieve whatever they've achieved in their lives, whether it be like financial, mental, physical success, you know, TEDx has many different speakers from different types of successes.
• 11:44
  Asia Sharif: I thought, well, I want to do something that really challenged, and I felt like I was in a plateau in myself anyway, and I'd never challenge myself like education-wise or like academically, like where how far can I like push my brain and what is it capable of doing?
• 11:58
  Asia Sharif: And in the future, maybe I will build something, you know, like that's one of my goals to open a tech startup, and in the future I may be able to do that.
• 12:06
  Asia Sharif: So the challenge, but also I came across statistics at the time, and it was 0.1% of the world coded in 2020, and out of the 0.1%, it was like less than 2% were women of colour, and for me that was like shocking because it was like wow! So that also gave me the like drive to not only continue the career, but I told myself that you know, if if I do make it as a software engineer, that I don't want to just stop there, just you know, getting the role.
• 12:37
  Asia Sharif: I want to also inspire other women who look like me, because again, I didn't have that growing up like a woman who would look like me or from same religious background, so on and so forth, wasn't you know within my reach at the time.
• 12:50
  Asia Sharif: And when now we have LinkedIn, which is great, you know, you can just type self-engineering and pick out the females that you want to like reach out to and ask about their career journeys, but then it was not like that, so I thought now I'm going to then build my personal brand and visibility so that women would know.
• 13:07
  Asia Sharif: Hey, like there's a lot of actually us, well, there might not be a lot, but there's some of us who are really in who are in engineering, and you can do it too, and it's a very difficult journey, and it was a difficult journey, you know.
• 13:19
  Asia Sharif: I faced multiple rejections, failures, like all sorts in that 12 months.
• 13:24
  Asia Sharif: But I would do it again and again and again.
• 13:26
  Asia Sharif: It was just patience really and challenged, so yeah.
• 13:29
  Andy Coley: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
• 13:30
  Andy Coley: I um have you ever watched the film Hidden Figures?
• 13:32
  Andy Coley: I'm sure you probably have.
• 13:33
  Andy Coley: It's about the mathematicians that are involved in NASA.
• 13:36
  Andy Coley: Yeah.
• 13:36
  Andy Coley: Um about how to get the rockets up and back down safely how many people, particularly women of colour, were involved in the background, but were never seen or hidden in terms of the work that they did um to support that.
• 13:49
  Andy Coley: And I'm sure there have been so many fantastic women out there doing awesome work.
• 13:52
  Andy Coley: Um coding's not that difficult, Simran.
• 13:54
  Andy Coley: I'm gonna talk about this as a as a coder myself.
• 13:57
  Andy Coley: Um it's just it always appears difficult until you get your head into it.
• 14:00
  Andy Coley: It's logical.
• 14:01
  Andy Coley: You've got a logical brain, I find coding is quite logical.
• 14:04
  Simran Whitham: I was just gonna
• 14:04
  Andy Coley: say we'll talk about for, you know, 'for next loops' and 'if...
• 14:07
  Andy Coley: then' later, if you want to.
• 14:09
  Simran Whitham: I can't think of anything worse than that conversation.
• 14:12
  Simran Whitham: But yeah, again, I'm very left analytical, I'm very creative style brain.
• 14:16
  Simran Whitham: Whereas I because I was dyscalculia growing up, so I always struggled with mathematics anyway.
• 14:20
  Simran Whitham: But maybe I also just had really bad coding teachers.
• 14:23
  Simran Whitham: I studied game design, so you kind of had to be good at coding, and yet coding was the one thing that I really struggled with.
• 14:29
  Simran Whitham: So for people like me, it looks like the most difficult thing ever.
• 14:32
  Simran Whitham: But then programmers and engineers like you just make it look so accessible, which I do have to say, you I really respect like how accessible you've made it look for you, like you'd beat every stereotype and every image of what a software engineer looks like because you're very fashionable, you've got a very good sense of style, personal taste, and when people think software engineers, even when they think women, typically, because in the games industry, we it's still very high proportion of male-dominated, but it has got better over the years.
• 15:04
  Simran Whitham: But your style and everything you do, I feel like you've brought a fresher breath, sorry, breath of fresh air to that role.
• 15:12
  Simran Whitham: Because when people think software engineers, they don't think this very stylish, just amazing, personal brand, award-winning, self-driven, very confident individual.
• 15:23
  Simran Whitham: And you just I think you just make it look really attractive in that sense because like, yeah, I'm breaking down those stereotypes and those barriers.
• 15:32
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, no, I totally agree.
• 15:34
  Asia Sharif: I think it's the way I see it is society for some reason has created like images of certain careers.
• 15:42
  Asia Sharif: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Asia Sharif: And I try, well, no, I do always try and uh like stay away from the societal like norms or what something is meant to look like or what they perceive, uh, you know, for example, engineer or like their version of beauty is and so on and so forth.
• 15:59
  Asia Sharif: So um, you know, a lot of my friends, a lot of us were in in engineering and technology, CEOs, and all sorts.
• 16:08
  Asia Sharif: And again, we always get stereotyped, it's very funny.
• 16:11
  Asia Sharif: At networking events, I've had um many comments such as, Oh, were you like one of the videographers?
• 16:16
  Asia Sharif: Are you um you know one of the designers?
• 16:18
  Asia Sharif: Absolutely not.
• 16:19
  Asia Sharif: In fact, I built that or I did this, you know.
• 16:21
  Asia Sharif: But and then you see their face, they're so shocked and confused.
• 16:26
  Asia Sharif: And I think what's so confusing is because you've stayed in a box, you know, there's like a theory, you stay in a box, and you refuse to like see outside the box that there's way more, and people come in all different shapes, sizes, looks, and everything.
• 16:39
  Asia Sharif: But because you've got this box where you've purposely just kept like stayed on the rock inside, and you don't want to expand your like imagination, and then obviously people become shocked.
• 16:51
  Asia Sharif: And it's like, no, you don't need to be shocked.
• 16:54
  Asia Sharif: I wish we live in a society where people are just accepting of what you know what everyone looks like, no matter what industry they're in, and accept that yeah, people come in different forms.
• 17:05
  Andy Coley: So tell us a little bit more about your TEDx then.
• 17:08
  Andy Coley: What's the theme of your TEDx?
• 17:09
  Andy Coley: What are you gonna be speaking about on the stage in as we're recording this just a few weeks' time?
• 17:15
  Asia Sharif: It's all about the myth of strength.
• 17:17
  Asia Sharif: So it's about deconstructing and breaking down how society deems strength it should be.
• 17:28
  Asia Sharif: So uh my belief is you know, uh the society in the world we live in believes that strength you should be perceived as strong and you know, keep a good brave face and turn up and do what you you need to do and really not ask for help and you may be perceived weak, especially in the corporate world.
• 17:48
  Asia Sharif: I'm in the corporate world and uh male-dominated industries and stuff, especially even as females, like if you somehow perceive yourself like come across weak, it can like hinder your trajectory.
• 18:01
  Asia Sharif: Yeah.
• 18:01
  Asia Sharif: Um, but I don't believe in that.
• 18:03
  Asia Sharif: So like I said earlier, I love breaking the norm.
• 18:05
  Asia Sharif: So I will continue to do that.
• 18:07
  Asia Sharif: So I break the break it down and I talk I go to go on to talk about um what I believe strength should be, which is asking for help, is letting people in.
• 18:18
  Asia Sharif: It doesn't mean you know you need to air out everything about yourself at all.
• 18:22
  Asia Sharif: It's just about actually when you need somebody, when you need that help.
• 18:30
  Asia Sharif: I think it's really important to let people in and to know when you do need help and then also where you it does help you with success in the future as well.
• 18:40
  Asia Sharif: I definitely believe that as a community, if everyone was open and authentic, we'd be a lot more successful than how we are now, hidden and yeah, so I don't believe in that.
• 18:53
  Andy Coley: And through your sort of life to where you are right now, you talk about that concept of breaking things down, sort of recoding, rebuilding them.
• 19:00
  Andy Coley: What which aspects of you paid attention to for yourself that had the greatest impact to who Asia is right now?
• 19:09
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, I think um I think two main things.
• 19:12
  Asia Sharif: One is growing up in foster care. When people hear of a foster child, again, it's like a l a lot of reactions are normally, oh, you know, they're troubled or they may not get to where there'll be in the statistics out there where a lot of unfortunate foster children don't get to where they need to be, maybe because of the environment, right?
• 19:34
  Asia Sharif: So whenever I hear these, you know, societal views, I always think, well, here I'm an example who grew up in foster care and I break the norms of what society deems a foster child, you know, would look like, would come across, or would end up in ten years' time.
• 19:54
  Asia Sharif: And I push further for that because I think it's really important that obviously one, we change our views, but two, um I think when it comes to the myth of strength, I would always ask for help like growing up, you know, I'd speak to my social workers, I'd speak to my foster par uh foster parents, I would speak to my teachers and tell them my goals, my dreams, my aspirations.
• 20:16
  Asia Sharif: I never felt shame about like my position or where I was at in life.
• 20:21
  Asia Sharif: And I think that that's like that was really important for me.
• 20:23
  Asia Sharif: And then later on in life, because because I had that community, that love, that support, so it that safe space to be whoever, it provided me all this stability, it probab provided me with like dreams that endless, you know.
• 20:37
  Asia Sharif: So later on in life, I then applied that same, you know, thought and logic and just how I am, where I lean on to my community.
• 20:48
  Asia Sharif: Because later on in life, three years ago, I actually got diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin lymphoma, which is a type of blood cancer.
• 20:55
  Asia Sharif: And you know, throughout my entire life I had more, you know, adversities, obstacles, you know, you name it, but you always have for me anyway, I always had a structure.
• 21:05
  Asia Sharif: I was always, you know, I have a structure, I have a plan, I protect myself from anything that can occur, you know.
• 21:14
  Asia Sharif: Um,
• 21:15
  Asia Sharif: But life decides to always test that theory, and uh stage four cancer was thrown in, and you can't you can't build around that, you can't create no, you know, structure.
• 21:25
  Asia Sharif: And for again during that time, because I it kept coming back, it came back three times.
• 21:31
  Asia Sharif: I remember there was a particular time where I had to go on the news and ask for help, and for some reason I felt shame.
• 21:37
  Asia Sharif: I was like, why would I go on the news and ask for help?
• 21:40
  Asia Sharif: Because I needed the stem cell donor, and with my heritage, I'm a mixed heritage, half Moroccan, half Somali.
• 21:46
  Asia Sharif: It's extremely rare to find a stem cell match.
• 21:49
  Asia Sharif: It's like zero to none to find a stem cell match for somebody like myself, and I thought, how can I do that?
• 21:57
  Asia Sharif: Because I've built six the past six years my career.
• 21:59
  Asia Sharif: I've built all this self-respect.
• 22:02
  Asia Sharif: I've earned all this respect.
• 22:04
  Asia Sharif: And you know, I'm looked up to as like a leader, as a, you know, like a mentor, someone people can lean on.
• 22:11
  Asia Sharif: And now stage four cancer.
• 22:13
  Asia Sharif: And it's like I'm in a male-dominated industry.
• 22:16
  Asia Sharif: I'm in the corporate world.
• 22:17
  Asia Sharif: I'm in this gigantic industry.
• 22:18
  Asia Sharif: And I don't want to be perceived as like weak just because I'm going through something that you know a lot of people would see as extreme hardship.
• 22:27
  Asia Sharif: And may also see it as you know something that can hinder your future.
• 22:32
  Asia Sharif: And I just switched my mindset and thought, no, what I'm going to do is, yeah, I'm going to get in front of that camera and ask for help.
• 22:38
  Asia Sharif: I need a stem cell match because I want to live, firstly.
• 22:41
  Asia Sharif: So I did exactly that.
• 22:43
  Asia Sharif: And second of all, um, I'm going to lean on my community and I'm going to still thrive.
• 22:48
  Asia Sharif: So, you know, I'd you'd find me in hospitals um doing tech talks online virtually.
• 22:55
  Asia Sharif: And that doesn't mean every cancer patient needs to do that at all.
• 22:58
  Asia Sharif: I just thought, why not?
• 22:59
  Asia Sharif: You know, I could either be very sad at my situation or I could live still try and live my life.
• 23:06
  Asia Sharif: So, you know, if I had things I was really passionate about, I'd still do it.
• 23:09
  Asia Sharif: If I needed to mentor, if I needed to do like a public speaking gig, I would do that for just virtually, I'd just adjust everything.
• 23:17
  Asia Sharif: And yeah, that hardship uh made me realise how much leaning on my community, asking for help, putting myself in a vulnerable position, just the act of vulnerability in itself is actually one of the most beautiful things that you can do.
• 23:31
  Asia Sharif: Because I definitely believe there's so much beauty and like resilience and you know, hardship and adversity.
• 23:36
  Asia Sharif: I think see the beauty in it.
• 23:38
  Asia Sharif: And in Islam, there's a particular quote and it's uh in the Quran, I'm Muslim, and it says, you know, 'with hardship there's ease', and a lot of people in the Islamic community sometimes misinterpret it with that after the hardship ease comes.
• 23:55
  Asia Sharif: But during one of my Quran lessons, I learned that during the hardship there's ease, and that's what got me through uh stage four cancer because yes, I had stage four cancer, and yes, I was going to chemo, and yes, it kept coming back every day, and you know, and yes, I had all these worries.
• 24:10
  Asia Sharif: But if I looked around, I had the roof over my head, I had so much ease.
• 24:14
  Asia Sharif: I was, you know, in private healthcare, so I had um food in my stomach, I had like a a great life.
• 24:22
  Asia Sharif: So, how can I how can I focus on the hardship and there's all this ease around me, and I can just use it to give back, so yeah, I think that kind of really helped me, and then it shaped my talk to myth of strength.
• 24:34
  Simran Whitham: And on your cancer journey, so your cancer journey is actually how I'd found / met you years ago.
• 24:40
  Simran Whitham: So I was there the day you won your This Is Manchester Award, and I remember briefly meeting you on the night because Zara I think I came up to you to congratulate you.
• 24:48
  Simran Whitham: I know you were very emotional that night as well.
• 24:50
  Simran Whitham: You were crying, talking about how much it meant to you to win that, and you've won many awards since then.
• 24:56
  Simran Whitham: Huge kudos to you.
• 24:58
  Simran Whitham: And after that, I watched you because you documented quite a lot of your cancer journey, and it was terrifying for me as a viewer because obviously I've lost family members to cancer, I've watched people go through it.
• 25:11
  Simran Whitham: I watched my granddad, who was my dad, with wither away to cancer and die.
• 25:16
  Simran Whitham: And I can see that what you went through was really terrifying.
• 25:19
  Simran Whitham: You lost your hair, you went through all the treatments.
• 25:22
  Simran Whitham: I saw the video of when you rang the bell when they gave you the all clear.
• 25:27
  Simran Whitham: If you're comfortable talking about it, what did those early days when you first got that diagnosis look like?
• 25:34
  Simran Whitham: And you're here now, you're incredibly successful.
• 25:38
  Simran Whitham: But as we know, there's Instagram versus reality.
• 25:40
  Simran Whitham: On your darkest days when you were going through that, what got you through it?
• 25:47
  Simran Whitham: Because resilience and the myth of strength you've talked about, obviously, but we all need that little something that gets us through those darkest days.
• 25:55
  Simran Whitham: And for you, what was what did those early days of the diagnosis look like?
• 25:58
  Simran Whitham: And then how what got you through the worst of it, would you say?
• 26:03
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, no, I'm sorry again for your loss.
• 26:05
  Asia Sharif: Obviously, you know, for a lot of people to cancer, and it's it's it's very it can be very tragic.
• 26:11
  Asia Sharif: Um, and then at the same time, you know, there's like I said, there's beauty when you see people get through it and ring the bell.
• 26:19
  Asia Sharif: Um
• 26:19
  Asia Sharif: And for my for myself, like I remember when I first got diagnosed, I already knew I had cancer.
• 26:26
  Asia Sharif: It was just about advocating to get um diagnosed finally.
• 26:30
  Asia Sharif: But I knew it was bad when I walked into the room and there was like two consultants, and I was like, Why is there two consultants and a couple of nurses?
• 26:38
  Asia Sharif: And I thought, what are they going to tell me?
• 26:42
  Asia Sharif: Because you know, I was in the Christie Cancer Center and my consultant's looking at me and he's you know struggling to look at me, and I sit down and he says, you know, wow, see, I thought it was stage two, but it's actually stage four.
• 26:54
  Asia Sharif: When you hear stage four, you think, oh, you know, it's the end, like it's incurable.
• 26:59
  Asia Sharif: But I didn't even think that, which is so weird.
• 27:01
  Asia Sharif: I think because I have so much faith in like God.
• 27:04
  Asia Sharif: I just thought, you know, what's meant to be will be.
• 27:07
  Asia Sharif: And I've always been someone who just believes in like the now, in the present.
• 27:10
  Asia Sharif: I don't think about six months' time, and I don't think about yesterday.
• 27:13
  Asia Sharif: I just think of the now.
• 27:15
  Asia Sharif: So when they told me, I was like, amazing.
• 27:17
  Asia Sharif: So, like, you know, is it like how long?
• 27:19
  Asia Sharif: Like a prognosis.
• 27:20
  Asia Sharif: And he looked at me and he started laughing.
• 27:21
  Asia Sharif: He was like, let's let's figure out a treatment plan.
• 27:25
  Asia Sharif: And I thought, amazing.
• 27:26
  Asia Sharif: So you're somebody like me who just focuses on the now, you know.
• 27:29
  Asia Sharif: Um, and that was helpful, but of course, there was dark days like key.
• 27:35
  Asia Sharif: I think what it's not the cancer that is the worst part, it's the chemo, the chemotherapy, the radiotherapy.
• 27:42
  Asia Sharif: Like it nearly killed me so many times.
• 27:44
  Asia Sharif: I remember the first regime I had, it was called ABVD.
• 27:48
  Asia Sharif: It was horrific, like I couldn't get through, it was burning through my skin.
• 27:51
  Asia Sharif: I still have scars on my arm.
• 27:53
  Asia Sharif: Um, and you know, my even my doctor, my nurse was shedding tears at some point because I was genuinely begging them to die because the side effects were just horrific.
• 28:03
  Asia Sharif: And after the third time, they realised, you know what, ethically they can't put me through this regime anymore.
• 28:09
  Asia Sharif: And you know, at that point I was still stage four cancer, so you know, they then switched to a a different treatment called Via COPDAC 21, which is like some form of German treatment, is the highest dose that you can give someone, and that required me to stay in the Christie's a lot, and that worked, but the side effects again were substantial.
• 28:29
  Asia Sharif: You know, I had extreme weight gain, I went from like 65 kilograms to 105 kilos.
• 28:36
  Asia Sharif: Um, I lost so much of myself, like my hair, eyebrows, things that I guess before I never was challenged by.
• 28:44
  Asia Sharif: You know, you you never think physicality is something that's important, but it stripped me from everything I was out.
• 28:51
  Asia Sharif: Like I was completely naked, I couldn't get any more naked than what I was, you know, um as a physical person.
• 28:57
  Asia Sharif: Um, and I completely lost myself, like I didn't know who I was anymore.
• 29:03
  Asia Sharif: Um, and then obviously all the pain, I can't even describe the pain and the joint issues and everything that comes with that.
• 29:11
  Asia Sharif: And then I wouldn't leave the house.
• 29:13
  Asia Sharif: Uh 2024, I would just stay in in the I lived in Deansgate in the apartments, and I would not leave my apartment, even in the heat.
• 29:22
  Asia Sharif: I would stay there because I was so embarrassed.
• 29:24
  Asia Sharif: I came across all these challenges now that I didn't realise I had like embarrassment, shame, you know.
• 29:30
  Asia Sharif: I didn't know how to wear a wig, I didn't know how to put a wig on.
• 29:33
  Asia Sharif: You know, I had this big luscious curly hair, and now I don't have this.
• 29:36
  Asia Sharif: That's all I've ever known is to do my curly hair routine every day.
• 29:39
  Asia Sharif: To now I have to learn how to install a wig and who to go to.
• 29:44
  Asia Sharif: Um and it was just as simple as that I can't just pop to the corner shop because I have to put a wig on.
• 29:50
  Asia Sharif: If I don't put a wig on, people stare at you, and you know, obviously you have no eyebrows, really obvious.
• 29:55
  Asia Sharif: You have the steroid face, the moon steroid face, obviously you're going through some sort of cancer.
• 30:01
  Asia Sharif: Um, and I also hated how people looked at me.
• 30:04
  Asia Sharif: They always looked at me that feeling very sorry, and like also I was very overweight, so I couldn't really walk much.
• 30:09
  Asia Sharif: I couldn't walk a couple of minutes without like dripping in sweat, and that was a chemo side effect, so that was really difficult.
• 30:15
  Asia Sharif: So I never left my apartment for about a year, which caused extreme like social anxiety, so having to relearn to live.
• 30:22
  Asia Sharif: And then the cherry on top was I had a stem cell transplant, so I thought I'd been through all that, and then I had a stem cell transplant because we were treatment of two years at this point last year, and there was I was in there for 30 days, and my doctor said to me, He said, If you hated me at any point in the last two years, you're going to hate me.
• 30:42
  Asia Sharif: Like you are going to, you know, not want to be here, and I just need to warn you that it is absolutely horrific what you're gonna embark on.
• 30:50
  Asia Sharif: I thought, what's he on about?
• 30:52
  Asia Sharif: You know, I've did every side effect you could possibly think of.
• 30:54
  Asia Sharif: Like, you know, I'm myself someone who should experiment with the side effects I had.
• 30:59
  Asia Sharif: And when I had the stem cell transplant, he was not joking.
• 31:02
  Asia Sharif: That was absolute hell.
• 31:03
  Asia Sharif: Like I genuinely thought I was going to die, and you know, I didn't speak, I didn't move, I had to relearn to sit up.
• 31:08
  Asia Sharif: I didn't realise like muscles hold you up, I couldn't sit up.
• 31:11
  Asia Sharif: Um, I didn't eat for a month.
• 31:13
  Asia Sharif: The you know what that does to a human anyway.
• 31:16
  Asia Sharif: Like I completely just like withered away on this bed.
• 31:19
  Asia Sharif: And through all those darkest times, the only thing that got me was I kept saying to myself, if I get through this, now I have to, it's not you know, it's between me and God, like I'm getting through this. But if I don't, then at least that I've did everything that I wanted to do at the time during my life.
• 31:38
  Asia Sharif: And I chose myself so many times, then I told myself that the only goal I had was I would pray every single night, like in the bed.
• 31:46
  Asia Sharif: I couldn't move, and I would be like, God, please allow me to get through just so that I can have one more walk or you know, one more time where I can like climb a mountain and like see the sunset and sunrise and like detach from this.
• 31:57
  Asia Sharif: We say the dunya, which is like the world.
• 31:59
  Asia Sharif: I'll detach from this worldly goods, so I can just enjoy the true peace of like the world.
• 32:06
  Asia Sharif: So I would literally be praying, like, just allow me to see one more sunset, one more sunrise, and then you can take me like it's totally fine.
• 32:13
  Asia Sharif: And I feel like just the dream of just seeing like a sunrise somewhere in the world, anywhere, um got me through it, uh, which obviously then ties in with faith because my hot sole belief while everyone around me was worried was well, you know, at least if I see one more sunrise, that's what matters.
• 32:33
  Asia Sharif: And I knew it's bad when my nurses were crying, my nurses never cry.
• 32:36
  Asia Sharif: Um so yeah, and then I got through it and since I've done nothing but travel.
• 32:40
  Asia Sharif: I'm not here, uh you know, and I've seen many sunrises and sunsets.
• 32:45
  Asia Sharif: So I always say to myself, if it ever comes back, you know, at least I can look back and say the last this is one year now, cancer-free.
• 32:53
  Asia Sharif: This last seven months, especially, I've seen so many parts of the world and met so many people and experiences and did things I never even thought I'd do, even with all the pain and side effects, I still suffer.
• 33:03
  Asia Sharif: Um, and I'm grateful.
• 33:05
  Asia Sharif: So it's definitely allowed me to see the world in much more different place and from a place of humility.
• 33:11
  Asia Sharif: And I feel like that's why I always do things for like the greater good.
• 33:14
  Asia Sharif: It all ties back to that.
• 33:17
  Andy Coley: So, what would you say to people if they feel that their background, race, circumstances around their health um has sort of put a ceiling on them?
• 33:26
  Andy Coley: How would you encourage them to see past that and beyond and through the now into the what's next?
• 33:35
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, um for myself, what really helped was um having a plan and having number one a plan.
• 33:46
  Asia Sharif: So a goal.
• 33:46
  Asia Sharif: So I always goal set like six months and twelve months and twenty-four months, but I don't look at them, I write it down in a letter and I leave it.
• 33:54
  Asia Sharif: After that, I focus on the present.
• 33:56
  Asia Sharif: So if you're going through a hardship but you have this goal that you want, right?
• 34:00
  Asia Sharif: So at the time my hardship was, you know, lockdown, not knowing where I'm gonna live.
• 34:05
  Asia Sharif: I'm like sort of dealing with homelessness, staying at my foster brothers.
• 34:08
  Asia Sharif: But I had this goal, I'm gonna be a software engineer, but I'm not gonna stop there.
• 34:12
  Asia Sharif: I'm gonna be, you know, uh uh award-winning, uh a mentor, help, and everything that I can possibly do to inspire like the next generation.
• 34:20
  Asia Sharif: I had this really this is a huge goal.
• 34:23
  Asia Sharif: So, and even though I had those adversities of like homelessness and everything, I thought I told myself, let's focus on the now.
• 34:29
  Asia Sharif: What what can I do today?
• 34:30
  Asia Sharif: So I would use Trello and I I use it every day and I split it into two sections.
• 34:35
  Asia Sharif: So the first section would be like my morning routine, what I need to get done.
• 34:38
  Asia Sharif: So if you can go to the gym, go gym.
• 34:40
  Asia Sharif: If you can't, at least get a walk-in, move your body somehow, like you you need your health, right?
• 34:46
  Asia Sharif: So I would start with that and I would take it off, and then my anything to do with like self-care would be done early in the morning, and then I would go on to this uh split in two parts.
• 34:55
  Asia Sharif: The second part would be what I can do today for the goal that I want in six months.
• 34:59
  Asia Sharif: So, for example, if it was to switch careers and it was soft engineering, my second part would consist of one hour problem solving, one hour reading like a book on problem solving, one hour coding, and I would get that done, you know, in that day.
• 35:13
  Asia Sharif: And before you know it, if you just focus on these small steps, it's very small goals each day, and on with the hardship that you're facing, whether it is stage four cancer, whether it is homelessness or some sort of adversity, because you're not looking at the bigger goal, you'll get through, you know, in six months' time, you'll look back and you'll be like, Oh my gosh, I did all of this, these small steps, and now I'm here.
• 35:36
  Asia Sharif: So for me, even when I was going through cancer, I had many goals.
• 35:39
  Asia Sharif: I'd focus, okay, today I have chemo.
• 35:41
  Asia Sharif: This is what I need to do for my self-care, and this is the rest days I need, and I would split it.
• 35:46
  Asia Sharif: If I had to look at chemo, I'd look at the week instead of the day.
• 35:50
  Asia Sharif: Because if I had chemo on the Monday, the side effects would kick in three days later.
• 35:53
  Asia Sharif: So I knew I had three days from the Monday to the Wednesday to fulfil my daily goals that would help me get to my six-month goal.
• 36:00
  Asia Sharif: So Monday to Wednesday would be doing things that I need to do, whether it's career-wise, mental-wise, physical-wise, from the Wednesday, that's blocked off.
• 36:09
  Asia Sharif: I'm I'm sick and I'm recovering Monday, uh, Wednesday to however long it takes me.
• 36:15
  Asia Sharif: And then it's also taken away like the feeling guilt, because that can come sometimes when you have these big goals, you know, guilt.
• 36:22
  Asia Sharif: And then also dealing with like imposter syndrome.
• 36:24
  Asia Sharif: I think like imposter syndrome, feeling that you might not be able to get through or you might not be good enough, or something, whether it's a hardship, you feel like, oh, it's not I'm not gonna be able to make it, yeah.
• 36:36
  Asia Sharif: You have to just put it's a thought, you can accept the thought, and I do do that.
• 36:40
  Asia Sharif: I'm like, okay, I feel this right now, but I remind myself feelings are temporary.
• 36:44
  Asia Sharif: So if I sit, if I force it's up to me whether I sit in this feeling.
• 36:48
  Asia Sharif: And if I sit in this feeling, what's going to happen in five hours time, I'm gonna still be in the feeling in the same position.
• 36:54
  Asia Sharif: But if I accept the feeling for like five minutes or whatever your time for me, it's like 15 minutes, and I accept it for 15 minutes.
• 37:01
  Asia Sharif: I write about it, and then after 15 minutes, sorry, I have to get up.
• 37:05
  Asia Sharif: I want to continue.
• 37:07
  Asia Sharif: Life is so much more, you know.
• 37:09
  Asia Sharif: And then I do that.
• 37:10
  Asia Sharif: So I hope that that would like help somebody if they have any goals whilst facing hardship is structure, breaking things down and accepting the now and like where you are now and who you are now and what you're facing without the guilt and shame, you know.
• 37:24
  Andy Coley: Awesome. And if you've got sort of one hope that you hope people take away from your talk specifically, what would you love to leave people with as a legacy from your talk?
• 37:34
  Andy Coley: Like your talk could be a talk somebody else is talking about on the TEDx so that they're doing in the future.
• 37:39
  Andy Coley: So, what do you hope to leave people with with your TEDx?
• 37:42
  Asia Sharif: That you do not have to be unbreakable to survive your life.
• 37:50
  Asia Sharif: I think that's really important.
• 37:51
  Andy Coley: Yeah.
• 37:52
  Andy Coley: Awesome.
• 37:53
  Simran Whitham: I love that.
• 37:54
  Simran Whitham: Now, thank you, Asia, for joining us.
• 37:57
  Simran Whitham: But before you go, we have a tradition on this podcast, and what I would like to introduce you to this is the TEDx Northern Quarter Red Journal.
• 38:06
  Simran Whitham: And what happens on this is that at the end of every podcast, we ask the previous guest to leave a question, an idea, or a thought for the next person to answer.
• 38:18
  Simran Whitham: Now, there is a question that has been left for you, but I'm not gonna tell you who left this question for you because funnily enough, Andy, this was actually left for us in the old podcast one that I didn't add into the red journal.
• 38:33
  Simran Whitham: So I'm not gonna tell you who left this for you.
• 38:36
  Simran Whitham: It's on my phone ironically because I haven't copied it into this journal.
• 38:39
  Simran Whitham: But
• 38:40
  Simran Whitham: The question that was left for you was, and I'll tell you who asked it to you afterwards, was...
• 38:45
  Simran Whitham: "If someone gave you access to unlimited resources and finances to support one dream completely unchained and unhindered, what would that dream be and why would you choose to pursue it?"
• 39:08
  Asia Sharif: What a beautiful question. Strip poverty from the world.
• 39:22
  Asia Sharif: The entire world I would strip poverty and try and deconstruct um power from the world so everyone's free and able to live freely without poverty.
• 39:37
  Asia Sharif: It's really important.
• 39:39
  Simran Whitham: As someone from a council of state, thank you for that one.
• 39:42
  Simran Whitham: Would you like to know who asked you that question?
• 39:44
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:46
  Simran Whitham: Emma Gaskin, your speaker coach, left that question for you to answer.
• 39:50
  Asia Sharif: Ah, she's amazing.
• 39:51
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, well have you.
• 39:52
  Andy Coley: What's it been like working through the whole process of doing a TEDx talk?
• 39:56
  Asia Sharif: It you know, because it's such a big dream.
• 39:59
  Asia Sharif: It was a lot of pressure at first.
• 40:01
  Asia Sharif: Because you chase this dream sometimes, and I definitely found myself, you know, sometimes I'd go like a whole year where I would apply for TEDx talks, but the minute I stopped, it came to me, you know, like when I met you.
• 40:12
  Asia Sharif: Yeah, I stopped.
• 40:14
  Asia Sharif: This is also another thing why you need to not think of long-term goals, just let it be.
• 40:18
  Asia Sharif: It's in your mind and your subconscious, and you know, I um so at first it was like, oh my gosh, this dream has caught the blue.
• 40:26
  Asia Sharif: This is a dream I had put behind me like three years ago.
• 40:29
  Asia Sharif: So um now I whereas now it's like with all the help I've had from Emma and yourselves, it's completely changed.
• 40:38
  Asia Sharif: Just I don't know, my whole perspective that I'm not again, it ties in with my talk, I'm not doing it alone.
• 40:44
  Asia Sharif: You get a community, you lean on your community, and they help you.
• 40:47
  Asia Sharif: Um they provide you with the tools that you need, and you help also meet them halfway and take those tools.
• 40:53
  Asia Sharif: And now I feel like I've written and I'm gonna have a very beautiful TEDx talk thanks to yourselves, the community, and Emma.
• 41:02
  Asia Sharif: What a great question.
• 41:03
  Andy Coley: Thanks, so much, Asia.
• 41:05
  Asia Sharif: Thank you.
• 41:06
  Asia Sharif: Thanks so much for having me.