E177 Shahnoza Rikamova

Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She is really my superhero. That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities and perspectives about this world. In these difficult times in human history, we need to bring the people of the world together. And when we hear the voices of women, when we listen to real lives of women from other countries, we connect our cultures without our differences or stereotypes and we get inspired by their stories to live a better life. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Shahnoza Rikamova. Shahnoza is from Horog, but currently lives in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Shahnoza has a degree in communications and media and currently is working in digital marketing. She loves listening to podcasts, drawing, painting, watching anime, spending hours on Behance and taking long walks. Shahnoza is constantly working to improve herself spiritually, intellectually and physically. Shahnoza how are you today? Hello, I'm fine. I'm doing great. Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy. I'm honored. I feel lucky to spend this time interviewing you and I'm curious about you as a person. So I'll begin with this nice first question. If your friends could describe your personality, what would they say about you? So if my close friends would describe me, they will definitely say that I'm funny, intelligent and friendly. Yes. I like that. And I'm curious. Some people try to be funny, but they're a bit socially awkward. They don't know how to do it. So how do you create good humor when speaking with friends, etc? How do you make things funny? Is it enough for you to laugh, to make it funny? Do you study some jokes and memorize them? Do you try to exaggerate what people say or what is the way, let's say you try to teach a person to be funny, similar to you, what should they do? How should they do it? Well, actually, I don't know if there is a way to teach yourself how to be funny. If I'm saying that, I sometimes cannot consider myself as a funny person because I'm really also, I'm most of the time socially awkward because I'm really introverted person, but it depends on the people whom I'm talking to. And also making, creating some jokes. It's not about how to do it. It's just about the time, I think, and the circumstances. So you have to think what you're saying and that should be right on the specific occasions. So I'm not planning how to create jokes. They just come up to my mind at the right time and they are funny, but maybe they don't come up to my... Maybe the time is not correct. So at that time, I also feel social awkward. Yes. But my friends, they are really close to me and I don't actually make jokes when I'm not like, when I was people whom I don't know, like some just acquaintances. So then I just, I'm really silent. I understand and it's interesting to explore the concept of being socially awkward. Do you feel that situations like the pandemic and social distancing and isolation and staying at home have been a big factor in you being more socially awkward than many younger people? Or do you think it's something you always had, you were a shy little girl and grew up in that way? Or is it you fear judgment? And when you see social media, it makes you feel, oh my God, I'm not so perfect. I don't know how people will judge me and that increases it. Or how does it work? So actually, yes, that's a really interesting point because I can discuss a few topics in here. Like starting from my personality, yes, as like when I was a child, I was not, I cannot say that I was really extroverted or really sociable. I was friendly. But as I remember all the time, I was choosing, like I had some ability to choose people around me. Like I was really, before letting someone close to me, I had to know them more. And I think I was introverted from the beginning. And then I understood that I'm not introverted all the time. And when I entered university, we were living in the big campus with a lot of people. There was, I think around 150 people, but that was a lot. And I sometimes somehow started developing my social skills and then pandemic happened. I went home, I was studying in Kyrgyzstan and then I came home to Horuk, Tajikistan. I really didn't have friends there. And it was really hard time for me, especially for my social skills because everything went online. And I think that impacted me really strongly because after that, it was really hard to come back to offline life because I was sitting at home for like a year and a half. And people whom I was seeing were my family, those people who I see every day, no friends. All my friends are online and I don't talk to them often. I was talking with my classmates and so all my communication went online. And after that, it's still really hard for me to come back to offline life. And I am struggling a little bit with those communication skills, even though I studied that at university, but in life it's really hard and I'm just working on it now. It's interesting that you mentioned struggling with communication skills. Even before that, was a big reason of you studying communication in order to become more outgoing, to learn, to communicate with people? Because a lot of girls and people who study psychology, they want to understand others and therefore was the communication choice based on you learning to communicate as a person or how did you make that decision for the subject of communication and media? So actually that's, I don't, so it's really not up to that. First, when I was entering, like applying on my application, I mentioned economy, like economics major. I wanted to go from that, but then I changed it to computer science. So I was starting the preparatory here as a computer science student. And then I understood that computer science is interesting really, but I found it really hard and that's why I chose, like I changed it to communications. And during the first year I was really not understanding what is really going on and why do I need that. And I was, I had some false interpretation of that because I was thinking that at the end of the day, I will end up as a journalist and it's not like very, I like this profession and I don't have anything against that. It's like really hard nowadays to become a good journalist, especially in the countries like mine. And then I understood that there are a lot of different directions within the communications and media major, and I decided to stay. And later on, I understood that really making, like having a good communication skills is really important, like both in your professional life and your private life in every way. Like communication is the key, I think. So I think it really didn't depend, like it's not, it doesn't depend on did I really wanted to improve my communication skills or not because I had to make that choice earlier. Thank you. And I'm curious about you as a girl from Horog, which is kind of a small place. Now in 2023, how is a younger girl from Horog, how is your culture? Are you a traditional Pamir girl or are you a mix of cultures of Tajikistan and some American culture because of Hollywood and the TV series and a bit of Asian because of K-pop and anime and TikTok and all those created a new culture that you're a part of? Or how does it work? If you could describe to someone who doesn't have friends from your culture, what it is to be a girl in 2023, you, for example, are you similar to your grandmother or are you different in many ways? Yes, like as you mentioned, I'm from Pamir and I think my life really changed and my like vision really changed after I went to university because my university is a place of diversity. Like we have a lot of people from different culture. And I cannot say that my culture is a pure Pamiri culture right now, if I'm talking only about myself. Yes, here I'm talking only about myself and it's really a mix, like as you mentioned, I love anime. My friends are watching K-pop, like one of my closest friends, she is really influenced by that. And as I'm her friend, I also get influenced by that. I'm really interested in that. And as we are watching, I think old people from my generation, we might have very mixed culture and also one of the important aspects of my culture is the UCA culture. So UCA is University of Central Asia, from which I got my bachelor degree. And as I mentioned, people are from very different backgrounds. So I think I'm really a mix. My culture might be like mainly Central Asian culture, but I'm also influenced by some West and East cultures. So it's really a mix and I'm really curious about everything that's happening around. So I want to be involved in everything that's really interesting. And I also really love my own culture. I'm really fond of it. I studied it a lot for my diploma, I think. And I'm really into it currently, more than I was before. Thank you. Can you talk a bit more about that, how you were before and how now you're more into it? Yes. So before I'm talking about my high school years because I was living in Horeg and it was the environment where I was born and everything around seemed to be so granted. I was very used to it and I was not really interested in why, for example, we have such patterns in our traditional clothes or why are we wearing those clothes, like why the design is like that or why the musical instruments look like that or they sound like that, like the specific way. And when I really zoomed out and I was looking around, like what are the differences that were around me, they made me go back to my own culture and look at it from the different perspective, from the perspective of the person who already knows a lot of other things, which are very different from what I have. And maybe it's just also because I got more information, I was reading about it, I was searching for some articles, like I was talking to people about all of this. And I started realizing how precious is the culture and why should we preserve it and why should we preserve it for future generations and all of these things, it just inspired me a lot. And I'm also educating myself about my religion because I don't think that you have to, because I think that everyone has a right to choose their own religion. And if a person was born in a specific area, he doesn't have to obey the certain religion that all the people around are obeying. So you have a choice and I made my choice, I made it mindfully and right now I'm starting it, I want to know about it more and I'm falling in love with it. So my religion is also part of me, part of my lifestyle and my culture. That's really, really interesting and such an open-minded attitude, I really love it. And in your introduction, I mentioned that you spend many hours on Behance, which is a design and creativity website, or you can say community. What is fascinating for you there? Are you interested in creative work? Do you have creative activities and designs and things like that that you do? Tell me more. Yes, I really love Behance and talking about my personality as well, I really love being creative. I love creative people, I try to be around these people and I think it was something that I had from my childhood because the first creative person I have seen in my life was my grandfather. He was an artist and every time he was painting some pictures, he showed it to me and said, Sharnoza, what do you think about it? I was like seven or eight, maybe even six years old and I didn't understand anything, but I was just sharing my opinion and he was editing it, redrawing something and it was really fascinating for me. He was teaching me how to draw, how to paint, which brushes to use and which colors to use. And all people, my relatives and family, they were telling me that, so you have a talent in drawing like your grandfather did. So you have to improve that. And at some time, like some time in past, I started doing it, but then something went wrong and I gave up it, gave it up. And at university also, we started some design courses, visual design, graphic design, and all these things like digital design in general. And I really love it. I don't know why. I'm searching for it because I need it like an air. I have to inspire me with something and I have plans like going for graphic design or like any other directions of design, maybe web design. I have that like such kind of plans and yeah, it's really important for me to have such people around. I also have Instagram page from which I follow all these people that make me really inspired. And I like knew about Behance, maybe for the past year, I know that there is such a community, but recently I just signed in and I like people who don't see things like all the people do. I like the crazy combination of colors, graphics, phones. And if there is emotion or some animations, it makes me feel that I'm alive, I'm living and I want to do like this as well. I want to create something like this that make people feeling the same. I love that. And can you explain to you what is being creative? What is a creative person and how does it relate to you to feeling alive? It sounds fascinating. Actually, it's really hard to explain who is the creative person because I think that you don't have to like there is not a list of specific personality traits or some other habits that creative people do. Of course, they are the people who try to look at things from different angles. And definitely there are people who are not afraid to express themselves and who are not afraid of judgments because not every person will understand your art. The main thing is that, so how do you translate it yourself? Or the main thing is that like what you feel if we're talking about artists and those who create some visual things, because you don't have to be understood. And maybe you have to open your eyes widely and look around you. For me, I also mentioned that I love taking long walks and sometimes if I'm feeling that I'm burning out, like I don't have any inspiration, I don't know what are my goals in life or something like this, I go out and I just take a very long walk. I look around without like I don't have my phone with me, no headphones, like nothing. I just go wherever I want and I observe everything around me. And also being alone in the nature really helps me as well to clear my mind and to understand where I am at and where should I go. So I don't think that there is, so I can recommend something like how to be a creative person. But I don't know why I think that I am one, it's just a feeling. It's just a feeling and nothing more. It's really hard to explain it to other people. I think you have to feel it yourself. That's really, really interesting. And since you're speaking about the feeling and the emotion, do you consider yourself an emotional kind of girl? Are emotions and new emotions and emotional experiences what gives you that feeling of being alive and primarily important for you? Or do you believe you're someone who is ruled by logic and more rational? I would love if I will be one of those who is logical and rational, but I think I can combine these two because recently I've noticed that I'm really emotional, not in a bad way. But there are some small things that can make me laugh or cry even, like from happiness if you can say so. I would love to be more rational, but right now I am working on how to understand my feelings and emotions and how to, let's say, take an action and not only rely on my feelings because I understand that I'm already getting older and currently I am all by myself living here and I'm the one who is responsible for myself, for my actions, feelings and all other stuff. So I'm trying to be more adult and I think adulthood is about the way you understand yourself and how you can negotiate with yourself. Maybe I'm just going out of our topic, but I'm really an emotional person more than just a logical or rational. Thank you and I love that you said that being emotional is not a bad thing. You're doing it in a good way, which is very important to not have any self-judgment like that. You said that sometimes you feel awkward socially. Well do you have, because you said it's not always, sometimes you're not. What experiences or places or people are you confident with and what does it mean for you to be a confident girl? What is that? How can you describe it? Yes, I said that I'm not socially awkward about a person whom I consider my close people. These are my friends and some other people who share the same values maybe and they have the same visions as I do. So I also don't feel, I feel like really okay with them and I can make some jokes if we're talking about that, but what is really confidence? I'm really learning about myself in that term right now. I'm trying to understand if I have enough confidence or not really do I care about other people like their opinions and et cetera. I think being confident is just, it's really hard to explain it actually, but I think it's more of like, the better you know yourself, the more confident you get, I think. And it's just a very long way. You have to spend a lot of resources, I think. I don't know. I'm talking only about myself to become confident, but also you can fake it and nobody will know about it. But I think if it's okay for you to fake it till you make it, that's also fine, but you have to believe it till you achieve it, I think. I don't know what else should I add here because I'm currently working on it and I don't really have a very clear opinion on that yet. That's a great answer. And since you're fresh in the process of working on it, in general, what kind of advice or lesson can you share with other girls and other women that you believe is either something you learned and changed your mindset or impacted you in a strong way, or it's something you want to remember so that you change your life and develop yourself in the way you want in the future? Yes, definitely. I have noticed that girls are really inspiring. For me, I was talking about the page, which I have on Instagram, for the people who make me get inspired. And I just watched, looked through those people whom I follow there, and there are all the girls and I'm really glad that girls are giving, they have different opportunities to improve themselves and I really believe in them. I really love what they're all doing and I'm really, really happy to have these kind of girls around me and I can say that girls can do anything, whatever they want, they just need one room and just to focus on the task and they can do a lot of great things, I think. They're inspiring, they are, I think, very lovely, and they're really nice, they're unique, and I hope that every girl will remember that they are unique and they really matter, whatever they are doing, it matters, their feelings, everything, because they are really inspiring. I cannot get tired of saying that because every day I see girls and I'm really, I say, wow. So there, I love them, I think. Thank you, that's so inspiring. Shach Noza, this was honestly my privilege and my honor to listen to you, to understand you and share your voice and your personality and perspective. I hope you'll listen back to this episode in like five years and remember how you were and notice all the developments and feel even more confident and that you have progressed always and constantly so much and how much wisdom you already had in this time. I thank you again. I wish you success. I wish you always constant development and progress and happiness and thank you again for participating. I would also love to thank you because that is a really interesting experience for me. For the first time, I am taking part in such program and like the main idea of this podcast is really great. I love it and I love supporting women and I love supporting girls and the stories which I listened to the previous episodes, they are really pure inspiration. I would like to thank you for your work, whatever you're doing for this and for our listeners. I would, I think most of them are women, girls. I wish them all the best and they can do whatever they want. I agree and thank you so much.