A new season, and a conversation about joy…
Welcome to Season Two of the Starting From Zero Live series. As we head into the final two months of the year, many of us are tired and running on endurance, so I wanted the first conversation of the season to be about joy, and how we can choose it deliberately.
Our first guest this season is Zee Saleem, Founder of Emerge with Zee. Zee is a board-certified hypnotist, energy healer, and mindset and nervous-system coach, and a partner at Meraki Integrative, a functional wellness clinic in New York City. She works with women over 40 who are ready to move beyond survival mode, and she will be featured in an upcoming issue of Intentional Living Magazine.
What she shared was honest, generous and, at times, extremely vulnerable. Zee offered her insights and tips for anyone ready to choose joy on purpose this season.
What if you’ve been asking everyone else to show up, except yourself?
Zee described waking up one day and realizing she was not living the life she wanted... she was doing good work and helping a great many people, yet something did not fit.
“I asked everyone around me, my clients, my family, my children, to show up as the best versions of themselves. And I felt like I wasn’t doing the same.”
That realization started what she calls her year of choosing herself… it led her to end a 36-year relationship and a 23-year marriage, and she speaks about it without bitterness. She is grateful for the years, for the lessons and, above all, for her two daughters. She had already left a 34-year corporate career, and around the same time she began a health journey that saw her lose 70 pounds over two years. As she put it, that change began when she stopped feeling stuck.
None of it was easy. Zee grew up in an Indian-Caribbean family, and telling them she was separating meant facing a great deal of expectation and some shame. Questions like “what do you mean you’re not staying for the kids?” were part of her summer. Her daughters understood, and she is working towards friendship with her former husband, because, in her words, “we have the rest of our lives to be happy, and I want that for both of us.”
Choosing yourself doesn’t mean choosing against anyone else. It means finally including yourself in the love and consideration you have always given others.
She also said something that so many experienced women will recognise:
“I choose me every single time, because I didn’t for 50 years.”
Those years taught her patterns, and now she is unlearning them. Who you were does not have to be who you are now. You can change your mind. You can outgrow a version of yourself. As Zee said, we are here to learn, to grow and to help other people do the same.
I recognize so much of this personally. Moving to New York meant closing a business I loved and starting again with nothing but six suitcases, and it took me a while to see that starting from zero could be a gift rather than a loss.
What does choosing joy on purpose really mean?
Zee was clear from the start that choosing joy has nothing to do with toxic positivity. It does not ask you to pretend everything is fine. Joy can sit alongside divorce, overwhelm, depression, career changes and the things we are not yet ready to talk about.
For Zee, choosing joy means growing into a new space and giving yourself permission to say:
“It’s okay to change. It’s okay to say, what worked for me before doesn’t work for me right now.”
So why do so many of us stay where we are? Zee answered this as a hypnotist. Our brains are wired to choose the familiar, even when the familiar no longer serves us. Fear of the unknown, and fear of loss, will nearly always win unless we deliberately create new patterns. She believes that is exactly why she stayed in her marriage as long as she did. Being familiar was easier. Choosing herself was the unknown.
The question that finally moved her is one she now asks her clients:
What’s greater: your fear of staying where you are, or your fear of growing?
For years, Zee said, she was frozen in that fear. Then one day she decided it was enough. “I chose joy over fear,” she told us. “I want this, or better.”
I loved that she said shared that many of us have muted ourselves, and life teaches us that there are limits. Zee believes those limits are learned, and that what is learned can be unlearned. She tells her daughters they are “the master manifestors of their life”, and she is now living that belief herself.
Zee’s top tips for reclaiming your power this week
I asked Zee for the small, practical steps someone listening could take this week. Here is what she shared.
Picture your perfect day, five years from now. Imagine your life with every lesson you have already learned, as if you had a magic wand. Then walk through one day in detail, starting with breakfast. What are you eating? What can you smell? Where are you sitting, and who is with you? Zee uses all the senses because it makes the future feel real.
Work backwards to today. Once you can see that day clearly, reverse engineer it. What is one step you could take now that moves you towards it? What is the thing you never did because you felt stuck, and why do you believe it is too late?
Ask which fear is greater. When fear stops you, weigh the fear of staying where you are against the fear of growing. Zee did exactly what she would ask a client to do: she weighed the pros and cons and had the honest, serious conversations.
Release something to make room. “You can’t make room for something if you’re not letting go,” Zee said. If you are holding on to something that does not serve you, ask yourself why. For Zee, prayer and meditation help with this.
Look at the people around you. “Who you are with matters,” she said. Spend your time with people who help you grow.
Be grateful for your awareness. Noticing that something no longer fits is worth celebrating. Zee suggests saying it out loud: “I am grateful for the awareness. I am grateful for knowing that I want more.”
The Emerge Method
Zee’s own way of working brings these ideas together. The Emerge Method is a six-step framework that takes women from survival mode to a life they choose for themselves:
The Emerge Method
Zee’s own way of working brings these ideas together. The Emerge Method is a six-step framework that takes women from survival mode to a life they choose for themselves:
Regulate
Release
Remember
Reclaim
Reimagine
Rise
Remembering is about returning to your why: why you are here, and why you are making the decisions you are making. Rising is where the journey ends, and it is why Zee’s logo is a phoenix. Zee runs the method as a six-week experience, with workbooks, meditations and weekly work, and each woman finishes with her own blueprint. It can be applied to relationships, careers, business or any part of life.
How do we finish the year with joy instead of exhaustion?
Zee was honest that 2026 was a hard year for so many of us, politically, socially and financially. Yet she pointed out that most of us also made it through, and some of us did far more than survive.
Thanksgiving is her favourite holiday, and the reason has nothing to do with the turkey. It is the day her family gathers in gratitude. This year she and her daughters have decided to do something different. Rather than following the usual traditions out of obligation, they will spend the end of the year somewhere they can relax, take a breath and notice everything they have to be grateful for.
Zee described the kind of example she wants to set for her daughters. She wants them to see her working hard and building businesses, and also resting, laughing, travelling and allowing herself to be happy. She wants them to know that ambition and peace can coexist, and that being a strong woman doesn’t mean having to carry everything alone.
She also wrote about measuring success by the quality of her days rather than by accomplishments alone. These are the five questions she asks herself:
Am I present?
Am I growing?
Am I connected?
Am I making a difference?
Am I experiencing joy?
The one thing to carry into 2027
When I asked Zee what she would want everyone to carry into the new year, her answer came straight away: gratitude.
“When you have gratitude, it’s actually a magnet to having more things to be grateful for.”
She means gratitude for where you have been, and also for your awareness: for knowing that you want more, and that you deserve more.
The takeaway from this: you don’t have to wait for your circumstances to be perfect to begin living intentionally. Your next chapter can begin before everything is resolved.
Takeaways From Our Conversation
Include yourself in the care you give others. Choosing yourself takes nothing away from the people you love. Zee asked everyone around her to show up fully, and then realised she had to do the same.
Notice when you are choosing the familiar. Our minds prefer what we know, even when it no longer serves us. Naming that pattern is the first step to changing it.
Weigh your two fears honestly. Ask yourself which is greater: the fear of staying where you are, or the fear of growing. Zee stayed frozen for years before that question moved her.
Begin with the future, then work backwards. Picture your perfect day five years from now in full detail, then choose one small step you can take this week.
Let go to make room. Something new needs space. Look at what you are still holding on to and ask whether it serves the woman you are now.
Measure your days, not only your achievements. Present, growing, connected, making a difference, experiencing joy: these five questions are a gentle way to check in with yourself at the end of each day.
Carry gratitude into 2027. Be grateful for where you have been, and for the awareness that you want more.
Where to find Zee
If Zee’s story resonated with you, I hope you will follow her work. She will be sharing much more here on Substack.
Subscribe on Substack: Emerge With Zee, or follow Zee on Substack
Website: emergewithzee.com
Work with Zee: she sees clients virtually and in person on the Upper East Side of New York.
Meet Zee Saleem
Emerge with Zee helps women over 40 move beyond survival mode, shift the patterns that keep them stuck, rebuild self-trust and create a more authentic life. Zee combines hypnosis, nervous-system work, mindset coaching, guided reflection and intuitive healing. On her website you will find:
Emerge Beyond, her six-week signature experience built on the Emerge Method, limited to 12 women
Survival Mode Reset, a free download with five gentle practices for calming your nervous system and reconnecting with yourself
A free Emerge Call, an introductory conversation for anyone considering working with her
Zee is a board-certified hypnotist with the National Guild of Hypnotists and a partner at Meraki Integrative Functional Wellness. Look out for her feature in an upcoming issue of Intentional Living Magazine.
Continue the conversation
Thank you, Zee, for your honesty and generosity, and congratulations on choosing yourself and choosing joy in such a demanding year. Thank you, too, to everyone who joined us live and shared in the chat.
As this year comes to a close, ask yourself:
What am I ready to release?
What deserves more of my energy?
What kind of life am I intentionally creating?
Which one will you answer first?
Season Two continues over the coming weeks with eight conversations leading into an Intentional 2027.
Subscribe to Starting From Zero so you don’t miss the next Live, and I would love to hear your answer in the comments to the question Zee left us with.
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