Zehra Mahoon

Educator/Teacher, Global soul, Idea generator, Life mentor, Writer/Editor

Hello, I'm Zehra, I am a dedicated and proud mom of two. In addition, I have 3 fur babies. I am deeply involved in volunteering and supporting various causes in my community. Volunteering is what helped me to become integrated with the community when I arrived in Canada as an immigrant in 2002. Over the years I have sat on the board of the Alzheimer's Society of Durham, The Business and Professional Women's Club and the YWCA Durham. I have been an active member of the Rotary Club for several years, and participated in various fund raising efforts for a number of charities. My passion is to help women in particular, take control of their financial futures by helping them to practice simple money management skills. Writing is my super power (and yes, I don't need assistance from AI for this endeavor). To date, I have written 24 self-published books on various subjects. When I learn something new, I like to write a book about it. Every year, I dedicate the royalties from one of my books towards a local charity. I have worked in the financial industry in many capacities over the years. I have been an investment banker, commercial banker, investment advisor and financial planner. I have also had the opportunity to work in brand management and retail management with various brands such as Nike, Levi Strauss, Estee Lauder, Thomas Cook, Color 4 Kids, Pizza Express, TGIF and others. In 2022, I retired from the corporate world, after over 30 years of service. I now dedicate my time towards helping other people achieve their ambitions as a personal advisor and coach. I love watching people grow and flourish. What started as my personal passion to grow and achieve my full potential as a corporate super star, mother, daughter, wife, sister and friend, since my retirement has turned into an obsession for helping others do the same. I am on a mission to create a legacy of empowerment and financial freedom.

I am passionate about human development and growth. I believe that anyone can start anywhere and create a better life. We can together create a better world. I believe that there is always a way forward, and sometimes we can't see it right away - but if we are consistent and committed we can figure it out. I believe that human creativity has no bounds and I am passionate about helping people be creative. I believe that just knowledge does not create a shift - action is required to convert knowledge to skill. Skill is what creates change. I am passionate about teaching people how to be creative.

On Jun 8, 2024 I took to the stage at TEDxOshawa to do a talk about "caring" vs "worrying." My idea worth spreading is that the reason we can't stop worrying is because we care. We measure the level of caring by the amount of worry. For example, when my mother calls me she says "I was worrying about you," but what she really means is "I care about you." We can't stop caring - and we don't want to stop being caring people, that is the reason we can't stop worrying. I talked about how we need to disconnect worrying from caring. Worrying and Caring feel very different in our physical body. We need to learn to care without worrying. My call to action recommended that people check in with their physical body so that they can connect with the emotion of caring. Learn to tell the difference between the emotion of caring and the emotion of worrying. Worrying is detrimental to our health and our ability to make good decisions, so it is important to disconnect these two things. We have to understand that Intention and Attention are two different things. Our intention is to care, but our attention is on things that prevent caring - because worry does not feel like caring in our physical body. The feeling of caring is the feeling of love and love feels good, whereas, worry feels bad.

Brand Management, Franchise Management, Mindset, Personal Finance

My TED story started many years ago, when I first discovered TED. TEDx did not exist at that time. I enjoyed listening to people who were on the leading edge of thought. Then TEDx events started happening and I found that they were always very interesting - they helped me to see things differently. I always learnt something new from them. I started saving my favorite talks in a playlist of my own for easy access. I never imagined that I would ever do a TEDx talk of my own. But then I became passionate about showing people the difference between intention and attention and really thought that this was a perspective shift I wanted the world to know about. I applied to several TEDx events and finally got the opportunity to present at TEDxOshawa in 2024. After the event, I became involved with the management of the event as a volunteer. This year I helped with the organization of TEDxOshawa 2025. It is a small team and I helped in many ways including being on the speaker selection committee and helping with speaker training. I hope to continue being involved with the TEDxOshawa team for future events.

Cooking! I love to cook. I love trying new recipes from all over the world.