Her Highness Sheikha Intisar AlSabah is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, author, film producer, columnist, and a Princess of the AlSabah family, the ruling family of Kuwait.
Her Highness Sheikha Intisar's vision of fostering Peace in the Arab world and beyond, regularly advocated during her many international and regional board engagements, advisory roles, media appearances, and UN General Assembly keynotes, has won her global acclaim.
You have an array of social-impact enterprises such as your cosmetic lines Prismologie and jewellery labels Intisars and Ebbarra, as well as non-profits The Intisar Foundation, Alnowair and Bareec. Please tell us about your background and the driving force behind your initiatives?
It all began when I was with my daughter and we started working on Prismologie. My daughter used to organise events in Kuwait and one of the events was on energy healing and self-development. One of the trainings that was discussed was about colours and the effects of colours on our daily lives. This talk had four times the amount of people attending it than any of the other previous trainings.
It made us think, wow, people love colour and it is a universal positive language that everyone understands and feels. So we thought, how can we support people using colour therapy in their daily lives, then the idea of Prismologie came to life.
We use colour and different effects of colour to bring on that beautiful feeling that we need to go through our lives, through our day, whether be it the loving and nurturing properties of pink, or the balanced effects of green, or the relaxing properties of indigo, or the vibrant inducing and blood pumping passion of red. It took us around two years to come up with the concept because there was nothing like this in the market, so we had to do all the research and then find the right people to help us to bring our vision to life.
Once people understood the concept everything just came into play.
As I enjoyed working on Prismologie and have a passion for jewellery, I wanted to combine the two and empower women and bring a healing feeling through jewellery. I know stones have an effect on our vibration but I had to work out how jewellery could bring on a feel good factor. This is where the idea of Intisars and Ebbarra came from. I wanted an added value of wearing jewellery, similar to how they used to be thousands of years ago, when people would wear talismans, amulets and trinkets to make them feel stronger, more powerful, more protected. We launched the brand and our signature line additionally has seven power words. For this, we used the findings of the research by Dr. Masaru Emoto. He proved that words have a positive or a negative effect on the crystallisation of water, so that was a second added benefit on that specific line. It is new and innovative and I tried it on myself like we did with Prismologie, and saw that there really was an effect, I felt it, it wasn’t just in my thoughts. This made it tangible, so we introduced it to the market and it is our second best seller.
What legacy do you want to leave on the world? How can we support your personal mission?
I want to leave the world a better place than what it is right now. That would be my legacy, however small or big it is, both work well. It makes me feel good to be able to leave a legacy that makes other people's lives better.
There is a reason to create everyone and for me, I believe that I was given so many blessings and so many attributes to do something in this world, and if I just do something, anything in this world, I would have made all these blessings and all the generosity of God and the Divine, worthy of receiving.
How can you help? We need help in every corner, from advocating for Peace through the self-empowerment of women, to realising that we all have the power to change the world by looking for ways to support each other.
We need more women to realise their strength, we need to get policy change, to include psychological interventions in any humanitarian aid, we need to support every woman we see in our lives because everyone is a mirror of ourselves and when we support that person it reflects on us as people and when we support ourselves, and when we grow ourselves, it reflects on the people in front of us. So, any way that you can support, I will be extremely grateful.
All of your endeavours are thriving, how do you manage to balance all of them?
You know, I did a lot of biofeedback training and I do a lot of therapy to support myself emotionally and I am sure that these have helped me to expand my strategic mind and enabled me to manage everything. I know that I am smart and I understand things quickly, so once I started to work on
de-stressing myself, I realised my efficiency multiplied. The biofeedback really helped because I can easily go into Alpha and Theta now and when I am in Alpha and Theta things just flow, things are easy, they are not complicated. I also have a positive outlook on life so I am able to quickly find solutions when things are not flowing. I look at problems as a challenge and I love solving challenges. I am additionally surrounded by a lot of amazing people and amazing minds who work with me on these projects, so it is all of these things combined.
How has being a member of the Royal Family impacted your work?
The honest truth is, this is one of the assets and the blessing that I have been given which I use to grow my voice, I use it to grow my mission, I use it to support all the work I look towards doing. I have been given all of this. I have been given the name, I have been given the passion. All of these are gifts, I have learnt to use to benefit my mission.
I grew up a little bit shy using them but now I use them with a smile because I know that they were given for a purpose and I understand what the purpose is. It gives me more visibility being a member of the royal family, and I have more time and energy to spend on my endeavours because I have enough money to be able to keep my lifestyle and focus on my philanthropic work. All my philanthropic work is profiting extremely from my name because it should. If you have something, use it, otherwise, you might just lose it.
What does the word Legacy mean to you?
I just want to be at peace. I just want to be in a good place and that is my legacy because it starts with me. If you ask me in 10 years, that question, I might give you an even better answer, but my legacy now is to just see my daughters very happy, to see everyone around me thriving, and to actually be very happy myself. That is the biggest legacy I can leave behind.
The biggest gift I can give myself is to know that when the majority of people speak about me, they smile because of what I mean to them, not only my work but what I personally mean to them.
What is the most important lesson that you have learnt in your life?
I have learnt many lessons in life. Do unto others as you want done unto you. As you are going up in life, be kind to the people because you want them to be kind to you when you are going down, (this is a very Arabic saying). So, that taught me to always be kind to people no matter how important or not as important.
The biggest lesson I have learnt and remind myself of daily is; the world is a mirror of me. In other words, when things are happening in the outside world, we should not blame but instead look within. Unfortunately sometimes I love to play the victim, I guess we all do it to some extent, and the lesson I have learnt is that I am a creator of my life. I am a creator of what I do, what I see of my future, and I create it because of my thoughts. My thoughts need to reflect that everything is a reflection of me. So when I do not like what is outside of me, I work on the inside of me. For sure this has been the biggest lesson but also the thing that most empowers me. It is all to do with me and my thinking, nothing else. Once I resolve that, everything in front of me changes.
