The Strength to Ask for Help.
With Maya Nassar
July 2026 · 3 min read
About this episode
Sometimes the people who look the strongest are fighting the hardest battles in silence. Maya Nassar is a fitness coach, a broadcaster and a gym founder, a person whose public image is built almost entirely on capability. This conversation is about what that image conceals.
She describes a period of feeling isolated while appearing successful, confident and in control, and the specific fear that stopped her speaking: that asking for help would change how people saw her. In an industry that sells strength, and a culture that treats endurance as a virtue, admitting need feels like breaking the product.
We talk about the mechanics of getting past that. Who she told first. What she expected to happen and what actually happened. Why the conversation she dreaded turned out to be the one that changed the direction of the year.
We also talk about failure, in her case a competition she did not win. She came back a year later and won it. She is careful about how that story is told, not as inspiration, but as information. Failure showed her precisely what to improve. That is all it did, and it was enough.
And we talk about Lebanon. This country teaches its people to be strong, and that teaching has kept a great many of us upright. Maya's argument is that strength should not have to mean suffering in silence, and that the two have been fused for far too long.
This episode covers
- Looking composed while struggling privately
- Why asking for help is not failure
- Failing a competition, returning a year later, winning
- Discipline, transformation and the mindset to try again
Reflection prompts
Three questions to sit with after listening. There are no right answers.
- 1.What did you keep when you left, or when others left you, and what did you let go?
- 2.What are you carrying right now that nobody around you has noticed?
- 3.Which rule from the way you were raised do you still follow without thinking?
Topics
Chapters
- 00:00Looking strong, feeling alone
- 07:40The fear of being seen differently
- 15:30The first conversation
- 23:00Losing the competition
- 31:20Coming back a year later
- 39:00What Lebanon taught us about strength
I was afraid that asking for help would change how people saw me.
Failure is not a sign to stop. It is information about what to improve.
Lebanon taught us to be strong. Strength should not mean suffering in silence.
About the guest
Maya NassarFitness coach, Virgin Radio Stars, SLR Gym
Maya Nassar is a Lebanese fitness coach, radio presenter with Virgin Radio Stars and a founder at SLR Gym. She is known publicly for discipline and transformation, and privately she has lived the gap between how strong someone looks and how supported they feel. She speaks openly about mental health, competition failure, and why asking for help is not the opposite of strength.
Clips from this episode
Lebanon has taught us to be strong.
She failed the first time.
Sometimes the people who look the strongest are fighting the hardest (Maya Nassar)
Questions this episode answers
Why is asking for help so difficult for high-performing people?▾
Because their identity and often their livelihood are built on capability. Maya describes the fear that a single admission would rewrite how everyone saw her. The irony she found afterwards was that the people who mattered did not adjust their view at all.
How do you recover from a public failure?▾
By treating it as data. Maya lost a competition, spent a year addressing exactly what the loss revealed, and returned and won. She resists the inspirational framing: the value was in the specificity of what failure showed her, not in the comeback.
How does Lebanese culture affect mental health conversations?▾
It prizes endurance, which is genuinely protective and also silencing. Maya argues that a culture built on getting through things makes needing support feel like a personal failure, and that separating strength from silence is the shift most worth making.
What advice does she give someone struggling privately?▾
Start with one person, chosen carefully, and say a smaller version of the truth. She is realistic that the first conversation is the hardest and that most of the fear is anticipatory. The relief usually comes from being known, not from being fixed.
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