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Don’t Forget Yourself Lest He Enslaves Your Heart
Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
Where do you see yourself in the next ten years?
While these questions are important a lot of research suggests that doing quarterly plans around what you want to achieve is quite effective for individuals as well as teams. That is why you always hear about quarters in the business world.
This is our thirteenth episode.
Which means if you have been listening to this one episode a week we have now been on this journey together for one quarter. Or for 90 days. So think about this; we’ll be sharing with you in today’s episode what you can do for the next 90 days, what you can do for the next quarter and why it is important to plan your next quarter.
On the spiritual side, and for the last two episodes we have been talking about one single spiritual disease that causes a lot of harm and impedes spiritual, emotional, intellectual and materialistic growth. In this episode, we’ll start sharing one allows himself to be led to that disease.
Bismillah. Alhumdulillah. Wa Salat Al al-Salam wa rasulullah. This is your breakthrough coach, Zubair.
90 day rocks!
Have you heard the story of trying to fill a jar with rocks pebbles and sand? If You start with sand, you won’t have space for the rocks. But if you start with the rocks, you can fit in the pebbles and put the sand in the remaining space.
This is a very important analogy for our life.
If you start filling your days with the things that are most important, the less important things will find a space to fit in here and there. But if you start your day and if you focus on t less important things then you won’t have the time or energy to do the most important things. Therefore many planning books suggest that you take a look and identify what are the rocks, what are the most important things for you to focus on and achieve in the next 90 days?
If you think about it, ask yourself, have there been any habits that you have been able to quit in the last 90 days? Or develop? Have you been able achieve a new skill? Have you been able to read a new book in the last 90 days?
Think about it.
What have you changed in the past 90 days?
Now, this is a good time to plan for the next 90 days. What is it that you want to focus on? Are there any new habits that you want to develop? Are there any bad habits that you want to quit? Are there significant milestones that you want to achieve in the next 90 days? Whether it be skill development, reading, focusing on something, focusing on solving a problem, researching ways of implementing it to solve a particular problem and then learning from it?
Write it down.
Take time to think about it then write it down and commit to it, focus on it.
Think about it. If you really, really want to build a habit; let’s just take a simple habit of controlling your tongue or showing up for fajr and praying the fajr on time or being in the masjid to pray the fajr on time. Depending on your financial situation; let’s say if you were to lose $50 for each fajr that you don’t show up for, don’t you think you will be able to influence your behaviour to the way you want it to be?
The point is that when you don’t do something that does not have an immediate, short-term consequence to it, we typically are lazy about it. So not going to fajr in the masjid might not show you the consequences right away. But if you were to put a financial penalty or you were to put a penalty that would cause you pain in the short term, you might be able to influence your behaviour and tune it towards what you want your behaviour to be. So try it out. Or have an accountability partner.
We would also love to hear from you. What are your next 90 day rocks. What are the most important things for you in the next 90 days. We would love to hear from you to see how you are achieving it and what challenges you are facing. So we can, hopefully, provide you with the right tools.
Once you have those 90 days focused, then identify what you need to do on a daily basis.
What are your daily rocks?
Then identify what are the things that you need to be achieving for the next week? Do your weekly reviews. So if you want to choose your weekly review day to the same day that you listen to this podcast, that could be a good thing. Do your weekly review and see, ‘Have I been able to commit and achieve what i wanted to achieve? How well am I doing? If I’m not doing 100%, that’s fine. Have an idea, have a score, have number for how well you are doing and then consider what is preventing you from doing 100% and how can you do better for the next week?
Now let’s move onto our spirituality section:
I read a beautiful statement in, again, the same book that we have been covering by ibn Qayyim (ra) The Disease and The Cure. He mentions the example of a heart is like a bird. The higher it flies, the safer it is. As it lowers itself to the ground it is exposed to all sorts of dangers. So the idea is to elevate ourselves. To go beyond our body to go beyond our desires and to think beyond the skin and the bones. And to focus on the love of the creator and the pleasure of the creator as opposed to pleasing the creation at the expense of displeasing the creator.
The more we do that, the higher we ascend. The higher we elevate ourselves. The more peaceful we become and the safer we become.
There’s an interesting point here that he mentions. He brings the verse from the Qur’an, the kitaab of Allah, the speech of Allah. He says:
- ا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَلْتَنظُرْ نَفْسٌ مَّا قَدَّمَتْ لِغَدٍ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَبِيرٌ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ
Oh you who have believed, fear Allah, keep your duty to Allah and let every person look as to what he has sent forward for tomorrow. And fear Allah. Verily Allah is all aware of what you do.
And it continues:
And be not like those who forgot Allah and he caused them to forget themselves. These are the ones who are fasiqun. The ones who are rebellious and disobedient to Allah.
What does it mean to forget one’s self? It is explained as forgetting the right path. Forgetting to focus on the right path towards safety, happiness, peace, eternal bliss and the path to the pleasure of Allah, the Paradise of Allah.
You can see how Qur’an instructs us to be focused and remember what is good for ourselves and to be obedient to Allah (swt). And to count and hold ourselves accountable for what we are achieving and how we are using all the resources that Allah (swt) has given us.
Now, we talked about the danger of disobeying Allah. And how disobeying Allah causes us a lot of harm in our emotional growth, in our spiritual growth as well as our intellectual and materialistic growth. And why should it not be? Allah is the Creator, the Designer, the Owner, the Lord, the Sustainer, the One Who Arranges all Affairs of the Universe. The Most Merciful, The Most Just. The Completely and Perfectly Wise.
All his orders and guidelines and rulings are based on his wisdom that are designed to help us achieve alignment and harmony and growth and peace and overall peace in the community.As we try to stray away from it, we are disobeying Allah (swt) and causing ourselves local and harm at a communal level. Nut now you want to start looking at how the evil forces, the enemies of Allah, how they sneak into the heart of the believer and causing him to do do acts of disobedience. How it happens in the stages. How it is lured. How the power of the believer is lured into doing things that are displeasing to Allah (swt).
Again in the same book, ibn Qayyim (ra) he mentions the example the knowledge that; the heart of the believer being safe and secure in the worship of Allah, in the obedience of Allah. Guarded by all the knowledge, guarded by all the body parts which are the soldiers, protecting the heart from harm.
On the opposite side, is the army of those who are against the Creator. Those who are trying to cause mischief. Those who are trying to incite the believer into committing disobedience. And the shaytan. The lead and his allies now see that the heart of a believer is firm and secure and safe so they send out their specific and special investigators and they send out their closest and the strongest soldiers to go and investigate which of the soldiers is the dearest and the closest to this heart of the believer.
They return back identifying that one key soldier to be the self, the nafs.
These evil forces then decide and plan to seduce the self.
And their instructed to find the venues that are beloved, that are most desired to the self. WHat are the most beloved things to the self. And they are instructed to go and to show and to adorn these things that are beloved to the self and then to make promised of delivering those pleasures and to deliver those desires and to show it to the self in various forms while he is awake and while he is sleeping.
This increases the desire of the self towards those things. At the same time, false promises are being made to deliver those things. Until the self and what is around it is shackled into those false promises and becomes a captive of the evil forces.
Once that happens the path to the heart becomes easy.
Eventually the heart is owned. What we will see in upcoming episodes is how the shaytan, the evil side, the dark side, tricks and captures the eyesight, the hearing and other faculties of a believer and how it starts from desires and false promises.
For now, what is important to remember is: what are the things that you are attracted towards. And how is it taking you from the obedience of Allah (swt). It may not be taking you directly into disobedience. It will start to take you into diestraction, into doing things that are permissible, but doing too much of those things and to start neglecting the obligations and to start relaxing about the obligations. Or to start being relaxed about the forbidden things. So you still don’t do it, but you are becoming more and more relaxed about it and you have an excuse, an interpretation that you allow yourself, that you are allowed to do it because of your special circumstances.
This is how it starts, this is what we will see going forward for the faculty of psych, the faculty of hearing and so on and so forth. For this episode, again, take a look at your last 90 days, plan, write it down and plan an accountability session every week on how you will account yourself for every week going towards your 90 day goals.
And take a look at what is beloved to your heart.
What are the desires that you are chasing?
What are the desires that are making you heedless and taking you away from Allah?
Until next time… CLOSING DUA
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Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs is our weekly podcast series in which we share insights on how you can achieve breakthroughs in your life to unlock your spirituality, relationships, and mindset. You will get practical steps towards living a truly extraordinary and fulfilling life in sha Allah.
To check out previous episodes visit Breakthrough Podcast
Got questions or comments? Send us an email at breakthroughs at muslimmastery.com