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The behavior that suppresses the itch but opens a whole can of worms
You are listening to Muslim mastery breakthroughs, a podcast series in which we share insight on how you can achieve breakthroughs in your life to unlock your spirituality, relationship and mindset. You will get practical steps towards living a truly extraordinary and fulfilling life Inshallah.
The behavior that suppresses the itch but opens a whole can of worms
We have been told that water is the best drink, how it’s important to keep us hydrated and how we should sugary drinks, pops, soda, Coke and all. This is a great and very important advice; however, we will share with you a real-world problem when Water itself becomes worse than any other drink, much worse than Soda, or liquor. We will use this as an analogy for our breakthrough idea of the week around how settle element can poison and jeopardize all seemingly good things we do. The water incident is also an amazing real story to realize how our behavior and our reactions can be sabotaging our key relationships. A lot of time we consistently react in a way that gives us more of unwanted behavior and less of the desired behavior from others. You think you don’t do it? Most likely you are going to be surprise. We will give you our breakthrough idea of the week around how you yourself are contributing towards the hurtful behaviors in your relationships.
Bismillah. Wallahumdulillah Wa Salat Al al-Salamu wala rasulullah. This is your breakthrough coach, Zubair.
Since 1986, the Carter Center has led the international campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease. It is contracted when people consume water from stagnant sources which is contaminated with Guinea worm. Inside the human’s abdomen, Guinea worm larvae mate and the female worm mature and growth. After about a year of incubation, Female Guinea worm becomes one meter long, creates an agonizingly painful lesion on the skin and slowly emerging from the body. Guinea worm suffers may try to seek relief from the burning sensation caused by the emerging worm out of the skin, that immerse limbs in water sources. But this contact with water stimulates the emerging worm to release the larvae into the water, and begin new cycle of infection all over again.
So, do you see how this issue of seemly clear water, when consumed contained of invisible bacteria of worms that grows inside the human body, and then painfully comes out of the body? To seek relief from that pain, and from that burning sensation, they go back and they use the public source of water, and they basically end of contaminating and restarting the cycle all over again.
Remember if you are talking about this starting in 1986, the disease afflicted an estimated of 3.5 million people in over 21 countries in a year. These countries are from Africa and Asia, right, in the areas where people would go to public source of water try to fetch water from there.
Now today, this has been much under controlled and that’s a great news, Allahamdulilah!
Now the way that Carter Center approached this problem was to create education, awareness, putting a changing behavior right? And the two things and two keen behaviors that they really changed will be using as the knowledge toward breakthrough ideas of the week.
Now one of the behaviors is related to what was being done if someone had the worm infection. Do you remember what we said the People would do when they are feeling the infection, they feeling the worm coming out of their body, they feeling the burning sensation, what would they do to seek relief? You got it! They will go and they would get relief by were putting their limbs in public sources of water, so the water can give them relief, but that, they would basically be re-contaminating the water, in creating this whole chain reaction.
Now obviously, the Carter Center and their team worked on changing the behavior, educating the people about it and making sure that the infected person gets the water to relief himself without going to contaminating the public sources. Now this one seems like their obviously choice, right? But here is the thing, when we under pressure, when we under a busiest schedule, we keep doing our old habit as well, even though they give us a temporary pain relief, temporary comfort, they cause a big chain of reaction, and opens a big can of worms for us.
So our first breakthrough idea of the week is a common theme that I’ve seen in many relationship interventions. Whether they’re between husband and wife, a child, a parent, and so on and so forth, there are certain behaviors we really really want to see in our spouse, or from our family members, or from other people around us. And there are certain behaviors we really really hate. Now one party is either not getting what they want, or is having to see and hear what they really really hate, and they find it very painful. Ok?
Now there are lots of other dimensions and relationship I get it, right? But this time, we only talk about this idea of how you react to what you are observing. So other dimension can be past incidents, lack of clarity, lack of communication, so on and so forth. But what we want to focus on today is that our own reaction to our experiences is one of the key problems, that is giving us more of the unwanted behavior, and less of the desire behavior.
Let me give you some example. If a husband has respect as his primary value, he very value being respected, ok? And when he is with his friends, he feels respected, he feels desired, and he feels he is loved, he is having a great time, ok! The wife may be complaining that he doesn’t spend enough time at home, or he is not taking care of his responsibility at home, and there is so much things that are not done at home, right? And whenever the wife would see their husband, she would bring all the list, and you hold them accountable for the things that he is not doing, right? This is her way of expressing her anger or frustration, and communication. But if this is not done in a proper manner, this can be sending signal to her husband to basically having him driving away from home, because that is where his not finding comfort. Now I am not saying that we shouldn’t be addressing our issues, what I am saying is that we have to look at the behavior that we want. If the wife wants the behavior for husband to be more at home, to take responsibilities, and what she is doing is just expecting him, that may be working against her that may not be motivating him to do the right things.
The point being that, to look at their own behavior, and seeing that what is my behavior doing? Yes , is fulfilling some of my needs, maybe it helps some the anger and frustration, I feel in charge, but in the long term I am not getting the real result that I want, and creating another set of problems, such as, the lack of connection, lack of bonding, because husband is not feeling respected, so on and so forth.
And there are many other examples; we will be talking about some of them in future episodes. The idea is that they exist, right?
Another scenario is could be that the people are blaming the wrong person. So sometimes, our wife, or husband would blame wife’s family, or he would blame the friend of wife, and not hold the wife directly countable, and not have conversation with her, right? And if he thinks that, you know, she is not doing her responsibilities, she is not taking care of certain things that she supposed to take care of, and Just saying that oh this is because of her parents, right? Or vice versa or the in-laws is doing that to their daughter- in-law, so on and so forth. There is tons of tons of examples or this right? Putting blame on the wrong person.
Ok, so what we want you to do is, pick one behavior from each important relationship that you want more of. So if there is a certain behavior that you desire and you wish the person in the relationship with you give you more of, and he/she is not doing that, note it down, whether it could be lack of respect, fulfillment of the promise, laziness, careless for gratefulness, anything like that, just take a note of that in every important relationship in your life.
Ok? What it is that you don’t want to hear? What it is that you don’t want to see? Take a note about it, observe, and pick one or two things. What is the behavior that you do when you see that happening? If you hate something when you see it happening, right? If you hate mess and your children are doing the mess, and you see your husband leaving a mess behind, how do you react? What does that reaction give you? Does it take care of your anger? Does it meets you emotionally; does it have any long term consequences that were against you? How long have you been doing that behavior? Is it a behavior that you want to keep? Or you want to let go of? If you want to let go of, you clearly understand how this behavior is working against you, how is dangers for your relationship?
So, pause the audio, rewind it if you have to and complete this exercise, spend some time to think about it. If you really can’t do it, and listen to while you are driving, I get it! But make sure you put it in your calendar to take some time off for your thought, and do this. Preferably sometimes, outside of your office, or outside of your home, so that you can have a fresh look at things, you know, take yourself to somewhere you like, coffee shop, a tea shop, you know, by the lake, by the river, you know! In the garden, in the park, wherever works for you, do it, help yourself.
Now, you may be thinking, if I don’t react in the way that I’ve always been reacting, then what should I do? Well, the first thing is not to figure out what you want to do, but to realize that what you are doing it is worsening the situation, right?
Now one key idea that we share last week was mashing the technique that every fighter mastered. Do you remember that technique? How is that going? Are you applying it? Are you conditioning yourself to apply? Do you remember what that technique was? Well, if you don’t, then go to check it out and make sure you decide if you want to use it or not, and if you do, when will you practice it, and how would you measure?
Likewise in episode number 5, we talk about timing, right? That the importance of timing in your communication, how is that going?
Now today, what we are suggesting is for you to identify behaviors, actions, reactions that are not helping you but are hurting you. And to clearly understand why those behavior are not your friend. Write them down, visualize the whole story, the whole chain reaction that is created, the whole world election (11:08), the mood swing, or anything else that follow by your reaction. Once you realize that, you know, you decide to keep it or drop it, that’s your decision. But you need to have a good awareness of it. Now if you decide to drop it, how would you drop it? You can hang some reminder around you, to remind you the value, you can create a phrase around it, create a trigger point for you to solve, right? you can write it down as an action plan, and review it daily several times, if you know at a certain situation you are prone to getting into it, let’s say if you’re coming back at home from work, and you tend to know that the certain behavior you don’t remind yourself from coming in, before coming in, right? Remind yourself what kind of husband you are going to play?
We talk about this in episode 1 and episode 2 on role playing, right? So this is all time together, all these bits and pieces, and techniques and tactics will help you achieve these goals. So do you need to do to conditioning yourself in changing your behavior.
Alright, now in your reactions, so if you don’t do what you are doing, right? What can your new reaction be? So in some other episode, when you are ready, you will be thinking about the new strategies, you will be putting a new action. But from now, the simple reaction could be, hey you know what? I am sorry, this happen again, I need to think about it, I can’t talk about this right now, I need time, ok.
Now, in the meantime, you can give them something that they can do to fix things, Right? So let’s say, you know, you give somebody an important task, right? They have to take care of something, they have to take care of some mess, or bring something, or fix something, or move something, or take care of the children, or teach them something, and they didn’t do it, right? You come home, or you get a call, you realize that it was because of the lack of responsibility for your spouse, you know parents, or children, or someone, and they just didn’t do it, right? and you may think of , you know, the person doesn’t care enough, he such a person, always busy with his friends, and he is not listen to me, and he doesn’t care about me, this and that all of sort things are going wrong, right? but you have start communicate , you can assert your disappointment, you can communicate that, but you don’t have to let all that emotions out. See, you can say something like, hey, you know what, this happen again, and , you know , I don’t like this, and , but let’s talk about some other time, I don’t like this is time to talk about it, and what I would like you to do is can you please take care of this right now, right? Can you fix this right now, can you fix that as soon as possible, I’ll talk to you later, and then you leave, right?
So again, you are using the technique from last time which was to leave it, to get out of the way, right? At the same time, you have communicated, you have avoided to take the behavior that was harming you. Depending on the situation, you may want to either have to call you close friend, or advise her, discuss this among all the party that are involved, ok? And build a plan on what need to happen in the future when unwanted behavior happen. Yes, you also want to communicate on having a plan and how to avoid that behavior from happening in the first place. But the reality is that changes usually don’t happen overnight, and you may continue seeing this unwanted behavior. So you need to have a strategy, assist them on how to deal with it, who would be responsible? Who would take care of it? And who it is painful for when that unwanted behavior happen?
Likewise, you know, the other thing we have been talking about, right, not to give a meaning that it does not implied, not to give it a meaning that you know, this happen because this person doesn’t care about me. This is happening because I am not good enough, and so on and so forth.
Now, let’s move on to our spiritual section. We were talking about shirk, which is give others what solely is the right of Allah. This giving maybe a partial giving, or a full giving, you give something completely to other than Allah which completely belonged to Allah. You give part that belongs to Allah to someone else.
Last week, we were talking about love, honor, submission, humanity, and how it should be completely in absolutely sense be for Allah. And how doing so can help us, empower us, and improve our relationship with others as well. Now we will be talking about the Guinea worm and water issues shortly, let us first look at what surah as we continue on this topic.
So from the where we left off from last week, continue on we talked about that, the shirk that comes in the intentions, statements, so actions of tongue, or action of the body parts, right? So we’ve talked about this three area where shirk can come in. So what happen is that when this happen, the things that are the right of Allah alone are being done for others, right, for other than Allah. Such as prostrating to others, doing Dawa at other places that Allah has not legislated, shaving of one’s head in your former submission of humility(16:02) for other than Allah. And other things the many people do at graves, right, like sacrificing in the name of idols, sacrificing for the righteous people, so on and so forth.
So some of these are very obvious actions, and we’ve heard that (16:16), issues that our audience is facing, right? These greater form of shirk that we start honoring an object, you know, or grave, or you know, things like that. We are hopeful that you know, our audience is not affected with this. But I am sure that you know people who are. And is such a great thing that just corrupts everything, right? On most settle issue if you go on the site of statement, the statement than can have Shirk(16:44), can be for example, taking an oath by other that Allah, right? this is a form of shirk, Right? Attributing absolute powers authority to other than Allah, right? and same thing like, you know, what Allah will, and what you will, right? Allah is for me in the heaven, and you are my only hope on earth, right? And things like that, right?
And how many people still safe, right? Things like, I can’t go to the Madina, unless the messenger of Allah, Muhammad ( Sallilahu aleihi wa salam) invite me. Asking him like, oh, Muhammad ( Sallilahu aleihi wa salam), give me invitation to Madina, call me, and anythings like that, which are done, you know, some sort of show of humbleness in humanity, but you know, this really really go against the concept of Taoheed, and giving, and goes to a point of give something that belongs to Allah to others, right?
Now, so we have clear hadith about that, right? Something happened, you know, the time of the prophet Muhammad ( Sallilahu aleihi wa salam), he corrected both of these behaviors. For example, so some of the people were taking oath by Ka’ba, right? Obviously, it is such a holy place, right? But is not Allah, right? And that is not something to be done for other than Allah, right? So prophet correct them, (Sallilahu aleihi wa salam), and he said you know, do not swear, do not take oath by Ka’ba, rather say by the Lord of Ka’ba.
Likewise, you know, someone said, whatever Allah wills, and you will, meaning whatever Allah wills, and Muhammad (Sallilahu aleihi wa salam) wills. Now this things, yes, the human being have free a will, they have a choice, right? This is something that we know that is something established in the Quran, right? But the way that it was said, you know, whatever Allah will, and you will, right? From a linguist purpose, it’s like putting things in equality. And the prophet of Allah rejected us (Sallilahu aleihi wa salam). And he said, rather you should say, whatever Allah wills, then what you wills, right, so even from the words perspective, right?
Why is it important? Is because statements that are manifested what is in the heart. And the statement can also have an effect on what is in the heart. So really in truly, we have to see what and who do we truly think has complete power. Who has complete power to protect this absolutely sense? Who can give us what we want? Who is in charge, and who is controlling? And in who’s hand Is our success? What do we truly believe in our heart, and then what do our action tell us?
The next point is on our intentions, right, if we do something or we don’t do something, if we love or if we hate, if we support, or if we don’t support, is it because Allah wants it that way? It’s obvious that we are trying to seek the pleasure, and happiness of Allah? Is it because we are trying to closer to Allah? Or we have alternate motives. Who is it truly for? Most importantly, the religious action, the action from the Sharia, Salah, Ibadah, the things from worshiping Allah (subahana wata Allah), seeking knowledge, teaching people, giving Dawa, all those things, right? Are we doing for fame, for money, for to feel good about ourselves, challenge ourselves, and to feel good that how far you can stretch yourself?
Now even our human relationship can be done totally for the sake of Allah (subahana wata Allah). But there is element of human love that is fine, but the point is that if you really really truly make it for Allah (subahana wata Allah), you will really become unbreakable. Cause you would be, you know, the narration on behalf from the companion (RA) about that even if their family member were not doing their part, they will still do their part, right, because they’re doing it for the sake of Allah (subahana wata Allah). And they would do it without having expectations. A lot of time you will see people would say, you know, I did this for that person, I did this for my children, I did this for my wife, and my in-laws, and this and that, and now you know they don’t even do this for me. You know, they didn’t invite me, they didn’t call me, or they didn’t take my advice, all these things. But look it, like if you truly doing it for the sake of Allah, you’ll help them when they need it, right? You are not doing it so that you will have special place in the family that you will get, you know people will seek your advice. They would call you, people would give you respect and honor you, right? I mean if you’re seeing it in your heart than this is where the cleansing come in. we’ll talk about cleansing in a second.
So this mind set can completely change the outcome, right? Is it an action but it helps us to get close to Allah, or are we only doing it for the sake of people, or we are do it for our own physiological and emotional benefit.
Now coming back to the Guinea worm, right? So the issue was the water which was contaminated was so lethal. So from the outward it looks it is water, right, in general, but it has a settle issue, that this larvae would result into worn and just destroy the person.
Likewise, our outer action can be all amazing, but inside we have poison of Shirk, our intensions are mess up. So therefore, the outward actions would not be fully beneficial for us, it would be rejected by Allah (subahana wata Allah), and we will not be benefiting, and will not be successful at all.
So the realization that the team had was actually to purify the water, right? And then the simple technique of doing that, you know, just use a piece of cloth and pass the water through it, it will filter out the worms, and basically the water will become drinkable and you will not be getting the disease. Just simple behavior change, but has to be done all the time, every time when the water was to be drunk.
Now this is something we also have to do, we have to continuously check our intention, right, it is not a one time’s thing, just like the water example, they had to continuously do that. Likewise is not the one time’s thing we have to continuously do it, make sure that our intentions is for the sake of Allah (subahana wata Allah). And we are not doing that for others than Allah (subahana wata Allah). And we would have sign and we will have key things that would tell us, right? Our emotions, our expectations from people, you know, how we change our behavior when we have more appraise from people, or less appraise, or how we change. This would basically be indicating that if you are truly doing it for the sake of Allah (subahana wata Allah) or not.
So the more you are aware of it, the more you check yourself, and the more you purify the better you will get. Think about this, what are you think about in Salah, right? That can show a lot about who you are truly caring for. It is ok to have concerns and worries, but in times when you in front of our Lord, you are having one of the meeting with our Lord, what we should be focusing about is not using our intellectual and our smartness, to figure out what’s the next step we will take, how we will solve the problems, but rather just submit into, and to ask Allah for help, to realize Allah is the one who can help us, and regardless how smart we are, we cannot solve the problem if Allah does not help us. So now this thing could happen because sometimes we forget, and sometimes we become unaware, and we just keep thinking without realizing that we are in the presence of Lord, the one who is charge for everything. So let us focus on Him, and let us put our concerns and worries toward Him so that He can solve it for us, right? and He would give us the right connection, the right idea, the right effort, the right believe ,right?
And likewise, you can apply this for everything else, if you’re having, you know, if you are missing out on love, if you missing out on emotional needs, ask Allah to fix that for you, because He is in charge of your heart as well.
Now we share a very important measure for this last week. Do you remember what that was? It is scheduled in your calendar, are you checking individual stuffs if you are doing thing enough? Is very important things! And you know what that was? Do you? That was a Dua, we studied the Dua from Sonnah on how the Messenger of Allah (subahana wata Allah) taught us to seek protection in Allah from this poison of Shirk.
Now let’s take a recap, right? Identify what important and unwanted behavior in key relationship you want more of for you liking. How do we react in those situations? Is your reaction beneficial? Is it hurting? You clearly understand the behavior that need to be let go of, how can you help yourself to let go of it? What were you exactly do? What do you measure success is? How would you frequently measure? How frequently would you check it, and how and when? Figure it out. Take some time off for yourself; go to your coffee shop we talked about, a park or a lake to get it done. Now what you need to figure out and use strategy? Who you can help out, help you with this? When can you look out for some times to figure out this strategy? Do a self-check on how many actions are done in private and how many actions are done in public. What events, classes, recitations of Quran, remembers of Allah, to engage in for seeking Allah (subahana wata Allah), even if people are not around, even if there is not a big crowd, even if is not a big Sheikh, even if there is not a celebrity speaker. What kind of commitment am I consistently doing? How consistent am I with my volunteering work. Does my quality drop base on the public attention?
By the way, as we share last time, that just doing a action in public or privately does not mean that it is insincere or sincere. You can have public action that could be absolutely sincere, likewise, you could have public private actions that could be insincere, and you are doing it just you feel good about yourself, just to charm yourself, just to see how good you are, how strong you are, and so on and so forth, right? To seek protection from Allah (subahana wata Allah) keep an eye on yourself, and this something we have to consistently to do it.
Well I will end of this from Kitab；book of Allah (subahana wata Allah), He say:
(Quran, 18:110)
Say, “I am only a man like you, to whom has been revealed that your god is one God. So whoever would hope for the meeting with his Lord – let him do righteous work and not associate in the worship of his Lord anyone.”
So next time
Subhanakallahumma wa bihamdika, ash hadu anlaa ilaaha illa anta, astaghfiruka wa atoobu ilaik.
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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.
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