Tips: How to conquer laziness

Assalamu alaikum it's your brother, john Murphy here with another session of roots q&a. Today's question asks brother Murphy recently I've developed the habit of being lazy. This procrastination has caused me to miss my prayers to suffer in my school and also not to do well at work. Can you give me any tips on how to conquer laziness? This is a really important question. I think all of us can sympathize with the questioner and that we all have busy schedules in life, whether you're a student, whether you're working full time, whether you are a parent, whether you are a spouse, whatever kind of facet of life that you're in, your schedule is probably filled up with things,

whether it's studying, taking care of deadlines, taking care of your family, going to social events, like weddings, and parties and such, these are things that take up your schedule, and will generally decrease your energy level. So like, just like when you drive a car around a lot, the gas tank goes from full to empty, when the human being or when a person does a lot of things in their day, then they tend to have you know, less energy and their energy levels go down. So it's really important to ask this question, and also to see what are some things that the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu wasallam, what he taught us about laziness? And also how can we practically implement these tips

into our lives, there is a dog that the prophet SAW them gave to conquer laziness, and that is Allahumma inni, or obika, meaning the urges eat wild castle, where he says, Oh Allah, I seek refuge in You or ask you to protect me from asked you to save me from weakness and laziness. And this is a drop that he taught us. what's beautiful about him teaching us this solo setting them. what's beautiful about it is that when he teaches us a draw, to ask a lot of protects us from something, it shows us that this is a disease. So you're not going to ask for something or protection for something, you're not going to ask for protection from something unless it's very harmful, right? So

the fact that the prophets will send them is asking for protection and teaching us to ask for protection from weakness and laziness shows that these are some some things that can be diseases of the heart, right, that can penetrate the heart and become a disease of the heart. So it's really important to ask this question and find answers to it. And besides the drop part, besides making this there, I'm asking Allah to protect us from weakness and laziness. The Prophet Mohammed Salah said them always taught us always taught his companions and by definition, you know, but through transmission us, he taught us to always act on it as well. So don't just make the draw and then run

away and think that things are going to be better. The draw is the first part. But you have to also take your action as well. Right, tie your camel and then trust in Allah as we're taught in the Hadees. So what are some things what are some tips practically speaking, because our body does affect our spirit, right, your body is going to affect your relationship with Allah subhana wa, tada, what are some practical tips to increase energy levels and to conquer the disease of laziness? The first tip that I can give is that we need to look into our sleep habits and our sleep patterns. My first teacher, my Shere Khan, my mom, may Allah bless and preserve her and give her a long

healthy life in sha Allah, as well as all of our mothers. I mean, my mom, she always used to say, always used to say, if you want to have a successful day, then you need to make sure that you go to bed early the night before, if you want to have a successful day, you want to make sure that you go to bed on time, the night before. A lot of times, because of Facebook, because of the internet, because of iPhones because of iPads because of you know, smartphones, and the internet and all these things,

it's really difficult to go to bed on time, because you know, we'll get caught browsing something or we'll get caught watching Netflix or we'll watch like a, you know, play video game or watch it watch a game on TV, like a sports game. Now the NBA Playoffs are on. And so we get caught up staying up late. And what this does is it cuts down our sleep time, right, and then we have to wake up for either school or work and definitely have to wake up for fudger. And so our quality of the next day is less than two because we didn't get enough time to re energize our bodies the night before. And so it's really important to make sure that you try to get at least six to eight hours of sleep,

anything under six hours of sleep, you're gonna feel it the next day, you're going to feel it in your body is going to eventually over time, develop some wear and tear. And so going to bed at 1am 2am 3am and then waking up at 6am for fudger. That's not really a solid plan. And oftentimes people will fail, right. And even if you do wake up at 6am for Federer, it's not going to be the highest quality of prayer. Remember, the goal of prayer is to have a high quality prayer. I mean, you can pray in 30 seconds each time. But you want to make sure that you have some sort of meaningful quality prayer with a last minute tada each time that we pray the five times a day. So

make sure that we try to go to bed early, right so we need to make sure that we try to go to bed maybe 11pm. Once you push past midnight, you're really really gonna detract or take away from the quality of your day the next day inshallah so make sure that we try to go to bed on time. I'm always used to say that and we're lucky the older you get, the more you realize how true it is. You do need a solid night's sleep the night before. That's why whenever you take an exam or whenever you have a big test or in a job interview, what do people always do they always say, All right, I'm gonna go to bed early. I got a big day tomorrow. Well every day is a big day, right? Every day.

is a day that you have to achieve something and each day in the life of a Muslim is supposed to be better than the next at some point, right? Even if we make mistakes, it's fine. We don't want to make the same mistakes The next day, right? So if you miss federa One morning, move past it make Toba feel guilty. But make sure that you don't miss it the next morning, and how can you do that, practically, is by going to bed on time. Then, another tip that I can give you the second tip is that the Prophet Muhammad SAW said I'm always encouraged, being physically fit right always encouraged being in shape. You know, the Sahaba, the companions used to wrestle the Prophet so

seldom used to race with his wife, right? I mean, racing is fun. But that's also exercise you can't raise if you're not in shape, right. So he used to, he used to go out in the desert and race with his wife Ayesha, or the little Honda. I mean, he used to always preach being physically in shape. And this is part of having an energetic lifestyle of having energy through your day is being in shape. If someone is not in shape, it's kind of like, if your car is not in good condition, it's not going to run as well. So if your body is in better condition, if you take care of yourself, if you exercise, then it's going to run better throughout the day. This doesn't mean that you have to have

like a gym membership, right? There are parks in your community, probably even if you don't go to the park, you can go run around the block a few times run in your neighborhood in your subdivision. If you live in an apartment complex, you can walk around my wife and I live in a nice apartment complex from the lab that has a really nice walkway. So we walk all around. And occasionally even I'll go jogging all around, I do have a gym membership as well. But I'll go jogging in the apartment complex, because you don't always have time to go to the gym. But sometimes you have 1520 minutes. And that's a really solid jog. If you're jogging for 20 minutes a day, maybe three or four times a

week, that'll really get you in the habit, especially if we eat a lot of food. And this is the next point, I want to make sure I love it. Especially if you eat a good amount of food, you want to make sure that you don't just lay down or sleep after you eat, you want to make sure that you go and do something active like walk around, maybe go to the park with your family or with your spouse or with your friends and just get get some energy expensive energy energy expensive those calories, because then you're going to develop some if you don't do that you're going to develop some lethargic behavior. And that's not positive on your energy quality. So make sure that you're in shape, make

sure that you're physically fit and Sharla and that your cardiovascular levels are high inshallah, so that you can enjoy the quality of your day. The last part that I want to talk about is the issue that Muslims have, and, and is one of the many issues that we have. But one of the issues that we need to work on is our eating habits, right, our menus. And because a lot of the Muslims came from overseas from the eastern part of the world, right, we have a lot of indo Pakistani, and Arab cultural cuisines, we have you know, a lot of fried food, a lot of food that's heavy in oil, very heavy in carbohydrates. So you have a lot of rice, a lot of bread, and very heavy in meat intake. I

mean, I know some families Mashallah that they're able to meet, eat meat three, sometimes two or three times a day, that's a lot of meat and meat can actually have a negative effect on your body in terms of the amount of meat that you take in, it's very important to eat high quality food, right. So in terms of eating food, you want to make sure that we eat high quality, and the quantity is not that high, right. So quality, high quality, meaning vegetables, fruit, a lot of water, don't drink a lot of coke, or a lot of soda, that stuff is not really good for you. If you have to have something sweet, you know, there's fresh juices that you can drink, a cup of orange juice is actually better

for you than a club, a cup of coffee, in terms of even keeping you awake as well, because of those sugars from the juice as well. So make sure that you eat healthy. Now on the quality part, we want to make sure we eat good quality. But on quantity the Prophet Muhammad SAW said I'm also taught us that in a very famous Hadees, that the capacity of the stomach should be one third, one third, one third, right, one third food, one third water and one third left for air. Now a lot of Muslims take this headies as like a challenge like the prophet SAW, Selim is giving like some sort of millionaire challenge to you know, the person who can eat one third, one third, one third. And so we always try

to achieve, you know, these one thirds, but the Prophet Muhammad SAW Selim actually is giving us the maximum limit, right? This isn't a challenge. This isn't advice. And he says that the most you should eat is so that the food that you the amount of food you eat takes one third of your stomach, the amount of water or liquid is one third. And the amount of air or space left for air is one third, this isn't saying that he You have to eat this much, but that this is the most you should eat. Now what you might say to this as well, if I only eat this much, then I'm going to have to eat more frequently, right, and I'm really busy with my schedule. I can't eat that frequently. But even

this, you know, studies have shown how studies have shown that eating smaller meals more frequently throughout the day is better for your health and better for your metabolism, thus affecting your energy levels. So even if you have to eat smaller meals a little more frequently throughout the day, it's better for you, it's more healthy for you. And it'll help take care of your energy levels, thus taking care of the disease of laziness and Sharla. So these are a few tips along with a drop that we should make, you know the tips of making sure that we get enough sleep enough rest and sleeping on time, right, don't sleep late, making sure that we're a fit, we're physically fit and we're active

and making sure that the fuel that we're putting inside of our bodies is high quality enough to take care of this Amanda that we've received from Allah subhanaw taala these three tips are things that I've thought about that I'm trying to put into my life and I'd love to share

with you in sha Allah, I think that if we try to improve these three things that will improve the quality of our lives inshallah so with that I want to say thank you for submitting this question. It's an excellent question just go ahead and inshallah we can all live more energetic lifestyles, not lazy lifestyles inshallah, so that we can be better worshipers of Allah and better family members we can be a better member to our families in sha Allah, which Allah is actually located with Solomonic monumental law.