Dopamine Slavery

Hello Alex Nice. Assalamu Aleikum Welcome to shake up the Rahim greens new YouTube channel. In fact, it's not new. It's just been very inactive. But we've been trying to, you know, boost it this week. Slowly come check. How are you doing? I'm good hamdulillah Al Hamdulillah. I luckily had you look like you just came out of the snow and I just came from outside sledging with the kids.

It was great fun up here in the Shropshire hills. Brilliant. So, what we're doing today is we're going to be speaking about dopamine slavery. Now, just before that, you know, trying to get a little bit warmed up. Before we speak about this topic, a few years ago, you had this willpower course. And, you know, I'm guessing it's just something which you still want to develop and still want to work with inshallah. And with so we're gonna be speaking a little bit about dopamine slavery, and then the willpower course. And also, additionally, what is the plan for this channel? So what do we what is your vision? YouTube, as we know, is a great live streaming platform. And in fact, according

to some stats is going to be surpassing the likes of Twitch and other sort of platforms. So it's definitely something worth investing in. So before we get more people joining us,

I want everybody right now, to just make sure that if you haven't subscribed already, that you subscribe to shake up the Raheem Green's channel, Inshallah, we're going to be trying to do live streams, pretty much at least once a week inshallah shake right.

Alongside your very busy schedule, we'll try and fit this in. Now, when it comes to the topic of dopamine slavery, before we get into the slavery aspect, and why this is important topic, could you just explain to us Chef, what is dopamine? And why is it important when it comes to the study of willpower addiction and these related topics? Right?

Okay, I've been thinking about a simple, I mean, look on a very basic level, from a scientific point of view. Dopamine is a neuro transmitter, it is a chemical that transmits signals in your brain. And it is responsible for making you feel certain things. It does depend on what what part of the brain, the dopamine is present. And you have various other neuro neurotransmitters, like oxytocin, for example.

And, anyway, there's lots of other so many serotonin.

You know, adrenaline is not really a neurotransmitter, but it does affect your brain as well. So you have different, so these different different chemicals in your brain affects your mood, they affect how your brain functions, and it depends where they are in your brain, right? So that's basically dopamine, it's one of those chemicals, but the main task of dopamine, the main thing that dopamine does, if I first start by explaining it in simple Islamic terms, dopamine is almost it's almost I wouldn't, I couldn't say definitively as a fact, here. I'm not saying this. But dopamine is basically your knifes, that that's basically what dopamine is almost the same. If you look at what

dopamine does. And you look at what the description of the knifes are, you know, from the Islamic terminology, then dopamine is almost one in the same thing. Right? So

from the from an evolutionary per scientific, evolutionary evolutionary perspective, right? So if we take it from, you know, what the, how the scientists describe it, and obviously, they generally believe in evolution, and that all of these things have a place in our development, right.

Dopamine basically, is what drives us. It drives us towards rewards. Anything that we feel gives us a reward. Dopamine drives us towards it. Now, you will find many people on YouTube, right? They'll talk about dopamine, and they say, oh, it's the pleasure chemical. It is not the pleasure chemical. Dopamine is not a pleasure. Chemical. Dopamine does not make you feel happy. It doesn't. In fact, it doesn't make you happy at all. In fact, dopamine makes you feel agitated. It doesn't make you feel happy. But it drives you towards what you think is going to make you happy and it is essential.

By the way, I want to, I want to this is so important. Dopamine is not necessarily your enemy. Don't think of dopamine as your enemy, there can be this very wrong way of thinking about, you know, things like dopamine or even our LUFS. Right? And yes, I suppose in a sense, it is an enemy in the sense that it can distract you from the goals that you want to achieve. And very often, dopamine gets in the way of our long term goals. Willpower is defined in psychological terms as your ability to delay gratification, in order to achieve a long term goal or objective, Put very simply, I want something now, but I realized that if I have that thing, now, I'm not going to have something more

desirable in the future. Yeah, in the, from our Dini perspective, from the Islamic perspective, if you want to get to Paradise, you can't do all those haram things that you feel tempted by, right. And you also have to put effort into doing things that are actually quite hard and quite difficult and quite stressful, and quite trying, because that's the only way you're going to get to Paradise, you need willpower to get to Paradise, basically, that's what it is, right? And you need to resist the urges many of the urges of dopamine. However, just to point out that dopamine is essential. If you don't, if you want to see what happening happens when you have a lack of dopamine, then look at

someone with

with Alzheimer's, one of the markers of outsiders, right is that people they have very low dopamine levels, their dopamine, dopamine is not functioning properly anymore. And because of that, they're not driven. Dopamine drives you, right? Actually, if you really master yourself, and you understand dopamine, and you achieve real mastery, right? Then you can use dopamine to your advantage. But most people, like you said, in the you gave that nice title dopamine slavery. Most people, unfortunately, are slaves to dopamine, they are slaves to it, because when it kicks in, it's literally it feels like sometimes it can feel like you are possessed.

Right? In fact, there's three, I guess there's three different things we could put, you know, if you put together three different aspects of the human psyche, the you know, the our minds, right, our heart, we could call it cold as well, to be honest, from the Islamic perspective, this is all more, we talk about it more in the point of view of the panel, but even that I call the intellect and all of these things come together, right? I think the Islamic terminal terminology is slightly different. But a lot of it boils down to the same describing the same things, but in a slightly different framework. Right. But it's all fine. Because it all a lot of it is just, you know, it's

literally amazing. It's the same stuff. Right? A lot of the stuff that you find, you know, the spiritual masters of the past in Islam, were talking about, you find that modern psychologists are talking about as well, right. Okay, so what was I say dopamine slavery, right?

So just before we get into it, the way I wanted to structure it is to first go with the problem, and then the reaction in the solution. So firstly, let's see what the audience mean, mashallah, a lot of people are commenting, some are saying, you know, you can get dopamine from salah, some speaking about dopamine in video games, and obviously, social media has come up a lot. So let's let's first do this sort of

this sort of

survey, I guess, with the audience, because livestreams, obviously about engagement. So guys, everyone's saying, I'm addicted, and you know, these types of things are the eluding for that. But let's first get down to this level.

What is do you think in your life, the number one thing, which on a regular basis, you feel you're a slave to and you think dopamine is, you know, causing you to be a slave to that. But like the Sheikh said, it's not a pleasure thing. It can be drives you towards pleasure, right? Driving is not the feeling of pleasure. It's the drive, it's that you know, it's that itch that you get that you I can't relax until I've had that chocolate bar, right. Yeah, I need to eat that chocolate. Yeah, I need to look at that. You know, haram, whatever it is pornographic thing like, you know, I need to open that little red button that they have, you know, that little red thing they have on your social

media that shows you how many messages you've got, I have to click on it. That feeling I've got to do it. I've got to do it. That is dopamine, right that's making you feel

Your Life. So the answers we're getting shake off social media, music, my phone, my phone, computer. Someone says weed out you're not supposed to be

hidden behind a username that you don't know.

Yeah. So internet social media is coming up again and again someone wrote actually my own garden so maybe someone's really addicted to

gardening. That could be something. So you know, it's interesting you say that it's, it's basically something which makes you dopamine making you think this thing's gonna give you pleasure. But yeah, it can actually, I think you're, you're opening up the possibility can just lead you to misery even though yeah because because the thing is is the thing that dopamine doesn't care, right? It's just a neurotransmitter, right? And you have to think, you know, you have to think of human beings how we lived, you know, not even forget it not even 1000 years ago, right? How did human beings live two 300 years ago as recently as that, but until, by the way, the vault until today, the vast majority

of human beings, right? Not the vast majority. But a very good portion of human beings just still live on the breadline. Right, yeah. So this, this, you know, the drive to reproduce, you know, to basically yeah, to have sex, right to eat to drink, right.

And, by the way, it's also not just to eat and drink, but to eat, you know, to go to go for high calorie, you know, sweet things that, you know, provide a lot of nutrition in a very small package. Right? There's obviously very good reasons throughout human history where most of history we've been starving, right, but this is actually really good. This is what helps you to survive. So you have to understand dopamine is not your enemy, necessarily, but it can become your enemy. Because we today, we, we we believe we get pleasure from so many things that are actually potentially really damaging. For us. This is the problem. Right? It's the same thing with another issue that we have

psychologically. And that is a whole nother thing called the fight or flight response, right. So that's the things that we get afraid of. So there's things that we seek pleasure. And on the flip side, there's things that we are afraid of, right? Again, fight or flight is such an important

thing that we have as human beings, because it's what saves us from being eaten by lions and saber toothed tigers, and you being attacked, hijacked by our enemies, and so on and so forth. Right? It helps it saves us, right. But today, this kicks in, in all sorts of extraordinary ways, right? When we feel our ego is being battered when we feel someone is belittling us, when we feel someone is putting us down. When we're not feeling appreciated. We act as if even mundane things in life, like being you know, maybe being late for work or having too many projects, like someone I know who's got piles and piles of projects that he can't deal with, right? So this this actually can trigger the

fight or flight or freeze it's actually should be called fight flight or freeze. Because one of the things, why don't you just want to run you want to run from you want to run from it, you want to run from that responsibility. You want to run as fast as you can, because you feel you feel it like this is threatening my life. Right? You do? Yep. Okay. Or sometimes you just freeze, you can freeze, like, you just can't do anything. You literally become like a zombie. You can't do anything. So we're dealing with this and like all sorts of weird things in the modern world, trigger this fight or flight response, right. And similarly with dopamine, it gets triggered. But you know, our phones

are literally designed and he does many. There's quite a few YouTube channels, YouTube videos now, of these guys who work for Google work for Instagram work for Facebook, coming on and saying, Look, we did this stuff. We didn't really realize what we're doing. We thought it would be a great way to develop our product. Even some of them really had good intentions. But we knew we were turning these things into dopamine devices, right? Those little things were designed to meet you. The iPhone is designed so you can't put it down like it the whole way. Particularly the iPhone, by the way is extraordinary. Right?

It says that people with their iPhones have the same psychological brainwave state as they do when they're having religious experiences. Wow.

Right. I mean, as Muslims

So this is scary because we we understand as Muslims that the most important experiences are our religious experiences, we would argue that so anything that threatens the right direction of that is very serious. So basically, you know, I was going to, you know, as you can have this perfect storm, perfect storm of your brain being hijacked when I see your brain, right

in the front of your brain, right is what is called the pre frontal cortex, right? The prefrontal cortex is where the thinking, pausing and planning part takes, this is where you think about your future, you think about the consequences, right? You plan is, in a sense, that logic Center, where you think you plan, you ponder your way, is this going to help me? Is this not going to help me? Right? So generally, most of the time, this is the part of the brain we want to engage. This is the thing that we want to be using, we want to be using our akal most of the time, not all the time, right? Like, you know, when it comes to you being attacked by our enemies, you need to switch off

your account and just begin to react instinctively, right? Because the occult is not going to help you that much. You got to work on instinct sometimes. But most of the time, especially in modern life, we used to we need to use that prefrontal cortex. But here's the crazy thing, right? Dopamine, when you get a dopamine surge, it shuts off your access to your prefrontal cortex. Right? That's one of the things that dopamine does the neurotransmitter actually makes it very hard for you to think it makes you hard for you to pause and plan. That's why you can fall into dopamine slavery, it can literally seem like you are possessed a person and you know, they can get hijacked by dopamine and

literally suborder is like, what was I doing? Like, literally, you can't understand how could I do that? Right? Yeah, it kinda reminds me of when Allah says in the Quran about the people of lutenist salaam that they were in this blind?

Absolutely, because if they had stopped really just exactly what a perfect description, bro. Right? Because they're literally surrendered to it. They will not using the occult. And this is why, right? When when when the angels say to the people, right, who were being dragged into the hellfire, Didn't someone come? And didn't someone warn you of this. And the people will say, If only we had used our aka. Right? In sort of told milk. Yeah, it's mentioned this, if only we had used our icon, we would not be now we will not now be in the fire. If only we had paused and thought deeply about the consequences of everything, right? That's it the people of loot they couldn't. They were so wrapped

up in their their addiction, their slavery to what gave them pleasure, right? They don't think really because most a lot of these things don't really give you pleasure. Right? And even if they do give you pleasure, so what is very short lived?

The pleasure is very short lived. How long is the pleasure of sex? Right? The activity? The climax, what is it? Right for most people on average? 15 minutes, right, the actual climax is what seconds? Right? I mean, that's it. And then afterwards, how do you feel really, especially if it's something that is haram? Do you feel good about it within yourself really, once that pleasure of sin has subsided? I mean, that's a whole nother thing. Don't you know, that's a whole nother topic. Right? There's, the point is, and dopamine doesn't care whether you actually feel happy at the end, right? That's the thing. Dopamine doesn't care about that dopamine is just driving you towards what you

think is going to make you happy. Right? What do you think is going to give you some sort of pleasure? As really beautiful point. And I want to

highlight the thing that you said about the prefrontal cortex that before? I mean, yes, we use it for planning and thinking but the interesting thing is that human beings previously we believed that it didn't fully develop to your 25 the prefrontal cortex

recent studies actually showing that it's, it's until you're in your basically 40s

very, kind of you don't become an adult, a real man until you're 14. Yeah. And this is why children like in Islam, they're not you know, they, you know, often you know, my wife, you know, you hear her saying, maybe when you're going to get some other she says to the kids, right?

because kids don't have it, right? They don't, you know, it's not strong. They're very much driven by the, you know, impulses of their desires, right? But it takes training, right? You have to train it. This is what a lot of humans This is what? In reality this is what human civilization is human civilization is really the training of the prefrontal cortex. Yes, the training of willpower, literally, that is what civilization is, right? Because if I, if you just let yourself right to your instincts, right, anyone who has a different shade from you, you'd have a flippin name for them. Anyone who has a different accent from you, you'd have some other ready, you'd be ready to combat

them. I mean, basically, look human beings, we're basically used to living in small little tribal units of 3200 people, even then, within that tribal unit, we probably have arguments in there, let alone someone from another tribe, right? Who we are basically mostly programmed to go to war with them and fight to the death, right? Civilization is all about developed, it's all about training, from a very young age, restraint to restrain your impulses, right? That's why we have laws against hate speech, for example, right? But it's not just enough having laws, right, you have to have a whole system. And this is the problem. By the way, this is a whole different, you know, sending me

down the rabbit hole. Now, it's very interesting that this guy, should we I wish I'd bought the pope who I didn't think I was going to use it. But as a quick side point, you know, on that topic, is someone did a research he wrote massive book on this. And the the big quick conclusion of this is basically once any civilization starts to practice, premarital sex, right? Or out, you know, sex outside of marriage, right? Any civilization once it becomes common, the civilization is destroyed in today's generations. Wow. Right. Why? Because one of the most important systems of control for your impulses is abstaining from sex, outside of marriage.

Any society that abandons that will destroy itself with two generations. Right. And this has been shown again and again and again, evidenced in history. Right? So probably, we got one generation left in the West unless it reforms itself, but which the West has constantly able to reinvent itself.

It's very interesting what you're saying. Because if we look at the Victorians, they were a lot more conservative than their previous generation. So you have this natural, you know, people and even the 60s, I mean, the 60s, people were going wild.

Even evolutionary psychologists, they talk about this idea that, you know, we thought sexual jealousy would disappear. And 60s Everyone was doing it with each other. But then they realized, actually, no, and society became more conservative in the 80s and 90s, than it wasn't 60. Well, it's just it's part of what's keeping us together. In from the point of view of society, right? Yeah. I mean, my, I did some research into this quite a while ago.

And I think it was off the back of this whole willpower thing. I mean, you know, what it is, when you start studying something, you go down this branch and you go down that branch, you start looking into a whole lot of things. So one of the things when I started studying about willpower is one of the branches I went down as I was thinking about, I wonder, what is the theory of sex? Right? I mean, the theory of sex from the point of view of evolutionary, like, what's the why is sex enjoyable? Why is it so fun, right? It's so amazing, right? What, what is the evolutionary? Because Allah knows best, but as far as I know, for a lot of animals is, it's not necessarily fun. For some

animals, they die, right, like sex is the last act that they do. Right?

For some animals for some creatures, not animals, but for some insects, right. And it's not necessarily enjoyable, right?

Why? Why is it enjoyable? Why is it incredibly enjoyable for human beings? Many primates as well. Right. So I was looking at I said, Well, I wonder what the various theories are on this. Now, obviously, this, I think there's, remember there's about four theories. I can't remember the only one that seemed to make sense to me, and it's probably biased because it's what I was looking for. And it matched my own ideas, right? Is that sex is a bonding mechanism, right?

sexes or bonding mechanism, right. It is one of the things that helps you bond very, very strongly with your partner. And that is needed because you're going to do something that is really tough.

And that is you're going to raise a bunch of little kids, these kids kids are going to they're going to take, what 10 years before they can really even defend themselves in any meaningful way more, right? More than that 14 years, let's say, right, they're still going to need your help for 1314 years, right?

And they're going to need mum, and they're going to need dad. Right?

Sex is, you know, the enjoyment of sex. Right is one of the things that really helps keep that bond strong. Now, here's the problem.

If you allow in society, sex to be practiced recreationally as a recreation, let's have a bit of fun. Let's just have some sex just for fun, right? It's just the enjoyment. You're having recreational sex. The thing? The problem here is, if it's true, as a theory, I believe it is because I'm sure if they study it, they'll find it. 99% Sure, right. That if it's true, then here's the crazy thing is that all of this, you know, having these into these one night stands, what does that doing to a person like if you are programmed for this act, right? To form a very deep, profound connection with another human being right? And then within one night, you break it, and you don't

even talk to that person again? What does that do to you? What does that do to your ability

to form those profound connections? What does that do to your ability to maintain those relationships in a husband and wife situation that is needed in order to raise a family? It destroys it? Right? That's why one of the other reasons why. Right, you can see why. One of the, you know, benchmarks of the destruction of a society is when sex outside of marriage becomes practice widely. Yeah. So anyway, that's just the side. It's interesting, because it's a side point of the whole discussion on willpower. But the point goes back to this abstinence, right, as part of training, as one of the ways that you train your willpower. One of the ways that you train your prefrontal cortex

is by resisting temptation. Right? So how do you learn to be patient? Because it's basically sub? Yeah. How do you learn to be sober? By practicing? Simple, that's how you learn it, right? Yeah.

What's interesting about what you were, the way you're summarizing it, is that civilization is essentially judged by your success could be gauged by its restraining mechanisms and how we can actually enforce those.

And thus, that's really quite interesting when you think about it, because even when it comes to the ancients, who we many times we think of them as being a bit backwards or you know, in terms of, but they actually had really powerful mechanisms to actually restrain these types of actions. Because, in a way, right now, we're in sort of evolutionary freefall. It's like a Royal Rumble. I mean, what's to stop somebody technically spending most of their time eating junk food and then waiting outside a sperm donation bank from a Darwinian point of view.

It's perfectly fine to do something like that. But going back to your point about restraint

as Muslims, we obviously have the higher goal to get to Jannah and I've seen in the willpower course, that you begin off the course with a particular narration of Gibreel Salaam and the conversation with Allah so would you like to just explain that again? Because I think for the viewers that's a very powerful and I mentioned you bro, you mentioned that hadith because I need to go and get a charger from

popped up that I've got a low battery, right, right. That's fine. I can I can tell one of my kids to go and get it right. But I just need to. Yeah, so basically, the hadith is you know, the Allah tells Gibreel don't, I've created hellfire, go and look at it. Tell me what you think Gibreel goes to hell. Fie comes back to our lives of anyone who hears about this place, they will never go to it. You know, meaning like, just hearing about it. That's it. They're gonna do whatever it takes not to get there. Then Allah surrounds Hellfire with temptations, right? And then he says to Gibreel okay, go and look at how far and it doesn't say okay, but it says, Go and look, I hope I tell me what you

think Gibreel comes back. He says, hola. I'm afraid nobody will escape it. Because these temptations are so great. Right? And the same with Paradise. Allah creates paradise. He says, Tell me what you think. And Gibreel comes back. He says Anyone who hears about this place, they're gonna go there. Right? Then Allah surrounds it with difficulties with hardships with trials with tests. And then he says, Did you agree

will tell me what you think. And he says, I'm afraid nobody will enter it. Yeah. So I mean, that really summarize, that's really that that literally is like literally life is a willpower test. Yeah, it is literally if you if you take the classic psychological definition of willpower, it is literally your ability in order to delay gratification, right in order to achieve a long term objective. And it could be, you know, willpower is two things I will do and I won't do, right, I will do other things that you have to do. Like you have to pray five times a day like you have to fast Ramadan, by all of these things are incredible at building your willpower, by the way, right?

They are amazing building your willpower Taqwa is similar similar type of thing, right? You have to make had you have to give some of your money to the poor and the needy, right. So these are the things you have to do you have to enjoy what is right and forbid what is wrong. Stand up for truth and justice, speak the truth, even against yourself. And then there's the things you have to keep away from you mustn't do you mustn't lie, you mustn't cheat, you mustn't steal you mustn't make I should have started with Shere Khan cover. Right? You must kill, you must not drink alcohol, you must not fornicator. So those all of this is willpower, whether it's us, you know, something you

have to do and something you have to achieve, or maybe a more mundane level. I have these projects, I have to do this work, I have to do this deadline I've got to meet, right? Well, there's things you mustn't do often, by the way, in order to achieve those things that you need to do. You have to stop doing some of the things, right. Like, it's so ironic, this willpower course, I've done all this research on willpower. And mostly I had really applied it around diet, right? Although I found it was helping me in so many things in my life, even my relationship with my wife with my family, it was helping me in so many things, right? It was amazing, right?

But I just couldn't get this course done. And I realized, basically, I sat and thought about it as what you have to do, right? And I realized there was basically so it was basically the flippin farm, it was because I would sit down. And I would literally spend three, four or five hours reading this reading that article looking at this answering that checking this WhatsApp message listener, before I know it the whole day is gone. And I had done nothing. I had all the notes, I had literally everything, right? Everything ready, but I just and I said, you know, what I need to do is I need to apply the

willpower cools in order to do the willpower goes, that willpower course itself was a massive implementation of the very strategies that I teach in it, which is like, you know, it's a bit ironic, but at the same time, it's you know, mashallah, it's it's fantastic, you know? Yeah, it really was just like you just really what willpower is, is actually interesting. It's like a lot of people imagine they have a wrong idea about willpower. They think it's some like Jedi mind trick. They think it's like you can you know, you with the force of your mind, you could move an object. Yeah, you know, Yoda reving, whatever. Luke Skywalker getting his * out of the swamp, right? They

think this is willpower, right?

No, no, no, no, no, that's just ridiculous, right? Okay, the only one who has willpower like that is Allah. He just says plum fire. Could he just says b&e, is that set? Right? Right. We don't have willpower like that. Right. What we have is a series of strategies and is a little bit like war. In fact, the book that I really based most of my course on, right, and if anyone's a reader,

you can read it. I mean, the book wouldn't have all the Islamic stuff that I've put in, but it's a really good book. It's called The Willpower Instinct, right? By Kelly McGonigal and that was the most useful but a really, really brilliant book. And I just took some and from other books and other stuff as well, there wasn't any book I used.

But I forgot my point. I was getting lost there. What was I saying? Well, you were speaking about how you had to apply the willpower course to yourself, and get it done. And this reminded me of another No, sorry, yeah, in that book, bro. Sorry. She says that you're literally you know what she says you're at war with yourself. Wow. Yeah, literally, I thought Subhanallah Jihad business, she uses that. She says you have to treat yourself. Like you're at war with it. You have to use deception. You have to use strategies. You have to trick it. It's like literally, that's what she's describing it. It's like a battle. You have to learn to trick yourself. That's what willpower is. A

lot of willpower is actually just strategies you use

And the other book that I found really which I actually want to do a whole, I would love to do a whole nother course, like, much more connected to this book is called The Chimp Paradox. Yeah, I found it's one of the most helpful books, right?

Really, really helpful. The Chimp Paradox. Again, normally, by the way, guys, I'll be honest, I don't recommend books to people.

I've people asked me, oh, recommend a book and I've given it and then people start giving me a hard time I've done to him this is full of comfort and shock. And this guy's an atheist, you know, whatever, I get these type of things. So I don't, I shouldn't really mention these books, because none of these guys are Muslims, right? Or The Willpower Instinct that they're scientists, they come from an evolutionary perspective, they don't believe in God, right? So you could get confused, right? So I don't really you know, unless you have a really good foundation and you know, in your Aqeedah is strong and your Islam is strong. Unfortunately, reading these books might make you more

confused. Right? So, you know, that's the best thing to do is go to someone who can, you know, filter this stuff for you insha Allah what this that's what I've done in my course, bro, that's what I've done is you've done it. So you know, I've really filtered the stuff taking it out, giving it you know, referred it back to the Quran and Sunnah. Given it sort of Islamic framework. Yeah.

I haven't. It's you know, it's still live already good, but

it's the cost in life for people to rent. Yeah, you can go to get I will power I think it's get I will power will get I will power for you.com I have to check it out. Maybe you can quickly do a quick search for me.

Get get on I will. While looking it up. And you can just WhatsApp me check and I'll put it up. I did this course. And in fact, when I first signed on to it, then I didn't do it and shake up there you need willpower to do what he walks up to me and he said, Have you done it? And I said no. Then he sent me a message when he looked quite angry and he was driving. And that was

not sufficient. Because he started doing it. However when I did it, I actually started to think to myself oh my god, this is why shaitan doesn't want me to do this like this.

I'm telling you, man, he does not want you to do it.

You saying they just bricking it? Don't do this course. I'm gonna be able to send it to you. It's yeah, I get I will power that's it. I will power.com you can find that

this is his his little pop up comes. This is for heroes not for sheep, your

this is not for you. And it really isn't right. It really isn't. Because it's interesting because there's a whole nother subject I get lost on this one. Right. But it's so interesting that, you know, throughout history, human history, we have heroes, every culture every you know, every culture. However primitive, seemingly primitive, has heroes. And the interesting thing is the story. The basically the pattern of the journey of the hero

in every society is almost identical, right? Almost identical. And it's so amazing that if you look at the life of the prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, it's almost as if his life has been scripted. According to this journey of the euro, it's incredible. But basically, it's all about the journey of the self. It's all about learning to master yourself. That's ultimately what it comes down to. Like the really the thing, what makes a hero a hero is that they haven't just surrendered to their knifes, they're not just sheep, they've done something that has taken willpower. That's really what it comes down to. Right? they've mastered themselves in one some way, shape or form.

Right. And that's true until today. I mean, a lot of urines or sporting heroes or business heroes, but all of these people, the one thing they have in common really is a degree of self mastery. They have delayed gratification in order to achieve some incredible objective and they've had to give up a lot of stuff that most people are happy to just graze the grass like sheep their you know, watch the grass, you know, and wait for the you know, suture to come along, right. I mean, why gotta get the charger, bro? Yeah, you get the charger.

So in terms of this particular course, I did it many years ago, and it was phenomenal. It was amazing.

It was something which really made me

it made me aware of just how easily the human mind can be tricked. So especially when it comes to say

Do something we indulge in pretty much, three times a day, which we don't need at all. Probably even one once a day, which is food, so you, you're on your phone, and you know, UberEATS or whatever it is, or you just open the fridge. And you know, you get this type of okay, like it is this this, this, you know, dopamine trigger, and makes you think okay, um, you know, it's just one milkshake was this was that when actually the simple tricks that inshallah shake up the ring green is going to be sharing with you guys. And you're going to see through that, that you can actually fight off the dopamine. So one of the things you can actually do is you can wait 10 minutes. So you see a

cheeseburger, you see a milkshake or whatever your favorite thing is, you wait 10 minutes. And you know, the dopamine is no longer pushing you it's maybe pushing 5% than it was before. Likewise, you know, the other thing, which the course teaches is about, you know, you have to treat these types of triggers, like they are

like they're an ambush. And you have to have this type of reflex and you have to understand what's happening in your body. Now, I was so counter ambush training. Carrolltown was training. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I was so humbled system that I developed. Yeah. Because it's like, I guess it's like anything else. It's like, if like anyone who studied martial arts, if you haven't, everyone probably should. I don't know why people, like, you know, you're a Muslim, you should know martial arts, right. But, you know, in order, like, anyone can go there, and you can, you know, study what you like and do all these patterns and whatever. But unless you actually have real reflex training,

yeah. Unless you actually go and actually practice being hit and hitting someone, right? You've got to train that reflex action. Right? You got to train it. Just watching movies or watching there's not going to do it, right. And it's the same with training your response to dopamine, right? So when you get hijacked by dopamine, when that dopamine makes you his slave, right? You've got to train your self, not to get it, right. So it's not like you can't just read it, you have to practice it. Right. And you know, the three components, you know, so the first thing you develop, right, this is my basically, this is my course, right? This is the summary of my course. Right? The first thing you

develop is awareness. Right? Most of us have triggers, we have things that trigger us now everyone is different. What triggers use a board is going to be different from what triggers me, right? There may be things that just don't interest me at all, but the interest you right, so you have to So I guess one of the most important things and it's interesting that Kelly McGonigal McGonigal in her book, The Willpower Instinct, literally, her summary of her whole book is you need to practice mindfulness, right? It's this state of being constantly mindful. And when we say mindful, pre frontal cortex fullness, right? It's thinking about everything you do, not thinking about it

necessarily, but being present. Right. But I think for most of them, I have said that you can't be truly mindful unless you believe in Allah. Right? Because if you don't believe in God, right, you're excluding one of the most important dimensions of every single thing that happens in your life, is the fact that it's been created by Allah subhanaw taala, that he has provided you with everything that you have. And if you fail to be mindful of that you are not really being mindful at all. Right? I mean, you might be, you know, you might be being mindful compared to a glutton who just doesn't think about what they stuff in their face? Or a nymphomaniac? Who doesn't care? What who she or he,

you know, whatever does, right. Okay. But you're not truly mindful. If you're not thinking about a lot. And if you think about it as a Muslim, shouldn't we be like that? Shouldn't we be sitting down every time you have a cup of tea? Every time you eat some food? Shouldn't we be thinking about how a lot bought this to us? Right? Whatever it is, our eyes, what are we using our eyes for our ears? What? So this state of being mindful, right is really the biggest, most important thing. So part of that mindfulness is just being aware of when dopamine hijacks you. Yeah. So just like when I was doing my course, when I sat down and thought about it, I realized, Okay, what's going on? I know

what's going on. Right? I realized that I sit there in my computer in the morning. I've got all the intentions, right? I've got every intention of doing the work and writing the scripts. Yeah.

But three hours later, nothing's happened because I'm just on my phone. Right? Okay. Right, what triggers me what makes me? So then I realized, Okay, I just made a bargain with my so that's anyway, the first thing is awareness, you've got to be awareness, whatever it is that you want to deal with, you've got to be aware, what triggers my dopamine, right? Maybe I don't know, let's just take an example. You know, like, whoever that guy is, whoever said I smoke weed, right? Well, hopefully you don't smoke it nonstop all the time. But, you know, like, maybe you may have given it up for a week or two weeks or a few days. Right. But then what triggers you? Oh, you know, when you're feeling, I

don't know, whatever it is stressed out? I'm just giving some examples, right. You know, you're stressed out. You had a lot, there's a big argument in the house, right? You just can't take it anymore. And there's a certain part of town, you know, that if you go there, someone's gonna offer you some weed, right? And you find yourself going down there. So like, these are all your triggers, you know, okay, these are the things that trigger the right, boom, boom, 123, right. You have to study yourself, what's happening? Because you want to break that pattern. You want to break those habits, right? How do you do that? Right? So you've got the awareness as the first thing, right?

Right. The second thing is when you get that urge, right? So that's a is awareness, B is breathe. When the urge comes when that dopamine urge comes, you have and brothers and sisters, most of us don't know how to breathe. I know it sounds like some Yogi stuff, but it's really true. Honestly, I before I was Muslim, I practice Buddhism for three years. And this is the first thing that like it wasn't even Buddhism Buddhism, it was just like some, you know, but but it was so true. Most people don't know how to breathe, right.

I really recommend you learn the Wim Hof Method, by the way, He'll teach you how to breathe and building willpower by having cold showers. Brilliant, right? Okay, so learn how to breathe. Basically, you breathe deeply right into your abdomen, right? It's not a chest, right? That is right deep down into your abdomen, and then you fill up your chest and then you and you do that to the count of seven, one, breathe in one, two.

And then out 12345. And you've as you're breathing out, you're already feeling you're beginning to relax. You do that three times. And by the way, what does that do? That slows down your heart rate and allows you to reengage your prefrontal cortex, it allows that dopamine surge to dissipate. The next thing is D, right? I am so sorry. B is breathe. ABC. Right? Breathe a breathe. Yeah, C is change, change what? Change your state, right? Because now, why did you get that dopamine surge, you got that dopamine surge, because you were in the house, the argument started, you got that I need to smoke some weed, I got to have that high, I gotta get out of this. That's it, you know, it's

happening. So what you do need to get out but not in that wrong place that you want to do. But you need to change your state. Right? The best thing to do is go and pray to rock up. Honestly, I will say if you can do that, go and pray to rock up. This changing your state is what the Prophet taught us. When you get angry. What do you do, you change your state, you change your state by doing if you're standing up, you sit down, if you're sitting down and you're angry, you lie down. If you you make will do it's a state change. The purpose of that is to put a distance between you and that thing that is presenting temptation. Yeah.

Right, and then D, right, ABC, D is delay. That's the 10 minutes that suborder was talking about. Give yourself 10 minutes, give yourself 10 minutes, right? Say to your brain, say to yourself, you know what, if you really, really want to do this, after 10 minutes, really, you can do it.

But in that 10 minutes, you've got to think deeply about what are your goals? What are your objectives, and that's why the way by the way, in the course I do teach it's very important to actually write that down. Think about your goals, right? Because you've got to have a plan, right? So you know, hopefully now the crazy idea of this may be controversial, very controversial. But you know, the final thing is if after 10 minutes, you know with this 10 minutes you give yourself if you really feel like doing it after 10 minutes and you've thought about it and you calm down, you can give yourself permission. Right now obviously I can't I'm not saying you're giving yourself

permission to do haram. Right. But the thing here is, this is a whole nother thing.

In psychology, right?

The more you make yourself, try to stop thinking about something, guess what happens?

The more you think about it, right? Try not to think about a pink elephant. You know, pink elephant, don't think about pink elephant, right? And, you know, one minute from now try not to think about a pink elephant. Like most of us, that's all we can think of. You know, it's, it's actually like well known. It's called in psychology, the white dead, not the pink elephant. Right? Okay, so

yeah, one of the things is just, you know, what I call my favorite thing in my whole course, is what I call surfing the urge. Right? And this is one of the most useful things. And like, for me, that's useful surfing the edge, I literally feel that urge. You see, because you have to understand brothers and sisters, these urges, some of them are natural, right? It's just part of you. You don't want to push it away and try not to think about it. You want to say Yeah, it's like you say, I can see you. I know you're there. I know, your needs are real. I know. You think they're real. Right? I can understand that. Right? I recognize it. But you know, we're not going to get into we're going to

serve it right. So you like it's like you just let it you know, it could be like clouds, you let it dissipate. Or another technique is you're imagining you're in a bus because sometimes all these things these noises, you imagine you're sitting in a bus. And you know, you just let the passengers get off one by one. Yeah, just get off, right? Sit there, or you surf. For me. I like this. Like, I feel like it's a big wave hits me like a wave. And I literally literally imagine myself surfing this wave, right? And just let it just let it go. Right. So that's important from a psychological perspective, because the more you try to dismiss the thought and say, no, no, no, no, no, the more

it will stick with you. Right. So that sort of acknowledgment that yeah, you're there. It's genuine. Right? But you've got to serve it. And there's, there's so many other things like I there's so many other things I bring in the course the helicopter ride, right thinking about yourself in, you know, in the future, most of us treat our future selves. You know, like, if you're 20 Think about yourself when you're my age, right? When you're 56, whatever I am, right? Yeah, you don't? You will think about it's us the same you brothers and sisters, right? That's you the same you. But you don't you think of that person as a complete stranger, you might as well be from Timbuktu unless you're from

Timbuktu, obviously.

You know, it might as well be you. That's you in the future. But you don't think of yourself as actually a real person, you don't think about what you do now, how that's gonna affect you in the future. All right. So there's a whole bunch of other stuff. But that's it. That's some of the things wrong. And what's beautiful about the ABCD thing is, from each one of those stages, we can we can see a clear Islamic dimension, we can see a clear Islamic link. So with the see the change part, it's not only about a physical change, and we can think of how the process alum spoke about the man who committed national murders. So there's that.

Yeah, the state change in terms of thinking about death. Because process Salam said that, you know, you know, he was asked about who is the wisest, and he said, The wise this is, you know, paraphrasing here, but the one who remembers death and prepares for it. And these things are extremely important, because I think, like you said, one of the things which we do is we make these projections in the future or in the future will be the same, you know, I'll be a great guy, but actually, what the real what's really sad is, you know, people get caught, you know, having affairs in their 70s

nothing really changes nothing. And also we can think of everyone perspective, I mean, we've all we've all been there either we were nonpracticing or not Muslim then when we go back and look at our you know, our friends from our maybe primary school and stuff

you know, you look at the Instagram and the Facebook it's nothing's really changed

things are the exact thing and the reason is bro this is because the other thing is that this is also the whole thing about willpower is actually also about breaking habits.

It's about breaking bad habits and building new habits. You know, literally the perfect storm of destruction for your for you in terms of willpower is you know, dopamine

fight or flight plus your habit. If you have a bad habit add to that dopamine add to that a fight or flight response, right. You're that's you have almost no chance

to write, you have almost got no chance you will be giving in again and again and again. Right? So a lot of what we do, right, we love to think we're rational. But most of the time we're not. We're just habit, we're creatures of habits. I know, like, this is my you know, I would say that my biggest single struggle is with food.

Until now, even though, you know, the thing that prompted me to start this whole willpower journey was getting hold of control of my diet. I'll be honest, I've fallen, not quite back to where I was, but I'm not far from where I was, before I did it. Right. I've just, I've just relapsed. And by the way, that's the hardest hardest thing with willpower is maintaining it is maintenance. Right? And I talk about that in the willpower course. Right? Because the reason is, is because from the point of view of from the point of view of neuro from neuroscience, from the point of view of our brain,

they say that old habits, not that old habits die hard, old habits just don't die, they are permanently. So basically what happens is when you do something, it forms a neural pathway, your brain forms pathway. So your brain is all about connections, right?

Habits are a series of connections in your brain that allows you it's brilliant. They're brilliant, because they allow you to automate your behavior. Yeah. If you've ever had to think deeply about imagine, I all of you who drive so all of you who are drivers? Yeah, think about, it must have happened to you so many times that you've got in your car, and you've got to your destination, and literally just don't remember anything, right? Like the whole thing? Like, how did you don't remember it? Imagine you had to drive like when you were a learner the whole time? Can you imagine how stressed out you would be? You would probably die of stress. You couldn't light you could not

take the cortisol from your body. Like you can't take that much stress, right? You couldn't handle a habit, right? You know, you get muscle memory, you get the habit, it becomes ingrained in your brain, the process it becomes and that's what makes it so easy, right? It's just like it's an automatic behavior, right? It's one of the things that actually pretend one of the most important things for us as human beings, is our ability to automate our behaviors. But obviously, you can see the downside, you can automate bad behaviors, you can automate habits that are just terrible. And they can start from a very, very young age, you don't even realize it. Food, right? So for me, I'm

not you know, I thought about this a lot, bro. So

I'm sort of, I thought about this. I'm not making I'm not. Guys, listen, you know, if you look too, if you've got on my Facebook page for literally since Ramadan, I've been giving talks every week, almost every week about knowing yourself, right? And I say again, and again. Stop telling yourself stories. Stop telling yourself flippin stories, right. But here's one of the stories I tell myself, right? When I was at school, and this is true. When I was at school, I was always hungry. Right? I was always hungry. And I'm a growing kid. I was a boarding school, right? We never had enough food. And I was hungry the whole time. Like hungry, like I needed to eat because I was growing up. I don't

ever really remember hardly ever feeling like I was hope. Right? And, you know, like, literally that's it. If I see food, I feel I have to eat it. And by the way, I think a lot of people have this problem. It's very interesting that Chef could call him chef or Imam. I don't know, I probably just call him he also wrote a really interesting post. Just the other day he was writing about that right? About this the urge that we have like we just see food we feel we have to eat it. We can't bear to be like, even a little bit hungry for a minute. And that's it. It's just a habit. I see some nuts, I see some chocolate I see some thing, pick it up, eat. I'm not even hungry. I'm not even

hungry. It's not prophetic, because the Prophet said, eat when you're hungry. But it goes back to that habit

that I didn't used to eat the whole time and I was hungry. The whole really hungry the whole time. But I'm not anymore. But the habit is there is so deeply ingrained. It stays with you brothers and sisters. So like suppose said, don't think you're going to become a saint. Like one day, it's not going to happen. If you've got bad habits. It is really tough. So all you do and those bad habits will never go and the more you do it, the more ingrained they will be. Right. So what they say is you never get rid of bad habits. They stay in your brain forever.

All right, not forever but as long as your brain is there right? But what you can do is override those bad habits with more stronger neural connect neuro connections. However what happens sometimes when you least expect it

you just slip into that old track

right? You fall into that old habit you just like and again it's usually a series of triggers. Right? You fall into that old habit. Yeah. Okay, so this is quite a hard thing so I also you have to forgive yourself you have to forgive yourself and love that I'll forgive you because we're human. And a handler honors of a photo Rahim we sin by night and sin by date right? But this is a soul that's a whole nother thing. So this is the perfect storm bro. The Perfect Storm is your habits old neural pathways being hijacked by dopamine fight or flight response

you know that that's you know, that's fighting the dragon that St. George against the dragon that is the boy and the magician fighting the beast on the path right? That is the boy and the king you know the boy and the king and the magician. Right? That is that is the that's the hero's that's the hero's journey fighting the demon. Right? And

this advice that you're giving is very very practical. Like for example, when you spoke about giving yourself new like when you when you feel a trigger, you give yourself something to deflect, right. Something which ESA is really helped me on my diets been poor, but I've been losing weight, because there's omad eating one meal a day. Every time I feel a trigger to get to eat something. I look back at how many hours I've already done. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So then I calm down. Like, they could be like, I love biryani, it could be anything. But as soon as I see this, all of those hours are gonna go to waste now, if I Okay, yeah, it's like we it's like me with Duolingo. Right? It's like this

language learning program. I have such a long streak that I can't bear to let it go. I would just do anything, just to keep that streak going. But you know what, it keeps me going right? And you know, whatever works, as long as it's not haram. Right? Whatever works, you got to find the strategies. That's what willpower is. And that's the great thing, by the way. And this is something you pointed out, bro, I remember I was really impressed because I didn't really mention this in my course. Although it is in

Kelly McGonigal 's book, right? I didn't mention it in the course. Right?

But you said one of the things he said, you said to me I remember when you did the quiz, you said you're not under him, can't you? Can't you dope demise, the things you want to do, right? And I said yes, that is an actual strategy, right? You can actually get yourself to build good habits by building in a lack of dopamine kick. I actually think by the way, this is what happens when you when you really connect with Allah. That's what happens, right? You actually connect this feel good feeling with praying five, when you turn to Allah and you stand in front of Allah when you pray, when you make a stick for why when you really experienced those deep, profound religious experiences

that said, you'd like your dopamine now is helping you like the Prophet said, it's very interesting, by the way, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that everyone has a gym, right? Everyone has like a Kareena Kareem. Yeah, that you know, and this Jin invites them to evil, right.

But except me, the Prophet saw some said my gym just tells me to do good. I was asking, I was really because someone was asking me some question, right. And so I because I didn't know the answer to this at all. So I asked someone to, you know, student of knowledge. I said, is this just for the profit or could this be for anyone? Right? Could anyone there Jim encouraged it? He said, No, it is possible that anyone's gym can also actually also do that. It's not just the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam, right? Mashallah. So, like, I like I said, you know, like, if I said your knifes, right was dopamine, just like you can train your knifes to desire agenda to desire to avoid the

Hellfire to love knowledge, right? You look at the people who love knowledge, they're addicted to it, right? There are people who are addicted to Tao. Right? Tao or addiction, right?

Yeah, addicted to you know, struggle.

You know, you know, so there's all sorts of good things that you can be addicted to. Right, that are really positive and really good. And you know, dopamine can help you because that's originally really if you think about it, dopamine has a really good purpose. You have to remember

But it's basic purpose is really good. Yeah, we just have you know, we, again, we can let use our willpower use our, you know, developing those neural pathways to to incentivize ourselves that the only thing you have to be careful is, is that, for example, right, what you don't want to do is if you're on a diet, you don't want to meet your incentive. Right? You know, like, yeah, if I keep up this diet for a week, I'll have a big chocolate cake at the end of it, right? So you want to make sure that the way you incentivize your, you know, your dopamine is not buy more of the same stuff that you want to stop. That's not gonna help you, right? That's just gonna do undoable a good,

right. So that's why a lot of you know, like, some, some people say, you know, this cheat day and stuff like that is not actually a good idea. Yeah.

Also,

very interesting about this.

You know, when it comes to willpower, and when it comes to dealing with, you know, social media addiction, or whatever, food addiction.

I remember. And I think stories are always a good way of remembering things. I remember, you know, a brother who was pestering me to help him get a second wife, and then used, like, regularly, like, oh, this and that. Like, you got a hold store. Right? Well, yeah. I mean,

it was sad about because it was kind of like, okay, you know, people blah, blah, blah. And so anyway, one day, what happened was he text me and he says, he said to me, if I commit Zina, it's your fault. I got so angry. And I literally just said to him, the whole problem in your life, is that you don't have a purpose. You don't have something to do. If you look focusing on Dawa, I said to him, if you're focusing on Dawa, if you're focusing on something big, you wouldn't have time. And I honestly, and I spoke to a stereo knowledge because of this, this particular brother. And I said, this is what I feel His problem is I feel His problem is he doesn't have goals in life. That's why

he's only thinking about something. And you know, you mentioned you can be addicted to something good. And this, this brings in a topic, which I think is related, it sounds unrelated, but the whole idea of flow, that if you keep yourself in a position, where you've got lots of work to do, and you're not killing yourself, but you're not like comfortable, you just don't have time for anything else, because you're just constantly in this state of flow. And it's like, you know, I think once you gave this example, that when you're cycling, and you get momentum, if you have to stop and restart, and stop and restart, it's way more difficult. But if you're just on on a particular

trajectory, if you're accelerating, you don't want to stop because you know, if you stop that's it.

It's why cyclists don't i People don't understand and in towns and cities, why cyclists jump red lights and stuff like that is because once you're going, you don't want to stop because it that's the hard bit the hard bit of starting, you know, Pete, you have to keep starting because that get getting that initial momentum is what is really hard, right? But you like that's another favorite topic of mine is is the whole discussion around flow, right? And optimal experiences, and you know, what is real happiness, which sort of goes back to where we started, right? Because dopamine doesn't care about real happiness. Dopamine cares about what you imagine happiness is right.

But, yeah, this is very interesting as well, because you know, optimal experience most of the time is something that is initially hard to do. Right? It's very interesting, because just this morning, I went out with my kids, right? So what my little one was saying, No, I don't want to go right. And I realized that I knew the minute, you know, he was out that he was gonna have an amazing time. Right? But he doesn't, you know, it's just that initial thing to get dressed, you know, to step out into the cold, right? Whatever, right? And I know that I know, five minutes later, he's going to be having the best time of his life. Right? You know, but he but if he can say, No, he won't, because

that's it.

You'd rather sit on a computer and have that thing that you think is sort of it is you know, it can be fun playing a computer game, but most people when they compare it, they will say yeah, this thing where I push myself this thing where I did something really difficult this thing where I did some light you said bro, you have real goals, you're pushing yourself towards something that is, you know, that is the very edge of your capabilities and your limits, right.

And even better, you

If you can contribute and improve in some way, you know, humanity in some way, that's it, that is the most satisfying thing that people do are those things, right? But they take that initial effort, they take that initial or willpower, right?

So again, yeah, again, if you can find yourself in that flow state, that's another, you know, I mean, that's a whole nother level. Right? Really, that's, I guess that again, if you go back to the hero's journey, that's what ultimately, you know, in the hero's journey, that's what they discover, when they leave the comfort of their tribe, you know, they go through these trials and tribulations, they pass, they go into this cave, and they, they, most of the time, they go into some sort of other dimension, some other world, it's like, another world really, right. And it's in that other world, that they they find this state, what they find is this, it is really, they've pushed, they've gone

out of their comfort zone, they've they've put themselves in a really difficult situation, or situations that that's why they have all these trials in these tests. And you know, they have to fight these monsters and outsmart these things, and, you know, whatever. And that's where they find their flow state, when they actually begin to really love that, you know,

that's the danger. The danger is you can get lost there.

The real hero comes back, ultimately to share this knowledge with everybody else. Right. That's the that's the sort of, you know, that's the full circle of the hero's journey. A lot of you know, in from spiritual terms, a lot of people didn't come back, they go out into the wilderness, and they stay in the wilderness. Right? Because they're really happy that

you know, the true hero comes back because there's something precious they have to share with everybody. Right? Yeah. In a way it sort of the whole thing starts again, you know, and you reach it, I guess, a whole different level.

And you can see that especially in the lives of the prophets.

So Hamdulillah we covered willpower? Yes, quite insufficiently. Definitely not anywhere close to what the information is in the course. Get I will power.com I highly recommend everybody does that. Inshallah, we're gonna be trying to make this YouTube channel up during Green's YouTube channel. more active, at least one live stream in shallow I'm gonna pester the sheriff to get out every week. And what's most important is that if you found this information beneficial, tell your friends about it. Tell your family about it. There's no better marketing than personal marketing. Yeah, so we've got this new channel, is what we're going to do. So off off the off the cuff, as they say, What do

you think we should cover next week? Same time. 3pm flow? I have no idea we can talk about flow. We can talk about that. Definitely. Yeah, that would be really interesting. Yeah, optimal experience. A whole thing that I couldn't like a whole course I did years ago. Like it wasn't maybe that's my next course. I should do actually. I just You got my you got me going, bro. Right. It was called embracing the inner struggle on the path to true happiness. Yeah.

Yeah, I really enjoyed giving that that during that course. I erasing the inner struggle and that's what it's all about basically. This was 2016 by any chance Yeah, I think wait before that. Yeah, I did it a couple of times. I did it

the first time I did it is in Canada way ages ago. It's like there is some sort of crusty you know old hard to see video there was actually online with a Whole Foods online. I don't know. It was a long course I didn't the university and someone had filmed it right from the back of

the lecture theatres, like

have a mercy mission as well. Right. I did it for them in one of the retreats.

Yeah. Mashallah. I was saying 2016 Because I remember you using that in one of the IRA meetings where you gave the analogy that, you know, we all want the perfect state. We all want the perfect ideal. And even when the process Salam was the Emir and we want the best of cities of Medina, you still have the monastics he still had no enemies. He's had people committing fornication and his struggle in life struggling you got to embrace it, you know, I still remember that as a very powerful message. Mashallah. So, Dr. Sheikh would you like to add anything before we end? That's brilliant, everybody watching, until next time, 3pm GMT, next Saturday inshallah we will be live

again. And make sure you subscribe to the channel and we will be discussing the flow state. And please tell your friends and families about it. Assalamu alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh