Patience

Allah Subhana Allah says in the Quran

wabasha savini,

Allah,

Allah,

Allah, Allah, Allah,

Allah like to do, that give good tidings to those who are patient, those who when disaster strikes them, they say to a law we belong and to Him we will return. These are the ones upon whom is the blessings of their Lord and His mercy. And it is those who are rightly guided. And Allah subhanho wa Taala also says, was definitely somebody who was sought out, rely upon patience, and prayer.

Some patience is one of the greatest characteristics a man can have.

And it is considered a foundational characteristic.

And Allah subhanho wa Taala speaks about Southern operand patients in the operand more than 90 times his hospital wasabia.

More than any other characteristic, a lot of talks about sub what we translate as patience.

But we have an interesting relationship with the concept of suffering of patients. That often when somebody tells you to have sub to have patience, we understand the meaning or interpret this understanding to be, do nothing.

Sit down.

And don't act.

And it's odd that we have this understanding of sub Eros as patients, or southern being this passive attributes, this thing that if we have it, we don't act upon it. We sit down, we don't take any action.

And the reality is that when you look at the concept of soccer in the Quran, and so now, it is something that entails action. The person who is having suffer is the person acting,

they are persevering, they're resilient.

They are not giving up, which is the complete opposite of doing nothing. So when you're going through difficulty and somebody tells you have patience, do nothing. They haven't understood what Allah meant when he told us to have sub. And the reality is everything Allah created acts according to Subhan.

Allah subhanaw taala shows us how the sun rises and how it sets. It doesn't happen in the blink of an eye. It takes a process in perseveres and endures a process for the sun to rise and for the sun to set. Do you see how Allah subhanaw taala created the heavens and the earth in six days.

And Allah subhanaw taala could have created it in the blink of an eye, or a time even less than that. But Allah subhanaw taala cause the entire universe to go through different stages, to go through different processes, different degrees different cycles, to show us what endurance actually is. And that this concept of patience does not only involve humans, but it applies to everything Allah subhanaw taala has created

and we need Southern patients in our lives, patients from falling into citizen vices, the person who commits evil, who consumes intoxicants who smokes who does this or that, how do they prevent themselves from falling into these sins that suffer a perseverance against slipping and patience over disasters that occurred to us and patients upon worshipping Allah subhanaw taala being constant in our lives, no agenda for stuffin cannot live to be steadfast as a law has ordered you to do. And this is why the scholars when they talk about sublime, they call it command and dunya. with Dean they say it is the pinnacle or the perfection of some someone's dunya this life and their Deen their

religion. Because anything good achieved in the dunya, business, athletics, whatever it might be, the person has to persevere to achieve it. And anything good achieved in your deen to worship a law to stay away from sins to be devoted in your prayer and towards Allah subhanaw taala and in your devotion to him requires perseverance and patience. And so today I want this talk because I spoken about sort of the concept of patience many times. I want to focus on something a little bit more

more applicable to our lives? How can we be resilient? And now the modern terminology that people use often, whether in schools, whether in business is the concept of resilience? How do we become resilient people, because when we talk about suffering, a huge component of it is resilience. And I was reading a number of books about the concept of resilience, resilience in business and in sports and in this in that, and I wanted to boil it down what are the characteristics of resilient people. And I saw so much overlap between what you know experts, not academics are talking about in between what our religion speaks about. So one major characteristic of resilient people is that they

understand that suffering is a part of life.

When hardships occur, they know that this is part of human existence. And they do not make it something personal to themselves.

And this is something missing from so many people in today's day and age, we seem to think that we are entitled to a certain type of life, the I should have this type of job, and this type of family and this type of car, we think that we are entitled to these things. And it's a type of narcissism. It's a type of arrogance. We think that we deserve these things. And if they're taken away from us, we feel anger, resentment, and a bunch of negative emotions that actually make our ability to be resilient, to cope with difficulty, much more difficult.

And you notice how Allah subhanaw taala in the Quran, when he speaks to our Prophet, and whatever difficulties in your life that you have, you cannot compare it to the difficulties our Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam lived through when you see what our Prophet lives through, what is a loss of Satan? What is the messaging in the end, we'll call it an episodic, illusory man who beat up

a lot Allah tells the prophets, look at what you went through. Look at what's Moosa went through, look at what you went through. Look at what all of these prophets went through. And then Allah tells the prophets, all of these stories we've told you, what, Colin,

all the stories of the messengers Who told you are for what reason, man who said, b2b for Adam, what we did to make your heart firm, because when you understand other people went through difficulty, and this difficulty is not personal to you, I was not doing it because he hates you, because you're bad because of this. Because of that. He's doing it because everybody gets tested.

When you understand and you don't personalize it to yourself,

then it's easier to cope with

the Companion of the prophet who was a slave and a blacksmith, and his owner ordered men to beat him up and to burn him. And his skin was burned and sculpted. And he came to the prophet SAW, sent him one day. And he said,

Hassan said Atlanta, he said, O Messenger of Allah, aren't you going to make it for us? Aren't you going to ask a lot to give us victory? Like, well, how long are we going to be oppressed and tortured, asked a lot to give us victory. What did the Prophet say? The prophet SAW on the low end isn't actually got upset with him. He's a man being tortured, oppressed, and the Prophet became upset with him.

And he said to him, in the cannon and publico people before you were tortured even worse, and the Prophet began to tell him and described him in graphic detail, the torture that happened to people before Islam, the followers of Elisa, the followers of other prophets, what happened to them?

The prophet SAW them saying, suffering is not personal to you. It's happened to many people who follow the path of Allah subhanaw taala either. And then the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, and indeed this religion will prevail. And there will be so much success for this religion that a woman will be able to travel alone, from hunger

to cities in Yemen, fearing nothing other than the animals across the path. Well, I can come to Saudi Arabia, you are being hasty. The profits on the low end instead of going through this motion, he is teaching her bad what's that other people have been tortured as well, and that this is a part of life, which is Kayla Yamanaka wouldn't have been enough. Allah says the days we give to people in turn, one day things are good one day things are bad. This is life.

And when you understand that it's not personal to you, it's not a personal attack against you, that allow me some hardship in your life. This will allow you to overcome and to be more resilient

to persevere.

The second point of resilient people, the characteristic of them is that they are really strong at knowing where to place their attention. They focus on what is within their control. And they accept that there are things outside of their control. Because we can

paralyze ourselves, when we focus our attention on things that are outside of our control, outside of our ability.

And this happens, you know, especially with COVID, you think of all the things happening with COVID, since this pandemic began, you can kill yourself thinking about the things outside of your control.

And perhaps this is a lesson from Allah subhanaw taala. One of the lessons of COVID is to remind human beings, so many things are outside of your control. Don't feel so arrogant to think that you can control everything. And when you understand this, then you understand Okay, Allah gave me a scope of control over certain things. Let me focus on those things. Why should I focus on things outside of my control, that will destroy me mentally. This is where the prophet SAW the walk around, he was setting them, he taught us it upon

if the hour begins, if the Day of Judgment begins, and in one of your hands is a seedling, fully of less than letting planted.

Now imagine the hour has begun. You see the mountains shaking, turning into dust in front of your eyes, you see the sky being torn apart, you see people running around in chaos. The Bible says if you see this happening, but you have a seed in your hand, plant the seed,

because Yokoyama is not in your control, what's in your control the seed in your hand, focus on what's within your control. And do that good deed by planting that seed and leave the rest to Allah subhana wa Tada. And if you do this, you'll find that your mental health will actually improve significantly, focus on things within your control that Allah gave you control over, don't focus on the things outside of your control. Yeah, your

full circle.

Allah says, Oh, you who believe upon you is yourself. Take care of yourself, focus on yourself on a coming full circle, your responsibility is you.

They will not harm you that someone else has gone astray if you have been guided. So focus on your own area of control. The third characteristic they mentioned is to evaluate yourself constantly, and to see whether you are helping yourself or whether you are hurting yourself. And this is a question that throughout this period of COVID, a lot of us must be thinking about instead of being stressed out, might be stressed out about the pandemic, about getting sick about your family members getting sick, stressed out about the economy, stressed out about your personal finances, stressed out about your children about this and all that all of us feel stressed out.

Now the question is, are our actions helping us or hurting us? If every time I cough, I start thinking to myself, Oh, my God, do I have COVID? What does that mean? Where did I get it from? Am I gonna be giving it to my family? And you go through this conversation? In your mind? Are you helping yourself for hurting yourself? When you litigate every cost that you have?

When you watch TV and the news all the time? And they tell breaking news, bad thing? Breaking News, bad thing, breaking news, bad thing, and you see this constantly? Is this helping you or hurting you? Maybe you're somebody who can watch this, and it doesn't affect you too much. But maybe most people, I think they watch this and it makes them nervous, and it makes them stressed? is it helping you or harming you? So do it for yourself.

Take yourself to account before you are taken to account. Take yourself to account What are you using your time with? What are you putting your energy in? These are things a lot will ask us. And if we're doing things that are harming ourselves, you're watching the news all the time, and it's hurting you mentally. I was going to ask you about that. Right? So take yourself to account maybe say okay, I'm going to check the news every two days. Instead of checking it every hour, I'm going to check it out once a day, right? We're gonna check it every two days or every three days. Ask yourself what you're doing. If it's helping you if it's harming you, and make adjustments on that

basis, we have to take account of how we decide to spend our time and our energy as much as possible. And it's important for us to understand this concept of some of resilience of perseverance. It's not something that you have or you don't have. Right? It's not something that either you're born with it or you're not born with it. It's a skill that we have to be conscious of that if we ask

According to it, Allah subhanho wa Taala can help us build this skill, we can increase our capacity to be resilient, we can increase our capacity to have patience, and we can lower it as well, if we stop paying attention to the things that we do that sometimes might harm ourselves. And so some important lessons that we can take in our lives, and exercises that we can do is to ask ourselves, you know, think back to a time when something difficult happened in your life, you lost your job, or you got really bad feedback at work, or you lost some money, or you know, a fight with your wife or with your husband or something like this took place. How did you act during it? How did you act

after? How did you feel? What steps did you take? Because we go through a cycle, when bad things happen? coping and thriving? coping is when the difficulty happens. How do you deal with it?

How do you understand it? And then thriving is how do you take that difficulty and turn it into positive action. And what's interesting, as I'm reading this, the scholars of Islam speak similarly. Because they talk about something, the different stages of sublime, they talked about how patience, when you don't have any control over it, something bad happens to you, is a lower level than patience upon worshipping Allah, or your patience. And you're using your patience to do something positive in your actions. So for example, in the story of Prophet Yusuf, he was thrown in the well.

He had to be patient, that he not, of course, but that level of patience is less than his patience when he's thrown in prison. Why? Because there, he had a choice. And he decided to do what was positive, which is to stay away from the fallout from the evil sins. Whereas when he was a kid thrown in the well, he didn't have a choice. He was thrown into the well. He had to cope with that situation. later on. He's thriving with his situation. He's doing what is the best thing that he can do to protect himself from evil sins. And so you see this concept take place, even in our own religion. And so let's talk a little bit about coping mechanisms. How can we cope? In scenarios that

are difficult? One thing that we can do is to identify tactics that work with ourselves because every person is different, but certain things will work with certain people rather than others. And so one of the things that's often mentioned is meditation. And in our Deen, we have split up prayer and the profits in the long run you send him What say to be led? Yeah, be that

make us feel comfort with our son out. So when a difficult thing happens, the feds are in a sauna he turned immediately to prayer. So prayer was how he copes with difficulty, right Vicar of Allah subhanaw taala remembering Allah should be part of how we cope with difficulty.

Allah Vina Harmon,

decree law, Allah.

Allah says those who believe in their hearts find contentment with the remembrance of Allah. Indeed, with the remembrance of Allah hearts find contentment. And so this is part of our coping strategies to turn to a lot to remember them and they talk about meditation. This is our meditation which is far greater than our loss of hundreds and are revealed to us. Also part of coping is to speak to other people to talk to your brothers and sisters in Islam, to talk through some of the problems that you might be facing. The Prophet sallallahu Sallam Of course, in the Quran, many mentions of having good friends, friends, was we left second malady later on down below that.

Unless paradises be patient with those who worship Allah in the morning and then the night have good friends have good companionship, where you can speak to people about your problems and your issues and they can speak to you about theirs, and that can help you overcome some difficulties that we face. The second point is to understand the coping mechanism to understand that things are not permanent. When you are in the midst of a crisis in your life, a challenge in your life, you might feel like the future is bleak. You might feel it will always be this bad. It will always be this terrible. But you need to recognize and have belief that the negative state that you are in is not

is not permanent. Rather it is temporary. And the more that Muslim believes in the athlete, the more they will be able to cope with challenges and difficulties. When you believe Illuminati have fun. Everything on this world will end including your hardship and your difficulty.

That will increase your Eman and increase your ability to cope with challenges. Allah Perez the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said Matthew what do you what do I have to do with the dunya feynan NFA dunya illa kuraki When is the last

He said the dunya is just like

a man who is riding traveling.

And they see a tree. So they take shade under the tree, then they get up and they leave. And they continue their travel. He said, that's the dunya. Dunya is a small break that you take.

It begins and ends very quickly.

So the process enemy says all of these things and so on, it's so much more in our DNA, to remind us this dunya is funnier, it perishes, it goes away, and even the difficulties in them will go away as well. And so these are some important you know, challenge abilities and tips that we can use in order to cope with hardship and difficulty Falco, Cody, how the money will come through, in all of

the lessons of cinema and also learning early he was a woman.

As we spoke about some tips about how to cope with hardship, we said, you know, when hardship comes, we cope with it, and then inshallah with a loss help we start to thrive with it. And so how can we move from coping to thriving? And what are some tips that we can do in order to get there? Number one,

create learning opportunities for yourself. Look at the challenges you faced in the past, and determine for yourself how can I improve? How can I become better in the future? What was my response when I faced hardship in the past? And how can I improve the way that I dealt with in the past to become better? And what action can I take now?

That will help me in the future?

So for instance, I had a real difficulty and a personal problems with my friends. And we got into a big fight and things happen. So this is a crisis that happened in the past. Now I reflect about it. And I say, Well, what can I do? To make sure in the future, it doesn't happen like this. So maybe I need to invest more in my friends. Maybe I need to choose better friends, maybe I need to spend more time with them. Right? So I'm analyzing my life in the past learning from it and creating opportunities. Why did this bad thing happened to me in the past, I lost so much money, have the left things are a bit better. Now. What can I do to make sure that you know my finances are better I

can learn how to invest my money better. Also, I can decide to give more sadaqa today so that Allah will protect me from fitna in the future so I can learn from my past to improve inshallah my future. The second point is to implement positive self talk. And this is something very, very important. How do you speak to yourself? What conversations do you have in your own mind?