Building Confidence, Dealing with Setbacks and Criticisms – S3 Ep1

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Assalamu Aleikum, I'm a primary and welcome to season three of Muslim life hackers podcast. The Muslim life hackers podcast brings together individuals from all walks of life to give their insights on an area to help you live better, achieve more and succeed in this life and the next. If you're new to the show, make sure to check out our episode archives over at Muslim life hackers.com, where you'll find all the episodes from season one and season two. Now, let's get started.

Today we'll be speaking to Abu Omar We are a small camera. He's an Islamic Studies graduate, author and head ta for the Islamic online university. We're going to be talking about his latest book the best of creation, which is nice, which is an Islamic guide on self confidence. We cover topics such as competence with arrogance, recognizing low self esteem, and ways to improve it. So enjoy this episode with Abu muawiya.

This episode is brought to you by millionaire muslimah a cost by one of our past guests on the show savers ad on how to launch your online business even without an idea. It is a 12 step system containing everything practical and psychological. You need to make it happen. You can check it out by going to Muslim life hackers.com slash millionaire.

I sound like cool. While we are and welcome to the show. Polycom Salaam Rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh. First of all, for our audience who are not familiar with your work, can you please start off with telling us a bit about yourself? Okay. My name is a smile calm there are more commonly known by my cornea Abu Mahalia. And well, I've been involved in Islamic work from a very young age, I started studying Islam at the age of 13, I started getting involved in teaching and Tao at the age of 16. I wrote my first book when I was 23, published when I was 25. And yeah, I've been involved in Islamic work for a long time. And more recently, in the past three years, I've gotten involved in what I

what I call Islamic self help. I've started a blog called Islamic self help calm. And I've written a couple of self help books on time management and self confidence from an Islamic perspective. So I branched out in that direction. Generally, I like to think of myself as a writer. That's my Yes, yeah. So what do you actually mean by slamming self help?

Self Help is, you know, one of the most popular written genres at the moment, when you look at best selling books around the world, you know, by Steven COVID, Tim Ferriss, Brian Tracy, it's called the self help genre, which is basically books that you read, to help yourself become a better person, you know, and feels like confidence, stress management, goal setting, time management, anger, manage anything, helps you improve yourself.

In training, and in teaching, it's called personal development. But in the book writing is called self help. So I noticed you know, there's a lot of amazing books out there in these topics in this field, but not that much by Muslim authors. And you know, the Quran and Hadees have so much to contribute in this field that I took it upon myself to start writing about this. Yeah, definitely. I totally agree with you that like when when I go on to find books on Amazon and stuff, there are very little out there Bible symbols. So it is a it is a needed thing, that that we have more people working on Islamic self help. So I'm actually curious to know what like you wrote your one of one of

your books is called the best of creation, which is a book around self confidence. Now I want to know, what was the motivation behind finding such topic?

Okay, this book is quite interesting. It actually started off as a It actually started off as a writing of letters to myself, I've got this habit that I write motivational pieces to myself whenever I'm whenever giving up, right. So as writing, I was researching, I came across some nice quotations, some had some Quranic verses, some to ours. And after a while, I realized I've got enough content to write a book on the entire topic. And I myself, I've been suffering with confidence issues, basically all my life, right? I'm, I'm an introvert by nature. I'm a very quiet person. I like writing. I like reading. I like being alone. And you know, growing up in a society

that values extroverts. I grew up with very low self confidence. I was trying to be somebody I'm not. It's only the past few years that I realized that 100 Allah made me an introvert for a reason. It makes me a good speaker makes me a good writer. It makes me creative. It makes me a good reader, and I learned to embrace who I am and that's really what it is about, you know,

Embracing the gifts that Allah has given you one line that I speak about in that book, which is actually I think, one of my most popular Facebook posts as well. Is my life motto, be yourself, as long as being yourself is Halliwell. Hi, this is something of mine. Yeah, so because we tried too hard to be to be other people we try and, you know, we see somebody who we think is pious, or we think they, you know, they're good people, you want to just like them, you want to look like them, you want to talk like them. You do that for the practicing Muslim for the other Muslims, they want to look and just like other people, but no one's being the authentic self. And when I studied the

lives of the Sahaba, and the early Muslims, everybody was unique. I mean, Omar wasn't trying to be like Abu Bakar Abu Bakr was trying to be like oma, they both accepted that they had conflicting personalities, and they were still best friends. They have that, that the independent or individual personalities. So you'd find that the man was a more quiet person who would spend more time at home reading Quran, Omar was a more extroverted person would spend more time out helping people and talking to people, and both ways refined, you can be a practicing Muslim, and a valuable member of society, regardless of your strengths and weaknesses. And that's really where the book came about

from. Most of the topics I speak about in that book are topics from my own life, you know, dealing with failure, dealing with setbacks, dealing with dealing with fear, all of this is my, my life story. So really came about is writing a message to myself. Yeah, I, I totally understand that whole point that you made about being an introvert and actually trying trying to sit in an extroverted world. And it reminds me of a book that I read on this topic, as I myself, I, although like, I'm hosting this podcast and everything. I am an introvert, and I'm a very quiet person. And the funny thing is, though, there was a book on this called the power of introverts by Susan Cain have Have

you seen that book? Yeah, that's one of my favorite books. That's one of them. Yeah. And it's like, Yeah, when she was like, like, writing on that book, and just saying about, this is how we behave. And I was like, Oh, my God, that that sounds like me, it's like, extroverts is the way to be kind of thing. And so we all try to try to try to mimic that in order to fit in, but then we lose a part of ourselves. Yeah, it's actually a funny story about that when I was a teenager, one of my teachers to me for driving his car. And he told me that you don't want to be an introvert when you grew up. I didn't know what the introvert was back again. But it sounded like

for the next few years, I had this huge conflict inside, I don't want to be an introvert. And you know, the book is spoke about by Susan Cain power of introverts that really helped me to come to grips with the fact that this is how Allah made me and he made me discover a reason and it's fine. It's perfectly fine. Yeah, yes, it's perfectly fine to be introverted and perfectly fine to be an extra read as well. So I mean, for all the extroverts out there as well.

So, I mean, so you explained that this this book that you wrote about self confidence, it was it was coming from finding a solution to your own troubles that you have, but have you noticed that there is an like, it's, it's very common to find low confidence amongst the Muslim community?

Yeah, yeah. Especially since, like, a lot, like a lot in the community and stuff. I mean, is that something you noticed as well? Yeah, actually, the second and third chapters of the books are based on my experiences with the community. You know, the second chapter of the book deals with misconceptions about self confidence. And the third one about causes of low self confidence. And really, both of those chapters are based on things I've seen in the Muslim community. This Give me an example, the second chapter, I speak there about the fact that many Muslims think a confident person is arrogant.

And yeah, build up your confidence. They want to put you down, you know, put you in your place to make you humble. And what they need.

Yeah, yeah. And that's not how the proper solution dealt with people. You know, he would tell even his enemies, you tell them, You are intelligent, you will tell them that you are sincere, I tell them that you're wise. He wouldn't put people down, even told people not to put them themselves. Don't say don't belittle yourself. So the idea of putting people down to humble them, that's not from the sooner. And again, this is something which I struggled with, and which I know a lot of people struggle with a lot of people would write to me saying that, you know, where do I find where do I draw the line between confidence and arrogance? How do I know whether I'm being competent or

being arrogant? So this inner conflict is there for a lot of young people. And I believe it's affected the oma as a whole. Because now we think that to be humble, you have to think low of yourself. But guess what, if you think that you're stupid, if you think that you're dumb, if you think you can't do anything, then you're not gonna do anything with your life. The entire room is thinking like that. Yeah, that's the entire world could do. Nothing.

Until we look around the world today, the Muslims are not leading in any fields. It's because we don't have the confidence to lead we killing each other's confidence one Muslim starts doing good work. Everybody else pounces on him or her as a talking that person gives up.

And what we're doing is we're killing the oma, we really killing any initiative from the oma to rise up. So confidence is an issue. In the Dutch chapter I speak about parents. And you get them to do this call the child stupid, call the child an idiot, call the child You useless. You kidding, your child's confidence, you know, teachers, I spoke about a friend of mine, who the teachers used to call him dumb, john, you know, and it completely destroyed him. I mean, you know, completely destroyed his life. I spoke about bullies, I spoke about culture, you know, our culture's kill our confidence. I mean, think about women who are forced into marriages, that's not from Islam at all.

But we know it happens. I mean, I've seen guys who've been forced into marriage to people who don't like, and those guys and whose girls were forced into marriage 90% of the time, they don't have the confidence to say no, and to stand by the decision, because the family and the culture have just crushed whatever competence is in them. So this is a major issue I've seen throughout the oma NFL, do something needed to be done about it. So I went on Facebook, my Facebook page, and I wrote there, Would anybody like to read a book on self confidence from an Islamic perspective? and hundreds of people say, yes, to read that book. A few that a topic said I have to write about this topic. Yeah.

So you touched upon the point about if you're confident, then people think it's like arrogance. So how can you tell the difference between the difference between self confidence and arrogance? Like how do we ensure that we are nurturing the former not the latter. To me, it comes down to wanting whatever is haram is harmful, whatever is halaal is beneficial. And that's really the difference that confidence is productive, and arrogance is destructive, right? So nothing is going to cause problems. Well, okay, if you got two people who are public speakers, right? To be a public speaker, you need confidence. Definitely. One public speaker. He's boasting. He's putting other speakers

down. He's doing character assassination. He's trying to only promote his own lectures, that becomes arrogance. Right? The other person, he goes out there, he does a good job, do a good job. He wants what's best for everybody. He wants to succeed, but he wants his friends to succeed. He wants his students to succeed. That's confidence. Right? So confidence is productive. It benefits the oma it benefits the individual. It benefits everybody. arrogance is destructive. Confidence is musala. Islam standing up with your own arrogance is your own denying the message of Mousavi Salam high confidence is Omar radiallahu, standing in front of the Kaaba and saying he's going to make the

Hydra, you know, and who's going to stop you. That's confidence. arrogance is Abu Jamal coming out and fighting the prophets like some of the battle the battle, you know. So whatever causes destruction, whatever causing harm to society, that's when you know, you've stepped over into arrogance. As long as you're being productive and you're benefiting the oma, then that's just competence. I like that. So that confidence is productive, and arrogance is disruptive. That's really nice.

So my next question that I have here, is that, okay, so it's easy to say that we're confident that we're happy the way Allah subhanaw taala created us. And this might even be backed up by having a perfect social media presence. But then, in the real world today, you know, the world that we all live in our actions may suggest otherwise. So I want to know, what are some signs of insecurity and low confidence that we can look out for so that we can do something about it? Well, low confidence would be not having goals or not chasing after your goals, because you don't think you have what it takes to complete them. Right? Yeah, for example, one of my goals is to become a best selling

author, and to really go full time into writing books. Now. Yep, I haven't been successful in selling books yet. I've written books, but maybe a Best Writing author doesn't make you a best selling author. Now, what happens here is someone who's not confident, it will say, I've done what I could, and no one's buying the books, forget it, I'm not gonna write anymore. a confident person will think that this is just a minor setback. I'm going to keep going because this is my goal. And I know I can do to the help of Allah. So when you feel that you can't do it, you know that word I can't. That's low self confidence. And when I was a child, my father used to tell me for anything,

don't ever say I can't ever say I can't do it. Any became part of me. Whatever it is, I won't say I can't do it. I mean, I'm an Islamic teacher, but I build my own books, shelves, I could change I would, you know, fix any electronics that I do anything. If I don't know how to do it. I google it and watch a visual aid. I learned how to do it. I don't see I can't do it. I believe that we can learn anything, we can do anything. So I think the main sign in anybody's life that they that they have low self confidence is this. I can't and so many times I tell people, why don't you do this

good at this, it's no I can't do it. It's not that they can't, is that they don't have the confidence. They don't believe they can do it. And most important, that's a sign of low self confidence. Yeah. The other real major sign of low self confidence is just going along with whatever society and culture says, you know, this is really a major sign that you know what's wrong, you know, your family's wrong, you know, your culture is wrong, you know, what the people are doing is wrong, but you're doing it because you scared to be different, you scared, you don't have the confidence to stand up and speak the truth. Or to do things differently. This is a major sign of

those are competence. So you'll hear people say things like, I know it's Haram. But what will the people say, you know, they have this, this, this mindset, that's low confidence, you're not confident in your message, not competence in your deen, your competence, in fact, a lot going to help you stand up for the truth. So the confidence is not there. So I believe that this is going along with whatever people say, even when you know it's wrong, that means you don't have the competence to stand up for what you believe in. That's an interesting way to put it. So just whatever, not kind of stepping back and asking yourself is, is this what I want to stand up for? Or

is this the kind of life I want to live? Yeah, and I think confidence also comes in our practice of Islam, you know, nowadays, to wear the hijab, you know, in societies which look down upon that requires confidence for men to go for a business interview with a beard, even though they might reject him that requires confidence. To pray your salon public requires confidence to do thou art requires confidence, it is necessary to be a practicing Muslim, in a society, will you be a stranger for practicing Islam? That's a true. So though, there was a point that you mentioned in the book about people who criticize, and it was said that such people who criticize those with low self

esteem and and you know, it's an interesting observation, because he thinks that if someone criticizes, and it's because they've got everything sorted out in their life, which, of course, is not true. But I want to know, like, why criticizing is headed with low self esteem. Well, what I found is the people who are unable to chase their own dreams, they don't want anybody else to chase their dreams, people who are cut off from chasing their own goals. They don't want other people to chase their goals, they become bitter, they become cynical, they think it's not possible, or they don't want somebody else to remind them of what could have been. So just see, for example, there was

someone who wanted to be a best selling author, I am talking about this because it is Michael, right? Yes, somebody wants to be a best selling author, and this person failed miserably when they were young, and they gave up. Now that person's gone. All they've gone cynical, and they see a young person wanting to be a best selling author, that old person is going to put that guy down, you can say it's not gonna work, you're never going to be able to do it. Don't waste your time become a doctor was critical. It is whether it's coming from his own lack of self confidence and his own ability to being a best selling author. Right? He knows he couldn't do it. He thinks I know and and

that's really what it comes down to no one else should do it. That cynic cynic I mean, think about someone who's had a bad marriage, you know, they'll, they'll say things like, All men are the same, or all women are the same, or no marriage and handcuffs, you know.

And this is coming from projecting their reality upon somebody else, that because their marriage isn't working out, or hasn't worked out, the projectors, and everybody else, you know, there's again, their own confidence, their own lack of confidence that's expressing itself in this way, they don't realize it themselves. But when you study psychology, you realize that very often when somebody's talking to you, and talking about your fault, they're actually talking about their own fault. They also add to actually talking about themselves, that we are murderers to each other. You know, the Hadith says that the believer is the murderer of the believer, we see in each other

ourselves. So I mean, when someone looks at you, and they see for you is usually because they have the same faults in them. So that's actually, that's a very deep when you think about it, because it's like when when someone goes and criticize another, it's because they see something in them that reminds them of something about the day itself. So they're like, you know, let me give you an example of this, you know, the issue of hijab, there's sometimes a young sisters that's wearing hijab, and suddenly, all the older sisters start getting jumpy, and start making noise and start talking back to her. And yet, she wonders, why is he doing this to me? It's because they, when they

see her, they are reminded of the fact that they didn't do this. And they remind you of the fact that the essential for not doing it, and they don't want that reminder, you know if they can get her to take up the job, just as a reminder out of their way, right. So they think she's criticizing her her job, they actually coming from their own point of view. They don't want to see any reminder of what they're supposed to be doing. And so, so at the end, if if someone were to criticize you, then it's never about you. It's about them, isn't it? Well, the way I deal with criticism is I firstly, I separate it from the emotions, right? Yeah, when it comes to me positively or negatively. I don't

look at it until I've emotionally Come on.

meaninglessness criticism comes, we all go into the state of anger, or we go into a fight or flight, you know, this runaway or fight type of response. So I handle the criticism straight away, I leave it for later. So it's an email or a Facebook comment, whatever, I leave it aside, I look at it later, when the emotions are not there, then I look into constructive PSA. Is this a genuine point? Or is this person just, you know, projecting the reality upon me if it's a genuine point, identical to the point and I tried to change my life accordingly? If not, then, you know, I thank him for the point and say, I have a different perspective. And he does that. Because the end of the day, there

is criticism, which is true, we all have our faults, we all have ways that we can improve. For example, many years ago, people would tell me that I talk too fast, or that I have too much of an accent, or did I use certain words which are not understood outside my country, and I began to improve my speech accordingly. to such an extent then now the people in my own country asked me what country I'm from, because I no longer have the local accent.

But the point is that you have to listen to criticism, you can't shut it all off. Yeah, at the same time, you're only going to listen to it. You know, this is more criticism out there than anything else. I mean, if you go to any Shaq's Facebook page and look at the comments section, you know, the amount of criticism people throw at them, if they're going to listen to everything, no one's going to get any work done. This is the reality. So we have to separate what is what is beneficial for us from what somebody else is projecting themselves, or what I say just plain trolling. Yeah, yeah, True. True. And it's also a lot of people do it, because it's easy to criticize that actually do it

yourself. Hmm, that's a that's a lot of people.

Yeah, like how how how you were mentioning about on Facebook pages and stuff. There's so many people that criticize and it's like, they're not the ones that are like in the forefront of doing the work. And they just like sitting there saying, Oh, you know, this, that and this. And it's like, yeah, the keyboard warriors

want to like when eating in real life.

So then, the next thing that I want to actually ask you about was you spoke about keeping a mistake journal. And this was something that you spoke about in your book. And personally, I've never heard it before, because like, generally, it said, you know, celebrate your wins and other positive reinforcement. So, I want to know more about this, and how does it actually further develop ourselves, especially in confidence? Okay, mistake journal, a continent, we got it from us, either Stephen COVID, or Dale Carnegie, one of those authors who spoke about it in one of the books, I can't remember which one, but one of those authors had mentioned that whenever he made a mistake, he

would sit down and reflect upon it and write write it out. So I saw the changes a few years ago, I started in 2012. You know, we ever made up for every small mistake, but like really big, big blunders that cause problems to somebody else. I think all of us make mistakes. So yes, you know, this happened a few times a year where you did something and like, how did I do that? Why did I do that? You know, I mess things up? Well, the thing about the mistake is, it can be a learning experience. And the best way to learn from something is to analyze it. So what happens to most of us, we keep the mistake inside, right? And it boils, any any plays in our mind, and it drives us

crazy. And this is even worse for an introvert because you know, we always remember the most awkward things that happen to us in our lives. If you just play, if you write it out, it stops playing on your mind. So this is what I do. When I make a major blunder. I write the date, I write out what happened. And I thought what led to it, and then I write, what can I do in future to make sure this never happens again to the rest of my life. So at the end of the day, I've learned the lesson, a life lesson. And it's highly unlikely. I mean, whatever mistakes I've written about my mistake journal, they've only happened once in my life, I've never done them again for the rest of my life.

Because I've analyzed them, I've extracted the lesson from them. And he's made me a better person. And this is something I mean, many of us we, we don't even want to admit our mistakes, we will only analyze them and see what did I actually do wrong? Most of us play the blame game when something goes wrong. We want to blame everybody and everything else. And for me, I sit back and say, Where did I go wrong? Because really, that's the only way you're ever going to see it positively. If you're going to blame everybody else, you know, we always going to have have been accused to remain as we are, we're not going to grow, we're not going to develop, you're not going to mature. So to

actually analyze it and see where did I go wrong? And how can I improve? At the end of that whole process, you will feel more competent, because you learn a lesson. And now you know, next time that situation happens, you're going to tackle the difference. You have a plan on how you're going to tackle it differently. And so in that way, it really does help you with your confidence that you I think in my book, I had a chapter called reframing mistakes, right? You stop looking at stakes. Start looking at it as life experience. You know, when you go for a job interview people tell you that the

looking for someone with experience, someone experience means that you already made your mistakes at some other job. So you're not going to make the same mistakes at their job as what it means. Again, they don't want somebody young who's fresh out of college, because he's gonna make all these mistakes there. So they rather you make a mistake at somebody else's firm, and then come work for them. Having is actually what experiences and many of us think experience is just success. And it's just, you know, doing a things that you can be proud of, but really experience is failure. And I actually was watching a TED talk today, which said that failure is a necessary ingredient for

success. And that's why most people don't succeed it because there's, they're afraid to fail, you have to fail and learn from it. And they fail again, and learn from it and fail again and learn from it. And by that whole process is over you now on another level and you're able to succeed. Yeah, that's true. on that, on that note of failure. I remember reading somewhere how it said that, if you're not failing a lot, that that means you're not trying harder, like you're not even trying

not to be not failing a lot image not trying anything new at all. Yeah, yeah. That's so true. And, and to be able to admit, your mistake is something that make you feel uncomfortable and take you out of your comfort zone. It's something that maybe not a lot of people want to do because of that, the pain that it causes.

That takes us back to what we spoke about earlier about arrogance and confidence. Remember, the prophets lie some city arrogance is refusing to accept the truth is someone who doesn't want to accept that they make mistakes, someone who doesn't want to accept that they could be wrong. That's not confidence. That's arrogance, right? Yeah, a humble person knows that he will make mistakes, he'd be willing to learn from his mistakes and be willing to look at these mistakes and analyze them. He also the very ability to look at your mistakes, and to know that you've made mistakes, and to admit that that requires humility. And if you're unable to do that, that means there's some ego

involved, right? Because that's the only reason why anyone would not accept mistakes, because there is some level of ego there holding us back from doing so. So really, that should be the go to the only thing that if you really want to grow in life, if you really want to experience any kind of success, we have to let go of that ego and admit when we're wrong, and learn from our mistakes. Yeah, if like, when you put it that way, it does really show how important it is to be able to pretty much admit your mistakes and move on from there. So I'm, I want to know, like when you should have your mistake journal, is it? Is it something is it like a physical journal? Or is it something

that you to the electronic journal, I just, you know, out of my curiosity,

it's the electronic for me kept up somewhere on a file in my computer when no one will find it.

Okay,

so we're actually nearing the ending of an interview. So before we end off, I just have final questions which we ask all our guests. So the first question is, what are your top three reads, particularly when it comes to confidence and what we discussed today?

So you need to question your top three reads books, favorite books, and their top three books regarding confidence? Yeah, especially regarding confidence, although if, if it's if it's not serving, or if it's just passive, if it's like, Huh, well, you know, I'd like to plug my own book in the midst of creation. But when it comes to confidence, one book that really helped me was feel the fear and do it anyway, by Susan Jeffers. Right, feel the fear? Yeah. Anyway, I mean, that book, really, it really goes straight to the heart of where most of our lack of confidence comes from the issue of fear. I have a whole chapter about in my book, she has a whole book just on that topic. And

that's one book is really get caught me, you know, believing in myself in terms of confidence again,

another book, which I think is really good for confidence. Yeah. The name of my mind.

Well, I think the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, everyone should read that, or not specifically on competence, but I'm all for it. Generally, I think that's a book I've suggested to every single person who ever asked me, What book should I read. And every one of them came back and said, Thank you for suggesting that book has changed my life. I'm the same principle that just apply to everyone. Whatever field you are in.

As far as Islamic books are concerned on the subject, as I said, there aren't there isn't much written on this topic by Muslims. So the book Don't be sad by Dr. Idle colony. That's really one that kept me going when I was younger. I think a lot of people can relate to that. And related to that is his other book for women specifically called you can be the happiest woman in the world. I think his book has just returned from a very optimistic that actually by the same author as well, because I remember seeing that.

Okay, yeah. The book

by the same author. Yeah, I mean, his books are written in Arabic and translated to English. But really, they have a very optimistic take. And I mean, for me when I was younger, most of the Islamic books, and most of the lectures I should listen to be very hardcore and always about, you know, the, the more this harami that is haram, you're going to hit by a kind of things. And these books have a very light feel to it is full of hope for the mercy full of, you know, things are going to get better. You're going to learn from your mistakes, you know, Allah is going to help you. It's just full of positive messages. And I think I've done a lot of inspiration for my writings from his

writings as well. So don't be sad by Dr. Idle Gordon is a book that I think every Muslim home should have. Would that also the book, enjoy your life by Dr. Mohammed Al Rifai, another Arabian scholar? I don't know if you've read that book. Enjoy. Yeah, yeah. I've seen that book. I, I actually never got to finish it. Because I was like taking it a chapter at a time. But now, yeah.

Yeah, for me, sometimes when I'm done, I just opened randomly any chapter in that book and read the story is just really, really beautiful. And optimistic is really, really just gets you going. Yeah, that was that was a good one. So our next question that we have here is what is your favorite life hack in terms of growing your confidence? My greatest life, my favorite life hack in terms of growing my confidence?

I've got so many actually.

Well, for me, one would be talking to myself in the mirror.

Sorry, I think that's something that talking to myself in the middle. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think people actually find

it.

But I'm really feeling lonely. And I know things myself in the mirror and say, you can get it, I literally get myself an extra look myself in the eyes, give myself a lecture. It works, it actually boost me up.

And another thing that really boost me is having motivational quotes all over the place in my books on my computer, everywhere, just having more motivational quotations, lying everywhere. For example, my background on my computer would be the same statement. You are a writer to make sure you write something today, no matter what I'm feeling like I'm going to write.

Yeah, yeah. So are you putting those quotations everywhere? And then, of course, you know, to me, one of the most important things that keeps me confident is that, understand that Allah has a plan. Now, whatever happens, I just tell myself, Allah has a plan to be part of a larger plan. And, you know, one day you will understand why it happened. So no matter how badly I feel to be failing, no matter how things seem to be sinking, you just have the confidence to move forward. Because you know, Allah has a plan, and you know, everything will go according to His plan. So I remind myself of that, which statements like the Hola, la quwata, Illa, billah, and husband alone in Milwaukee.

And you know, these kinds of statements that remind you that Allah is in control of everything. So if you succeeded, is because Allah wanted you to succeed, if he didn't succeed, because Allah wanted you to learn a lesson. He wanted to test your suburb, he wanted to see how badly you wanted, Allah has a plan, and you just have to go along with that. So that's the third thing I do is that whenever I'm feeling low in confidence it by myself, Allah has a plan, and I can't keep working and Allah will help me eventually. That's true. So finally, where can our listeners find you online? And to where to find more about this book and everything? Yeah, I have two blogs. One is my Islamic blog.

We write Islamic articles. Yeah, that's abou mo aria.com. Yep. And the second one is we are right self help articles. And that is Islamic self help calm. So we want to write about confidence and time management and goal setting and productivity that you find that Islamic self help.com when I'm writing about fic and EDA and Dawa and have seen that you'll find that Abu muawiya calm as for the book at Islamic South hub.com there is a page there on my books.

But you'll actually find it everywhere. I mean, if you want my book best of creation, it's on Kindle. It's in Kobo, it's on iTunes. It's on Google Books, whatever e reader you will find.

I said Kindle yet so Amazon Kindle. It also a nuke. It's also available in PDF format and various websites. And you can always order hardcopy off Amazon or

Barnes and Noble. So yeah, there's a variety of places to buy it. Anyone who came up with us? Yes. So we'll include all this in our show notes. So that they can be able to find it and be able to go through so that was the two blogs and the book which is available on all major

stores, and E readers. Okay. Excellent. Okay, so is it So since we're ending off our interview is there anything any final words you want?

Want to say that you haven't mentioned before you want to touch upon?

Yeah.

You know, when it comes to these topics of self confidence, we need more people writing on these topics I don't want to be the only one writing about these topics

is actually hard to me to find material on this. And so my advice to brothers and sisters out there is this get involved in these fields, you know, let's start. You know, instead of relying on others for our guidance in these areas, let us be the leaders in whatever field to be into. So I would love to see other people writing on some of the topics. I mean, I myself my book on time management, I've written a book on halaal Entertainment, original book on confidence. My next book is going to be on homeschooling, you can see I tackle topics that people don't normally write about, right? And anyone who asked me tells me they want to be a writer, what should they write about? My advice always is

write about something that nobody's written about before. Otherwise, it's not worth writing. Yeah. I mean, I remember one day a young boy came to me and said, he wants to write a book about solar. And I asked him, What are you going to write about solar. And he told me, you know, the basics of how to pray Salah, Tony, but he's already 100 books on the topic of what could be the purpose of writing the book, he said, I just want to write a book, I told him, if you want to write a book, look in the community, see what nobody has written about, and what could benefit people and write that to be in any of my books, you find you on such topics. And likewise, you know, I'd advise people accordingly,

if you're going to be a writer, if you're going to be a speaker, I mean, just look at Muslim life hackers, I just see something nobody else is doing. And that's what we all need to do.

Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so thank you so much, once again, for joining us on the show. It was a great interview. And I learned quite a few things today. And we hope to see you see this wall of the shirt, a follicle.

So that wraps up the interview with Abu muawiya. One thing that I learned from this interview that stood out for me was the whole idea about having a mistakes journal, because I can relate to the part about having whenever we experienced blunders, it just goes on loop sitting, like you see a video how you put on loop. And that's what happens in my mind. And so, actually taking the time to analyze that mistake, so that we can be able to further grow. I think that is a very powerful way of being able to use these mistakes and these challenges in our life to further better ourselves. Anyway, I'd love to hear your feedback on everything we do on the show, including any topics or

guests that you'd like to see on, you can do so by going to Muslim life hackers.com slash contact. If you want to support the show, the best way to show your support is by telling your family and friends, online or in person. Now friends, that brings me to the end of the episode. Until next time, remember, the only person you should aim to be better than is the person that you were yesterday, so give it your best today.

Thank you for listening to the Muslim life hackers podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review for us on iTunes by going to Muslim life hack is.com forward slash iTunes