Mirza Yawar Baig – Focus
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My brothers and sisters,
the question I want to ask you and
ask you to ask yourself and ask myself
is what is your focus?
What is the focus of your life? What
is your focus?
And the reason I asked this and the
reason why focus is important
is because
take light for example. Right?
This light
at best illuminates,
but take the same light. The nature of
the light has not changed. It's the same
thing.
Focus it and it becomes laser
and laser can cut through steel.
This light can cut through steel, same thing.
But focus
it cuts through steel.
Sunlight,
you go out in the sun at best
you feel hot.
But take a magnifying glass, we used to
do this and it's also for camping and
so on. It's a good trick to know.
Take a magnifying glass or even a a
mirror
and focus the sunlight onto some
dry leaves and something it'll catch fire.
Same sunlight,
but it through the magnifying glass, through the
because of the mirror,
it gets focused
and therefore it is
ignites.
Ignites a fire.
The Morse code, which is
dots and dashes
with which telegrams and so on used to
be sent before now, of course, we have
electronic means.
But one of those
was by a thing called the heliograph.
The heliograph basically was a mirror,
which could be tilted back and forth.
So
with this heliograph, they would send
complex messages.
They would have the heliograph on top of
a hill. They would send these messages just
by focusing sunlight. It would be flashes of
sunlight,
and this
was visible for as long as 30 miles
away.
Alright. So you can send a message
across line of sight up to 30 miles
away.
Focus.
Now the same thing applies as far
as Islam is concerned.
In Salah,
Allah what is the quality of Salah that
Allah
mentioned?
When he in Surat al Mu'minoon, Allah said
the Mu'minoon are those people who
who
which is focused.
What
is focus?
You're focusing on Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. You're
focusing on the fact that I am standing
before Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
Rasool Rasool Rasoolam said when the slave makes
Sajdah,
he is not making Sajdah on this farsh
on this earth, he's making Sajdah
before the arsh of Ar
Rahman, before the throne of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
Focus. I'm standing before Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
in one beautiful hadith, Rasool Allah says
when a slave is standing
before Allah in salah
and his attention wanders,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala asks him
what is in your life? What is this
thing which is distracting you which is better
than me?
Because if it is not better than me,
why is it getting why are you getting
distracted? So what is distracting you, which is
better than me, which is more beautiful than
I am?
And this question is asked
when the slaves
attention wanders one time, two times, three times
after Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala leaves it.
So focus,
what is the focus? The thing to do
is to check this for ourselves
and monitor 2 things. 1 is monitor our
internal conversation.
What is it that I'm saying to myself?
Be conscious of that. What are the thoughts
in my mind?
Because our thoughts
define
our emotions. They define our actions. They define
our speech.
As we think so, we act. As we
think so, we speak.
So monitoring thoughts. What are my thoughts? This
is extremely important. So monitor that. What is
my internal conversation?
And monitor it to see whether my internal
conversation
is about myself
or is it about the outside world.
What are people thinking of me? How do
I compare to this or that? We have
got today, we live in a world where
the external environment
floods us completely.
Right? You have got opinions,
opinion setters. You have got opinion makers. You
have got icons for this and that. There
are fashion icons and there are body shape
icons and there are god knows. Right?
All kinds of icons. So I am not
even myself. I'm trying to be like this
one. I'm trying to be like that one
and you will never be like this one
or that one because that's a different human
being. Allah made them differently, made you differently.
But the whole life, the focus is outside,
external focus. And that also means that we
are constantly seeking,
reinforcement
and we are constantly sitting, seeking praise
from the outside world to feel good.
So my self esteem does not depend on
what I think of myself. It does not
depend on whether my whether I am comfortable
with my own conscience, it depends on what
people are saying about me.
So even if one person says one negative
thing
that will sit in your mind and will
work the * out of you and will
you lose sleep over it and whatnot
constantly, even though there may be a 100
people who are saying positive things about you,
but one person says something negative, this one
goes on and round and round. This is
human nature. It is it is human nature
for better or worse to remember negative more
than positive.
In, customer service,
there are studies done
on how many customers complain about bad service
and how many customers
take their trouble
to praise good service.
Almost nobody praises good service. They take it
for granted. Yeah. Good service. Yeah. I'm so
sorry. I paid for it.
But anything bad, anything, any service failure,
instantly people will complain. People will tell others
about it and so on and so on.
And this travels all around the world.
And that's why to, to correct customer service
failures is actually considered to be more important
and more powerful than giving just good service
by itself.
Because when the customer is displeased and then
you
do something to please him,
that he will remember.
But if you got good service to begin
with, he takes it for granted.
All external reinforcement
of
ourselves. This is
so monitor that conversation. Is it my conversation?
Is it about the external or is it
about myself?
Now what the reason is important is because
at the end of the day, the only
thing that will help you is what you
do with yourself.
Nothing else.
Whether it's in education, whether it's in health,
whether it's
in happiness, whether it's, you know, marriage,
you name it. The only thing that can
help you and will help you is that
which you do for yourself.
Not anybody. Not anyone else. Anyone else can
do whatever they want. What will help me
is what I eat, not what he eats.
If I don't do my salah,
he can do salah all night. It won't
help me. It says salah.
Even if he says, yalla, I'm praying my
my my my brother, my friend,
please give the salah to him. No. It
doesn't go. You can make dua,
but the salah
is yours. If Yaharbayh is not praying,
then Yaharbayh is in trouble. Not you. Not
you.
You can't say no. I'm I'm doing extra
salah for him. Please give it to you.
He doesn't pray but give it. No. No.
No. Doesn't.
Yourself. What is your focus on yourself?
And once you figure that out and remove
all these external chat,
focus on yourself, then say, what do I
need to do
moving forward? What are my goals?
What must I learn? What must I achieve?
What are
the markers that I set for myself?
Right?
Have friends who will remind you of that.
I have a couple of friends who I
really value, and the reason I value for
the value of them is because
one of them the almost the first thing
he says after salami, he says, what book
are you reading now?
Nothing. He would ask me how are you
how is your health? What book are you
reading now?
I really value that because, you know, that
keeps me on my
so question.
What book are you reading now?
How many books did you read in the
last 12 months?
What were those books?
What was your takeaway? What did you learn?
By reading those books, what changed in your
life?
Even if you are reading for entertainment, no
problem. I'm not saying that you have to
read only
and read whatever you like but always ask
the question, what do I take away from
this? What do I learn from this?
There's one of my favorite authors. He is
a,
historical fiction writer,
and he writes about the,
the Roman Empire.
And these are military histories,
but they're fiction.
But they're very true to fact, true to
actual fact. At the end of the book,
he always writes a note about wherever he
took some liberties with the actual dates and
names and so on.
And I read, if I'm not mistaken, a
set of 32 books.
It's the all those books are written around
the lives of 2 soldiers,
but those soldiers are different places and different
wars and different zones and different things.
Now what did I get from that? I
got an enormous understanding about the current geopolitical
power situation in the world.
From stories, fictional stories, historical fiction, written about
an empire which
is 2000 years old.
Because the structures,
the things that drive that empire have not
changed.
They are in operation today.
But you won't know that. You won't understand
that unless you read those things.
Right? That's the reason why history is important.
History is important not because of what happened.
It's so that you can understand
what is happening today. And hopefully,
if there is something to do about that,
then you can understand that gives you some
kind of a
pathway forward.
So focus
number 1,
change the conversation.
Focus the conversation yourself and what can I
change, and then set goals for yourself?
So these are my goals. These are the
objectives which I'm trying to achieve. This is
what I must do and put timelines on
them by when.
So I'm gonna read 1 book a month,
minimum. This is something that everybody must do.
A one book per month, you must read.
And by 1 month book, I mean, especially
the students. I'm not talking about your course
course material. I'm talking about other than course
material,
one book per month. This is the minimum
that you must read. Every educated
person who's been to school must read at
least one book per month if you read
more good for you.
Right?
We
ask to help us to focus on that
which is beneficial for us in this
and to do what is pleasing to him
and to save us from what does not
please him.