Mirza Yawar Baig – Invest in yourself
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of prioritizing one's own worth and learning from past experiences rather than looking for one's worth in the eyes of others. They also stress the benefits of reading books for entertainment and finding one's own expertise in learning from past experiences. The speakers advise the audience to focus on their own development and not invest in themselves.AI: Transcript ©
My brothers and sisters, one of the greatest
scholars of this Deen was Imam Ibn al
Khaim al Jazir Abdul Ali
and
we are so fortunate that we have
a wealth of such scholars.
I mean, the Khaim is not the only
one.
We have Hassan al Basri, we have the
we
have Imam Malik, we have what number
of scholars
who are not only
hugely knowledgeable,
very pious
and Insha'Allah close to Allah Insha'Allah among the
Awliya of Allah
but people
who
gave
advice
and
whose
advice Insha'Allah
is
something that is truly worth
following
because this is advice that comes hard earned
because of
their own
practice
of what they preached.
So in this case, Imam, even the imam
says
a friend will not literally
share your struggles
and a loved one cannot physically take away
your pain
and a close one will not stay up
the night on your behalf.
So look after yourself,
protect yourself,
nurture yourself
and don't give life's
events
more than what they are really worth.
Know for certain that when you break
no one will heal you except you
and when you are defeated
no one will give you victory except your
own determination.
Your ability
to stand up again and carry on is
your responsibility.
Do not look for your self worth
in the eyes of people.
Look for your worth
within your conscience.
If your conscience is at peace,
you will ascend high
and if you truly know yourself,
then what is said about you won't harm
you.
Do not carry the worries of this life
because this is for Allah and
do not carry the worries
of sustenance
because it is from Allah
and do not carry the worries and the
anxiety for the future because it is in
the hands of Allah.
Carry one thing only.
How to please allah
carry one thing only
how to please allah because if you please
him he pleases you,
fulfills you
and enriches you.
Do not weep from a life that made
your heart weep.
Just say, oh Allah,
compensate me with good in this life
and in the hereafter.
Sadness
departs
with such happiness
comes with a sincere dua.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not forget the
good you do
nor does he forget the good you did
to others
and the pain you relieved them from
Nor will you forget the eye which was
about to cry
but you made it laugh.
Live your life with this principle,
be good
even if you don't receive good
not because of others' sake
but because Allah
SWT loves those who do good.
SubhanAllah, I mean you can,
there is something that is so
full of goodness and so full of wealth
and so full of wisdom.
May Allah give us the to
understand this and to live by this.
Now
I want to divide this into
a few parts for us to be able
to understand that.
So the first part when he is saying
that a friend will
not literally share your struggles and a loved
one cannot physically take away your pain and
close and a close one will not stay
up all night on your behalf. So look
after yourself, protect yourself,
nudge yourself and don't give life's events more
than what they really were.
Now all of that
and also the fact that he talks about
who will heal you
if you are sick, who will
give you victory if you are defeated
and so on. Now all of these point
to one particular thing which is to what
extent
are you
focused on your own development?
To what extent
are you focused
on your own development?
Now it's
a very simple thing. It's a question of
calculating
that, counting the number of hours, counting
the resources that you spend
in your own development.
One of the first things to ask yourself
is how many books do you read?
The next question is what kind of books
do you read?
3rd question is what
happens to you when you read a particular
book? What do you take away from that?
What do you learn from that? Not just
accidentally something happened, no.
Question of systematically, what do you learn when
you read a book? Are you reading it
with the intention of learning something
or is it just pure entertainment?
Even books that you read for pure entertainment
teach you huge lessons.
For example I like to read,
I love history
and one of the fun ways of learning
history
is to read historical fiction. Now there are
writers who write historical fiction,
several of
them and
the benefit is that they are actual historians
and when they write this article fiction,
they finish the whole story at the end
of the book, they have the little
few pages of notes
which tells you where they took liberties with
the actual
events.
So, and these liberties basically have to do
with
putting things together in a in a storyline
and maybe,
you know, some of the,
events that are mentioned,
they change the timing to make it more
interesting to read and so on. So there's
no
falsification
of data. It's just that the data is
put in a way where for a story
line, it it it's more fun to read.
So it tells you the actual facts. Now
the benefit of that is that you can
read this even though it's fiction,
but it gives you a wonderful
opportunity
to learn from history.
Your own history, the history of the people,
the history of the world and so on
and so forth. So it's a wonderful way.
Now question is do you do that?
Ask yourself what is the amount of time
I spend on my physical development?
My time in the gym, walking,
do I move around? I don't move around.
I'm sitting in one place like a
mop or what what is what is my
story with regard to my physical development? What
kind of food do I eat? Is it
healthy food or unhealthy food and so on?
What do I do with my relationships? What
kind of relationship do I have?
Do I have there are people who have
relationships which are parasitic,
which
are they are like parasites, they always take
from others and if you stop them and
say look at tell me you have been
this person's friend and you have taken so
much from them what have you given them
in return the answer is nothing
because that that is not the focus. The
focus always is what can I get out
of this? Now try to change and say
what can I give to it? What can
I give to this relationship? And you believe
me, you will get far more out of
it than you would ever get if you
were only focused on getting something out of
it.
Right? How much time do you spend,
with people
who cannot
who are not immediately
potentially beneficial
for you. Right? Among them I would put
them now top of the list. How much
time do you spend with your grandparents, for
example, those of you who are fortunate enough
to have grandparents,
with the elderly people. Now think about this.
The elderly people, these are people who have
true wisdom, who have wisdom of life. They
have lived their lives, they have accumulated wisdom,
they are in their seventies, in their eighties,
and if you are lucky and you have
those people and they are still lucid then
in their nineties.
And just sitting and talking to them is
not just interesting but it gives you an
enormous enormous enormous learning in terms of
navigating your own life.
The question is are you interested in that?
Because if you
sit there and if you,
listen to them and then in your mind
you're carrying on this this useless exercise of,
you know,
of of saying, for example,
for example, one guy told me,
you know, my father tells me how,
he used to walk 10 miles to the
school
and,
in the summer also with the heat
and how we used to
you know undergo all the difficulty
sit in a classroom which didn't have air
conditioning
because there was no air conditioning probably in
the whole country at that time and so
forth. Then he did after taking the whole
slide, I'm very impressed by this. I'm I'm
very impressed listening to the story and I'm
thinking myself oh wow this this kid really
knows has some you know fantastic
wise parents who tell him the story then
he tells me
what good is that to me today?
What is the use of
of my father telling me this story today?
My life is completely different here in America
and boom I come to the ground as
a subhava.
I mean this kid is dumb like a
like a brick. Right?
You're asking what good is that to you
today you cannot you which means you cannot
start you cannot see beyond heat, you cannot
see beyond the dust, you cannot see beyond
the fact that the class didn't have air
conditioning.
You don't see the determination, you don't see
the focus, you don't see the ability to
overcome difficulty to get something beneficial because you
see that as beneficial which is knowledge.
You don't see the perseverance, you don't see
the
fortitude and the and the patience and the
saber
with which your father has gained whatever knowledge
he got.
None of that Right? And you think you're
smart. I think you're the dumbest piece of
faction that I that I ever came across.
So
do that.
Think about yourself and say what am I
doing to invest in myself?
Because if you don't invest in yourself, believe
me, nobody else is gonna come and invest
in you. Simple as that. Don't nobody's interested.
Right? You might think you're interested. You are
completely uninteresting
because people are interested in themselves
and if you are not even interested in
yourself
then
goodbye.
So think about this we'll talk more about
this beautiful advice of the al Khaim al
Khale Ali tomorrow and so forth but for
now this is enough
focus
on your own development and say what is
it that I need to do to get
better than I was yesterday as rasul rasulam
said the one for whom 2 days the
one for whom 2 days are equal has
wasted one day so each day should be
better than the previous day
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