Journal writing

Tila Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen

wa salatu salam ala mousseline. Muhammad Rasul Allah is Allah Allah, Allah who are early he was able to sell of the Steven cathedra. Because

some of us who, my brother and sisters

we're talking about the differentiators, what is it that is that makes us human,

as human beings, how do we differentiate from animals?

Because like I said to the other day, as far as the

normal senses are concerned, or as far as strength is concerned,

and so on.

There is practically every single animal that Allah created a superior it was

physically everything.

If you take athletics, for example, you get very

take the who's the fastest, the Olympic sprinter, what is them?

Who's involved, right? Hussain bolt speed 400 meters is slightly less than hippo.

Any hippopotamus out of Africa runs faster than that.

But because the human being is always over us. So big deal, right? Physical progress wise, practically every

animal that we know, and I'm talking only about the mammals, if I go into insects, for example, a flea can leave the height of the Empire State Building.

If you compare the size of the fleet to the to the hydrogen leap, and compare our size, then it would be somebody who is leaping over the empire state building that is the kind of so I'm not even going there. Just mammals, cat dog rats at one, everything is superior.

So what differentiates us

it is the mind. And in the mind, in regard to me, the three things number one,

is the ability to reflect

the ability to reflect and introspect and conceptualize, like I mentioned the other day, to think about an incident to go over it your mind is incident is over and now sitting outside the incident, go over it in the mind and say, what happened? What could have happened differently?

What else could I have done? What mistakes did I make? What were the good things I did? What should I do more of what should I do less of all of this,

this ability of introspection, reflection, and conceptual conceptualization, drawing lessons from it, this differentiates from animals. Second thing is attention span.

That's another big thing.

Animals have very short attention spans, they cannot stick with something for a long time.

But the key of human beings is the ability to stick with one thing for a long period of time.

Those people who are and this is something we have to practice is not something that I mean, intrinsically, is instinctively also we get it, but it's it won't just happen. So it has to be practiced. And one of the best ways of practicing it is to read.

If you don't read, you won't have an attention span. But if you read, and especially serious reading, this is something that will help. So attention span people who are able to do it, they have attention spans of hours together.

The other day one of my husband, I mentioned to this Buddhist monk, and the the brain scanning the red for him. And the kind of data that they found of this might have this man's ability to completely concentrate on one thing, but what insula, what you got also,

what is crucial, so the insula, insula was done here, and our mind is all over the place, but his man is him and they they put the boots, CT scan machines or whatever. So it's not a matter of just saying something they have actual physical data to prove the ability of that man to concentrate. He's not only one there

any number of those people?

Now I'm saying even if you don't get there with a sub level of ability to concentrate, and to have a long attention span, shorter attention spans, you know, people do this all the time. Whoa, you know, people anything more than 30 seconds. You're talking about monkeys, you're not talking about human beings.

There's monkeys. Right? So first decide who are you talking to monkeys are human beings.

So attention span is the second thing, reflection Dejima. Third thing, as I mentioned before, is the ability to extract lessons from our experience. And from our sights, what we see right there, because not everything is experienced, you don't need to, you don't need to fall into old row that there is a hole.

It's something it's possible to look at the experience of other people and learn from that, that's a easier way of learning. So that is very, very important. So think about that and say, what is it that I can do?

To increase these three things, the ability to reflect? Now what helps enormously as a tool I'm about to share with you is journal writing.

actually writing a journal. Now writing a journal is different from writing a diary, we may Allah protect us, I don't know if people write anything at all nowadays, but if you do and you should do

is to write a journal journal writing is conceptualizing of thoughts.

What are the learnings? Where can they be applied?

Right, I worked for a very large family business in India for 10 years,

and called the Buddha group. And I had the opportunity and the good fortune to be on very good terms with the founder of that group, and you know, with the owner family, and one of the things that I did very consciously was journal writing. So after every meeting with them, I would sit and I would write on what did I learn from this meeting?

I did that. And then after I left Lanting, in 2002, when the share market and so on look like the stock market look like it was diving, I decided to write a book on family businesses. And I wrote a book called The business of family business. Took me two years to write, but the main fundamental documentation of that was from my own life, from my experiences from the journal, which I wrote,

right. Now, if I did not, if I had not written that journal, I would not remember, we have this very, you know, everyone thinks that their memory is fantastic. It is not. It is not you think so it is not right. Especially if you have not trained yourself for structured thought, your memory is really is like a mess. You may remember things but it's like like a salad, you know, you got everything in it.

You won't find what you need to know, unless you write it down. And that's where structured thinking is so important. Making a structure of this thing and saying what comes first, what comes next, what builds on the next and so on and so on.

For that journal readings, I saw the lack of a do that sit on every day and say, today, what was my learning? I've said this so many times to all of you guys, I don't know who's doing it. But please try and do it. What is my learning today? Where can I apply it? What can I do with it? How can I teach it? These are all very important thing. Once you do that, believe me, it's very good. It's great fun. And then later on, you go back over your journal, you read it and say, Okay, this is what is happening to me. Many times, you will be surprised when you read the journal. You say, Oh, my God, I this happened to me. I don't remember now. But it happened. You wrote it. So it happened to

you. But if you forgot what because you already do it. Now it's still there and useful for you.

This one also increases attention span. So focus on that, right, don't fall into this trap of people say Oh, but you know, young people can't see it. They will tick tock me. All of this is garbage. All of this stuff. It destroys us. Right today. COVID is not the biggest problem, the biggest epidemic, the biggest epidemic of mental illness.

Far, far, far bigger, far more spread and far more problematic than with COVID. What's worse, I mean, you get sick, you get Okay. with mental illness, a lot of that stuff

almost never goes away.

And one of the big reasons for it is because our minds have nothing to do

constantly, only the fourth constantly only these tick tock and this forward that forward in shorts and whatnot. There is no the brain is not getting any serious work to do. So it atrophies. It just goes I mean the brain cells are like like, like any other cells, the body cells, for example, you don't use your legs, you lose the strength. You don't use your arms, you lose strength. Similarly, you don't use your brain you lose strength,

the brain

becomes useless.

You have to use the brain just like you use your arms or legs or so on for strength. The brain has to

used that one of the best ways to use is math but I mean if you use ABS getting to death, you know math for God's sake was there before John No, no, really, but that's one of those beautiful things if you if you if you were interested in maths fabulous, but even if you don't do it just do journal writing and read some serious stuff

very important.

So I remind myself when you let us do that, let us this is our single differentiator, the brain does the health of the brain what we can do with the brain. Let's do that and not reduce ourselves to the level where there's no differentiating between us and animals. We ask Allah subhanaw taala to help us to think and to extract lessons and to apply them in our in our lives inshallah was ALLAH will carry while he was a board member I will try