Mirza Yawar Baig – Our future is in our own hands #2
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
My brothers and sisters,
there is a basic fundamental principle in life
and that is that you can only
change, you can only impact, you can only
affect
the things that you own.
For example, if I
want to change the color of my house,
I can do it because it is my
house.
But if I want to change the color
of your house,
I can go and change that color. I
can go and repaint your house because I
don't like that color
unless I have your permission. So you have
to permit me to do it.
I can sell my car. I can give
it away.
Right? If it is
broken, the responsibility
to repair the car is mine. It is
not my neighbor's.
I cannot give away my neighbor's car. I
can't sell my neighbor's car. I can only
impact
my own things.
I have the responsibility
of raising my children. I have the responsibility
of looking after my family and so on
and so on and so on.
The same thing applies to life.
Only I can impact
my life. I think this is one
of the most fundamental but one of the
most difficult
things
to get through our
brothers,
solid skulls.
And that is that I am responsible
for myself.
Now this is an
enormously empowering,
state of mind
because the minute
I own responsibility,
the minute I say to myself that I
am responsible for myself,
then immediately
the doors
of changing my future
open before me.
If I am responsible for my future, then
nobody can stop me
from changing
that future.
But until I own responsibility
for myself,
nothing in my life will change.
This is
the master
victim philosophy
which I mentioned to you yesterday.
The victim is one who always blames others.
The victim says
my problem
is because of somebody else, meaning
someone else owns my problem.
Well, then get used to living with that
problem forever
because the one who owns
your problem, who you think owns your problem
is not interested in solving it. He probably
or she probably created it in the 1st
place. So why would they solve it?
But the minute you own up to the
reality, to the truth, and the truth is
that you own your problem.
Somebody else may have created it. No doubt
about that. But
who owns it? You own it. The minute
you accept this fact and say, I own
my problem,
believe me, that problem is
halfway solved at least because you have owned,
you have taken ownership for it. Now you
say, therefore,
what do I need to do? And you
have the steps. Step 1, step 2, step
3,
and your problem is solved.
But until you own responsibility
for it, nothing will change.
And that is the whole master victim philosophy.
Now,
let's take any situation that we have. You
have a marriage which is going which is
on the rocks. Whose marriage is it? Your
marriage.
Who can change it? You can change it.
Not somebody else.
It's up to you.
If you want to change it, you can
change it. You don't want to change it,
it won't change. You can sit and blame
the old one and his wife for the
fact that your marriage is not working. Nothing
will change.
Children,
you like the you like the way they're
growing up?
You don't like the way they're growing up?
Whose responsibility is it? Is it your responsibility?
Your career
is going nowhere. What must you do?
Make the steps. But remember to remind yourself
that my career is not going anywhere, not
because my boss doesn't like my face or
not because the economy is going down or
not because of blah blah blah. It is
not going anywhere because I don't seem to
own my career. I seem to put my
carriers
career's responsibility,
the responsibility for my career progress on somebody
else's shoulder, but that is not where it
belongs. So therefore,
unless
I own the responsibility
for my career, my career will go nowhere.
So now I own responsibility for my career,
and I say, okay.
So one of these factors impacting my career
is the fact that the economy is going
up. One of the factors impacting my career
is that my knowledge,
whichever field I was in, has become redundant.
People people no longer speak their language. People
no longer need that particular skill set.
Alhamdulillah.
Very nice. So therefore, now what do I
do? I acquire a different skill set.
But until I own responsibility
for myself and my career and my
my my my situation in life, nothing will
change.
The reason I say this is because this
is one of the biggest problem that we
have as Muslims.
Just monitor conversations. You know, I I remind
myself and I tell people always monitor conversations,
and you will see what we do with
ourselves.
We are constantly blaming
everyone in the world.
Right? It's always somebody else's fault.
Whatever's happening to me
is the fault of the colonials.
It is the fault of
the current government. It is the fault of
this country or that country. It is a
fault of my neighbors. It is a fault
of,
this person or that person,
people of this religion, that religion, this race,
that race. I mean, it's always
somebody else's fault.
And that is the biggest lie in the
world.
Now that does not mean
that others
always wish the best for me. No.
People will do things.
People will do negative things. People will try
to sabotage you. They will try to sabotage
your career.
They will try to harm you,
but whether
to allow that to happen or not is
in our control.
If you went to the forest
and the forest has tigers, it has leopards,
and so on.
So is there a possibility that the tiger
might attack you? Of course.
Of course. Nobody said the tiger will welcome
you with open up. They might they might
do that, but, you know,
it was with a different intention.
But to protect yourself, whose responsibility is it?
The tiger or yours?
Exactly the same thing.
People in the world will try to harm
you. It's not as if the whole world
is set up against you or not.
Somehow some of this stuff is we imagine
it.
There's a reality where we you and I
are really not
that important in other people's lives.
So if we think that everyone is, you
know, sitting there trying to sabotage me, sorry.
The reality is most people don't care, you
know, they don't give a oat whether they
will live or die. So they're not sitting
there waiting to do this and that. But
even if those who are,
to allow that to come to you,
to to allow them to
to, do something to you, it's in our
control.
If you don't want that to happen, believe
me, it won't happen
because you will not enable that in whichever
way. We enable in 2 ways. We enable
by doing the wrong things,
or we also enable by not doing the
right things.
For example, one way of enabling
a marriage to go down the drain
is to take the spouse for granted.
The husband takes the wife for granted. The
wife takes the husband for granted as if
they'll always be there as if they are
some doormat to wipe their feet off.
And next thing you know, marriage gone down
the grid. So
not because of what you did, but because
of what you did not do. And what
you did not do, You did not express
gratitude. You did not you did not say
thanks. You did not express
your love and your affection and and all
the good stuff.
So it went down the drain. Careers,
same thing.
Some things are in our control.
Other things, for example, you know,
there are things, such things as bad bosses.
There are such things as bosses who
try to harm you.
I agree.
In my career, I had
2 such bosses
who did,
and believe me, they tried every trick in
the book
to harm me.
Alhamdulillah,
they were not able to. Allah
protected me, but this is all magic.
What I did was I documented everything I
did.
All my actions, all my work,
measurement,
measure, document, measure, document.
So when now this boss tries to carry
some tail to my super boss, to the
general manager,
I'm showing him facts.
I'm giving him fears. I'm giving him actual
documented evidence.
So when the boss does this a couple
of times and he comes up and I
come up with my documented evidence, he looks
like a fool.
So his credibility before his boss is gone.
You have to take steps. Now I would
have sat and complained and said, oh, you
know, what can I do? No.
No. What can I do? You can do,
and
only you can do.
Now take this analogy,
and this is a real analogy,
and apply it across the board.
We complain that
our people, our children don't know our own
history. History, first one of the family, of
the clan, of the of the community, of
the tribe, history of, Muslims,
history of the world. What's the point in
complaining?
Who stops you from learning?
Who stops your children from teaching?
Who stops you from teaching your children? Who
stops your children from learning? The problem is
we don't know our history ourselves, and you
blame the children.
Similarly, we say, you know, our children don't
speak our own languages. Why not?
Because you will not speak to them in
your language, in your own home.
So you lost a language,
and with the language goes the culture.
So then you will complain, oh, you see
these children have become completely westernized. Yes. You
you did that. You you westernized them.
Because the heritage of the language, you delight
them.
I'm sorry that, you know, some of these
things may be unpalatable,
but up to you, don't swallow it. Live
with the fantasy if you like, but that
doesn't change anything.
I want to end with this and say
that
Allah
gave us the power
to write our own destiny.
To write whether we will live life which
are
powerful, which are beautiful, which are harmonious, which
are
full of
goodness or the opposite
and our
depends on that
a good life in this world results in
a good life in the.
An evil life in this world results in
an evil life in the
we ask Allah to help us to understand
and own responsibility
and to live our lives as a responsible
people
who will Inshallah be a role model for
this.