Mirza Yawar Baig – Value of Values
AI: Summary ©
The importance of values and a focus on one's own values is crucial in hiring people. They use the term " Higher Value train behavior" to describe various forms of behavior that come from values, including anger, anxiety, and depression. The speaker emphasizes the need to expose children to positive and good adults in one's circle to build a sense of pride and identity. They also discuss the use of negative language in media and emphasize the importance of differentiation in life, avoiding limiting one's point of view and asking for forgiveness.AI: Transcript ©
My brothers and sisters,
among my books is a book I have
written called
Hiring Winners.
And this book focuses on, like the title,
Hiring Winners, so how to hire good people.
Of course, the 4th the focus of the
book is
in the corporate world, but it applies to
anywhere where you have to choose people for
whatever the reason,
including incidentally in marriages.
Now one of the things that I have
said in the book and which I believe
is about the importance of values.
Now if you see
our lives, there are
2 things that we have,
1 is values and the second one is
behavior.
Values and actions.
Values are the
foundation from which actions arise.
So based on the value, we act in
a particular way.
People of certain values act in certain ways.
So if you want to understand behaviour, we
say you have to go down to the
values. What is this behaviour coming from?
For example, you might have somebody who has
an anger problem.
Right? So expresses anger,
uncontrollable, and so on.
Now if you say, no, how can we
control this anger? You cannot control the anger.
You have to go to what is giving
rise to the anger.
What is the value in the person which
is
resulting in this person
acting in that way,
in that set of circumstances. Because you will
find that other people who face the same
circumstances don't act in that way.
It's not as if it's a universal thing
that everybody has to know. Some people like
it one way, some like it another way.
Anxiety is another big one.
Depression is another one.
People lose hope
and then they do all kinds of things.
So
different
manifestation
of behavior they come from a different set
of values.
In my book, I use the term, I
say, higher values
train behavior.
Higher values train behavior, meaning
don't try to
train values into a person because there's a
very good reason because values are hardwired.
They are hardwired into you
because they come from your upbringing. That is
the reason why it is so important to
focus on how you raise children.
Parents
who
literally parents write the script
of their children or whether your child would
succeed or fail,
you are the reason
to a huge extent,
not entirely but to a great extent.
And where you find that parents who have
raised children in a certain way, the children
have still succeeded,
then you find some really,
overwhelming
effort on the part of the child who
is now grown up to understand himself or
herself, a great understanding of psychology
and then enormous effort to get over the
mental blocks and the mental models that
the parenting
loaded them with.
So it is very, very important to under
and now for a from a hiring perspective,
it's not worth your while to hire somebody
who is
loaded negatively and try to cure that. That's
not your job because you're not a you're
not a unless you're running a counseling center
or something. Otherwise, normally you are hiring people
to do some work. You're not hiring to
to change their way of thinking.
So
it's not doable. You can I I in
any case, you might not even have the
training training to do that? It's like it's
like it's like medical I mean, it's like,
you know, medical science. You are you are
a doctor, you're not doctor. If you're not
doctor, you can't go and say, I'll have
a person. I'll cure him. No. We will
kill him.
So it's,
therefore, we say that it is possible to
change values, but it is possible like it
is possible to change the shape of your
nose.
It takes surgery.
There's no other way. Or maybe, you know,
a boxing glove in a very hard hand.
Otherwise, there is no other way. Shame of
the nose, the shame of the nose. You
want to you don't like you want to
change it? You say, you know, I how
do I make my nose like the like
Barbara Streisand's nose or or
Arnold Schwarzenegger's nose. It doesn't you have to
go in surgery. So similarly,
values can rarely be changed and even if
they can be changed, it's a very very
painful
process. That's the reason why it's very important
to raise children
correctly with the right values.
Literally, I tell parents, you are literally programming
their success or failure.
It is as serious as that. You are
really programming
their success and most parents will do that.
They have no clue. They don't even know
that. Obviously, no parent will consciously
program failure for their child. Right? This is
not possible. But you don't know.
So it's like a bull in a China
shop. You know, you don't understand what you
are doing.
And by the time you understand or if
you ever understand that, the damage is done.
Now value
values incidentally have nothing to do with with
what passes,
for education, what we call what what we
like to call education. That's nothing to do
with values.
Our education is literally different levels
of literacy and numeracy.
That's it. Right?
All education can be collected into that. Different
levels of literacy and,
numeracy.
Real education
literally begins and end with values.
So give children the right value and they
will learn the rest on their own.
Now what are some right values? I think
this
almost give
it. Number 1 truthfulness, number 2 reliability.
And that is why Rasool al Saram's title
was
truthful and reliable.
Truthful and reliability. Then of course, value for
your word.
A sense of pride of identity to say
that I don't lie.
Value for your word.
Kindness, compassion, bravery, nobility and a host of
others are all values. They're not learned in
schools
but they are learned
watching parents and elders
and that is why the loss of the
joint family system is such a huge loss
of potential value demonstrating people in the lives
of children.
And that is why adab is where it
all starts and that's what's missing in our
society.
Now
since we don't live in a society with
the joint family,
one of the things that you can do
and you should do is expose children to
positive and good adults in your circle. So
by bringing them to the budget, take them
somewhere else, take if you have friends who
are and then everyone doesn't need to be
a Muslim. Please understand this.
You have some people who are not Muslim,
but they are absolutely fantastic people in terms
of their values and so on, by all
means take them there, let the children be
exposed to
those people Muslim or not, it doesn't matter,
it's you're looking at the values of the
children. Now, the question somebody asked me was,
one of my good friends who's, he specialises
in asking good questions, so he asked me,
he said after listening to all this, he
tells me, what about the values of Rasool
Allah,
Where did they come from?
So do you think this was divine intervention?
Did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teach him or
did they come also from his environment? That's
my my contention comes from environment, comes from
family.
For Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul
Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul
Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul
Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul
Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul
Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul
Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul Rasul of
course, what Allah gave him, Allah gave him,
but also you can clearly see if you
read the that
the values came from his environment.
First of all, the reason the Arabs used
to send their children out into
the desert with the
was to teach them values, to teach them
the Arab culture,
the Arab society,
pure Arabic language,
also, of course, for health reasons, but main
thing was this,
imbibing
of the
all the noble values of the Arab culture,
hospitality,
bravery,
honor. Right?
All of this. So they used to send
them out. Specifically,
they used to send them out for that
reason. That's one one place where he would
have picked up this. Second thing is if
you again in the,
just take the one story of his grandfather
Abdul Muttalib
going to meet Abraha,
the king of Yemen
to
ask for his camels which Abraha soldiers had,
stolen. Right? Kidnapped.
The the the the the, account of a
historical account says that when Abdul Muttalib walked
into the tent of Abraha. And who's Abraha?
Abraha is the Yemeni king. First of all,
he's a king. Abdulmutall is not a king.
Secondly, Abraha
is coming there as a conquering or potentially
with the intention of conquering Makkah.
He's at the head of an army,
he's in this tent obviously with all the
pomp and splendor of that and he's sitting
on a throne and so on. When Abdul
Mutali walks in, Abraha
spontaneously
stands up and comes down to welcome him.
He does not even know who the man
is.
Right? He stands up and comes. Now what
does it tell you? It tells you that
here was a man whose presence was so
strong.
Right? His his, the.
The presence of the man, the the look
of the man, how he was dressed and
whatnot and how he walked, everything. I mean,
all of this
was so strong, so powerful
that it spontaneously
influenced the king who came with the evil
intention.
Right? So
now this man, Abdul Mutaleb was the man
that Rasool
was exposed to on a daily basis because
he lived with him when he was at
a young and impressionable age of maybe about
say between the age of about 6
to 10 or so.
So, values come on there. So, I want
to close with this to say that this
is a very very important thing that I
remind myself and you all to think about
and say, ask yourself what are the values
that we are giving our children?
Now in this process, think about this one
line, we always say, children listen with their
eyes,
not with ears. Children listen with their eyes.
They don't care what you say until they
see what you do.
Now many times parents don't realise you say
things supposedly
like a joke,
you behave in a certain way in the
house,
right?
You may use some language which is not
so great to use,
bad language and what not and so on.
Children pick up every single thing.
Children pick up everything.
And that is how the values get created.
I want to end with this.
In 2020, we had,
I was they asked me to here to
speak at
the Martin Luther King,
you know, the Martin Luther King Day and,
we're talking about racism.
And I somebody sent me
a little video clip,
just about a minute or so
of this
small white girl, she must have been about
2,
in Australia
because of the accent I could make out
that it was Australia.
So this little girl, she is obviously gone
into the cookie jar and she's, you know,
oh, eats her cookies. So the mother catches
her and the mother says, who took the
cookies?
So the girl says, not me.
Then the girl says, the boss says, no.
You not you, then who?
The mother says, do you mean a a
robber came into the house? She says, yes.
So the mother says, the robber came. He
did not take the stereo. He did not
take the TV. He did not take anything.
He only took the cookies? She says yes.
And then she says,
he was a black man.
Now think about that. How does a 2
year old
little girl in Australia
who who I not even probably she's definitely
never seen a black man in her life.
How does she say black man?
Why does she say black man?
Obvious answer, right? So this is the this
is how values get inculcated
and that is how early values get inculcated.
I always say values get inculcated with mother's
milk,
literally.
In the nursery, in your lap
and that is why it is so critically
important to inculcate the right values in children.
The value of
the hashat of Allah,
the value of the hope of Rasool Allah
SWAN,
the accountability fellow Swamalu Taala, the value of
the love of Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the
value
of the honor of honoring the sunnah, the
value of love for the kalam of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala, value for respect for elders.
We have the Hadith, he said, the one
who does not respect elders and does not
show kindness to to youngsters is not from
us.
All of these and more, I don't want
to go into a list of that but
I'm saying that please give it some thought,
children,
your children are your creation, that is the
reason why they are your sadaqa jariyah
and what you create, believe me apart from
Sada Khajaria, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala shows that
in this life itself and I have had
the
pleasure and the pain of seeing both.
I've seen peep I've seen children who are
with their parents
so fabulously beautifully
that,
you know, you feel as well. I wish
my children are like this. And on the
opposite side, you have children who are
literally a curse
to those parents. I feel sorry for the
for the old parents but then you go
back in history and say how did the
child become like this? Answer is clear.
So I request
you and I myself and you let us
focus on values
and inculcate those in our children. Let's not
simply think that you know, throwing enough money
at them is enough, yes doctor.
The question that doctor Saad asked was,
he mentioned
hadith where the meaning of it,
said it is more difficult to change the
nature the fitra of a person than to
move a mountain
and he's saying this fitra is it when
from the late from childhood we are it's
like building an a mountain inside your child
What is that kind amount you are? Is
it a mountain of gold or is it
a mountain of coal
or or or iron or, you know, we
don't know what, right?
So and that is very true, this is
exactly what
the meaning of the hadith,
what Nabi Shastal meant, which is to show
how difficult it is, it is not easy,
it's very, very, very tough
and that is why the entire,
if you look at the dawah of Rabi
sallam,
it's not just a matter of changing your
point of view or changing your mind about
something, right? It's not saying I'm cheering for
Arsenal, now I'll cheer for
Manchester United. No. It is a lot more
than that. It's a
it's internal. When when when you have people
who are
operating in the world in a way where
the world is important and nothing else to
change them to the is important and the
world is a way of earning the it's
a complete spin,
right? Completely, that's why I always say that
that means that Allah has changed the meaning
of
net worth.
A high net worth individual HNI
in the pre Islamic times in Mecca was
exactly what it is today, which is how
much money do you have?
And the changed the the the the definition
of high net worth individual
from.
So networks became your character, network became your
value, network became your actions,
not how much money you have.
So, this is and believe me that was
not easy, but that
was one of the most difficult things that
you can possibly manage.
And how difficult it is, I mean, it's
a tragic thing to reflect on that,
literally about
less than 30 years
after the passing away of Rasool Allah, we
almost went back to went back to the
original.
Right? And there were people there. I'm not
I'm not now criticizing Saab or anything, but
there were people who saw Rasool Rasool, the
people who spent time in the company of
Rasool Rasool,
There are people who
in the next generation,
who are in the company of Sahaba
and we know, you know what they need,
we know what they need. So it's very,
very important to understand this is not easy,
it takes time, it takes energy, it takes
a lot of effort,
but it is something which is worth doing
and this is what really
differentiates
us from animals
because end of the day we are mammals
and you know, a cow is a mammal,
a horse is a mammal or dog is
a mammal, what's the differentiation? Differentiation is value,
differentiation is thinking beyond
food, clothing, shelter and physical need, it's thinking
of something better,
what is virtue, what is vice, what is
something, what is kindness, what is compassion? Animals
don't have kindness and compassion except to their
own children, except to their own young which
is something which is instinctive, it is not
something which is thought about and so on.
It
is the potential of the human being to
be kind to someone
to whom is not related,
to suffer far or
to be strong and to fight for someone
who they are not related to. What we
are seeing today, for example, in all of
these universities and so on, students standing up,
these are people who
have absolutely
nothing to lose
They're fighting against what's happening in Palestine,
right? These students who are fighting, they will
lose absolutely nothing
no matter what happens if I say this
like the moon for them. What does it
matter to them?
They don't know, they are not related to
those people. They are not even the same
religion, they have nothing in common with the
people of Palestine, whether the people of Palestine
live or die makes no difference to them
but they are putting their own lives and
their own careers and their own happiness
and their own health and safety
on the line for people
they have never seen, people who they will
probably never see.
Why?
Value.
For an ideal
to uphold something. They say, no, it is
not true that I will not I will
lose because I was alive. This was happening
and I remain silent, that will not happen.
I will speak out, majority
of those people are not Muslim, majority, big
majority of them are not even Muslim and
we are Muslim,
what must we do?
So I don't I remind myself when you
let us not put ourselves in a situation
where when we stand before Allah others
will stand there and say, you're up, we
did not know you, but we did this.
These people knew you, see what it
May Allah save us from ourselves and may
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala help us to do
that which is pleasing to him and
which does not anger him and we ask
Allah to save us from that which does
not please him.
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