Mirza Yawar Baig – What’s a Life Goal 1

AI: Summary ©
The importance of knowing one's goals and finding one's own comfort in life is emphasized, along with the need to be prepared for pain and anxiety. The speaker advises the audience to focus on their own goals and narrow their options for resources and resources, emphasizing the importance of clarity in requirements and building a legacy. The speaker also provides examples of key skills needed for achieving goals and building roadmaps, and encourages individuals to pursue them.
AI: Summary ©
The question that I'm asked from time to
time by thinking individuals, thinking young people, is
how should I focus on a goal?
How do I arrive at a goal for
myself in life?
Now, those who are born with that thought
and that knowledge and that focus, clearly in
their minds are blessed, but those who are
not born with that are in a way
blessed even more.
Because when you get something easy, sometimes you
tend to lose value for it.
You think it's okay, it comes easy to
me, so it must be easy.
Whereas the reality of life is that it's
not easy.
And for those to whom it does not
come easy, I'm saying they are even more
fortunate and more lucky.
Because on the one hand, they will get
that knowledge when they work hard enough for
it.
And meanwhile, they will have the opportunity to
develop resilience, to develop perseverance, and to develop
consistency, and to develop persistence, and to develop
commitment, and to develop discipline, all of which
are critically important to achieve that goal, no
matter how easily or no matter with what
difficulty you arrived at it in the first
place.
So even the person who knows from the
moment you open his eyes that I want
to be this, whatever that this is, he
will need persistence and he will need a
sting power, he will need the commitment, and
he will need all of that if he
really wants to achieve the goal.
Knowing that you want something is one thing,
getting it is a whole different ballgame.
The benefit, or rather the only benefit, of
knowing clearly what you want is that you
can start working in that direction sooner than
somebody who has to go through a lot
of soul-searching and so forth before he
or she gets to that clarity.
That's about the only benefit.
But if you know it clearly, but you
do not do anything to develop, to bring
discipline into your life, to be persistent, to
be consistent, to have determination, then good luck
to you because you are not going to
achieve that goal.
Now, therefore, how to do this?
So I'm not talking about the one to
whom this is clear, I'm talking about the
one to whom it may not be so
clear and they are struggling.
The first thing to do is to make
friends with yourself.
I've said this many times and I believe
this and I believe it very strongly that
one of the greatest things that we have
lost, which used to be a strength, maybe
for some people it was a strength, by
default, I mean, you know, they didn't ask
for it, but it was there, it became
part of their life.
It's like people living on steep hillsides, they
get to do a lot of cardiac work,
walking up and down hillsides, not because they're
interested in cardiac fitness, but because that's how
you get around.
You live on top of the hillside, you've
got to go down to the river for
water, carry the water back up again and
so on and so on.
So, you are getting, you're doing some work
for some other reason, but you're getting cardiac
fitness as a bonus and I think that
is something which is, you know, worth thinking
about.
So, the thing to do, what we have
lost is this, which is the ability to
be comfortable with yourself.
The comfort with silence, the comfort with solitude,
comfort with being by yourself.
And when I say by yourself, I don't
just mean by yourself physically, personally, as in
one human being, but one human being minus
their phone, because the phone is the biggest
distraction and the biggest interference that we have
bought and brought into our lives and we
have created this completely toxic lifestyle, which is
based on where the most common feeling is
that of fear, FOMO, fear of missing out.
And if you just think about all the
time we check the phone, so that we
don't suffer from FOMO, so that we don't
miss out something and see, okay, so I
checked my phone, you know, 10,000 times
a day because that's the truth of it.
That's how much we check every three seconds
and say, okay, sure.
Now, what did I get?
Obviously, I didn't miss out.
I was taking care of that every three
seconds.
So, I must have got what I was
chasing.
What did I get?
Ask yourself, what is the answer?
You know the answer, I know the answer.
So, the ability to be alone and to
be comfortable with yourself being alone.
So, number one, we're talking about how do
I get to a life goal?
So, first step, make friends with yourself.
Learn to be alone.
Seek being alone.
Don't seek company.
Seek being alone.
Seek solitude.
I don't mean seek solitude as in, you
know, somebody who is dysfunctionally introverted, somebody who
is depressed.
No, as a perfectly healthy human being, who
is very comfortable with other people, who has
high social skills and so on, but they
like to be alone by themselves for some
part of the day.
And that's where we need to get.
Today, there is a whole branch of psychology
which deals in these things, which is anxiety
-creating moments for people who hate being alone.
Solitude, khilwat, being by yourself creates anxiety in
people, creates fear in people.
I'm asking you, get to a point where
you will be happy with that.
You will seek that.
And if you don't have that for some
time, that will make you unhappy.
That will make you, not anxious, but it
will be something that you would want to
have.
You say, oh, I wish I could be
by myself.
Not because I hate people, but because I
want to be by myself.
So, make friends with yourself.
The second thing is, once you are alone,
and believe me, be prepared for pain, be
prepared like anything else.
If you go into the gym and you
say, well, you know, my muscles right now
would, they would look nice on a chicken,
but since I'm not a chicken, I need
to do something about it.
And you start, under a coach, you start
a regimen of calisthenics and weights and so
on.
The first thing, the very first sensation that
you will feel, which will be very strong,
is that of pain.
You will feel pain.
Your whole body will pain.
You will question your sanity.
You will say, what the *, why did
I do this?
Am I insane?
And the answer is no, you are the
sanest person in the world.
So, why did you choose the pain?
Because you know what is behind this pain.
The pain is a mask.
The pain is a barrier.
And once you go over that barrier, then
there is beauty, then there is comfort, then
there is great, beautiful health, all kinds of
good things.
So, the same thing with solitude.
Be prepared for the pain.
Be prepared for anxiety.
Depending on what kind of a frenetic lifestyle
you have, depending on how addicted you are
to your phone, all of this is going
to come up.
Don't even take your phone with you.
Don't give yourself more difficulty by saying, I'll
take my phone, but I won't look at
it.
No, you won't.
You will look at it.
Keep the phone at home.
Keep the phone as far away from yourself
as possible.
And if the phone is linked to your
watch or something, imagine, see how we have
physically and voluntarily put chains on our ankles
and our wrists and on our necks.
These are the real chains, right?
Not the steel and iron chains that slaves
were forced to wear.
The slave didn't like what he was wearing.
We love it.
And that's where the problem is.
I was reading some stuff by George Orwell
and Aldous Huxley, two philosophers.
George Orwell wrote the book in 1984, and
I suggest you read it.
And Aldous Huxley wrote the book Brave New
World, which also I suggest you read.
There's somebody else who made a wonderful commentary
on them, comparing them.
And he said, George Orwell feared that we
would be enslaved by the things we hate.
And Aldous Huxley feared that we would be
enslaved by the things we love.
And so on.
I mean, I think this is where we
are.
We are enslaved by the things we love.
We spend money we can't afford to get
more and more sophisticated phones.
Most of the features of it we don't
use.
And then we also make sure that we
are hooked up in other ways, where the
phone is hooked up to the watch and
the watch is hooked up to something else
and so on.
So chain after chain, you need to break
out of that.
So throw all that, leave your watch, leave
your phone.
Don't take any watch.
You don't need a watch.
The world doesn't depend on you.
If you are not contactable for a few
minutes or a few hours, believe me, nothing
will change in the world.
And if you don't believe me, go to
the next funeral, that you go to the
next janaza and see the people who come
to the janaza, people who pray the salat
at the janaza, people who go to the
cemetery, people who are burying the person who
has died.
Look around, see how committed they are to
their task.
See how interested they are in the person
who died and how interested they are in
getting it over and getting back to their
lives.
Just see that, right?
It's a very salutary thing.
No matter how much that person was loved,
everybody loved, no matter how much that person
was respected, no matter how big a crowd
there was for the janaza, the crowd at
the kabiristan and the cemetery is smaller and
so on and so forth.
So the point is that that's exactly how
important you are and how important I am.
So let's not get sidetracked by that.
Nothing in the world will change if I
disappear for a few hours, nothing at all.
And if you don't believe me, disappear and
see what happens.
Nothing will happen.
So stay, go and sit in a forest,
ideally a forest.
There's something beautiful about forests, there's something beautiful
about trees, but if you are not fortunate
enough to live near a forest and find
something, find a park or something, go out.
Don't sit inside the house, go outside into
a place of nature, into a place where
the khutabat of Allah swt surrounds you.
Go and sit down and just be by
yourself.
Do nothing, say nothing, speak nothing, alone.
Don't take your best friend with you, don't
take your cat or your dog with you,
don't take your phone with you, definitely don't
take your phone with you.
Be comfortable with yourself.
You're talking about getting life goals.
How do I get clarity of my life
goals?
This is the first step.
Make friends with yourself.
Second thing you do is you then learn
what to do with yourself when you are
alone.
And that is the skill of introspection.
Reflection, introspection and abstract conceptualization, three very critical
things to do.
Reflection, introspection and abstract conceptualization.
So this is another word which David Cobb
uses in his beautiful model, he calls it
reflective observation.
It's a very beautiful term, reflective observation, which
is in reflection, thinking about the incident that
you are reflecting on.
Now he's talking about specific incidents and talking
about being there with yourself in your time
and trying to be with yourself in your
time and see what can I learn.
So reflection.
Now for that, for you to be able
to do reflection observation and abstract conceptualization, you
need a pad and a pen.
Again, no tablets, no electronics, your pad and
your pen.
Take a pad and pen, sit down in
this forest in silence and reflect and introspect.
Keep your heart alive with the zikr of
Allah.
Keep remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Let your heart be beating to that, to
la ilaha illallah, to the dhruv and salam
on Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, whatever, subhanallah,
alhamdulillah.
But keep focused on yourself and try to
be aware of what is happening within yourself,
what's happening in my heart.
How do I feel?
When you sit in that forest, try to
feel your whole body.
What do my toes feel like?
My head and my arms and my fingertips
start from the extremities and come inwards.
What is each of these feeling like?
This awareness, this physical awareness is very important.
It does two things.
One is, it is an exercise in developing
awareness.
And second thing is, it then cancels out
the interference that that lack of awareness can
hammer.
Because your back will pain and your leg
will do something and so on.
And this will all interfere in your thinking
and your reflection.
So you want to get rid of that.
The thing about that is, when you become
aware of it, it goes away.
It stops disturbing you.
So become aware, consciously aware of what is
happening to you inside yourself.
Once you have done that, bring your mind
to the task at hand, which is, what
do I want out of life?
And write.
Don't worry about grammatically, is it correct?
What does the sentence look like?
What will somebody who reads it, will they
laugh, will they cry?
It's not about anybody.
It's not an exercise in composition writing.
It's not an exercise in writing poetry.
It's not an exercise in anything.
This is between you and yourself and you
and your heart and you and Allah.
So write down whatever is going on in
your mind.
Ask yourself questions.
Write whatever the answer is.
Don't worry about the answer.
Does it sound nice?
No.
Just write whatever is in your mind.
Including, I think I am insane.
Why did I listen to this lecture?
I think Shekher is insane.
Write all of that down.
But make sure that you are writing.
Writing is critical, without a doubt.
Writing is absolutely critical.
So make sure you don't not write.
So make sure you write things down.
Introspection.
Now, when you are writing down, remember, as
I said, three-step process.
Reflection or reflective observation.
Introspection.
And abstract conceptualization.
So this is the first step.
The first step is reflective observation.
So you are writing down what's happening in
your mind.
Your thoughts about your goal.
What are the different goals that I am
potentially considering.
Some of them might be clear.
Some of them might not be clear.
And it's a good thing to try at
this stage to narrow down to, if possible,
two or three goals.
And again, having said that, don't try and
do that in the first attempt.
Because, especially if you are not used to
being by yourself, it's not easy.
So don't think that, oh, you know, I
spent two hours and I didn't really get
anything out of this.
No.
This is part of the development process.
So keep it.
Keep the thought.
And keep on, you know, your focus on
it.
And keep working.
And it will come, Inshallah.
Not to worry.
So focus on writing now.
And again, as I said, you may have
to go again.
Do it a couple of times.
No problem.
Alhamdulillah.
That's the way when you start liking this.
And I hope you will enjoy it as
much as I do.
So writing down.
Now once you have written that down, so
in that process try and narrow down to
two or three.
It's not difficult because, you know, you are
not looking at every single thing or human
activity as possible.
You are looking at some things which you
would like to do.
And you are saying, out of these, which
are the top two.
Now one caveat.
Don't get into what is practical and what
is not practical.
For example, you say, I want to become
an airline pilot.
I want to be able to fly A380s
or whatever.
Or whatever is the new plane that gets
developed in the place of the A380.
I want to learn to fly that.
My immediate thought will come, you know, I
am a poor guy or I come from
a middle class or low middle class family.
We don't have a lot of money.
Flying school costs a lot of money.
How is this going to happen?
Don't worry about that.
Do not worry about the practicality of it.
Right now at this stage of the exercise,
we are looking at narrowing down possibilities of
what we want to achieve.
No matter how impossible it seems.
No matter how unlikely it seems.
No matter how difficult it seems.
No matter how expensive it seems.
No matter anything.
We are just narrowing down on the possibilities.
This is what I would like to do.
So, focus on that and keep thinking of
that.
Now, once you have that, go home.
Take your pad and go home.
If you don't have it yet and you
spent a couple of hours and you are
getting hungry or something and you want to
go home, go home.
On the question of hunger, feel free to
take some food with you.
Coffee, tea or whatever is your drink.
Water.
No problem with that.
I just don't want you to go there
with your phones and stuff.
So, take this with you.
Now, go home.
We then go to the second step.
And again, we don't go to the second
step until we finish the first step.
The first step may take two or three
iterations of this.
So, I go to the forest the first
time.
I come back with a few sketchy notes.
I am not very happy with that.
I go again and I work more on
this.
Until I am satisfied with the notes I
have and I think I have everything that
I need in order to go to the
next step of this exercise, which is the
step of introspection.
So, the step of introspection is where you
are going to be working with the data
you have.
And at the stage of introspection, now you
think of, to make this happen, what are
the steps?
Once again, don't worry about can I do
it?
Can't I do it?
Do I have the resources?
Don't I have the resources?
No.
What is required?
What are the steps required?
And in that, the reason I am saying
keep it separate is because there is always
this tendency and temptation to make compromises in
the steps to say, I don't have enough
money.
I don't have enough time.
I am living in the wrong country.
No.
The standard is very important.
The requirement is very important.
If the requirement is not clear, then you
don't know what resources you need to fulfill
it.
So, make sure that your requirement is clear.
This is what I need to achieve this
goal that I have set for myself.
So, clarity on the goal.
Out of that set of 2 and 3,
you can concentrate and try to bring it
to 1.
Even if you can't bring it to 1,
bring it to 2.
Usually, a good idea is not to take
it beyond 2.
And then you come to, once you have
2, then you look at those 2 and
say, To achieve number 1, what are the
others?
What do I need to have?
To achieve number 2, what do I need
to have?
Some of the things you need to have
might be material in terms of money and
getting this or that material stuff.
Others may have to do and will have
to do with yourself.
Developing myself.
Now, developing myself is in 2 ways.
One is acquiring knowledge and so on.
I need a PhD.
I need a Master's.
And I need it from this university or
that university.
That's one part.
The second thing is, as a human being,
what do I need to develop myself?
I need to develop more patience.
I need to develop better conflict resolution skills.
I need to develop better communication skills.
I need to develop better skills to communicate
with people who I have serious differences with.
It's easy to talk to and be with
people that we agree with.
But what about people we don't agree with?
In life, you're going to get both.
You're probably going to get more people you
don't agree with than the opposite.
So what are the skills I need for
that?
Skills of empathy.
Skills of courage.
Facing danger and looking danger in the eye
without fear.
What do I need to do?
So there's a whole series of set of
skills that you should identify and say, these
are the things that I need to develop.
One of the top skills that I recommend,
and I think everybody should have it, is
the ability to communicate through writing.
The skill of writing, the skill of creative
writing, is a very, very, very important skill.
Because remember, that is a legacy skill.
Whatever you say is going to be finished.
It will be forgotten, even if you record
it.
If you record it on some media, it
might stay there for a while.
But what remains is writing.
That's how today, 2,000 years after Plato
passed away, we still read the Republic.
We still read the ancient books of different
cultures because of writing.
And that's why even the Quran al-Karim,
which came as the spoken word, the Quran
did not come as a written word, it
came as a spoken word, was then written
down.
People didn't say, well, you know, it's okay,
we all have memorized it, and we know
it, and we love Allah, and we love
his Rasul, and we have everything, and we
don't need to write.
No, it's a no.
Writing is in point.
And even though the Prophet ﷺ was unlettered,
he didn't know how to read and write,
he encouraged it.
And he said, write it down.
So that's how the Quran and the Ahadith,
his teachings, his explanation of the Quran, have
been written down from day one.
And those who say that the Ahadith were
not written down, they were not preserved, and
so on, they're talking through their hats.
They don't understand what they're saying.
It was written down, and it makes logical
sense.
Why would you write down a command, and
not write down how that command was to
be fulfilled?
It makes absolutely zero sense.
So you're saying that people who say that
the Ahadith were not preserved, they're effectively saying
that we wrote down, and what was written
down was established prayer, but not how it
is to be done.
It doesn't make sense, it makes absolutely zero
sense.
No one with half a brain would do
that.
And the people who did it were a
lot more intelligent than that.
So that's a side note, but the important
point is that learning to write is a
very, very important and critical skill, which I
believe we should develop.
So this is what you're doing now, introspection
exercising.
What do I need to succeed?
Material things, non-material things, things that have
to do with acquiring knowledge, and things that
have to do with acquiring skills and abilities.
Some are skills as in to do with
your hands and with your mind and so
on, and communication, so conflict resolution skills, and
communication skills and so on, but much more
important are skills which are a state of
being.
As a person, what do I need to
be?
And how do I need to be?
What is that skill?
Develop those skills.
Not develop, I mean, write all that down.
Finally, the third stage, which is abstract conceptualization,
which is your roadmap going forward.
Where are you going to say, right?
So I now have all this data of
what I need to do and what I
need to develop and so on.
So now going forward, what is my game
plan?
How am I going to do this?
Where do I start?
When do I start?
And how do I start?
So this is where the issue of arriving
at a goal is.
So I wish you all the very best,
and you're most welcome to comment on the
video, you're also welcome to ask me for
further clarification if you think you need it,
and all the best in setting inspirational goals
for yourself, and even more importantly, in achieving
them.
Thank you very much, and alhamdulillah, the opportunity
to talk to all of you.