Muhammad Alshareef – Encore Day 2 Silencing Your Inner Critic
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of succeeding in a project, as it requires a long period of pain and day effort. They emphasize the importance of stories and the importance of spending time with children. The speaker also emphasizes the need for more time to build up and encourage others to share their past mistakes and express their dislike for the internet. They encourage parents to shut off media and focus on their own projects.
AI: Summary ©
Two more things related to wild ideas. I want to share with you where to get wild ideas to more, I have a whole ton of these things. And I want to share with you where not to get wild ideas because that could be equally as important. Don't look for wild ideas in this section. Okay, so here's the number one way to find wild ideas, whatever people are doing go the opposite way. Whatever people are doing go the opposite way. There's this statement that that never left my mind. And that is, you know, when the Gold Rush happened, I don't know when it happened in California. And everybody went I don't know like 100 years ago or something like that there was a gold rush in California 49 San
Francisco 40 Niners so when that gold rush happened everybody went to to try to find gold but they said the person who thrived in that in that era was the or in that area was the person who was selling pans like you know in order to pick up the gold the person who sold pants to everybody is the one that succeeded and they say like Levi Strauss jeans Levi's jeans, Levi's jeans when you're down looking for gold, you need clothing that's not going to rip so Levi's jeans comes along and they sell the genes to everybody and then they become a very successful company. They're the genes that everybody needs to go searching for gold if everybody's going in a direction let's try this all
of us here let's come up with wild ideas and I'll be brutally honest if your ideas not wild so be it if everybody that around you like Instagram you have all these sisters that are doing I'm doing coaching for sisters sisters doing coaching for sisters okay no problem I'm sure and I'm sure some people who are doing that as well. How do you go in the opposite direction?
If everybody's How do you go in the opposite direction of sisters doing coaching for sisters? Give me a shot. What do you think what would make a wild idea? Go in the exact opposite direction? What would your idea be? Let's try it out.
Sisters on Instagram doing coaching first sisters
so if he just says adventures for sisters
Okay, I like it Camila says sisters doing coaching for brothers nice. I like it.
Brothers doing coaching for brothers Yeah, I've seen that before
sisters coaching brothers coaching for brothers come on guys break your brains out of this Instagram training for sisters who are doing coaching for other sisters on Instagram.
I like that Amira says they coach me her I like it. I like it.
So rather than you coaching them, they coach you.
One more Come on guys. I just hear the same things. Sisters coaching brothers. Okay, come on more than that. retreats for coaches,
being a coach or or coaching certification for sisters who coach districts.
Ah.
So back to what we said, If this is the gold rush in California, and instead of searching for gold, you want to sell the pens to everybody or sell the jeans to everybody? What could you sell? Or what could be your idea to all these sisters coaches ask the question, what is their pain? What is their pain? And then go the opposite direction from there something that all of them would need.
So I got an idea. What if all these Instagram sisters selling Instagram? What if you could do tailored Instagram posting for each coach? They all have problems doing marketing and being present on social media. What if I could take that off your back and do the Instagram marketing and messaging for you. And you just do your business. So it could be like selling the item?
IT services. I like it for old school. I will set up the database for you.
This is true. By the way, by the way. I'll tell you guys that social media managers that are really good
Have and can actually get results are in high high demand. So if you like to spend time on Instagram, you'd like to spend time on social media master it become the master of that, because there are so many companies that need that kind of skill. Okay, the next thing, the next thing that the next way to get your wild idea
is what I call the PT irony of being the best in the world, the time irony of being the best in the world, what I'm about to tell you took me many years, many years of pain, to finally understand what I'm about to tell you do not take this lightly. Do not take it lightly, at least 10 years to figure this out. And once I figured it out, all the pain and suffering and mental anguish went away. So one thing that you'll see is that a lot of people talk about being the best in the world, the best, you know, florist in the world, the best fashion brand in the world, the best coach in the world, the best blah, blah, blah in the world, this the best in the world, the best in the world, the Pro and
me do I start a Melbourne Institute, I'm like I want to be the best Islamic educational
institution in the world in the history of Muhammad said a lot is, which is pretty big. So what I learned from that is when you insist on being the best. And by the way, tell me in the comments, have you thought of being the best?
Have you already thought of your idea, we're going to be the best in the world.
Of course, that's what we're trying to do be the best.
Here's the problem with that being the best in the world will necessitate that other people have to fail in order for you to succeed. Okay, again, in order if you say that you want to be the best in the world, it necessitates that others must fail in order for you to succeed. That's where jealousy comes in. That's where you know sabotaging somebody else's project. That's when you see your brothers and sisters, they're doing good and you hate them and not why are they doing good stuff like that. It all comes from this tiny irony of being the best. So this is one word that will save you five to 10 years of pain and anguish. And that is the word among among the best. All law make me
among the best mother's or Allah make me among the best fashion brands in the world. Oh, Allah makes me among the best coaches in the world. Allah makes me make me amongst the prophets of the shahada, and the solid in Yokohama in general, for those amongst them might be in MMA, right with amongst them will Kuno marsali in and be with the righteous people. So this little word, like I said, will save you five to 10 years of mental anguish, and trying to sabotage and fighting with other organizations, stuff like that, because your idea doesn't have to be the best. You don't have to like I've seen some people, they're like, hey, I want to start, you know, this, this cat business.
But there's a Muslim organization here that does a cat business. So I must quit my idea because there can only be one the best. So I say in response, how about you and them and a couple of others do this cat business, not necessarily in competition, but a collection of the best cat businesses out there. And that comes up with like Islamic institutions. Suppose you want an Islamic educational institution, you don't have to be the only gig in town. You don't have to be the only one doing Islamic education. You can. There could be multiple how many universities are there in the US, there's so many, and they're all full, and they all have people, the same thing can be for your
idea. It can be full, I mean, the woman needs more and more, not less than less and only one so that's another way to
that's another way to approach your well idea is do not tell yourself that you need to be the best in the world. Tell yourself that you to be amongst the best. And that opens a whole avenue of collaborations and support for one another and all these good things inshallah Tada.
Now let me tell
let me tell you guys where not to get your wild ideas where not to look for ideas. This is equally important because just like I'm telling you, hey, this is where you get ideas from, then all of a sudden, some uncle of yours is gonna tell you to, hey, let me tell you, let me tell you I went to school to this is where I got ideas, and they tell you an idea, like, hey, get a mortgage and, and pay for 30 years and, and buy a house. And that's how you'll be wealthy.
Like that, like they say free advice can be some of the most expensive advice you'll ever get in your life. Free Advice may be the most expensive advice you get in your life, because it wastes your time. It wastes your money, it wastes your life, because this free advice will take you down a pitfall and a mountain, and you might not be able to recover from it for many years. You know how I keep saying that recovery from this issue might take five years, 10 years, because that's how life is when it comes to these businesses, you take a misstep or you get the wrong advice. And you launch a company and you go through the
you build it and it doesn't work out and you have to rewind, that's what I'm talking about like three, five years like this. So the first of these no thoughts situations is
sorry, the first place to not look for while ideas is no thoughts, situations, no thoughts situations. So what do I mean by no thoughts situation? And no thoughts situation is when you get an idea, and you have not spend time really assessing it. So
let me an example of a no thought situation. And actually, this is related to food. For me, I won't eat a snack, unless I've spent time thinking about it. Because then I know that my craving for the snack is real. So right now, for example, the snack that I'm craving is a hamburger. I'm craving a hamburger. I don't know why. But I have thought of
I literally I was typing tissue. This isn't for you. I was typing something. And then and I wanted to tell Tisha, you know what, I need a hamburger, right? Like it's in my mind I've been I've been thinking about it. It's those kinds of situations that I've spent time thinking about that I will act upon a situation that I will not act upon. Yeah, it's a snack because it's not hamburgers are not real meals kind of thing. A situation that I would not act upon is if you're ever in a checkout line, like you're in a supermarket or something like that, and all of a sudden, you feel like you want a Snickers bar, or you feel like hey, I want to get that magazine, I want to get you've spent
no time thinking about this. How come all of a sudden, you feel like a chocolate bar. And something in that atmosphere is triggering it. That could be a color, it could be like the color red, which is scientifically proven, you know, to make you hungry. It could be like some advertisement programming that kicked off. That's that craving is fake. That craving is fake.
And then so I tell myself, why is it that I've only spent five seconds now all of a sudden, I feel like a chocolate bar. This is not real. If I just wait another 20 seconds. I will not really crave this anymore. Okay, so your ideas are like that if you haven't spent I'll give you an idea. This is a brother that told me that his idea was to
he saw some sisters buying diapers.
Diapers, I don't know what the British term for diapers in nappies. Yeah. And, and then he saw some other sisters buying diapers. And then he said, I want to start a diaper business. I want to, you know, create diapers. And I said, like, Hold on. Is this profitable for you? Yes. That's why he thought of this idea. Is it fun? And he's a guy, how exciting is it to to go wholesale diaper shopping.
So it's not fun. Is it beneficial? You know what, you know, so you save them like $1 or two on their nitrogen that it's not really beneficial that you know, you spend your time on this. So that was like a no thought situation. He just saw an idea. Like, let me do this. What I just said happens to all of us. We just like these ideas just pop in our head like I could try this as you try that. You haven't really thought it out. There's no thought behind those things. There's no deliberation and those kinds of things.
peers tend to if you go to sleep and wake up the next day, you'll find that there, it's a junk idea.
Okay, so the second place, that
second place where you not to get while ideas
is
asking the wrong questions. So the question that I do not like, is when somebody says, Does this sound like a good idea? We always hear this question being said, Does this sound like a good idea? And I hate that question. hate is a strong word, don't really hate it. It's more like, I prefer other questions to it. So when somebody says, You know what, selling diapers on Amazon? Does that sound like a good idea? This is my response. The correct question should be, is this a wow idea better than anything else I've deliberated on for the past 30 ideas? Is it fun, beneficial and profitable? And is it the best use of my time and skills at presence? Do you see how that's a lot
different than asking? Is this a good idea? I'll repeat that again. It's like this. And you can you even if you miss what I'm saying here, you can come back to this to this recording. It says, Is this a wild idea? Okay, so selling divers on Amazon? Is this a wild idea better than anything else that you've deliberated on for the past 30 ideas? Is it fun? Is it beneficial to other people? Is it profitable? And is it the best use of your time and skills at this present moment? Okay, then you'll see that the answer is a resounding no. Depending on the question, your ideal will thrive or won't thrive.
Okay,
so that's kind of like warming you back up yesterday, we're talking about the WoW idea, this five day suit challenge, I want you to get your you want to come out, pay this is my idea and take your first steps, inshallah Tada towards moving forward. Okay.
The next thing that you're going to face, I call these, I mean, it would be better if you had a different analogy, if I had a different analogy, but the reality is, what I'm about to tell you is a dragon, a dragon that standing, you know, the princess or whatever, or the or the gold or whatever is behind the dragon. And now the dragon is you're going to face it. And that is the stories that we tell ourselves as to why we can or cannot do something, the stories that we tell ourselves as to why we can or cannot do something. And it's usually why we cannot do it.
Actually, you know,
I have a whole bunch of examples for this. But let me share with you this example.
I have a friend who went for medical weight loss, he went for medical weight loss, meaning that you know, they were giving him injections, and he was meeting with a doctor and so on. And he was supposed to do some exercise. And so the doctor says to him, Have you been doing your exercise?
And then have you been doing your exercise? And then my friend said to the doctor, no, my knees are hurting. And the doctor responded and he said, *.
He literally said that. And he shocked my friend. It wasn't me. She shocked in and he said, Have you ever heard of something called swimming?
Have you ever heard of something called swimming and I love that, because we take our stories and we tell ourselves I can't exercise because my knees are hurting. But there's and by the way, this actually happened to me I was doing a fitness challenge. And and I injured my hip. I could not do any leg cardio even though I had like a, a cardio challenge that I was doing. I'm telling you there's actually multiple ways. There's actually multiple ways that you can deal with you can still exercise. One of them is a ski machine. One of them is like an A standing up like bicycle but you're doing it with your hands. You can do boxing, get on the glove, just put on some gloves and do
boxing. Do you see what I'm saying that once you just say hey, you know what, this is my situation, but I'm not going to accept it. I'm going to like go beyond you actually open up more alternatives for yourself. I love those exercise machines. I love this machine. I love the work that I'm doing
Boxing, and those are Cardiel as well. But that aside, let's talk about, let's talk about the stories that you tell yourself. The stories that you tell yourself.
Tell me if I'm not wrong, you want to start your business. Let's get right down to the real one. And you tell yourself, I'm an impostor, who am I to coach other people? I'm the one who needs coaching. So the first story that we tell ourselves is, I'm not worthy of providing the service for other people. And that happens to let's say, a chef. She studies chef studies, Dean, and then
studies Dean and that has to give lectures about being the best person in the world when the chef knows, hey, this is not who I am. Right? Like, I'm not perfect. If you're a coaching business, or this and that I'm an imposter. Well, my Am I qualified? Thank you. Nazia. The second type of story that you might tell yourself is, I don't have the resources to do this. I want to do it. But I don't have the resources. Resources, meaning like, I don't have a team. I don't have funding. I don't have a website. I don't have an app. I don't have a social media manager. I don't have I don't have I don't have resources is a second story. Yes. Phases saying no time, phase. Point number three. I
won't have time to do this. Like, yeah, I really want to do this. But I
phases said there was a phase at Pitzer that somebody just said funding phases that no time actually, this, this, this idea is I won't have time, like I have time now. But if I start a business, that's actually a really big one, if I start a business, or I start the kind of like my, you know, idea, my niche or whatever,
that I'm not gonna have time.
And if we don't deal with these stories, they become our life. Like some people actually succeed in life. And other people have a story that's like a little cuddle bear that they go to sleep with at night. And people say, Why haven't you started that wonderful idea that you've been working on? And then you say, if I started it, I wouldn't have time there like, whatever. If I started it, I wouldn't have time. And so you hug your bear, you go to sleep. And after, after a couple of years of doing that, then you see your friends started businesses, you see other people doing the business that you wanted to do other people thriving, you start building up this regret, I should have done
it. You have tons of time. You have tons of time.
Hey, for all the moms in the house. How about this one?
I have I'm getting really serious with the moms here. Have you ever seen? Actually, I don't know about the moms, it's for dads. But have you ever said something like if I start a business or if I follow my dreams, I won't have time to spend with the kids? Have you ever said that I won't have time to spare, I want to spend time with the kids. If I do this, I'll be I'll be you know, I won't have time for the kids. The reason that it's actually not for moms, because this is what I said to myself. I'm like, I want to spend time with the kids. I don't have time to go out and follow my dreams or anything like this.
My kids were traveling. This is a couple of years ago, my kids were traveling. And
and by the way, one of the biggest stories we tell ourselves is blaming the kids like the if the kids could talk to us, they would tell us to shut up and go do what you need to do. Because you already spend eight hours a day on social media. Don't tell me that you're not doing this. Because you want to spend quality time with the kids. How about you just shut off Instagram, and goals. Now you have eight hours in your day to go spend build your dreams instead of blaming the kids just out on saying. So this is what happened to me. I feel like it's the kids. I'm not doing that. And then I noticed that even when I'm with the kids, I don't spend quality time with them. I'm just like in the
general proximity of the kids when I'm not spending quality time with them. And then they traveled and there was I was by myself. I was in an apartment by myself. And I still didn't do what I was blaming the kids for the reason why I don't do it. They weren't even there. And I was still
Am I doing it desperately searching for another valid excuse to make my story and make me feel better when I go to sleep? Do you see what I'm saying? So Instagram, I'm sorry, on our phones eight hours a day, all you need to do is take two hours out of that. And let's deal with some of these stories. So I'm not just going to throw these stories out at you, I'm going to address them. So the first thing is
I won't have time, the first excuse, I'd like to address obviously, and actually, later on, I would love you guys to post in the Facebook group. Tell us what's been your story so far? And what would you like your new story to be? Because when you let your story out to the world, you'll find that there's other people that don't really have that story. They've got their own silly stories, but your story might not connect with somebody else. And they can give you some advice that like, look, it's not true. So here's one of them. Here's one of those stories. And it's I won't have time.
When I started a Muslim Institute, I was, you know, in multiple cities, and very successful handler, right, from like, day one. And
I remember a doctor brother, who took our classes, and he saw me playing games, this is like in New Jersey, he saw me like going on tour in New Jersey, hey, we're gonna go check this out and stuff like that. And he said, It's shocking how little time you actually work. But you get so much done.
It's shocking, because it's just you just have to be strategic about how you do the work. And I tell some, I tell people, like, if you want more time in your life, you need to make more money, I sorry, yeah, you need to enter more. I know, it sounds like you're going to spend the time. Like, for example, if you own the business, you would have more time than being an employee, an employee has to work, let's say 12 hours a day, and the boss can like, go on vacation, come back, check this out, make sure things are working. When you aim for higher levels, you actually get more time, if somebody tells you that a when I started building up my businesses and I have less time, what that
person is saying is that they're not. They don't know how to manage people. They don't know how to manage things, they haven't used time techniques. They're trying to be a perfectionist for some reason. And they those kinds of people actually make bad managers, if I was hiring somebody, and they said something like that to me, like, oh, I spent so much time I'm like, then you're not being efficient, you don't know how to manage people. Second story that we, that we tell ourselves is I don't have the resources, such as I don't have funding or there's nobody that wants to volunteer, nobody wants to help me. And the thing is, with the resources is that almost everything is free.
These days, it's free, you know, how somebody says, Why is everything? Why all the good stuff you have to be you have to pay for? I get that a lot. So if I'm not a lot, but there's always somebody that makes that comment, when we sell a class, and somebody says Why is everything you have to pay? I'm like no, that you don't have to pay for these things. That's free. So social media is free. Google documents is free email delivery up until like 2000 contacts is free. PayPal to make payments is technically free, but to process online payments, you have zoom, which is free. And we're living in amazing times. Everybody's like dropping everything free, free, free free. And they let you build
up to a level that when when those services start charging you you're already making money to pay for those services.
You know, there's free services to Yeah, literally the whole world is full of great ideas of free things that are available to you entire university courses are available, you name it, the resources are there. Maybe in the olden days, olden days me like the 1930s you needed, like resources, but now everything is everything is free.
The last one we'll talk about here is I'm an imposter. I'm not qualified who am I to be speaking about this
I'll tell you a little backstory. So
little backstory in in the UK. They have back in I don't know if they do it but there's this fame
Yes, queen, queen, Queen Mary University. I know all the all the UK people that want to say Queen Mary. Yes, Queen Mary University has this annual dinner
and, and they invite speakers and they get like big speakers is a really big event for students to come together and stuff like that. Again, this was like how many years ago like you're talking about 2009 or something like that maybe even older than that. Maybe it was 20 years. I don't even remember how it was a very long time ago. Yeah, it could have been like 2002 This is when this happened. Cool. No, it's in London. And Samina says, I love those annual dinners. I know UK people. So I got invited. This is like ministry for up and coming speaker young guy and martial arts Avantika love fiery speaker fiery but like, Yeah, whatever. So I got invited to this event. And I was going to be
one of the main speakers. And then after like, a few weeks, after a few weeks, I hadn't heard anything from them. So I contacted them and I said, Hey, brother, so is this annual dinner happening. And then And then he said to me, he said oh so sorry. Did you think you were invited? We're so sorry. We didn't we invited somebody else
Hmm. So so my Queen Mary annual dinner invitation was canceled. And do you know why it was canceled? It was canceled because
I had a friend in in Medina, who was a British student who is extremely knowledgeable martial arts Avantika law, like when I was like failing classes, and this brother who was my friends was getting like 95% this and that and you know, like 90% 95% bla bla bla he got so like really high marks. So they asked him his opinion about them inviting Pamela should Eve and he said, Oh, this guy's a punk. He doesn't know
he's an imposter.
Arrest him He's an imposter and I would have gotten away with it. If it wasn't for you meddling Medina University.
Yeah, so
what happened? What so the reason that I'm telling you guys this is between between me and that brother, Allah father, my friends 20 years later, he's like, I think he's an Imam, and a little more solid than London or something like that. Or he's very knowledgeable. If you look at you know, like how life works, you don't have to be the most knowledgeable person to make the biggest impact or make an impact. It's amongst the biggest in the organization. So it doesn't matter. Actually, even just, just yesterday, my wife was looking at my marks from Medina University.
She said, A stuffer Allah, your marks are so low Muhammad, not all my marks, your marks are so low Muhammad. And I'm like, Look, nobody looks at the mark sheets of your university. They're only looking at Did you graduate or not the graduated Alhamdulillah. That's it. That's all anybody ever cares about after that. It's the results that you provide for people. If you provide the results for people, nobody cares, but your qualification or anything like that. And to be honest, if you notice my style, and when I'm teaching, I'm vulnerable, I'm vulnerable. And I get a lot of comments that say, Hey, I really appreciate I really appreciate you being real with us. But I'm like, I don't like
to be I don't like to make up a story some fake story of oh, I'm this I'm that I never make a mistake. We're human beings actually really dislike about the internet that people tried to show that they're perfect. I'm like, and whenever somebody makes a mistake, everybody's like, look, he made a mistake or she made a mistake. It's called being human. It's just that now on the internet, that mistake is magnified. I'm like, but everybody makes mistakes. And I'm like, Hey, let me share with you guys my mistakes. I feel better being human rather than trying to put up some fake facade and stuff like