S01E31 – Have Nothing To Do? Find Out Why This Can Work Against You!
Date:
Channel: Muslim Life Hackers
Series: Muslim Life Hackers - Season 1
File Size: 8.31MB
Episode Notes
Mifrah speaks about idleness, what’s wrong with it and what you can do if you find yourself falling into it.
Episode Transcript ©
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Episode 31 Welcome to the Muslim life hackers podcast, the weekly podcast providing you with tips and tricks on how to hack your life and maximize its potential. And now for your hosts Mithra maroof and maheen Malik.
As we said, the crisis see
Assalamu alaikum Muslim life hackers, this is me for America with the 31st episode of the Muslim life hackers podcast. In this podcast, I'm going to be speaking to you about idleness. What's wrong with it? And what can you do about it, if you find yourself being idle, one of the reasons that I decided to go ahead with this topic was because today, I was driving back from class and I was, it seems to be one of Muslim life hackers episodes. And obviously, the one I was listening to you wasn't the one in which I wasn't the one which I was doing the speaking because just hearing my voice makes me cringe a bit. He was an episode by maheen. And it should be the one that you would
have heard last week about over commitment, what to do if you're over committed. So for that podcast, you would have heard that being over committed, some is something that can work against you. And at the same time, the opposite of that is being idle, which in which you have nothing to do and that also can work against you. And so in an effort to balance out her message, I decided that I'm going to go for the opposite of this topic and provide some useful insight on it. So before I start with today's podcast, I just want to let you know that Muslim life hackers has been redesigned, they can our website, we actually launched up our new website during EAD. And you can
check it out over at Wilson life hackers.com. And at the front, you can find in video eat message by myself and maheen, which had lots of fun filming, and also a feedback form. So in that feedback form, you can let us know your thoughts, feedback and ideas for future podcast. So future podcasts and future projects as well. So would really love to know. So do fill out the form. Okay, so now let's get into today's podcast. So when we get idleness, having nothing to do, what's wrong with it? I mean, surely, it must be a good thing, right? Since doing nothing equals no stress equals no pressure, no need to wake up. And, you know, be in a rush. And it almost equal bliss, right? Well,
it's actually quite the contrary, let's see. First of all, I don't know, causes sadness and despair. There was an article that was that I was reading, called human psychology, the paradox of idleness in which there was, they actually wrote about this study in which they had two sets of people, two sets, two groups of people actually. And the first group were was a group that waited and did nothing. And the second group where they actually did some sort of action, right. And it was reported that the second group actually felt more happier than the first group. So
from that, there, they concluded that action like when, when something like time was made use off, rather than just like steel time in which they did nothing. The people who made use of that time actually felt more happier.
Secondly, to add to the point that of idleness, causing sadness and despair, there is a book called Don't be sad by Dr. Lala cottony in which he says, When you find yourself idle, prepare for depression, and despair. Because idleness allows your mind to wander in the past, the present and the future, with all their difficulties. Therefore, my sincere advice to you is to perform fruitful acts instead of being idle, for idleness is a slow and veiled form of suicide. So that's actually pretty, pretty deep, as I say. And it does, it has a lot of truth to it.
The second reason as to why idleness is actually something harmful for us is that it goes against the nature of how we were created. You see, unless one of Allah, God has given us a body, he's given us a brain so that we can be active and not inactive. And we see this, for example, in that study that I mentioned earlier, in which the people who had some sort of action felt more happier, as opposed to those who waited and did nothing. And so what happens when we go against a nature of something is that we get we have to face the consequences. So in this case, when we stopped
when we're when we engage in idleness, and we stopped doing something in our time, then we have to face the consequences. And this can be such as like having low self confidence in ourselves feeling like we can't achieve anything bad habits.
Taking on bad habits such as being more lazy, being a person of all talk, no action, and being a person full of excuses and all these things that just make someone go downhill. And, seriously, I mean, would you want your life to be like that. And it's very sad when, like we've all been gifted with our life in order to, and this life actually determines what our life in the hereafter would be. And when we don't make use of this life to its full potential, then we're really, we're really shortchanging our own selves. And it's not something that we'd want to be in mela protect us all. I mean, it is a balancing act, it is a struggle, but it's something that we have to always try and try
and try in order to get better.
And so which reminds me of how they, how that statement goes in which like,
as each minute goes by, it's like a part of us goes away. And we are really like time. And so when people say like, they want to kill time now what they're really doing is killing themselves. And that's, that's pretty sad.
The final point as to why idleness is actually something harmful for us is that idleness, having nothing to do actually opens up an opportunity for us to fall into things that are pointless, or are sinful. So you see, when you don't have you when when you when you don't have anything to do, and you just have so much time on your hands, then what happens is that you might, you know, a full, safe route for for example, you, you decide, okay, we're just going to call up your friend who also is bored, and has nothing to do so you speaking and speaking. And then what that ends up is that it turns into, like backbiting and you know, all these things that you can fall into. And on the other
hand, even if you're alone, and say, you're online, and you're just surfing around, and you know, one click to another click to another click, and you end up on a website that you shouldn't be visiting. And you get up to all sorts of troubles that your parents don't know what you're doing. But Allah subhanaw taala knows. And the point I'm coming across here is that it's not that, you know, I'm, I'm telling you to not go on the internet or something, what I'm saying is that this all happened as a result of idle time of not having anything in your time. So if we, if you can make that conscious decision decision to be more intentional in the way we spend our time and finding
things to do in our time, rather than keeping it free, then we can, you know, avoid getting into the situations that will end up regretting later, years down like month soil, but like, you know, down the track, we'll end up regretting it. I mean, whenever we do something wrong, it's always in the future, we're going to look back and regret. And it's just, it's just the way, it's just the way it is. So these are the reasons as to why idleness is actually something harmful for us. Now, we know that idleness is harmful. So now, how do we get out of it? Like, how do we get out of this hole? You know, have nothing to do? I mean, what can we do? That's a question. Well, the first thing to
realize is that not all types of doing nothing is necessarily a bad thing, right? There is something called relaxation, right. And there's also something which is idleness, which I was speaking about in today's podcast. And the way you can tell between it is to find out if you have a reason behind what you're doing. So for example, you're resting after an exhausting long day, then enjoy, I mean, rest well, because you know, you need that rest for your body, you're giving your body it's right, and you're, you know, just refreshing so that you can continue on with what you wanted to do like the next day. And on the other hand, you can even like have an intention, like, plan up like a, an
activity with your family, and have a good time with them with an intention of strengthening your family ties. So for the sake of Allah, you can also get reward for that for that at the same time. And that would be like a relaxation thing as well. So that's not necessarily a bad thing, either. But on the other hand, say, say it's like a Saturday morning and you have no school or college or uni on that day. And what happens is like you decide to sleep in until like the day and you know, you you wake up at night and you look at the clock and you're like now have any go back. And then you wake up again at 11 o'clock and you're like now there's nothing to do so you just keep sleeping.
I mean, it's it's not so good because
what happens is that you wake up at like midday and then you stay awake and then the sun goes quickly because it's like, You slept during this most of the time as well. And then it's just it's just
Feels like your day just flew past really. And there's very little you can get done after that. So
that's how you can actually tell between if it was something that was relaxation or idleness. So it's by the intention behind it. What What did you intend before you actually did that.
So now the next thing, in order to get out of this nothingness, we can call it, like doing nothing behaviors that check your surroundings, because you see,
um, who, like who our friends are, actually influences who we are, I mean, it's a fact of life, the people we hang around with are, are going to have an influence on us. And the Prophet sallahu wa sallam told us about this. And
there's also the saying that you are made up of the five people that you hang around with. So from that,
you may not always be able to control the people that are around you in person, right? Because it may be that, you know, these people are your friends that you have are generally good people, but they just have some bad habits about, you know, just being idle and everything and, but they, they're not really interested in changing it. And they're like, the best kind of people you can find in your school or college or wherever you are, right. So even if you can't change that, there is something else you can change, you know what you can change, you can actually change what you feed into your mind. And by feed it if he D feed
by think social media, right? So you see,
you need to really be conscious of what you're consuming online. So check what you're reading online, what do you listen to? What kind of books are you reading? What magazines are you reading? What kind of status updates tweets? Are you reading? Because you see, if you're reading things that are like complaints, like, you know, there's that odd friend that always complains about everything, or like, you know, there's another friend who's like, I'm bored, and they post up a selfie. Or it's like, another friend is like, I'm so bored. It's like, if you're constantly reading statuses, like they said, it's gonna, it's gonna affect you, and you're gonna also be like, yeah, I'm bored, then
we just be bored and do nothing, right. And so what you put in your mind, that is what would come out, right? So what you can do a very powerful technique is that control what you consume online. And you see, you don't have to tell your friends that or you're not, you're not going to read the status updates in which they're complaining, and no one would not accept you. And the thing is,
go ahead and control what you're reading. And if it's not making you a better person, then then cut it out, cut, cut, cut that out of your life and make maybe in future podcasts, I can explain how I actually approach social media and some of the things that some of the things I have in place to ensure that I control what I actually
I actually read online, and what I actually come in contact with online, so that it influences me for the better really,
you see, at the end of the day, it's social media, and all these things that I'm reading online should be something that
hasn't benefit for me. I mean, it's not just I'm there to, I don't know, I mean, no waste of my time, I suppose. Anyway. So be conscious of that, and choose what you feed f Ed into your mind.
The last way, which I have here, on how you can get out of this whole nothingness, like doing nothing, is by finding something to do. I mean, so it's obvious, but
I use some of the reasons why we don't know, on the you know, we don't know how to fill in this time, it's because we don't know what to do out there. So, you know, do something like, like I mentioned earlier, plan activities to spend with your family, with the good intention of strengthening Family Ties for the sake of Allah, and inshallah you get rewards for that. Or you can do something like, do something you enjoy, sign up for sports, play for a team. Go learn a skill. For example, you can learn how to swim if you didn't get to learn when you're younger. You can also learn other skills like martial arts and become like Kung Fu Panda, he's pretty cool. You can also
go get a job somewhere and learn lots of things at a workplace. And at the same time, make money and spend it on things that you like and spend it on even to fund hobbies like martial arts will suit the swimming lessons, right. So you can also sign up for volunteering organizations and charity organizations sorry and volunteer, be a Muslim organization, organization or even non Muslim organizations.
So there are some lot of things you can learn there. Or you can read good books, and really immerse yourself some good good books and,
you know, increase your increase in like some good beneficial knowledge. So if you want to find out books to read the, by the way, you can go check out Goodreads, it's a social media website for books. So you can check that out. Anyway, you see what it does, when you engage yourself in like, productive activities like this, then it not only fills in your nothing time, but it also teaches you skills that you just can't learn at school and in college and things like that. Because Take Take it from me. I mean, I've been on both sides when it comes to like getting a job, right? I've been on both sides in a sense that I've been on the side of getting interviewed. And I've also been
been at the back to actually sort through resumes and actually interview people, right. And I tell you that the people who have done more activities outside their normal studies, generally, they stand out more to be honest. And there are some things like I mentioned, school doesn't teach you everything. And you need to actually go out there and take that initiative to be someone that learns more, and takes learning into their own hands. Because you see, the people who succeed are those who actually take learning into their own hands. It doesn't stop when their course stops, or their studies stop. So I'm just going to tangent there. But that's something that I'm really passionate
about, like learning being a lifelong and davia.
So, with that, I end off today's podcast, you can check out like more ideas on what to do if you have nothing to do at an episode that we did before it was episode seven. And so you can find that by going to Muslim life hackers.com slash seven. But that's about it for today's podcast. And for the show notes. You can check out Wilson life hackers.com slash 31. Finally, do you want to be on the list of life hacker show? Because from time to time, we will be including in our show or dedicating an entire show two questions asked by you. So if you have a question, then simply record a voicemail over at Wilson life hackers.com slash ask and if chosen, will be played and answered in
our upcoming episodes. So that wraps up today's episode of life hackers. Until next time, aim high. Take action and be awesome.