Transformers Ep.7 – Great Change Requires Patience

Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh dear brothers and sisters in Islam Welcome to Transformers I pray this broadcast finds you in the best of health, and the highest of Islamic spirits. This is Episode Seven. And I would like to discuss with you all the importance of patience, because the key ingredient towards the creation of great change is great effort. And the key ingredient with regards to great effort is patience. And this is part of the DNA of Islam. It's part of the DNA of life, it's a matter of physics, right? This is how Allah subhanho wa Taala has created life. You know, one of the things that I am noticing, in my different travels and working with different communities is

a trend of people lacking patience. And no doubt one of the things that has aided this trend to come about is the instant age that we live in whereby we get everything at the push of a button, there's no real effort that's required. And if no, there's no effort required, and there's no real patience that is needed. So for example, if you you know, long ago, you could only speak to someone far away from you, if they were at a telephone and they couldn't take their telephones with them. Now we have instant communication, you have instant messaging applications.

You know, if then it wasn't even enough, you wanted to know that your message was sent. So they gave you a tick, then you wanted to know now that the message was delivered, so they gave you two ticks, then you wanted to know now that the message was red, so they gave you two blue ticks, everything is on demand. This is how we live everything is now before you had one TV channel, if you wanted to watch the news, you had to wait till 8pm at night or 6am in the morning. Now you have dedicated news channels, the children when they wanted to watch cartoons, they could, they had to wait till the screening time for the cartoons maybe five o'clock in the evening when all the schoolwork was done.

And they only had half an hour slot. Now all of a sudden you have dedicated cartoon channels, then even that wasn't enough. Now you can record and replay.

You know, from the decoded device itself, that presents to you the channel everything is is instant, right Instagram, food is instant as well, how it's delivered, your tracking of it, you know exactly where your food is, you know exactly where the plane is in the sky. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing. But if you're not careful in terms of your own relationship with Insta, then you're going to retrogress you're not going to transform this episode in our series is a series of transformation. Right? Not just inspiration, but inspiration that leads to real change. Right? We know we have a lot of knowledge around us today, and we've discussed this in other episodes. But the question is ways

to change. We are the people that are willing to spend the price, pay the price, right? Spend the amount, pay the price that is required for that inspiration, to transform them to something else to move them better ways it right. So clearly, something's wrong. And in my humble estimate, what's wrong is we lack patience. That is what is wrong. If you look at, you know how Allah subhanho wa Taala even revealed to us our you know, our rules, our regulations, it happened over time the Quran was revealed over a period of time 23 years, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wasn't given instant access to Medina, when his people troubled him he had to go through 13 years of being

patient with his people not lifting his arms, even in,

in defense, right? Allah subhanho wa Taala told them, don't retaliate. But pray your Salah and give you Zakah This is what you do in this period of time. Right? You got to be patient, there's lessons that comes from being patient and also for mcha, to become yours, which is great change that needs to be great effort. Right? And for you to manage yourself to great effort, you need patience. You know, I came across an interesting

thought by those who specialize in in human development and they've got decades of experience in this arena. And they, they mentioned this 40 day formula that for real change to occur in your life. You require at least 40 days of being patient on the act that you want to bring into your life or the process or the act that you want to read your life off, right. So for example, you have a bad habit you want to get rid of, it's not going to go easy. You're gonna have to fight yourself by this 40 days before your self becomes calibrated or in class.

towards living comfortably, without having

this inclination towards this bad thing, you want to bring a good habit into your life you want to maybe bring wake up with the hygiene, it's not gonna be easy, you're gonna have to purse, you know, pursue it, you're gonna have to be patient, you have to continue, you're going to have to go through the great journey to achieve the great change whether tahajjud is something natural in your life, you want to fast every Monday, for example, it's going to take time, so I'm going to be a click of a switch a flick of a of a, of a switch or a push of a button that all of a sudden you're just going to be doing it right, you know, so they talk about this 40 day rule that for for you, yourself, to

stop resisting the change, you need to pursue being patient with your effort for at least 40 days. And I was thinking about this because obviously they've obviously gathered this formula through experience. So I thought about it from an Islamic perspective that Do we have anything in our Sharia that, you know, teaches us this concept, and then last Ramadan or not just last month, but a few number of months ago, it dawned upon me the, how Allah sees a Yama do that when he tells us to pass the month of Ramadan, he says 29 or 30 days, these are fixed number of days you have to, that's the price you have to pay. To have the chance of getting taka taka is not even guaranteed. Perhaps you

may gain taqwa. If you apply yourself for 29 or 30 days, it has to be 29 or 30 days, Allah says, well, it took me two days to complete the days you have to complete the days. And even then perhaps you get it, everyone is different. Some people need many, many more Amazon, some people less some people need the voluntary acts after and so on and so forth. And then I also came across another hadith of I've been through diabetes, but on the other hand in Sahih, Muslim, in which he talks about how Allah subhanho wa Taala created us, he says that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that Allah created us as a piece of as a droplet

for a period of 40 days, and then converted us into a cleaning cloth for a period of 40 days and then converted us into this,

this resemblance that resembles a chewed piece of flesh for 40 days. So we have this 40 day incubation period. Now Allah subhanho wa Taala can create us instantly, but Allah subhanho wa Taala, he is absolutely perfect, and from his perfect from ever, and he's perfect forever, he can create us instantly, and he can create us over time. And he creates us over time, he puts us in this 40 day incubation periods that perhaps it's part and parcel of the DNA of mankind, and, and and the life of mankind that you know, there has to be that incubation period, there has to be that settling period, there has to be that period where that you fight through for a period of time and then the great

change comes. And then you have to in your second grade change period, you got to go through the distance as well and be patient through it. And then the next great change comes and then the human being is created, then there's meat on the human beings and this bones and then Allah dresses the bones with with flesh. And then this human being grows and continues to grow and the cells generate slowly but surely, and you have to crawl before you walk and you walk before you run. And this is the nature of life. This is the nature of life. So brothers and sisters in Islam, you can't give up at the drop of a hat. Right? for great change to come into your life. You got to have great effort.

And I want you guys to read up on this concept of dopamine addiction. Dopamine addiction, right? dopamine is a chemical in the brain which Allah causes to be released after great effort so that you feel the satisfaction. And it's a it's sort of a defense mechanism, that when you feel that satisfaction, you feel inclined towards trying again to work hard get up for work the next day, for example, right? You you experiment might have failed. But it gives you that satisfaction at the end of the day that you get up the next day to try again. But when we have everything at the push of a button we should have we sort of rather short wire our brains because we're constantly getting this

dopamine released until we get to a point where we become distracted human beings. Why? Because we're constantly looking for dopamine stimulation and we only find it through Insta everything being instant. So you know you go into Facebook you come out of Facebook's not enough you go into Twitter, you come out of Twitter, you go into Snapchat you come out of Snapchat then you into Instagram, you come out of Instagram you back into Facebook you back into WhatsApp you know you're constantly robotically doing things because it's something your mind subconsciously just wants to be stimulated. So read about dopamine as well. In this very, very important lesson about great effort

or great change requires great effort and great effort requires great patience. I love you for the sake of Allah subhanho wa Taala until next time, Salaam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh