Tom Facchine – Surah Al-Masad & Atomic Habits
AI: Summary ©
The segment discusses the negative impact of habits and emotions on behavior, including arrogance and fear of success. It emphasizes the importance of finding one's own values and finding one's own values to make oneself attractive. The speaker also discusses the negative impact of post-enlightened behavior and the importance of positive and constructive behavior to achieve change. The segment concludes by discussing techniques for trickling emotions into one's behavior, including finding a good language to use, making a habit habit, and using emotions to motivate oneself.
AI: Summary ©
We have Surah Al-Masad.
Masad is a translation of a twisted rope
fiber.
Okay, there's a pun that Allah makes.
Surah Al-Masad, lots unpacked there.
Abu Lahab was one of the uncles of
the Prophet ﷺ, who knew that Islam was
the truth but rejected it because it was
against his worldly interests and he said this
word Tabat yadaa Muhammad wa tabbaa Muhammad.
Basically curse, sending a curse to the Prophet
Muhammad ﷺ and these words were revealed straight
away on the spot to the Prophet Muhammad
ﷺ to answer.
Say so and Allah is making different puns.
So he plays with his name.
Lahab is a flame and similar to how
maybe in contemporary colloquial English, we would say
that someone is hot, right?
They're attractive, they're beautiful, that this was something
that meant that he was an attractive person.
But Allah flips it and basically says that
he's gonna end up in a flame, right?
I mean the flame of fire, of hellfire.
And then he also mentions his wife as
well which is a carrier of firewood.
It was an expression to indicate that she
was someone who carried tales and spread lies
and slander.
Against the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and that he
then makes another pun and says that there's
going to be a twisted rope around her
neck on the Day of Judgment.
Now, they used to have ropes carry firewood
and that you would you would wear it
around your neck.
The imagery of having a twisted fiber rope
around your neck in a strangling way, not
in a way where you're just carrying firewood,
but in a strangling way on the Day
of Judgment is pretty intense.
It's pretty intense.
The idea of Tabbat is that Abu Lahab
would not just quietly disagree.
He made a big show out of it.
And he tried to say in a very
public way to influence everybody else around to
say curse be to you, you know, Muhammad,
to try to throw shade at him and
to try to basically discredit him, okay?
Now the interesting thing about this chapter is
that it's very very short and Allah tells
him what's going to happen to him, that
he's going to end up in the hellfire
forever, for eternity, because of his knowing rejection
of the truth.
Now, if Abu Lahab wanted to prove the
Qur'an wrong, all he had to do
was say Ash-sharwan laa ilaaha illallah wa
ash-sharwani Muhammadun Rasulullah.
All he had to do was embrace Islam,
accept Islam, become a Muslim and he would
have proved the Qur'an wrong.
But he was so arrogant that he couldn't
even bring himself to do that.
And this is an important point when it
comes to the nature of kufr.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala says in the
Qur'an bal lilladhina kafaru fee takdheeb, bal
lilladhina kafaru yukadhdheeboon, that the nature of kufr
is this type of arrogant refusal.
A lot of people, I don't necessarily particularly
like the the translation as just unbelief.
I don't think that, or disbelief, that's a
little bit too weak, right?
Like kufr is like, it's the cover.
You're arrogantly rejecting, you're a denier, right?
It's not even like, well, I need to
think about it.
No, it's like you, you know, it's true.
And you reject it.
Today, we are in the chapter about making
it unattractive.
So if you know James Clear, he breaks
down sort of the four laws of habit
forming or habit formation.
Make it obvious was number one, and number
two is make it attractive.
Now, every law has its corollary or its
opposite, which is true.
So your good habits, you have to make
them obvious in order for them to be
successful, meaning the cues that are going to
trigger your doing that habit.
And so if there's bad habits that you
have, you have to do the opposite.
You have to make them unobvious.
You have to hide them.
You have to make them invisible.
Okay?
Now, the second law was make it attractive.
And we talked previously about trying to make
your good habits attractive so that you'll want
to do them.
We talked about temptation stacking was one of
the words that was used, like every time
I watch TV, I'm going to do push
-ups during the commercial breaks or whatever.
So you're tying the things that you need
to do to the things that you want
to do.
But now we're going to talk in this
chapter about the opposite or the implication of
this law, which is to make your bad
habits unattractive.
And he starts pointing out by why we
have bad habits in the first place.
And this is really key, and I think
it's really also empowering, that everything that you
do has an underlying motive.
Whether it's a good habit or a bad
habit, there's an underlying reason why you're doing
it.
And your current habits are not always the
best way of addressing the problem that you're
facing, or the reason, the motive that you
have to do that thing in the first
place.
Let's say that you want to unwind.
At the end of a day, you had
a stressful day at work or whatever, or
with family, whatever's going on, there's multiple things
that you can do to relax.
You can listen to Quran, take a shower,
work out, you can go for a walk,
you can spend time in nature, you can
scroll on your phone.
Scrolling on your phone is what a lot
of people reach for because it's convenient, because
it's right there.
But is it the best way to address
that underlying motivation of wanting to relax?
It's probably not the best way.
You have a craving or a sense that
something is missing, or even better, you want
to change the way that you feel.
Most habits are about wanting to change the
way that you feel, but you have to
realize the action that you're doing is not
necessarily the best way of having it done.
And so then you actually start to look
at yourself like, whoa, boy, okay, well, I'm
scrolling through the phone because in this moment,
I feel lonely.
In this moment, I feel like I want
some human interaction.
I feel like I want to unwind.
What's a better way of unwinding?
What's a better way of having human interaction?
Going through these sorts of motivations is really
important and can be empowering, and you can
actually start to pay attention and look at
your habits and say, I want to address
the underlying feeling, I want to feel different,
but I need to take control of the
decision and the habit that I'm choosing to
achieve that change of feeling, and I need
to choose a positive one.
I need to choose a constructive one.
I need to choose a better one than
the one that I'm currently doing.
A lot of people think that emotions cloud
your decision making, and he says that's not
true.
And I agree with that.
I think that's a really super important part.
I think that post-Enlightenment Western values look
at emotions negatively.
Oh, you're just being emotional.
Oh, he's in his feelings.
But feelings are actually really critical.
Emotions are essential to making decisions.
There's no possible scenario in which you can
put your emotions aside.
They've observed people who had some sort of
brain injury that incapacitated the parts of their
brain that are responsible for emotion.
And you know what the consequence is of
a person who loses that part of their
brain?
They can't make decisions.
Isn't that crazy?
They can't feel happy.
They don't feel sad.
They don't feel angry.
They don't feel anything.
They look at a decision, and they'll sit
there for hours and not be able to
decide what to do.
I was surprised by that.
So rather than emotions getting in the way
of our decisions, you actually really need your
emotions to make decisions in the first place.
That's why he's going with the whole move.
Well, we don't necessarily want to get rid
of the emotions.
We just want to observe and pay attention.
You have this emotion.
You feel lonely.
Let's think about a more positive and constructive
and rewarding activity, and one that's actually going
to more successfully deal with the fact that
you feel lonely, joining a club, joining an
activity, going to the mess sheet, like whatever
it is.
It's easier to scroll your phone 100%.
It's hard to, okay, you've got to find
your keys.
You've got to get in the car.
You make sure gas is in the car.
You've got to go and do all this
other stuff.
Oh, so-and-so is going to be
there.
I don't really get along with them.
All these reasons that stop us from going.
So how do you get over that?
That's how he ends the chapter.
He basically says that you have to trick
your brain to learn to enjoy the hard
habits.
So if going to the mess sheet is
hard compared to scrolling your phone, but you
know it's the right thing to do, then
you've got to figure out a way to
trick your brain into liking it.
And there's a few different techniques he gives.
One of them is the language that you
use in your internal speech.
So instead of, for example, oh, I've got
to go to the mess sheet.
I have to go.
No, I get to go to the mess
sheet.
Focus on what you're gaining.
You can even say it out loud.
I'm going to the mess sheet so that
I can stop feeling so lonely.
Or I'm going to the mess sheet so
I can build positive relationships with the brothers
and the sisters.
Now, what if you feel nervous?
What if you're going to the mess sheet?
We have people who are converts here or
people who are interested in Islam, and they're
nervous to go to the mess sheet.
And that's the reason it's holding you back.
Well, he suggests what a lot of professional
athletes do, the pre-game motivation ritual, is
that a lot of athletes, yeah, they get
nervous as well.
When you step up to the plate, when
you're about to go to bat, bases are
loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth, World
Series, Game 7, that's a nervous situation.
You're taking your free throw, Game 7, Series
is tied, 3-3, one second left on
the clock.
You are in a very, very nerve-wracking
situation.
What's going to save you in that situation?
To do your habit the way that you
want it to unfold, to have a ritual,
a ritual that motivates you.
And you can tell yourself and reframe that
you're just getting excited and that you're using
your adrenaline rush to power you through this
thing.
So there's whatever you can do.
You can psych yourself up.
Sometimes it's a nasheed or it's something that
you listen to, part of the Quran.
Sometimes it's a certain YouTube video.
Sometimes it's something that makes you angry, right?
If you want to look at what's going
on or the particular sort of hate that's
directed at Islam or the people of Islam
or things like that, it motivates you to
go to the gym and pump that iron.
Then you can use that as your ritual.
Develop a motivation ritual for yourself.
So identify one hard habit, the right thing
to do, but you're lazy to do it,
it's inconvenient to do, and develop a motivation
ritual that's going to help you to do
it.