Tom Facchine – Surah An-Nas & Atomic Habits
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the meaning of "will" and its use in addiction statistics. They also touch on the success of "The secret to self" in helping people manage addiction, which only happened at Vietnam where the US serviceman tried heroin. The importance of context, environment, and power of cues in creating environments that make people feel less productive and addictive behavior is emphasized. The key to building disciplined environments is making them visible and reducing their exposure to temptation, rather than just building environments where people spend time around temptation.
AI: Summary ©
Al-Khannas is a title, something that only
occurs in Surat An-Nas.
Allah SWT is naming or giving a laqab,
giving a nickname to Shaytan, to Iblis himself.
And as we said that the meaning of
this word sort of indicating one who hides
away or slinks away or causes the mischief
and then runs, indicates to us the method
and mechanism by which the Shaytan leads us
astray.
We talk about bad habits, and some of
the bad habits that we have might be
sinful habits.
And why do these sinful habits keep on
coming to us?
Because the Shaytan, by whispering, by being someone
who basically does it and then leaves, he
basically just points out to us, he makes
us notice the possibility of committing a sin.
And notice a justification for why it might
not be that big of a deal, right?
He shows us the cues and then he
whispers to you the justification that it might
not be that bad if you do it.
You have a reason.
Everything has a maslaha, right?
There's always a maslaha, a reason to do
it.
We can always justify.
I'm just doing dawah, right?
I'm just, you know, I'm doing what everybody
else is doing, right?
It's not like I'm doing this, that would
be way worse.
There's always a justification.
The Shaytan is ready to give you that
justification, and then he'll retreat and watch from
a distance as everything blows up in your
face.
And so it becomes really important to link
it up with what we're about to talk
about in Atomic Habits when it comes to
how to minimize our bad habits and how
to disrupt them and how to break them
and admitting that some of our bad habits
are also sinful habits.
We've been going through the book Atomic Habits
by James Clear, a very, very useful book
for Muslims.
Coincides almost one-to-one with some of
the things that we have to do in
Islam, and it really helps us with maximizing
our good habits and minimizing our bad habits.
The title of the next chapter is The
Secret to Self-Control, and he brings up
some wild statistics, okay?
So he talks about drug addiction.
He brings up a case study of the
Vietnam War and when American soldiers were abroad
in Vietnam fighting the unjust war there that
a whopping 35% of U.S. servicemen
tried heroin while they were there.
That's crazy.
And of those people who were there, 20
% of the soldiers were addicted to heroin.
20%.
That's one out of every five soldiers in
the U.S. military fighting in Vietnam was
addicted to heroin.
That's mind-blowing.
Now, even more mind-blowing than that, what
percent of them used heroin within one year
of returning to the United States?
Only 5% of those people who were
basically addicted, they were heroin addicts.
Over in Vietnam, when they came back, only
5% used heroin within the first year
of being back.
That's nuts.
Why is it nuts?
It challenges a lot of our assumptions about
addiction and addictive behavior and how they work.
In our culture, in the United States of
America, we definitely tend to see addiction and
drug use as a moral failing, and it
is a moral failing.
Let's not be unclear about that.
However, what this study showed is that there's
a lot more going on than just willpower,
okay?
It shows you the power of context, the
power of environment, and the power of cues.
Now, let's flip these sorts of things, okay?
Imagine, what are the numbers, do you think,
of people who get addicted to heroin in
their own homes, right, in their own homeland,
where they live, in their residence?
What percentage of people who go through these
programs relapse within a year?
90% of them are using heroin again
within a year.
The people who are abroad in a totally
different environment were addicted to heroin.
They come back, change everything about their lives.
Only 5% use heroin within one year.
Think about it.
That's the point that the author is making
when it comes to the secret to self
-control.
The point is that unhealthy behavior, yes, there
is a dimension to it that is about
self-control.
There's a dimension to it about moral weakness.
There's a dimension to it that is moral
choice, okay?
However, there is another dimension to it that
has to do with a disciplined environment, okay?
So, he talks about the difference between a
disciplined person.
We are used to thinking about things in
terms of disciplined people, that there are disciplined
people, and undisciplined people, and disciplined people just
have all the willpower in the world, right,
and they can just face any temptation, and
they're successful.
They're successful at resisting that temptation versus this
idea that really successful people create disciplined environments
for themselves.
They create environments where there is no temptation
or where there's very, very, very little temptation,
so they don't have the chance to have
a failure of willpower.
Basically, he says that the people who seem
that we, you and I, look at as
the most disciplined are the people who spend
the least amount of time around temptation and
triggers and cues that would lead to negative
behaviors.
The first thing that came to mind was
the hadith of the person, excuse me, that
killed 99 men, okay?
So, he was a person who had murdered
99 people.
He went to a monk.
He asked, will God forgive me?
And the monk said, no way.
And so he killed the monk, and he
made it an even hundred.
And then he went to a sheikh, and
he said, I killed 100 guys.
I killed 100 people.
Can I be forgiven?
Will Allah forgive me?
He said, yes, but you have to change
your location.
You got to get out of your situation
where you're at, and you need to go.
And you know the rest of the hadith.
He died on the way, but you know,
Allah made it so that because of his
intention and his effort that he expended, Allah
forgave him, even though he didn't even make
it to the place where he was at.
So, this is exactly what the author is
talking about, that Islam recognizes that we want
to not just build disciplined people.
We also want to build disciplined environments.
And sometimes the key to building a disciplined
person is actually to build a disciplined environment,
that the person who is the most successful
is the person who spends the least amount
of time around temptation, which is also borne
out in other sort of ayat and examples
in our tradition.
Allah said in surah al-Isra, don't even
come close to illicit sexual *.
Don't even get close to it.
Because if you get close to it, there's
a likelihood that you're going to fall into
it.
And so you need a tuqa, right?
You need this sort of, you know, taqwa
literally means sort of like a wiqayah, it's
like a protective barrier.
You need to put enough of a barrier
in between yourself and that haram thing that
you're not going to get in a tempting
situation.
Other examples, the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ
talking about doubtful matters, right?
The halal is clear and the haram is
clear.
And in between them are mushtabihaat, the things
that are doubtful.
And then he says that the example of
a believer is like somebody who is, somebody
who's grazing their flock around the himmah, the
himmah is like the pastures, right?
The king's pastures.
If you graze your flock on the edge
of that pasture, it's just a matter of
time before one gets in.
And then you're guilty of doing something haram.
That somebody who has taqwa, wiqayah, is going
to put a barrier in between themselves and
the haram, they're not going to be in
a tempting situation.
They're not going to put themselves into temptation
so that they will fail.
Anybody can break a habit, but it's much
harder to forget a habit.
That habit lives on in your mind, and
this is what the shaitan plays with, with
his whisperings, right?
And so the key to stopping bad habits
is to make them invisible.
Just like the key to good habits is
to make them visible and increase visibility, the
key to breaking bad habits, and especially sinful
habits, is to make them invisible.
Reduce your exposure, remove cues, and make sure
that you spend the least amount of time
in temptation as possible.