Yasmin Mogahed – What is Self Love VS Narcissism?

			Salam Alaikum everyone, yes memoji I had here
		

			I will be lacking in a shape on our regimes Mila Rahman and Rahim or Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah
wala le or savage mine, rubbish. rocklea Saudi was certainly Omri Wanaka melissani of Hong Kong Ali.
Thank you for joining. We are, this is our second session in a series in which we're covering the
themes that I'll be talking about in my upcoming class called transformed. So I want to give you
kind of just like a little bit of an overview, and then we'll go into the topic of today's. So
transformed is a class that I used to provide on site. It's my most comprehensive class that I've
been teaching for many years now. And what I cover in this class is, I talk about a lot of kind of
		

			topics that have to do with how we can start to change our lives, but not like just small changes,
but really, really improve and develop and change the things that we want to see, you know, change
in our lives. And so the the concept of this class transformed is that it really basically revolves
around this idea in the Quran, where Allah subhanaw taala says, In the Lucha naohiro, mabie,
Coleman, Hatha Yoga euro mabie and fusi him that Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a
people until they change what's inside themselves. And so what we learn here is that, in fact,
change has to happen internally change has to begin from inside of ourselves, and then things
		

			outside of our lives can change that's how we're going to be able to change the you know, the
problems that we have, for example, there is a lot of things in our lives right now that we may we
may not like that we may want to change maybe we have problems with our relationship with others,
maybe we have problems with our relationship with Allah subhanaw taala. And maybe we have problems
with our relationship with ourselves. And that's the actual theme that's the topic I'm going to I'm
going to focus on today. The the topic of Elva dude and self love and what does it mean to love
ourselves? And how can we build a stronger relationship with ourselves, this is one of those themes
		

			that I do get into more deeply in the course transformed. The people who've registered for this
class have gotten access. So what we do is that as soon as you register for the class, you can
register at a level of dot online. This link inshallah will provide a LMAGH our IB dot online. The
thing about registering is that as soon as you register you get immediate access, a lot of people
have asked, because in hamdulillah we have a global community.
		

			You know, actually I want you to take a chance before we jump in and tell me where you're logging in
from. So we can kind of get a sense of how global this community is, and everybody's has their own
timezone. Um, so what we've done is that the class is actually accessible to you at your own
schedule, so you get immediate access to the class material as soon as you register and you can
watch it at your own pace and you can you know, at your own schedule. The other thing is that only
the people who register get exclusive access to for live q&a is with me. So I did my first one on
Wednesday, and anyone who registers will still get a recording of that but there's three more live
		

			q&a is coming up and that's only for the people who register for transformed as students this term.
So in terms of talking about you know, this concept of self love
		

			what is it First of all, what is it what dude, right one of the names of Allah subhanaw taala, in
which in which we learn that Allah subhanaw taala is the V, the, the root, he is the source, capital
S of all love, of all the love that we give all the love that we have, is all rooted in and widowed
Allah subhanaw taala but what is the relationship now between that love that we have and we received
from Allah subhanaw taala and that we give to Allah subhanaw taala and our own self love. First of
all, I want to kind of just talk about this concept because I think
		

			it's one of those really popular sort of, you know, in this in this modern day, there's a lot of
talk about self love. What does it mean to have self love and I think there's it's also important to
define self love in a healthy way because
		

			We are a people of extremes, right? And I think that it's important to talk about these extremes so
that we we are aware of them, we be aware of them, and we find that middle ground. So I think on one
extreme, you have this trend, right? of, you know, yes, love yourself. It's all about you. But the
problem is, we've also, in a sense, moved into a
		

			culture of narcissism. And what does that mean? Well, narcissism is a personality disorder, in which
a person lacks empathy, and is what this is one of the most striking kind of characteristics of a
narcissist. It's a person who basically only sees themselves, who only sees their own needs and
their own perspective in any situation. And so somebody who is a narcissist, would have difficulty
seeing beyond themselves, beyond that self centered sort of view, and that they would have
difficulty taking the perspective of another person, they would have very, you know, it would be it
would be very difficult for them, to show empathy. For others, it's a very self absorbed type of
		

			disorder. And
		

			ironically, it's actually grounded. And this is this is very important for the topic we're
discussing today. It's ironically grounded in insecurity. So oftentimes a person who is actually at
the root very, very insecure, they they would cover that up, or it would be covered up by this
narcissism by basically putting themselves as as basic, they become very needy, needy, of praise,
needy of admiration, more than just approval, but a narcissist needs to constantly be not just
approved of but but admired, almost worshiped, in a sense. And, again, there's a there's a total
lack of compassion for others, and understanding and empathy for others. And so it's a very
		

			unhealthy kind of self focus, right? But then you have on the other hand, the other extreme, and
that's kind of what I want to talk about mostly today, is when a person completely lacks self love,
completely lacks healthy self compassion. Now, what is self compassion and what is healthy self
love? Well,
		

			a person with healthy, a healthy self compassion and self love, will have a healthy self image will
have a sense of worth for themselves. So without being a narcissist, without believing that you are
at the center of the universe, but having value for yourself believing that you are worthy believing
that you have worth believing that you are deserving of, of, of respect, that you are deserving of
love and respect and belonging, that that you have self respect right? Now, what does that look
like? Practically? Right? Um, you know, I think that one of the biggest sort of traps that we fall
into, and I've heard this,
		

			over the years, countless times, a lot of us and I would say, especially women, are extremely hard
on ourselves. And when I say that we are hard on ourselves, I don't mean that, you know, we push
ourselves to be our best in a healthy way, I mean, that we beat ourselves up. And it is not healthy.
And one of the ways that we I think one of the most common ways that we beat ourselves up as as,
especially as women, and generally also men, is that we have a habit, which is extremely toxic,
called negative self talk. Now, negative self talk is basically the way in which we speak to
ourselves the way in which we have an inner conversation with one with our own selves. So for
		

			example, when something happens in our lives, how do we talk to ourselves about it, right?
Specifically, when it's something negative when maybe we make a mistake, or we let another person
down? Or we let ourselves down? We're not you know, we're not at that level of perfection that we
might that we might hope. How do you talk to yourself? This is extremely important, because this
ends up becoming the foundation of our own relationship with ourselves. Now I want you to remember
that this is in
		

			To grow, this is absolutely essential when we talk about the relationship with our Creator, we can't
really have a full, meaningful, deep, healthy, healthy relationship with our Creator, if we do not
have a healthy relationship with ourselves, and it goes the other way around, it goes, it goes both
ways that that our relationship with ourselves is linked to our relationship with the Creator. And
it should be right, where should we get our self worth, right? Because this is, you know, we're
living in a in a, in an age right now of social media, for example, now in the age of social media,
in the in the Instagram world, and the Facebook world, and the tick tock slash Snapchat world that
		

			we live in.
		

			What's happened now, especially for the younger generation, is that so much of our self worth, is
now being linked to what other people say about us what other people think about us, specifically
online, right. And that's why they're finding studies right now. That the level of depression, the
level of anxiety, even eating disorders, suicidality, that all of these things are actually
increasing. And they found that there is a link between social media usage and the increase in these
in these things, and the increase in loneliness, depression, anxiety. And so what's happening here?
Why is that happening, I mean, it's, we're not using social media just to go you know, find out
		

			about, you know, heavy or, or, or to just maybe find out what our friends are doing. But we're using
social media for a much deeper reason. And a lot of it has to do with our own self worth, that we're
linking our self worth to what other people are saying about us, and the other the approval of
others. And that becomes extremely dangerous. Because as you know, the people will love you one day
and they'll hate you the next right, people will approve of you one minute and they'll disapprove of
you, the next minute, we cannot link our self worth to what other people feel about us or what other
people say about us or what other people think about us this is a very unstable foundation for our
		

			own worth.
		

			And and when a person becomes their the definition of their worth, is linked to what other people
are saying or how other people view them, that person becomes extremely insecure. And their self
worth is unstable. And so our self worth has to be linked to something that is stable, and something
that does not that something that doesn't run out, right. I mean, a person can only give you so much
praise, right? A person is limited, people are limited a person people the creation can only give
you so much approval they What if they're tired, what if they're in a bad mood, right? Sometimes we
get headaches right? Sometimes we our selves are empty and it becomes difficult to fill another you
		

			know, when you look at a person who is extremely needy, or who is dependent upon another person for
their own
		

			inner fill, when you become dependent on another so for example, someone who's dependent on their
spouse to make them feel okay, or who is dependent sometimes on their own children. This is a you
know, this is a very unhealthy type of, of
		

			attachment, and sometimes narcissism where they need their children to make them feel important.
They need their children to make them feel that they're okay. Or maybe it's their social circle. Or
maybe it's it's their online community. Now, when you when you have that as your source of your own
self worth, and your own
		

			to fill your void internally. Well what happens when that individual your spouse or your child is
busy, or isn't in a good mood or is feeling empty themselves? What happens when the online community
turns on you? Right? What happens when there is a scandal and everyone who loved you yesterday hates
you today? You know, that's the reality of of the online world that's the reality of human beings is
that human beings are not stable, human beings are limited. Human beings do not have an infinite
capacity to give. Right? We are limited as human beings. Yes, we can give love, right we can give
love to our children. We can give love to our parents or our spouse, to to our friends to our
		

			family, but we are limited. We
		

			Human beings are not lol dude, we are not the the infinite source of love. Only Allah subhanaw taala
can be an infinite source of love and support. So it's very essential that we root our self worth in
something that is infinite in something that is stable, something that doesn't just is not fickle,
right does not just turn on us, when it when it when when they're having a bad day. And so it's
very, very essential that the foundation of our self worth is in something stable, and something
infinite and that is only God, that is only Allah subhanaw taala. And Alou. And this is, these are
the concepts. You know, I mentioned before in my previous session, that one of the things I'm trying
		

			to do in my class transformed, it's called transformed principles of spiritual development. And the
reason it's called principles of spiritual development is that I try very hard to make these
concepts practical, right? I think that so many of these concepts that we learn, you know, by our
teachers, and by our parents, and you know, growing up concepts about Allah concepts about love of
Allah, a hope in Allah, trust in Allah subhanaw taala. And well, dude, you know, these are concepts
that are very theoretical, and oftentimes people don't really understand the concept. But more
importantly, we don't necessarily understand how to apply it in our everyday life. And that's
		

			exactly what I tried to do and transformed is that I try to make these concepts practical, I try to
make these concepts, something that that we hear, but then we can actually ground it, we can make it
something that we live, right, we live these things, we take these concepts, very, very powerful
concepts, and we use them to change our lives, to transform our lives. And that's the idea behind
transformed is that this is something that we are, we are we're applying to our lives in order for
us to be changed and not just so that we can, you know, hear them in nice speeches and read them in
nice books, but that we actually apply them to our lives. And, and this is something else that I
		

			found is that teaching these, these concepts and these ideas for many years now, right, so I've been
teaching these for over a decade, these these concepts of, of these, these spiritual principles,
basically. And one thing that I have found is that these are transformative, they are revolutionary
in the sense that once they stop being just ideas out here, or things that we discuss, in hot buzz,
but once they actually become something tangible and real that we do, they actually absolutely
transform people's lives. And they transform people's psyche as well. And this is something that I
also like to talk about, and I get into quite deeply in the class is that is the relationship
		

			between our spirituality and our psychology, right, the relationship between how we interact, how we
relate to Allah, how we relate to our Creator, and how that affects the way in which we relate to
people, and the way in which we relate to our world and the way in which we relate to ourselves. And
so it's a it's about making these things real it's about making these things tangible, right. And
transform this is in the registrations only open for about another few days. But it's an opportunity
to get that see once you once you register, you get that that content, the content of a full weekend
seminar, you get it for lifetime, you get lifetime access to it, and you can just watch it you can
		

			you can interact with the material as many times as you want, and at your own pace. So whatever time
zone you're in, you also get access to the q&a. And these are live q&a that I have only with the
students. Um, so if you are interested in getting more information about that or registering, it's
the website is www dot and Madlib a LMAGHRIB dot online. Now, I want to inshaAllah just wrap up by
talking a little bit about some of the things that sabotage the relationship we have with ourselves
some of the things that sabotage our own self worth. Now I mentioned one of the causes here I
mentioned one of the things that sabotage our self worth. And that is when we when we link our self
		

			worth to something that is unstable or finite, something that is limited and unstable. And that is
the creation
		

			That is what people think what people say, you know, what are people going to? How are people going
to view me, and when I am when my source of self worth and my source of approval for myself right
and, and where I stand becomes other people, you know whether those people are online or those
people are my spouse or my family, or my friends or my, you know, social circle,
		

			I become extremely weak in my own self worth, and I become unstable. And so that's one of the things
that sabotage is our own concept of ourselves and our own our own self esteem and our own self
worth. But there's something else that that also sabotage is self worth. And that is, the way in
which we speak to ourselves. I mentioned before, there's something called negative self talk, this
is one of the most toxic things that we do to ourselves. Now, what does this look like? Basically,
this is when, when we find that we, we've made a mistake, or maybe we haven't achieved something
that we want, we feel like we failed.
		

			And instead of having compassion for ourselves, so take, for example, if a friend of yours a spouse,
a sister, a brother, you know, a child came to you and said, You know, I made a mistake, I I failed
that this thing, right? I didn't get this right. Imagine how you would speak to that individual?
Well, hopefully you would not tell them things like, you know, you're such a failure, you're never
actually going to get this right, you're always going to be a failure. And you'll never, you know,
ever be successful. And you know what, you're ugly, and you're fat. Also, like, Can you imagine if
you talk to someone like that right? Now, what am I getting at? What I'm getting at here is that
		

			this is similar to how some people speak to themselves, right? When we, when we feel like we've done
something wrong, or we feel like we failed? How do we speak to ourselves? Do we do we talk to
ourselves like this do we do we say, you know, you know, we're, you're never going to get this
right, you're, you're always failing, you're always messing up, you're so stupid, you're so stupid,
or, or I'm so stupid, or I'm, I, you know, I, I'll never, I'll never succeed, I'm such a failure.
That type of self talk is absolute poison, it is absolutely toxic. And it is, it is destroying
ourselves from the inside, it is destroying our own relationship with ourselves. Imagine if we talk
		

			that way to our spouse, or to our best friend or to our child, it would destroy that relationship.
And that's exactly what's happening internally, with our own relationship with ourselves. And so we
have to be conscious of this. And we have to be aware that the way we speak to ourselves is
extremely important in terms of how strong our own worth will be, and, and if you can imagine, every
time imagine every time we make a mistake that we go and we take out a whip and we start whipping
ourselves, you know, many people are so much harder on themselves, even than others are on them. Or
sometimes what happens is that we may have had a critical parent in our in our upbringing, or a
		

			critical teacher. And then what happens is we internalize that critic. So we internalize the voice
of our parent, or of that individual, maybe it was a critical spouse. Some people spend years,
sometimes decades in abusive marriages, in marriages where there was verbal abuse, where there is
emotional or physical abuse. And then what happens is, unfortunately, is that hearing that type of
verbal, you know that that that that verbal abuse, for so long, not only does it damaged a person's
worth, but it's that person sometimes starts to internalize that voice, and they start to do it to
themselves, they start to think that way of themselves have heard of women who used to have a
		

			healthy self image who used to have a healthy, we used to have very, you know, strong self worth.
And
		

			after being in a toxic marriage, after being in an abusive or verbally and emotionally abusive,
maybe also physically abusive relationship for so long. It completely destroyed their self worth,
they started to believe those things that they were being told, and they started to internalize it.
So that
		

			They were actually saying those things to themselves, we have to break this, we have to get out of
these toxic relationships, we have to get out of these toxic environments. And we have to stop these
toxic habits. The the self talk is absolutely essential in terms of whether or not we become healthy
internally, and whether or not we have a healthy relationship with ourselves and with with in order
for us to really be able to have a healthy relationship with others, including the Creator. So these
are some of the themes that I will talk about more deeply, I'm able to take questions, you know,
much more deeply in the class. As we have much more time we have full full hours, we have four
		

			sessions that I did, that I do have live q&a with the students who register you get access to this,
this all of this content. As soon as you register and you get lifetime access to it. You can you can
see it you can you can
		

			you can sort of interact with that content immediately and at your own pace and at your own
schedule. I pray that Allah subhanaw taala helps all of us to build a healthy self worth that is
balanced, that is not
		

			that is not, you know, to any extreme. You know, as I mentioned the extreme of narcissism nor is it
the extreme of beating ourselves up and having a low sense of self worth. I ask that Allah subhanaw
taala
		

			allow us to have a healthy self concept and to have a healthy relationship with him and with the
creation of who Nikola Tesla was stuck for allottee Welcome in our photo Rahim. subhanak Hello
become dark shadow Illa Allah and istockphoto to Blake I look forward to inshallah interacting with
you more in the class and in sha Allah having an opportunity to really really transform our lives.
For the better in sha Allah does ECMO located on Santa Monica, welcome to light bucket