Yasmin Mogahed – What is Self Love vs Narcissism

			Salam Alaikum everyone yes min Mujahid here.
		

			I will the villa him in a shed on a regime Smilla Rahman and Rahim or Salatu was Salam ala
Rasulillah, while earlier savage mine, rubbish rightly sundry ways, certainly, Omri, Why, hello, Dr.
melissani. Have a home, Colleen. 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 kinds 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 area in the Quran, where Allah subhanaw taala says, in the
Hola, hola, yo, yo mabie Coleman, Hatha Yoga Europe 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 alpha 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 Al Maghrib dot online. This link, inshallah will provide a LMAG h
r i b 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 hamdullah, 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. 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 first of all, what is that what dude, right, one of the names of Allah subhanaw taala, in
which in which we learn that Allah subhanaw taala is the, 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
receive 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 you
		

			We are a people of extremes, right? 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, in 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 they would have difficulty taking the perspective of another person, they
would have very, you know, they 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 worshipped, in a sense. And, again, there's there's a total lack
of compassion for others, and understanding and empathy for others. And so it's a very unhealthy
		

			kind of so 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 healthiest a healthy, 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?
		

			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 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 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, a hadith, 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 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 ourselves 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, you
know, this is a very unhealthy type of, 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's a scandal and everyone who loves 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
		

			As human beings are not Elwha 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 Allah dude, 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, a 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 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 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 Cottbus, 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 registration is 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 and
A's that 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 n madlib Al Maghrib dot online. Now, I want to
inshallah 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
		

			And 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 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, or 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, or a brother, you know, a child came to you and said, You know, I made a mistake,
I failed that this thing, right? I didn't get this right. Imagine how you would speak to that
individual? will 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 gonna 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 damage 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. I've 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 clinically Heather was Dr. allottee welcome. innovaphone Rahim. Subhanak Hello become
dark shadow and La ilaha illa and iStockphoto to Blake, I look forward to insha Allah interacting
with you more in the class and in sha Allah having an opportunity to really really transform our
lives for the better inshallah does that come a little later on Soleimani Kumar, I'm delighted that
I get