Get your priorities right

Auto-generated transcript:My father taught me many lessons. And his way of teaching was he didn't sort of sit down with a class. He would just ask some question and that would be my mind. And alhamdulillah it worked very, very well. Two of the most critical lessons that he taught me, I want to share with you. One was, he always said, get your priorities right. Get your priorities right. Which thing should take the most of your time? Most of your energy? Most of your wealth? You know, and which should be next? Which should be next? Get your priorities right. The reason is because at any stage in life, whether you are in school or whether you are in college, university, whether you are working, you just got married, you have been married for a long time, you have children, no matter what, any stage in life, there will be many things that will try to draw your attention, try to draw, you know, come to you for various things. Give me time, give me money, give me donation, come and spend time with me, come talk to me, do this, do that. Many, many, many priorities. And if you don't get those right, and getting the priorities right means for some things you do, for some things you say, sorry, I have to do this. You say, sorry, I will not do this. I cannot do this. You have to say no. If you don't do that, then your life will be a dog's life, literally. Because you will get pulled in every direction. And your impact and your effect will be zero. Because nobody is, if you spread yourself that thin, then nobody even knows you existed, right? Although you try to help everyone. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. You cannot. So get your priorities right. And the second thing which he taught me was, he used to ask for everything. If I read a book, he used to say, what did you learn from that? If I went to, I spent some time with a friend, I came back home. So he would say, where did you go? I'd say, I went to so and so. Okay. So what did you learn from that? I mean, I went to spend time with my friend and, you know, I went to the gym. I went to the gym. What is the learning? He said, no. There has to be learning. There is always a learning. What did you learn from that? I go for a walk. What did you learn from that? I used to do a lot of horse riding. What did you learn from that? Learn from the horse? Yeah. What did you learn? I mean, Sheikh will understand this. Do you learn from the horse? Many things. Many things. Many things. What did you learn from that? Now, this thing is in my mind to such an extent that I continuously ask myself this question. I tell you, I have learned so much in life only for this reason. Because I ask this question, what did I learn? No matter what, what did I learn? So get your priorities right and what did you learn? So one of the most important things today in our life and our world, especially in the Muslim Ummah, is that as a rule, as a Ummah, as a people, we have got our priorities completely screwed up, completely upside down. Our attention, our focus, our resources, money, everything is spent on all kinds of things. All kinds of useless things. Whereas if you take at, if you look at, you know, key things which we need, they're always starved of resources. They don't have resources. Now, we like to, as general people, we like to criticize the billionaires and we like to criticize the kings. And we say, so-and-so bought this yacht, super yacht for a billion dollars. And see the standard of education in this country. Okay, fair enough. That's a reasonable comment, right? Ask yourself, where are you spending your money? Ask yourself in your country, in your place, what are the projects which are being funded? What are the projects which people are trying to raise funds for? If you see in this country, in America, one of the, and let me narrow it down, America, New England, one of the most crying needs, one of the most dire needs is for a world-class Islamic school. Right? For a top-quality Islamic school. Everyone that I talk to, their first moan is, the public school system is so bad. Our children are getting spoiled. They are getting this influence, that influence. All the woke culture. All right, all of that is correct. I agree. I completely agree. So, what's the solution? I wish we had a world-class, a very good quality Islamic school where we would teach Islam and we would also teach the regular sciences and so on and so forth. This time, we would teach STEM subjects and stuff so that the children could go from there to Harvard and Cambridge and MIT and wherever. Okay, excellent. Fantastic. So, what's stopping you? No, we have no money. Okay. So, raise funds. Raise funds. Let me ask you, in the last 10 years, I've been here last six years, how many projects did you find who are raising funds? I'm not saying successful. Maybe they failed. Have you ever heard of fundraising for a world-class Islamic school? I haven't heard. So, my point is, this whole moaning and groaning about you don't have a school is what? Hypocrisy? Nifak? What is this? Lies? Because if this is a, if this is a, if this is a charity, then how come you don't raise funds? I'm not saying, did you succeed? Find me somebody who says, I tried this thing. I'm raising funds. Nobody gives me money. I just raised $10. I accept that. You tried, right? Nobody gave you money. Alhamdulillah. With Allah, this is hujjah. On the Day of Judgment, when you stand before Allah SWT, you will be able to say, I tried today's money to teach people your religion about you. They did not give me money. They gave money for this and that and that. That's between them and Allah SWT. But did you even hear of a project? I haven't heard anything. Instead, what do we, what do you hear about projects for what? Projects for which Allah SWT, forget what prays in the Quran. It is not even mubah. It is ghafla. Allah SWT said, don't go there. We are powerful. We are furious and confused. But the word, come to god, from peasants of death, this fact was given by Allah SWT within a means, sh iba fabr. Tao said, we have not repeated our merit. Paul said, this is the result of all that you have done. Come and accept this. Now, we don't speak about these people's donaimees , They have been what is number one priority for you focus on that forget everything else individually and as a community if you don't do that you will answer to Allah individually you will find you will fail because the thing about this is that with the priorities open doors so if you have a priority and if you focus on it then the door for that opens and you enter that new life but if you don't look at that priority then after some time that door shuts and then even if you want it it's not there so if you wake up too late and say oh you know what I think I should no gone finished that opportunity is finished over not there anymore to focus on priorities means you have to take hard decisions in 1983 I decided that I wanted to be a and I wrote my goal I want to be a leadership consultant with an international practice 1983 I was sitting on top of a mountain planting tea I had worked in Guyana five years and after that I came to India I was sitting on top of a mountain planting tea I wrote this thing and one of the things also is don't tell the world the whole world about your priorities tell only if you have to tell somebody tell someone who is who can give you some good advice and who is genuinely concerned about you not don't tell don't broadcast it the worst thing in the world put it on Facebook or whatnot so anyway I didn't tell anyone except for but even though I was a member of the group I wanted to but even though I was a member of the group I wanted to one or two people I said it to they said how this is a nice statement but how is it going to happen because you are sitting here just to travel to some place takes you 24 hours just to get to that place your company gives you so much of leave how are you going to do that how I did that was and I won't go into all the details how I did that was that from 83 to 94 how many years is that how many years is that how many years is that how many years is that how many years is that 11 years 11 years 11 years I did not take a single day's vacation no weekends no holidays first thing second thing is I used to get 35 days of annual leave every year 35 days leave entire 35 days I spent studying attending courses attending training programs by other people shadowing them watching them and commend them and I was not an elite the reason why you do students Patel was also better because it was good school And so you could live at least the dignity of life your job per month you have to study your degree your major wherever you go do you study in school Samina was in, my wife was in England because her parents were in Leeds. These were the days before chat programs. The only way I could talk to her was on an international telephone call which I could not afford. I could not go to England to meet her. So for that whole period, one month after I got married, I did not see her, I did not talk to her. During that whole period, they gave us one week break. That one week break, I was stuck in the college by myself. There was nobody in the college. The dining room staff took pity on me. They said, we'll cook for you. So they used to give me food. That's it. Whole one week I spent in the college alone because I had no money to go anywhere. To pay the fees, I sold my car and I borrowed money from my company. My company didn't want to sponsor me. So they said, but we'll loan you the money. We'll pay it back and write us a contract to say you will continue to work for us for three years after you graduate. I did that. Hard decisions. If you don't take hard decisions,