Live a life of purpose

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers, and praise be to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and peace and blessings be upon them. My brothers and sisters, the most important thing, we are talking about happiness, and we were talking about what I mentioned in the last khatira, the issue of happiness and how do you become happy, what makes you happy. So it's not just a question of saying be happy, be happy doing what. Now, it's very important to understand this because, as I mentioned yesterday, people can be happy in some very negative ways, and therefore happiness is not a reliable meter to judge whether one's life is going on track or not. Now, therefore, what is the right track? How do you measure happiness? And what should you do? Well, I believe... that the correct and the most reliable way of trying to be happy is to live a life of purpose, not just randomly live. To live is not merely to breathe. To live is not merely to draw breath. To live is to achieve something worthwhile, to create a legacy, to do something and create some results which carry on after you, to spread goodness wherever you might be. That to me is the true description of happiness. So live a life of purpose. If you... One of the most valuable and useful things to do is to read biographies. It doesn't matter whose biography you read, but read biographies. The best biography to read, of course, is that of Rasulullah ﷺ, because Allah ﷻ presented His Nabi ﷺ as the best of examples for all people and of all time. The best example for you is the life of my Nabi ﷺ. The best example for you is the life of my Nabi ﷺ, and this is for the person who believes in Allah ﷻ, who believes in the Last Day, Day of Judgement, and looks forward to the meeting with Allah ﷻ. So any person of Iman, the best biography to read must be available for you, and must be available for you, absolutely required reading is the biography of Rasulullah to study the seerah Mubarak of the Rasul because Allah put this forward as the best thing to do so that's the first thing second thing is as I said read any biography right anyone because no matter whose biography you read whether you read the biography of a good person or a bad person he teaches you something and the reason I'm saying biographies is because to the extent possible they are as true as any story might be and though biography is like all histories are colored by the people who write them and no matter how objective a author might say he is or she is or no matter how for how objective they think they are there will be some bias and some leaning towards whatever the author considers to be worthwhile but leave that aside that doesn't matter now that is perfectly okay majority of what you're going to read will be fact will be something which actually occurred which happened I love reading biographies and one of the authors I strongly recommend is a man by the name of John Mann he's written a biography of Sultan Salahuddin by Yubi Rahatul Ali it's called Saladin and he's written another one of Genghis Khan if you read both it's called Genghis if you read these you it's a good way to read these as well as a comparison between two of the most powerful leaders the world has ever seen and who had an amazing impact, but two extremely different people, two totally different people. And it is a good thing to read this and to then reflect and say, well, what is it that makes them different? Quite apart from asking yourself the question and saying, well, who do I want to be like? But even if you don't go there, say, what is it that makes them different? So read biographies. Now, when you do that, you will realize that anyone in this world who has had an impact, irrespective of the kind of impact, anyone who had an impact was able to do that only because they wanted to do that. They were clear in their minds. They had a purpose. They were living with a purpose. They were living for a purpose, to achieve something. And they were able to achieve it to whatever extent. But they were able to achieve it. And the reason they were able to achieve it is because they were clear in their minds as to what they wanted to do. So I remind myself and you, let us learn to live a life of purpose. Live consciously. Live deliberately. Live thoughtfully. Exercise your mind and exercise your thought. Exercise your choices. All of us, no matter who we are, no matter where we find ourselves placed in the story of life, we have choices. I want to give you a measure of comparison. We have choices. But we must convert those choices into options. The way I differentiate that is that if you walk into a store, say you walk into TJ Maxx, what are the choices you have? The choices you have are everything that is displayed in TJ Maxx which is for sale. Every single shirt, every single trouser, every single suitcase, every single whatever TJ Maxx is selling, which is out on their shelves. 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What resources can you bring to bear? So what we need to do is in life, if you want to succeed and be happy, we need to increase the number of options. Choices are there. Choices are everything on the face of the earth is a choice. But the options, convert the choices into options by bringing to bear resources. So consciously do that. And then when you have the options, then you say, okay, now I've got three options. I'm going to do one, two or three. Whichever. Right? And based on the benefit that we can gain from that. This is the whole point of it. How can we increase my options? So when you lead your life deliberately, consciously, to achieve a certain purpose, you will find that automatically you will feel energized, you will be happy, you will feel that your life has some meaning. It's not just randomly that something is happening and you are a witness to your life. You are a witness to your own life. But you are somebody who has consciously made a choice. And because of the choice, now you have a life which you are leading, which is meaningful. I think that is where we should focus on. Now, the way to do that is every morning before you start out, make a list of three things that you need to achieve that morning, that day, in order of priority. First, one, two, three. And the order of the priority will be based on your own life goal. So if you want to lead your life according to a purpose, you must have a purpose. So first advice to you is write down your life goal. Clearly, as clearly as possible, write it down. And then every morning, write a list of three things that you must accomplish on that day based on the life goal in terms of importance. And write them, write the three in order of priority. Most importantly, next important is one. And at the end of the day, do Mahasabha. Do a self-assessment of how did I do today. I set out to achieve certain goals. Was I able to achieve all of them, some of them? And so on. So clearly, do that. Once you have done that, then you write down the goals for the next day. If you live like this, believe me, you will not have depression. You will not be sad. You will not have any confusion. Your anxiety will completely come down. You won't have anxiety. Now you might say, how will I not have anxiety? I don't have anxiety because I still have a goal. Can I achieve it? No. Anxiety is not because you have a goal or don't have a goal. Anxiety is because you are unclear about how to achieve that goal. So the goal is pushing, putting pressure on you, but you have not done anything about it. So the goal is also not clear. It's some vague thing of, you know, I want to be successful, I want to be happy. What does it mean? So if you become clear about that, specify the goal, and then the three things per day that you are writing is your is your road map for that day. I must achieve this and this and this. You do that, you will find that you will be very happy. So let us learn to lead a life of purpose.