Success or easy

https://youtu.be/FOTYkyxFzeI The troubling decline in conscientiousness - https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1953811277463122162?s=48 Auto-generated transcript: My brothers and sisters, I get asked this question, which goes that I want you to be a mentor. So I say, please write down, write me a letter or note in which I want you to list your challenges, your questions and your goals from this mentorship relationship. And why are you asking me to be a mentor? To be a mentor. To be your expectations. So I get this answer. Can I just call you and tell you? Can I send you a voice recording? So I said, no, you can't call and tell me. We will speak on the phone obviously at some point, but not now. And you can't send me a voice recording. What you can do and you should do is, write the thing down, send me a note. And the reason for that is because when you write things down, there is a connection. There are actual connections between, neurological connections between your writing and your thinking. Ideally speaking, write on paper with a pen. Not even on your laptop or phone. Sit down with paper and pen and write. So that's the reason. So I say, please write down. Okay. There is an actual relationship between the act of writing and thinking. And that is the next positive relationship. What it does is that writing clarifies your thinking. Writing clarifies your thinking. So as you are writing down and you write down this is my problem, the answer itself will come to you. So you will discover that, well, I thought this was a problem, but actually maybe it's not. Maybe I already have an answer. So I thought I needed this mentor for this reason and I don't. So alhamdulillah, good for you. So sit down and write. And then once you have done that writing, then list those things, that whole list of things you put there, list them in order of priority. Which is the most important? Which is the next? Which is the next? Okay. Okay. So in order to do that, in order to list the priority, you have to have a goal because there is no way that you can prioritize something unless you have a goal. Get it? So something is more important. Why? Because it helps me to achieve my goal in the most energy efficient, carbon efficient, calorie efficient, you know. Okay. Brain power efficient. Be efficient, 따라 masi We're making every experiment possible because they just want it in their wonderland, the … So this one is the mo inb priority because this is… Oh my God. This is the one spot, be patient. Because even though it may not be efficient in all these ways, but it will be more difficult and so on, so on, so on, it gives me the biggest bang for the buck. It gives me the biggest advantage, it is the biggest rock that I have to take care of. It is the forest frog that I have to eat, Do you know the level of quality? frog I have to eat. It is the elephant in the room. Call it whatever you want. We have lots of metaphors and lots of, you know, examples we talk about, but you solve the biggest problem. The rest of it can only be, you know, easier because the most difficult one you did. You slew the dragon. The dragon is dead. Now, whatever else is there, even if it's a tiger, even if it's a lion, it's not as bad as a dragon. It's not breathing fire, right? So, therefore, you've done your job. Makes it easier. So, define that. Prioritize it. Which one, which one? In this context, what people get confused is, and I get this all the time. Oh, Shaikh, but you know, what you're saying is true, but it's not easy. So, I tell them yes. Now, let's therefore understand one more thing, which is, you sit down and ask yourself, which do you want? Because these are two opposite things. Which do you want? You want success or you want easy? The two are not the same. The two are never the same. You want success or you want easy? Which one do you want? So, you're looking at a tree. We are now walking in Ashiro the Wild. So, we're going through the forest part of it. It's beautiful, very, very tall. Aspens and poplars as well. A lot, very tall tree, maybe a hundred foot tall, maybe more. So, suppose I say, well, if somebody comes to me and says, you know, I want to get to the top of the tree, what shall I do? What should you do? I say, start climbing. Right? Start climbing or learn to fly. What else? Start climbing. He says, no, but that's not easy. Yeah, sure. You told me you want to get to the top of the tree. You told me that you want to get to the top of the tree. You didn't say you want easy. You want easy, go sit by the trunk of the tree on the bottom. And if you sit down, you get... That's gravity assisted. Gravity will help you. You don't have to make an effort to go down. You have to make an effort to go up. And that's the principle of tower dynamics, right? The law of entropy. The law of entropy is that without effort, everything goes down. Nothing goes up. Without effort, everything goes down. If you have a house and you make no effort over it, it will deteriorate. It will not improve. Suddenly, one morning, you don't wake up and find, oh my God, it's a beautiful, a new color. No. You have a car, you make no effort, it deteriorates. It goes down. It doesn't become better. You can't say, well, you know, it had a blown up gasket and overnight now the gasket is back. No, it won't. Right? If you have a garden and you make no effort over it, it will deteriorate. If you have a garden and you make no effort, it grows weeds. A weed is a plant. A rosebush is also a plant. Gladioly are also plants. The garden will not grow gladioly and rosebushes. The garden will grow weeds. You might say it's strange. It is strange, but that's how it is, right? Your body makes no effort and you turn into a basket case, which is good for the health system because you make a, you help a lot of different specialists to make a lot of money. Thanks to you. You make no effort. It always deteriorates. Whatever it is, your relationships, you get married, no effort, the marriage will break up. Your relationship with your friends, make no effort, the relationship will go. Everything needs effort, needs follow through. I don't know how many of you play golf, but if you play golf, you understand one very important thing. The first thing my caddy taught me when I was, when I was learning, he said the most important thing is to follow the ball, keep your eye on the ball and follow through with the club. So you hit the ball, you turn your body, keep your feet in the same place. You turn your body completely and your club is over your shoulder and your eye is on the ball. You're seeing where the club is. You're seeing where the club is. You're seeing where the ball is going. He said, that is the most important thing. And that makes sure that the ball will go the furthest. Now I can tell you the reasons of physics. I can tell you reasons of logic that this is nonsense because once my club has hit the ball, I have no control over that ball. Whether I look at it, whether I sing to it, whether I weep over it, whether I ignore it, the ball will do what the ball is supposed to do according to the laws of physics, which are that the momentum the ball got from the shot of the club will take it that far depending on the air resistance that it is meeting as it is flying through the air. That is the physics of it. But believe it or not, if you don't keep your eye on the ball, somehow it doesn't work. Right? Now, I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in magic and all that. All I'm saying is that this is a indication. Forget the ball and the golf. This is an indication of what life is. Your ball, which is your goal, will happen if you follow through. If you show up, the key thing is show up. That's why when somebody comes to me and says, I want you to be a mentor, and if the guy is a Muslim, I tell him, come back after 12 months. Come back after 365 days. And in the 365 days, I want you to pray tahajjud every single day without fail. And I don't care what happens to you. But if you're alive, you have prayed two rakat tahajjud. You must pray two rakat of tahajjud at least every single day for 365 days. Then come back. I will accept you. And if you miss on the 364th day, you missed, you go back to day one. You start counting. You start counting. So alhamdulillah, I have no murids. I have no murids. I'm very happy about that. And if you think I'm insane, let me tell you some story of somebody who is not insane, definitely. And that is one of our greatest scholars of the subcontinent, Marana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, Rahatul Ali. He had a rule that if anyone came to him and said, I want to be a murid, I want you to be my mentor, my musleh, he would tell them, write me 40 letters. Over whatever period of time it takes. 40 letters. Explaining why. Why do you want me to be your shaykh? 40 letters. Can you imagine? That is the reason. Because before they even accept you, they want to make sure that you're not going to be wasting their time. They want to make sure that you are not going to be wasting their time. They want to make sure that you have the sincerity and you have the persistence to be able to see it through. So if you can't even write 40 letters, and in my case, if you can't pray tahajjud 365 days, then you know, you are not serious. So I make this rule. My point is this, that nothing that is worth doing or happening in life is easy. I'm reading a very eye opening thread on Twitter about this present generation. Be me, I'm not bad talking anybody. I'm not beating up this generation. I just want to open the eyes of this generation to what they are doing to themselves. And what they're allowing the clever people in this world who are using this generation as their base to become wealthy and to become influential. And how this generation is selling themselves, not even cheap,