Voices in the head

Auto-generated transcript:Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Now, most of the time, this is not conscious. So, we just give people permission to come and occupy, to live rent-free in your mind, in your head. Don't do that. Don't do that. Your mind is a very precious, very precious, precious thing. The mind is like a fertile field. The mind is like a fertile field. The mind is like a fertile field. The mind is like a fertile field. The mind is like a fertile field. fertile field, it will, whatever you plant in it, it will give you a harvest for that thing. Whatever you plant in it, the mind will give you a harvest for that thing. It makes it grow and it gives you a harvest. That is the reason why it's very important for you to choose what to plant in your mind. Because you plant wheat, you get wheat. You plant rice, you get rice. You plant wheat and you want rice, you will not get. So you have to decide, what is it that I'm going to allow into my mind? What will I allow to live rent-free in my mind? So choose who you want to listen to. And then listen to them very carefully. That's the second part. For the first part, we listen to everybody. Which is detrimental because everybody does not have the competence to say or tell us anything that is beneficial for us. And then the other part of it is that we disregard, again, consciously or unconsciously, real advice which can benefit us. And this would be the advice from experts. And advice from people who are... Who are genuinely concerned about you. So that's the other thing. So therefore, it's very important to pay close attention to that advice. Advice coming from people who are experts. And understand that that advice is coming to you and most of the time it will come to you free, is to be appreciated, deeply appreciated. Because it's not your right. That people must... So, that's the third part. That's the fourth part. That people must spend their time with you. People must share their hard-earned life lessons with you. Right? It's not... It's not something that is necessary for those people to do. If somebody's doing it, they are doing you a favor. And that is something that we need to appreciate. Not just take it for granted. If somebody is sharing their knowledge and their experience, it must be respected. One of the very detrimental things that I have noticed, especially this Gen Z, is this completely arrogant assumption. That anyone who's not... I don't know. I don't know. I don't think anyone can do that. I don't think anyone who's under 20 is not worth listening to. That the only people who are worth listening to are people of your age, people of this generation. Now that's about the most stupid thing that you can think about. Because experience comes with age. Experience comes with living life. You cannot have 40 years of experience when you are age 20. The only way to have 40 years of experience is to be 40 plus. It's not... is to be 40 plus. Now, having said that, not everyone who has 40 years of life experience can teach you something useful because of another very important factor, which is the tendency to document that experience. Because what is not documented is not learned. It's as simple as that. What is not documented is not learned. People live the life. So I'm 70 years old. There are millions of people who are 70 years old. But the 70-year-old who can teach you something will be the one who has taken the time and trouble to live reflectively and thoughtfully and he or she has documented their learnings. If they have done that, then what they have documented is potentially useful for you. I'm not saying everything is useful, but potentially useful for you. But if they have not documented that, then believe me, our memory is fickle. Our memory is not as reliable as we imagine. We forget things. We mix up things. We have, we call it the halo effect, which is we see something or we experience something good and that carries on to the next two, three incidents of people and we imagine good things about them and the opposite of that and so forth. So memory does all kinds of stuff. So the whole issue of making it useful is to document. And in the documentation, again, it's not just a matter of writing now this happened, this happened, this happened. No. It's a question of taking what happened, reflecting on it, extracting learnings from it and then, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know. documenting those learnings in a teachable form. So it is living the concrete experience then coming out of the concrete experience into a space of reflective observation and from the space of reflective observation or in the space of reflective observation of extracting important lessons of what went right, what went wrong and much and even more importantly, how can I prevent what went wrong from going wrong a second time? And conceptualizing these into what we call abstract conceptualization into abstract lessons which are teachable. So you say, well, this is what you should do in such and such situation. So you're not going there into the history of actually what happened. You're simply staying with the lesson that you have extracted from that incident. And then the final stage of what we call active experimentation, where you are now saying, okay, this is what I learned. I'm now going to apply it in my life and then see what happens when I apply that lesson in my life. And that would be the stage of active experimentation, where I'm experimenting with how well my life is going to be. And then I'm going to apply that lesson in my life. And that would be the lesson which I extracted works. Now, people have done that kind of documentation of their life. Those people and their experience is hugely, hugely potentially beneficial. And that is what you need to focus on. So when you have these voices in the head, analyze those voices in the head, 99% of them should be trashed because they are useless. But that 1% which is there, where hopefully you find somebody like this, who will be able to give you this extract, the actual juice, the actual essence of their life experience, that is to be valued. That is to be valued. So what must you do with voices in the head, which sometimes tend to, or most of the time tend to drag you down is number one, majority of them ignore you. And number two, you have to be able to say, okay, I'm not going to do this. Ignore them. Or rather, before you ignore them, analyze them in the context of what is relevant, what is not relevant, who is qualified, who is not qualified. And then keep only, or pay attention only to the relevant bits from people who are qualified, and the rest of it, you can let it go. I hope this is useful and beneficial because this is a very, very common issue with a lot of us, including myself. I mean, nobody is exempt from this because we live in society, people talk to us, and therefore, what they say, what is heard cannot be unheard. So what they say, they've said it. And if you allow it to take root, then it remains in your mind. And then, as I said, the mind will give you the harvest for the seed that you planted. Wasallamu alaikum. Wa alaikum salam.