What’s a Life Goal – 1

https://youtu.be/A7VxrTuHrpg Auto-generated transcript: The question that I'm asked from time to time by thinking individuals, thinking young people is, how should I focus on a goal? How do I arrive at a goal for myself in life? Now those who are born with that thought and that knowledge and that focus clearly in their minds are blessed. But those who are not born with that are in a way blessed even more. Because when you get something easy, sometimes you tend to lose value for it. You think it's okay, it comes easy to me, so it must be easy. Whereas the reality of life is that it's not easy. And for those to whom it does not come easy, I'm saying they are even more fortunate, they're more lucky because on the one hand they will get that knowledge when they work hard enough for it. And meanwhile, they will have the opportunity to develop resilience, to develop perseverance, and to develop consistency, and to develop persistence, and to develop commitment, and to develop discipline. All of which are critically important to achieve that goal no matter how easily or no matter with what difficulty you arrived at it in the first place. Because even the person who knows from the moment you open his eyes that I want to be this, whatever that this is, he will need persistence and he will need a sting power, he will need the commitment and he will need all of that if he really wants to achieve the goal. Getting that you want something is one thing, getting it is a whole different ball game. The benefit or rather the only benefit of knowing clearly what you want is that you can start working in that direction sooner than somebody who has to go through a lot of soul searching and so forth before he or she gets to that clarity. That's about the only benefit. But if you know it clearly, but you do not do anything to develop, to bring discipline into your life, to be persistent, to be consistent, to have determination, then good luck to you because you are not going to achieve that goal. Now therefore how to do this? So I'm not talking about the one to whom this is clear, I'm talking about the one to whom it may not be so clear and they are struggling. The first thing to do is to make friends with yourself. I've said this many times and I believe this and I believe it very strongly that one of the greatest things that we have lost, which used to be a strength, maybe for some people it was a strength by default. I mean, you know, they didn't ask for it, but it was there. It became part of their life. It's like people living on steep hillsides, they get to do a lot of cardiac work, walking because they're interested in cardiac fitness, but because that's how you get around. You live on top of the hillside, you would go down to the river for water, carry the water back up again and so on and so on. So you are getting, you're doing some work for some other reason, but you're getting cardiac fitness as a bonus and I think that is something which is, you know, worth thinking about. The thing to do, what we have lost is this, which is the ability to be comfortable with yourself. The comfort with silence, the comfort with solitude, comfort with being by yourself. And when I say by yourself, I don't just mean by yourself physically, personally as in one human being, but one human being minus their phone, because the phone is the biggest distraction and the biggest interference that we have bought and brought into our lives. And we have created this completely toxic lifestyle, which is based on where the most common feeling is that of fear, FOMO, fear of missing out. And if you just think about all the time we check the phone so that we don't suffer from FOMO, so that we don't miss out something and see, okay, so I check my phone, you know, 10,000 times a day because that's the truth of it. That's how much we check every three seconds and say, okay, sure, so I did that. Now what did I get? Well, obviously I didn't miss out. I was taking care of that every three seconds. So I must have got what I was chasing. What did I get? I ask you, sir, what is the answer? You know the answer. I know the answer. The ability to be alone and to be comfortable with yourself being alone. So number one, you're talking about how do I get to a life goal? So first step, make friends with yourself. Learn to be alone. Seek being alone. Don't seek company. Seek being alone. Seek solitude. I don't mean seek solitude as in, you know, somebody who is dysfunctionally introverted, somebody who is depressed. No, as a perfectly healthy human being who's very comfortable with other people, who has high social skills and so on, but they like to be alone by themselves for some part of the day. And that's where we need to get. Today, there is a whole branch of psychology which deals in these things, which is anxiety creating moments for people who hate being alone. Solitude, khilwat, being by yourself creates anxiety in people, creates fear in people. I'm asking you, get to a point where you will be happy with that. You will seek that. And if you don't have that for some time, that will make you unhappy. That will make you not anxious, but it will be something that you would want to have. You say, oh, I wish I could be by myself. Not because I hate people, but because I want to be by myself. So make friends with yourself. The second thing is, once you are alone, and believe me, be prepared for pain, be prepared like anything else. If you go into the gym and you say, well, you know, my muscles right now would, they would look like, look nice on a chicken, but since I'm not a chicken, I need to do something about it. And you start, under a coach, you start a regimen of calisthenics and weights and so on. The first thing, the very first sensation that you will feel, which will be very strong, is that of pain. You will feel pain. You, your whole body will pain. You will question your sanity. You will say, what the hell? Why did I do this? Am I insane? And the answer is no, it's not. You say you are the sanest person in the world. So why did you choose the pain? Because you know what is behind this pain. The pain is a mask. The pain is a barrier. And once you go over that barrier, then there is beauty, then there is comfort, then there is great, beautiful health, all kinds of good things. So the same thing with solitude. Be prepared for the pain. Be prepared for anxiety. Depending on what kind of a frenetic lifestyle you have, depending on how addicted you are to your phone, all of this is going to come up. Don't even take your phone with you. Don't give yourself more difficulty by saying, I'll take my phone, but I won't look at it. No, you won't. You will look at it. Keep the phone at home. Keep the phone as far away from yourself as possible. And if the phone is linked to your watch or something, imagine, see how we have physically and voluntarily put chains on our ankles and our wrists and on our necks. The real chains, these are the real chains, right? Not the steel and iron chains that slaves were forced to wear. The slave didn't like what he was wearing. We love it. And that's where the problem is. I was reading some stuff by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, two philosophers. George Orwell wrote the book in 1984, and I suggest you read it. And Aldous Huxley wrote the book Brave New World, which also I suggest you read. And somebody else who made a wonderful commentary on them, comparing them. And he said, George Orwell feared that we would be enslaved by the things we hate. And Aldous Huxley feared that we would be enslaved by the things we love. And so on. I mean, I think this is where we are. We are enslaved by the things we love. We spend money we can't afford to get more and more sophisticated phones. Most of the features of it we don't use. And then we also make sure that we are hooked up in other ways, where the phone is hooked up to the watch and the watch is hooked up to something else and so on. So chain after chain. You need to break out of that. So throw all that. Leave your watch, leave your phone. Don't take any watch. You don't need a watch. The world doesn't depend on you. If you are not contactable for a few minutes or a few hours, believe me, nothing will change in the world. And if you don't believe me, go to the next funeral that you go to, next janada, and see The people who come to the janada, people who pray the salah to the janada, people who go to the cemetery, people who are burying the person who has died, look around. See how committed they are to their task. See how interested they are in the person who died and how interested they are in getting it over and getting back to their lives. Just see that, right? It's a very salutary thing. No matter how much that person was loved, everybody loved. No matter how much that person was respected, no matter how big a crowd there was of the janada, the crowd at the kabiristan and the cemetery is smaller and so on and so forth. So the point is that that's exactly how important you are and how important I am. So let's not get sidetracked by that. Nothing in the world will change if I disappear for a few hours. Nothing at all. And if you don't believe me, disappear and see what happens. Nothing will happen. So stay, go and sit in the forest, ideally forest. There's something beautiful about forests, there's something beautiful about trees, but if you are not fortunate enough to live in the forest and find something, find a park or something, go out. Go outside, into a place of nature, into a place where the khuda wa ta'wa Allah swaha wa ta'wa surrounds you. Go and sit down and just be by yourself. Do nothing, say nothing, speak nothing. And I said, alone. Don't take your best friend with you. Don't take your cat or your dog with you. Don't take your phone with you. Definitely don't take your phone with you. Be comfortable with yourself. You're talking about getting life goals.