You don’t get to choose

https://youtu.be/Oj37__JfVwc Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and peace and blessings be upon him, and upon many, many. Brothers and Sisters, I want to talk to you about a very important thing, which is one of the major sicknesses of our modern society, and that is the illusion of choice. The illusion of choice. I say that because somewhere we have been given this false impression that we get to choose. And people try to use this where they can. I don't want to sit next to that person. I don't want to learn from this teacher or that teacher. I don't like my neighbour, and so on and so on. Right? The reality of life is that in life, if you are alive, you have no choices. You have no choices. You do not get to choose your circumstances. Your choices are with how you choose to deal with those circumstances. Please understand this. You do not get to choose your circumstances. What you do get to choose is how to deal with the circumstances. With the circumstances that are given to you. You don't get to choose whether you are rich or poor. You get to choose the kind of life you need to lead if you want to be rich or if you want to be poor. Now you might say, who would want to be poor? Every sensible person I know in this world wants to be poor. Poor not as in a homeless person with a begging bowl standing on the street corner, but poor as in a person with minimum assets, minimum impediments, minimum encumbrances, living a very comfortable but minimalist life. That is not a sign of stupidity. It's a sign of amazing intelligence. So you don't get to choose. For example, you don't get to choose whether you will be healthy or sick. But you get to choose the kind of life that you will need to lead if you want to be healthy. You don't get to choose whether you will be successful or not. You don't get to choose who your neighbors will be. You don't get to choose who your neighbors will be. You don't get to choose who sits next to you or on the same bus as you or on the same train as you. You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school when you go to school. You don't get to choose who are your teachers. But in all of these situations, you get to choose how you will behave as a neighbor, which will make no matter which neighbor it is, a good neighbor. The same neighbor has two houses, one on either side of his house. And you will get to choose whether your neighbor, even though intrinsically he might be a nasty person, that he will be the best, sweetest person to you while he continues to be the nasty person to the neighbor on the other side of the fence. This is the choice you have. You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school, but you get to choose what you want to do with those classmates in school, which makes you a better person. You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school, which makes them the best friends that you will ever have probably in your life, as well as very beneficial for each other's learning. Because that's why you go to school for. You don't go to school to hang out. You don't go to school to learn. And you don't go to school to learn book learning. You go to school to learn how to deal with people. Please get this into your head. Don't think that you have been to university for four years. Therefore, you have now a degree. And therefore, you must now be made the managing director of the corporation. No, sorry. When I hire a graduate from university, I don't care anything about what kind of degree he has, right? Or how well he did in that degree. What I'm looking at is that here is a person. The fact that you have a degree is evidence for me to show that you showed up everywhere. You showed up everywhere. You showed up every day for those four years. That you are somebody who can get away with the warning and go to school because there is school, because you have a sense of commitment to going to the school. Yes, you didn't study too well. And therefore, you could have got better grades, which you did not. And be sure I will ask you some questions about that. But that's not the reason I will fail you in the interview. I'm looking to see whether I'm going to hire somebody who will show up and not give me excuses. I'm going to I'm looking for somebody who demonstrates to me that he or she can complete assignments. I'm looking for somebody who can demonstrate to me that they can work with a bunch of diverse people who they did not choose to be with them. Because this is what they were presented with in life. In this case in the university, in this case in the college, in this case in the school. You didn't get to choose your classmates. But yet you worked with them successfully. And you stuck there for four years. You showed up every morning. You didn't make excuses. You completed assignments. Maybe you didn't do that well in the assignment. I will talk to you about that. I will ask you questions. You know, what happened? Why did you not do? Now tell me that since you have done that, since you have already submitted the assignment and they passed or they failed you or whatnot. But let's take that subject of the assignment and say, if you were to do it again, how would you do it differently? Right? The whole examination system sucks. So don't worry about that. I don't have any faith in the examination system. What I do have faith in is in people's ability to learn. And that's what I'm looking for. Because I want to hire somebody who has the ability to learn. Why? We don't have enough. Yum. Steps to learn for beginners at this chapter. Steps to me. I didn't practice these to you, as a particular person. How do you feel now? Do you have any concerns? Well, I'm an expert in the facility club as well. I want to keep you coming down thehuther side. Want me to talk to another person who wants to stop participating in the meeting to see what they've done for you? This is an excellent question. All of this came, all of them came to you, whether you liked it or not, and they came to you in the same package called life. When you came out of your mother's womb and you started breathing, you had parents, you probably had siblings, you had neighbors, you had all kinds of people, none of whom you chose. But every single one of them, you still have to deal with. And that is why focus on your skills of getting along with people, of influencing people, of enabling people. And at this point, let me tell you the biggest secret of success in life. The biggest secret of success in life. . . . is the success. The biggest secret is to help people. Is to help people. Read my lips. Help people. And in many cases, help people who have not asked for help. Help people who don't even probably realize that they need help. But nevertheless, you get up, you volunteer, you go out there, and you help the people. People will tell you a lot of garbage about how to build networks. And they will say, oh, you know what, networking is the most important skill in corporate careers. Networking is the most important skill in life. Networking is the most important skill that will get you places and so on, and so on. And then they will tell you, how should you network. Well, they say, you know, you go to these cocktail parties. You go to this breakfast. You join this club. You join that club. . . . And I tell you that's a load of garbage. That is a load of garbage. You know how you build networks? You build networks by helping people. Alhamdulillah, I did this all my life. And I didn't do this as a favor to anybody. I did this because I enjoyed myself thoroughly, completely and totally. So I did it. I helped people in all kinds of situations. And you know the benefit of that? Is today when I need any kind of thing, people come out from places I couldn't imagine. And they say, you know what? I heard you're looking for this. But here's the template. I heard you're looking for something, this, this, blah, blah, blah. Here's how I've done it. See if it works for you. I heard you're looking for contacts in this particular place. I know so-and-so. And I'm going to call him. Please send me some details. I didn't ask him to call anybody. But they did that. They do that. People have memories. So my submission to you is, get this thing out of your head. There is nothing in this world that you are entitled to. You are entitled to. It was all given to you. We have no choices. What we do have a choice on is what you do with what was given to you. And that thing which was given to you is called parents. It's called children. It's called spouse. It's called teachers. It's called students. It's called neighbors. It's called country. It's called world. It's called the environment. It's called animals and birds. It's called plants. It's called grass. It's called happiness. It's called sadness. It's called despair sometimes. And you know who succeeds? Not somebody who never feels despair because there's no such thing. There is no such thing, my brother and my sister. Everybody feels despair at some point in time if they care enough. If they want something badly enough. The only people who care enough are the people who care enough. The people who don't feel despair are the people who are probably maxing out on some drug or the other. They're anesthetized. Anesthetized. To be aesthetic is to be in complete control of all your senses and to be using them. To be anesthetized is the opposite of that. Where because of a drug your senses are now shut off. You're not feeling anymore. That drug is making you feel the way you feel. And that is why all intoxicants in Islam are haram. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala