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As-salamu alaykum. I mentioned to you the other day the issue of excellence and the issue of the company of people who will stretch you. Not the company of people who you coast along, mediocre people. We’re talking about the company of excellent people because you grow only in an atmosphere where you are stretched. If there is no challenge in your atmosphere, you will never grow. Right? If you look at trees that are grown in a greenhouse, they look very lush because of the controlled environment. They’re getting nutrients at the right time. They’re getting water, this, that. A lot of greenery. They look very lush and very healthy. But you take the same tree, you put it outside, one gust of wind, it falls flat because there’s no root system. Roots are not developed because roots develop only with stress. Roots develop for two reasons. One, roots develop when they go searching for water in the earth. So when there is not enough water, the root goes deep to hit the underground aquifers. And the second reason roots grow is to hold the tree in place and that happens when there are winds. If there are no winds, there’s no need for roots. You need the roots when there are winds. So, that is the same situation with human beings. If you are among people who are just like you and you are very comfortable with them, you will never grow. You need to be with people who are superior to you, who are better than you. That’s when you grow because you get stressed. You need to be with people who are superior to you, who are better than you. That’s when you grow because you get stressed. So I mentioned that in detail in my last khatras. I won’t go into that, but I thought let me give you some live examples to show you what ambition and passion looks like. Right? So do this as a test. All your friends who you hang out with, ask them what’s your ambition? What are you passionate about? Right? Let them, you ask them, you tell them. What is your ambition? What are you passionate about? And then see if it compares to something which I am going to show you just now. Because as I told you the other time, if you are with people who have no ambition, who have no passion, run like hell. Get out. Your life is in danger. Your future is in danger. You are in danger. Because for everything there is a period, there is a time period, there is a window of opportunity. Once that shuts, you can cry till the cows come home. Nothing is going to happen because the opportunity is gone. You have to take advantage of the opportunity at the time it is there. It doesn’t come because you want it. You have to take advantage of it where it is there. Otherwise you will stay where it is. Otherwise you will stay where you are. Now give me two examples. Since you guys are interested in sports, I did a bit of research. Michael Jordan, who is supposed to be, he’s called the greatest basketball player of all time. He led the Bulls in six NBA championships. He says, my whole life had always been about being the best basketball player that I could be. He said, I had absolute tunnel vision. Everything was channeled towards making me the best basketball player that exists. And that’s how he became. Kobe Bryant, as I told you, they say, his own teammates, they said, we would win a match. Listen carefully. We would win a match somewhere. We would come back home. All of us, we have won the match, obviously come with the money and this and that. We go for a party or we go home and Kobe would go to the gym. He would not go home. He would go to the gym. What’s he doing in the gym? He’s doing a gym. What’s he doing in the gym? In the gym, he’s practicing the two shots in that match, which he missed. Now think about that. In the whole match, how many shots would he have played? You know, God knows, right? And the missing those two shots did not do any harm to the match. They still won the match. But he said, no, I missed the two shots. So he goes and he said for one hour or two hours, he would be practicing those two shots from that place. So he remembers where he missed the shot, which point on the court. And he would be standing in that point on the court. And he would be shooting the basket until he got all the shots. They said, we would call, the coach would call for a meeting at 830, breakfast meeting. And he said, all of us would moan and groan and say, for God’s sake, one weekend, one day off we have, and the coach wants us. But you know, the coach calls you, you have to go. So he said, all of us would bleary-eyed come into the restaurant in the hotel, 830. And Kobi would walk in, completely covered in sweat from head to foot. He said, where were you? For three hours before that, he was on the court. Three hours before that, 830 meeting, 530 is on the basketball court, he is practicing. Now he set a goal for himself of 10 baskets from each spot on the court. And he would not move until he made all 10 of them. If he made nine, he missed the 10, he would go back starting counting from one. He wouldn’t move until he made all 10. Then he would divide his, he would do six hours of training every day. Six hours of training every day, right? You think you want to play basketball? Nothing wrong. If you say you want to play basketball and you are not doing this, my brother, stop smoking whatever you’re smoking, because you’re fooling yourself. You are fooling yourself, you will get nowhere. Six hours a day, two hours of weightlifting, two hours of cardio, high intensity training and sprints and two hours of basketball drills, right? That’s the meaning of dedication. That’s the meaning of ambition. That’s the meaning of passion. Tiger Woods, golf. He would run four miles in the morning, lift weights in the gym, hit balls for two to three hours on the range, play 18 holes of golf, work on the short game, run another four miles and play basketball or tennis. That is his daily training schedule. And he says, of course, you always want to get in that second four mile run before hitting the tennis or basketball court. Running eight miles a day, two to three hours of hitting balls on the range, 18 holes of golf. How many golfers here? Anybody played golf here? You played, I played. So there’s two of us. Michael Phelps, an American competitive swimmer. He is the most decorated Olympian of all times with a total of twenty-eight medals. Michael Phelps holds the all-time record for Olympic gold medals, twenty-three gold medals. One man, he got it. In individual events, and in individual events, he got thirteen gold medals. And Olympic medals, he got another sixteen. Now, when Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Games, he broke his fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz’s 1972 record of seven first place finishes at any Olympic Games. Michael Phelps did eight. Now, according to Bowman, Bowman is his biographer, Michael Phelps swam Michael Phelps swam thirteen kilometers a day, seven days a week, which is eighty thousand meters, which is eighty kilometers, which is fifty miles every week. He swam fifty miles a week, even on Sundays and birthdays. Now, this is where the whole point of dedication is, you know, where it shows the time when other people will say, okay, today is a festival, today is a birthday. No birthday, no festivals. You work out, then you go to your party. He split his training into two sessions, spending six hours a day in the pool. Right? This is what dedication looks like. This is what winners look like. So, why submission to you, my brothers and sisters? Your window is open now. It won’t remain open. The opportunities that you have at age fifteen, you will not have at age twenty-five. The opportunities that you have at age twenty-five, you will not have at age thirty, at age forty. Right? You want to wake up and do something and make something of your life? The time is now, not tomorrow. It will take pain, it will take tears, but you will succeed. And you will succeed the way you cannot even imagine. Right? But you have to make the effort. I wrote a book about my own effort. It’s called An Entrepreneur’s Diary. It’s on Amazon. Go read it. What I did with my life. What I did with my life. Same rules for everybody. Same rules for everyone. Put yourself in a situation where you are challenged. Get out of your comfort zone. The greatest danger in life is to feel comfortable. The greatest danger is to feel comfortable. Get out, put yourself in a situation where you are not comfortable, beat those people. Then get out from there, put yourself in a situation again, where you are not comfortable, beat those people. That is the way to go. Effort. And you have to love the effort because that’s the only way you will make the effort. Believe me, this thing cannot be faked. This is not happening because somebody is forcing you. Nobody was forcing Kobe Bryant, nobody forces Mark Phillips. No. They do it because they love it. They do it because they love to win. Right? So ask yourself, are you serious about your life? Or you just want to coast around. Up to you. Your choice. And if you think it’s okay to coast around, also remember the greatest two-letter word that is coming into our vocabulary today. What is it? AI. Artificial intelligence. You know what that means? That means that everything that can be automated will be automated. Every single thing. Every single thing that a machine can do, a machine will do, a human being will no longer do it. Which means that the entire job market is going to collapse. And only people who have, who can add value with real intelligence, only people who can add value with doing superior work, only they will have work, nobody else. Everything else, machine will do. So your choice. You want to have fun? You want to hang out with your friend? Go ahead. Be my guest. No problem for me. But if you want to save yourself, really do something worthwhile and not fall into the AI trap and become a statistic, you have to begin today. You have to begin today. Put metrics. Measure yourself. What did I know yesterday? What more do I know today? What did I do? What did I know? How much? Take, take, which is if you’re sitting here, how much Quran did I know last year? How much do I know this year? What was the condition of my Salah last year? What’s the condition of my Salah this year? How many books did I read last year? How many books do I read now? Which is the last book you read? What did you take away from that book? What projects did you do till last year? What projects are you doing now? What inventions did you make till last year? What did you invent today? Somebody inventing, right? People who are inventing are not Jin. They’re not Malaika. They’re not Jury and Mikhail. People like you and me. So how come you don’t do it? So, effort has to be made. Effort has to be made. He asked Allah, the Subhan, and the Ta’ala to help us to maximize the use of our time because our time is a non-renewable resource. Once it is gone, it’s gone. It’s not coming back. You can’t buy it. He asked Allah to enable us to use our time productively, to use it in a way which maximizes its benefit, which helps us to become winners in the dunya wal akhirah.
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