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Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘Alameen. Wasalatu wasalamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen. Muhammadur Rasulullah ﷺ, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathira. Fahamabadu.
My brothers and sisters, I want to share with you some thoughts. You know, people say we only live once, and that is true. That we only live once; we are not coming back to do or undo whatever we lived, however we lived, and whatever we created. So, it makes sense to live the best that we can live and to leave behind a contribution which will be worthy of our life, worthy of ourselves—something that you will be remembered by, will honour.
Ibrahim let this dua, and he said: “Oh Allah, give me a life where I will be remembered with honour.” And Allah Ta’ala gave him that, and that life was because of his obedience to Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la said to him, “Submit.” Submit? And he said, “I have submitted.”
So let me share with you some thoughts about what I think we should focus on in our lives. The first and most important thing is to know yourself—to know yourself as well as you can know yourself. And this requires introspection, it requires contemplation, it requires the ability, it requires courage because courage comes and courage fuels and courage supports the ability to face yourself. That is very, very, very tough sometimes for anyone. Anyone, it is easier to live in a fool’s paradise, it is easier to live behind a facade that we have created for ourselves, whereas we know the truth. Now, the truth may be both ways; the truth may be negative or the truth may be positive, but many people, therefore, they never face the truth, they never look at themselves in the mirror. That’s a big mistake because unless you do that, you have no basis to stand on. So the first and foremost thing is to know yourself.
I recommend to people: do a spot analysis for yourself—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. So write down your strengths and write down your weaknesses. Opportunities and threats are derivatives of that, so leave that for the moment, but write down what you see as your strengths and what you see as your weaknesses. Then what you do is take this list of yours of strengths and weaknesses and go to somebody who knows you well. So whether it’s your spouse, whether it’s your brother or sister, whether it’s your parent, whether it’s a close friend who knows you, somebody who’s maybe a work colleague. So, somebody who you trust and somebody who knows you well. And go to a person you trust. Go to a person with integrity. You don’t want to go to a person who will, you know, try to hurt you. It’s very important because in this, sometimes if you go to the wrong person, you can come out of there with negative, you know, unwanted and unfair negative impressions. So, go to such a person, show them that your list and say, “Please vet this list,” you know, add, subtract, change and so on, and have a conversation around that with them. It’s not just, you know, laundry list of stuff you write down and they cross it out or they add something. It’s not like that. It’s have a conversation around that.
So, for example, if you say that, you know, I think my strength is that I am outgoing, that I am a good communicator. Supposing you have written that, you go to a friend and you show them that. They might say, “Yes, you are a good communicator, but one of the problems…” So he’s taking now the strength and converting into a weakness: “I think one of the problems is that you do not allow anyone else to talk.” If there is a meeting, you dominated totally, so with the result that you lose out the input of other people. So the thing that you thought was your strength—yes, it is a strength in many ways—but it’s also a very important weakness that you need to overcome, which is you actually need to talk less. You actually need to encourage other people to speak. And the first way of encouraging is to keep your own mouth shut. So that is, you know, you get a feedback. So now you take this to—you make your list of strengths and weaknesses and then you take it to somebody who knows you well and let them add or subtract that and have a conversation around that. Speak to them in a way where your learning is enhanced and enriched.
Now, as a result of that, you will develop confidence. And once you develop confidence, then it’s important not to look outside for affirmation. So if you know yourself and you are confident about that, then you don’t do that. Otherwise, you spend a lot of time, trying to please people, trying to look good to people, and so on. And therefore, you open yourself to manipulation. When you show your need—that there is a need for affiliation, a need for affirmation—then whoever is giving you that affirmation will take their pound of flesh. They are going to be people who will, you know, within quotes, charge you for it. And that is worthless. So, therefore, this looking for affirmation from outside is a net negative thing. And that will not happen only if you are confident about yourself. That confidence, as I said, has to be based on facts. It’s not a matter of fooling yourself or creating some figment or imaginary model and imagining that I am this way or that way; that has to be supported with actual data.
Second thing is, become comfortable with staying alone, comfortable with yourself, with being alone. When I say “being alone,” that doesn’t mean that you are now sitting alone, but your face is in your phone and you are looking at Instagram or Reels or something, or you’re watching TV or… No, being alone means being alone. Just by yourself, sitting there, comfortable, not anxious, reflecting, thinking, just being by yourself and being with yourself. So make friends with yourself. Many people are extremely uncomfortable when they are alone. They always need some noise. They always need some company. They always need somebody there who has to be around them for them to feel comfortable. That’s a huge weakness. So be—develop this thing of being comfortable with yourself, comfortable with silence, and comfortable with solitude, you know, khilwa, by yourself, quiet, make zikr of Allah ﷻ, just be quiet by yourself, and that’s very important too, to be able to do.
Third thing is, we don’t fear to face the truth, even though sometimes the truth is uncomfortable, sometimes it is painful, but that is something to develop: that yes, I want to face the truth, I always want to face the truth, I don’t want to live in a fool’s paradise because it is better to face the truth because then i can work to make that truth—you know good for me right? So you face the truth and you—you are then able to create a strategy to take advantage of the truth of the reality without that. If you are lying to yourself, that is the worst possible thing. Is never to lie to yourself. If there is a problem, it is your problem. Face the truth and say “I don’t have discipline,” “I am unable to control myself.” And don’t dump it on somebody: “Oh, you see, but this was there, that was there.” No, it doesn’t matter what was there; end of the day, it is your hand, it is your foot, it is your eyes, it is your legs, it is your ears, it is your mouth, right? And if you have done something with these which was detrimental to you, you are the one who has suffered or who is suffering. So don’t lie to yourself. Um, and you are the only one who you can fool. So this is very important. Sometimes people think they’re so smart that they can fool people—yeah, yeah, you cannot fool people. People will see through you, right? If not the first time, the second time, they will see through you. But you can only fool yourself. And unfortunately, you see a lot of people go around fooling themselves. They think they are doing wonderful things, but the reality is—and that’s why i’m a—I strongly believe in metrics. I say measure it.
If you think I have a very productive day, how do you know that? To measure it, write down your whole schedule and write down what you did in the day every half hour from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep. And then look at this whole list and say: “How productive was this day?” And then no matter how, you know, bad it might, might look, then you sit down and say, well, how can i make it productive? Uh, from the time i get up to the camp i go to sleep, how can i make this day more productive? How can i change myself? But you cannot do that unless you are willing to look at the truth as it is because the fact of the matter is uh nobody knows the best that they can do anytime. You think you have done the best—you you will find that, alhamdulillah, you have the strength to do better. So, don’t stop at something. Say, okay, this is what I’ve done today, but I can do better. And therefore, compete only against yourself, but benchmark against the best. That is a very important thing to do, which is don’t compete with others. Because I’ve seen in my life also, it’s not very difficult to look good in whatever circle that you move around in. Because most people, they don’t do their best. Most people will not make the effort. So even if you are doing your life halfway good, you will look better than others. But that is not enough because you know yourself that you are only working at 50% efficiency. So how is that good? You look good because others are working at 25% efficiency. But you need to be working at—if not 100% efficiency—at least 80% efficiency. So you are still 30% below what you can be.
So that is why it is very important to compete only against yourself. You know what is your potential. See if you are achieving that and work to achieve that. But benchmark against the best. So you say, okay, what is the final goal? Who is my goal? So start from Rasulullah ﷺ, but also benchmark against somebody you know, somebody in today’s world, and say that this is the benchmark. I need to be like this. And how far away from that am I?
So that is the first sort of lesson that I want to share with you, which is the lesson of confidence: to say that be confident, don’t lie to yourself, do a SWOT analysis, share it with somebody who knows you, have a conversation around that, and make sure that you—that your quality of life therefore goes up. Right? So I ask Allah to help us to live the best that we can live because this is only one time you’re going to get a chance to live our lives. And I ask Allah to enable us to live a life where Allah will be pleased with us. Wa sallallahu ala rabbil kayyim wa ala alihi wa sahbihil mayim bi rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.