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In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful. All praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the most honored of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family, and peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family. Brother and sister, normally in America if you ask somebody how are you, what is the answer you get? Let me ask you, how are you? Good. He says good. First of all, good or bad is an assessment of you by somebody else. You don’t decide I am good. Somebody else decides if you are good. Allah will decide if you are good. Right? So this is the American culture in which things are upside down. So good. Wrong answer. You say Alhamdulillah. That is the correct answer for a Muslim. And then you be polite and ask the other person how are you? After all somebody asked you a question, how are you? So they deserve to have a polite answer, right? So Alhamdulillah, I am well, how are you? But that’s not the point. My point is what I want to say here is, when you say I am well, what is wellness? It’s very important to understand, very very important to understand what is wellness. Wellness comprises of many things. Physical wellness, mental wellness, emotional wellness, spiritual wellness, financial wellness, wellness with regard to your relationships. If you are married then wellness in your family, wellness with regard to your children, your relationship with your children, how your children are growing and so on and so forth. Right? Many aspects of wellness. Now why is it important to think about this? Because in this world Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala made this word, Allah said for the human being is only that which he works for. It’s a world of cause and effect. So if I want to be well, and by well what does that mean? It means I want to be well in all these aspects. I want to be physically well, mentally well, emotionally well, spiritually well, well in my relationships, well in my finances and so on and so on. Then I must have a game plan for all of that. Because it won’t happen. Unless I work for it, it’s not going to happen. So if you take your day, and I’m suggesting that you do this as an exercise. Right? I’m teaching a course on live goal planning on the 15th in Hampshire mosque. Anyone interested come to that course. So if you are interested in being well, then you must have a plan. And if I look at your day from the time you wake up in the morning to the time you go to sleep, you must have a plan which is targeted at physical wellness. How do you get physical wellness? What determines that? What you eat and drink? How much exercise do you do? How much sleep do you get? And how do you take care of your body? Hygiene. Right? Four aspects to that. You must have an answer for all of this. Mental wellness comprises of what knowledge do I have? What knowledge do I need? What am I doing to gain that knowledge? Emotional wellness. How do I deal with my emotions? Sad, glad, bad, mad. How do I deal with that? If I get angry, what do I do? If I feel disappointed, what do I do? If I feel depressed, what do I do? Spiritual wellness. My connection with Allah. How much time in a day do I spend in my connection with Allah? And I’m not talking about the four salawat. The four salat is the four salat. This has to be done. In addition to that, how much Quran I’m reading, do I understand that? How much dhikr do I do? Do I focus on that dhikr, what happens to me? In his last qatra, he talked about this. The believers are those who when Allah’s dhikr is mentioned, their hearts shiver with the awe and majesty of Allah. Does it happen to me? Spiritual wellness. Finance your wellness. How much money do you need? What’s your game plan going forward? What’s your career looking like? What are your career goals and aspirations? You’ve got a lot of young people sitting here. Do you have a career plan? Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? It’s not just a dream. 10 years from now I’m going to be the chairman of General Electric. What tells me that it will happen? Do you have that plan? Do you have ambition? In business, you’re running a business. What’s your plan in the business going forward? 5 years from now, 10 years from now, what’s the plan? Do you understand markets? Do you understand finance? Do you understand inflation? Everything has to be learned. And therefore, how much time do you want to spend learning these things? Then, relationships. Marital relationship with your wife and your husband. Relationship with your parents, relationship with your children. How are those going? One simple question I ask people, do you have a conversation with your children? Go get this, go get that is not conversation. Conversation is when you sit and you talk about things which have mutual interest, mutual value for both people. Do you have that conversation? My father used to give me books to read. Random books. He would come and give me, I said, I’ll do this. And when I, he would come back, maybe a day later, two days later, because he expected me to finish it first. So then he would say, okay, so what did you learn from this? Only one time I did it, so I said, this is what the author is saying. He said, no, no, I don’t want to know what author is saying. I know what the author is saying. Before I gave you the book, I read it. I want to know what you are saying. And he gave me, he gave me Ayn Rand’s book called Atlas Shrugged. Read it. He’s not talking about some story book, no. Books on philosophy, books which stretch your mind, stretch your imagination. What did you learn from this book? Then we would have a conversation. Then you would, I agree with something, he would disagree with something, he would agree, disagree and so on and so on, we would have a conversation. Do you have this with your children? If you have it, hamzil all party. If you don’t have it, why not? What are you waiting for? You’re waiting for them to grow up and go away and nothing else? So what’s the plan? Read. Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala made this world a place of darul amal. Place for amal. Spiritual? Zikr, tahajjud, fasting, connection with Allah. What happens to me when I read the Quran al-Karim? What happens to me when I come into the masjid? Most of us are so disconnected with ourselves that what happens to me is like a, I don’t know what you say. Because I never thought of what should happen to me. There’s no effect. It was never supposed to happen. My submission to my brothers and sisters is time doesn’t, we don’t know how much time we have, right? Nobody knows. Don’t wait for it to run out. Do something before the time runs out. Do something with yourself, do something with your children, do something with your friends. Surround yourselves with friends who will push you to do the things that you should do. Simple question, right? Ask yourself. Ask one of your friends, what books did you read this year? If your friend cannot answer that question, if they didn’t read the books, find another friend. Seriously, I’m not joking. What books did you read? What kind of friend is that? The thing is, if you surround yourself with friends who are one way, you become like that. It’s simple as that. Don’t be in this imagination that you are going to change everybody. You will not. You will change. You will be like, as they say, you are the sum total of five of your friends. If your friends are people who go regularly to the gym, if your friends are people who get up in the morning, after Salatul Bhajar they run for ten miles, believe me, you will start doing that. You will become physically very fit because those friends are doing it. You surround yourself with friends who are only sitting and eating, that’s what you will become. So I say to people, it’s not my quote, somebody else said, I read it somewhere, but beautiful quote. They say, choose your heart. Choose your heart. Being physically unfit is hard. Being physically fit is also hard. Being ignorant is hard. Learning and reading is also hard. Being a fool is hard. Being wise is also hard. Choose your heart. Being disconnected from Allah is hard. Connecting to Allah is also hard. Not easy. So choose your heart. Choose which heart you want. This life is not easy. This life was never meant to be easy. Allah did not make it easy. Life is hard. It is supposed to be hard. Choose your heart. Because if you don’t choose the right heart, the other one will happen to you automatically. If I do not do physical exercise, I will become unfit. And it comes with all kinds of ailments and problems and you know. If I don’t choose the spiritual heart, I will get disconnected with Allah and that comes with its own problems. If I don’t choose the heart of good communication, being nice to people and so on and so forth, then I will end up with our friends, problems in the family and so on and so forth. That’s also hard. To surround yourself with friends who will push you to do the right things. Assess your friends. Assess your friends. Is this person somebody that I should be friends with? And also say, what am I contributing to that friendship? I have friends who regularly, the moment he sees my face, I’ve got some friends. Sheikh, which book are you reading? What is your latest book which you are writing? Because I write, so they know this. Which is the latest book that you are writing? We ask Allah SWT to forgive us and open our eyes to what He has given us and to allow us to appreciate it and to take benefit from it and to use it for the benefit of dunya wal-akhirah wasallallahu ala nabil-karim wa ala ali hewas abid min rahmatul garh.
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