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بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين و الصلاة والسلام على شرف الأنبياء والمرسلين، محمد رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم تسليماً كثيراً.
My brothers and sisters, in America there is a system where when a professor retires, he gives what is called the last lecture. So it’s more of a recap of some words of wisdom, his experiences, and so on. It’s a very important lecture. One of the Stanford professors, Graham Weaver, had his last lecture. I was reading it; he said some wonderful things which have great relevance for us. He basically said four things: the first thing he said was “do hard things first.” The secret of success is to do hard things first.
I remember another lecture at MIT where this professor actually demonstrated that he brought a big glass jar on his table. He put that jar, then he put some golf balls, then he put some smaller marbles, and then he put some gravel—that are the final parts—and then sand. Four things. And then he said we have to fill this jar with all of these things. So, what will you put in first? Different people said different things. Then he started doing it to show them, and then he said just because you are a man—if you think about this—the only way that you will get all the things into the jar is if you start with the golf balls. You start with the big ones. If you don’t start with the big ones, if you put in the sand first or the gravel after that and the marbles, it is easy; it will get done faster. But you will never get the golf balls in there after that. They won’t fit because the big ones are already partially filled with all the sand and stuff. So the only way to get everything into that jar is to start with the big stuff.
So another thing: there’s a proverb, “swallow the frog.” Swallow the frog. “Elephant in the room.” Talk about the elephant in the room. All of these terms mean deal with and address the most difficult things first. The reason for that is the same thing. Firstly, in the beginning, you also have more energy. So you are able to do more difficult things first. And secondly, once the more difficult things are over, then the rest becomes easy. You have built up some experience of your life as well, and so on. Things become easier. If you don’t do the difficult things first, instead of that, if you go for the easy things, then the difficult things will never happen. And without those difficult things, you will never succeed because those are the key fundamental things.
I was in Guyana from 1979 to ’83. So there, I was in a mining town on the bank of the Berbice River, 200 miles inland in the rainforest. We had electricity; we generated our own electricity. And the generator, genset we had was a manual genset. There was no starter. So there was a huge cast iron flywheel. Once a year, the generator was stopped for 12 hours to service it. And once you finish the servicing, you have to restart it. And the way to restart the generator was to get the flywheel turning. Now, getting that flywheel turning was literally a gut-breaking job because it was a huge thing. Very big. It’s bigger than the size of this room—a huge, massive thing. I don’t know how many tons it weighed. So everyone got a whole bunch of people, they used implements, and they had to turn it. But the beauty was that once you turned it, once it moved, then it would move and continue to move for the next year. You did nothing. It just moved on its own because the inertia built up in it moved it. But getting it to move was the thing where you literally bust your guts trying to do it. Same principle: which is do the hard thing first. To get the hard thing done, the rest of it becomes easy.
So the reason I’m saying again, take one more thing from this. Take from the seerah of Rasulullah ﷺ. If you look at Rasulullah ﷺ right at the beginning of his mission, put yourself in that position. Supposing you had that job. You have a bunch of people who are your people. You were born there, you grew up there; they are your family. Your whole family is known, everything else. All this might sound nice and easy, but it is actually very difficult. Because it is easier to get the respect of strangers than to get the respect of your own people. Right? You will always think, “Oh, this guy, well, I knew him.” Like Ahmad, *mashallah*, how old are you? Thirteen. So I know Ahmad from the time he was thirteen. The whole bunch of young people who graduated from this masjid, now they have children, *mashallah*. So I know them from the time they were little kids. So today, one of those kids comes and he is giving a lecture or something. If I am sitting and listening to him, the picture in my mind will always be, “Oh, this guy, I know him from the time he was five years old.”
So this was his situation. He was there. For us today, *alhamdulillah*, he is Rasulullah ﷺ. But for the people of Mecca, for the people of Banu Hashim, for the people of Banu Abdul Muttalib, who was he? He was my son, he was my nephew, my grandson. So that is one thing: How do you get the respect of people who know you? Literally, I mean, this is like this kid; I used to hold him in my hand. This kid, I have carried him when he couldn’t walk. Right? I mean, imagine—that’s from their perspective. So, to gain their respect.
Second thing was, I have been in the field of leadership development now for 40 years. And I can tell you, the most difficult thing—I am even prepared to say it is impossible—it’s that difficult, is to change people’s values. You can train people; there’s no problem. That’s why I always say, I have written a book on hiring called *Hiring Winners*. And in that book, I have said, “hire values, train skills.” Hire values, train skills. You cannot train values. If you have somebody who is basically dishonest, you can’t change him. He will not become honest. He will always have a crooked mind. So, hire a person of integrity; if he doesn’t have the skills, train him. You can train any skill there. You can literally train anyone with any skill. But to change values—values are almost impossible. To change beliefs, to change core beliefs, fundamental beliefs, values, ethics, almost impossible. They are inculcated in the way a child is raised. That is the reason why raising children is so critically important.
Now, what you do: you bring our brother, *mashallah* Ahmad and his sister; they come on their own and they come to Shaukh. That Shaukh is created how? Because you take the trouble to bring your son for Salatul Fajr. We had another very dear friend of ours, Mushtaq Bhai, who used to also live here. His little son, Faisal. One day, in his masjid, it was in August or something like this, where sometimes in Hyderabad, in August, September, there is a lot of rain. So, there was enormous—that day was a huge storm. There were very high winds and it was literally hammering down. So, I came for—I was the Imam at that time. So, I came for Salatul Fajr, I called the Adhan. I came and said, “nobody.” The Madh is empty. So, I was standing. I finished my Sunnah, still nobody. I started my fard and I felt as if somebody is standing behind me. So, I am thinking, “what is this?” I can’t see anyone. And it feels like there is someone behind me. Anyway, whatever it is, I am standing before Allah ﷻ. Let me do it. When I finished my Salat, who is it? Little Faisal. Right?
And Faisal at that time was, I think, under 10 years old. So, Salat is not even further than him. But, the parents—and I think Mushtaq was travelling with his mother—he sends that kid down to the masjid to pray Salatul Fajr. He is less than 10 years old. Right? That’s how values
are inculcated. But, you cannot do that with children; you can’t train them like adults. So, hard things first: inculcate values. Right? This is very important for us to understand and say, “Do the hard things first.” Make sure that in life, when we take Nabi ﷺ, his challenge was this. First of all, dealing with people who know him. Secondly, changing their values. He was not teaching them skills. He was bringing them from shirk to tawhid. There’s no skill involved; it’s an issue of value. So, Allah Ta’ala gave him the most difficult work. And he sent him with his own people. Among his own people. Right? What did he do? Where did he start? If you look at your position, if I give you some advice, what would you say? You would say, first, make friends with people. Create an environment. Maybe, look at social evils. Start a party—using another word—to do social work. Like now, there’s a new party here. They are cleaning up rivers. Right? What is your purpose? Is your purpose to clean rivers? Or is your purpose to change the environment of this country? Change the administration of this country? So, Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam could have done this. He could have said, let us clean up the society. They didn’t have to clean the rivers. But in the sense that the society was plagued by alcoholism, which was rampant. Prostitution was rampant. Promiscuity was rampant. The oppression of the poor, slaves, and women was again rampant. So, you could have picked one of these issues and said, okay, let’s do this social work. By doing so, you are building a base. You are building popularity; you are building an electorate, for example. You are building a popularity base. Then, you use that to address the real issue: there is no God but Allah.
So, this was an option for him. He could have done that. What did he actually do? He went and stood on a sofa, and when people came running, he said, “There is no one worthy of worship except Allah.” And if you don’t leave this idol worship, this shirk, and this idolatry that you are doing, then there will be a day when you will face severe punishment. Straight away. No mincing of words, no sugarcoating, nothing. He is not telling them, “You know, after all, it is a good thing; you are really focusing on God, you really want to get close to God, but this is not God, this is God, and worship Allah, don’t worship.” None of this. No sugarcoating, no nice talk, straight go bam, straight between the eyes.
What was the immediate result? His popularity rating went from hero to zero. They used to call him Sadiq-ul-Ameen, and so on. Most beloved person in the town. Went from there to zero. So, was that a good strategy or a bad strategy? To answer that question, look also at the history of the other prophets of Allah, and you will find this is the strategy of every prophet. Every one of them. Nobody beat about the bush. Nobody built some opinion base. Ibrahim straight to the point. Musa straight to the point. Standing in the court of Pharaoh, the most powerful monarch on earth at the time. No mincing of words. This is the truth.
So, do hard things first. I remind myself and you: we’ll do this one by one. Go back today and sit down and say, in my life, what are the hard things? No matter what stage you are in, whether you are a young person looking at your career going ahead, whether you are an older person who is looking at retirement or whatever, doesn’t matter. Wherever you are today, going forward, what are the most difficult things in my life? As I sit here, stand here today, what are the most difficult things in my life? List them. And then pick the most difficult out of those and address it. Swallow the frog. Everything else after that will be easy. Right? Most difficult. Don’t look at “let me try this first.” The most difficult. How will you address that? What will you do? How will you resolve that? Figure that out. The rest of it becomes very easy. So, do hard things first. We ask Allah to help us. We ask Allah to give us the courage and steadfastness to succeed.