 So for those who may not know me, I am a licensed clinical therapist and I am positioned at Newark High School and so I'm there full-time. And so I'm working with our students at that high school Monday through Friday, sometimes longer days like today with a lot of different emotions that they're going through, different kind of life obstacles that they're trying to manage, anywhere from anxiety, which we'll probably delve into a little bit, depression, grief and loss. We're looking at relationship issues and they could be peer, family, or otherwise. One of the models that I use, one of the modalities that I use, I try not to use too many clinical words, one of the evidence-based practices that I use is cognitive behavioral therapy, which the author of The Coddling of the American Mind, the two authors, they do a really good job as far as using that and extracting some of that information and trying to help the reader understand where the feelings are coming from, how to navigate those, but it really kind of comes through the thoughts that we think or the thoughts that our children think. And I actually teach this quite a bit with a lot of my students. So I just wanted to, if it's okay, I'd like to have some takeaways. I want to give you some of my takeaways and just by a show of hands, and there's not putting anyone on the spot, but who has had a chance to either glean through or rethorily through the book itself, just so I can get an idea of those who might. Okay, so I might go into a little bit deeper detail of what the authors are presenting. And so hopefully that'll kind of help you along when you actually get through the book or just get to the book. It's a very straightforward book, so it's not beyond really the high school reading equivalent. So it's not very hard. It's a very easy read, and the authors do a really good job of storytelling as well as putting forth things that you can actually take away and hopefully use as you're raising your children. So I wanted to just kind of read and then I'll put my own thoughts. Would it be okay if I can have the floor for just a few minutes? All right, very good. So I'm going to read a little verbatim directly from the text and then I'll give my own little thoughts on that. So basically the two authors are really kind of looking at high school children below, so anything under that. But actually the beginning of the study, they actually went into the college setting, so university setting. And so what they were finding is it was a situation where there was a program that was put on. It was a kind of a heavier debate where feelings were kind of out of control because of the speakers that were being presented and the topic that was being presented. And I'll say that as a surprise if you guys delve into the book, it's in the first chapter or so. And they made a quote-unquote safe room for parents or students or staff even that might have been triggered by the discussion. And so the authors actually saw this and they were just kind of very curious like, wow, how fragile some of our adults are. Not necessarily children, but kind of like looking at the adults. And it's very weird because in the clinical therapy part of it, we talk about safe rooms and things like that, but I think he was showing the extreme of it. And so that's where it kind of starts and it just kind of starts where thoughts and feelings begin. So he said many university students are learning to think distorted ways and so that's where it starts. And so I find that oftentimes with my students and even with my staff, I work with my teachers and it's their thoughts and how they think about the situations and the environment that they're put in or placed in and how they think. And then all of a sudden those thoughts, there's behavior behind it. So that's kind of where the authors are going. And then it continues on that there's a culture of what they call safetyism. And so it has produced institutional practices that have overreached the goals of protecting children from harm and undermine our ability to solve important social problems. So as I'm looking through my notes, I wanted to just talk about my high school students. And one of the things that I'm preaching to my teachers, like I have a lot of students that come out of the classroom because they have anxiety. And so I'll give you an example of test anxiety. So that's a big one, right? So I'll get a teacher, they'll call me up and they'll say, well, the student is just out of control. They have all this anxiety and they just need to see someone, right? And so that's kind of that escapism. So they run to my office and they're just breaking down, they're in tears, they're shaking. And I'm trying to figure out what's kind of going on. I thought maybe there's an argument with the parent or there's an argument with a peer or maybe there's some kind of other thing going on. But it's just a test. It's just the quiz or it's just something like that. It's kind of going on. And all of a sudden I start kind of breaking down where the student is. And so one particular student, I'm like, okay, what's happening? What's going on? Well, I did it. So they'll say that I didn't prepare enough for the test. I said, okay. And then we'll say, okay, well, what else? You didn't prepare enough for the test. So you're going to take the test anyway? I can't. Well, why not? Well, I'm going to fail the test. Okay. Failure is part of learning, right? And what happens if you fail the test? And then all of a sudden they escalate. They escalate the negative thoughts. So the negative thoughts start rushing through. And their thoughts have, I'm going to fail the test. I'm going to fail the class. And now I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail school. And then they frame it as I'm a failure. And so my job as a therapist is to back them down or what I call walk down the staircase because now they've escalated to the point where now physically they're reacting to their thoughts and feelings, where now we're seeing physical symptoms of shaking and crying and all of this kind of getting out of control. So we walk them down and say, well, first of all, let's look at the test. What is the test on? So it's on chapter 24. Okay. How long is the test? Well, it's 25 questions. If you fail the test, hypothetically, you fail the test. What's your grade currently? I have a B. I said, okay. So logically, is it F on this particular test going to give you an F in the overall grade? And then they start to start to think and reason and understand and like, no, it's not going to bring my B down to an F. Okay. Great. Now, if it's not going to bring your B down to an F, it might impact your grade a little bit. So now, so we start to problem solve. So that that is kind of like the core of it. We have to get their fears and anxieties kind of calm down so we can start thinking rationally. And so that's where the kind of the book is kind of going. And so I'll continue on. They talk about the three untruths early in the book. So the two authors, they come up with three untruths. So untruth number one, the untruth of fragility. So they use this model, I'm not necessarily fond of it, but their words is what doesn't make you, I mean, what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Now, I don't know if you've all heard what doesn't kill you make you stronger, right? But that's the premise that they want you to take. But I guess they're saying that they've heard this one. But really it's, I have an example and I see this a lot. I lost a friend, therefore I will never find another and I will no longer be a good friend. So I had this one particular instance where two friends junior high, they come in the high school and they had a fallen out and then all of a sudden this argument happens and all of a sudden they catastrophize it. That's what we call it. You know, just making something small out of this huge thing, right? And now all of a sudden they're no longer friends and now I'll never make another friend ever. And so I have to, we talk about logical and illogical, right? So I have to break it down. I have to kind of bring them back down the ladder again because their thoughts are now turning into beliefs and I'll get into where the authors kind of think or actually describe how thoughts become beliefs and cognitive behavioral therapy talk about this. So if you think something, therefore you'll start to believe it and then therefore you'll see the action or result behind your beliefs, right? So the second one is the untruth of emotional reasoning. And so they said to always trust your feelings. And so that's the untruth. You shouldn't always trust your gut feeling it and you'll hear this a lot with adults. We might say, well, I feel it in my gut and I know it. That's what I should do. And we go down this, what they call gut instinct, right? And but this could be false. This could be not necessarily a good thing to actually do or even teach your children, you know, you should react on your gut instinct because it might be a false thing to do. So that's the second untruth. And then the third untruth is the untruth of us versus them. And this one hit home with me a lot. And so it's basically separation of groups. And we find this in politics, especially in the political environment that we've been placed in over the last, say, 10 years, right? We want to shelter and we want to contain our children from feeling bad or feeling, you know, upset and we want to care for them. We want to put them in a kind of a plastic bubble kind of scene. And we don't want them to experience pain, right? So we want to rescue them. So the authors say, and I also say this with my parents as I work with my parents and my students, it's going to be okay. When you learn, you're going to fail. You're going to have many failings. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I do in my office, and I love chess, chess is one of my favorite of all times, there's a lot of lessons going to be extrapolated from chess and the game of kings. When you start learning, you will lose. It's a complicated game in the very beginning. And I often teach and I have friends from all over the States. I'll teach over the phone, but the first time I'll teach them, I'll say you're going to lose. That's the first thing I tell them. You're going to lose and you're going to lose a lot. Do you still want to play? Sure. Let's teach me how to play. So I have a guy from Alabama that I have been playing chess with over the phone for about a year now. 23 losses in a row and I said, how's your resilience? I said, I'm going to beat you. I said, that's the attitude I'm looking for. And he did. He finally won a game and I'm telling you, that made his whole life just beating me one game. And then after that, I crushed him five more times, I think. And this is something that I learned in play therapy. So very early on in my education, I was trained in play therapy and my clinical psychologist who trained me in play therapy, she set me up in elementary school. And she taught me different kind of ideas about play therapy. And I didn't know this particular idea. And one of my little guys wanted to play board games. All he wanted to do is play board games. And I would just let him win. And I didn't think twice about it, we play and then I would just find a way to lose or just let him be happy because he took a lot of joy in it. So I'm going to pause just for a second as the event goes. So just to kind of pick up where I was at. So play therapy, I'm working with this little guy and he loves playing board games. And so I would just find ways to lose to make him happy. So I thought that that was a good thing. And so part of my clinical training is I have to review each and every student that I'm working with. And so my clinical supervisor sits down and we go over each of the children that I'm working with. And so I get to telling her about my little guy. He only wants to play board games. And that's OK. And this is what we call structured play. So we have structured play and free play. Free play is quite different, but structured play is more with the rules, right? And so she was asking me, does he abide by the rules? Does he cheat? Do they hide things or try to make you, no, no, he's doing all good there. And she said, how often does he lose? And I'm like, he never loses. And I'm like, she's like, he never loses. I'm like, wow, he's pretty good at these kind of games. And I said, well, I purposely let him win. And she said, well, why is that? I said, well, because it makes him happy. And he gets a lot of joy out of this. And she goes, well, I want to talk to you, but that's not necessarily a good thing. And so she wanted to let me know that there's life lessons that has to be used in play, in play therapy. And part of that is losing and learning how to deal with the emotions of losing. And so I said, OK, so she gave me an assignment. She said, next time I want you to play and I want you to do your best to win. And of course, you know, next time we play. And she wanted to know how he reacted, how he responded. And sure enough, the next time we play, I think it was shoots and ladders or something weird. And so sure enough, he loses. And he had a fit. He just had a fit. He was eight years old. He took the board and kind of threw it off the table. All the pieces flying. He got up and he said, I don't want to play anymore. And he went off in a chair and pouted for a while. And I was like, wow, all right, so now I need to process with him. So that's the key, right? So I needed to run and work with him. So anyway, with that being said, I talked to my clinical supervisor. And she said, you need to help him through those emotions. Because now we need to extract, what does he think of himself? Right, because it's all about thoughts versus feelings. And that's kind of where the authors are going with this. So long story short, I had to continue to play with him this way. And I found some rigidity with his willingness to want to play these type of games anymore. And I would have to encourage him, no, come on, come on. And then it's about teaching as well. So there's a teaching aspect of learning. And so whenever you're finding a child, your child, who's having difficulties or struggling or getting angry or upset, those are the feelings, right? And they're turning into action. I'll get into that in a little bit. But the teaching aspect is probably one of the most keys. Because the authors are saying that in order for a child to grow and develop in a healthy way, in an independent way, they have to learn, adapt, and grow. And they kind of go into the brain and the consciousness and how the brain is still growing. And it will be growing into the early 20s. But at a tender age of 8, 9, 10, and 11, there's cognitive processes that are developing. And the neurology is a little bit deep. But in all reality, it all comes down to teaching, learning, so they can grow and adapt. So that's another part of the book that I really found. And I'll be honest, I haven't read the entire book, but I can't put it down. So I will now finish the book. So thank you, Hamaira, for even bringing this book to my attention, because I was not in the know. So I don't want to over, are we good? So I want to get into something I'm passionate about. It's the modality. It's the clinical practice that they're looking at. It's the cognitive behavioral therapy. And so the basic definition, it's an intervention that focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes and behavior, improving emotional regulation. This is very key. I'll stop there. The emotional regulation is where my high school students are struggling. So I give sugar to a law that I'm in a high school situation where I'm dealing with students from the ages of 14 to 18. And I've been there for now seven years. And I'm finding that my young adults are not being young adults. And so a lot of the work is helping them understand and adapt to being a young adult, because that very critical age of four years from 14 to 18, in all sense of the things here in the United States, 18 you're considered an adult. And the parental rights are now waived. So now the parents are like, well, you're 18. You need to get out. And you need to take care of things yourself. And we're finding that our 18-year-olds are not prepared for this. And so I noticed this, and I try to find my freshmen. And I get them early as soon as I can get them. And I'll ask them, who wakes you up? What do you mean? Mama wakes me up. Oh, you're 14 years old, and you don't get up on your own. No, my mom gets me up. And I will say more than most of my students, parents are doing this. So that's that safetyism, right? I don't want to make sure you're not late, honey. So I'm going to wake you up. I'll get you up, and I'll cook you breakfast, and I'll take care of this, and I'll get your books together. And I dissect, I'll ask questions, right? But it's about what I want to talk to my parents about, is we've got to get them to become adults. And how do we do that? We have to teach. So when they're on their own, when they're in college, and I assume, I'll just take a poll real quick. For all those in the audience who have children that they hope and shalt love will go to the universe? OK, the majority of the hands, if not all the hands, went up. And that's fantastic, masha'Allah. The chances of your child living at home might be slim today. There's some universities that require on-campus dormitory stay for a freshman, not all some. And so then if your child goes to UC Santa Barbara, or UC Sacramento State, where I did my bachelor's degree, they're not close enough, so they have to be on campus. They have to be on dorm. So if they're on dorm and they're 18 now, they have to become adults. They have to get themselves up on time. They have to make sure they're doing their homework. They have to make sure they can cook, or at least rudimentally kind of cook, and just basic things. They have to make sure they're showering, and they're dressing, and they're using deodorant, and the hygiene's correct, and they're brushing their teeth, and all of these things. But if our parents have created this safetyism where we're doing everything for them, and now they're away from mom and dad for the first three months, it's going to be very hard for them to adapt from parents keeping everything safe and all, to now I have to do everything myself. And how do I manage that? I'm frustrated. I'm angry. I'm upset. And then, again, we go back to the thoughts and then how they feel about themselves. I can't cook for myself. I can't eat. Therefore, I'm a failure. I can't do this. And then we get into this failureistic kind of mindset. So as my parents, as I sit in front of you, one of the things that I really request is you start training your children to kind of be independent. Teach them how to cook. Get them an alarm, not their cell phone. Get them an alarm that they can get up on their own if they're getting up in the 12, 13, 14-year-old. It's time for them to kind of stand up. So when frustrations handle or happen or they're confronted with some obstacles, now they have a little bit more that inner strength in them that, hey, I can do this. I don't need mom there. I don't need dad there. I can manage. And it starts very small. And with my students, it starts with just getting up. And then it starts about going to bed on time. Do you have to be told to go to bed? Or do you know what time your bedtime is? And so it's just these little things. So going back to the cognitive behavioral aspect of it, so what cognitive behavioral therapy really kind of gets into is automatic thoughts. So when something happens, you will have a thought about it. If an earthquake happens, what's your first thought? What's that automatic thought? Am I going to die? Am I going to go through the fall through the earth a little bit? Or is my child safe? Am I safe? Is my home safe? Am I on the fault? Where did it happen? So all of these automatic thoughts start rushing it. And some people have these automatic thoughts that are pretty crucial. I know somebody who feels that they are going to die in every earthquake that happens. So these automatic thoughts is the ground starts to shake. I'm going to die. So now we have this false belief that's now growing. So if you've ever experienced a car accident, I had a sister that experienced a car accident. And it was pretty major. And I was young at the time. And she had to go to therapy for it because she couldn't get into a car. And her automatic thought was every time on the car, something bad will happen. So therefore I won't get in the car. Therefore I will not drive. And so all of these automatic thoughts turned into feelings, which turned into resistance. So cognitive behavioral therapy is about learning how to dissect the automatic thoughts. And then it goes into how do you look at that thought that came up? And so just for the sake of it, I'm going to talk about optimism and pessimism. Cognitive behavioral therapy always wants to look at the positive side of things. So being an optimist is the best way. So if we're looking at the negative, sometimes we have to. But one of the things that I do train my students as much as possible, oftentimes I'll put a bottle of water on the table. And I'll say, your opinion, is this half empty or half full? Almost every time, I kind of already know the answer I'm going to get, depending on the student I'm working with. If I have an optimistic student, most likely they're going to say, oh, it's half full. And if I have a pessimistic student, they're going to say it's almost empty. It's half way empty. So they're going to look at the negative, what's been taken out of it. So this is one thing about cognitive behavioral therapy. They want you to look at the positive. Because what happens is the negative thoughts creep in. Negative thoughts creep in. Negative feelings follow. So it goes back to thoughts and feelings. So if a dog bites you, that's a negative action. Now the negative thought is the automatic thought. All dogs bite. And it's a sweeping thing on all the dogs out there. All dogs bite. There is a truth behind all dogs do bite, but not all dogs are aggressive. So there's a way to break this apart and understand that not all dogs will hurt you. And so that's what cognitive behavioral therapy is about, is kind of breaking away these thoughts, these automatic negative thoughts. And what happens is negative thoughts build up into negative reaction, negative feelings. And then it turns into a negative reaction. And I actually want to get into that. I'm going to sum that up. I'm going to give you an example. And I'll give you an acronym for those who might be taking notes. But to sum up cognitive behavioral therapy, I'll sum it up in two sentences. What we think and what we do affect how we feel. Negative thoughts lead to negative feelings. If you want to take the whole science of CBT, put it all into two sentences, those are my two sentences right there. So how does that apply? And how is that applicable to the real world? If you think of AFBR, A is the action. F is the feeling. B is the behavior. And four is the results. I had to look at my notes. I do this all the time, but it's getting late for me. So the example is the action. There's an argument with a friend and the friendship ends. That's the action. That's what happens. The physical thing that takes place. The feeling. I will never have friends again. That's that distorted, abstract, negative feeling. The behavior. I'm going to isolate and not make friends, so I'm safe from getting my heart broken. The result. Loneliness. Isolation. Depression. Now, as a therapist, I go right from the beginning. I have to kind of unpack it all and I start with the action. What happened? We got into an argument. They said they never want to talk to me again. They were upset with me. And then we have to stop it at the feeling. So the feeling is I'll never have friends again. And so I have to. There's a disbelief. There's an automatic thought that now has to be deconstructed. And oftentimes I'll say, well, do you have any friends? Well, yeah, I do have friends. OK, who are your friends? And we just want to take that as a false belief and dissect it, and so they can disprove that. And this is where the critical thinking part of what we need to do with our children, so that their thoughts don't turn into their negative thoughts, because we all have negative things happen to us. But we don't want those to become negative thoughts. Then all of a sudden, they're negative feelings. And then we'll have a negative behavior attached to it. And that is CBT in a nutshell. And the resilience aspect of it all is that the. And this is really kind of the author's solution to the resilience factor is kind to see things as thoughts and feelings and behaviors. And what I would like to do is leave you with really this is the ending of my aspect of this talk. Is understand that your children are going to make mistakes. Understand that they're going to have these negative feelings attached to those mistakes. And it's your job as a parent. Your job as an educator. So if you're a teacher out there and you're teaching a student, it's your job to debunk the belief, the false belief that they start attributing to themselves. And you'll see it, you'll hear it oftentimes as I will never, this will always, all these forever kind of infinity words. Once you hear those key words, you have to stop them. And you have to kind of deconstruct that with them. And once you do that, we can start removing the negative feeling. But also to teaching to our children that failure is part of learning and failure is okay. As long as we attempt, as long as we try, failure is okay. And so I actually spoke with a student today and his heart was just on getting into USC. And so he's been, he's a senior now and he put in his early application and the USC has an early admissions and he thought he nailed it. And I was trying to get him prepared for the what if scenario, what if, right? He was shutting me down and I'm not gonna talk about that. So I get an email from him today and he says, Mr. Bishop, can I meet with you? And I'm like, all right, it's probably about the USC application. Sure, no problem. I have an opening such as such time come by in my office. And he comes in my office and he's just wearing basically an emotional wet towel. And he is just devastated. I already knew what happened, right? Just you can just tell and he's walks in and he slumps in the chair. I was looking for those infinitive words, those negative infinitive words. So I'm saying, okay, what brings you to see me? What, why did you shoot me the email? He says, well, I didn't get in. I said, okay, how are you feeling about that? Well, you know, what happened? When'd you get the letter? And you know, I just feel like a loser. I'm never gonna get in any of the universities. I was like, hold on a minute. So I had to deconstruct this because now we've got this never, I'm never going to. So now his resiliency is now he has no resiliency. Now he's just gonna drop out of school and he's just gonna become a nobody, right? I have to build off of this. So I said, okay, how many other universities did you apply to? Seven others. All right, let's list them. What's your number two school? You didn't get in your number one school. What's your number two school? UC Santa Barbara. All right, next one, UC Irvine. All these other UCs he throws out. I said, okay, before you call yourself a failure and you're never getting a university, how are you gonna say that you're never gonna do something if you don't know what the other side is doing? Part of this is getting him some hope. So this is what I ask you to do for your children. You give them hope, right? You give them praise for their attempt, but also to that hope is that optimism, right? We wanna give them this could possibly happen. And in reality, I had to show him facts. So another thing as a parent and as a teacher, I want you to lawyer up, all right? I'm gonna tell you about lawyers. A good lawyer is not gonna bring the emotion to the court. The judge is not gonna have any part of the emotion. And if a lawyer gets a little emotional with it, because he's trying to influence the jury, the judge will shut him down. Anyone here has ever been in jury duty? Okay, so when you go, you'll see this play out. So the minute that the lawyer tries to use emotion to sway the jury, the judge is no, no, no, no. You stop that now. And so the lawyer has to bring facts. And so once you have a child that uses, you know, that has these thoughts and feelings that are all in the negative. And you know these are false thoughts. It's your job to bring the facts, to debunk those thoughts. So with that student, and now I told him, I said, what's your GPA? That was the first thing I asked. 4.2, 4.2 GPA. And you're telling me you will not get in a university. I said, I challenge you to come back after your seven, give you letters in the mail, that you did not get in. And so that's our deal as he left my office. So anyway, thank you for just giving me the floor there for a minute. That was so beautiful, thank you so much for that. Thank you. Mashallah, I want to first and foremost thank Brother Ali for your presentation, so relevant, so powerful, a lot of food for thought that you left us with. And as you were speaking, many things were coming to my mind but I wanted to just first mention two things that really tie in with the portion that I'm gonna be presenting, which is the Islamic perspective. What you mentioned about how you introduced the game of chess to your friend and you basically set him up for the realistic expectation, right, which is that he will fail. And I think that as a concept there's something we need to first and foremost understand because in Islam, I was just mentioning earlier, I had a class and I was mentioning that one of my, I mean, there's many things obviously, Alhamdulillah that we love about our Dean but one of the things that I love about Islam and I think we should really take great pride in is the fact that our Dean is so transparent. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala has really just laid it all out for us, you know, you read the Quran, you read the Sira, you get the picture, it's all there, there's no secrets, there's no, you know, agendas, there's no hidden plots and twists and you know, it's all there, dunya's difficult, dunya's hard, you're gonna be tested, we're gonna test you with your children, with your spouses, with your wealth. So all of that is, you know, it sets you up for the right expectation in life, right? Which is why what I was saying before is so important that faith grounds you in setting yourself up with the expectation that will align with the reality you're going to have but when you don't have a faith perspective and then you create a false utopian concept of what life is, right? Because people who don't have faith, they really do see this place as it, right? Like this is it, I'm gonna make the most of it and so you set your expectation that everything should go my way and then we have obviously in our, you know, in the West here, we have a problem with entitlement, we have a problem with a lot of messaging that gets ingrained into the minds and starts to shape a person's expectations and reality, all of it which is not set in reality. That's the, you know, ironic thing, right? That we're actually falsely portraying life by, you know, through media, for example. I mean, think about how much of our expectations are shaped through film, through television, through music, right? When you're growing up on a diet of messaging that's distorted, that's utopian, that's not set in actual life real experience, but stories, you know, then you start to think that way and I've seen this when I work with couples. I mean, this is one of the main points I talk about when we talk about marriage, for example. And I say, if you came to marriage thinking that the Bollywood movies that you've been watching, right, or Hollywood rom-coms are like what your expectation is, you know, or you know, you're even before that, like your selection of a spouse is informed on the archetypes that you've seen growing up, watching all of this television and film, you are setting yourself up to fail and you're setting your marriage up to fail because that is fiction. It's not reality. Reality is, yeah, you might have that little honeymoon phase but all of a sudden you're gonna have problems, right? And we're taught to basically, you know, be very mindful of what affects, you know, what we let in, right? And, you know, when you ask, you know, how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect our children? We have to go back to the basics and the basics are what is the Quranic worldview, right? What is the worldview that Allah SWT wants us to have and ascribe to and how are we implementing that in our own families, in our own lives, as parents, as educators? What are we teaching our children? Is it in line with the Quranic worldview which says that, for example, you know, as I mentioned, you will be tested, right? That this life is, you know, or the dunya is a low place where you should expect sorrow, anxiety, depression, grief. Like if that's not what you're, the world that you're preparing yourself for, let alone your children, then obviously you're gonna fall into everything that they're describing in this book, which is a false expectation based on, you know, whatever, whether it's your entitlement, your false ideas around, you know, the narratives that you've envisioned, but it's not true. And so as you were speaking, I love that because that is part of the solution that we actually start off our journey as, you know, individuals, obviously, our own selves. That's where, you know, we start with you. If you're not grounded in reality, which is, you know, I have to expect and anticipate that I will have problems, that I will have challenges, but I also have recourse, right? So it's not like I'm just left to suffer. Through suffering, through hardships, we have a worldview that is actually quite empowering, right? And the perfect proof of that is to look at the lives of the Prophet. So if you're actually studying, you know, the highest of human beings and the ones that are exemplars, all of the prophets, but specifically the Prophet so I said, and you see that from the onset of his life, he had challenge that he had to, you know, overcome after challenge, after challenge, after challenge. But what's the totality of his life is that he was the most perfect human being. So those challenges did not in any way take away from him. They actually are part of why he is so incredibly, you know, who he is. It's because of those challenges. So, you know, going back to the book and those three untruths, I think if we go through every single one of them, you will find Islam has a perfect answer to all of them. The first one, as I mentioned, what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Of course it's a lie, because I just, you know, we just stated that, that if Allah SWT is telling you, or telling us that this life is difficult and hard and you will go through challenges, however, you know, those who are the most patient, those who are the most resilient, those who have Subur-Jami and they practice, you know, that beautiful patience will come out successful, then obviously it debunks that lie right away, that actually hardships, right, make you stronger. And again, the proof of that is evident in all of the great prophets, the saints, the teachers that our Dean encourages us to know of and learn about their histories. It's to infuse in us this concept and really get it, that actually, yes, you can go through a lot of suffering and life, but you can succeed and then come out on top. So not to look at suffering as something that you should fear necessarily, or suffering that is something that automatically means that you are disadvantaged, it's actually not true. As we're taught, Allah SWT attests those He loves the most, right? So this is where, as Brother Ali mentioned, using whether it's CBT, which is modality that therapists use or what Muslims would use is actually, again, deferring to the source that informs us of how to interpret things, right? Because if we're left to our own devices, it's very dangerous. The mind is, you know, in Islam, we have the concept, for example, that our thoughts are shaped by four sources, okay? So we call these khawatir or khatir, right? So there are four khawatir, there are four sources of inspiration or thoughts that all of our thoughts can fall under. The first is khatir rabbani, okay, which is that it is an inspiration that is directly from Allah SWT. The second is khatir malakani, so from the angelic realm, right? They're positive thoughts. The third is khatir nafsani, which comes from the nafs. And then the last is khatir shaitani, right? So all the thoughts that we have, and I think, I mean, I've read studies that say anywhere between 6,000 thoughts a day to even 70,000 thoughts a day, right? Can be understood in this, you know, in this structure that they fall under one of these four sources, right? Now, again, this is all from our deans. So when we're taught that, that you need to pay attention to your stream of consciousness, make sure that it's passing the truth check. You know, is there, is this a rational thought? Is this a thought that is provable? Is it falsifiable? Is there something that can counter that thought because it is irrational or it's based on emotion? So that is a process that we can develop internally with ourselves. How do we do that? Again, you look to the Dean by process of muraqaba, right? By process of muhaasaba. We're supposed to think, right? We're supposed to be thinking. We are our akal, which is, you know, again, going back to how rich our Dean is, because all these questions that I think a lot of people are grappling with in terms of the, you know, the thinking versus feeling are answered just looking at the way that our Dean has provided so much context to our creation, right? Like Imam al-Ghazali, I mean, one of my favorite, he has many, many wonderful teachings, but one of my favorite is also something that is found in the, according to the ancients and in the Aristotelian model and the pre-even Socratic model. They had a very holistic understanding of the human being as being multifaceted, right? So the whole mind, body, heart, you know, connection. But what Imam al-Ghazali introduced, and he really helped to explain, is that we have three aspects to us. We have the, he called these kuas, right? So kuat al-Aqliya, the intellect, kuat al-Ghadabiya, the emotions and kuat al-Shahwaniya, the appetites. So when you understand yourself in this triune nature and then you realize, you know, what our Dean, you know, instructs us, which is that Allah SWT created the Aqal at the top of our being, right? Because this should govern everything that we do. Our Aqal should be in charge, right? So you should be rationalizing. That's why we're differentiated from all of his other creation. The animals are not, they're instinctual. They're not rationalizing anything. They feel, animals certainly feel, but they're instinctual, whereas we're rational beings, right? So the mind is at the top of our, the crown of our entire structure. Then we have the emotions which reside in the heart. And the analogy that he uses is that emotions, you have to understand them as having a functionality similar to a hunting dog, right? If you have a dog that you are, you know, training because you're a hunter or you're out, you're survival, you're surviving, you need to know how to train the dog and then dispatch it to retrieve what you need and it comes back. So emotions, that's what they should do. Emotions have a function. There's a time to be angry. There's a time to be happy. There's a time to be sad, but it should have a function and once the function of it is over, like it would be wholly inappropriate if this was a funeral and we're laughing, right? So we need to know that that is not acceptable socially and that we are created with an ability to be empathic, to have sympathy, to grieve. And so that's the emotion that should come forward in that time and place. But this is a rational process, right? Understanding this. So the emotions are centered in the heart. You train it and this is where regulation comes from. So Brother, when you were talking about CBT and all of the distortions, right? The cognitive distortions that a lot of us are susceptible to, catastrophizing, you know, or even the opposite of that, minimalizing, right? There's a lot of things that we do as human beings. It's because we're not rationalizing. That's the bottom line. It's an emotional drive that leads to those conclusions. But the moment you activate the intellect, which is what our Dean is constantly telling us, right? That you are intellectuals. You're created with akal, you should be thinking, reasoning, weighing the pros and cons, weighing the veracity. You know, there's a door that the Prophet said and taught us to make, which is, you know, Allah show me truth is truth and falsehood is falsehood because we're susceptible to our own distortions and also being manipulated by other people. But the point is our akal has to be in charge at all times. So the emotions are based in the heart. You treat them like you would a hunting dog. You train them, you regulate them and you dispatch them according to the appropriate time and context. The shahwa, the appetites are likened to a pig. You have to not fall into enslavement of them, right? So we're now, many of our teachers, like Shahumza, he's mentioned this before, but it's true that if you look around, you find a lot of what he calls dog people and pig people. They're driven by emotions, which is what we're talking about, right? Everybody's triggered, everybody's sensitive, everybody's fragile, everybody's falling apart, or they're just giving into their base desires. They just want something, their shahwa leads them. Where are the people that are reasoning? That's supposed to be us, right? The Muslims are put in the position of the khulafa, or the representatives of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-Din, because we're supposed to be reasoning. And if you really look at historically, this was true, right? Our golden age was the age of what? The dark ages for the Europeans, because we were on the rise and many of these, even these conveniences that we have today are sourced to the fact that Muslims contributed so much to the areas of science and medicine and all these things. So we are absolutely the vanguards in the trip. We were leading the charge for so long because we were doing what we were supposed to be doing, but now we've come here, right? And what's happened? And this is, I mean, I've seen it in my lifetime where as soon as we come to the land of choice and opportunity, what takes hold, right? How many people do we know who've immigrated here from Muslim lands? They had mashallah structure order. They were praying five times a day. They come here and it's like, oh yeah, it's party time, right? Let me just, let me just, you know, throw all of that knowledge, all of that out the door because the dunya and this is, you know, a microcosm of what the dunya represents, right? America or the West with all of its opportunity, with all of its choices is like a, you know, a buffet of shahwa, of desire. And if you're not in control of yourself and you don't have the right understanding of your purpose, then you're susceptible to falling prey to all of the distractions and all of the things that we're seeing so many people around us fall prey to. And this is why when we go back to parenting or educating our children, we've got to remind them of their essence. You are a spiritual being that's in a physical body. You are not a physical week to the flesh, right? Body that has no spirit. And that's the demonic worldview that they are being indoctrinated in everywhere else in this country or in this world, which is you're just a physical body. Your feelings are all, you know, everything, your whole reality should be shaped around your feelings or your desires. And so the spirit is completely gone and children are not really being taught that anywhere else unless they come to an Islamic school, unless they have parents who are really grounded in their Dean and remind them, you are a spiritual being. You have a high maqam with Allah. You have the ability to rise above the angels. Like, I mean, just think about how powerful that message is for a child that regardless of your human frailty, regardless of the skin color that you have that you're insecure about, that all these, you know, things, all the accidentals that this society tells you to focus on, it's immaterial, it's irrelevant because you're by virtue of your character, by virtue of your good deeds, you can achieve higher than the angelic realm. If we could teach our children to see themselves in that way, then what happens is when they're faced with difficulty, with challenges, they will have resilience, right? Because they're informed on the truth of their reality, whereas nowadays, again, which is really the big issue, and unfortunately it is affecting our Muslim children, I mean, inshallah, not with families at peace terraces, but I've certainly seen it in the community because, you know, they're sending their children to public schools where they're not getting any spiritual input at all, ever. And then, you know, there's no time, but because you come home, there's homework, there's sports, there's all these other things, so where are our children supposed to get this, you know, solid fortification that really reminds them that you have to be strong, that this world is temporal, that there's much more to life and that, yes, you're gonna go through things, but guess what? All of the best of people have gone through things and we've survived, and the only, like our teachers remind us too, that the only reason why we even exist today, and this is where, you know, a perspective that's really important for us to have too, is to look at the generational resilience that resulted in us being alive today. It was because our ancestors went through famine, went through war, went through horrific marriages, abusive relationships, but maintained their faith identity, maintained their, you know, they had istikama, they stood, they didn't fall apart because they had this, that or the other happened to them, that we are standing here today as Muslims, especially those of us who were born into Muslim family. So we have to really appreciate that stoicism, resilience, all these themes that our Dean teaches us are part and parcel of being a Muslim and that's why we're, it's haram to fall into despair, it's haram to let, you know, your own machinations, your own false interpretations cast doubt in your Lord, which is what happens to people when feelings just start going sideways and, you know, we're all over the place with our feelings. So regulation of emotion is so important and I think the other point I wanted to mention, which I'm so glad you talked about the game that you were playing with your, or with the student that you were working with, it's so funny because just the other day I had this discussion with my husband. So how many of you watch Jeopardy in your households? Okay, so we never, I never had regular television but with the World Cup, my husband bought YouTube premium or whatever for three months and so I was like, we're only, we watched the World Cup and I'm not a TV person but I was like, I love Jeopardy, I'll watch Jeopardy. So Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, right? Those are the two, we watched them and that's it. That's our TV for the day. But I am very competitive. So if you know me, you know, I will win and I will, and I am, yes, I'm a showboat, I'm a braggard because I'm like, it's all about competition. You got a trash talk, you know? If you could do it on the court in basketball why not sitting at the house and I'm rubbing it in your face that I want. So anyway, I like to do that but my husband was getting, he was in the kitchen and he was like, you shouldn't do that because my youngest one was getting like a little sad, you know, and he was like pouting because I kept getting the answers, right? And so I had this debate with him and now I'm so happy that you shared this. I'm gonna go and tell him brother Ali confirmed. Cause I knew, I was like the same exact thing. I said, no, I want him to be tested on. He was telling me to let me let him lose or let him win, stop answering the questions. I was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I will, I will win. And I, even if I'm playing chess, if I'm playing any game I never take the approach of like, let me, you know, soft. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna beat you and teach you my ways and that's the other thing. I do that. I'm, I'm generous in that way. I will, I'll teach you my ways. But I want them to win. So I actually, you know, defended that position and then I had to have that same processing conversation with my youngest when I said, listen, the reason why I'm like doing all that is because I want you to feel confident and also to spark that competitive drive in you where it's like, okay, it might not be about mommy. It's just about, I want to do better next time. I don't want to just sit here and pout and feel like, you know, I'm a sore loser. So, you know, infusing these types of ideas even in these transactions that we have with our children every day, they're so important because it will counter this fragility that they're seeing everywhere else in society, right? If we believe in them, if we bolster them, if we remind them that with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala everything can happen. I've had even my son over the years with different situations. I remind him of Dawah, the power of Dawah. Dawah is the weapon of the believer. I mean, that's such an important integral hadith for us. If we're teaching our children that and then guess what, when they feel like, okay, like I had my son, he was preparing for, my oldest one was preparing for a big basketball competition. It was like a tournament. And he was really stressed out because he was playing the best team and his team was like, okay, but he was like, so I kept telling him, just make Dawah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is with you. If you just make Dawah, work hard, obviously practice, do all that, but just make Dawah. So when, Alhamdulillah, they played and he won and it was the biggest shock because nobody thought that their team could beat this other great team. He was like, he came to me with the full confidence. He said, mommy, I made a lot of Dawah at Fajr time and right before the game, I did Fatiha and he was like, I know that's why I won. And I said, that's exactly, that's when you have that parenting, like yes, Alhamdulillah, you got it. And I, but it's, that's the kind of messaging that our children need to hear. Not, oh, you're sad, you're triggered, let me cuddle you, let me protect you, safetyism, all these things that brotherly was talking about, which actually end up doing far more harm. And I actually, you know, I remember just FYI, I mean, it's a kind of a little footnote, but I remember when I first had my first, my eldest son and I was reading about all the parenting philosophies, right? There's the attachment parenting style, then there's a cry it out method, right? If you look at the research of those two and you'll find camps, I mean, in my own family, I had people were like, cry it out, put them in the room and close the door, right? And that was not me, I'm too much of an empath if I hear like a little bit of a, I'm like, oh, you know, so I was like, no, I'm gonna do the attachment parenting, right? But when I started doing the research, what did they say? They said that actually you think that by leaving them in the room and to cry it out, that you're gonna build these strong kids, we're just gonna basically soothe themselves, whereas the research shows that they end up actually having more stress later in life versus attachment children. So it's again, challenging these ideas that we have with fact, right? Like Brother Ruddy said, your interpretation and your understanding may seem logical, but is it really in line with first and foremost, for us, our criteria isn't just science, but compassion, like to have a baby crying and you're just like, I'm gonna sit and eat my ice cream. Like what, you know? That infant is a lot gave them that ability because it has a need, maybe it's in pain. But for some parents, they've been so in condition to think that they're gonna do better by their children by abandoning them and leaving them to cry it out like that, because it's like, yeah, I wanna have these resilient kids, but the research doesn't prove that. It's the opposite. They actually, because why you're getting them accustomed to this high cortisol like stress response. So they end up actually having far more stressful experiences as adults because they don't feel safe. So here's like a perfect example of how these kinds of ideas that are perpetuated and usually because there's, you know, for me, I'm just at a point where everything has to be questioned in the society. Money drives so much of what is marketed to us and so much of what is sold to us and they're very convincing. They're very good at trying to use these, you know, like these, you know, whatever propaganda to convince us, but we have a higher criteria and our criteria is truth. It's hope and if it doesn't align with our Dean, it should immediately be abandoned. I don't care how many people are pushing it because if it directly is in opposition to a core value of our Dean, then inherently it's flawed. And this example of like, you know, as I mentioned, lacking compassion toward an infant. I mean, I'm talking newborns are left to cry. Like I just don't understand how any Muslim could adopt that if they were reading the hadith, if they were reading the messages of having compassion towards children, right? This doesn't make sense, right? You know, we talked about the three untruths, right? Which is the, what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. That's obviously a lie in our Dean. The second was always trust your feelings. What I was saying earlier about the thoughts, right? And understanding the sources of thoughts. Our nafs is really, you know, it's like a record playing constantly in our minds, right? And that, and it is the greatest of the evils, right? There's four sources of evil in the world. Shaitan, nafs, hawah, and dunya, dunya, the material world. But the nafs is the greatest evil. So we actually have to be very suspicious of our thoughts and very suspect of our feelings and make sure that you are literally questioning your feelings, questioning presumptions, questioning your, like for example, Hussna Dan, the concept of, you know, if you, if you, if someone for example didn't invite you, but you have to, it's on you to make excuses for that person as a rational exercise to get you out of victim mentality. So the victim mindset is not acceptable in Islam. You, you have to be willing to do that. Like what are the rational explanations of why you weren't invited? Do you have to conclude that they don't like you? Or is that maybe an irrational thought that's feeding into your own inner weakness or whatever. So rationally do the thought of like, oh, maybe they didn't have my email right. And you do that up to 70 excuses were challenged to do. That's how much we should suspect our thoughts. And then the third, as you mentioned, life is a battle between good and evil. I mean, yes, and from our cosmological understanding of the world, there's good and evil. But as Humair said, we have to be very humble to not presume we know who's good and who's evil, right? Like, who are we to make a claim? We don't know if we're on the right of any situation. I mean, Imam Shafi said he never met anyone without thinking that they were better than him, that they were, that they had more truth to the debate than he did. And he actually wanted that. So if we're gonna create these polarized world views where everybody is in, like you said, whether it's identity politics or whether it's gender, whatever the issue is, and we fall into these camps of us versus them, that's a supremacy. And supremacy is jahlia, it's ignorance, it's shaitani. Whereas the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the best of creation never treated people as though he was the best of creation. So he's our model. So all of these points are in line with our Dean in terms of what we have to infuse in our children. So I'm sorry, I just wanted to kind of full circle that.