 It's a pleasure to be here. I feel a deep gratitude to be here at a place like MCC. It's always inspiring coming to any kind of Muslim community for me, because a community like this is a community that is focused around what is really the purpose and the mission for all of us in this life, which is our connection to Allah, connecting to Him and growing in that relationship. And so it's always an inspiration to be within any kind of Muslim community, a community of people working on that overall mission, working on promulgating and spreading, inviting others into that mission in general. And it's especially inspiring being here at MCC too. Such a beautiful space, masha'Allah. It's gotten even more beautiful and more excellent since I was here the last time, 10 years ago, when I used to give khutbas. But also not only the space, but everything that's going on here. I mean, what a blessing to have in the next room a real engagement with Quran here. A real engagement with scholarship, with study, with spirituality, and on a level which I know many of you here, all of you as a community, are working on making this accessible in many ways too. One of the things I'm impressed by MCC is the real striving to make this a disability accessible community as well. That's incredibly inspirational. As well as your stand on trying to make things environmentally friendly and all of the goals that you have here at this community. It's an inspiration to be here. And so I'm here almost to take benefit from all of you in this space and be here. And also too, I'm not forgetting anyone who might be watching online as well. Your intentions, even though you're not physically with us in this space, still your intentions in showing up virtually too. That's inspirational for me. So thank you for being with us here today. So I'm here for myself. I'm here for you as well because my point in being here today is to help expand and improve this mission and this call that all of us feel as Muslims and to really make it as practical as we possibly can, as actionable as we possibly can. I'm also here for the people of Gaza and for all of our oppressed brothers and sisters throughout the world. The people of Gaza are suffering and others suffering under oppression, under violence, under threats and persecution, because someone seeks to gain from that. Were it not that someone could make money off of this oppression or gain power off of this oppression and gain a more comfortable life or some kind of privilege, we wouldn't see this happening in the world. And this is the natural result of what goes on outside of these walls, what's happening outside of the masjid. The general culture of cultivating in people in the society a sense that our mission in life is to get that money, is to get power, is to have a comfortable life. Unless we have engagement with traditional religion like this and particularly with Islam, you take what our general culture teaches you and this is what you get from it. And ultimately the oppression and everything we're seeing, that's the end result, the devaluing of human life in pursuit of the profit and power for a few. So I sincerely believe that if we can work on our individual and collective sense of purpose a little more effectively, we can start building a movement and creating societal change that will cause lasting effects of bringing more justice to our world and alleviating the oppression of our brothers and sisters throughout the world. That is my hope and that is my belief. And so that's partly why I'm here today. The mission of a community like MCC is inspirational, as I mentioned, and it's inspirational to me. But that mission will continue to remain theoretical, continue to remain hypothetical until each and every one of us has a sense of you as an individual, what are you doing to contribute to that overall communal mission? The communal mission remains hypothetical until you have individuals in the community committing to a specific mission, a specific purpose themselves. Just like how when we seek to connect to Allah, our connection to Allah, our relationship with Him remains theoretical. Our desire to serve Him, our desire for Ibadah, remains theoretical as long as it is not tied to a specific mission of how we're seeking to serve our fellow humans. And that's why I'm here today. So hopefully what I have come here to hopefully provide you, what I'm hoping you can walk away from this presentation and workshop today with, is a clearer sense of your individual mission, which I sincerely believe from my own personal experience and helping others with this. Other things come from as well, increased motivation, increased self-worth, increased discipline, healthier habits, healthier relationships, and ultimately a stronger and more fulfilling community as a community in which these individuals in the community are connecting on their deep purpose and mission in life. So that's my hope here today. And I speak here too from my own personal experience. So before I was Muslim, I had a pretty shallow mission in life. My mission in life was very simple. I wanted one thing in life and that was all that I oriented my life around. I wanted to be an FBI agent. So here on the screen is a picture of me with the then director of the FBI, Robert Muller, when I was in college. This was my goal. This was my aspiration. That's what I was working towards. I shouldn't presume that all of you in the room necessarily know all the acronyms that I might use in my presentation today. In case you're not aware, FBI is a governmental organization. It stands for funding bias in Islamophobia. Anyway, before I realized that, this was my aspiration. But when I became Muslim, it took me a few years to realize that I couldn't necessarily keep up that aspiration in a genuine way. I thought for a few years, you know what? Okay, masha'Allah. I'll be part of the FBI. I'll be seeking justice. Ultimately justice is the name of Allah. So I'm ultimately seeking Allah through this. I'll do this good work within the institution and I'll be serving the Muslim community as well. But I quickly realized that I couldn't both serve this religious and spiritual community that was so dear to me and at the same time serve this institution which was perpetrating so much discrimination and oppression against this community. Be like walking into a Biden-Harris rally with a make America great again. It's just not going to work. You can't play both. So when I came to that realization, I had to let go of that dream. I had to let go of that unique mission in my life to become an FBI agent. That gave me direction. That gave me a sense of purpose. That gave me a trajectory in my life. I knew exactly what was going to happen, the steps I was going to go to train to pass the physical test and ultimately pass all the tests I'd had to go through, the polygraph and everything. I knew the trajectory of how to get that position and then ultimately working my way up to be a supervisory special agent and then retiring from that, I could envision the lifestyle that gave me a sense of success. I succeeded in high school, valedictorian in high school, valedictorian in college at my Ivy League institution. Now learning Arabic, fluent in Arabic because as my government presented it to me, this was a key way to understand the counter-terrorism threat of our society. And so this propelled me. It gave me a sense of success, but when I lost that, I felt a little lost inside. But I was Muslim, so I said to myself, okay, what do I do want to do with my life? Well, I have a general sense of wanting to serve the community. I have a general sense of wanting to increase my knowledge. And so that's what I did. Alhamdulillah, Allah gave me, blessed me with many opportunities, receiving several ijazas in traditional Islamic sciences, memorizing Quran, Alhamdulillah, with the beloved Qari Amr here, this community, may Allah preserve him and reward him for all of the great work that he's doing. Then serving at Zaituna College, as well as Tahrif Collective. Then in 2014, a friend of mine had become a professor at Brown University. He sent me an email and said that the Muslim chaplain position at Brown was open, and he said, I haven't seen you apply for it. My first initial reaction was, hmm, playing basketball with privileged, know-it-all, annoying college students who reminded me of me, by the way, doesn't really sound like my thing. But I was still somewhat inspired by the sense of being able to serve the community in that role, being able to do good things in Rhode Island at Brown University in Providence. And so I applied for the position. Alhamdulillah was blessed to receive that position and was there for five years. It took the students a while to realize I didn't play basketball. But then after that, when I kind of lost a sense of exactly what I was doing at Brown because I didn't have specific goals, I was just trying to, in general, serve the community, I felt like moving on, and so I went to a PhD at Harvard. And that's where I am today. And in my first year of Harvard now, this brings us to March of 2020. March of 2020, I'm sitting in my apartment. Everyone else in the house has gone to bed. And I'm sitting on the floor leaning against my couch. And I remember the musty smell of those old blue carpets. I remember the faint light coming in from outside. It's a dark night. I remember just sitting there. And then a physical sensation started to happen. I felt an itch in my throat. I felt my head start to throb. I felt my stomach start to ache. And my whole body started feeling weak. And I thought to myself, like, perhaps a lot of you thought in March of 2020, oh, I think I have COVID. And at that time, before the vaccinations, before I knew anything about COVID, it was just this big terrifying unknown. Once I had that thought, I thought, oh, I think I might be dying. And once I had my reaction to that thought then, following soon after was, okay, I guess it's my time to go. Now, I woke up in the morning. And of course I was fine. I didn't have COVID. Or at least if I did, my body was able to deal with it. So I was fine in the morning physically. But spiritually, I wasn't fine. Because something started to build inside of me. I started to feel a kind of righteous anger, a frustration against myself, thinking to where I was that last night, where I had been, faced with death, ultimately, and how I had reacted. And I started thinking, Adnan, you have a wife who loves you unconditionally. You have a one-year-old son who depends on you. You have a little girl on the way. You have a family to provide for. You still have things to do in this life. And you weren't willing to stand up for that? When confronted with death, you just kind of passively said, okay, I guess it's my time. I was frustrated with myself. I was angry with myself. I thought, okay, we are Muslims. Yes, Alhamdulillah. We accept the decree of Allah. And if He decrees death on us, we accept that. But still, we need to have a certain zeal, a certain himmah, a certain aspiration as well. Something we're working for. And I thought back to that previous night and I was angry at myself. And so I did one thing. I went to the office in our apartment, to the whiteboard in the office, and I wrote in green marker what I wanted to do with my life. I wrote down what my specific mission was. And then over the next few months, even the next few years, life would bring me down. Life would continue to exhaust me. But each time it brought me down, I would return to that mission. I'd return to that whiteboard. I'd revise it until I'd revised it again and again until I had something which started to inspire me. I felt like there was something that my life was about specifically for me. Now this brings us to September of this year, just a few months ago. I'm in Medina by Senegal. I have an annual habit of going to Senegal and Mauritania to visit teachers there. And as usually happens each year when I go, my northern European body freaks out and says, we're not supposed to be here. And the West African climate freaks out and says, these people aren't supposed to be here. And I get quite sick, as usually happens on this trip when I go. The only thing this time was it was a short trip and so the day I got sick was the day before I was supposed to leave. I'd back and catch my flight to New York. And so I spent a whole day in my bed. Can't eat anything, can't drink anything, can't even barely move. I take the advice of my friends who encourage me to head to the local clinic. So it's now almost midnight. We head to the local clinic. The doctor puts me on an IV. It's now 2 a.m. when the IV has finally trickled down all the way. After that IV, I feel a little more strength. I feel better and I say to the doctor, I have a flight to catch in the morning. My family needs me, I'm heading home. The doctor takes one look at me and he says, you on flight is no good. I say, no doctor, no. My family needs me, they're expecting me back. My wife, she's just looking after the kids all on her own. I need to be back tomorrow. I am making that flight. So he says, okay. He acquiesces. So here I am now walking out of the clinic. I have my arm around my beloved Senegalese friend, Barham, and we're walking out. It's 2 a.m. now. The streets are still busy and filled with light and people and street vendors. It's still popping out there at 2 a.m. in Medina Bay. And so I'm walking and I make it about half a block away from the clinic. And I start feeling really weird. I don't know what's going on, but I say to Barham, I don't know what's going on. We need to head right back to the clinic right now. So we start turning around. I take a few steps and then suddenly I start feeling weak. Everything goes black. And I'm in this black space. And in that space, I have one thought. I think, am I dying? Am I dead? Where am I? And as soon as I have that thought, another thought follows it. It says, I have a family to get back to. I have a mission that's not done yet. I still have work to do. And I'm going to fight this. I'm going to crawl my way out of this black space if I can possibly. Now I come to a moment later. And for Senegalese guys, Mashallah may allow reward them carrying me one on each limb into the clinic. They bring me back into the bed. I've just had this near-death experience. The doctor comes in to give his prognosis. He takes one look at me and he says, he's fine. Eat. So it turns out, even though I had experienced it as a near-death experience, I was physically fine. Just hadn't eaten or drunk anything the whole day. I just needed some sustenance. But spiritually, it was a profound moment for me. Because I had something to compare it to. No, that's right. Now it's supposed to be a blank screen. Because I had something to compare this moment to. Back in March of 2020, had that moment when I faced death again and I didn't have that motivation. I didn't have that drive. Why didn't I have it? Because I hadn't defined specifically what I felt like my life was all about. It was loosely defined. I hadn't worked that out. And so, this is my message that I want to bring here today to talk about the importance of having that specific mission. Having that specific why, if you will. And so I'd like to make the case for why you need to have a specific mission that you're all about in this life. One reason is, in the words of Cornel West, a leading philosopher of our time, I am who I am because somebody loved me. That from the moment you are conceived to the moment you're born and then given the food that you need, given the sustenance, given the clothing that you need, given the education that you need, your whole life is a collection of moments and long periods, long, rough draining periods when other people have sacrificed themselves to make you what you are. Each and every one of us is a product of other people's self-sacrifice. And we know that deep down. We know that in our bones. And we know too that it's not possible to pay that sacrifice back. My mother gave birth to me. I can't mash that. There's no way I can pay that back. And if I think about those key people who provided for me in my life after my mother as well and along with her, there's no way I can really pay them back. The only thing I can do in this state, not pay it back, but pay it forward, the only thing that's right for me to do as a human, as someone who acknowledges the human condition is commit my life to a life of service of others, of self-sacrifice myself because my life is built and sustained upon the self-sacrifice of others. And yet we live in a culture that makes it hard to accept that and to work on that. We have a culture of entitlement. Many have called it an epidemic of entitlement in our society now. Also, what's going on in our culture closely related to entitlement is narcissism. College student scores on the Narcissism Personality Index have continued to rise since 1979. Going through a mental health crisis, the CDC estimates that childhood mental health alone costs the US $250 billion a year and specifically within that, suicide. It's estimated that suicide claims more lives per year than war, murder and natural disasters combined. And if you took the general life expectancy of each person and makes that what's called forever decision, think about the lives lost that they would have had had they not made that decision to take their life. That's 36 million years of life lost every year. There was just a report in USA Today three days ago that actually said the past year has seen the highest rate of suicides in the US in 80 years. Now these are sobering statistics and I know there are statistics the like of which many of you, especially people around the MCC community are probably familiar with because I know many of the programs that are on here about mental health in the Muslim community and that's amazing work and that's inspirational to see. But there's sobering characteristics, but they also demonstrate an opportunity. Because if we as Muslims work on our communal mission backed up by our individual missions and create a culture of cultivating meaning both individually and collectively we can change this. We can move around the society of narcissism. We can give people a real purpose to live which so many are lacking in this day and age. And to put that all together researchers in Japan have actually found this statistically that people who have a specific reason for being or ikigai as they call it in Japan statistically live a longer life. And I'm a product of that. I'm also realized that from my personal experience as well. Having had that moment of not having a purpose and not having necessarily something to live for and yet then in that moment of September 2023 facing death again, feeling the encouragement that came and motivation that purpose that came from having a specific mission in life. And so now one of the things that I love to do is to talk about this kind of material and make it practical and package it away that will provide practical advice, actionable items for all of you to take on and perhaps improve and continue for us all collectively creating a culture of meaning both individually and collectively. So these lessons I take from my own experience and also my study of the Islamic spiritual tradition. The whole trajectory, the whole program I call fight for your why because it's not only essential to know your why, know your mission, your purpose in life. It's essential also to stick up for it and defend it against those forces that want to take it away from you. And now this happens in four steps as I see it. The first step is to ascertain certain things that are going on. For one, ascertain your why, find out what that mission and purpose is as well get to know who are those enemies out to take your mission away from you and then to think about not only the why but the how. Think about all of the well-being in your life, what are the habits and consistent things that you do that support that why as well. Then after the step of ascertain comes the step unshain. Unshaining ourselves, ridding ourselves of the unhelpful mentalities we have towards how we look at failure or how we make decisions and how we view success. Then after that comes the step of retraining. Retraining ourselves to have the right mindsets, to have the right actionable habits and to approach relationships appropriately with our mission in life in mind and then finally after that comes the step of attain, ultimately seeing that success in our lives, getting ready to meet Allah with everything that we've accomplished and continuing to improve our intentionality through our engagement with death, through our engagement with scripture and through our engagement with mentors as well. So these are the four steps in the process. These four steps are, as I said, inspired by the formulations that are taken from our Islamic spiritual tradition. So this first step of ascertain alludes to the step of murakaba or contemplation, getting to know what's there inside and who our enemies are and all of that, getting to know what our state really is. After that comes the process of takhliya, emptying ourselves out of the bad qualities that we had ascertained are inside of us. After takhliya can come takhliya. Now we've gotten rid of the bad qualities so now it's time to take on good qualities inside of ourselves and then once we've done that we can have the tejliya, ultimately the manifesting of that success and the kind of life that we really want to live. So this is the program. Now today we won't have to go through all steps of this program but what we will take time for, insha'Allah, is to go through the first two which are the most essential. We're talking about number one, how to define your why, what does that mean and how can I tell that I've really found my why. And then number two, who are those enemies out to get my why? How do I understand them and ultimately defeat them? So, number one, defining your why. Before I get into the theoretical information I wanted to present in this first lesson I want to bring us to another story. This is a personal one. This is a historical story. So the setting is 11th century in what is now northeastern Iran. The person in this story, the main character, his name is Muhammad ibn Muhammad. Now Muhammad ibn Muhammad is born into a poor family and his father dies when he's young and so he and his brother Ahmad are left in the care of a local ascetic. Now that ascetic being an ascetic doesn't have many funds to provide for these boys and so once the inheritance from their father runs out he decides to enroll them in a local madrasa because at least the madrasa would provide them with food and shelter. Give them a general well-being, general sustenance. And so they enroll in this madrasa ultimately out of poverty but when they're in that madrasa both Muhammad and Ahmad get a taste for Islamic knowledge. They actually like this and they're good at this and so they start learning. They commit themselves to it. They increase in their knowledge. Eventually they graduate from that madrasa and move to another one. Then to another and they keep moving and graduating and increasing in their levels of Islamic knowledge and attainment until they reach the top of the time, the Nizamiya, studying with the person understood to be the foremost scholar of the time, El-Jewani. And after that, Muhammad Ibn Muhammad in particular now not only a gifted student but starts to clearly become a gifted teacher as well. And so he's around the Nizamiya and around attracts the attention of the leader at the time, and this potential sees the amazing gifts that this young man, Ibn Muhammad now has and appoints him to a professorship at the Nizamiya. So now here he is starting out a life of poverty in an unknown place in north-eastern Iran outside of Thuos. Now he's at the top institution of the age. The top institution of that civilization at the time. He's having a top position. He's got the power. He's got the prestige. He's got that position. He has the money he needs, the clothes, the beauty all around him. People respect him, honor him. Outwardly, he has everything. But inwardly, something starts to affect him. You know, it starts with physical manifestations. He wakes up one day and he suddenly has a problem with his talking. He never had a stutter before. But now, he can't make it through a full lesson properly. He can't properly teach. With that comes a lack of enjoying his food. Food is tasteless to him. He can't really stomach anything. So he stops eating. He loses weight. He starts becoming really weak. And so the doctors come to him and try to figure out what's going on. And their assessment ultimately is that it must be spiritual. And now it starts to dawn on him. He starts to realize that there's something deeply bothering him. First of all, it's a question of how do I know what I know? After reaching this pillar capinical of knowledge, how do I know that what I know is true? But even more than that, a question which burns even fiercer than that is how do I know what I know about myself? Why am I here in this institution? What am I really about? And that starts to scare him. And now in this moment, he starts to hear several voices in his life, if you will. He describes it. He says that he becomes convinced that he is on the brink of a crumbling bank about to fall into the fire. And what kind of voices did he start hearing? Well, for one, ahead of him, he describes a herald of faith calling him, saying, come, leave this life, work on yourself, step away from everything you've known, do something different. So there's a herald calling to him here. But then, holding him back as he says it, are the chains of everything that he's built and the power and prestige that he has pulling him back. And then next to him, speaking in his ear, is a shaytan saying, might sound like a good decision, but you're going to regret it if you step away from it. So he's hearing these voices. He's hearing that call calling him to something else. But he's also feeling chained and he's getting convinced by this shaytanic voice. And so he wakes up in the morning committed, saying, yes, I'm on this brink. I need to do something. But then by the end of the day, you know, I have a good life. Maybe that's an extreme decision. I can still do things, but he goes back and forth and back and forth and this lasts for months until finally he decides, he says, I'm going to take this step. I'm stepping away from this life. He leaves his position. He leaves his teaching position to his brother Ahmed. He leaves his family in the care of the welfare of the state at the time and he says to everyone around him, I'm going for Hajj. I'm going for the pilgrimage so that they won't really question much about what he's doing, but he actually heads towards Damascus. And now what does he do? Spends 10 years in solitude, contemplation, and as he describes it, spiritual warfare against himself. Some days he said he will head up to the minaret of the mosque, seclude himself all day in worship and contemplation. He does this kind of thing for 10 years until after 10 years he feels a pole inside of him. He feels a pole to go back to that life that he left. But now as a different man and so he heads back to the Nizamiya. He's only there for a short time because then he feels a pole to return to his hometown establish a center of learning there and write. And write he does and write quite prolifically. In fact one of the works that he wrote during that time becomes the most cited work of Islamic knowledge after the Quran and Hadith. Now this man, Muhammad Ibn Muhammad we typically know him by his last name. Al Ghazali and that book that he wrote that became so influential. The Revival of the Religious Sciences. But it wasn't just that book which was a game changer it was many books almost 100 books that he wrote each of them making a fundamental change in so many different sciences not only Islamic sciences but philosophy itself philosophy and theology writ large. Centuries later there will be Christian thinkers in the west who take from his work in terms of his philosophical thought and theological thought and continue to do so. And so if we had seen him at that time at the end of his life having gone through those 10 years of solitude and then coming back and being so prolific and so influential if we would have seen him we might have said SubhanAllah you're on fire you're flying and from this story and also reflecting on mine too and my own experience one of the key lessons we get from this is that your unique why will give you the fuel to fly your unique why will give you the fuel to fly because it's interesting Imam Ghazali may god have mercy on him he had the what he had the position the prestige that life but that wasn't it for him in fact he had the sense that that was pulling him further and further into perdition into disgrace at the end of the day it wasn't even his how because he learnt how to be a good person finally he worked 10 years on that and developed the right adab that he hadn't had before the right comportment, the right spiritual wayfaring he worked on that how but after working on that he felt a pullback because he had a specific why he had a mission to teach to write and to become one of the most influential scholars of our whole Ummah this is Imam Ghazali and this is what we can draw from his life the importance of having that why to drive us and so the question of how do we find that why which you might be wondering well for one there are several people in our society at large who have actually been talking about this recently so Simon Sinek came out with a book a few years ago called Start With Why his TED talk of the same name is one of the most influential TED talks of all time in that book he talks about finding your why being a process of discovery not invention you don't come up with your why you look into your life you look into what Allah has planted in your heart and you find it out that way and we know this from our tradition ultimately from our teachings from Hadiths such as when the Prophet peace be upon him said that everyone finds easy the life for which they have been created and so this is it the image that I find the most helpful in this regard is the image of a well I call it the why well that we're looking to find that source of groundwater which once we hit it will create a wellspring a fountain that will come up that we can draw from and have this pure taste of something which will fuel our flight fuel our flight to the skies so the question is now today brothers and sisters are you interested in finding that well should we go through some exercise because we could just end it now I don't know it's a Saturday afternoon and I think the warriors are playing well we got the 14 eyes against the Eagles today as well Masha'Allah I don't know should we just stop it here should we do some exercises okay okay well when it comes to finding our why this process I like to call why dowsing because just like before we had hydro geologists there were dowsers who used crystals or rods or some kind of twigs or sticks to try to find groundwater it was more of an art than a science really our process of finding our individual why it's more of an art than a science there's no specific process that you go through step A then step B and then you can tell that you found it it's more like triangulation so this is what we're going to go through in a moment ultimately trying to arrive at this question and ultimately maybe just starting the question of trying to find out what is your why what is my why and so in a moment break up into pairs so find someone else to work with next to you if you if people are already in pairs and you're an odd one out then join a group of two to make it a group of three for those online maybe you're watching with someone or can draw someone in this conversation to have have this little back and forth with you for a moment one of you at least should be a timekeeper so we're going to take four and a half minutes for this exercise that means that if you're a group of two each person gets two minutes 15 seconds if you're a group of three that's a minute and a half per person and we're going to spend time on these questions now as I give you these questions it might be helpful for you to see them here up on the slides if it's helpful for you to have them on your device I also have a QR code right here where you can get that QR code and see the pdf and get the questions on your device to follow along with so first of all we're going to take 30 seconds inshallah to read the questions and to start thinking about them get our juices flowing as we start reflecting on this and then we'll start the clock of the four and a half minutes so this is the point of the program where I ask for a volunteer after the Y dowsing once we kind of have a sense of what might be our Y then comes the quality tests we have a Y quality test kit up here there are six tests for us to go through so I'm interested in a volunteer who wouldn't mind being in front of us for a moment in front of the audience for a moment who thinks they have a general sense of what that Y is and wanting to test it out a bit so can I get someone alright what's your name brother Omer nice to meet you Omer I'm going to hand you this mic so make sure to hold that up close to your face so you can take a seat sounds good okay perfect so Omer tell me about your Y my Y currently I'm in community college and navigating my education but my Y is something I don't think I've properly defined yet I think starting getting there I would say is I really enjoy helping people and I really enjoy I've been a counselor for a minute which is Muslim Youth of North America and honestly that was one of the defining moments for me is that I enjoy helping and just counseling and being there for other people and helping them be comfortable with their own skin and stuff like that which is funny because I'm not sure what I want to do yet but I love helping people figure out what they want to do okay nice well you've got to start here should we run through some of these tests for you okay so first is the motivation test so this one the question for you now to ask yourself is does this Y motivate me to wake up early stay up late and push through setbacks what do you think of what you have so far of helping others helping others do what they want to do I think definitely I've always really enjoyed it's like a satisfying feeling helping other people get to where they need to be and I think this is definitely I definitely I guess invest more time in other people than I do myself sometimes and I think this is a good thing and also maybe not a good thing not a good thing in terms of I can focus on myself a little bit more but a good thing in terms of you know I'm I'm motivated and I'm willing to help other people okay nice so do you feel like you passed this motivation test I would say so let's hear it from the audience so I'm going to give a count of three on the count of three you either say pass if you think that Brother Omer has passed or you stay silent okay one two three okay a little reluctant sounds like okay let's do the next one do you want to read this one uniqueness test yeah sure uniqueness test is this why somewhat unique and original to me what do you think I don't think it's original I think other people love helping other people as well and that's an amazing thing but I think it's very special to me and I personally you know find a lot of satisfaction and just you know I'm very happy with this why in terms of helping other people but maybe you know so this test it's why is it doesn't necessarily mean that no one else has it that's not what the uniqueness test is about but it has to be something that really is something that I feel called to do and I see as something which I'm uniquely positioned to do a little bit more than others and so I gaining a sense of confidence and self worth in terms of how I uniquely can contribute so it sounds like there might be just a bit more work to define it because a lot of people want to help other people so maybe a bit more work to do would you say that you passed this one I think you're right I definitely could hone in on why it's unique to me a little bit more alright well let's move on to the memorability test read that for us is this why simple, concise and catchy enough for me to remember word for word and say allowed 10 seconds this is why simple enough I guess if I was to turn into one sentence less than 10 seconds I would say my goal is to help other people yeah 2 seconds okay alright maybe I could definitely make it a little bit more specialized or something like that but I think for now that's a good baseline do you feel like you passed this test I hope I did yeah I shall well let's see what the hope of the audience is to okay 1 2 3 a little lukewarm there okay what about the next one the service test let's check that out service test does this why involve serving all humanity rather than a select few people that I care about I would say yeah this one I'm confident in saying yes I think anybody who needs if I can offer my help to anybody who needs it I'm willing to offer it okay nice yeah I would say so too ultimately what this test is about is that sometimes our mission in life can be simply providing for my family there's nothing wrong with that as long as there's an intentionality that is behind that of how we see that providing for our family is also serving the rest of society because there's a way in which we can be focused on serving a particular set of people that becomes almost dependent on those people or doesn't really go beyond that which is something which we want to interrogate right and so that was my timer going off signaling that if I keep you any longer I might give you a stomach also being in front of everyone else anyway let's give it up for Omer thank you thank you brother Omer thank you brother Sir here so as I'm putting these chairs back you can see the other two tests that we have and once again there'll be several points during the program where I'll put that QR code again which has the key teaching slides from today so you don't have to feel like you have to furiously scribble all this down you can get the slides on your device in a moment too so this is it and this is why I'm here ultimately trying to press this point of I sincerely believe that if each and every one of us has a unique why a unique mission in life and we know that and we're working towards that and it fits those tests and it's that pure water for us to drink from that that will really create profound change in our lives in our communities in our society once we're able to find that why well but life brings us down life is heavy sometimes and one of the things I want you to take away from this is as you're working on your why now you started reflecting on it started doing a bit of why dowsing as you reflect on it in those times when life drags you down let your why raise you up just like how I experienced it being down in that moment in March of 2020 and working on that why and time and again then being able to pull myself back up as I continue to get better at defining what my life was about and ultimately the reason why this works if we've really found out why is because your unique why will give you the fuel to fly now that's our first lesson today if I left you here if I left you simply with this message I would be remiss there's a little bit more to go through because if I left you with this you wouldn't necessarily fly you wouldn't necessarily take off might be a little like booking a flight in February that has a layover in Chicago it's probably going to snow you're probably going to get stranded somewhere you're probably going nowhere for a little while so how do we actually get that where if you will well that's where lesson 2 comes into play understanding who wants to pull us down what are the forces out there wanting to take us off of our why and to illustrate this point at first I would like to tell another story so one part of my why I won't bore you with going through my why and the how that is around that which is in lesson 3 which we won't go through together but that part of the program is about defining a how that supports that why well one part of my how which supports my why is in my life I am working towards having a life partner who I'll share my life with that's always been part of my how and Alhamdulillah I feel very privileged and blessed to have a beautiful marriage now more than 12 years going on 13 Alhamdulillah with my loving wife Sarah from Colorado but before Sarah from Colorado there was Sarah from Colorado a different Sarah from Colorado now let me give you a bit of background so as I've alluded to I did not grow up Muslim I did grow up though with this sense of wanting a life partner to spend my life with so before coming to Islam that meant having a girlfriend and Alhamdulillah Allah made me a pretty good dork in high school so I wasn't cool enough to necessarily be successful in that regard Alhamdulillah Allah protected me even though I did work right it took work all that time having to have the hair crop the beard shaved the shirt ironed the unique cuff links the trousers nice and pressed the belt that matched the watch band the shoes and then unique socks all that put together to potentially get an hour of another woman's life with me but then came Islam I became Muslim about a month or two after becoming Muslim my beloved Jordanian American friend from Detroit Muhammad may Allah bless his soul he broke the news to me he was driving me back from the masjid one day and he heard now I was in college at the time and I actually had a girlfriend Alhamdulillah Allah protected me from wanting to get physically involved in that relationship but he knew I had a girlfriend and he broke the news to me he turned to me he said hey ma'am you just gotta be a player you gotta say that girl girl let's get married and I thought to myself okay you and I have vastly different definitions of what the word player means and I also knew that he didn't understand how these relationships tend to go and how serious people are in your typical western relationship so I knew I had to cut that off which I did and now this brings me to a little while after that I find myself in the Middle East specifically in Alexandria Egypt beautiful city but also a foreign city a lonely city for me you see I've always been a lonely person myself being an only child raised mainly by a single mother growing up in the US every time I'd return to the UK people would identify me as an American by my accent every time I was in the US people would well Americans aren't very good at identifying accent cause they're not really good at geography so I get things like are you Swedish masha'Allah so I grew up feeling lonely but I was particularly lonely in Alexandria because I was on an Arabic program in a foreign country on my own with other American students but we had a language pledge so I was forced to speak only at a fifth grade level cause that was about my proficiency in Arabic at the time so feeling lonely on this program also knowing having spent these years growing up trying to find that life partner doing everything I could externally to try to to get one hour potentially of another woman's life now the bar has been raised it's not just about getting one hour but getting a whole life from that woman to commit to and so I knew I needed help back up I knew I needed to up my game and so ultimately came the ultimate game-upper Ramadan during Ramadan this is my Ramadan dua that year in Alexandria every single night I prayed fervently to Allah Ya Allah grant me my soulmate every single night then Ramadan ended and I met Sarah from Colorado the other one now this Sarah from Colorado I was interested in her and she was interested in me and we started thinking about spending the rest of our life together started getting to know each other now the thing is I was so focused on that dua that I had made I was so focused on accomplishing that goal checking that box in life life partner checked off I was so focused on that I was so focused on it happening on my time sometimes when we think about dua we almost think about Allah being a vending machine like okay I put the dollar in I put the dua out Allah brings the dua back to me we want things on our own time sometimes this is how we get and this was how I was at that time and also I didn't necessarily feel inspired but I felt comfortable I felt comfortable and I felt finally someone's interested in me so I need to be interested in them and maybe there are parts of me that can kind of be sacrificed a bit on the altar of accomplishing this check box and so I'm someone who if you can't tell I love engaging in religious knowledge and speaking about religion and Islam in particular she didn't like that so much she was religious somewhat but she didn't really like talking about things so I thought okay okay I'll kind of bottle that piece of myself up and put it away I'll take that out and then there was something else that didn't quite vibe with her and so I said okay let me put that aside so I was slowly emptying myself out slowly becoming a shell of who I really was so no wonder that when we when the program ended and we returned back to the US and she ultimately decided that she no longer wanted to continue talking with me continue being with me she thought it was long distance I thought the trek between Boston and Hanover New Hampshire two and a half bus ride come on we can make it work she disagreed Alhamdulillah but I remember that moment when she told me over the phone and she had the resolve she didn't want to continue things I was at Dartmouth in Hanover New Hampshire and I remember that moment in Novak Cafe I remember standing there around lunchtime with all the buzz of all the people around me and all the smells of everyone getting their lunch and then all the colorful drinks and posters on the wall and with all that color everything looked gray and with all that noise and buzz everything sounded muted I felt empty of course I felt empty I'd become a shell of what I had once been and I had to recover I had to put myself back again so I actually joined a friend I went to a monastery for spring break and picked up a few books a few books of Islamic spirituality Purification of the Heart by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf some books from the Baha'i Halloween tradition I started reading those books I started engaging with that information I started working on myself and regaining that sense of self and understanding who I was who I really was and so now come a year or two later I find myself back in the Middle East now excuse the fuzziness of the picture this is all I could find this is a picture of me in my apartment in Damascus, Syria early 2011 so it's winter in Damascus in 2011 so it's colder than it ever was in Alexandria they don't really have central heating in Damascus so it's cold I'm alone in my apartment I had an American roommate on my program he had to leave abruptly I'm lonely I'm isolated it's a tough program and I have this thought this thought comes into my mind of I remember this young woman Sarah from Colorado different Sarah from Colorado now I remember her from college I remember her from the MSA and she is the one woman I can think of in my life who I wouldn't change anything about her I wouldn't change anything about me to think about spending the rest of my life with her I thought that's a crazy thought and I had an even crazier thought I said I'm going to write this Sarah from Colorado a letter so I wrote it it began something like this Sarah you might be engaged in conversation with a brother now about marriage if so please ignore this message and I am very deeply happy for you and you don't have to read anything further but if not I would like you to read as I tell you and write to you everything that I admire about you and makes me want to consider spending the rest of my life with you and you know the crazier thing she responded within a few days we were talking on the phone within a few hours of conversation first with her and then her father we were both convinced that we wanted to get married within a few months we were married and now it's been over 12 years now what do I take from that well in my life was Sarah from Colorado and Sarah from Colorado it was almost as if Allah was teaching me calling my attention to compare these two situations one in which I had compromised myself I had let myself I had a sense of why and how in my life but I let myself get pulled away from it and another one in which I didn't feel a need to compromise anymore I could be completely myself and let her be completely herself and things have worked out amazingly since and so what I take from this in particular and especially as I went through that process of reading works of Islamic spirituality is the lesson that if you don't learn to defend your why it will be taken from you we have to understand who are enemies out there and we have to take them seriously this isn't a game they're not playing now how do we do that well okay so pop quiz I know this has been mentioned in this community I know people have mentioned this on the Mimba you have heard this at some point likely at least many of you so let me put you on the spot can anyone say who are your four enemies in life you can just call it out okay Shaytan's one of them great well so there's nafs right ego what else do we have arrogance okay that's that's not necessarily an enemy but it's something your enemies can do to you you can fall into it's a quality sorry how are right whim caprice what else dunya there we go dunya the material world those are our four enemies I even remember I remember a talk from check comes to use if it's always been drilled in my head those forward nafs how are shaytan dunya nafs how are shaytan dunya anyway to make this a little more practical and actionable in our lives I've find it helpful to use this acronym foes to remember our four enemies and to think about how they actually manifest in our life so the F stands for feelings so as you can see as we'll see in the picture with each foe ultimately each foe has a little vial of poison that they want to dump into your why well infect that with that poison so that rather than serving your why you're serving their purposes these are the foes that want to take your why away from you and have you serve them so what is feelings about well this is my translation of how I the Islamic concept of whim what do I mean by feelings well what I don't mean is your sensations your felt wisdom that wisdom that comes from from your feeling things in life what I do mean is feeling good feelings is about feeling good physically right being comfortable a nice comfy seat a nice rug under me not only physical comfort though but emotional mental comfort as well not being offended not being challenged wanting a trigger warning please don't bother me if we have a need for trigger warnings ultimately that's a serious thing but ultimately that means we have some trauma in our lives which is our responsibility to start working on our responsibility for that feelings is all about not taking responsibility don't challenge me just leave me alone I just want to feel comfortable I want to feel good and I also want to feel how I feel comfortable feeling we each have default personalities we're an introvert or an extravert we like being people with people or we don't we're systematic or haphazard and we get challenged in that way feelings comes up and says oh this is making me a little uncomfortable I don't like that and so I find it very helpful to engage with a lot of the different personality typing models that are out there because it can really teach us what our Hawa is going to call us to when we understand our personality typing my favourite one I find the most wisdom in is called the Enneagram has anyone here heard of the Enneagram at all okay we got maybe one or two I highly recommend looking into the Enneagram I have a book recommendation for you The Road Back to You I find the Enneagram the most beneficial because it's built on the sense that we have basically three primary three potential ways that we can respond to pain in the world we either get sad we get mad or we go to dad because we're scared and of those three emotions we have three things we can do with those emotions we either internalize those emotions we bring them in upon ourselves or we externalize them we put them upon other people or we vaporize we completely run from them we don't want to hear about them and so me for example I'm a one on the Enneagram perfectionist as they're motivated by anger ultimately I'm angry about the world but what do I do with that anger I internalize it so when I see something wrong in the world I think I'm angry myself and not dealing with that that can cripple me if I'm not aware of it all of these there's always a strength to this emotion but a negative to it as well because ultimately all three of these emotions they're real and they're real human emotions that we should be feeling but ultimately they are they have to be a function of love at the end of the day anyway that's kind of an aside and a recommendation from me but getting back to feelings what feelings whispers to us what it keeps saying inside of us that voice that we hear inside of ourselves is the voice that says I just want to be free and take a break because of course we want to be free of course we want to feel good we were built to be free actually that's how Allah built us but a freedom which is freedom from everything except our slavehood to Allah that's the catch and so it's appealing but the way that we dismiss that whisper that feelings puts inside of us is by giving it back which shatters that partial truth of well you're true we want freedom but true freedom comes from true servitude and ultimately true servitude is true love and if you really want to be comfortable you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable that's the only true comfort we can have in this world so that's feelings next the O is outcomes now this is my rough translation of dunya or the material world literally an Arabic that which is nearest and closest to you now the thing about dunya and outcomes is that so what I'm talking about here is accomplishing things it's about the check boxes it's about the specific things that we either have or haven't done and the thing about checking boxes is that it very easily leads to comparison if I check that box of getting that job it means a bunch of other people haven't checked that box because they did get that job or even if it's a check box that everyone could have still if I know that I've done it then I know that other people have or haven't done it and it very easily lends itself towards comparison now interestingly enough if you go full circle the other way it actually becomes the same thing so outcomes is also about lack of accomplishment if we're not focused on getting certain things done in life that's an ultimate accomplishment the person who's lazy in life wants to be ultimately lazy and completely disregard any kind of external success at all that's part of the dunya as well so we're not talking about being inattentive to accomplishment and to check boxes once again if we remember and if we saw on the slide that we went through quickly one of those why quality tests is the generative test does this why generate things for me to do and to accomplish in life so we do want to be attentive to that but not in a way that distracts us as simon cynic that author of start with why has said success is the most dangerous foe of true accomplishment broad paraphrase but ultimately he's talking about the context of companies companies that become really successful they just become distracted by their own success distracted by those check boxes and those metrics Allah alludes to this in the Quran when he says he said he said we grant the home in the hereafter to those who do not seek superiority the happy ending is awarded to those who are mindful of God the people of taqwa those who do not seek superiority those who aren't comparing themselves to someone else and saying I'm better than that I'm better than Ahmar I'm better than Fatima no, that's not the point what's the paradigm of success Allah links success in the Quran to belief to faith to iman it's interesting that Allah doesn't say at the beginning of surah 23 qad aflihan muslimoon he doesn't say the people of Islam the Muslims have succeeded he says the people of iman of faith have succeeded because success must be for us an intangible thing just like how iman is intangible Islam is not intangible Islam, five pillars that's the actions, those are the physical actions that we're required to do but our tradition is not just about Islam there are three dimensions to our tradition our deen is Islam it's iman and it's ihsan it's body, it's mind and so the true test is ultimately what's happening on the inside and ultimately no one else can tell that you can't tell the difference on the outside between a hypocrite and a true believer so similarly this is intangible but also similarly your practice of Islam and you're actually doing the things that you can check boxes on have I prayed though did I fast properly during Ramadan those are signals of your iman similarly the accomplishments can be signals of your attentiveness to overall success and many different references we could give in this regard but also just wanted to call attention to the famous Hadith that many of us I'm sure are aware of that actions are based only on intentions this is the Arabic which it starts with in the Arabic means actions are based only on intentions and nothing else everyone has exactly what they intended ultimately at the end of the day it doesn't matter whether you succeeded or not but your success should be for you a signal of did you have the right intentions that should cause you to ask the question but ultimately that's not what it's about it's about those intentions and so outcomes is not about that it's about the check boxes the specific things it's about the comparison and it says inside of us we hear that voice I need to know that I'm valuable and that I'm better than others and I need to know it now and that appeals to us because of course we want to feel good about ourselves again we want to feel successful we want to know that we're doing the right thing but ultimately we have to respond with the whole truth that our value must be internally validated it will be externally validated in the Akhira at the end of time it will be externally validated and we'll have to continue to unfold and the only true comparison is comparing myself today to myself yesterday and seeing have I improved or not so that's outcomes the E infoses for ego right nefs exactly so what this is about is not your ego in terms of yourself your individuality what makes you we actually get into problematic relationships when we sacrifice what we're really about as in my case so that's not what we're speaking about what we're speaking about is that ego that calls to being filled fill me up it wants to be filled with food filled with drink filled with carnal pleasure with intimacy all of these things and it also wants my way wants to do things my way not only does it want to be filled but it wants to fill all of existence it wants to look out at the world and see everything and know what everything out there what all those people out there are doing for me wants to imprint its own self upon everything that exists and the only way to dispel that in us because of course once again we want to feel good we want to feel filled but ultimately what kind of feeling is that well it's being fulfilled and when we look at the world we want to look at it and see how can I contribute to everything that I'm seeing how can I do better for this person in my life and for this thing happening and that in the world so that's ego and then finally the S stands for Satan in the Muslim context sure most of us are familiar with this concept of Satan and Satan and the personification of this force I find it helpful though in case people find that's too religious or something maybe in another context because ultimately I'm building this I've built this material not just to suit a Muslim context but to be beneficial in general and for us to be able to share with our non-Muslim friends family, colleagues also another way to look at this flow is the shadow side almost the inverse of us we have at the end of time we're told there's going to be the Christ comes and there's also there's going to be the Christ and the antichrist right and so similarly we have a why well this is your anti-why it's Satan Satan is all about calling you to moral failure calling you to do things that you know to be wrong but if they're not kind of universally known to be wrong at the very least he wants to he wants to call you to things that you know are beneath you things you shouldn't be involved in now interestingly enough sometimes we confuse this especially if we don't have a religious perspective with what the government says is wrong or with what society says is wrong but often when we're really true to our why it will be misunderstood other people will think it's a bad idea and so that's not what we're talking about it's ultimately that sense inside of us that we're doing the right thing that's what we want to be on and the inverse of that, the shadow of that is doing the wrong thing and so what this shadow, what this Satan wants to tell us and is whispering in us is saying you hear this voice in yourself and I am destined for an epic fail I'm I'm pretty bad and I'm about to mess up seriously that's what Satan wants for you ultimately he wants you to be crippled by the thought not necessarily even engaging in bad activity but he wants you to be so obsessed with the fear that you might get engaged in something that you shouldn't be engaged in it's just a way that it settles you it paralyzes you it causes you not to take a bold move because the fact is with a bold move just with Imam al-Zali being on that precipice and hearing the call to faith and then Satan whispering in his ear and saying you're gonna regret that decision what Imam al-Zali was feeling was the pull of a leap of faith and the thing about a leap of faith is that we love it it feels like falling Satan wants us to feel like we're about to fall but actually that can be a sense that we're actually taking a leap of faith we're stepping into a deeper sense of purpose and so the only way to respond to that is to understand that things in the world that have dangerous potential in creation also have a potential for amazing good and so true the human is weak the human has a capacity for immense evil but that actually only signals the human's capacity for immense good which even outpaces that evil so those are the foes there we have them feelings outcomes, ego and Satan and one final note to make about all of these foes that these are internal to us but since they're internal to you they're external they're internal to everyone else and hence they're also external enemies as well other people can be can represent these enemies in your life can fall into these patterns for you and this there are many illusions in Quran to this one of the illusions we might be the most familiar with is from the last surah of Quran that warns us against the shaitan against the satans that come from both jinn kind both the unseen forces and humankind so internal and external these are your foes and these if you were to look at that story of the sarah from colorado versus the sarah from colorado you'll see in my story in that first instance all four of those foes pulling me away from who I felt like I really needed to be but interestingly in that story if you remember when I finally realized that and was confronted with not being able to be with that first sarah from colorado it gave me an opportunity which is why one of the key lessons I want you to take away from our time today is to take setbacks in the pursuit of your why as reminders to check for your foes poisons we can't always have that awareness we can't always be completely on point and on message and being aware of what those whispers are but what we can do is when the tough times come when the affliction hits when things are hard for us that can be that signal for us oh maybe I'm not fully on my way if I'm not if I'm feeling dragged down now like flying it's not pushing me through these setbacks maybe I need to reorient myself and check have some foes snuck into my why well and dump some poison in there which I'm potentially drinking from so now we have the potential to do an exercise I think for the sake of time we're just going to we're going to skip this particular exercise but you can take a look at this on your own time once again on the slides I have the QR code again here this will be here at the end of the presentation for you to follow as well I just wanted to put up on the slide some signs that your why has been poisoned some things to reflect upon in regards to all for these foes so this is what we've covered today I've thrown a lot at you you might be thinking okay okay so I've learnt why it's important to define my why I've started that a bit I've learnt a bit about who my enemies are and how to think about how they might take me off my way now what's the next step because Adnan up front told us that there are other steps in this process well what do I do now because our time together today is gradually coming to a close well if you are interested in the rest of this material we have a website fightforyourwhy.com there's not a lot up on that now but at the very least there's a why muscle strength test that you can take to see how strong are you in defending your why and also too there's a link to set up a call with me I'd love to make some time with you to think through this with you help you think through your why and also if you want the rest of the content from this method so with that being said I want to end on a final story the setting for this one a moment ago I told the story about Muhammad ibn Muhammad this story is about Muhammad ibn Abdullah the prophet peace and praise be upon him the time of this story is the 11th year after his prophecy becoming manifest he's 51 years old what state is he in I want you to think about what he's feeling at this time he's gone through three years of a Muslim ban ban against the Muslims the whole Muslim community is ostracized in Mecca no one can trade with them no one can even associate with them through that time and through that hardship three years of a boycott that takes a toll on the community that inflicts hunger it inflicts poverty it inflicts immense hardship on that community people are lost including some of the most beloved people to the prophet he loses his beloved uncle Abu Talib he loses his beloved wife Khadija the first Muslim the woman who was there for him at the very beginning so here he is sitting with the hunger, the hardship the cold of the night sitting with the pain of that loss of his beloveds and the pain too the knowledge that the mission which he's living out has caused pain to people that he's loved imagine what he must be sitting with in that moment the loneliness, the isolation then what happens well one night he meets a new friend his friend the angel of revelation Jibril comes to him with a new character this time named Burak a magnificent creature that can traverse from this point to as far as the eye can see one bound and the prophet peace be upon him he gets on this creature and rides it all the way to Jerusalem and what does he find there? company friends other messengers and prophets he has spiritual communion with them he prays with them imagine how that must feel after a life after all these years of hardship and hunger and cold and isolation and loneliness and his crew of course the Sahaba is his crew but he also his crew the messengers no one can relate to him on that level he gets companionship with them after that brought up through the seven heavens gets to meet the denizens of hell, the denizens of heaven and ultimately ascending to the presence of Allah himself now imagine what that must have felt like what he experienced in Allah's presence compared to what he had been going through in that cold night in Mecca imagine the warmth of that presence the mercy the love the understanding the companionship the sense of place the sense of arrival the openness, the expansion if you were in that place I wonder what you would do because I feel like I know what I would do I just want to stay there I would just want to stay in that presence forget the cold forget the loneliness, forget all that hardship let me just stay here enjoy this the rest of my days but what happens he goes back he comes back comes back to the cold to the loneliness to the hardship he comes back to his way he comes back to his mission now it's interesting because the next day in the morning people start hearing about this story the Muslims of the time actually had a hard time many of them at first believing that this actually happened and so I don't know where everyone in this space and online is in regards to that story I myself have full conviction that this actually happened but I don't know where you are maybe you just see it as allegorical but the fact is undeniable that this is a key this is a key story in the Islamic tradition a key part of human civilization and so the question is why is this story so foundational for our civilization it's so foundational because it signals deep down we know the potential that each and every one of us has to go through and sit through the hardship the loss the affliction the pain the cold because we know exactly what we're about just like the prophet did peace be upon him that is our example that is our message, that is our potential and that is what I hope for myself because this time is ending now, our time together we'll soon be going back to whatever's outside waiting for us outside of the mosque right, we got our deadlines we got our financial pressures we got our health concerns we got our bills to pay we got our messy relationships the conflict that hasn't quite been sorted out yet we're returning back to that cold night and the question is are we going to return back the same or are we going to return back different are we going to embrace that struggle and see it as the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam saw it as ultimately not seeing the hardship but seeing the hardship as ultimately a function of even a more immense mercy that's my hope for you and for myself and with that we'll end on Dua Bismillahir rahmanir raheem allah umma salya our setup may Allah forgive me Allah we Use yeah allah please rectify the ummah of your beloved prophet please smile on him grant relief to the ummah of your beloved prophet on him. Ya Allah please grant mercy to the Ummah of your beloved Prophet ﷺ. Ya Allah allow what we've learnt today and what we've thought about today to be the beginning of something powerful. Ya Allah allow us to actualize our service to you by actualizing our service to others. Ya Allah Allahumma haqq islamana wa imanana wa ihsanana. Ya Allah please allow us to realize true Islam, true iman, true ihsan. Ya Allah please guide us in terms of a specific guidance that shows all of us exactly how we can serve you and serve our fellow humans. Ya Allah please grant us success in that. Ya Allah wa akhamru d-da'awana anin hamdulillahi rabbin animin subhana rabbika rabbin azati anman yasifoon wa asalaamun aalama masalinin wal hamdulillahi rabbin animin. Thank you. Okay well just talking about this was really really wonderful. I just had a quick clarification. The internalized, externalized and vaporized the three ways of responding to pain. I was wondering if you could explain what does that actually look like. I think you described internalizing about what does it look like to externalize and vaporize. Ya ya for that I would encourage looking into a resource like that book The Road Back to You. I found it very helpful. The enneagram of personality not only helps us understand what our default personality tends to be but what we start to look like under stress and in the good times as well when our personalities can shift. So maybe to illustrate I can talk about the what's called the anger triad which is the triad which I'm part of the three personalities based on anger ultimately. So as I mentioned I'm a perfectionist. My response to the anger that I feel deep inside first of all before I read the enneagram I would literally say throughout my life oh I don't get angry. I don't get angry and that's a key marker of a one of a perfectionist because for them anger is something a perfectionist like me I'm angry about the fact that I'm angry inside. So I deny that I'm angry because anger is a negative emotion for me so I want to deny that I'm feeling angry at all even though that is ultimately what motivates me. So I internalize that anger I get angry at myself for not doing things and for falling short and that kind of thing that's what makes a perfectionist. Now the another way to respond is to externalize it and that's what that's what makes a challenger which is an eight on the enneagram. A challenger is the kind of person who doesn't want to be controlled by anyone else wants to be a trailblazer and do things and they're actually often great influences in society. So these are is not negative things these are every every strength has a shadow as I said so every personality has pros and cons. So the best example for me of an eight actually is Sheikh Hamza. If anyone's had experience with him he's a very intimidating personality in a good way like he's done so much for our community Sheikh Hamza Yusuf done so much in community because he has a clear vision and because he doesn't mind telling it like it is and he's not going to be controlled and swayed by anyone else. He to me is a key example of a number of an eight. A nine who's the other person motivated by anger is the person who runs from that anger and a nine is the peacemaker a person who is really disturbed by anger because that's ultimately what they feel inside. So the kind of person who is always obsessed about not having conflict resolving conflict really quickly or brushing over it because it really upsets them that people might be angry at each other. That's a beautiful thing to seek to reconcile between people but it also can become can become a dangerous thing when we don't want to deal with conflict or want to pretend that conflict is not going on. Does that help in that regard? Subhanakullahu ma'min wa hamdik. Ashharu allah ilahe illa