Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Power of Virtues and Goals
What if you could elevate your intentions and actions in daily life by understanding the difference between values and virtues in Islam? Join me as I discuss how our faith system can help us anchor ourselves against non-changing values and achieve our goals while keeping Allah as the highest authority. We'll examine how our internal moral compass is subject to change, and how having clear values can help us reach our goals. Plus, we'll explore the importance of remembering to have an elevated intention behind our actions for the sake of Allah, even when striving towards seemingly materialistic goals.
Morality doesn't have to be tied to religion but virtues are
Listen in to learn how to start elevating your intentions behind all your actions.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognisably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Uftar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to be talking about the difference between values and virtues, and the prompt for this podcast came from a recent lecture that I was listening to from an Islamic scholar. He was basically deterring against values, and for good reason. Initially, i was kind of surprised, because the word values is used very commonly, even by me. I teach a lot about what we should be aiming towards as goals and destinations. I myself aspire towards the highest values that I can create, but what the scholar was saying and it's so fascinating to me was that the notion of values in the western world leaves behind the highest authority, that is, god. When we chase values as defined by the culture, we tend to forget the divine, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. So to me, it becomes very important to define the distinction between values and virtues, because we hear a lot about values in the current feel good culture. While having values is an excellent notion in itself, i think we can elevate our experience behind our values and goals just because of our faith system.
Speaker 1:Value is considered to be something you measure against yourself. It's your own internal moral compass. You can have a value of respecting others or you can totally value disrespecting others, and I won't be the judge of that. It just happens to not be my value. I don't want to be disrespectful to others, just like I don't want others to be disrespectful to me. This is based on my own internal moral compass, but the problem is that the internal moral compass is subject to change rather quickly these days, i might add, and this is all based on social media and ease of access to the newest trends.
Speaker 1:There is so much hype about identifying your values. Make them really clear. If you don't know them, you don't know where you're going, what you're doing, where you are aiming, and if you don't know that, then you don't know what to work towards and all your efforts can be a waste, and that is if you make any effort at all, because not having clear values, not having a clear destination, will keep you lost and you are more likely to not take any action at all. They say make language as clear around your values as you possibly can So you know what you want And I totally advocate that and I have been doing that through this podcast.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, human beings moral compass changes based on the belief system, and the belief system changes depending on the times you're living in. So if the internal moral compass is ever changing, then it's important to anchor yourself against some non-changing values, and that, to me, is provided by the guidance in Islam. When you clarify your values and goals and if you strive to keep it within the bounds of Islam, then you can decide to elevate your intention behind your actions. Then the actions can only be for Allah. Just by that intention alone it can become a virtue. So how I define the difference is going to become more clear in this podcast. But what I want you to practice this week after you listen to this podcast is to attempt to elevate your intention behind every action you take to be for the sake of Allah. Just like any habit that we try to change, it's not going to come naturally at first You're going to have to remember and repeatedly remind yourself, but eventually the elevation of intention will become a habit, inshaallah. So a goal or a value could be that I want a certain qualification or I want to serve people, i want to earn money so I could be a contributing member of society. But, at the same time, we're encouraged to stay away from the Western type of thinking around achievements. And yes, i agree, there are some material type of achievements that you can work towards with no end, and we have to come back to remembering and keeping the metaphysical in mind. We, as Muslims, have to keep the hereafter in mind. So then, having a value in itself, based on your own internal moral compass of creating money in the world, based on your talents, your ability of mind, your able body, your value of service and contribution to the society, that in itself is not a bad thing, but it's also not the best possible thing.
Speaker 1:If you have a goal of making a hundred thousand dollars a year and come in your professional career as a Muslim woman, then how is it that this is not a materialistic goal? And the answer to that is a big part. What you need to do to make this a virtue or a non-material goal is to answer why you're doing it. The more elevated, higher quality that answer is, the higher the chance that your seemingly materialistic goal becomes virtuous. I tell you, guys, that money is the token of exchange of service.
Speaker 1:If you aim to generate a hundred thousand dollars or more a year and income through your professional career whether it's through employment or a business venture or independent contractor if you set your eyes on that goal, that would mean you have to create that much amount of service in the world for somebody to pay you that much money. As an employee, you would have to create that much service for somebody else's workplace for them to then pay you that much money. As a business owner, you would have to create that much service for your customers for them to then pay you that much money. So in that case, if A equals B and B equals C, then A must also equal C, and I love simple math. So in this case, your goal of a hundred K a year and this money equals the service you generate. So the goal equals the service you generate. Point here is that coaches, leaders, experts, all different sources of teachers tell you to make the goal as clear as possible so that it's a benchmark of actually how much service you're creating, so that you can measure against how much money you've actually generated Generating service for what you get paid a hundred thousand dollars a year in an industry of your choice tells you with subjective, factual data that that's the amount of service you've generated, because money is the token of exchange of service.
Speaker 1:If you make 30k, if you make 50k, if you make 500k, if you make a million dollars a year, no matter what the case is, you will receive money compared to the amount of contribution and service you have created in the world. And if you haven't accomplished your goal for the year, that means you get to think about how you can optimize your service so you can reach that money goal. Again, why I'm trying to make the amount of money you make as a metric is because numbers don't lie. It's hard to deny the truth that you made 150k or 200k or 30k a year, but it's easy to argue with yourself that your value is service, hard work, providing for the family and realizing your potential.
Speaker 1:All of these values can become nebulous and arbitrary and vague when the going gets tough, when the resistance to work is high and when you don't necessarily see the results of your hard work right away. The brain wants to relax, it wants to watch TV. At that point it will generate all sorts of excuses that will make you forget all about these values, or at least start to compromise on them. So you'll be finding yourself pushing against, trying to justify these values over and over again so that you can keep generating energy. But it's going to keep consuming energy. So instead the brain will offer excuses that will sound factual like I did enough, i contributed enough, i worked, and that's all I can accomplish of my goals. But when you make money as a marker, it becomes harder for the brain to create vagueness around it, because money is tangible and subjective. So our goal of 100k worth of service in the world is as clear of a goal as we can get it because we have a solid system to measure it. Once we have that clear goal, then we can transfer our energy into focusing on the process. But then again back to my original question how to not make this 100k goal materialistic? Must you work for a non-profit? Must you only teach Quran for your goal to be honorable?
Speaker 1:An easy way to turn your goals and values into virtues is that you elevate your intention behind them. All virtues are values, but not all values are virtues. Value of respect, tenacity, service, tranquility, pride of hard work, dedication to using your mental and physical capabilities all of them make excellent values and, as seen, they are based on high internal moral compass from the current culture. But they become virtues only with the intention that you execute all of these tasks for the sake of Allah. If you values have been attached to the money you make, or you're doing it because I'm telling you that it is one tangible way to create an inordinate amount of service in the world, in a way it will help you break your limiting mindset around money And when you have gone through that level of coaching then you can make that value into a virtue by making it less tethered to this world, by elevating your intention more and more behind it.
Speaker 1:There are three levels of intentions behind each action you take. The first level is for yourself. The second level is that you do it for others, including the global benefits of the world, plants, animals. The third, and the top most here of the intention behind your action is that you do it for the sake of Allah, and only for the sake of Allah. That can include becoming a pharmacist, a technician, sweeping floors, doing laundry for the sake of Allah. So again, three tiers of intentions behind goals for yourself, for others, and the third tier is for the sake of Allah.
Speaker 1:So initially, when I started to apply this on myself, my brain really started to break. So I'd be in the middle of dusting furniture and my brain would be like how can this be for the sake of Allah? My value in itself is that I want a clean house Tier one. I want my family to have a clean house Tier two. But since the third tier was not something I had practiced frequently, that's when my brain said this can't possibly be for Allah. It's just dusting and cleaning. But that's how I started. Now I declare everything for the sake of Allah. Whatever I do is for the sake of Allah, and with every intention of this level, the next intention becomes easier. I want you guys to start making these new neural pathways this week and elevate your intentions behind as many of your tasks as possible. Caveat, of course. You can't commit fraud or murder for the sake of Allah. You cannot elevate your intention behind a sin and call it a virtue. That, of course, is an inherently flawed notion. So you have to have basic knowledge of what Islam allows, because belief without knowledge is extremism.
Speaker 1:Like when it came to women's freedom as a value for a culture, this freedom looked very different. Prior to the sexual revolution of 1960s, women's freedom looked very different than it looks now. Now a woman thinks she's liberated if she's not modest, and a lot of people hold that as a value because their internal moral compass changed based on the changing narrative with the decades of social programming. While I agree behind the premise of women's liberty that a man cannot and should not be controlling a woman and you guys might know that from my teachings that no one human being can control another human being a woman operates from her own nervous system thoughts. That's why, when forceful control is applied to any sovereign human being, there will be retaliation and there was retaliation. But at the same time, the escape that was chosen was sexual liberty. Permiscuity became synonymous with freedom, courage, strength, which a lot of people hold as a value. Currently I, among many other Muslims, don't hold that value because our moral compass is based on a faith system that's different. Sexual liberty as an escape of patriarchy became quite hurtful to women. So, like I said, values change century to century, decade to decade and even faster.
Speaker 1:Now, setting goals of a hundred, two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars a year, providing service to the world in exchange of that money, can be a very high level value, since service can be your value. But your value can also be a virtue if it is within the fold of Islam and you're able to elevate your intention behind it for being only for the sake of Allah. The more you are able to elevate your intention to that level, the quicker you will become non-attached to your goal and you will become more process focused. So when I refer to values, i'm referring to virtues, meaning it is something that you're doing for the sake of Allah. It is something that you're allowed to do within Islamic teachings, but you might have been falling short of elevating your intention behind it up until now.
Speaker 1:If my value is that of respect others, then to make it a virtue, all I have to do is to purify my intention behind it, elevate it from level one all the way to three. Level one would be that I respect others because I want to and I'm taught to do so. Level two is that I respect others for their sake. I don't want to hurt anyone by my actions. And level three is that I'm doing it for the sake of Allah. All actions that lead to the actualization of our values come from our thoughts. While there is nothing wrong with having values and having intentions behind it that benefit you and others, it will weigh much heavier on the scale of good deeds if intentions behind those deeds are of all the highest tier, if done for the sake of Allah alone.
Speaker 1:Morality in itself is not strictly a religious notion. There are a lot of moral people that are not religious, and this concept is something I learned from Sheikham Zayusuf. Morality strictly being only related to your religion is a highly self-righteous paradigm and just another way to judge others. And, as always, judgment of others is a lower brain mindset, because judgment of others doesn't hurt them, it hurts you. I am forever thankful to that scholar for teaching me this valuable lesson, and I am thankful to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, for me to be able to come into this study on a deep level.
Speaker 1:With that, i pray to Allah. Ya Allah, most gracious, the most merciful, bless us with the heart that loves for the sake of you, a heart that feels and heals for your sake alone. O Allah, guide us towards virtues of patience, gratitude, kindness, empathy. Protect us from any trials, but if we do have them, let us bear them with grace and resilience, always acknowledging your wisdom alone. Feel in us the sense of humility that makes us vessels of your great bounty, from a pure intention and an elevated heart. O Allah, make us among the virtuous and make our deeds stand in our favor on the day of judgment. Ameen, ya Rabbul Alameen, please keep me in your dharaz. I will talk to you guys next time.