Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Barakah in Your Efforts with Alignment
What if you could achieve exponential results with less effort—simply by aligning your thoughts, emotions, and actions? In this episode, we uncover how clearing inner conflicts and starting with the right intentions can bring barakah into your efforts.
Discover why pushing through resistance drains your energy and how alignment can transform your work, relationships, and even your worship. Learn the secret to working smarter, not harder, and why your best results come from mental alignment, not more hustle.
InshaAllah with this concept, you will be able to unlock the divine blessing that multiplies your efforts. Tune in now and take the first step toward alignment and barakah.
Don’t miss this eye-opening episode on the power of alignment—it could change how you approach every area of your life.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Asar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today, we're going to be talking about how to be more efficient with your work, more productive, how to make the most of your time, and I talk a lot about this topic, but today I want to bring a different type of attention to it. Today, what I want to talk about is how you're going to align yourself before you take any action to save energy, so that there's barakah in your effort, so that the result of your effort is far more than you expected. So I just want to start out with some definitions. First of all, alignment that's a term that I'm going to be using a lot today which means getting your thoughts, feelings and actions to work together in type of a harmony towards a goal. This is when you clear up your inner conflicts, like your fears or your doubts, so that all the parts of you are moving towards the same direction. That will save you a lot of energy, a lot of time. Instead of ignoring the parts that you feel hesitant or unsure, alignment asks you to pause, understand those feelings and bring them into balance without judging them. So when you do this, you're saving energy and you make much more progress, a lot more smoothly and effectively.
Speaker 1:What do I mean when I say the word Barakah? This is the divine blessing from Allah SWT that causes something to exceed its expected benefit or capacity. This is what transforms what seems small, mundane or limited, whether it's time, money or food. Barakah transforms it into something abundant and impactful, and the thing starts to serve you in ways that go beyond your logical expectations. And this definition, or a version of this definition, I might have gotten through Productive Muslim. Now let's define Barakah in time. Let's say you have a packed schedule, you have barely an hour to spare, but somehow you manage to accomplish everything in your to-do list and then some. Or Barakah in food, when you're able to serve all the food to everyone on the table to their fill. Or barakah in time, receiving a modest income by the worldly standards, but even when you think it shouldn't be enough to cover all of your expenses and your needs, it does so anyways.
Speaker 1:Prerequisite of barakah is, of course, you start with the remembrance of Allah. But what brain action you can take to tap into this barakah that Allah SWT has already ordained for you. What is it that you can do is not more physical action, not more struggle, not more hustle. It's mostly mental action, cleaning up the energy that's driving you and dividing you in different ways. And this is the mental action of alignment of your thoughts. Aligning yourself saves energy.
Speaker 1:Before you jump into action, you have to figure out what your internal parts are saying, what your thoughts are, what your emotions are. Are they pulling you in different directions or are they working towards the same goal? If you act without resolving inner conflicts, you will expend energy fighting yourself. This misalignment will create friction, and friction consumes energy. It slows you down, it makes it harder for you to sustain momentum. This is one of the very important reasons why you should be working on inner alignment first. If you have one part that wants to push forward, but the other part hesitates out of fear, doubt, uncertainty, and if you start to take action without addressing these internal tensions, you'll feel drained and scattered Preemptively. Sitting with these opposing forces and working to align them initially might feel like you're wasting time, especially when others appear to be making progress. They're taking quick actions. But this upfront action is like calibrating your compass. This way, you're ensuring, when you do move, you're heading in the right direction and you move forward much faster.
Speaker 1:People who ignore this inner alignment and take action despite of opposing thoughts. Initially they might look like they're moving forward, but the longer their inner resistance remains unresolved, the quicker they will lose momentum, and if that's you, that's a fast way of burning out. But on the other hand, if you're somebody who works hard to align yourself, align your inner world, address your fears, then it might take you longer to start in the beginning, but you move with much greater power and endurance, because then your actions are fueled by clarity. You're not constantly addressing the doubts. This is what brings Baraka in your time, because your inner conflict is not slowing you down because you've preemptively addressed it.
Speaker 1:The common advice that you get is to push through resistance. Just do it, even if you feel unsure, and there is a time and a place for that. There's a time and a place to take action despite of your inner turmoil, like when you need to meet an urgent deadline or you need to break through procrastination and just do the work. But this approach has limits for goals that need to be sustainable and that are long-term. This pause of finding alignment before you act. It's not you sitting with your thoughts or using it as an excuse to do the work. You're preparing yourself to move forward with purpose, kind of like getting rid of the garbage on the path before you start to go down it. This preparation will make sure that you don't waste your energy fighting internal resistance. This way, you're going to't waste your energy fighting internal resistance. This way, you're going to fully channel your energy into your actions.
Speaker 1:Mal-alignment steals barakah away from your time and effort. Start every task, minor or major, with Allah's name, but also elevate your intention behind each task. Clean up the garbage that's keeping you weighed down, and this is the secret to sustainable and impactful action. Let's say you want to start a business, an idea that excites you and energizes you, but deep underneath this ambition, there's the fear of failing, being judged or realizing you're not as capable as you hope. You get tired sooner. All of these internal conflicts will create a pattern of dabbling. You research endlessly, you make plans, you take small steps, but you're mostly hesitant, and then you retreat whatever progress you've made. Weeks, months or even years go by and you're still swirling in the same place. This is the lack of barakah, because this is the lack of you cleaning up your internal conflicts. In this case, even if you do manage to take an action, it will feel like pushing a boulder uphill.
Speaker 1:You have not paused to address the fearful part of you. It does not feel seen. It has not been addressed when you have acknowledged this existence. Just that awareness alone, most of the time, softens the fear. It sheds light on it long enough so you can understand that most of your fears are actually baseless, coming from a primal fear of visibility or a primal fear of being cast out if you're a failure, when none of that actually hold matter in the modern world.
Speaker 1:And you can take multiple daily life examples. Let's say you agreed to help a friend move because you don't want to disappoint her, but deep down you're running on empty. You need time to recharge. You need time to focus on yourself, on your own goals, yet you push all of this aside to avoid the guilt of not helping your friend. The result More resentment builds up. You feel annoyed at your friend. You wish she wouldn't ask so much of you. This puts your friendship into jeopardy. This is the exact opposite of barakah in your relationships. The malalignment that you're not aware of in this case is leaving you emotionally drained and instead of this task being a generous act of friendship, it becomes a source of tension for you In this case.
Speaker 1:Alignment here would mean learning to prioritize your needs and addressing them without ignoring them. Acknowledging them just so it can create some soft space in you, space enough just for you to recognize how much energy do you have to be able to help your friend? Or let's take another example. Let's say you have a desire to make money. Do you have to be able to help your friend? Or let's take another example. Let's say you have a desire to make money, whether you want to support your family, you want to achieve your personal goals, you want to be financially independent, but there's another part of you that feels that earning money, especially in significant amounts from the worldly standards, is superficial or even morally questionable. You might want to make money, you might want to even work hard, but you're going to be subconsciously sabotaging yourself towards earning more money easier. You may even think that it's more virtuous to just work for a non-profit or have a business that prioritizes only social good. While those are good qualities, cleaning up the malalignment might tell you that more money will give you more resources, more money will buy you more freedom of time.
Speaker 1:But when you don't slow down to address this malalignment, making money and putting value in the world to be able to earn money is going to feel very hard. The inner conflict is going to keep you stuck. You're going to undercharge for your services. You're going to feel guilty for earning more than others. You're going to subconsciously avoid more lucrative opportunities altogether, opportunities that might even make your life easier, that might make your income grow easier. To align these opposing parts, you will need to redefine your relationship with money, recognizing that money itself is neutral. It's a tool that can be used for good or harm. By earning more, you create the capacity to contribute more, especially to the causes that you value. You can support your loved ones.
Speaker 1:Your recognition of your opposing parts within you helps you realize that you've always been working with these opposing thoughts. They aren't separate physical entities. They're not human beings inside of you battling for control. They're just thoughts, habitual, persistent and sometimes deeply ingrained. These are patterns of thinking that loop through your mind, and the nature of opposing thoughts is sometimes they appear so factual Questions like what if I fail, or thoughts like I don't deserve this, people will judge me. I should do what's expected. These are not loud, dramatic intrusions, but rather slow whispers, and they always are running in your awareness very subtly, in the, like an unopened browser that consumes your energy Over time. The repetition, even without your awareness, gives them weight, making them feel like absolute truths instead of just thoughts. This is why they feel so persistent. This is why opposing thoughts stick around for so long. Part of your brain sees them as a protective mechanism, but they're actually just arising from past experiences, conditioning social expectations, things that your brain has determined are important to keep you safe.
Speaker 1:Living with these thoughts in awareness does not mean that you are going to be able to control them 100% of the time. It just means that you recognize them as thoughts, things that you do not have to accept at face value just because they're present in your brain. While this noticing does not limit you from having opposing thoughts, it does give you the freedom to choose them, especially if they continue to show up on and on in your long-term goals. So the first step in working with opposing parts is noticing them for what they are just patterns of thinking, not immutable truths. When you successfully observe these thoughts without judgment, you will begin to loosen their grip on you. So instead of thinking I'll never succeed, you might observe hey, that's a familiar fear of my failure again, that's the fear of visibility again. And instead of being paralyzed by thoughts like what will people think, you could just acknowledge that this thought about judgment is present, but it does not have to define my choices moving forward.
Speaker 1:Just by bringing awareness to these thoughts, observation for them, you separate yourself from them and they stop being the drivers of your actions. They just become something you can reflect on, something that you can challenge and especially dismiss, especially in cases where they're driving you in opposite directions, not allowing you to achieve any measurable results, directions not allowing you to achieve any measurable results. Just the recognition opens the gate for possible reframing. You can ask yourself is this thought serving me or is it holding me back? What's the deeper truth here that I want to focus on? What action can I take next that aligns with my highest intentional thought, my highest self? Let's say, a thought tells you you're not ready to start yet you can counter it with readiness. Comes with action, not waiting. You're not silencing your opposing part, you're acknowledging it. You're just allowing yourself to think something different, something that aligns more with actions that you can take efficiently. This will create more and more ever-present awareness for you, and while this persistent awareness is going to require work in the beginning, it's not going to be as exhausting as you think, because eventually it will become the norm. Eventually, you'll become used to recognizing your thoughts.
Speaker 1:What if your malalignment was about hijab versus personal expression? Let's say you wear the hijab because you believe it's a command from Allah SWT, but a part of you that's malaligned. It feels that it's constraining and it's disconnected from your personal sense of style. You might want to be constantly adjusting your hijab style, or you might feel self-conscious about it or how you look at work. This is going to create lack of barakah in your act of ibadah. This is going to create resentment, frustration. One part of you is committed fully to your spiritual duty, but another part of you is struggling with self-expression and confidence. Your responsibility here is not to judge this self-expression part, not to shame yourself for having these second thoughts, but giving them their due time and recognition and letting them be present. That way, you can choose whatever path you choose to go down, which, like I said, if you're already wearing hijab, you are already making the better choice. You're just creating a lot more work by suppressing your part that's creating the lack of confidence in your hijab. There's no need to continue to live with this resistance.
Speaker 1:Or if you're struggling to prioritize parenting versus self-care, you spend the bulk of your time caring for your kids, making sure they're well-fed, they're educated, they're emotionally supported, but you do recognize that you're neglecting your own needs in the process. Maybe it's reflection time, maybe it's worship, and this is making you more irritable, more resentful, more stressed out. The part of you that prioritizes being a devoted parent is also present, with a part of you that craves time for self-reflection, personal growth, self-care. If you're feeling disbalanced because of it, if it's creating friction in you as a parent, creating more work for you, all you have to do is bring your mal-aligned parts into awareness and find out how you can address both of them. This is going to take the friction right out of the process. This is what I mean by aligning and harmonizing your efforts.
Speaker 1:When you're in a marriage and you believe that being a good wife means prioritizing your husband's needs, but you do it to such an extent that, over time, you feel invisible and unappreciated. There's a part of you that wants to maintain harmony, but there's also a part of you that feels that this level of self-sacrifice leaves you neglected. You absolutely have to address this malalignment, because without that, you're always going to be blaming the external circumstance, the marriage, the husband. When, with just recognition of personal boundaries, understanding that giving yourself time and attention does not mean that you're taking it away from your husband, that alone can align you. That alone can take care of a lot of mind drama. You might have malalignment with your career goals and your ideas of modesty and how far you can go as a professional Muslim woman just because you practice modesty. And there are tons and tons of examples like this in your life.
Speaker 1:I want you to pay attention to where you think you are not aligned perfectly, because when you think about moving forward in life if it's your career, deepening your faith, or about your relationship, your tendency is always going to be quickly move into action. But real progress, the kind that feels fulfilling and sustainable, that only comes from not rushing but aligning yourself ahead of time. If you don't identify the thoughts that are pulling you in opposite directions, you will waste energy, create frustration and you will burn out much sooner. People that continue to create sustainable efforts that accomplish long-term goals are the people that are putting energy ahead of time and paying attention to their mal-aligned parts. Paying attention to them with love and respect, not with judgment or shame.
Speaker 1:You will see that even with fear and guilt, self-care and societal expectations, with personal fulfillment all of these inner battles can keep you stuck, even when you're working hard, because it's going to look like you're sitting idly in thoughts, but you're preparing the launching pad for takeoff. You're preparing your mind, your heart, your intentions so that they work in harmony. It might take more time up front, but it serves you so well because this method will make sure that every step you take moves you closer to your goal. You might observe those people who skip this step and sprint ahead and you might feel like you're not doing things fast enough, but if you have a tendency of taking action and not getting anywhere, alignment might be the missing link for you, because alignment doesn't just give you momentum, it gives you resilience, the ability to go much farther than you ever imagined. This is exactly what allows barakah to filter into your time and your effort.
Speaker 1:With that, I pray to Allah SWT. O Allah, align my heart and my mind with your guidance, help me recognize all of the thoughts that hold me back and grant me the clarity to move forward with purpose. O Allah, strengthen my resolve, ease my inner conflicts and fill my actions with sincerity and barakah. Ya Allah, let every step I take bring me closer only to you. Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.