Nothing Has Gone Wrong

This secret belief robs us of whatever happy moments that we have in our lives because we don't savor them . We worry about losing these moments and play a story in our heads about when we won't have them again . We worry about the future , while in the moment of happiness and then we complain we're not happy . This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy .

This is how we end up severely constricting our lives . So today I'll be breaking the myth that humans are supposed to be happy all of the time , Because once you understand this concept , you'll actually enjoy the happy moments in your life and , inshallah , your life will expand . Enjoy the happy moments in your life and , inshallah , your life will expand .

Another misconception is around life coaching , and that is that with life coaching , all the clients are happy all of the time . That is not at all the case . If you've been hanging out on planet earth for a while , you will realize that no one is happy 100% of the time .

And if you do pretend to be happy for the sake of a facade , life usually catches up to you . Being happy all of the time is not for this planet . The constant happiness and tranquility is for heaven . Allah SWT says about paradise in Surah Al-Hijr , ayah 46 and 47 .

One translation says their greeting will be Enter ye here in peace and security , and we shall remove from their hearts any lurking sense of injury . They will be brothers , joyfully facing each other on thrones of dignity . That's the promise of the paradise . Any lurking sense of injury will be removed from the heart . And imagine the tranquility that would bring .

But that's only for when we get there . Inshallah , what to do about life on this mortal earth ? How to improve this existence ? For that first , imagine what if the world was designed where everyone was happy all of the time .

Everyone got what they wanted , everyone won the lottery and has millions of dollars , everyone has the perfect in-laws and the perfect colleagues . Everyone prayed with full concentration , without ever second-guessing their intentions , and they had complete khushu in salah .

There would be nothing left to strive for , there would be no contrast , there would be no sense of happiness , because no one would know what unhappiness is . So happiness requires that there be some unhappiness , because human mind is created to think in references .

So for us to live a meaningful life , we have to expose ourselves to the ebbs and flows and the ups and downs , and we have to expose ourselves to the possibilities of disappointment . We have to be willing to feel the chaos of anger and frustration .

For us to experience this mortal life in its full spectrum , we have to accept it with everything it has to offer . And on this menu of life there happens to be a full range of emotions . So sometimes we have to choose the negative experiences , and sometimes we will do that willingly .

Now you might be questioning I would never willingly choose a negative experience , and I have one of the most fascinating evidences to support this theory , and that is that human beings have children . As mothers , we bear children knowing full well that this experience of having children will open us up to a wide range of emotions .

We know that by having a child there's a possibility that they will get hurt or they might experience a chronic illness . We intellectually know that a child can even die , but we open ourselves up to that hurt anyways , but we open ourselves up to that hurt anyways .

We are even told in the Quran this is clear evidence that human beings are capable of choosing negative emotions . As parents , we feel joy . We also feel sorrow and grief , and we get hurt through these relationships , but we do it anyways . We get married , knowing full well that marriage will also come with its set of chaos , but again we do it anyways .

Allah SWT has put a special mercy in the bonds of these relationships . Despite the possibility of hurt , humans are biologically wired to seek out these relationships . But when we experience the hurt and the rupture , we think something has gone wrong and it needs to be fixed immediately .

But during that time of chaos , I want you to remember this is how it was always supposed to be . Nothing has gone wrong here . My favorite definition of happiness is the experience you have , the joy you feel when you are actively listening to the voice of your soul . This soul will give you goals and you will find fulfillment in reaching them .

But then you will see obstacles , unease , stress and the fear of unhappiness will get in your way and most of us fall victim to this fear and bury our soul's voice deep , deep down inside of us , resulting in unhappiness .

So I've alluded to these obstacles many times in this podcast , where these obstacles are just some thought errors that we face as it is presented to us by our enoughs . Also , it's one thing that we want ourselves to be happy all the time , but also we expect everyone else to be happy all the time as well .

We want everyone to be happy and lovely and pleasant and cooperative all the time and if they're not , we get upset because they're upset and that never helps the situation . We have all witnessed the situation of escalating emotions . These are times when people start reacting to other people's emotions and forget that they have their own thought filters .

I am going to be happy and lovely as long as my colleagues , my children , boss or husband is happy and lovely , but I'll replicate the anger and upset if I sense that from other people . Times when we are replicating other people's emotions , we are assuming we have no choice in the matter .

We are forgetting that everyone is outside of us , which is a circumstance , and we can apply our own mind to the situation to see how to most appropriately respond to it . So reactivity to other people's emotions is always a choice . Just with a pinch of consciousness in that moment you can choose to respond the way which serves you most .

Ask yourself do you have to be angry ? Why is the other person angry ? Is their anger justified ? Is it appropriate to replicate that anger through your thoughts ? Sometimes that might be the answer . Other times the answer will depend on what result you want to create . Any of these questions will bring a pinch of consciousness , will help you redirect the outcome .

Most commonly , though , two people angry at each other always result in an outcome that they regret later . You can always pick an emotion you want to respond with .

Maybe it's kindness , maybe it's pity , maybe it's compassion , or , again , maybe it is anger , as long as you're choosing it for yourself at the moment , as long as you're not under the impression that the other person's anger is causing your anger . Same is true for every other emotion . Someone else's grief cannot cause your grief .

What happens when you're an empathic person is your thoughts are aligned with the other person's experience , so you'll align with their grief through your thoughts . Same way , you cannot feel another person's joy . You're having thoughts about them that make you feel joyous .

In any dysregulated state of pain , when you're experiencing a relationship rupture , it is difficult to believe that nothing has gone wrong , but that's okay , because during the hurt and the pain it seems like everything has gone wrong . There was never supposed to be any childhood trauma .

Parents were supposed to have their lives figured out so they could have provided me with a secure attachment . I was supposed to create wealth and leave a legacy for my children . None of that is happening . So how can I say nothing has gone wrong ?

It's okay if you don't believe that right now , but do not beat yourself up for having these doubts , because now you've added insult to injury . You have pain and doubt and on top of that you've added judgment about it for yourself . This just compounds a problem . Your pain is 50% part of your life .

If you add judgment and rejection of that pain , pain is 50% part of your life . If you add judgment and rejection of that pain , you've added 20 , 30 , 40% more of a negative experience to that original pain . Now it will seem that your life is taken over by chaos , which can result in chronic stress , repair of a relationship , rupture and order .

From chaos can only come once you find yourself truly believing that nothing has gone wrong here . When you are in acceptance of that fact , you will feel a ton of weight has been lifted off of your chest , you will feel lighter . Even while being in a negative experience , you will still feel uplifted .

What if , for an experiment's sake , we imagine that we live in a country where the law was that every citizen had to feel a negative emotion 50% of the time , kind of like taxes ?

If you just accepted that this was the part of living , then you can drop the fight and start to make peace with the fact that this is just how things are around here , because for me personally , it used to be when I didn't feel happy . All the time I would feel guilty about it , and that is true for so many of us .

Our brain will offer us something needs to be fixed , something needs to be purchased , we need to go on a vacation . We try to get rid of these negative emotions by fixing our environment , but there are many times in our lives where things are actually going exactly right and we still feel negative emotions . How do you explain that ?

Sometimes that negative emotion is an invitation for us to refocus where we have lost connection with our life , where we have lost the sight of our blessings . Accepting that nothing has gone wrong helps you recover from relationship ruptures from trauma .

Wrong helps you recover from relationship ruptures from trauma and it helps you expand your life to an unimaginable extent . So embrace every experience , because it's always going to be 50-50 . Something that I also see a lot in single sisters is where they can't find a suitable spouse . And here is a special request . I will ask you to just be curious .

If , at any level , you believe your spouse is supposed to make you happy , if you think your happiness lies in their hands . So every time a prospect comes , you're evaluating the compatibility and then he either says something or does something that has you questioning the state of happily ever after , you will go into guard mode .

Be curious if that is your truth at any level . As women , we are socialized to believe that spouses are supposed to make us happy and they're supposed to do that 100% of the time .

In the Quran it says that they are qawwam , they are supposed to provide maintenance to us , but above all , they are also humans first , and as humans they are navigating the same 50% of life that they don't like but have to deal with . I am not asking my single sisters to settle . I am not asking you to accept abuse .

I am asking you to honestly ask yourself if , at any level , you hold a belief that they are supposed to make you happy 100% of the time , and this belief is keeping you from completing half of your deen . Nobody can provide you with happiness .

Nobody on the planet is supposed to be happy 100% of the time , married or unmarried , no matter who you choose to marry , no matter who your family chooses for you to marry , any guy that you're considering to marry or any guy that you're already married to cannot give you happiness .

And if you do drive happiness from the relationship , it's not going to last a hundred percent of the time . Every relationship is going to have ruptures , moments of chaos and disorder , and when the moment of chaos arrives , you're going to forget this design , and that's okay . That's your body's defense mechanism . Nothing has gone wrong here .

Nothing is wrong with how you're feeling in that moment . Nothing is wrong with how you're feeling ever , even in the depth of grief . The amount of pain you feel for somebody is a direct measure of how much you love them . So why would you not want to feel grief ?

Similarly , you might be trying to lose weight and you think that all of the negative experiences and the chaos in your life is because of your weight . You push , you fight , you struggle , you hate yourself all the way to your weight loss goal , just to find out that life still presents challenges . The number on the scale does not change the 50-50 .

It cannot change it . The number on the scale , your bank balance , the amount of children nothing will change that balance of life . Everything else is a circumstance . They are all neutral . This epidemic of people resisting emotions when they try so hard to be happy all of the time by chasing things just results in chasing life , not living life .

You don't have to be chasing things . You can just be ambitious towards your goals , not because you want to fix something or remove chaos , but because you want progress . That's true abundance . How many celebrities do we know that climbed the ladder of success and wealth just to commit suicide ?

And I don't want to generalize , I'm not in their shoes , I don't know their personal experience , but how many times do you think it's because they thought life would be better once they've achieved all of it ? And it turns out , at the peak of their success they still find life to be 50-50 and nobody ever prepared them for that .

So you do not chase success because something has gone wrong . You do not achieve your goals of wealth because then your life will become perfect . You achieve them because you want to , because it's your calling , because it's the voice of your soul , because it is your true and genuine desire .

Creating a purposeful life is the true definition of happiness . It only comes with striving , because there always will be a 50% of unwanted emotion waiting for you and knowing full well you can experience the heartbreak , loss and the worst of the emotions , you still expand your life for the sake of Allah . That is true happiness .

With that , I pray that we obtain the greatest happiness from making Allah SWT our topmost priority . May Allah make us one of those people of paradise through this purpose of seeking His pleasure in this life . May Allah grant us prosperity in health , wealth and fulfilling relationships and help us remember His design in the moments of chaos .

So we are not mistakenly in disobedience by complaining . I make dua for you guys to find true happiness in fulfilling your roles in this earth , while doing it for the sake of Allah , and I pray that during the toughest of moments you remember that nothing has gone wrong here . Please keep me in your duas . I will talk to you guys next time .