If your Facebook newsfeed is anything like mine, you’ll have noticed that more and more people are posting ‘positive thinking’ style, uplifting memes. Whatever challenge you’re going through – there’s a meme for that.
However, some of the “inspirational advice” seems to have the opposite effect – for example, when people are told to be grateful for their situation because others have it worse.
Now at face value it appears to be sound advice. Comparing ourselves to others who are worse off should theoretically cause us to be more appreciative of our own situation and circumstances.
However if you’ve been through a really challenging time and are struggling to be grateful, what can actually happen when you read this, is that you feel even worse for being such a bad Muslim that you can’t even feel grateful for what you do have. Comparing yourself to people who have far less does nothing to lift your mood and so you feel even worse about yourself and sink into feeling even lower than before.
There’s one uplifting meme that really does it for me, but that I’ve never seen on Facebook, and it says this:
‘You’re only ever feeling your thinking in the moment’
Now at face value, this may not automatically solve all of the problems you’re experiencing in life.
And that’s exactly why I wrote ‘Inside The Soul Of Islam’ – to connect the dots between this one simple, psychological truth and every aspect of your spiritual life, until you start to effortlessly embody all the virtues of Islam.
And when you see this simple truth, something really nice starts to happen. Your mind becomes so much quieter that you start to make spontaneous dhikr. You naturally become more thankful and express this gratitude to Allah every day, moment by moment.
You no longer need to be forced to be grateful, you just are, because you now understand the simple truth of how you actually experience life and are connected with Allah, the Most Near.
To experience this for yourself, join us at the live event coming up next week:
