Feedback Loops, honouring parents, focusing in salah and Ethereum

Sep 05, 2022 1:44 pm

Update for 05th September 2022

as Salaamu Alaykum,

The last email had a few errors which have now been corrected. Apologies.

My intention with these newsletters is to synthesise beneficial information for you in sha Allah.

The podcast is a lot of work, so I give a lot of credit to those who have been able to produce consistently. There are now many Muslim-run podcasts but very few keep going over a long time horizon. For this reason, I have a lot of respect for Faisal from Freshly Grounded. Not just for his consistency, but his overall body of work and his content philosophy which I judge as exhibiting high ethics.

A Self Development Idea I was thinking about this week:

I'm part of a course in which Ameen from Seerah Masters articulated the link between Facts/reality -> Our beliefs, mental diet -> interpretation of facts/reality -> action. I have talked a lot about mental diet but usually in a simple way of "garbage in = garbage out". This essentially makes the same point if it wasn't already obvious but breaks it down further. For example, Ali fails on a maths test (reality), he thinks he is not a maths guy (belief based on life/upbringing/mental diet), he then doesn't apply himself which leads to continuous failing or a static identity as being bad at maths. Baa, has the same reality in that he fails on the same maths test, but he has a growth mindset so decides to work harder/smarter and then improves upon his result in the future which shifts his results and further reinforces his identity as being someone who can improve if he applies himself.

Hadith

An example of how the righteous salaf honoured their parents is that of ‘Abd-Allah ibn ‘Umar (may Allah be pleased with him):

It was narrated from ‘Abd-Allah ibn Dinar from ‘Abd-Allah ibn ‘Umar that a man from among the Bedouins met him on the road to Makkah. ‘Abd-Allah greeted him with salam, seated him on the donkey that he was riding and gave him a turban that he had been wearing on his head. Ibn Dinar said: We said to him: May Allah guide you, they are just Bedouins and they would be content with little. ‘Abd-Allah said: The father of this man was a friend of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab and I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) say: “The best act of kindness is for the son to uphold ties (of friendship) with those who were his father’s friends.” Narrated by Muslim, 2552.

An Islamic Reminder on focusing in Salah

Inner Dimensions of Islamic Worship by Imam al-Ghazali

The way to deal with this is to make a deliberate effort to comprehend the meaning of the words one is reciting in the Prayer, concentrating on this to the exclusion of everything else. It is helpful to prepare for this before the initial consecration, by reminding oneself of the Hereafter and that one is standing in communion in the awesome presence of God, Glorified is He, and under His scrutiny. Before consecration for Prayer, one should empty the heart of all its cares, leaving oneself free of potential distractions.

Health :

"If we have low standards for good cardiovascular health and strength, we’ll never be physically thriving well into old age. Hunter-gatherers could likely walk or jog 10 to 25 miles a day without much bother. The voyageurs apparently worked into their 60s. When you think of a fit 60-year-old, do you imagine someone carrying 180lbs of gear for half a mile?

And before anyone jumps in with an “akshully those people weren’t healthy; they only lived into their 30s! We’re so much more healthy now!” No, that’s just bad statistics. Antibiotics, surgery, and other medicines can save us from an unnecessarily early death pulling down the average, but the healthy human lifespan doesn’t appear to have changed much throughout recorded history." Nat Elison

Book Review

Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron. Link

"Think of it this way: If you were a robot, and things like sleep, relaxation, stress, relationships, desires, and temptations were not a factor, how would you program yourself to meet your goals? "

Decent read. Written by an elite Crossfit Games Athlete coach.

Product

Recently purchased a Kindle Paperwhite. I've always just used the Kindle App on my phone but then you have to avoid being distracted by other applications.

Some quotes from my readings:

59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman However, if they can be persuaded, or can persuade themselves, to work on the activity for ‘just a few minutes’, they often feel an urge to see it through to completion.

Mental Models by Peter Hollins The more complicated or labyrinthine the explanations get, the less likely they are to be the truth

Purification of the Heart by Hamza Yusuf

If there is much corruption in a given generation, it is best to be wary of people until their goodness becomes manifest.

“There is no greater fool than he who thinks himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects he is a fool.”

— Marguerite de Valois

Something unrelated but I found interesting:

So what are they doing right? 3 simple reasons why Peloton subscriptions work:

Loss aversion - now that we've spent $2,000 on a product we will go out of our way to avoid the pain that comes with wasting it and making it feel like a loss.
Commitment bias - we tend to remain committed to our past behaviors, especially those made in public. And with all of Peloton's psychological tactics, as shown here, it's hard not to get started and even easier to stay committed.
Your scary spouse - once you buy the Peloton, you either tell your spouse you just threw away $2,000 or eat the $40/month and start using it more.

One question to ask ourselves

If you could not improve then why would you be held accountable by Allah ﷻ

I want to hear from like-minded people, please feel free to reply.

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