Every creature communicates in some fashion but only humans can make language carry the weight of the soul. Allah ﷻ blessed us with that capacity and then did something extraordinary with it. In His infinite Wisdom, He invited us to use it with Him. There is something unlike any other act of worship about du’a. Salah has its structure with time and movements, fasting has its boundaries, and zakat has its calculation. But du’a has no form and no required language. It has no set time and it can happen in the middle of the night or in the middle of a crowd. Du’a can be one broken word or a lifetime poured out. It is the one act of worship that Allah left completely open. And that openness is not an accident. It is an invitation.

Du’a begins where control ends

Psychologists identify the illusion of control as one of the most deeply held human tendencies. We believe that our effort, planning, and will can determine outcomes more than they actually can. Almost like we are owed the outcome that we seek after meticulous devising. When control is lost, humans are left devoid and completely shattered. Du'a begins at the exact moment that illusion breaks. Not as failure but as clarity. It is the moment a person stops negotiating with the world and starts speaking to the One who controls it

The person who makes du'a has arrived at something true about their situation that the person still grasping for control has not yet accepted. When you come to terms that the outcome you want contains an element outside of your scope, you discover reality. You discover that this moment, as uncomfortable as it is, is actually the closest you have been to truth in the entire situation.

Limiting du’a to just a request would be a disservice to its potency. The word du’a itself comes from the Arabic root meaning to call out. However, the act of calling out to Allah inherently contains within it an acknowledgment that the one calling is completely dependent. You cannot genuinely make du’a while simultaneously believing you are self-sufficient. The two positions are incompatible. Which means every sincere du’a is already a confession that you are not enough on your own.

Psychologists call this radical acceptance; the idea that genuine relief from distress requires first fully accepting the reality of your situation without fighting it. Du’a captures this concept but actually it goes deeper than secular acceptance because it does not simply frame our struggles as “this is reality.” Du'a seizes that same reality and moves it. Moves it out of your chest, out of your mind, and into the hands of the One who actually holds the outcome. Surrender in du'a is not resignation but the most deliberate transfer of weight a person can make.

Your Du’a Was Answered Before You Asked

In Al-Da'a wa Al-Dawa'a (The Disease and the Cure) by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, he argues a unique concept that explains how we receive inspiration for du’a. Ibn Qayyim holds the opinion that If Allah did not want to accept your du’a, He would not have guided you to make it in the first place. With this in mind, this showcases an incredible exchange of mercy between Allah and the caller.

We misread the moment of helplessness as abandonment when things do not go our way. However, in reality the things that drive us to make du’a is a form of guidance and even greater sign of mercy. Turning to Allah in a time of need is itself a confirmation that help is near. Our need for help retroactively creates the framework of calling for help and ease following it. The moment ease begins is not when the answer arrives, but when you turn to ask

This connects directly to the Quranic framing when Allah says “Call upon Me and I will respond” (40:60). The condition embedded in that calling is that you are actually calling with belief and being present. And genuine calling requires that you have released the pretense of control before you open your mouth. Calling on Allah guarantees an answer, but not always in the way we expect or want.

The Three Responses

We have made countless du’as in our lifetime and still may have never heard a response. Some might object that our efforts are pointless when making du’a because we don’t immediately get an answer. That our du’a disappears somewhere between our lips and the sky. These fears are understandable, but it is a direct response to our narrow comprehension of what a response from Allah actually looks like. We assume an answer only counts when the exact thing we asked for appears in front of us. But the Prophet ﷺ gave us a much wider framework.

This hadith completely reframes the silence we feel after du’a. The first response is the one we recognize most easily: Allah gives us what we asked for in this life. The need is fulfilled, the door opens, the hardship is lifted, and the caller sees the answer with their own eyes.

The second response teaches us that not every accepted du’a is meant to be spent in this world. Some of our du’as are stored for us in the Hereafter. That means the words, aching, tears, and pain you thought went unnoticed was being collected. The requests that felt unanswered may return to you on a Day when you will need mercy more than you ever needed the thing you asked for here.

The third response is even more hidden. Allah may divert an evil from you similar to what you asked for. This means you may ask for one form of relief, while Allah protects you from a harm you never even saw coming. You may think nothing happened because your situation did not change, but something may have been removed from your path before it ever reached you. A calamity could have been delayed or a door that would have destroyed you was closed. A pain you could not have carried was lifted before you even knew it was near. The third response asks the most of us because it requires trusting that Allah was active in the silence. That protection does not always announce itself. That the absence of what we asked for may itself be a form of answer.

40 Years

It is quite arrogant for us to assume that we always know what is best for us, especially when our Creator sees with a context we could never possess. We make du’a with one outcome in mind, but Allah may be giving us something far deeper than the outcome itself. Sometimes the response is not the thing we asked for, but the relationship that was built while we kept asking.

There is a famous story within Islamic scholarship about a man making du’a for something over the course of 40 years. He never received what he was asking for and after decades of calling upon Allah, he began to feel as though his du’a had gone unanswered. The man complained to a scholar saying that he had not received what he asked for and the scholar said to him, “The fact that Allah allowed you to stand at His door for forty years was itself the answer.”

The man thought his du’a had been unanswered because the outcome had not arrived, but in reality the ability to keep calling upon Allah was itself a mercy. It is far more valuable than anything the man could have asked for. For forty years, Allah had preserved a relationship between Himself and His servant. He had kept the man attached, dependent, hopeful, and aware of his need. Despite the heart devoted with one thing in mind, Allah had given him the greatest gift someone can ask for: the gift of never being cut off from Him.

Du’a Exposes What We Don’t Know About Ourselves

That kind of sustained nearness does something to a person. When we are kept at the door long enough, we begin to see ourselves more clearly than the routine of life ever allowed. Life in motion gives us places to hide behind confidence, status, and personality. However, a heart that has been returning to Allah for years has fewer places to conceal itself. When we become desperate enough to make real du’a, we find out about what we actually value. We find out what we fear losing and what we subconsciously depend on. A person may ask for relief and discover how impatient they are. They may ask for a person and discover how deeply they tied their worth to being chosen. They may ask for success and discover how much of their identity was built on being seen.

Du’a also exposes the limits of our self-knowledge. Sometimes we ask for something convinced it is good for us, only for time to show that we were asking from pain, insecurity, envy, attachment, fear, or impatience. The request may be sincere, but sincerity does not always mean clarity. A person can be honest and still not fully understand themselves.

Psychologists call this the gap between our stated values and our revealed ones. This is the difference between who we think we are and who our choices show us to be. Du’a closes that gap with a ruthlessness no therapist can replicate because it happens in front of the One who already knows.

This is why weakness in du’a should not be seen as humiliation but as a means of returning to our proper place. Imam al-Ghazali writes in Iḥyā’ ʿUlūm al-Dīn,

“When you place yourself in the position of lowliness, know that this is your proper place, and you are returning the branch to the trunk, for of the dust were you formed and to it you return. His mercy hastens towards weakness and lowliness, and not towards pride and conceit.”

In other words, du’a does not make us small in a degrading sense. It reveals that we were never self-sufficient to begin with. The sooner we realize that weakness is our natural state, the sooner du’a stops feeling like desperation and starts becoming honesty. We have to shrink ourselves before we grow because the heart cannot receive mercy while still pretending it has no need.

This is why du’a is not only a way of asking Allah for what we want. It is also a way Allah shows us what is inside us. The longer you sit with a du’a, the more it begins to reveal the condition of the one making it. Am I asking from trust or panic? Am I asking Allah, or am I trying to use Allah to reach something I have made ultimate? Am I willing to accept His answer, or do I only want Him to confirm mine?

In this way, du’a becomes a mirror. It does not only expose the depth of our need. It reveals the direction of our heart.

When Du’a Becomes Conversation

With enough du’a, a person begins to realize that calling upon Allah is not limited to the moments when they need something. At first, du’a may begin at the junction of need. Something breaks or something becomes uncertain, and the servant finally turns back to Allah. But if a person keeps returning, du’a can slowly mature from a list of requests into a living conversation.

This does not mean we graduate beyond asking. Asking Allah is worship. And need is not a flaw in the servant but a part of our design. But there is a difference between asking Allah because we know we need Him, and only remembering Allah when we need something from Him.

On a human level, we understand this concept excellently. A relationship feels hollow when someone only reaches out to take, only appears when they are desperate, and only speaks when they have a request. The issue is not that they asked but that the relationship never grew beyond asking.

Many of us struggle to build a relationship with Allah because speaking to Him feels foreign. It is difficult to find comfort with One we have only approached in emergencies, but du’a can change that. Let du’a serve as a compass giving the heart a direction to face. It teaches the tongue to call, the soul to accept its weakness, and the servant to become familiar with standing before Allah.

Over time, du’a becomes more than a place where we unload our needs. It becomes the place where we learn who Allah is, who we are, and how much we have always depended on Him. The request may bring us to the door, but the conversation is what teaches us to stay. And it was weakness that brought us to the door in the first place. Not despite our insufficiency but through it, Allah drew us near. The openness was never an accident. It was always an invitation. And it was always meant for you.

There is something terrifying about the idea that one day, we will be remembered and spoken about in the past tense. People will not describe the version of ourselves we carefully presented, but the person that they experienced. People may forget what you say or did for them, but they will always remember how you made them feel. They will remember whether we brought ease or difficulty, warmth or tension, safety or harm. In Islam, that memory is not treated as meaningless. The way people bear witness to our character carries weight.

People Are Witnesses to What We Leave Behind

The Prophet ﷺ once taught this through a moment that should make every person pause:

“A funeral procession passed and the people praised the deceased. The Prophet ﷺ said, “It has been affirmed to him.” Then another funeral procession passed and the people spoke badly of the deceased. The Prophet ﷺ said, “It has been affirmed to him.” ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb asked, “What has been affirmed?” He replied, “You praised this, so Paradise has been affirmed to him; and you spoke badly of this, so Hell has been affirmed to him. You people are Allah’s witnesses on earth.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 1367

What people will testify to is not what we intended, but what we embodied.

Akhlaq Is Not Just Being Nice

When we hear the word akhlaq1, we often reduce it to being nice, polite, or easy to speak to. While those things are part of good character, they do not fully capture what akhlaq is. Akhlaq is not just a social skill. It is not just knowing how to smile, speak softly, or make a good impression. Akhlaq is the way the condition of the heart becomes visible through the way we treat people.

A person can be polite in public and still be harsh in private. A person can speak beautifully about religion and still make the people closest to them feel small. A person can know the language of mercy while failing to embody it with their family, friends, roommates, or coworkers. This is why akhlaq has to be understood as something deeper than manners. Manners can be performed. Character is revealed.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “There is nothing heavier on the Scale of the believer on the Day of Resurrection than good character”(Sunan al-Tirmidhī 2002). Good character is not light in the sight of Allah ﷻ. It is one of the heaviest things a person brings back to Him. This means akhlaq is not a side issue. It is not decoration on top of faith. It is one of the clearest places where faith becomes expressed.

People may forget the exact words we said, but they often remember the emotional weight we left behind. They remember whether they felt safe around us. They remember whether they had to carefully choose every word before speaking to us. They remember whether our presence brought calm or anxiety. They remember whether we made them feel seen or dismissed.

This is where akhlaq becomes psychological. It is not only about what we intended. It is also about what people repeatedly experienced from us. Some people leave others feeling lighter. Some people leave others feeling drained. Some people make others feel like they can be honest. Others make people feel like they have to hide, shrink, or walk on eggshells.

Akhlaq is not just what people see from us. It is what people carry because of us.

Most Sins Are Not Isolated

When we talk about what people carry because of us, we have to be honest about how it gets there. Most of the sins that we commit are not as isolated and more often than not involve other parties. Backbiting involves someone’s honor. Stealing involves someone’s property. Lying involves someone’s trust. Harshness involves someone’s heart. Mockery involves someone’s dignity. Oppression involves someone’s right. So when we sin against people, it is not just “me and Allah.” There is now a third reality involved: the person who had to carry the effect of your sin.

When we wrong another person, that matter is not simply erased without justice. Allah ﷻ is fully capable of forgiving all things, but the rights of people must be restored because the harm was done against them. It is not that Allah ﷻ lacks power to forgive it. Rather, in His perfect justice, He does not ignore the rights of those who were wronged.

Some sins do not end when we stop doing them. They continue in the person who had to carry their effect. Even if we did not intend for the harm to spread, we may still be accountable for what our words set into motion. For example; the moral consequence of speaking about other people in a negative manner alters the perception of whoever is slandered. Now if a person were to negatively treat them, you would partially be responsible. That is the frightening part of sins involving people: the harm can multiply beyond the original moment.

If amends are never made, you will have to settle the dispute on the Day of Judgement with deeds as the token of exchange. First, it is the good deeds that are used to pay off the sins quantified as debt. If there are no good deeds to pay back the rights of those you have oppressed, you start to pay back by accepting their sins.

Now take a step back and ask yourself; why will you wait for the day where people will run away from their mothers and children as a day to reconcile? That is a day when no one will be carrying anyone else's burdens willingly. Take care of your affairs here, while the door is still open.

Character Debt

Every interaction you have either deposits something into a person or withdraws something from them. Most of us move through life without keeping that ledger in mind. There is no Switzerland when it comes to actions. This is where character debt begins. When our actions withdraw from people without repair, we create unpaid moral weight. Character debt is the dignity we took but never restored. It is the trust we damaged but never rebuilt. It is the apology we owed but never gave. It is the wound we caused but expected someone else to heal from alone.

This is why poor character is not just a personality flaw. It can become something we owe. A person may forget the moment they belittled someone, but the one who was belittled may remember it for years. A person may move on from what they said, but the person they harmed may still be living with its effect. Some people are left healing from moments that others barely remember causing.

The debt can be paid, but not in private. Allah ﷻ hears your repentance, but the person you harmed is still carrying what you left them with. When the wound was created in a relationship, the healing has to find its way back there too. That does not always mean a grand gesture. Sometimes it is an honest acknowledgment. Sometimes it is changed behavior that proves the apology was real. But it has to move in the direction of the person who paid the cost of your actions. Not just upward in du'a2 while they remain below, still holding what you put down and walked away from.

Check Your Mirrors

Most of us do not set out to harm people. The more honest problem is that we do not notice. We check our mirrors when we drive because we understand that our movement does not only affect us. A careless turn can harm someone we did not even notice. Character works the same way. We move through people’s lives with our words, moods, reactions, assumptions, and silences. If we never check our mirrors, we may not realize who we are cutting off, who we are pushing aside, who we are wounding, or who is quietly paying the price for our lack of awareness.

The people in our blind spots as we drive in life are the ones that have no choice but to absorb our moods. Our families, our partners, our close friends and people we interact with every day. Strangers meet our manners, while people in close proximity meet our character. Strangers often meet the most polished version of us because it is easy to be pleasant with people who only experience us briefly. But the people closest to us meet the repeated version. They see us when we are tired, irritated, stressed, inconvenienced, corrected, or denied what we want. This is exactly the standard the Prophet ﷺ set when he says “The best of you are the best to their families, and I am the best of you to my family” (Sunan al-Tirmidhī 3895).

One question that you use as a litmus test to see where you stand with your character is: do people feel safe around you? Not just physically safe, but emotionally safe. Do they tense up when you walk into a room because they don’t know what version of you they will receive? Can people tell you the truth without fearing your reaction? Can they make a mistake without being humiliated? Can they disagree with you without being punished by your mood, your silence, or your words? Sometimes poor character can hide behind a cheap smile. Sometimes it looks like being difficult to approach. It looks like making people calculate every sentence they speak. It can look like people doing more than what they need to when interacting with you because you are emotionally expensive.

The Weight Can Go Both Ways

A scale has two sides. What sits on one determines where the other lands. In Islam, Allah ﷻ does not count our deeds, but weighs them. And one of the heaviest things on that scale is how you treated people because character can tip in either direction. Character can harm people, but it can also build people. It can drain people or it can restore them. It can leave someone carrying something heavy or it can lift something they've been carrying alone.

We can fill our records with prayers, fasts, and remembrance. None of that is small. But there is a difference between worship that stays within you and worship that leaves you and lands in someone else's life. One builds your account while the other changes someone's world. A hundred voluntary prayers do not reach the person you wounded. And a single act of genuine mercy toward someone who needed it can outweigh what we assumed was our most significant devotion.

The Prophet ﷺ taught us:

“The most beloved people to Allah are those who are most beneficial to people. The most beloved deed to Allah is to make a Muslim happy, or remove one of his troubles, or forgive his debt, or feed his hunger. That I walk with a brother regarding a need is more beloved to me than that I seclude myself in this mosque in Medina for a month”

al-Mu’jam al-Awsaṭ lil-Ṭabarānī 6026

Private worship builds you, but character that reaches people is where that building becomes visible. Worship that enters someone’s life, that lifts something they’ve been carrying, that restores their dignity or eases their burden leaves an imprint that outlasts the moment. That is your deen3 leaving your body and landing in the world. That is theory becoming practice. The person Allah ﷻ loves most is not the one who worshipped the most in private. It is the one whose character reached the furthest into other people's lives.

What Will They Testify?

The Prophet ﷺ stood at two processions and said a single word each time. Affirmed. Not based on what those people intended, not based on their private worship, not based on what they thought of themselves. Based on what the people who knew them carried out of the relationship. Will people watch our bodies being carried and become stricken with grief or relief? What will the people who actually knew you say? Not the people who met your manners. The ones who met your character. The ones who absorbed your moods, who needed your honesty, who carried something because of you or were lifted by you.

The witnesses are already being formed. Every interaction is adding to their testimony. The question is not whether they will speak. It is what they will say.

Most of what you believe, you never actually chose.

Your values, your habits, your sense of self were given to you by your parents, your upbringing, and the environment you grew up in. The things you truly believe in didn’t arrive through deliberate thought. You simply inherited yourself through life. However, there comes a point in life where you pushback on the inertia set in place. You define you’re own prerogative. But questioning yourself opens the can of worms which surrounds purpose. You start to pull back the curtains of yourself and question; What is life? Who am I? Where am I even going?

Canvas

Large and indigestible initially, the thought of life can be too grand. Questioning why things the way they are feels unnecessary and sometimes even threatening. However realizing that everyone, absolutely everyone, has no clue or sense of direction of where they are going in life has provided an immense amount of relief to my life. Coming to terms with this, life starts to feel less like a fixed path and more like a canvas. And whatever you paint becomes your art. Not because you mastered it, but because you realize no one really knows how to paint. There’s no perfect color, nor is there a correct way to hold the brush. And the kicker is you never make it out alive to get to step back and see the full gallery. Your piece is always unfinished from your own perspective. Either others see your work when it’s complete, or you spend your time walking through the gallery, witnessing theirs. Either way, everything is still in progress.

So the question becomes: how do you choose your colors?

Courage

Not by staying inside what you were given, but by stepping outside of it. Irrespective of the walking through the gallery of life, it is imperative to seek out what color works for us. The clearest way to understand what you believe is to sit with what you disagree with.

Not to be a contrarian, but because something genuine happens when you face an idea that unsettles you and actually work through it. If you have the courage to do so and be honest with yourself, one of two things happens:

Either your perspective shifts.

That’s growth.

Or you come back more grounded in what you already believed.

That’s clarity.

In both scenarios you win.

Palettes

As I continue to experience life, what I’ve come to believe is that not every color is up for discovery. Some colors feel personal, shaped by experience, and are always evolving. But not everything is up for negotiation. Some colors were always going to be part of your painting. You don’t find them; they find you. The exploration just makes you ready to receive them.

You might not be drawn to them at first. They might not feel natural. But over time, as you understand them, you start to see why they matter. And when you finally accept them, your entire palette begins to shift around them. What once felt forced starts to feel right. The whole painting becomes more coherent, more peaceful, more beautiful.

And there’s something else worth saying. Your stroke of goodness means nothing if you had no other option. Virtue without choice is just conditioning. That’s why intentionality matters, not just in what you do, but in what you choose to believe. Because at the end of it all, most people never even stop to ask what they’re painting. Some are still using the colors they were handed, never questioning them. Some are too busy looking at someone else’s easel, trying to copy a picture that was never meant for them. And some don’t even realize they’re standing in front of a canvas at all.

And then there are people trying to paint with broken brushes, carrying things they never chose, trauma they never asked for. Still forcing strokes onto the canvas even while their hands are bleeding. Some refuse to acknowledge it and some don’t even realize they’re hurt. But whether your brush is steady or broken, whether your strokes come easily or with pain, the responsibility doesn’t disappear. You’re still standing in front of the canvas. So the question isn’t just what your painting looks like, it’s whether you ever chose to pick up the brush in the first place.

I come from an extremely loving home, so don’t get it twisted; I love my family deeply. They have always supported me in everything I’ve done and never restricted the direction I wanted to take in life. They never asked me for anything, which only makes me want to give them everything in return.

But being in an environment that is designed for you will never truly challenge you. It will never force you to meet the most important person in your life: yourself.

who are you?

It wasn’t until I had no distractions that I began to seriously ask who I was. And to be honest, I’m still figuring it out. Who I am as a multi-ethnic person, shifting between identities depending on who I’m around. Who I am as a Muslim. Who I am as a friend. Who I am as a man.

For a long time, we accept the idea that whatever structure was built for us growing up is simply who we are. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You are exactly who you set out to become. You have to realize that life comes from you, not to you. So pick up the pen and take ownership of your story. The scariest part about living alone is waking up every day, looking in the mirror, and realizing that everything is your fault. Every up and every down. Every pound lost and every pound gained. Every missed fajr and every made tahajjud. Every regret and every moment of bliss.

There is nothing wrong with fault. We just have an inherent negative view of accountability because we associate it only with failure. But when will we start crediting accountability for the good things in our lives: the discipline, the growth, and the peace that comes from intentional living?

faith without pressure

At this point in your life, you find yourself at a crossroads of who you want to become and where you want to go. This especially relates to your religiosity and whether or not you want to subscribe to your faith.

With no one to push you to find your deen or to pray namaz, you ask yourself why you are doing these things to begin with. Every action becomes a question when no one is watching, and you evaluate for yourself whether you want to do it. You have the power to shake off bad learned behaviors you got as a kid when sculpting yourself or indulge in whatever you please. No one is watching, and what you do is between you and yourself.

In my head, this is where I really embraced my Muslim identity. This is when I actually took my shahada.

integrity

With no one watching you, you get a new appreciation for people who work hard. You’re not working hard to show it off for other people, but rather for yourself. It isn’t that it’s not fun to dunk on your haters—for sure, it is—but it’s simply too weak of a reason to keep me going.

Life is dark, and if the only thing that is keeping you going is contingent on other people, you’re one step away from derailing your entire success. If you determine your success based on others, you never will really live for yourself. Besides, proving people wrong isn’t going to put food on the table. You need to find a greater reason, and that only comes from within. I had to learn that consistency and effort go a very long way and is an integral part of a successful life. And what you do in private always shows up on your face in the form of genuineness. Integrity isn’t something that you can fake and life has taught me that the truth will always come out regardless if you want it to or not. Integrity isn’t something you turn on when people are watching. It’s who you are when nobody is.

hours in silence

When in isolation, you really don’t realize how quiet life is. When you’re not speaking for 12-14 hours of the day, all you have is your thoughts. You learn to live in hours of silence and the the side effect of it is finding out who you are. The good news is that you’re able to finally able meet yourself. The bad news is that you're finally able to find yourself.

With so much silence throughout the day, you find that often more than not you are just an anxious person busying yourself. No wonder why you can’t sleep at night because your subconscious that you thought is healthy has been cooking at 425° and you forgot to turn the oven off. AirPod culture has completely killed us as people and is lowkey signifying the end of times. You can’t walk somewhere without having AirPods on. You can’t drive without music or a podcast. You can’t eat without a YouTube video. You can’t even clean yourself in the restroom without doom scrolling for 10-15 minutes. If you take it a step further, its quite concerning that the media that we consume is called a feed which is the same things that domesticated animals and cows consume. Cows don’t even choose what they consume either and we are all just cattle being directed to wherever we are pushed wherever the feed is. Whenever you decide to stop consuming so much and sit in the silence, everything just stops and life really begins.

time diet

It is quite scary at first in all honesty. When you stop consuming everything at once, you deal with a lot of repressed emotion at hand. You become aware of how many things you want to change about yourself. You address all the issues you have personally, and for the first time your scope is completely focused on yourself. We as people are conscious about what we consume as food, but not when it comes to our spirituality, mental health, and most importantly time. With no distractions, you’ll finally be able to meet yourself, seeing where your mental health is after denying so many apparent problems in your life. The beauty about it all is how you’re able to sculpt exactly where you want to go from there.

Slowly but surely, I was able to start cutting out the things in my time diet to see what fits best for me. Like a physical diet, not everyone’s body functions the same and it is crucial to figure out what foods work best for my mental and time. Taking back the time to invest yourself has been the first step at least for me to feel like I’m actually living. I am able to be present in my experiences and try to step away from consuming so much. My hugs have become tighter, my laughs have become louder, and my smiles have become wider. Knowing myself has allowed for me to know others deeper and able to formulate relationships that will last lifetimes. To be transparent though, when it becomes too quiet, I do end up phoning my friends and my friends are all victims of it. I’m not a monk who will stash myself away from society a but took out the necessary time to meet someone who I’ve never met. The journey to understanding one’s self has to begin with yourself and only focus on yourself. Then and only then will you be able to love the main character in your life.

what’s next?

To come to these realizations makes me feel like my life truly started when I started to look after myself. I felt like I was born at 19 and my memory started to form only afterwards. There are so many things I’ve missed out on by not being present and I hope to just be there for not only everyone, but for myself. You come into the world alone, get sent back to Allah alone, get judged alone, and either suffer or cherish because of it. Might as well come to find yourself so that you don’t have the false presumption that someone will be there every step of the way.

To better the quality of your life, you need to implement the changes necessary and in all honesty it can be excruciating. It is easy and comfortable to just not be aware of yourself and live life on airplane mode, but once that switch is turned on it can never be turned off. How can one not be excited in determining who you are, in finding individuality that you can bring to the world? Exploring yourself is an absolute necessary human experience because at the end of the day if you are not going to take control of your life, who will? So before I meet Allah alone, I want to make sure I’ve truly met myself.

Kibr is built on insecurity. It comes from needing your actions to say something about you. In Arabic, kibr is usually translated as arrogance or pride, but psychologically it’s deeper than that; it’s an attachment to the self. It’s when good deeds increase how you see yourself instead of bringing you closer to Allah.

Riyaa’ is different, although they overlap. Riyaa’ comes from the word for seeing and is usually translated as showing off. Riyaa’ is about being seen by others while kibr is about seeing yourself. You can have riyaa’ without kibr and you can have kibr without anyone else knowing at all. That’s important, because it means secrecy alone doesn’t solve the problem. The issue isn’t visibility. It’s attachment.

Shaytan understands this psychology really well. His goal is rarely to stop you from doing good immediately. Most of the time, he lets the action happen and then reframes it afterward. You pray a sunnah you don’t usually pray because you were inspired by others. Then the thought comes that you’re only doing this to show off. It feels like sincerity, but it’s actually destabilization. Over time, the doubt piles up until the person stops doing the action altogether. Shaytan’s end goal isn’t to corrupt the deed. It’s to make you abandon it completely.

This whisper only works if your intention feels fragile or constantly under review. When people keep auditing their intention over and over, they give Shaytan full access. Intention is something you set, not something you obsessively monitor. Once you know why you’re doing something, you move forward. Excessive self surveillance keeps the self at the center, even when it looks like humility.

Riyaa’ and false humility

Sometimes Shaytan can’t inflate the ego, so he deflates it instead. This is where false humility comes in. Instead of feeling proud, a person becomes overly suspicious of themselves and falls into spiritual paralysis. They downplay their deeds, hesitate to act, or avoid good altogether out of fear of insincerity.

This in itself is a form of riyaa’ in which you still are sinful. It still keeps the self at the center and the focus hasn’t shifted to Allah; it’s just flipped direction. Whether someone is admiring themselves or doubting themselves, the ego is still being fed attention.

That’s why security matters. A secure person doesn’t need to prove righteousness, and they also don’t need to erase it. They act and move on.

Repetition removes ego value

Good deeds feel heavy when they’re rare. They feel like statements about identity and when something happens often, it becomes normal.

Repetition drains ego value from an action. The more you do something good, the less special it feels to the self. That doesn’t make it less meaningful spiritually, it just means the ego stops attaching to it. Consistency turns worship from an identity marker into routine obedience.

This is one of the most underrated protections against kibr and riyaa’. When you do a lot of good deeds, Shaytan has less room to work. He can’t inflate you with pride and he can’t crush you with doubt, because the action doesn’t feel exceptional anymore. It’s just something you do.

Ownership of deeds

A big part of attachment comes from ownership. The more you feel like a deed belongs to you, the more Shaytan can manipulate it. The moment you see the deed as something Allah allowed you to do, rather than something you produced, attachment weakens.

This shifts the mindset from achievement to permission. You yourself didn’t even generate the good but you served as a vehicle for Allah to spread goodness. You were simply allowed to participate in it and that alone dissolves a lot of ego and a lot of fear.

When the deed doesn’t feel like yours, Shaytan can’t threaten you with it or tempt you through it.

Audience matters, but intention matters more

Speaking about your own good deeds works the same way. Mentioning something that implies any righteousness that you’ve done isn’t inherently wrong. The issue is how much that these actions means to you internally.

If the action holds value to your ego, mentioning it feeds your own kibr. If the action is ordinary to you, mentioning it does nothing at all. Kibr isn’t in the words themselves, but it’s the attachment behind them.

Who you’re talking to matters too. On both ends of the spectrum, there usually isn’t much there. If the person isn’t that religious, they won’t even register the value of your deeds. If the person is deeply religious, they’ve either already done it or don’t care. In both cases, there’s nothing to gain. And a lot of the time, the audience isn’t even external; it’s the part of yourself that wants to be seen.

Security as the antidote, not silence

The answer to kibr isn’t hiding actions or being afraid to speak. It’s being secure enough that your actions don’t define you. When you’re grounded in your intention and not measuring yourself by what you do, Shaytan can’t use your good deeds against you.

A secure person can act without spiraling and speak without self inflation. The deed doesn’t belong to the ego anymore; it belongs to Allah.

The long term effect

Insecure people swing between pride and guilt. One day they feel elevated by their actions and the next day they feel crushed by doubt. This ultimately just leads to burnout and inconsistency.

Secure people move forward steadily. Their worship isn’t dramatic and it’s sustainable. Over time, that steadiness compounds and Shaytan loses interest because there’s no leverage.

The less a deed means to the self, the more sincerely it belongs to Allah. When the heart is secure, worship becomes quiet, consistent, and free.

The point isn’t to become passive or silent but to become clean inside. When you purify the heart, Shaytan has nothing to work with. He can’t inflate you and he can’t break you down s goodness becomes simple again.

Do good and don’t overthink it. Let go of how it looks and who sees it. Let go of measuring yourself against others. When your actions stop being about identity and start being about obedience, Shaytan loses his entry point.

The goal isn’t perfection, but steadiness. The more you detach from people’s perception and from your own self evaluation, the freer you become. That freedom is what protects sincerity.

When the self is quiet, worship becomes easy. When worship is easy, consistency follows. And when consistency takes root, Shaytan stops trying, because there’s nothing left to pull on.